If I had only 30 days to return to full running after an over training injury, what would I do? Well, that is what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
Yesterday I was at the Twin Cities Foot and Ankle Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota and the reason I was there is I was invited by the Minnesota Podiatric Medical Association to come and give a lecture, a one-hour lecture, about what was new in sports medicine. It may not surprise you that most of what I was talking about was the kind of stuff I talk about here, how to help injured runners get back to training, full activity, after overtraining injuries, as quickly as possible.
So, what happened was really simple. I gave my talk, and then after the lecture, another doctor out in the hallway approached me, and she asked an interesting question. What she said was, “You yourself had an overtraining injury, whether it was a stress fracture, a plantar plate sprain, a tear of the plantar fascia, a split in the peroneal tendon, no matter what the injury was, if you yourself were given a deadline of 30 days to healing that thing enough, you could actually run outside without worrying about re-injuring that piece of tissue, what exactly would you do?”
Well, that is a great question. I have never thought about it that way, but it does really kind of make things different because I’m always talking about you’ve got to figure out what the runner’s goal is, you have to have a timeline, and then you have to do everything that you can in your power to try to make that heal as quickly as possible.
Early this morning, I was on a strategy call with a runner who called me, and he wanted to know about getting an MRI, some very specific things that related to diagnosing his condition, and I immediately started telling him some of the same things I’m about to tell you. So, if you think about what I would do, given that all the stuff that you’ve listened to that you know about me, what do you think my answer would be? Get an MRI, get a PRP injection, a corticosteroid injection, take some kind of medication, what do you think it would be? Well, the answer might surprise you.
I think I have got about eight things I have thought of that I’m going to tell you, but I have tried to put them together in order to tell you, like, literally, from waking up to going to bed, what I would do every day for those 30 days that I believe would give me the best chance of maximizing the healing of that tissue so that I could return to running in a way that I personally find enjoyable.
First thing I would do, soon as I woke up and stepped out of bed, on day one, I would make note of any pain that I have or lack of pain. I would write it down. I would start a pain journal, and I would start tracking it immediately. What I mean is that when I wake up, I get out of bed, and I go make coffee. So, I would literally, from walking to the coffee pot in the morning, do I have any pain, or do I have no pain at all? That is the very first thing I would do. I would write something down no matter what. If I had pain, I would write it down. If I did not have pain, I would write it down. If it felt weird, if it felt swollen, anything, I would write that down.
Second thing. Basically, while I was making coffee, what I would do is I would meditate, and I would visualize the healing of the tissue every single morning. So, I would do a neuroplastic exercise where you’re trying to get your brain to stimulate something to happen physiologically and there is evidence that this will work. It’s not just hocus-pocus, but I would visualize the osteoclast and osteoblast working together to remodel the bone if I had a stress fracture or the tenositis repairing the plantar plate if the plantar plate ligament was torn. I would visualize that healing happening every single morning, very first thing.
Then what I would do after that, probably when I was having coffee, I would do a writing exercise. Something to the effect of I would say, like just for today, I’m going to do whatever it takes to be stronger than I was yesterday. And so, I would write down an affirmation like that and then I would think about and list out the things that I could do, that I plan to do today that are going to make me stronger than I was yesterday.
The fourth thing I would do is that I would workout and I would exercise anything that could make me stronger as a runner, that could not possibly slow down the healing of that one injured part, whether it’s a metatarsal stress fracture or a torn plantar plate or a peroneal tendon or Achilles tendon or whatever. I would exercise everything else to strengthen everything else so that one piece can rest and recover while being supported by increasing fitness everywhere else.
The fifth thing is that as I was going throughout the progress of the day, as I was working out, as I was going to see patients, as I’m standing up to do these videos for you, as I was doing anything during the day at all, if I had any pain or any discomfort at any time during the day, I would write it down and I would ask myself, why did that just happen? Is it because of standing barefoot, too much pressure on my foot, on tile or hardwoods or did I step on the edge of the rug or is it because I was turning and changing direction and rotational forces are what’s causing it? I would really write down what exactly happened that caused that discomfort and how much it hurt on a scale of one to 10.
The sixth thing I would do is I would really focus on my nutrition, and I would eat like I was still in full training mode. That is exactly what I would do. I would follow the same kind of regimented diet that I would when training for an Ironman triathlon or an ultra-marathon because you are trying to rebuild tissue. It’s just not as fun as when you go for 20-mile runs. It’s arduous in that you have to like stay on this diet when you’re not really training per se but you’re healing tissue and that is all training is. You cause tissue damage, and you have to heal it. Along those same lines, it doesn’t get stronger when you’re doing the workout, it gets stronger when you’re sleeping. So, I would schedule, plan and really protect my sleep so that I get the highest quality sleep possible.
Then the last thing I would do, number eight, is that for five minutes while in bed, every evening right before I was going to fall asleep, what I would do is try to key up my subconscious mind to actually speed up this process and I would picture myself, I would close my eyes in my mind, I would picture my cells actually helping that injury to heal and I would go through a positive affirmation expressing gratitude for the healing and strength building activities that I actually did today that I wrote down before I even finished having coffee in the morning. That is really the things that I would do that I think would make the biggest difference.
I think that if you did those things, they could help you too if you have an injury that you think is not healing as fast as it could. The one thing I do know is if you do the things I just told you, they can’t hurt you. But I’m not talking about doing exercises that could hurt the tissue. So, if you have an injury, you got to talk to your doctor, talk to somebody, get a second opinion, even if it’s a webcam consultation with somebody who understands runners who can actually help you through this process.
But you have to track your pain more than anything else and the runner I was telling you about this morning, first thing, I got back really, really late from this conference in Minnesota last night. I only slept for four hours before I had this consultation scheduled with this guy that had the strategy call. But that is a commitment I made, and I kept that commitment. So, I got up after four hours and I talked to him and what I said is, right now you’ve got to start tracking your pain.
If you want to copy the pain journal I use, you can get that for free at www.docontherun.com/painjournal. You can go there, you can use that one as a model for how to track your pain, but you’ve got to start tracking things right away if you really want to get back to running as quickly as possible.
Now, I bet that if I was injured, I could do that and I could get back to running in 30 days or less. Will that work for you? I don’t know, but I know the more of this you do, the more it’s going to help you. And the less you do, the less it will help. If you enjoy this episode, like it, please subscribe, go get the pain journal and I’ll see you in the next training.
«« #952 What can a runner with hallux rigidus do if not a good candidate for cheilectomy surgery? |