Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about why jogging is a terrible way to test the state of healing of a running injury.
If you have a running injury and you are going to start running, your primary concern is making absolutely certain that the injured tissue has recovered and healed enough such that it is strong enough to withstand the forces of running without getting overloaded and becoming re-injured.
No matter what injury you have, it could be a stress fracture or it could be tendinitis or it could be a sprained ligament, but whatever you do you have to sure you don’t get re-injured, because that could be brutally demoralizing!
Because most runners think jogging is a lot easier than “real running” you might presume it’s a lot safer for you to just start jogging to test out your state of recovery.
The reason for this episode is that I was just on a call with an elite cross country runner who is had an injury that has been getting better. The physical therapist who has been treating him told him that he was getting better, but he wasn’t quite ready to start running outside.
So , he asked her, “Well, when will I be ready?”
But the reason he called me was that the physical therapist had not given him clear recovery end-point that made sense.
What I mean by not having a clear “recovery end-point,” is that the physical therapist didn’t really seem to have a clear explanation on why the tissue was going to be strong enough in three weeks, or how anyone was going to be able to confirm that the tissue was actually strong enough to start running three weeks from today.
For example, if you have a stress fracture in your second metatarsal bone, the doctor may do an x-ray in the office and then tell you that it doesn’t appear to the bone has healed yet but, given the timeline an x-ray in couple of more weeks might actually show healing.
In that case, the doctor is actually looking for bone that is bridging across the fracture site. If your doctor sees that they have visual confirmation that there is new bone present in the actual bone break. At that point of course you know that the bone is stronger and it’s probably safe for you to run.
But sometimes you have injuries to muscles, tendons or ligaments that aren’t as easily verifiable with medical imaging li eX-rays. So then you’re left guessing when it might be okay for you to start running again.
And that brings us back to the cross country runner who called me after being confused by the answers and resultant advice to wait 3 more weeks, before starting to run again.
Because we had previously work together to get him back to running, training and racing after a stress fracture, this writer felt confident in my approach. In short he said we just take the same approach we used with my stress fracture and apply it to this injury so that I could start running and start testing it right now.
Sounds completely logical, right?
But his idea was to test it out with jogging. (That was the term that he used.) And there couple of problems with jogging after an injury.
When I use the term “jogging” all I mean is running significantly slower than your normal training or racing paces. Although it may be easier, it’s not necessarily safer.
When you run slower than normal (AKA “jogging”) you run with different form.
You likely have a “best” tuned running form. A lot of it has to do with muscle memory.
Think about this for a second. Is there a pace at which you’re probably used to running, the does feel like a work out, but still feels really comfortable for you?
One year my sister and I decided to run the Houston Marathon together. And although we both had done lots of marathons and Ironman races, we had never actually done a race we ran together, side-by-side. So when we decided to do that, I thought it would be easy. Because I expected to be running much slower than my normal race pace.
But what was interesting to me Was that about 18 to 20 miles in I was in an extreme amount of discomfort. In fact, it was one of the most painful races I’ve ever run. Why do you think that is?
Well, I can tell you. I don’t normally run at her pace. Even my base training pace was faster than her marathon race pace. And it’s not an issue of being inpatient. It’s an issue of running form and the strength of the muscles that are specifically tuned to maintain a particular pace for the duration of the race.
But the important point is rather crude, and kind of embarrassing, but at about 20 miles into the Marathon I had to use the bathroom. So I told her I was going to stop at a porta-potty at the next aid station and then I would catch up.
For mile 21 and 22 I ran at a 7:20 pace to catch my sister. And I felt like I had had a massage!
That’s because I feel most comfortable running at that pace. And even though I had run 20 miles at a slow pace, running at my typical pace was a lot easier for me and frankly a lot more relaxing and rejuvenating.
The reason I’m telling you that story is that you have to remember that when you’re returning to running after a running injury if you just go out and start slogging along at a pace that you don’t normally run, you will be running with a running form that is not well tuned for you. And because of that, you might have certain muscles that support your running form that start to fatigue early.
Fatigue of muscles is what will allow you to wobble, sway and load individual structures at higher peak forces. Those higher loads, delivered unpredictably could re-injure your partially healed tissue.
So rather than running slow it’s always better to strengthen structures first, and then very deliberately return to running while decreasing the stress and strain on those individual structures so that you can protect them as you get your feet back under you.
Don’t just run slower. Focus on getting stronger so you can run faster, sooner.
If you want a copy of the step-by-step roadmap any injured runner can use to immediately asses where they are, start working out and use some simple self-test to get back to running way faster than you (or your doctor) may think…just go to https://www.docontherun.com/roadmap/ and you can get your copy for free. Go get it and I’ll see you in the next training!
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