okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Rambling notes about injuries

A few days ago it struck me that a lot of the people who I follow on Attackpoint get sick and injured a lot. A few years ago, I tried to see if I could predict injuries and illness. I picked out a few runners and each day I'd check their log, read what they wrote, and give it a score. I'm having trouble remembering all of the details, but the score was something really simple, like a 1-3 scale, where the higher the number the more I figured they were likely to get sick or hurt. I kept it up for a month or two and then got bored.

The main thing I remember was a few false positives. Runners who's training made me think they were likely to get sick. But they didn't get sick (at least during the month or two I was watching).*

There's lots of generic advice on avoiding injuries: don't increase your training more than 10 percent; stretch; strength train; and so on. But, despite all that advice, lots of people seem to get injured. Maybe they're not following the advice. Or maybe the advice doesn't actually work.

*An aside. Probably just coincidence, but the people I was following who scored highests on my scale didn't get sick during the period I was following, but have had some longer-term injury problems in more recent times.

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posted by Michael | 8:37 AM

2 comments

Comments:

I think another reason for injuries especially among endurances athletes is the lack of strength training.
For me personally I think it's a reason i'm quite often injured, not doing enough supportive training next to my running.
Of course this is widely known, and still it's hard to make yourself do this strength training on a regular basis next to running.
Interesting experiment!

# posted by

Koen : 12:26 PM

I found for years when I trained at my most intensive, including a lot of track and road running, that if I had regular decent massages (every 1-2 weeks) it kept most injuries away.... Without doing the boring strength work. I realised after 2-3 years of this that the cost of the massage far outweighed the frustration and cost (doctors, physios etc.) that you incur when injured.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:31 PM

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