New Year, New You? How to Avoid Common Running Injuries

The benefits of running are almost limitless and can improve your health and wellness on many different levels. For starters, if you run just 5 to 10 minutes a day, you can reduce your risk of early death from all causes.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the health and wellness benefits of running, which explains why 50 million Americans count themselves as runners and joggers.

As health professionals, the team at SOAR Spine and Orthopedics appreciates the health benefits of running, but we’ve also seen the other side — running injuries. So, if you want to try running in the new year (or get back to it), we applaud this decision, but we’d love for you to follow a few great strategies for avoiding running injuries.

Common running injuries

To set the scene, we want to review some of the more common running injuries, including:

• Achilles tendon issues, which affect slightly more than 10% of runners
• Plantar fasciitis, which accounts for about 10% of running injuries
• Ankle sprains
• Shin splints
• Patellofemoral pain syndrome, also known as runner’s knee
• Stress fractures
• Bursitis

Outside of ankle sprains, most of these injuries are overuse or repetitive use injuries that you can avoid, if not manage better.

A guide to avoiding running injuries

Now let’s get into some strategies for avoiding running injuries, which include:

Starting slowly

Whether you’re new to running or you used to run regularly, one of the biggest mistakes people make is not easing in. Running engages many joints in your body, especially in your lower legs, and they are not used to the demands.

So, we want you to start very slowly to see where your body is, and then you can push gradually from there.  

A good rule of thumb is to add only 10% the distance from one week to the next, so if you run 1 or 2 miles in the first week, you can bump that to 1.1 to 2.2 miles the following week.

Easing into new terrain 

Runners often use distance as the primary metric, but there are others. Running steadily uphill over a mile is more demanding than running twice that amount on flat terrain. So, if you’re changing your running landscape to add more challenges, such as hills or trail running, please ease into this.

For example, even if you routinely run 3 or 4 miles on flat pavement, if you want to switch it up and do some trail running, cut your distance in half to start, as the terrain is far more challenging for your body to negotiate.

Get the right tools for the job

What you wear on your feet is critical, and you want to make sure your running shoes support your feet. So, please make sure that you have snug shoes with no pressure points. As well, be sure to have the right shoes for the job — if you enjoy trail running, you should have trail running shoes with more traction to avoid injury. 

Cross train

One of the best ways to avoid injury is to crosstrain and build body strength. And we’re not just referring to leg exercises, but other areas, such as a strong core for balance.

So, you should devote at least one training session per week to strength training your entire body. To get started, click on this link.

Do not run through pain

As we mentioned, most running injuries develop gradually, which means there’s often a warning sign in the form of pain. Any time you feel pain while running, we urge you not to run through it; instead, heed the warning and take a break.

If the pain persists, please see us. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen running injuries that we could have resolved far more easily, but the patient ran through the pain, and the problem worsened.

So, at the first signs of trouble, please see us for running injury rehabilitation so that we can get you back to running more quickly and more strongly.

If you have more questions about injury prevention and running, we invite you to contact us today at one of our offices in Santa Clara or Redwood City, California.