Now that we’ve looked at load management, I’m going to move onto the next two usual suspects in running injury prevention: strength training and running technique.
Back to the scene of the crime
I’m back in the clinic with my injured runner. She tells me that she has been tracking her runs like NASA tracks their satellites. She can show me detailed graphs on her running app dashboard showing slow and steady changes in training volume over long periods. She assures me that she closely monitors her intensity and only ever changes one training variable at a time.
Okay, so we cross that suspect off the list. It wasn’t the training load.
Who is next on our list of the usual suspects?
Strength Training
Strength training has certainly received more attention in the running media in recent years, which is awesome! That being said, I was out with the Running Room Ottawa yesterday, and one of the runners was telling me how he had been doing some strength training for a while, but had fallen out of the habit. Most injured runners I have in the clinic are not aware that strength training not only reduces your injury risk, but also improves performance.
That’s right, strength training improves running performance.
But let’s stick to injury prevention for now.
Strength training has been shown to reduce sports related injuries by up to one third. I’m going to write a lot more about strength training for injury prevention and performance optimization in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned for that.
Just for today, let’s just say that strength training is awesome at preventing injuries. After load management, strength training is the second most important variable when it comes to developing an injury.
Back to the scene of the crime
My injured runner is telling me she strength trains three times a week. She can deadlift twice her bodyweight, her squat is almost as good and she can even bench two thirds her bodyweight.
Okay, so we cross that suspect off the list. She’s strong.
Who’s next up for interrogation?
Running Technique
Now it’s getting interesting. How running technique relates to injuries has been studied extensively. We know that some running technique errors are related to increased injury risk. You can read about that in more detail in my article Running Technique: Elephants, Monkeys and Mice. However, the relationship between injury risk and running technique is by no means as strong as the relationship between injury risk and load management.
To try and avoid confusion here let me say this. If you have terrible running technique but exceptional training load management, you will probably not get injured very often. Conversely, if you have terrible load management but exceptional running technique, you will get injured pretty much all the time.
That being said, I will often modify running technique to reduce symptoms or to reduce injury risk. I also perform running technique analysis in order to optimize performance. However, if you want the best bang for your buck in term of reducing injury risk, you should spend more time working on load management than you do on improving your running technique. That is not to say that running technique has no influence on injury risk, but it is far smaller an influence than load management.
So what other variables should we consider in preventing running injuries? Check out the next article in this series: Running Injury Prevention: Shoes + The Unusual Suspects