Cross Training Through Injuries

Audio Transcript

Coach Tony: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Runners Connect Run to the top Extra Kick Podcast. I hope your day is going well thanks for tuning into the show.

I’m here to answer your running and train questions so you can train smarter, stay healthy, and achieve your goals.

Today we have a great question from Garry.

Garry: Hi guys and girls. I’m from [Shebby Gates 00:00:37] Ipswich Suffolk, UK. I’ve just started a marathon training program. I’ve been running for a while, a few years as I’ve done marathons before.

I pulled a muscle in my calf just under a week ago so I’m going to miss the first two to three weeks of my marathon training.

In the meantime, I am spending as much as I can in the gym doing strength work which I never normally do but I know I must. I’m also doing cardio in the gym.

Will losing this two to three weeks really influence my marathon training, or should I just start it knowing I’m going to be three weeks behind?

Help and advice please. Thank you.

Tony: First, marathon training is a long period of time. It’s under the assumption that you’re going to miss some time.

There’s some lost downtime built into any training schedule. If you miss a week because of an injury or personal matters, time is built in, and it’s just understood that you’re going to miss some time.

Don’t worry about that when it happens.

It’s going to happen – you’re going to miss some time, you can adjust the schedule. That’s where you want to really communicate with your coach in terms adjusting your schedule.

You’ll come up with a good plan even if it’s towards the end of training. Work with your coach to come up with a way.

For example, instead doing a three week taper you can do a two-week taper. You can adjust what that long run is. Communicate with your coach as this event unfolds.

The purpose of taking like that week or two weeks off is to allow that calf to get healthier. What people often do is they do some spinning on the bike because they can’t run. You use your calves for almost anything.

If you are hurt and you need to take a week off, take the week off. Don’t start trying to do other forms of fitness because you can’t run. You want to maintain that fitness because you’re not going to allow that to heal.

Take that time off and allow that injury to recover.

Don’t be too concerned with it. One of the top female runners’ father would always tell me that she had a great ability to just take a week off and not do anything during training.

She’d take that time off and go hiking or maybe go camping or whatever but just take a week off.

If an elite athlete can take a week off, I think we all can take weeks off during our training for a marathon.

One thing that’s really going to help during that period that you have to take off is your mind’s going to be fresh. Your mind is going to be itching to start running again which is healthy for your mind.

When an injury comes, it’s important to communicate with your coach.

You’ll figure out a plan to adjust to your schedule and so forth but don’t start doing some other types of cross training during that period, unless you know it’s not going to hurt in your calf.

Let’s go back to the example of maybe you want to do some other exercise, you can do pool running, or maybe go on a trainer keeping the resistance insanely low, and spin a maybe higher cadence.

My overall advice is just take that week off, let the body get healthier and then when it’s time to come back, realize those first couple of runs are going to hurt.

You just came back from an injury trying to get confidence and the fact that you can run again and you’re not going to get hurt and feel the pain.

Bottom line Garry is you’re going to be fine.

Communicate with your coach and revise your schedule accordingly and just be careful with all the cross training that you don’t aggravate something. I wish you the best of luck and keep us posted Garry.

That’s it for today’s show. If you haven’t already done so, please consider heading to iTunes or your favorite podcast directory and subscribing or leaving a review. It helps us reach more runners like you.

Thanks for tuning in, I hope you’ll have a great day, and I’ll see you on the road. Thanks everybody.