How Do You Know When Your Body Is Ready For Speedwork After An Injury

Audio Transcript

Question: Hello,I have a question about getting back to doing speedwork after an injury.

Pretty much for the past year, I’ve been in some sort of injury cycle with a variety of different issues.

I’ve been able to run pretty consistently about five days a week for the past month and a half, but I’m scared to start incorporating speedwork again because I’m afraid it’s going to start off some sort of injury.

I guess my question is, how do you know when your body is ready to start getting back to speedwork after an injury, and how do you go about incorporating speedwork back in without getting injured. Thank you.

Michael: Great question. Injuries are obviously part of the game and simply something we have to deal with.

Actually, getting back to running is only part of the equation.

You make a great point that getting back to speedwork is another leap from there. The number one thing is to make sure that you are better.

Now this seems obvious. Of course, you’ll want to make sure that you’re better, before you get into speedwork. That’s easy to do when you’ve only been doing a little bit of jogging, maybe even just walking up to this point.

If those all feel good, obviously, it’s a great sign but speedwork is of course another animal.

The exercises and stretches that you’re doing should be going very, very well.

If you had any pain when doing them when you started, you should not be having any pain now, and you should have made a lot of progress in terms of the strengthening with that.

In addition, there should be no pain with easy running.

That means no pain, no discomfort, no feeling at all in the spot where you were having pain before.

The second thing is you’ll want to introduce strides.

What are strides? Strides are essentially a 15 to 20-second burst where you run at about 85% effort, not an all-out sprint but about 85% effort.

It’s a good way to work on your form, work on your stride and improve your basic speed.

Strides are the best way to introduce speed after a layoff. Again, these are not hard, 85% effort or so tops.

You’ll want to make sure you’re on good terrain, ideally, very flat. It should be a hard surface like a road or a track.

Make sure you’re properly warmed up. That means these are going to be after a short easy run or when you’ve been doing your exercises.

You’ll want to start with three or four of them, and no more than that.

Normally, we prescribe four to five but you’ll want to stick with no more than three or four when you start at a nice pretty comfortable pace.

You don’t want this to be very hard. You want it to be maybe 80%, 85%, maybe even 80% effort when you’re first starting.

Not a very hard effort, more like your tempo pace.

You’ll want to slowly progress to the point where you are doing five, six of them at about 85%, maybe even 90% effort once it’s really time to test it out.

One thing to remember is that these are basically mini speedwork if you think about it.

Just because it’s not an organized session where you are doing 10 times 400 meters or 5 times 800 meters, it’s still 3 to 6 times, 15 to 20 seconds at a pretty good pace.

Those are definitely the best way to introduce speed without really getting into hard sessions.

Fartleks are another good way once you’ve established stride; once you’re feeling good with those.

We are talking about very simple fartleks, basically, extended strides.

For those who don’t know what fartleks are, it’s a Swedish term for speed play.

Basically, if you’re doing five times, one minute on, one minute off, with ‘ons’, you do them at about your tempo pace and, offs, you’re doing them at a nice slow easy jog.

Another example, maybe four times: two minutes on, one minute off, eight times, 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, etc.

It can really be varied up as much as you want, but we’re going to want those on segments to not be very long when you’re starting off.

Again, you’ll want to slowly increase the ‘on’ segments. You’ll want to start at maybe 30 seconds, one minute at the most when you start, and then gradually work up to the point where you’re doing two-minute segments, maybe even get to the point where you are doing three-minute segments.

At that point, you’ll pretty much know you can get into real speedwork.

Fourth thing is to make sure you are keeping up with your exercises and your stretches.

I know I mentioned this before but it really is important and it’s one of the biggest mistakes people make when they come back from an injury to think, “Oh, well, I’m better now. I don’t really need to keep up with the stretches or the exercises.”

Just because it’s better while walking or jogging does not mean that it’s 100%.

You need to make sure that you are keeping up with the exercises, even if they’re just activation at this point.

You’ve already strengthened it up, and it’s back to where it should be and you’re just activating when you do the exercises.

I’ve actually known several runners to do activation before every single speed workout, particularly with their glutes.

Glutes are used a lot in speed and aren’t really used nearly as much when you are running easy and running really long and slow.

For instance, I’ve seen people do glute bridges, just one simple set of 10 or so of glute bridges before a workout, just to make sure the glutes are firing properly and to help the hips, the hamstrings, and everything else get ready for the workout.

It’s very important to make sure that everything is firing properly.

Fifth thing, and this is probably the biggest, is that you’ve got to take it slow. Patience is 100% key here as always but it’s really key in this instance.

Too many runners fall into the constant cycle of injury. They are injured then they come back, they get reinjured, they’re injured for a while longer, they come back, they rush to come back, they are reinjured and it’s really mostly due to a lack of patience.

You just have to be patient with this.You have to give it it’s time, and you have to take it slow and you have to make sure that you don’t increase the load until you are properly ready for it.

A couple of other small points.

You want to make sure you are wearing good shoes. Now, if you’ve never done it, gait analysis is really fantastic.

A lot of local running stores will do it. If you can find a Fleet Fit Sports perhaps, those are some of the best. Find a shoe store that will do gait analysis, where they either watch you walk or maybe they put you on a treadmill and watch you run.

Either way, just someone who’s going to look at your feet and determine what type of shoes are best for you individually, not just for everybody.

If you’re ordering off Amazon or Zappos or whatever, I would highly recommend at least once going and checking out a shoe store where you can get gait analysis and determine which size of shoes are really best for you.

That’s obviously going to help prevent injury in general, but especially when coming back like this, you want to make sure that your feet are properly taken care off, which will help with getting back from the injury as well.

Second thing is not to go after hilly routes or tough terrain for speedwork at least at first.

That’s a whole other stimulus on your body, especially if you think about tough terrain like trails where you’re getting that really three-dimensional surface that’s tough on your legs.

It’s good for you, it’s good for your lower legs, strengthening them over time but it can be very tough when you’re coming back from an injury.

At first, I would highly recommend getting on either a nice flat stretch of road or perhaps even a track if you can.

Last thing is to remember that sometimes, it’s a two steps forward, one step back scenario.

One flare up is not the end of the world.

It’s going to happen at one point or another.

It’s difficult for most runners to be patient enough, but it’s also very difficult because you just don’t know. You don’t know what it’s going to be like until you really add that speedwork in.

You can do everything you can to prepare for it, and you can make sure that everything’s feeling good but at some point, you might just have a setback that’s going to feel pretty disappointing when it comes about.

It’s important to remember that sometimes it really is two steps forward, one step back and as long as you keep moving forward, you’re on the right track.

All right Runners Connect fans. Remember to check out Health IQ, health insurance specifically designed for the health conscious.

We like data-backed research and so does Health IQ. Take advantage of your much better than average health with tremendous offers.

Just visit runnersconnect.net/healthiq. That’s runnersconnect.net/healthiq to learn more and/or get a free quote. Thanks for tuning in today, hope you have a great day and we’ll see you next time.