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Learning what you can do to prevent running injuries is paramount. With the amount of volume and repetition required, it’s often the case that runners don’t prioritize enough rest and recovery into their schedules. That along with a lack of strength training and stretching/mobility work. Today we’re going to tackle all of it—and learn how to stay healthy long-term in the sport.

Rest, Recovery & Injury Prevention for Runners

Rest, recovery and prevention are terms that cover a range of strategies aimed at allowing the body to repair, adapt, and optimize performance, ultimately leading to better overall health and well-being. While training stimulates bodily adaptations that lead to improved performance and tissue changes, it's during periods of rest that these adaptations actually occur.

This is important for runners. The nature of running is very repetitive, with the effects of that repetition only compounding as the distances grow longer and the pace gets quicker. This kind of exercise attracts (maybe helps foster?) personalities that thrive off of volume, which can work both for and against the athlete.

For, because people like that always want to train, not exercising enough isn’t the problem. Against, because people like that always want to train, so they have a hard time taking a break. This opens the door for doing too much, and overuse injuries are one of the most common types in runners, particularly in the lower extremity (predominantly the knee).

Rest might be defined as a total cessation of physical activity, while recovery can mean anything that helps to facilitate repair and adaptation. Prevention encompasses methods or techniques that decrease the likelihood of injury. They all have their place, and they can all complement one another with a smart approach to program design; let’s find out how.

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How to Prevent Running Injuries

Zoom out and look at the sport from afar; running is a lot of repetitive motion and impact. We are…

…always exerting the same muscles to the exclusion of others

…always landing in the same way, on perhaps the same types of surfaces

…largely ignoring the core and upper body musculature

…not challenging our body through differing ranges of motion

…only loading our tissues in a limited number of positions

…and then afterwards, we wonder why we get injured. Running is a great sport, but like all sports lacks balance in a number of ways. Real injury prevention comes from filling in the gaps in our training and competition to give our body the best chance it can at performing well (and consistently) over long stretches of time.

Sleep

If you’re wondering what you can do to prevent running injuries, one of the first places you should be looking is your sleep schedule. Are you getting 8+ hours a night? Is it good quality? If not, you’re disrupting the natural healing mechanisms available to you for free. Get off the phone, get away from the snacks, turn off the TV—and go to sleep.

Quick Tips

• Don’t eat or drink anything 2 hours before bedtime
• Stop looking at screens (phone, TV, computer) 2 hours before bedtime
• Make your room completely dark; use blackout curtains and/or a blindfold
• Go to bed at the same time every night; get up at the same time every morning
• Don’t consume caffeine after 12:00 PM

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Nutrition & Hydration

Nutrition and hydration are literally the building blocks of who you are. It’s easy to forget that the muscles, ligaments and tendons causing us pain are literally made up of and saturated with the nutrients we bring into our body. They better be high quality and plentiful if we want those tissues to last through the literally thousands of impacts that we absorb while running.

Quick Tips

• Drink at least a gallon of water a day, more if you train that day
• Add a pinch of salt to your water to raise the pH and improve absorption
• If it wasn’t here 10,000 years ago, don’t eat it (focus on natural, whole foods)
• Consume high amounts of protein to build strong tissues, especially post-run/workout
• Limit food intake prior to bedtime for better sleep

Active Recovery & Cross Training

By participating in other forms of physical activity, it allows runners to stay active while at the same time challenging the body in different ways. Cross training in different sports or doing more leisurely activities like hiking can be both complementary to your running practice and regenerative to your body by teaching it to adapt to varying stressors of differing intensities.

Quick Tips

• Try adding a new sport or activity to your non-running days
• Participate in a wide variety of activity to build resilience and tissue tolerance
• Add in a low impact activity like cycling or swimming to put the focus on recovery
• Change running surfaces to expose your body to different angles and landing positions
• Don’t underestimate the power of a simple leisurely walk for recovery benefits

(Credit: Adobe Stock)

Stretching, Mobility & Strength Training

In order to correct the imbalances caused by running, we need to do so through a properly balanced stretching, mobility and strength training protocol, which is exactly what we’ve designed here at Dynamic Runner. If you want professional programming led by world-class instructors for pain-free running, sign up for a 7-day free trial with us by clicking here!

Quick Tips

• Perform stretching and mobility work after every run
• Incorporate strength training routines at least 2-4 times a week
• Do a mix of bodyweight exercises (relative strength) and weights (absolute strength) 
• Focus on stretching common problem areas for runners (such as the hip flexors, quads and calves)
• Consider cutting running time to add more strength and mobility work if you get injured often

Schedule Rest Days

Our final piece of advice, start putting rest days into your schedule. It’s easy to let them slide or have them turn into another workout. The body needs time to respond to all the input you’ve given it through your training. When you’re scheduled to rest, really rest. Give yourself the space to just chill out and be lazy—it’s good for you (once in a while).

Quick Tips

• Absolutely no running or strenuous activity on these days
• Use the time to be present with friends and family
• Frame it as an important part of your running journey
• Don’t be afraid to give yourself an entire week off every now and then
• Line these up with special occasions and/or cheat days on your diet

Running Injury Prevention: Dynamic Runner

We have all the tools for you to prevent injury and run like you’ve never ran before. Look better, feel better, be stronger, and become more flexible with the Dynamic Runner App and Online Training Platform. Available to you 24/7 for the price of a couple cups of coffee. Replace endless physio and massage appointments with intelligent exercise. Sign up with us today.

Written by Eric Lister – Certified Personal Trainer & Corrective Exercise Specialist