Blog post produced and written by Head of Physiotherapy Dept. & Lead Sports Therapist Gerard Minihane. With a Masters Degree in Sports Therapy and currently working with the QPR Football Club Medical Team, Gerard specialises in knee injuries and acute trauma from a wide range of sporting injuries.
The importance of load management in running
Are you new to running? Picked up a niggly injury?
There may be a quick solution – STOP RUNNING!
Easier said than done, plus this post wouldn’t be of much use if I just left it there!
From my perspective, a pain you didn’t necessarily have before you started running, is now present. It leaves us with an easy solution as to why this has occurred. But it also leaves us with some questions and where to go from there and how to get you back running safely without this injury returning.
The first question we ask is why has it occurred?
So this is why you are concerned, and rightly so. Running with pain is not normal. Yes there may be some aches, but pain should not be one of them and should not be considered ‘normal’. This is where ‘load management’ comes into the equation. We will ask questions such has ‘how often have you been running?’ ‘what sort of distances have you been running?’ ‘what sort of surfaces you’ve been running on?’ etc.
These are all very important variables that YOU can control.
Particularly if you are new to running, you may see friends or other people you may follow or look at as an idol and they are posting 5km times and 10km times. This does not mean you need to go out and start doing the exact same. This is so IMPORTANT.
A gradual approach to increasing your load needs to be appreciated
An example of progression would be running 1 day/week to 2/days per week or running 5km/week to 5.5km/week to 6km/week. Different frequencies and quantities need to be adjusted according to where you’re currently at and where you want to be.
Where you’re starting point is will depend on your own individual circumstances and maybe for that reason you should seek that professional advice before going about a block of training.
NB
It must be noted that although this is one of the most important factors to note, it must not be forgotten about the importance of self maintenance with some stretching and strengthening work that can compliment your running. We will look at this in my next post!
