Do you enjoy running, but find that when you’re finished or during your run, the onset of pain occurs in your joints?
If you feel like you have to cut your runs short because of pain, that’s not a good sign and more importantly, do not run through it! The amount of stress and impact that running creates on the body, can be quite damaging for joints and soft tissues over time. As a runner, we have narrowed down the 5 most common injuries that we come across:
- Runner’s knee
- Shin splints
- Hamstring pulls
- Achilles tendonitis
- Piriformis Syndrome
As you can see in the list above, the main parts of the body affected by running generally tend to be the feet, ankles, knees and hips. These body parts are all connected in the one link, when you are tight in one area other parts will overcompensate meaning injuries happen here. For example, if you do your knee it usually means that either your hip or muscles around your knee are too weak to support the movement of running.
We’ve gathered our top tips to help you try and minimise these ongoing joint paints yourself first:
- For knee pains, strengthen those muscles around your knee with eccentric training (slow lowering tempo squats) this will strengthen the tendons around the knee
- Rest up and make sure you are fully recovered before attempting to run again
- Ensure you have a gradual increase with running distances and running times (if you go too hard too soon, it will spark injuries/inflammation!)
- Know your limits and don’t push through the pain! Make sure you STOP when the first onset of pain occurs
- Stretch regularly to loosen the tightness of your muscles
- If pains continue, make sure you see us to get you back up running faster!
It is incredibly important that if your pains aren’t just a one off, and you begin to feel them every time you move, it will only make matters worse and lead to a more serious injury! With this, it means that your running days are temporarily put on hold (and no one wants that!).
If you feel like you’re running injuries just won’t go or are becoming worse over time, our friendly team will be able to help assess and accurately find the source of your pain. We pride ourselves on being able to educate our clients with specific tips to improve their injuries while providing relief and restore the injury site to allow you to be back to your usual routine.