Question from Runner Trying to Increase Training Volume and Avoid Injury

I seem to always get injured once I reach a certain level of running miles per week.  Are there exercises I’m missing in my training routine which would make me more durable?

--S.Bush

Answer:

Without knowing your training background and health history or analyzing your running form, it’s easy to speculate but difficult to determine with 100% confidence the true etiology of your injury.  In all likelihood, it’s a combination of factors.  Everyone has their individual threshold for miles over which the chances of injury increase exponentially.  Maybe you’ve reached that level.  Perhaps your run program is periodized incorrectly with intense sessions occurring prematurely or too frequently.  How many days a week are you running?  I’m a believer in frequency to build volume rather than duration of individual runs.  Is your warm-up adequate?  What about your cool-down and recovery strategies?  Are diet and lifestyle sufficient to support your training endeavors?  Tissue integrity is key.  And that, of course, is predicated on what you're consuming/how you're living on a consistent basis.  How’s your cadence, your posture, your foot strike?  The drills described in Chapter Four of Section Three of my book (http://triumphtraining.com/pages/holistic-strength-training-for-triathlon) will help anyone, regardless of level, to learn proper landing mechanics and improve ground-reaction time and proprioception.  Just like dance or martial arts, running is a skill which can be broken down and practiced in pieces until it flows with unconscious competence.  And, depending on where in your body you are consistently getting injured, I’d suggest incorporating the run-specific prehab exercises described in Chapter Three of Section Three.