Training Tips by Coach Joe McConkey

Three 'Must-Have' Injury Prevention Habits

1. Daily work for symmetry. Over 80% of all running repetitive motion injuries are unilateral injuries, injuries on one side of the body. A critical way to avoid these is to ensure your muscles are symmetrically loose, relaxed and without inflammation - i.e. symmetrically pliable.
   • Spend 15 minutes assessing R vs L tension levels for the lower back, glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, calves and shins
   • Use a foamroll, self-massage device, lacrosse ball and/or your hands and thumbs to apply pressure and vary up the positions you are in to fully assess each area.
   • If one side is tighter than the other, begin working on this asap with quality TSM (targeted self-massage) on the tighter side.
   This process leads into ensuring symmetry of flexibility and symmetry of strength (more detail of this approach in Pliability for Runners).


2. Use the 80/20 rule, or adjusted 40/40/20 rule. A standard practice to help prevent injuries is to train using the 80/20 rule, where 80% of your weekly volume is easy running and 20% at a higher intensity. This can be limiting for amateur runners who are training at only a moderate level of speed and volume. For example, 'Matt' runs 60 mpw, wants to run a marathon at 7:00 minute pace, and likes to run 8 miles of speed work on Wednesday and a 16 mile marathon- paced run on Sunday. That is 24 miles of higher intensity, which is 40% of his weekly volume. It does not quite follow the 80/20 rule, but Matt responds well and is staying injury-free. The 80/20 rule is great for high volume (80-100+ mpw), fast paced (6:00 pace or faster for the marathon) runners, but for more intermediate level marathoners another 'level' to the 80/20 rule is often more appropriate. Typically this comes out to around 40-50% of easy running, 30-40% of easy moderate (marathon goal pace) and 10-20% of anything faster than marathon pace.


3. Carbs for Recovery. Marathoners know that to prepare for your long runs, and for race day, you must ensure you are eating plenty of carbohydrates. Having carbs after you run is an often neglected practice yet is just as critical as 'carb- loading!' After a long hard workout your body is depleted of and is starving to replenish glycogen stores. By taking in plenty of healthy carbs soon after your run you are expediting not only the recovery process, but also the super- compensation adaptation (i.e. building a stronger body after full recovery from a hard workout ).

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