The Real Reason You Keep Getting Injured
How to join me in an injury free, high training load season!
Injury sucks, and if you landed on this article I bet you’ve experienced your (un)fair share of them over the years. Maybe, like me you have been someone who has been used to at least 1 injury a year if you were lucky. Maybe, like me you always ran, cycled or generally worked out in some sort of discomfort or pain that wasn’t directly linked to the exercise itself.
Well, I’m here to tell you that you are probably your own worst enemy when it comes to getting injured. I’m not saying it’s 100% your fault, you’ve probably got white coat syndrome and have believed the fitness industries version of good advice around how our bodies “should move”. Most of this is marketing and old advice which hasn’t been updated since new studies have either disproven it or found out that the original assumption was faulty.
Now, I’m not one of these “don’t believe the scientists” types, not at all. Quite the opposite in fact, most of what you hear in the fitness world is BS marketing and hype, the actual science has moved on quite a bit since things like “don’t squat with your knee over your toes” or “stop all foot pronation!” were touted as the gospel for injury prevention.
I’ll take you through my journey to a high degree of injury prevention and building a strong, mobile body using techniques that are proven to work even in what some physios would deem the most lost causes out there!
Overtraining
Let’s rip off the first band aid, over training is still one of the most common causes of injury, especially in the endurance sport world. Us endurance athletes often have very high training demands placed on our bodies, we tend to be putting in a minimum of 10 hour weeks and the more dedicated amateurs may even be hitting the 20 hour mark. That’s a lot of load, especially if you drive a desk for a living like most of us do these days which in turn causes us to develop mobility issues, strength imbalances and above all else, injury risk.
Best way to prevent this? Pretty simple but not always easy. Gradually increase your training load and make sure you even out your imbalances. If you are a person with a long history of keeping fit and active but you keep getting injured, you are likely doing too much. It’s not always jut too much, you may also be suffering from too little, and by that I mean, too little recovery, strength and/or mobility.
What does that “too little” look like? Well it depends, you could have an excellent cardiovascular system but weak muscles and imbalances causing you to run with poor form or fatigue very quickly and be unable to carry your weight in a functional way. It could be too much training and not enough recovery, things like a lack of sleep or poor diet can really trip up even the most dedicated athlete.
Whatever your “too much” or “too little” turns out to be, this is the most simple one to rule out. Just back off the training load for a few weeks and see how those small but ever present issues seem, does that shoulder pain start to ease off? Are your knees less sore? Easy way to spot if you need to dial back your training hours or dial up your recovery is checking in with how much general energy you feel you have, if you’re constantly knackered you’re out of balance.
Like I say, simple but probably not all that easy to act on. We all live busy lives and there are a huge number of things to do on a daily basis, recovery often feels like a luxury. However, if you want to achieve longevity in health and fitness, you need to figure out if sustainability looks like dialling back training or dialling up recovery.
Functional Strength is Non-Negotiable
This is a big one that many endurance athletes get wrong, myself included for many, many years! It’s probably because many of us take up endurance sports to be in the great outdoors rather than a sunlight devoid gym where no-one talks to each other and looks like they also don’t want to be there… Ok maybe that’s a bit harsh on gyms, but you can guess how much I like going to the gym from that description.
I promise though, if you do just sacrifice 1 hour a week to the gym gods, they will reward you by making you a more resilient and functional athlete. What you need to keep in mind with functional strength is that it’s not about lifting the most weight, try not to bring your running or cycling mindset to the gym. You’re not aiming to hit targets or PB’s for these sessions, think of these sessions like a set of swim drills, pace isn’t import it’s about holding and repeating the best form possible.
I would recommend starting your strength training with bodyweight only, even if you have a history of lifting weights. The reason being is that you may be strong, however, you probably have terrible functional strength as they don’t really crossover. Your strength training should be aiming to build core stability, strong ancillary muscle groups and increase your range of motion. Yep, functional strength and conditioning should actually increase your flexibility and range of motion!
I considered giving you a guide on what exercises are best, however, everyone has different imbalances and weaknesses to address. You need to first figure out your areas for development and then apply the correct exercises to address these imbalances. If you don’t have enough knowledge on this subject, take my quiz and book a free call and I will happily advise you on how to get started!
Rest Days
You're probably doing rest days wrong, I know, how can you possibly get a rest day wrong?! Well, easily in my experience. People like us who love endurance sport tend to be of a particular nature, we don’t really know how to relax and take it easy. As an example, most of my rest days in the past used to be spent going to the theatre, going for a long walk, maybe even doing a different less intense sport. It’s not really sitting in the park or on the sofa popping blueberries watching the world go by.
If you plan your rest days well, it gives your body an incredible boost and will enable it to Supercompensate if you get it just right and have a high build load in the days leading up to a proper rest day.
I’m not saying just sit on the sofa by any means, definitely keep active. However, what I want you to takeaway from this is that rest days should not be stressful, do everything you can to engage in things that relax you and bring you enjoyment but don’t be too full on about it, just because you’ve freed up 2 hours of your day doesn’t mean you should cram it with as much as possible.
Just in case you haven’t got the picture yet, stressful days caused by a busy schedule (even of things you enjoy!) can cause your rest day to feel more like a training day to your body.
Don’t ruin all your hard work by overdoing the rest days, that’s kind of the bottom line for this. I think I’m stressing this point the most because I fall prey to this trap almost weekly, I’ll learn my lesson one day! Hopefully you can learn yours from my mistakes and not fall into the trap of overreaching and getting ill on the regular.
Fuelling
Why did I say fuelling rather than nutrition? Well, fuelling covers training and recovery, this is super important and I wish I had figured this one out much earlier than I did.
We can start with the bad news first, if you have a training load of 5+ hours per week, you’re gonna need to track your food at least to start with. Yep, it’s annoying, none of the apps on offer are all that good and quite frankly it takes the joy out of eating. However, the worst thing you can do for your recovery or your training (other than sleep debt) is to screw up your fuelling. If you manage to put yourself in a massive calorie deficit, much like I used to, you will start to experience the beginnings of overtraining, chronic fatigue and at worst case something we’re starting to know as RED-S. We’ll talk about the latter more in a bit.
The long and short of it, is that you need to track your food for at least a month to make sure you’re roughly breaking even on your calorie spend vs your calorie intake. Unless you are trying to drop weight, but even then, don’t push for anything more extreme than a 10% calorie deficit, it’s been proven unsustainable in many studies. If weight loss is your goal, what I want you to takeaway is that it takes time and dedication, there is no easy way, don’t jeopardise your health for quick results.
The good news? In my opinion it’s great news! If you fuel during your workout & well both before and after you will see an enormous return on your existing training load. I know this stuff has been done to death in every bit of sport nutrition advice but still we seem to suck at following it and it just works. I don’t need to tell you that you need a balanced diet full of fresh veggies and fruits, you’re an adult, don’t eat burgers for every meal, that part is pretty obvious.
However, the less obvious part is making sure you fuel during your workouts, well, not every workout, but especially threshold sessions and long endurance efforts. Making sure you keep yourself topped up with glucose will mean you can push harder, for longer and improve the training adaptation. Not to mention, if you start to “bonk” this actually undoes a lot of the work you’ve done because your body starts to prioritise staying alive rather than fuelling your effort. You will feel sluggish, tired and unable to push the kind of effort that will actually lead to enough muscle damage to cause a repair which makes you stronger. If you don’t fuel during those efforts, you’re just racking up junk miles and there is no return on investment there.
It’s all about self experimentation, once you have a good idea of your calories out and calories in you can start to make adjustments and experiment with different food combos to see which boost your performance the most. Using myself as an example, I have a 13 - 20 hour weekly training load, my ideal fuelling is 4000 Calories per day to maintain my weight and performance. That number is made up of ~105G of protein (66KG bodyweight * 1.6G protein) and the rest made up of primarily whole food fat sources (nuts and seeds) and carbohydrates from complex sources like legumes, oats, brown pasta, veggies and fruits. Sometimes I have to flex up on double days where my calorie expenditure can hit 5000 calories and flex down on rest days. One thing I never compromise on is that protein number, if I miss my protein count I feel sluggish, tired and weak the next day.
If you get it right and find out what works best for you I can guarantee it will totally revolutionise your training adaptation! Best part? You will likely see better results from your existing training load rather than needing to add in more hours.
My Own Story of Getting Recovery Wrong
I recently (Winter 2022) dug myself into quite a whole, it was a combo of things but one of the biggest factors that kept me sick with what ended up being a pretty bad chest infection for the best part of 4 weeks was poor fuelling & sleep debt. Until that time I hadn’t tracked my food at all, I didn’t even count the calories / carbs I was using to fuel a 70.3 Triathlon. Yes, I know… What a moron. The reason I want to highlight this is that I was very competitive last season, I placed in the top 20% if not better in all my races and also got a few top 10 results too. I figured whatever I was doing was working, I was also leaning out and building muscle, perfect training on the surface, right?
Well, until I got ill and stayed ill for nearly a month I thought so too. I was accumulating sleep debt like it was interest free and when I finally tried tracking my food in January after I fully recovered I realised most days I was in a 1500 calorie deficit. It doesn’t really get much more destructive on your body than this, I wasn’t letting the recovery systems do their job because I was under resourcing them and while you can sustain this stress for a short period it will eventually catch up with you. When I look back, I was starting to see the very early warning signs of chronic fatigue, overtraining and RED-S creeping in.
RED-S or chronic fatigue are very extreme ends of the spectrum, generally speaking you’re only in the danger zone for this one if you compete in ultra marathons, Ironmans, middle distance Tri or to a very high standard in the marathon, ultra endurance cycling or standard distance multi-sport. But you do need to pay attention to the signs otherwise you can end up with life altering health problems.
It’s all well and good going full Goggins if that’s your thing, but you need to manage your recovery as well. Going hard is great and it will build incredible fitness, however, you need to go equally hard on your recovery to let that wonderful body of yours build back better.
The bottom line is; don’t do what I did. Instead, gradually increase your training load, if you sign up for a big challenge that will push you to your limit, make sure you allow plenty of time to build your fitness sustainably. Get on top of your fuelling, if you don’t know where to start ask someone who does, there are plenty of people who can give you first hand experiences and a lot of coaches have good nutritional knowledge.
Most of all, make sure you pay attention to how you feel, feeling a bit tired is normal when you’re building your body up to do something it isn’t used to, however, getting fitter should feel great, overall you should feel better than you ever have. If you’re always tired, in pain or feeling washed out don’t ignore that. It could be a sign you need to read this article again ;)
Still feeling confused? Not sure where to start when it comes to training, nutrition and recovery? That’s fine, there are plenty of people out there who can help and I’m one of them, take my quiz and see where you might need a little extra focus, you can even book a call with me for free! Just click the link below.