If you're one of the brave who are training for a marathon, the last thing you need is an injury to sideline you. Yet, over and over again, even the best runners among us get injured despite training by ramping up miles responsibly and in line with a training schedule. It's been widely documented that 1 running injury occurs for every 100 hours of running. In addition, runners on average miss about 5-10% of their workouts due to injury. Injuries plague new runners and experienced runners alike.
When you have a half marathon or marathon date set, it's never the right time to be injured. Each day is accounted for in your training schedule and you can't afford to be out. That's why it's so important to accept and embrace a core strengthening regimen as a fundamental part of your training schedule.
The reason why runners get repeatedly injured in predictable ways is driven by the fundamental basics of what running actually is. Consider this: during an average one-mile run, your foot strikes the ground 1,000 times. So during one "peak" training run of 20-miles, your foot strikes the ground 20,000 times. And the force of impact on the foot is 3 to 4 times your weight!
The surprising clincher is the real reason why runners get injured is that injury prevention is not about leg muscle strength at all. Sure, strong legs matter – but the truth is, your set traditional training more than adequately covers that. In fact, it's just the opposite: the real strengthening needs to target all the muscles you're most likely ignoring while overly repeating the front-and-back motion of running. In short, your surrounding muscles which laterally stabilize — and are SO important to safely landing each step — just continue to atrophy. This pattern is no surprise because by definition, running is a forward-and-back motion. That's why the injuries that plague runners are common and predictable.
We all know that running is great exercise, but its limited range of movement will create muscle imbalance. Without opposing movements, the body will compensate to avoid injury by working around the instability. Compensation puts stress on muscles, joints and the entire skeletal system. If your body isn't balanced, every step you take forces the muscles to work harder in compensation. Tight muscles get tighter and weak muscles get weaker.
What's wrong with tight muscles? They are brittle, hard, and inflexible. Because muscles act as the body's natural shock absorbers, ideally they should be soft and supple, with some give. Brittle muscles, on the other hand, cause the joints to rub and grind, making them vulnerable to tears and injuries. Short, tight muscles can't provide the necessary shock absorption you need for each step's landing.
So what can you do to prevent injuries during your marathon training?
From the beginning, treat strengthening as a key requisite of your training. It's not an 'extra' or 'nice to have'. It's a fundamental part of each day's running. Think: your strengthening allows you to run. Not vice versa.
To treat the inevitable muscle imbalances, you must stretch the shortened muscles and strengthen the weaker muscles. The calves, hamstrings, and low back muscles of runners typically are short, tight, and inflexible. These muscles need to be stretched. On the other hand, the opposing muscles — the shins, quadriceps, and stomach muscles — become lengthened and relatively weak. Think of the two groups as yin-and-yang: you must stretch the shortened, strengthen the lengthened.
Injuries to a runner's body do not usually stem from one single traumatic event. Even if you recall a "specific" day an injury happened, it's more likely the case that injury just finally triggered that day — and all the runs leading up to it fully contributed to it. Most injuries stem from overuse. An overuse injury is caused by a gradual breakdown in the system. The most common types of injuries resulting from overuse are back pain, runner's knee, shin splints, and Achilles tendonitis. The primary causes for overuse injuries are muscle imbalance, biomechanics, flexibility and postural alignment.
Pilates is an excellent way to prevent injuries and is gaining a tremendous amount of respect in the rehabilitation community. Physical therapists, chiropractors and medical doctors have included the Pilates method as part of the rehabilitative program for patients.
In your marathon training schedule, you'll probably ramp up to 40-mile weeks and have 3 peak runs of 20 miles each. Recall that during during one peak training run, your foot is striking the ground 20,000 times with the force of 3-4 times your body weight. When you have to include those 3 peak runs of 20 miles each, the numbers will just pile up. For each 'landing', your core muscles have to be strong enough to land foot on the ground in a strong, aligned way.
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