Running is a fantastic form of exercise, it helps to boost your cardiovascular fitness, improves your strength and maintain your weight.
There can be a worry that you’ll pick up injuries when you run, but if you plan your training carefully and have a balance between running and strength exercises you can progress well.
Having a bad back can be so debilitating. It can stop you getting a good night sleep and have the knock on effect of getting you down and irritated.
When it stops you doing your normal everything things you know it’s time to do something about it.
Many of you will know about the issue I’ve had with my knee over the last few months, thanks to some body boarding and ‘old lady breaststroke’ during the August bank holiday weekend.
Its turns out I’ve torn part of the cartilage in my knee, and I now have the long slow recovery process to work through, as I’m very keen to avoid a surgery on it.
Whenever we need to move, our body needs to balance. This can be made harder if your ankles are unstable.
Shoulder pain can be a really big problem and very frustrating when it comes to exercise.
You might not realise it, but like many injuries when they happen you suddenly notice how much you use that area.
Do you ever suffer from lower back pain?
Your sacroiliac joint is a joint where your ilium and sacrum meet at the top of you pelvis and lower spine.
When dysfunction happens it is usually coupled with an element of pain in the lower back and hips.
Have you been as engrossed in the Olympics as me this week?
I love watching them; it’s a great chance to see so many sports that aren’t normally in the spotlight. My favourites so far have been the BMX, Skateboarding and of course Tom Daley Diving. I can’t believe Beth Shriever had to crowdfund her own journey to the Olympics and all that hard work and determination paid off when she won Gold.
Your feet are the start of the movement chain in your body. Any issues you are likely to have in your feet, especially your arches collapsing in (over pronating), will in turn lead to other problems elsewhere. For example knees dropping in (valgus position), or hip drops and rotations. If you link this to exercise it will give you problems when you squat.
Understanding how you respond to injury is a huge step when it comes to planning training programmes.
I’ve spoken in the past about being injured not only affects you physically but also psychologically as well.
The most frustrating and devastating day I had almost 15 years ago was being told I’d never play football again by a consultant.
I’d gone through the process of having an MRI done after having months of physio from my reoccurring back injury.
I thought I’d beaten the agonising pain in my back and legs, but as soon as I started playing and working again the same feelings cropped up again.
Being injured can often be a huge blow mentally and physically. Injuries can range immensely from strains to fractures and can have a huge range of affects from bruising, swelling, cuts and surgery.
This is why it is important to monitor your training appropriately to prevent long term injuries happening.
Now that races are starting to make a slow reappearance in the calendar, training is starting to feel like it has a purpose again, other than stress relief.
I’m going to go through what rotator cuff injuries are and how that can then lead to shoulder pain and shoulder problems.
You might think that shoulder work as a runner might be lower down on your priority. You might be thinking your legs need a bit more strength work putting into them, but your shoulders are just as important, particularly when it comes to obstacle races. It is a given that your shoulders and your upper body strength is going to be needed, particularly if you're thinking about pull-ups and monkey bars and any rig work that you might be doing, but link it back into your running form. You're going to be using the arm movement through your normal natural swing. So the positioning that you're going to be in is really important.
I'm going to go through what IT band syndrome is, you might know it as your iliotibial band, it can be shortened to IT band, ITB syndrome, ITBS. It’s a common over use injury that leads to a thickening of the connective tissue that runs from your hip to your knee. And as that thickens, that causes the tightness, tensions and inflammation within that area, which then leads to the pain in your knee. Your IT band helps to stabilize your knee joint, it stops that rotational movement happening. When it gets weakened, that's when it becomes painful.
We're going to look a little bit today about what is runner's knee. Commonly, this is when you're getting pain at the front of your knee when you're running.