Have you set yourself a New Year’s fitness goal?
Does it involve running a marathon, an ultra or completing a triathlon?
Or do you just want to get fitter, stronger and leaner?
Have you considered not only the training plan but how to periodised this to prevent getting injured?
We see people with amazing fitness goals all the time – marathons, iron man’s and ultras are standard, but also rowing across the Indian Ocean and Atlantic, mountaineering, and expeditions in the arctic to name a few.
And with the New Year upon us it’s prime time to set you sights on a new achievement. You’ve thought about the training plan, the nutrition and the equipment and tech. But have you considered how to periodise your training? Or factored in recovery weeks, the S and C required, Pilates, flexibility training or sports massage? Have you even considered a pre-event training biomechanical assessment?
Periodising your training is one of the most important factors when you are training for an event. When do you peak and taper and how can you factor in recovery weeks into your plan? I would normally recommend 3 weeks of progressive loading then a recovery or download week. This is the concept of load management and will help to prevent tendon injuries for example.
One of the most common things we see at the moment with people working from home is people being more sedentary than usual during the day. You are no longer walking to the station, standing on the train, walking to the office, going out to grab lunch etc. People’s step count has dropped from 10,000 a day to 2000-3000. Then when work has finished, you’re off to the fitness class or gym with little or no warm up and thrash yourself as hard as possible.
Your body can’t cope with these extremes, and it may well lead to an injury occurring. Be sure to get up and move around more during your day and spend 10-15 minutes doing a thorough warm up prior to high intensity exercise.
Two of the most common injuries that you might suffer from at the gym or training for an event is runner’s knee and shin splints.
Runner’s knee doesn’t just affect runners, but all active people. It’s brought about mainly through muscle imbalance and excessive load. Adopting a load management strategy and correcting any biomechanical faults should help to reduce your risk.
Shin splints is a term that mostly covers shin bone stress fracture or tendinopathy. Again, biomechanical assessment and strengthening can reduce risk.
A Run Fit assessment and a podiatry plantar pressure gait scan can help to identify any areas of concern prior to commencing training for your New Year’s fitness goal and we can put together a home exercise plan for you to help prevent annoying injuries.
