In order to. call yourself a runner, you must have enthusiasm for the sport; why else would you torture yourself with miles of punishment every day? Running injuries are an unfortunate, but all too frequent, occurrence. Understanding the essentials of endurance exercise training is the key to effective prevention and treatment of overuse injuries.

Avoidance of injuries should probably be first in mind, but many runners, fail to take the correct steps to avoid injury. Even by employing sound training principles a running injury can still occur.  However, taking a few basic steps will help decrease your risk of developing a serious problem: developing and following a training program, stretching out properly, icing an injury, buy the right shoes and, cross training.

Developing a Running Program

When developing a training program it must include an exercise prescription specific to the individual runner’s goals.  There are four variables in a training program that can be manipulated based on their goals: exercise mode, training frequency, exercise duration and, training intensity.  On the intranet, you can find training programs from successful runners and coaches; however using someone else’s program may not benefit your overall goal because it does not consider your individual strengths and weaknesses.

Exercise mode, this variable refers to the specific type of activity. This is where it can get confusing for novice runners.  Some runners believe the best way to train is to mimic the movement pattern employed in competition as closely as possible.  In some respects this may be true; however too much training of the same exercise mode will cause overuse injuries, mental fatigue, and boredom.  I have found that varying the exercise mode in the being phase of a program is one of the best ways to prevent such problems from occurring.  Use the later phases of the program for improving the recruitment of specific muscle fibers, challenging aerobic endurance, and enhancement of performance.