The Most Common Injuries in Marathon Runners: Causes, Prevention, and Long-term Solutions
Marathon Injury Prevention Strategies in the Modern World
Distance running is a great way to get in shape. But it’s not without its risks. Injuries are common, though most can be prevented with proper training and a better understanding of why they happen.
In this article, you’ll find the advice you need to avoid the most common marathon injuries.
Breaking down the most common marathon injuries
There is a range of injuries that you could suffer when you are training for a marathon. While the back is susceptible to issues such as sciatica, it is the hips, legs, knees, and ankles that are most at risk.
The most common types of injury during marathon training include ankle sprains and bone stress fractures (when people ramp up to fast). These may often be one-off injuries that require specific treatment.
Other common injuries for marathon runners include:
Iliotibial band syndrome ─ which is often caused by poor running form or weakness in the hip, butt, or abdominal muscles
Shin splints ─ caused by overwork of the muscles, tendons, and bone tissue
Muscle pulls or strains (for example, in the hamstrings, quadriceps, and calves) ─ usually because of fatigue or improper muscle use
Perhaps the most debilitating of all marathon running injuries are tendonitis (Achilles tendinopathy) and arthritis. Ryan Chow explains the issue with these types of injury:
“The problem is that arthritis and tendonitis (especially) are what we call chronic diseases. They don’t happen from a single injury. They develop slowly over time. Some systems are being stressed more than others. In arthritis, for example, the joints are taking more of the load than the muscles and tendons. In tendonitis, the tendons take more stress than the muscles and bones.”
The right type of program and strength training can help to repair and prevent such injuries.
The myth of wear and tear
One of the most common injuries that we see in runners who don’t incorporate strength training into their programs is knee pain. They go to the doctor, and they are almost immediately diagnosed with arthritis. The act of training for and running marathons has taken its toll. “Wear and tear” has set in, and accelerated the aging process.
Sounds familiar, right? Even if you aren’t a sufferer, you may know someone with arthritis who will say things like, “It’s age catching up with me,” and “Nothing can be done, except to grin and bear it.”
We now know this isn’t true. Conventional wisdom says that conditions like arthritis cannot be reversed. Fortunately, science is continually challenging conventional wisdom.
Scientists have discovered something they call our ‘inner salamander capacity’. We all possess microRNAs that regulate the regeneration of cartilage. Yes, cartilage can regrow, though it’s a slow process. But you need the right environment. With this we can heal and change the knee joint, for example, improving someone’s capacity to not feel pain and to run further and faster.
We must stop looking at such injuries as “wear and tear”, and instead focus on “wear and repair”: a gift of injury.
Here’s another snippet of conventional wisdom that must be challenged: marathon running is bad for your knees. A study published in the BMJ found that long-distance running can improve knee damage. And as reported in Runner’s World, multiple studies show that runners are less likely to suffer from arthritis in the knee than sedentary folk.
It’s not exercise that is damaging, it’s the environment
Our environment is changing. We sit more than we used to. Manual jobs have been replaced by office jobs. Kids don’t play with balls, they stare at PlayStations. Research of our physical progress through the ages shows us that:
We are more obese than ever
In the 80s, kids used to be able to do 6 to 10 pull-ups, now it’s only 2 to 3
Strength and aerobic capacity have reduced since the 80s
Let’s return to arthritis. There is now more knee arthritis than at any time in human history. Cave people had better knees than we do!
Now, we know that arthritis is an inflammatory state. We also know that obesity is an excess of fat and inflamed cells. And we know that we aren’t as strong as we used to be. The conclusion?
If we don’t eat healthily and reduce our activity, we become weaker, less able to support our own body weight, and, with more inflammatory markers in our body, more susceptible to arthritis. It’s not rocket science.
Dispel the myth of wear and tear to create long-term solutions to pain and injury
Putting all the above together, we can see that if we are suffering from pain as a marathon runners ─ or as anyone else ─ we must put ourselves in the right environment to heal. No one has ever healed long-term by staying still and not moving. (Yet isn’t that exactly what most doctors tell us to do with an injury, back pain, or knee pain?)
In the case of knee pain, the right movement helps to reduce inflammation and reduce pain. Strength training can help to build up the body’s ability to absorb stress ─ such as the stresses caused when training for a marathon.
You don’t need medical intervention. You need coaching and encouragement to develop a new lifestyle. One that improves your capacity for movement and exercise, and allows you to handle more stress. Those who find this too hard are the ones who will always say, “It’s wear and tear.”
Long-term, personalized solutions with Reload
Many physical therapists continue to follow the traditional wear and tear approach. They will prescribe rest and reduce exercise and physical activity while pumping you full of painkillers.
That’s a mistake. First, because we’ve moved on. We now understand that too much rest is counterproductive. Second, if we numb the pain too much, we cannot measure the exercise we can do. Generally, it’s better to get moving at a tolerable intensity sooner rather than later. A combination of too much rest and too many painkillers does not enable us to do this.
At Reload, we focus on a wear and repair approach that equips you with the knowledge and tools for long-term sustainability rather than short temporary solutions that fade quickly. We also personalize our approach. You are unique, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
And we employ people who can offer you the benefit of their experience ideal to your situation – like former marathon runners who understand the lifestyle and the impacts of distance running on the human body.
Our goal is to help you understand the causes of any injury or pain and guide your through the recovery process and to long-term, pain-free marathon running.
Take the first step today: book an appointment with us to start with a comprehensive 90-minute physical therapy body evaluation.
