5 Tricks to stay in shape when you’ve got a chronic injury
I have not been able to run for a good long time now with my Plantar Fasciitis. I’ve had to come up with some stop-gap physical fitness routines to fill in for the fitness I typically get from running and training.
The interesting question here is “What do you mean by staying in shape?” Are you trying to maintain your running fitness level? Are you just trying to maintain your overall fitness and keep your endurance and strength?
With a chronic injury you can’t focus as much on running specific fitness, you have to change your focus to overall fitness. As a rule of thumb I’d say anything that keeps you from running more than 6-8 weeks is probably getting into ‘chronic’ territory.
If you know the injury is temporary, less than 6 weeks, then you can do pool-running and other running specific fitness routines to maintain the running fitness. If it’s longer than that you should probably change your strategy to be more holistic.
Here are 5 specific activities I use to stay generally fit, to burn calories and to keep my head in the game. When I return to running I will have to spend a few weeks regaining the mechanics and strength of running before I can train and race. But, being holistically fit it should be an easier transition and I should be able to stay injury free.
- Swimming. If you are chronically injured and can’t run chances are you can still swim. There will be a transition period and you may even have to learn how to swim. You will have to join a club or find somewhere to swim. It takes a few weeks but if you can mix in a couple workouts in the pool a week it is a great total body aerobic workout.
I try to do one medium distance continuous swim of 1,000 – 1,500 meters and one interval based workout to really get the heart rate up.
- Weight lifting and lean-muscle workouts. With a little help from your friends you can construct a high-energy, low-weight workout that will work up a sweat and workout your core. I have a routine that works my total body with emphasis on core. I do a lot of push-ups too. It helps you feel strong. I try to do this twice a week.
I wish I had a better label for this activity because ‘weight lifting’ comes with a lot of negative mental baggage. More than half of the exercises I use don’t use weights at all except for the weight of my own body. It is not about the weights. It is about building and maintaining lean muscle in your core.
- Bike. If you can get out on your road-bike, great! If not you can spend time on the trainer. It’s boring, but will give you an opportunity to catch up on your reading while you keep your endurance engine competitive. I have recently procured a home fluid trainer that I’m going to mount my road bike on.
Biking uses different leg muscles than running but it uses one common muscle – the heart – which is important. I try to do this twice a week as well and may combine it with a weights workout.
- Elliptical. I’m not a big fan of the elliptical machines. I find the movement unnatural. That being said this is probably the closest to a running motion you can get without the running motion. After you learn the mechanics you can increase the intensity to mimic your running workouts.
- Walking. It is not much of an aerobic workout if you are used to training for a marathon but walking can be good to clear your head and it’s a great way to share some alone time with loved ones. You have to be careful not to tweak your running injury. Take your spouse, your kids or your dog and go for a long walk. Go a couple miles. Take your time and breathe the air. It’s good and meditative and helps you think about how lucky you are.
That’s it. That’s what I have been doing to stay reasonably fit and reasonably sane as I wait for my heel to get running-ready. Once you establish a rhythm of which routines you are doing on which days it gets to be just like any other training schedule.
I would treat it like a real training schedule. Have someone create a plan for you so that there is structure to your calendar or you will skip workouts and feel sorry for yourself. Think about other events that you can train for and set some goals to keep you motivated. Maybe a triathlon? Maybe a bike race? Maybe a goal to swim 3 miles or do 250 pushups? Have some fun with it.
Eventually you will get back to running but for now you have to stitch these alternate training cycles into your endurance lifestyle.