I think this infographic (from SmoothFitness.com) does a pretty good job of identifying the major injuries that runners could potentially encounter. I know that personally I have experienced the patellofemoral pain syndrome as well as hamstring strains, but the runners knee was definitely the most aggravating. I attribute my specific case to excessive heel striking, and overuse due to running more than my body was prepared to handle at the time.
The graphic provides a handy list of ways to avoid these injuries, though I would qualify the specific item referencing “wearing the right shoes” to suggest wearing shoes with minimal: cushioning, arch support, restrictive upper, and heel padding. If you can reduce the influence of any or all of those factors, I believe your shoes will allow your feet to actually do what they were engineered for in the first place.
You would also do well to check out my friend Jason Fitzgerald’s website, StrengthRunning.com. He is my go-to guy for insight into running injuries, and for developing training programs to reach peak performance on race day.
If you enjoyed this article, get email updates (it's free).
4 Responses to Common Running Injuries (Infographic)
Eat Well, For Less
Over 40 pages of advice, dedicated to helping you save money on healthy food.
Want to Learn More?
If you are unfamiliar with some of the topics that I’m discussing, you should enroll in my free five part email tutorial.
You’ll receive a series of emails answering the main questions you probably have about natural diet and fitness.
I would emphasize dynamic pre run stretching and obtain an assessment to find muscle imbalances. You can run two days in a row if you follow a good program. Wearing shoes could be just a band-aid so the issue might never be corrected.
Yeah, dynamic much better than static. I’ve seen a fair bit of evidence that static stretches actually reduce performance pre-workout.
Yeah at my anatomy lecture today the lecturer talked about piriformis injuries being common in runners, sometimes people don’t associate it with a running related injury because of its location. It attaches to the iliotibial tract on the outside of your leg, which in turn runs down to kneecap and can pull it laterally – not good to be running with that so watch out everyone!
[...] of us, but we’re all prone to injury due to overuse of joints and muscles and poor mechanics. This nice little infographic summarizes many of the common injuries that you might have had or are currently dealing with. Most [...]