The best way to avoid stress fractures and other overuse injuries
I see a lot of people every month and hear about many more that suffer from overuse injuries. Many are completely unaware of the risks in what they are doing. Some don’t believe that what they are doing is bad for them. I hate to say it but sometimes our own obsession with trying to get fit is worse for us than not moving at all.

Our reasons for moving more should aligned with what we love. And while we may not always know how to train properly -vs- What seems to make us feel good, we should know why we are doing something and understand the risks / rewards. Unfortunately this is often not the case: I have met a lot of runners, particularly marathon distance runners, who suffer from overuse injuries of every sort including very serious lumbar spine injuries. Many tell me how much they love running. How it makes them feel great. And yet most of them are falling, literally, apart. There’s a disconnect here.

Repetition, while important, can also be very detrimental to our bodies. I believe that long distance running on pavement, year in and year out, is not good for anyone. This might make me some enemies but I think my beliefs are supported by a lot of facts.

Simple way to avoid repetitive stress injuries and stress fractures
There’s a good reason to add variety to your training. It helps prevent injuries by using different systems in your body. Commonly referred to as: “cross training”, creating a synergistic training program can be challenging in an urban setting but it’s essential. Why? By imposing different types of demands and/or levels of intensity, your body responds by building more capacity and specifically it also works hard to address these new demands in a multi-dimensional way.

Complexity vs Simplicity
Complex forms of cross training incorporating a wide variety and depth of types of exercise is the goal. However, in it’s simplest form cross training can be successfully accomplished through rotating your activities, pairing opposite demands and paying attention to how you are feeling. Example Pairs: Swimming and climbing, hiking uphill + surfing, tennis and Tai Chi, soccer and yoga, basketball and Pilates. The most important factor is making it fun and keeping it interesting. Cross training is ideally not simply stepping off a treadmill on to a “elliptical” machine. Cycle through forms like yoga/dance class/resistance training/running/swimming instead. IF you truly don’t have the time then make sure you mix things up thoroughly: Time/Intensity/Intervals/Machines/body weight/etc. This is not an easy thing to do but necessary to avoid common injuries.

Why Repetition is Good, But Variety is Better.
While we need repetition to learn new movements, it’s the progressive and incremental increase in demand that makes our bodies sing. In less modern times, people had jobs that forced them to move more and included a variety of intense and less intense demands: Walking, running, lifting, hiking, etc. Today this is not the case. Are so called “modern” industrialized societies do not require you to move at all. In fact, our increasingly “information based” jobs are causing vast numbers of people to stop moving all together.

To combat this we need only to look at the patterns of the past and integrate some new ideas into the mix. It’s not enough to “copy” what our ancestors did, as we are not them nor should we be. But we can learn from their experiences and the way that they moved for clues into improving our own health and fitness.

Old School Case Study: Mountain Climbing in 1938
I am an armchair mountain climber. I don’t think I’ll ever climb anything serious. But that doesn’t prevent me from I’m reading works by the greatest mountaineers. Most recently, I’ve been reading K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain by Ed Viesturs, David Roberts. In one section of the book, Ed Viesturs describes how the mountaineers of 1938 had to hike in 360 (three hundred and sixty) miles before trying to scale the second highest peak in the world. What? That’s true cross training. It took them many weeks in some cases months to get to the mountains before they even started climbing them. Unconsciously, these people prepared their bodies for the strenuous demands ahead. Few to none of us train this way but we should. We should be training over longer periods of time and use extended training progressions to truly help our bodies and minds develop the ability to perform. This goes completely against every “fitness marketing” plan for every segment of the industry. It simply doesn’t sell. But it works.

So, next time you train, imagine that before you start you have to spend 75% of your time “getting prepared” and only 25% of your time actually working hard. Does this sound familiar?

- think more
- run less
- find something new to do
- move with more intention
- and less overuse.