How do you prevent running injuries? (Read 321 times)

Hi everyone!  This is my first forum post. I was hoping to get some insight on injury prevention for runners.

First, a little bit about me: My name is Ziva, and I’m a college student interested in neurological engineering and feedback, mostly in runners because they have a such a high chance of injury. I’m working on building a feedback system that allows runners to give inputs about how they feel while running, and hopefully change this statistic.

I was looking for some running guys/gals to answer questions about running injuries. Have you ever gotten injured while running?

What do you do to prevent running injuries? What is your rehabilitation process like? How do running injuries affect you? If you haven’t gotten injured what’s your secret/regiment?

As Greg said, we already have a feedback system. It's probably more important to figure out how to get people to listen to it, even when they have good data telling them something is wrong. Runners like to press their luck.

Most running injuries can be reduced to a simple equation: Running too far, too fast, too soon = injury.

Every time I see your handle, I think of Mike Richter. Any relation?

MTA: comma.

I think a big factor in analyzing the pain that you're feeling is to start off with asking yourself is it a sharp or dull pain. If it is dull it could just be some soreness and most likely can be worked through. If it is a sharp pain, something major could be wrong and should almost stop the activity immediately

My biggest advice at the moment is to watch out for potholes while running....I'm currently on crutches cause I gave myself a really bad ankle sprain by falling when my foot got caught in a pothole...

Yeah, that's exactly the problem!  Most injuries are because people aren't listening to their senses!

How do you know this?

Yeah, that's exactly the problem!  Most injuries are because people aren't listening to their senses!

That's exactly the issue we're trying to solve. We're building an app that gives you smart feedback, so that if people are ignoring their body, they have a backup.

What type of feedback would you find helpful?

I'm pretty certain that no app could ever be developed that could convince a runner not to run. We all listen to our senses,  fully understand we probably shouldn't run, and run anyway.

The only thing I can think of would be some sort of predictive app that analyzed your training and looked for certain red flags that indicated that perhaps you may be doing too much of something or not enough of something else, which MAY lead to injuries if you continue this way.  Hey, you haven't strength trained in over a week, or done yoga, or you did too many hill workouts too close together, or you're increasing your mileage too quickly, or ran too fast.  Seems like a fun project, but a monumental one.  Good luck.