3 Mistakes Endurance Athletes Make When Returning After Extended Time Off

Last month I wrote about skipping workouts- why sometimes it’s necessary, and how to do so in a way as to not compromise training. However, there are  some times  when we have to take an extended break. This could be from a variety of life circumstances, such as pregnancy and childbirth, because of a prolonged illness, or due to an injury such as a stress fracture, or achilles tendinopathy. 

In fact, most will get injured in the course of their running career. In fact, 70% will, which makes running the most dangerous sport in terms of injury out there. Imagine that! More dangerous than American football, hockey, or even MMA! 

So when life, injury, or illness causes us to take an extended hiatus from running or any endurance sport for that matter, we need to make sure that our return to sport is both safe and effective. Unfortunately however, most get it wrong. Here are my ‘top 3’ mistakes athletes make coming back from extended time off:

1) Wanting to get ‘back’ to where we were. Instead of looking “forward" to the long term, most athletes compare their current self to where they were before. This is probably the most common issue I see as a coach. And while we all want to get back to our prior fitness level as soon as possible, and many times that is not possible. At least in the short term. When we look backward, we tend to romanticize our previous performance, and overlook any challenges we might have experienced, comparing our former absolute best days with our current performance. That is a recipe for negative thoughts, and the associated challenges that come with that. When we face a major hiatus, we should consider our new starting point, and be forward-facing in setting our goals. 

This may mean temporarily postponing previous ambitious seasonal goals, such as key races, qualification times, or personal bests. However, we can start where we are now and build from there. We need to be realistic with our current circumstance in terms of what our body can handle given our possible lower fitness level or higher risk for relapse. We can’t fall into the trap of looking backward, then being frustrated with why we are not further along given our time off. If we readjust goals and expectations to match our new starting point, we’ll have a much greater possibility of success going forward. 

2) Many stop doing the PT or strength work. Strength and corrective exercises are necessary to support the repetitive demand of running (or cycling). But fitting it in is one of the biggest challenges with people coming off an injury. We start feeling good having done PT or corrective exercise work, then focus back on our running and fail to continue doing the things that have allowed us to get better. And I understand- most of us want to be outdoors, running or riding, not stuck in a gym! However, doing strength training, corrective exercise, or PT is exactly what 's going to keep us outside doing that thing we love long-term. So, we may need to reevaluate the priorities and consider how to include strength in our schedule. It might mean sacrificing one run a week for a dedicated strength session, or maybe we substitute our weekly yoga or HIIT class with specific single leg workouts designed to build running and cycling strength. Whatever we need to do to continue our longevity in the sport is going to be advantageous so we do not relapse into injury.

3) Too much volume or intensity too soon. This happens with novice runners and athletes, as well as the most experienced of us. We want to do too much too soon, and the body is simply not ready for it. As we stated earlier, running in particular has a very high rated injury. Every step we take while running, we have to tolerate 2 to 3 times our body weight on one leg, thousands of times every time we run. Doing too much frequency, duration, or intensity too soon is a sure fire way to relapse in injury. Taking a systematic approach is helpful here. I’ve referenced the 10% rule in times past, which says when coming back from injury, we should only increase volume by about 10% per week. The same holds true for intensity. Even if our volume is slowly and steadily increasing, but we raise intensity too much, we over stress the body and increase injury risk dramatically. 

This is due to the fact that our cardiorespiratory system adapts much faster than other structures. Our muscles adapt slower in response to the running stimulus, but our connective tissue (ligaments, tendons, cartilage, etc.) take a very long time to achieve the adaptations we need, due to the limited blood flow inherent in the structures of those tissues.  This is the reason we have systematic approaches to building fitness through carefully periodized training. We want to give a slow increase in stimulus and then adequate recovery for the body to adapt that stimulus. If we do too much, too fast, too soon, it’s a sure fire way to end up injured once again.

So, remember these critical lessons the next time we have to take some significant time off due to injury, illness, or simply life circumstances. Avoid ‘looking back’ at where we ‘used to be’ as we set new goals, continue (or commence) strength training or PT exercises to allow for increased training, and don’t do too much - either intensity or volume - too soon.