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How much walking is too much when you have a tibial stress fracture? In this episode of Doc On The Run, Dr. Christopher Segler breaks down how runners can safely stay active while healing, explains the key differences between Fredrickson Grade 1 and Grade 2 tibial stress fractures, and outlines the two critical factors that determine how fast you can recover—without making the injury worse.

Today I was on a strategy call with an injured, but recovering runner who is trying to figure out how to organize his workouts to get strong quickly, without re-injuring his stress fracture.   He was headed in the right direction, but was making a critical mistake when trying to do more with split workouts. It’s not about splitting workouts.    It's all about the stressors that are applied to the stress out bone. But this also applies to other overtrain injuries like Achilles tendinitis, perennial, tendinitis, or plantar plate sprains.   If you understand, this basic principle, you will definitely get back to running a whole lot faster!   Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, why any runner with any overtraining injury should focus on making sure there are no big stressors on the same structures.

The Walk-Run Routine is likely the most overprescribed and least understood plan for returning to running after an overtraining injury like a metatarsal stress fracture for a plantar plate sprain.    But the commutative forces that result from that specific routine may put your foot at unnecessary risk of re-injury. Understanding how and why those unique stresses happen may help you make better decisions about your first few runs after you feel your stress fracture or plantar plate sprain has healed enough to resume running.    Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we're talking about the worst thing about walk run routine after running injury.

Kettlebell workouts can be a great way to maintaining strength, even if you have a running injury.    If you are a runner who has an overtraining injury like a metatarsal stress fracture or a plantar plate sprain, you are probably doing everything you can to keep the rest of your running body strong, while that one injured part heals.    Kettlebell training can help, as long as you don’t let those kettlebell workouts overload that injury to the ball of the foot.   You have to pay close attention to form and technique. Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we're talking about Kettlebell mistakes and modifications for injured runners.

This morning I was on a webcam call with a runner who had healed a fracture and started running again. He has been running every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with cross-training in between.     Now he is ready to add a fourth running workout to his weekly training schedule.    The question is:    “What day of the week is best to add an additional run, because I want to make sure I don’t overload the healing tissue and re-injure it.”   Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we're talking about which weekday is best to add workouts for injured runners.

The half-ass boot routine is no good. Slow improvement with unnecessarily increased risk of atrophy, weakness, stiffness, loss of neuromuscular connections, and destruction of your running form. Your running form, your strength, your flexibility, all protect you from another overtraining injury.    When you wear a fracture walking boot for a long time inconsistently, or a long time walking on it, you're going to get more of those bad things.    The other thing that is good, the sort of polar opposite of that, is a half-ass weight routine.  Whaat is that? And more importantly, why would that be good?   Today on the doc on the Run podcast, we're talking about half boot versus half weight when you're recovering from a running injury.

The biggest enemy in the injured runner’s battle is your desire to run as fast or faster than you were right before you got injured. This morning I was on a call with a recovering elite Masters athlete and she has been doing great, but she seems to be drifting into dangerous territory!  During our call, I got worried about the way she was thinking about her upcoming workouts. But was thinking was very common, and very dangerous. And that is the reason I decided to record this episode. Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we're talking about how you should never let your recovering body compete with your racing body.

This morning I was on a consultation call with a runner at 4:30 a.m. and he's been suffering from a plantar plate injury.  But he's been doing pretty well. He actually just finished his first run! Now, what I asked him about was his plan for his next run. What he said, made me uneasy.  It seemed risky, and I started kind of squirming as he was describing his plan to me. It wasn't really a bad plan. It wasn't really a crazy plan. But based on all the experience I have working with injured runners, I knew it was riskier than it needed to be.  And this is why I decided to record this episode. Because it happens to almost every injured runner!  So don't let it happen to you! Today on the Doc On The Run podcast we’re talking about why runners get re-injured one to two months into healing.

Runners glorify the suffering needed to keep moving in spite of pain, and the payoff is almost always increased fitness, and improvements and mental fortitude needed for running endurance. No pain, no gain is a terrible approach when you are an injured runner. If you really want to get back to training, racing in full return to running fitness as fast as possible after a running injury you have to stop causing pain in that one injured part. Do not confuse that with stopping running-related exercise. That's the lazy doctor's way.  In this episode, we discuss a different, better approach for runners. 

Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast we are talking about Mental Rehab for Recovering Runners with Mental Skills Coach Carrie Jackson. It may sound dramatic, but in reference to doctors casually telling runners they just cannot run a race (when maybe the runner could run), or worse…they may never run again, Carrie says, “These doctors have no idea the trauma they are causing to the runner by saying that.” Carrie co-authored “Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries.” So, she is not just empathetic toward runners, she is 100% qualified to help runners get your mojo back after a serious injury sets you back physically, and the pain of recovery sets you back mentally. Not only is she a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, but Carrie is also the host of the Injured Athlete’s Club Podcast. If you have an injury, and you feel down. There is a solution. Listen in to Carrie, and you will find it.

Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast we are talking with Dr. Samantha Braun about training fro Ultra’s, running Hell’s Hills and how her training as a Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine Physician helps her avoid overtraining injuries. How do you think you're training in rehabilitation help you understand your own mechanics, physical training limits and overtraining injury prevention while training for Ultra’s?  During the 50 mile trail race, what did you do to restore a more positive mindset and keep running to your potential? Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently to prevent that injury from happening? Right now there is some runner listening who is suffering from an over training injury, and very likely of how demoralized they have become as a consequence of not running. If she was sitting there in front of you right now and you knew this about her, what advice would you give her to encourage her to keep healing, working and getting stronger so that she could get back to running?

Over the past couple of months I have done a whole bunch of stress fracture strategy calls with runners who seem to be stuck. I take notes every time I do those calls and there're number of steps that all of them seem to be missing. Let's face it, if they weren't missing some critical steps, we would've never gotten on a call to try to figure out a strategy to get them back on the path to healing and running again. In this episode I'm going to explain the five critical stress fracture steps every runner should take if they really want to get back to training and back to running as quickly as possible. Today on the Doc On The Run podcast we're talking about the five critical stress fracture steps for runners.

I just got off of a Stress Fracture Strategy call with a real runner who has been suffering from a stress fracture for 47 days.  Over the past five weeks she has been getting worse, not better. And she hasn’t even been running for more than a month! If you have a stress fracture, or a stress reaction and you are: 1. worried about canceling race because of a stress fracture 2. your stress fracture is not getting better fast enough 3. worried you're going to lose your running fitness waiting for the stress fracture to heal  This episode will help you understand the strategies I use whenever I worked directly with runners with stress fractures, and apply those strategies to help you figure out how to speed up your stress fracture recovery.

Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast we are talking with Alexandre Dufresne about his journey and getting back to running after having suffered 2 metatarsal stress fractures at same time! If you think back about your training leading up to the 2 stress fractures, if you could go back in time, do you think there's any one thing you could have changed in your training routine that might have prevented it from developing into such a serious problem? Listen up to find out!

Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast we are talking with Patrick Durante about Automatic Negative Thoughts and how they affect runners.   Many years ago I was having a discussion about daily stressors with a friend of mine name Maury. He said something I have never forgotten.   “It's not the lions and tigers that will get you. It's the ants and mosquitoes because problems.”   Every single over training injury that afflicts runners as a consequence of developing too much stress. The constant buzzing of mosquitoes and ants may drive you crazy. And Today we are talking about the creepy, crawly kind of ant, but A.N.T. or Automatic Negative Thoughts that buzz through our heads and inhibit our ability to finish races on time, complete training runs in a gratifying way, and may even may inhibit our recovery from hard workouts or over training injuries.