Taking it Day by Day
A Nine-week Plan for Staying in Shape While Injured
By Pete Pfitzinger, M.S.
As featured in the May 1999 issue of Running Times Magazine
You are guilty of enjoying your running too much and ignoring the early warning signs of an injury. Your sentence is eight weeks of no running. You’re injured, and it’s a big one. The doctor says absolutely no running for two months, and then a gradual return.
This is the news Scott Douglas received last fall when he was diagnosed with a stress fracture of the tibia. Scott sent me an SOS by e-mail. He asked for a crosstraining plan that would keep him fit and preserve his sanity while his shin recovered. Having endured similar trials myself (and vicariously through my wife), I knew Scott would be frustrated and worried that he would rapidly lose fitness. And his usual form of stress relief, running, would be absent. I needed to design a training schedule that would be hard enough to maintain fitness for a well-trained runner, but not so hard that Scott would become discouraged and quit before the injury was fully healed.
Most of the benefits of training are reversible. Your cardiovascular fitness, for example, decreases measurably after two to three weeks without training. Studies have shown, however, that with reduced training you can maintain your fitness at almost the same level for several months. The intensity and specificity of crosstraining workouts are most important in determining how much fitness you lose when you take time off from running. You must do some training above 70% of VO2 max in order to maintain your aerobic fitness and racing performances. And of course, you need to find a method of crosstraining that will allow your injury to heal.
The best way to crosstrain
Depending on your specific injury, you may be able to cycle, row or use a cross-country skiing simulator. If you can do these activities without interfering with your recovery, then by all means include them in your crosstraining program. Unfortunately, however, these types of exercise aggravate a number of running injuries. Scott could not do any of them without causing pain to his injured tibia.
One thing Scott could do without pain or aggravation of his injury was run in deep water. Deep-water running is an activity that can be done with most running injuries. Running in the water while wearing a flotation vest provides an excellent training stimulus and more closely simulates land running than most other crosstraining options. Deep-water running is a total-body exercise that works your legs, trunk and arms, and positively stresses your cardiovascular system.
Several studies have verified that deep-water running can be used by runners to maintain fitness. In one study, investigators from Florida State University coerced a group of trained male runners to run in the water while another group continued regular training. The runners were tested for VO2 max, lactate threshold and running economy before and after six weeks of training.