Hi folks!
About a year ago, I gave myself patellofemoral syndrome. At first I thought I’d overtrained, but turns out it was mostly wrong posture, resulting from unwittingly correcting a foot deformity I didn’t know about. I also gave myself osteoarthritis in both knees and one hip from it.
Anyway, I got orthotics now, and can run pain free with them+taped knees. So I’d like to start again.
Thing is, most training plans I can find are aimed at either people who are in training, running wise, or starting from ‘couch’, ie, being mostly or completely sedentary. I’m neither, as I’ve replaced with walking 5k+ per day most days and swimming 1.5k (breaststroke, keeping my head over water, and in just under 40 min if it matters) once or twice a week.
I also hike, but not all that regularly. Did 20k with 300m altitude (I know, more of a long brisk walk than a hike) last week and it didn’t cause any pain during or after. Just in case that’s a relevant clue.
Since my pool membership is running out and running is virtually free, id like to get back into it now that I’m mostly pain free and have my orthotics. Does anyone have a link or advice for how to pick it back up without doing more harm than good?
tia!
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What a fascinating recommendation, thank you! I’m intrigued
Since you brought up the minimalist shoes: one thing that’s conflicting is thaty orthopedist recommended I always wear my orthotics when running or hiking while my physiotherapist recommended walking, and if possible running, barefoot as much as possible. I’m looking into barefoot shoes once it gets warmer (those thin soles aren’t super appealing in the current freezing temps). I’ll start out wearing them casually and see how it goes.
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Thank you so much for the insights! I’ll be trying barefoot shoes for sure. Are they comfy on course gravel? My park runs have a bunch of that.
That sounds right up my alley, nice!
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Ha, fellow teacher here, though for my country’s equivalent to GED maths.
I’ve never liked ankle support much. Never had running shoes that went up that high. My hiking shoes do, because on actual alpine trails I’d slice my ankles to bits on the rocks otherwise, but I never lace them up all the way to the top.
I love going genuinely barefoot, like no shoes at all, when I just go on a little walk through the forest. Always have, to the point that it was a rule in my house that we had to hose ourselves down before coming inside when I was a kid. But that’s soft ground. Never gotten used to gravel, but even just a super thin sole may do the trick!
In case you live somewhere that gets cold some of the year, do you wear minimal shoes then, too? I feel like there wouldn’t be much insulation
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Thanks for the recommendations! Some of those look pretty appealing to me, so I’ll have to look into it!
One thing I can’t abide though are wet socks. There’s currently 20-30cm of snow on many of the sidewalks around me because it’s snowing so fast it’s impossible for the city to keep up, even with plows going every hour or so. Let alone out in nature. But then again, in snow and ice, I think I do prefer to have traction on my soles, and also with a high enough shaft that the snow won’t fall into my shoes. So Ill stick to my blundstones for this weather, and hiking boots for hiking! But I’ll see how it goes with thin soles when it’s cold but relatively dry.
can’t help with concrete advice but if you can, can you expand on the “taped knees”, what’s that about, and also who do you go to, to determine all them things, the deformity and such? thanks
I’m talking about kinesio tape. https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-tape-a-knee
I’m seeing an orthopedist and, when needed, a radiologist. I went through a round fo physio therapy too. Afaik a specialized sports doctor wouldn’t be part of public health insurance. Either that, or it’s just so happens that the ones in my city are all private. It’s a pretty gentrified city with lots of rich people moving here for a few months or years specifically for sports (it’s in the alps).
Some good advice here already. Let me add one piece of advice that should help avoid injury in the longer term: strength train! See if you can gather a few people to meet up in a weight room once or twice a week, learn to deadlift, perform weighted squats, reverse lunges, Bulgarian split squats, etc. If that’s too ambitious, working by yourself with a few resistance bands and a bag filled with sand can work almost as well, though in my experience it helps to have folks around you to motivate you and give you advice on your form while lifting weights.
I can’t really financially justify a gym membership rn. I do have some good calisthenics and resistance band exercises I learned in physiotherapy. I’ll look into the the sand bags! Thanks for the advice
Although you probably have amazing cardio, your legs need to readapt to running. A run-walk program like the one in couch-to-5k will let your legs slowly adapt, even though it might feel boring. Basically accept that for the first few weeks your running can’t get you to a high fatigue level because your legs won’t like it and trust me when I say the injuries and niggles are not worth getting to that 10k a few months early. Add some good run-specific strength work (lots of bodyweight or low equipment options on youtube) to help your legs get stronger too.
Thanks for the advice! But yeah, as much as it sucks, I’d rather be bored during exercise than injure myself. I guess I’ll have to start in parallel with swimming so I don’t lose my cardio! I do have a a repertoire of exercises my physio taught me, I’ll have to get back to doing them diligently.
I’d say avoid high intensity runs for a while, keep a relatively low pace and don’t be afraid to walk at times. Running down hills is particularly hard on the knees, so try to avoid that.
At times I’ve been coming back into running post-injury, I have found making sure I have new running shoes is a big help, as well as trying to run with a very high cadence. My normal cadence when running slow is about 165, but when recovering I try to run close to 180 steps per minute. Doing after-run exercises like calf raises also helps.
Thanks for the tips! Now that you mention it, too-high cadence might very well be a big issue of mine. I’ve noticed I even do that while walking too: my non-leisurly walking pace, that I keep when I’m walking to work or running errands, is like 7km/h. So I’m taking some big ass steps (I’m 172cm), which is probably not the best idea. For sure even worse when running, with the higher impact.
Oh whoops, sorry I didn’t get to this earlier. I have far too many unread motifs in my inbox.
Anyway, I think it’s important to clarify some terms. Cadence isn’t measured in km/h, it’s in steps per minute. You can go the same pace (or speed) with a high cadence or low cadence, by changing your stride length.
Definitely, a low pace is also helpful when recovering from injury. But in my previous comment, I was suggesting taking a lot of very short steps. My theory is that doing that means each step has less force going through it than fewer, larger steps, at the same pace.
Pace, fwiw, is basically the inverse of speed. Speed is measured in km/h, pace in min/km. Though terminology can be weird, because “high pace” usually means “pace with a lower number” (e.g., 4 minutes per kilometre is a “higher pace” than 5 min/km).
Oh I did know that it’s not the same. I don’t actually know my cadence, I just estimated that it must be too high since I walk (ie not run, so have both feet on the ground between steps) and am not that tall. Thanks for the helpful breakdown either way!
My reasoning has always been—though I don’t know if this is backed up by evidence at all—that a higher cadence means each step puts less force through the legs, and thus a high cadence is better when recovering from injury. I hope your recovery goes/is going well!
When I recovered from PFP, my physiotherapist told me to try with 30 minutes easy pace and see how that was tolerated. If pain was 2/10 or lower and returned to baseline, then I could add more of that type of session, up to 3 per week. When that was tolerated well, I could scale up weekly distance by 20% while below 20k and 10% when above. All while doing strength exercise to facilitate knee recovery.
This worked well and I’m back to breaking PBs again
