Saturday, October 9, 2010

Must-Have Injury Prevention Tools for Runners!

Over the years, through personal experiences with running-related injuries and learning from the running injuries of others, I've discovered several "tools" that I think should be in every runner's injury-prevention toolkit. Check out the video clip below to see what tools are recommended. If you have other injury-prevention methods, techniques or tools that you'd like to add to the toolkit, please leave a comment. I'd love to see what you have. Always the learner.

11 comments:

Christina said...

Thanks for sharing! Gonna get the foam roller for sure and have the other stuff in my birthday wish list!

RunnerDude said...

Hi Christina! Happy Early B-Day!

Anonymous said...

Have the stick, foam roller is on it's way, and the footwheel was new to me... and I enjoyed the video really showing each thing. I think these items can be somewhat overwhelming and intimidating... not sure how to use them or if you are using them correctly. Thanks for the video!

RunnerDude said...

Hi Lesley! Thanks for the feedback! Greatly appreciated! Stay tuned, I'm working on some more clips on specific ways to use the foam roller.

Ed said...

Thanks bro. I appreciate the info. I need to know that kind of stuff. I do so many things incorrectly, without even knowing it. Btw... thinking about signing up for a half in April. You think that's doable?

RunnerDude said...

Hi Ed! Yep, you should have plenty of time to get ready for a spring half. A half-marathon training program is ususally 12-14 weeks. So, back up that many weeks from the race date and that's the date you start the official training. During the time between now and the training start date you should be working on building base mileage. It's a good rule of thumb to have about a weekly mileage total of about 20 miles before beginning the half-training. What race are you looking at?

Ed said...

Awesome! Yeah, I am just recovering from my first 10K, which was on Sunday. I want to commit to something before I start slacking. I was looking at the "Where the Party Meets the Pavement" Half Marathon on April 2nd. Not sure if you know about any other good ones that go on up here in the spring?

Kathy said...

IN the land of no foam rollers available, I've been making do with a fire extinguisher. A little hard but I can't put enough force into the stick to really get at the knots in my calves. there are some great vidoes on UTube of a PT showing roller use - let's see if I bookmarked the link...

http://en.wordpress.com/tag/self-muscle-massage-series/

RunnerDude said...

Hi Kathy! Now there's a creative roller! You can also use a piece of PVC pipe that has a pretty large diameter and will work really well too!

robison52 said...

I was able to find a roller, made by Altus at Big 5 Athletic Stores, but couldn't find the "stick." I'll probably purchase the stick at the marathon expo in December at the Las Vegas Marathon expo.

RunnerDude said...

Hi Robison52! Awesome! If you need The Stick before December, you can order it at http://www.thestick.com/