Avoiding Injuries as a Runner

16 May Avoiding Injuries as a Runner

When you’re a runner, we know you want to push yourself to the limit to achieve your goals. In doing this, you may begin to experience pain. Injuries, when you’re running, are all too common and with our orthopedist in Wantagh, we can help relieve your pain. Some of the most common injuries when running are:

Runner’s Knee

This injury is common when you are overworking the muscles in your knee, and your knee becomes unaligned. Be sure to listen to your body, so you don’t overwork past your limit. To help with the pain, you should tape your knee or invest in a knee brace.

Shin Splints

When this injury occurs you feel pain in the front or inside of your leg, alongside your shin bone. To prevent shin splints make sure you are wearing proper fitting sneakers, avoid hills as they put extra force on the shin muscle, and increase your workout or speed at a gradual level. Treatment for shin splints includes icing your shins for 15-20 minutes and keeping them elevated at night to reduce swelling.

Ankle Sprain

This occurs when you roll or twist your foot inwards or outwards, and you stretch or tear the ligaments around the ankle. This injury is excruciating. Doing regular exercises such as single-legged squats to strengthen the muscles around your ankle can help prevent this injury. You also want to make sure you pay attention when running as these injuries are commonly caused by curbs, tree branches, potholes, or other unlevel surfaces. Common at home treatment includes wearing an ankle brace and taping up your ankle and of course rest

Pulled Muscle

This happens when your muscle has been overstretched. The most common causes are overuse, inflexibility, and not warming up before a workout. Make sure you are stretching and warming up before any run to help prevent this injury. If you have pulled a muscle the best thing to do is rest! Take a break for a minimum of five days before running again and be sure to ice and stretch.

Our orthopedist in Wantagh is here to help if you are experiencing overwhelming pain. We offer a variety of treatment options to help you regain strength and functionality with our quality orthopedist in Wantagh. If you are experiencing a more severe injury, we can provide a solution with our knee replacement surgery, a safe and effective treatment that can help relieve pain and restore function. We also offer external fixation that helps ankle injuries by attaching a device called a fixator to the affected bone with specialized bone screws, or pins. The pins allow for proper alignment of the fractured bone.

Contact us today for more information on how we can help relieve your pain with our orthopedist in Wantagh.