A high-level athlete doesn’t need to see a sports doctor. Why is that?
If one wishes to observe “begging the question” in the true definition of the phrase, there ya go. Many high-level runners struggle with constant injury. And those are the ones you’ve heard of. The ones you haven’t heard of? They couldn’t stay healthy at the level of training required. At high levels, athletes are pushing themselves right up to the brink of injury, and hopefully not past that point. It’s an otherwise okay article, but that sentence is a swing and a miss.
Yes this is like saying a Formula 1 car doesn't need a pit crew because it's faster than a Honda Civic. The opposite is true: high performance requires operating at the absolute limit of mechanical failure.
Novice athletes operate at 50% of their capacity and have high safety margins. Elite athletes redline at 99%. They need constant medical and PT leverage not because they are "sick," but to manage the structural debt accrued from that volume. The better the athlete, the tighter the feedback loop with their support staff needs to be to prevent system collapse.
Most athletes have (and need!) regular access to shared or personal sports therapists.
These days it's arguable that F1 needs pit crews because pit stops are the only source of entropy during a race but I (bitterly) digress.
FTA:
“A high-level athlete doesn’t need to see a sports doctor.
[…]
Professional athletes benefit from much better […] medical support than novice or amateur runners”
So, which is it? You might say their “specific programme that includes dietary measures, recovery phases and processes” is medical support but doesn’t involve doctors, but if you do, I think that’s playing with words.
As a decades-practicing engineer, I sure can stand to benefit from someone more experienced than me giving my work a health-check and some suggestions, but I don't NEED that because generally I'm one of the most experienced people. I benefit greatly from these more knowledgeable people.
High-level athletes know their bodies better than 99% of people, including non-sports doctors. They don't NEED to see a doctor, but when they're out of their depth, talking to an experienced doctor, combined with the skills of the athlete already, the athlete probably gets more out of the doctor than a "normie" would.
I think that supercompensation is not as strong an effect in amateurs and that this is the #1 driver of injury.
I've long suspected there is a range of exertion that is net negative with regard to injury risk. No exercise at all means no exercise related risk. However, I strongly disagree that an extreme amount of exercise is the riskiest. I think the most dangerous level of exertion sits right in the middle somewhere. That special zone where you are grinding down your bones a bit but your hormones and other compensation mechanisms don't react accordingly because you aren't going quite hard enough.
Running is generally a bad exercise in terms of the injury/body-wear to benefit ratio, especially if you're body isn't light and young. Better to combine walking/hiking with resistance exercises.
A lot of the forums I see recommending rucking as the best cardio exercise. Less likely to be injured by a turned ankle or knee than when you are running. Also it offers a great way to gradually increase difficulty.
My favorite is stair climbing, but it's very difficult to find publically accessible space (e.g. 20+ story building) to do this.
I have a Planet Fitness membership which is stupid cheap and they have stair machines. I guess a lot of people like them a lot. Also the treadmills are great if you increase the incline. Lets you get a workout without having to break into a run.
Love max incline treadmills to warm the body up and exercise the calves. Stair machines are OK, but not nearly as satisfying to me as lifting my whole body through space with legs and arms on real flights of stairs.
I love walking up stairs and detest stair machines (and treadmills to an extent). You have to tell your brain to not look ahead to where you are stepping and use your peripheral vision and memory, but instead trust that there will always be a step in front of you, or stare at your feet. It's a bit unnatural.
Agreed. Also much less of a workout per stairs since your center of mass roughly hovers in the same place. Also difficult to resist the temptation of hanging most of bodyweight on hands as I see most people doing.
I've been lucky to run fourteen years so far without any injuries at all, starting when I was twenty-seven. I don't train "for" anything, though, other than maintaining my own fitness. I just do my 10K three times a week and that's good enough for me.
I've been running 3x a week for over 40 years now.
* about 4 miles
* I don't run for time, just a trot
* not training for anything
* drink a full glass of water beforehand. If sweaty outside, two glasses
* had some pain in my hips and knees. Switched to a ball-strike rather than a heel-strike. Pain went away. (you can feel the difference in the impact on the knees and hips)
* don't run downhill
* the big toe joint hurts and has gotten large making it hard to find shoes that fit
* don't run when not feeling well, or there's ice
* I feel weird when I can't run for some reason
* It feels good to run, and I like the results
When I started running, I hated it. I had to force myself to do it.
A funny thing happened after about a year. I realized I was looking forward to the run, and missed it when I wasn't.
But it took a whole year :-/
I did similar for about 25 years. I had one injury from overtraining (I basically ran 20 miles every Sunday morning for 6 months, in addition to two shorter runs each week) that ended up plantar fasciitis and I had to take 4-5 month off.
I stopped doing that sort of weekly long run after that and did a lot more in the 6-10 miles range.
Then during and immediately post-COVID shutdowns, I just started running every time I felt stressed about something, and I started to neglect all the other holistic movements that complement running.
This ended up leading to a weird twinge in my hip that 2 years of focused strength training hasn't eliminated. Doctor says there is nothing structural but I don't run any more and I miss it often. There is a flow state I seem to get in somewhere just under to just over an hour in to a run.
The only other time I ever get in to that wonderful flow state is every once in a while when playing guitar, but it's rare.
I does feel good to run, and I miss it.
> weird twinge in my hip
Could be arthritis.
I do 10K twice a week, but walking speed with a 15kg backpack for load training. It is safer on my joints and pushes my body harder but obviously takes much longer than running.
What's your secret to longevity? Do you not push tempo to, hopefully, lessen the stress on your body?
Not OP, but I’ve been running competitively for 50 years (yes, I can collect Social Security). I ran 10x20” sprints yesterday, I’ll do tempo later this week. I still race, from cross country to ultramarathons. I ran cross country nationals this past year and didn’t embarrass myself, I’ll run a 12 hour race in April.
My secret? Genetics. I used to tell people that would ask about what I know about their injuries: “I don’t really know, I don’t get injured.” That isn’t true anymore, I’ve been nursing plantar fasciitis for about six months now. But I will say this about injuries: if it doesn’t get better in a couple of days, take a little time off, and see a doctor if it persists more than a couple of weeks. And my other “secret” is to be reasonable about your mileage. OP has the right idea with a few runs a week at a reasonable distance. I don’t do that, that’s probably why my foot hurts right now. You can miss a day, none of us are going to the Olympics.
Otherwise, after 40, don’t just run. Do yoga, lift weights, ride a bicycle once in a while. Sacrifice a run if you have to so you can lift twice a week, you’re not getting any stronger. Take ten minutes with a YouTube video to do some yoga, you’re definitely not getting any more flexible. You should do these things when you’re young, but they are almost a requirement after age 50.
I've been running about the same amount of years, starting at age 38, including sometimes as many as 14 runs of 26.2 or longer in a year.
Keeping 80% or more of the volume at an easy effort is part of that. I think diet helps, because depending on what you eat, you are could be contributing to more or less inflammation in the body, which both could make injury more likely and recovery slower. I eat whole-food, plant-based.
I expect a good stretching routine would also aid injury prevention, but I've been pretty lousy about that most of the time.
The best way for me to avoid injury is to just not run if I dont feel good. If I dont sleep well, or feel like I am getting a little sick, I just take the day off. If my ankle or knee doesnt feel quite right, I skip my run.
To maintain my fitness, I do a mix of gym strength training, bike riding, and running, which also helps reduce some stress from any one type of training.
I don't push myself that hard. If I don't feel that hot (slept poorly, sick recently), I'll do a shorter run.
Average heart rate is around 140.
Professional runners will do high impact lifting and daily stretching. Amateurs will do whatever they feel like doing for prep work, including nothing at all. It's disturbing that they leave this critical detail out.
> They follow a specific programme that includes dietary measures, recovery phases and processes.
Eh, it's kinda there
The key is simply to keep moving.
Staying safer and getting the benefits comes down to progressive training (carefully managing volume and intensity), adapting lifestyle/recovery, and getting guidance/support (coaches, clubs, medical help) rather than assuming pros are built differently and amateurs are safe.
My doctors recommendation has always been “Eat a little better and move around a little bit, that’s your goal”
I've reached the age where my body starts complaining if I don't exercise somehow on a frequent basis.
There is an interesting study in older adults who were former elite athletes. Knee osteoarthritis (knee joint wear-and-tear) was best predicted by high body mass and knee injuries as young adults.
It depends on the intensity level. In the pandemic of 2020, I ran 26.2 mile runs at an easy effort for 5 weekends in row in the spring and 6 in the fall, generally with my easy effort getting faster as I went. Rather than the sequence of big runs wearing my out, I was getting stronger.
Now, if I had tried to run every one at "race pace", I would likely be trashed or injured by the end from insufficient recovery.
Funny two weekends ago I watched a woman set a world record for the mile for women 80-85.
Quntity of exercise cannot build quality. Its self-selecting the people who can handle running and injuries better so they adapt. The rest get injured enough to stop. II don't think trying to "push it to using 100% of potential" is worth any long-term health risk, especially with no long-term reward: so you win X race/competition once and then what?
so you win X race/competition once and then what?
So now you're on a Wheaties box and making millions in endorsements, that's what.
Even if it shortens their life, many athletes would take a drug that guarantees athletic success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman%27s_dilemma The results have been disputed, but the take-away for me is that athletes have a variety of motivations, and the perceived rewards might be very different than what you might find rewarding.
I’d always hated running. I’ve done C25K a few times with no problem, but once I reached that goal I felt I couldn’t make much additional progress. But the need to move and running’s simplicity and minimal requirements meant I kept trying every couple of years. I read/watched a little and got some tips from ultra runners and actually started to make progress. I was actually enjoying it and looking forward to running. Then I got the worst fucking shin splints imaginable where I had to nearly crawl halfway back home. Stopped running to heal, which took a very long time. I’ve tested a few runs but there’s still pain and I just don’t want to go through that again.
So now I row every day. I get a much better exercise high from rowing, progress is much more noticeable, it’s improved vitals more than running has, there’s no pain, and I don’t have to worry about weather. I occasionally miss the change of scenery or things like running on a cold snowy day but I can just go rent some cross country skis when I get that itch.
I had a similar experience with running, including terrible shin splints that took me out for weeks at a time.
I went to a "run clinic" where they observed my gait. I'm paraphrasing here since this was many years ago, but basically they said that my stride was slightly too large and that my knees were behind my feet during the foot strike. My cadence was around 150-155 steps per minute and they suggested increasing it to 170-180, basically meaning my steps would be smaller but more frequent.
I downloaded a metronome app on my phone and set it to 172 to make sure that I maintained the proper rhythm while running. Worked immediately and I never had shin splints again.
Nursing a sore right Achilles as I read this...
> Note the paradox here: one of the principles of training is to stimulate the body, to “wear it out” at a given moment in time in order to trigger the physiological processes that will lead to improved capabilities, the fight against fatigue… and, ultimately, increased resistance to physical stress.
A somewhat recent paper:
Systematic review and meta-analysis of antioxidants with or without exercise training improving muscle condition in older adults
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12491480/
Seems to imply that as we get older, antioxidants might help the body recover from exercise. More specifically, antioxidants may help resolve exercise induced inflammation in adults aged over 55 years.
So it seems that, yes, as you get older, its easier for the body to wear down, but this can be mitigated somewhat.
wow this article sure reads like AI slop
reading some popular media from around 1900 in the USA, it seemed to be a common perception that people who trained for track and field events generally expect a short life somehow.
If you read about their wellness and performance enhancing drugs, there's good reason they died young.
For example, the 1904 Olympic marathon, the organizer believed drinking water was a bad idea while exercising and the winner took a mix of brandy, strychnine and egg whites during the race.
The Wikipedia article on that race is a must-read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1904_Summer_O...
I don't understand this, didn't they feel like crap all the time with such diet?
Most racers didn't finish, so the water idea was just dumb. I'm not sure how serious anyone that actually trained ever took it.
The strychnine taker did feel like crap. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1904_Summer_O...
>Hicks led the race by 1.5 miles (2.4 km), but he had to be restrained from stopping and lying down by his trainers....He continued to battle onwards, hallucinating, and was barely able to walk for most of the course. When he reached the stadium, his support team carried him over the line, holding him in the air while he shuffled his feet as if still running.
But… winning!
Yes
I mean the consensus is that to improve you kinda have to put a certain level of unusually high stress on your body. While amateurs do it at a lower level, amateurs likely like the genetics that makes increases resistance to slows down the wearing process and also lack regular constant monitoring of exercise intensity, frequency, rests, diet etc.
TLDR: no, they do not wear out the body in the same way
Thank you. I've read the article and didn't found the answer. So, they wear out the body of amateurs and professional in different way. I'll try to remember that.