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Common Overuse Injuries

Repeated stress on your body can cause repetitive strain injuries (RSI), especially when you don’t give yourself enough time to repair, recover and adapt. For those who play sports, common overuse injuries are often caused by training mistakes, such as increasing the intensity, amount or type of training too soon.

Plantar fasciopathy

This can be caused by significantly increasing your running or walking or making sudden changes to your footwear.

Tennis/golfers elbow

This can happen when you are spending extended hours playing sports like golf and tennis, possibly with incorrect techniques.

Achilles tendinopathy

This can occur when there is a sudden spike in your running load, frequency or duration, without adequate rest.

The best way to avoid developing an overuse injury is by gradually increasing your load over a period of time. How do you determine what amount is the right amount? Try following the 10% rule. If you are training for a marathon, instead of pushing yourself as hard as you can every session, increase your training volume by 10% each week with a mix of slow long run and fast interval short run. After doing this for three to four weeks, give yourself a lighter week where you use less volume than usual. This can help your body recover and adjust to the training, allowing you to push harder over the coming weeks.

Always listen to your body. Progress your exercise load gradually, schedule adequate rest and maintain good sleep hygiene can help you boost your training and exercise ability and reduce your risk of injury.

If you have a new fitness goals, but are not sure what exercises to do or how to progress, our physiotherapists at Sports Focus Physiotherapy will be able to help you come up with a tailored exercise program to help you achieve this.

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