# An IRONMAN Triathlete's Guide to Avoiding and Recovering from Injury | Ep 553

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 27 Aug 2025, 33 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/107009183/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-7-18%2Fae46fa89-b295-5001-8949-da2dc243dffc.m4a

In this week's episode Coach Rob dives into the critical topic of injury prevention and recovery for triathletes. Including: -> The importance of recognizing early signs of injury... -> Seeking prompt professional help... -> Understanding the causes of common injuries in the sport... -> The role of strength and conditioning in injury prevention & rehab... -> Appropriate training strategies to minimise injury risk... - >The importance of a long-term perspective to ensure consistent, injury-free training * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Like what you heard in this show? Join hundreds of other age group triathletes making the most of their limited training time, training with Team OxygenAddict! http://team.oxygenaddict.com - The most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Book an application call to see if you'd be a good fit for Team Oxygenaddict for the coming season here: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ Register to watch our FREE IRONMAN Accelerator webclass and learn how to dominate your first IRONMAN in as little as 6-8 hours training per week: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/ironman-accelerator * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply click this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:04] Hello and welcome to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast.
[0:07] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision Fuel
[0:09] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:13] order with the code Oxygen Fuel 25.
[0:16] Welcome to the show everybody. I'm your host coach Rob Wilby
[0:19] from Team Oxygen Addict Triathlon Coaching and every
[0:22] week I bring you an episode of this podcast to help educate,
[0:25] motivate and hopefully inspire you.
[0:28] On this week's episode, I'm going to be talking about very
[0:30] important topic that I think a lot of people overlook and it's
[0:33] recovering from injury. And a big part of talking about
[0:37] recovering from injury is going to be talking about looking for
[0:39] the early signs of injuries and looking about how to how to
[0:44] avoid them becoming injuries in the 1st place.
[0:46] So I've got tonne of tips here for you today.
[0:49] It's not it's funny this it's not a sexy topic.
[0:53] It's not like talking about aerodynamic gains on the bike or
[0:57] what can I buy, what clothing can I wear.
[1:00] People are always looking for those kind of tips.
[1:02] Honestly, if you can keep yourself niggle and injury free
[1:06] through a whole season, or the vast majority of it, that is
[1:10] going to do more than all the aerodynamic gains in the world,
[1:14] than all the Norwegian method things you've read about in the
[1:17] press, all of the strange new gels that come onto the market.
[1:21] Simply being consistent and able to train every day that you need
[1:25] to train, that's going to be the thing that gets you where you
[1:29] want to go in terms of whether it's completing your first
[1:32] triathlon, completing your first Ironman, winning your age group,
[1:36] going to Kona. All of those things stem from
[1:39] the consistency of training. And a big part of that is
[1:44] accepting that some days you have to say no to the training
[1:48] in order to be able to train again tomorrow.
[1:51] And often I hear horror stories from athletes who often well
[1:56] meaning that a lot of our athletes are very driven type A
[2:00] personalities, don't take no for an answer or do things that
[2:03] people think are unreasonable amongst the normal human
[2:07] population. You know, most people think
[2:08] nothing of getting up to train at 6:00 to the pool, five
[2:12] o'clock 4:00 even to get the long rides done.
[2:15] They're willing to do things that people are often not
[2:18] willing to do. But a big part of the long term
[2:22] consistency piece is not breaking yourself.
[2:25] And that's where the coaching aspect of this comes in.
[2:27] One of my ethics said to me the other day, I thought when I
[2:30] signed up for coaching with you, it was going to be you
[2:31] motivating me to train every day.
[2:33] And actually what it's been is you saying well done when I've
[2:37] got the training done that needed to be done, but saying
[2:39] don't do this at the times when it's appropriate to hear don't
[2:42] do this. And often the athletes said they
[2:45] would have trained that day had it not been for the advice of a
[2:47] coach saying look, you're best stuff missing this session,
[2:51] seeing a physio recovering XYZ, whatever that might be.
[2:55] Most of my job as a professional coach is saying no to athletes
[2:59] at the right time so that they can then get the benefit from
[3:03] the 99% of the training that they want to get done.
[3:06] And, and often, I'll be honest with you, with almost all age
[3:10] group athletes training for triathlon, your desire to train
[3:14] often out, out outstrips your ability to absorb the training
[3:19] that you're capable of doing. What I mean by that is you can
[3:23] go out and put yourself through an absolute health session.
[3:26] You can put yourself through a week of health sessions.
[3:28] You can string together 567 days of massive training when you're
[3:32] away on a, on a training camp. It's the impact of that
[3:36] afterwards that's the difficult thing to quantify.
[3:40] And often athletes are willing to do training and can talk
[3:43] themselves into training when tired, can force a second
[3:46] espresso down, can get themselves psyched up the
[3:48] training and get it done. And sometimes they're pushing
[3:50] themselves over the edge into that danger zone where fatigue
[3:54] becomes soreness and soreness becomes a niggle, and niggle
[3:57] works it's way into an injury. So that's what I'm going to be
[3:59] discussing for you today. Now, before we kick things off,
[4:04] there's a couple of quick things you could do to help us.
[4:06] Actually, if you like and enjoy this episode, please consider
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[4:45] training and what you listen to today resonates with you and you
[4:48] think, do you know what this is? This is the kind of advice that
[4:51] I could be doing with as an athlete.
[4:53] It would help me improve as an athlete.
[4:55] Head on over to teamoxygenaddict.com.
[4:58] Check out our coaching memberships.
[5:01] I think we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching
[5:03] programme that's specifically designed for busy age group is
[5:06] it's not designed for pros, designed for people who've got
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[5:12] achieving type A personalities and just need that bit of
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[5:18] work. It's knowing exactly what work
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[5:29] there's a link in the show notes to book a membership call.
[5:31] There's a bunch of information about our coaching packages on
[5:34] the website. Please have a read through that
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[5:39] If it looks good, book a call with us and we'll see if you'd
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[5:44] All right, let's jump right in and let's start talking about
[5:47] our top tips for avoiding injury and for recovering from injury,
[5:51] coming back from injury. So my my first golden rule here
[5:55] for you and before I start this, I'm going to apologise in a way
[5:59] some of this is going to sound, I think possibly quite
[6:03] patronising. It's going to be some
[6:05] information that you're listening, you think, do you
[6:07] know what? I already know this.
[6:08] It's obvious. The stuff that you're saying
[6:10] here is obvious, but I want you to look at it through the lens
[6:14] of if you find yourself thinking that, then question.
[6:18] Well, even though it's obvious, have I ever done this thing?
[6:21] And the first one is a great example of this.
[6:24] Don't train through pain. If you're in pain, the first
[6:27] thing you should do is you should stop the session and you
[6:30] shouldn't force yourself on to continue through that Rep,
[6:33] through that set, through that five mile run, whatever it might
[6:36] be. It's to stop that session
[6:38] immediately and give that pain a chance to go away and help
[6:43] whatever niggle that is developing that give it a chance
[6:46] to heal, not continue to train on it.
[6:48] Now that's my first example of something that I'm sure almost
[6:51] everybody who's listening to this is going to think, well,
[6:53] that's really obvious. So my next question to you is
[6:57] have you ever done that? And if you have, there's no
[7:00] shame in that. I'm going to put my hand up and
[7:01] say I've definitely done that. I've definitely done that dozens
[7:05] of times during the time when I was, I was really taking
[7:08] triathlon seriously. And I think the fault of that
[7:11] was not listening to the wiser people I had around me who said,
[7:15] well, do you know what? You've just told us that this
[7:18] thing has happened. I don't think it's a smart thing
[7:21] to do for you to go out for a run.
[7:22] I'll give you a great example. Back when I was back, when I was
[7:24] working as a teacher, took a bunch of lads to a football
[7:28] game. The ball got kicked out and I
[7:30] jumped in the head to try and catch the ball as it went out of
[7:33] play. And I landed really awkwardly
[7:35] and a shooting pain went up my back and I triggered really bad
[7:38] sciatica to the point where anyone who's had sciatica will
[7:41] know it's just one of those really debilitating unfortunate
[7:45] things that can come on from nowhere and it can disappear
[7:48] seemingly from nowhere. But it affected me to the point
[7:50] where I couldn't, I couldn't walk, I couldn't sit without
[7:53] pain. But I continued to train through
[7:57] it. I found that I'll, I'll just go
[7:59] out for a little jog and see how it feels.
[8:01] And at first it was agonising. And then after 5 minutes eased
[8:05] off a bit and then I was able to run with a limp.
[8:07] And then I was able to run more normally.
[8:10] And then I was running OK after 10 minutes and I thought, great,
[8:13] it's gone away. So I did my run session, which
[8:16] surprise, surprise was a hill Rep session.
[8:18] So I went and did the Hill Rep session, came back to the house,
[8:21] had a shower, woke up in the middle of the night in complete
[8:24] agony and it was even worse than it had been before.
[8:28] And again, who knew, right? People listen to this going,
[8:33] wait, what? You did what?
[8:34] And I get that because my coaching head knows what the
[8:37] smart thing to do is. But my athlete was compelled to
[8:42] get that training done. I was convinced there would be
[8:45] worse consequences for me not doing that hill Rep session, not
[8:49] being in shape for the race I was training for.
[8:51] It was the the Ball Buster Duathlon on Box Hill.
[8:55] Some of you all know that race. I was convinced I needed one
[8:58] more of these hill Rep sessions in my legs in order to be able
[9:01] to run really well. And I had to take four or five
[9:04] days of running completely and I think I was even off work for a
[9:06] day because I literally couldn't walk or drive the car.
[9:10] I know looking back that if I'd listened to the advice around
[9:14] me, I wouldn't have tried to train through that injury.
[9:16] I had plenty of people around me saying that, but I was compelled
[9:20] to train through it. And I think it's the same for a
[9:22] lot of athletes listening. It's not that you're not
[9:24] intelligent and it's not that you don't know what's good for
[9:28] you. It's that sometimes the
[9:29] compulsion to train overrides or the obsession to train overrides
[9:35] the common sense of it and forces you to do something that
[9:39] is ultimately not going to be in your long term best interest.
[9:42] So that's the first thing I'm going to pass over to you here
[9:45] is, you know, hard, hard won wisdom as it were, from a guy
[9:49] approaching his mid 50s who raced quite well through his mid
[9:52] 30s and has looked back and thought, you know what?
[9:55] I, I could have potentially been better had I not made these
[9:59] mistakes. So that's my first tip for you
[10:01] here. Don't train through pain.
[10:03] It almost always is going to lengthen the recovery time from
[10:06] an injury or a niggle. And it's better to lose a
[10:08] session or a couple of sessions than a week or several weeks.
[10:13] OK, Next up, it's recognising the early warning signs.
[10:16] If you've had this niggle and it doesn't improve after 24 hours
[10:20] to 48 hours of rest, if the swelling, if the sharp pain, if
[10:25] there's, if there's an altered gait, meaning you're limping as
[10:27] you're walking, they're all real red flags.
[10:30] Catching them early can prevent them becoming sort of training
[10:35] block ending or race ending injuries.
[10:38] And the thing to do is to find yourself a really good sports
[10:42] physio, have it on, not have it on speed dial, but have that
[10:46] number saved in your phone. So you don't have to think, who
[10:50] am I going to go and see? Who's the person to talk to?
[10:53] Have a person that you go to, ideally that you see the same
[10:56] practitioner each time that they get to know you a little bit.
[10:59] I think that's the, that's the absolute key of this, that they
[11:03] get to know you and your body. And ideally that person can also
[11:06] be a massage therapist who can give you twice monthly, monthly,
[11:12] weekly massages, depending on what your, your budget and
[11:14] availability is. The massages are going to really
[11:18] help you stay loose and they're going to help you train more.
[11:21] But that physiotherapist, massage therapist, getting to
[11:24] know your body can often sense and feel knots and muscles that
[11:29] might then go on to develop to be something more serious.
[11:33] So that's .2 is is recognising the early warning signs and
[11:36] doing something about it. And then .3 is, is that idea of
[11:41] the sports physio, the sports massage therapist, Have someone
[11:45] that you really know and trust, have someone that you can book
[11:48] into, ideally at relatively short notice.
[11:50] But if not, get yourself in to see somebody relatively quickly
[11:54] because often any kind of treatment can really help that
[11:57] niggle clear quickly. Be it ultrasound, be it dry
[12:01] needling and acupuncture. There are things that
[12:04] physiotherapists can do that we don't know and understand, but
[12:07] can really, really help out clear a niggle or stop a niggle
[12:10] or an injury developing really quickly.
[12:12] And the worst thing that happens is you pay some money and they
[12:15] tell you exactly what the problem is.
[12:16] I've never heard of a situation where an athlete has paid money
[12:19] to see a Vizio and comes out not knowing what the what the
[12:23] problem is. Clearly often athletes don't
[12:27] like what they hear, they don't like what the diagnosis isn't.
[12:31] And sometimes they might even go for a second diagnosis if
[12:33] they're looking for that to be different.
[12:35] But always seeing that physiotherapist and learning
[12:39] what the exact problem is, is always going to be a really,
[12:44] really good first step for you to learn how you can go about
[12:48] getting that cleared up. OK, so you can, you can have
[12:52] that one for free. They can also then refer you on
[12:54] you might need more serious help, you might need help them
[12:58] being sent to the GP for imaging or referrals or Mris.
[13:02] But I think that the first port of call should be the
[13:04] physiotherapist or a sports medicine doctor, someone who who
[13:08] understands endurance sport. We're looking up here.
[13:10] We've got a whole bunch of great sports massage therapists and
[13:15] and sports focused physiotherapists who who can
[13:20] really help, who really understand the the demands of
[13:23] triathlon and, and can understand the the common
[13:26] injuries that come up so often. If you don't have one, your
[13:29] local triathlon club's a great place.
[13:31] Usually you'll find that if there's a local triathlete who's
[13:34] also a physiotherapist, no brainer, go and see them and
[13:38] they're going to understand what you're going through in training
[13:41] and the likely imbalances and the likely niggles and potential
[13:44] injuries that may come from there.
[13:46] OK, let's talk a little bit next .4 about why these injuries
[13:51] occur. So in triathletes, usually
[13:56] running is going to be the culprit.
[13:59] I'm going to say this, and it's not going to be popular and a
[14:01] lot of people don't like to hear it, especially amongst people
[14:04] who came from a running background.
[14:06] But there are some other things as well, and we'll circle
[14:08] backgrounds talking about running.
[14:10] Sudden increases in training load can be a trigger for some
[14:14] kind of niggle. So you get extra fatigued, you
[14:16] don't recover, the muscle hasn't recovered properly.
[14:19] Maybe there's a weakness there. Maybe that develops into a small
[14:22] micro tear, maybe that develops into a knot.
[14:25] Maybe that causes pain. Maybe that then impinges you and
[14:27] you run slightly differently, or you know you can see where that
[14:31] goes. So sudden increases in training
[14:34] load without recovering can be the first trigger.
[14:37] If you don't have perfect bio mechanics, that can be a
[14:41] trigger, especially as volume increases.
[14:43] And let's be honest, who amongst us do have perfect bio
[14:46] mechanics? Lots of people have things going
[14:48] on that cause problems for them all the time, be that how you
[14:52] run, muscle imbalances, weaknesses in your back, in your
[14:55] hips, in your hip flexors. So there's that.
[14:58] The inadequate recovery part is often massive.
[15:02] And with triathletes also, we need to look at equipment
[15:05] factors. So what I mean by this is a poor
[15:09] bike fit can sometimes, if not cause muscle imbalances,
[15:12] certainly highlight them and all choose be it on the run or the
[15:16] bike can also be real contributing factors to niggles
[15:20] developing and I'll give you a great example of it to anyone
[15:22] who's currently struggling with Achilles pain.
[15:25] When you go out for a run, a place to look is actually
[15:30] whether your bike cleats are worn or not and it doesn't stand
[15:34] to any reason then. This is a piece of advice I was
[15:36] given by, again, a sports physiotherapist who was a
[15:39] triathlete. He said the classic thing that
[15:41] happens is we spend, you know, 4000 pounds, 8000 lbs on a bike
[15:46] and then we're really resentful of spending £20 on a set of new
[15:49] cleats that go on the bottom of the shoes.
[15:51] And really we need to change them every few months because
[15:53] they get worn as we walk on them and as they get worn.
[15:56] That causes your foot to rock on the pedal very slightly.
[15:59] And if you think you're pressing down on the pedals, 90 * a
[16:02] minute with each. But if your foot is rocking on
[16:05] the pedal very slightly every time, your Achilles tendon is
[16:09] the point where that load is, is taking the you know, the load is
[16:14] getting pushed down through your quads, down through your shin
[16:17] bone, into your heel. And the Achilles is where all
[16:20] that turning force is happening as the foot flexes across a worn
[16:23] cleat. And often that doesn't show up
[16:25] on the bike. It often you don't feel that on
[16:27] the bike because of the nature of how little your foot and
[16:30] ankle joint moves on the bike. And as you go for a run, lo and
[16:33] behold, that translates into some kind of tendonitis.
[16:36] And it flares up so often with people who've developed these
[16:40] these Achilles Ingles. Simply making sure you keep on
[16:42] top of changing your bike cleats can be a game changer.
[16:46] And that means if you're lucky enough right now to be a person
[16:48] who's not experiencing Achilles pain, go and change your bike
[16:52] cleats right now for the sake of £20.
[16:55] It's a really small amount of money to pay to avoid
[16:58] potentially a really large amount of disruption to your
[17:01] training. Again, I struggled for, I'm
[17:03] going to say 2 years with agonising Achilles pain.
[17:08] I couldn't bring myself to stop training for long enough for it
[17:11] to go away. And even when I did stop
[17:12] training, as people who've had Achilles tendonitis will know,
[17:15] resting it doesn't really help as much as certainly not as much
[17:19] as doing the correct rehab exercises do.
[17:22] I had to cut the heels off all my running shoes using using a
[17:25] Stanley knife so that, you know, my Achilles tendons weren't
[17:28] touched by my the heel tab on my shoe as I was walking or even as
[17:33] I was driving. I had to drive barefoot and look
[17:36] back and I think I trained myself through these agonising
[17:40] situations all the time and it could have been solved by going
[17:46] to the physiotherapist early. And I'll be honest with you
[17:47] here, and in the same way that people are afraid of going to
[17:51] the dentist, I was afraid of going to the physiotherapist
[17:53] because my Achilles tendons were so sore.
[17:55] I couldn't imagine someone being able to even touch them with the
[17:59] finger to assess what it was. It was too terrifying.
[18:02] I was in that much pain, which sounds ridiculous to say now.
[18:05] What happened to me was I eventually went to the physio,
[18:09] he explained what happened and he said, right, I'm going to be
[18:11] really, really gentle with your Achilles tendon.
[18:13] And he massaged it so gently, it was almost like he wasn't
[18:16] touching it. And over time, over a few
[18:19] minutes, that tendon lost its sensitivity, it lost its pain.
[18:23] And he was eventually able to massage it really hard and it
[18:26] didn't hurt at all. And it was amazing to me.
[18:28] And again, the things we don't know, we don't know.
[18:31] I could never have predicted to you that that kind of skillful
[18:35] Achilles tendon massage would mean it would essentially go
[18:37] numb to pain and would stop hurting and then the physio
[18:40] could work on it. All I equated it with was
[18:43] there's no possible way anyone can touch this without screaming
[18:47] and agony. So no, I'm absolutely not going
[18:49] to go in there and have somebody touch it.
[18:51] So please, again, learn from my mistakes with this one.
[18:55] So getting yourself in there and avoiding the early injury causes
[19:01] can stop them developing getting worse in the 1st place.
[19:05] OK, let's talk next about some some common injuries that we
[19:08] might see in triathletes and especially in Iman triathletes.
[19:12] So typically overuse injuries are the things that that
[19:15] dominate the workload of a sports video seeing Iman
[19:18] athletes. Some typical injuries might be
[19:22] shin splints, which is pain down the front of your shin that
[19:26] might potentially shin splint is usually one of two things.
[19:30] It's either the tendon that runs down the sheath down the front
[19:33] of the shin can become inflamed. That's the kind of lower level
[19:37] of it. The higher level of it is
[19:38] actually stress fractures in the shin.
[19:40] So it's really important to go and get that assessed properly.
[19:44] We've talked a little bit about Achilles tendonopathy.
[19:47] That's pain down in the Achilles tendon.
[19:49] You might hear of plantar fasciitis which is in the tendon
[19:52] that runs underneath the ball of the foot.
[19:54] Again athletes, you've had it and I'm very lucky here.
[19:57] I never have. Agonisingly painful, meaning
[20:01] that you can't walk, you can't run because of the pain and and
[20:04] it's relatively simple for the physiotherapist to treat.
[20:08] That runner's knee is another typical one, ITB syndrome, which
[20:13] is pain right down the outside of the knee.
[20:15] Often it's really felt either running, but often cycling.
[20:19] And again, I've suffered and struggled with this myself and
[20:22] eventually when I went to the physiotherapist, I had
[20:26] acupuncture on it and unbelievably to me, I couldn't
[20:29] believe this was going to do anything.
[20:31] It took the pain away entirely and one treatment which was
[20:35] absolutely amazing. But again, I didn't know what I
[20:37] didn't know. So go in and ask for that
[20:41] professional advice. You might well find if you're
[20:44] suffering from shoulder pain in swimmers, that might be some
[20:48] kind of rotator cuff irritation. Again, relatively easily
[20:51] treatable by a physiotherapist and and often it's rehab
[20:56] exercises and prehab exercises that are really going to help
[20:59] that rather than any kind of injections or painful work and
[21:03] sometimes lower back and neck pain that might be caused by
[21:07] cycling position. All of these things I think my
[21:11] physiotherapist friends talk about being the common things
[21:14] that they see in Iron Man triathletes all the time.
[21:16] So if this is you don't feel stupid going to the physio with
[21:20] them. They see them all the time.
[21:21] They can genuinely really, really help.
[21:24] OK, it's a great time for shout out for our sponsors Precision
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[22:25] salty sweater, or exercising in the heat.
[22:28] OK, then let's jump back into talking about recovery and
[22:32] avoidance of injury. So let's talk a little bit now
[22:36] about estimated recovery timelines.
[22:38] It's a question I often get from athletes when they they've had
[22:41] something that's been a niggle that's developed into an an
[22:43] actual injury. So if you've got some kind of
[22:46] soft tissue irritation, some soreness in muscles, it's usual
[22:50] that they have to clear up within two to four weeks.
[22:54] Similarly, with a muscle strain, it's two to four weeks.
[22:57] If you end up with tendonitis, Achilles tendonitis.
[23:01] The recovery path from that often tends to follow how
[23:05] quickly you start to get treated as the pain appears, and it can
[23:09] be a long road back. There's exercises you have to do
[23:13] every day and they will help correct that in the long term,
[23:17] but it's largely down to how long you've been struggling with
[23:19] that in the 1st place. If you've got some kind of
[23:22] fracture or stress fracture, you're looking at 8 to 16 weeks
[23:26] for full recovery. And those shoulder impingements
[23:29] and rotator cuff challenges are in the range of 4 to 12 weeks.
[23:34] So all of these things are going to be, you know, a month, two
[23:38] months, three months in terms of recovery.
[23:40] You're going to have to be patient and dedicate yourself
[23:42] and some money to getting treated, but it will be worth
[23:46] it. The times are going to vary
[23:47] hugely depending on the severity of the problem, obviously age
[23:51] and how much rehab you do. But I would encourage you to
[23:54] think of this when you go to the physiotherapist, you're going to
[23:56] come home with homework. The problem's going to go away
[24:00] depending on how much you dedicate yourself to that
[24:02] homework rather than just by going to the physiotherapist.
[24:06] So that's well worth thinking about.
[24:09] Now let's talk about the approach to returning to
[24:11] exercise once you've, once you've, you know, got over the
[24:14] injury and started to get to grips with it. 4 phases to this
[24:18] phase. One is, is resting.
[24:20] It's reducing inflammation, reducing the pain, maintaining
[24:24] fitness with cross training where that's safe, but that's
[24:26] your first phase. Phase 2 is going to be gentle
[24:30] pain free movement and getting your rehab exercises done.
[24:34] Phase 3 is going to be a gradual reintroduction of some sport
[24:39] specific loading. Now often we're going to talk
[24:42] about starting at 50% of the usual volume and 50% intensity.
[24:47] So it's really easy to start with and really short.
[24:50] And what we're looking for here is just getting back into either
[24:53] running or cycling or swimming and not having any pain.
[24:57] And, and if it's been a run injury and you get back into
[24:59] running, I'd highly recommend introducing walk breaks into
[25:03] runs. So, so come back and do a minute
[25:05] run, a minute walk, a minute run, a minute walk, gradually
[25:08] extend the length of that run section.
[25:11] That in itself can often be a real great way to get back into
[25:15] running. And then the fourth phase of
[25:16] this is return to full training and careful monitoring by both
[25:21] you, your coach, and your physio staff to make sure that that
[25:25] problem isn't returning anymore. Next up, let's talk about cross
[25:28] training options. So this is a good thing for
[25:30] triathletes. If you get some kind of niggle
[25:32] that's preventing you training one of the sports, you've got
[25:35] two other sports that can potentially be used.
[25:37] If it's safe and doesn't add to that injury, it's really going
[25:41] to help you out. So injured runners typically can
[25:44] maintain their aerobic base fitness with swimming, possibly
[25:48] with Aqua jogging, definitely with cycling.
[25:51] They're they're the big three. So often if someone's got a run
[25:54] injury in the car, man, I'll say, look, let's replace the
[25:56] runs with a ride at the same intensity and the equal duration
[26:01] or up to 1 1/2 times the duration.
[26:03] So a 30 minute run might become a, an easy to steady 45 minute
[26:07] ride. An hour run might be an hour to
[26:09] two hours easy or steady ride. And then that way you've got the
[26:13] sort of the aerobic volume happening still, you just
[26:18] haven't got that run specific targeting going on.
[26:20] And I'm a big believer that you can maintain run fitness with
[26:24] cycling. It's very hard to maintain
[26:26] cycling fitness with running, impossible even I think, but it
[26:29] seems to work. If you've got run injury, you
[26:31] can keep on top of a lot of it simply with maintaining your
[26:35] cycle, maintaining your cycling, right.
[26:38] Next up, the role of strength and conditioning cannot be
[26:42] overestimated here. Many of these injuries are going
[26:44] to stem from from weaknesses and muscles.
[26:46] Weak hips, weak glutes, weak core muscles and targeted
[26:51] strength Conditioning is usually essential not just for the rehab
[26:55] from the injury, but for the prevention of future breakdowns.
[26:58] So with our athletes that we coach, we've got a really simple
[27:01] short strength conditioning routine that athletes do twice a
[27:04] week. And on top of that, they'll do a
[27:06] yoga session that really helps with flexibility as well and the
[27:10] focus really of our strength conditioning.
[27:12] It's not often not lifting weights in a gym, it's not
[27:16] pumping iron, it's doing body weight exercises and it's
[27:20] targeting the muscles that if you keep them activated and keep
[27:24] them strong, they're going to support you as you swim or bike
[27:26] or run. Typically as you run is that
[27:29] it's the most likely 1. So we do a lot of back bridges,
[27:34] we do a lot of hip bridges, we do a lot of 1 legged work like
[27:38] that where the muscle imbalances and weaknesses can show up
[27:40] really easily. There's lots of variations of
[27:42] those you can look up online, but they're great for activating
[27:46] the glute muscles. And most of us honestly don't
[27:49] activate our glute muscles at all because we sit on them for 8
[27:52] hours a day. We don't really need them when
[27:54] we walk. We can get away with running
[27:57] without using them. So often they're very inactive
[28:00] and we haven't developed those pathways that even get them to
[28:02] fire. So hip bridges and glute bridges
[28:04] are really good at just waking those muscles up and and you
[28:08] know, helping your body remember how to make them fire in the 1st
[28:12] place. OK, And the last point for you
[28:14] here today is just to say on patience and perspective, it's
[28:19] really better to miss one session than to derail a week or
[28:23] a block of training. It's better to miss one week
[28:26] than it is to miss a whole block or to miss an entire race.
[28:30] And especially as a triathlete with three sports being
[28:33] involved, you are going to be maintaining a really high level
[28:36] of aerobic fitness. You can train in the other
[28:38] sports. To be successful at this sport,
[28:42] to me means that you're in the sport for as long as you want to
[28:45] be. It means you're in for multiple
[28:47] seasons. I've been racing for over 20
[28:49] years at this point and it's the consistency of that exercising
[28:55] that I think is is the biggest win for me.
[28:59] I would love to hear in 10 years time people who listen to the
[29:02] podcast or athletes who be coached say I'm still in sport
[29:05] now and I'm still enjoying it. And, you know, maybe there are
[29:08] some seasons you take the racing really seriously and maybe there
[29:11] are some seasons where you turn up and you just take part in
[29:13] events and the result is not important to you.
[29:16] But maintaining the lifestyle of keeping swim, bike runs,
[29:19] strength conditioning as part of your life, I think is in
[29:22] moderation is going to lead us to longer, healthier, happier
[29:25] lives. And that's ultimately where I
[29:27] want athletes to be. I don't want athletes having to
[29:30] drop out of the sport because of the misery of constantly
[29:33] managing injuries and constantly trying to chase, you know,
[29:38] recovery from injuries that essentially have been caused by
[29:41] our own doing, by not following those common sense guidelines
[29:45] and by not listening to the advice that we know is right.
[29:50] So I'm going to, I'm going to finish this episode off by
[29:51] saying to you, I said at the beginning of this, a lot of the
[29:56] advice I'm going to give you here will sound quite obvious.
[29:59] So my question to you is, did you hear some things here that
[30:02] you already knew and sound obvious but found yourself not
[30:05] doing? Did you hear yourself reflected
[30:07] in my stories of training through illness or soreness or
[30:10] injury? Because if you did, I think it's
[30:13] likely you need to introduce a fail safe into your training.
[30:17] If you're not coached at the moment, you don't have a
[30:19] coaching or mentoring relationship.
[30:22] Find yourself somebody that you trust that you can work with.
[30:25] And when you have some pain, talk it through with that
[30:28] person. Might have to be a professional
[30:30] coach. It could be a wife or a husband,
[30:31] it could be a brother, it could be a friend, it could be someone
[30:34] at the club. But someone who's going to
[30:36] reflect back to you with a different perspective to you and
[30:40] who perhaps isn't obsessed with the the completion of an event
[30:44] or the winning of a race, who can give you that kind of longer
[30:47] term view. I think that's the key thing to
[30:50] all of this. I want you involved in the sport
[30:51] for as long as you want to be not forced out when you don't
[30:55] want to be forced out. So to wrap this up, I hope this
[30:59] episode has helped you. I'd love to hear about your
[31:03] experiences of recovering from illness and injury and how you
[31:07] think that you can make some changes in the future to add to
[31:10] longevity of your triathlon career.
[31:13] So to wrap things up, here are some discount codes and deals
[31:17] for you. Over at Precision Fuel and
[31:18] hydration.com use the code Oxygen Fuel 25 for 15% off your
[31:23] first electrolyte order. And at teamoxygenate.com if you
[31:27] are considering triathlon coaching for 70.3 or Iron Man
[31:30] for either this season or into next season.
[31:33] We've currently got a few slots opening up sort of August,
[31:36] September time, October time. Every year we have some slots
[31:41] opening up because of athletes who are moving on to different
[31:44] sports or different coaches, and that allows us to have spaces in
[31:48] the team for new athletes to come in.
[31:50] So been sitting there and thinking for a while that you'd
[31:52] be interested in the conversation about coaching.
[31:55] Now is the perfect time. We'd love to hear from you.
[31:57] There's a link in the show notes.
[32:00] Come and have a chat with us about how we work and we'll chat
[32:03] with you about what your goals are and how we can potentially
[32:05] help you out. And if you're a good fit for us,
[32:08] we're a good fit for you, then hopefully we can work with you
[32:12] all the way through to your next race.
[32:14] So remember, there's links in the show notes.
[32:16] You don't have to remember them. And until next week, have a
[32:18] great safe training and racing week.
[32:21] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[32:23] Addict Triathlon Podcast.

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