Running is one of the most invigorating and freeing ways to exercise. Whether you run indoors on a treadmill or let your feet fly over the pavement, your body was built to run. However, injuries can happen to anyone and can put an immediate stop to your running routine.

Twisted ankles, sprained knees, or broken legs - any injury from your hips to your feet can stop the running. Even body injuries can force you to take a long break so that you feel unstable on your feet the next time you try to go for a run. Fortunately, as long as you have healed, you can make a comeback.

Returning to running after an injury is a slow process, but it's something you can conquer. It's not dissimilar from getting into running for the first time if you started the hobby in adulthood. This article will offer a helpful guide on how to reintroduce your body to running to achieve the form, stamina, and speed that you wish to regain.

Stretch Out Every Time

One of the best things you can do for injury recovery is to stretch often and slowly increase the amount that you exercise. Stretch before every exercise routine, making sure to warm up your muscles and increase your range of motion before asking your body to provide serious performance. Warmups are essential to injury recovery 

Walk Before You Run

Start out by talking walks of increasing length and vigor. If you have been staying off an injured leg or on bed rest for a body injury, first you need to rebuild your basic stamina and the strength of your gait. Taking short walks and then longer walks is the path to running with strength and stamina again in the near future.

Rebuild Your Stamina with Low-Impact Exercises

You will also want to rebuild your muscles and stamina with exercises that are lower-impact than running. Elliptical machines are a great way to build your running muscles without the direct impact of each leg hitting the ground. You can work out your legs, core, and stamina through low-impact methods. Swimming is another full-body method to rebuild stamina without direct impact on joints or healing injuries.

Walk and Run with Short Intervals

Once you are ready to start running again, start slow. Walk for a few minutes, then run for 30 seconds. Alternate between walking and running until you can run for two minutes consecutively without pain or becoming winded. When your reach this point, begin alternating with longer and longer intervals of running between bouts of walking as you rest and recover.

The safest way to do this is on a treadmill, alternating running speeds in a safe and controlled environment with a perfectly smooth track and handrails to ensure that you maintain stability while pushing your body to regain the ability to run.

Slowly Increase Your Running Speed and Time

As you recover, you can gradually increase the amount that you run, the intensity and speed of each run, and how many consecutive minutes that you run at a time. As long as you don't push yourself too hard, you'll approach your old running capabilities in a surprisingly short amount of time. 

After an injury, you can start running again. You just need to start slow and give your body a chance to regain the strength, stability, and stamina necessary to once again train on the treadmill, track or pavement as your body does what it was built to do.

Running Recovery with Landice

Landice is dedicated to producing high-quality treadmills, elliptical machines, and exercise bikes that you can use to get back into running after an injury. Whether you need an elliptical or bike for rehabilitative low-impact muscle building or you're ready for a home treadmill to start working on your times and speeds again, we are here to help. Contact Landice today to learn more.