Whether you’re an amateur or a professional athlete, there is no greater source of frustration than repeated cycles of niggles and injuries.

It can derail your progression, dismantle race performance, erode confidence, and dilute your motivation.

While there are myriad reasons for various kinds of injuries, the good news is that most can be preventable, and manageable by adopting practical habits and tactics.

In the first episode of our three-part series on injury management and prevention, Matt shares his observations on patterns, common themes, and mistakes made by athletes and coaches that often lead to injury and the strategies that you should take as an endurance athlete or fitness enthusiast to lower your risk and occurrence of injury.

Matt’s 5 Keys to Injury prevention:

• Fueling post-workout - Using nutrition to recuperate and recharge.

(18:10) “It promotes tissue rebuilding and repair...it facilitates adaptations...it's going to fuel your brain for your energy levels throughout the day...so that you can have better clarity, decision-making, focus, etc."

• Keep the easy, easy - Leveraging low-intensity sessions.

(20:29) “If you go too strong in the sessions that are designed specifically to be easy, which by the way, tends to be a high portion of your total training hours. And then you are directly removing the body's ability to adapt, you are throughout, with no intent, increasing total training load. And what happens in this situation is the scales tilt, and the net result of that tends to be your tissue health declines, you get injured."

• Incorporating multiple sports - Introducing variance to your training

(24:10)“The truth is that the body likes variance. And I cannot think of an amateur athlete who wouldn't benefit...from mixing up their primary sport and ambition with other supportive disciplines.”

• Supplement with smart strength training - Strength is part of the plan, not the heart of it.

(27:51)“Just because you follow a strength and conditioning program does not mean that your injury risk is less. It's critical. It's important. It's a part of the recipe, but it isn't the recipe."

• Removing intensity - Knowing when to throttle back

(33:14)"But the fact still remains that so many injuries emerge from a place where an athlete ultimately intuitively at their core, know that things are not right. There is deep fatigue, whether it's muscular or systemic. And if the athlete had just paused, gained a little perspective, seeing the bigger picture and then made a decision to push or back off, it would be so valuable."

The goal of this episode is to help you identify any counterproductive practices that may be leaving you exposed to injury and replace them with habits that reduce your chances of injury, create greater consistency and ultimately improve performance.

Episode Timestamps

0:02 - 08:28 Welcome and Episode Introduction

8:34 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 230 Breaking the Injury Cycle: 5 Keys to Prevention and Lowering Risk

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