VOLUME MANAGEMENT
UNDERSTANDING VOLUME IS THE KEY TO REDUCING OVERUSE INJURIES
If you are someone who does any kind of endurance, strength or repetitive sport, you probably have heard about the concept of volume in training.
Volume can be mileage run, hiked, skied, walked, biked per day, week, month and if you do strength work, it can be weight progression or frequency of gym sessions, etc.
It is the accumulation of total work done.
As a PT, coach and athlete, I think about volume often. The progression of volume up and down is something that is constantly happening as we regularly use our bodies. The tissues in our body - muscles, tendons and bones all of have a certain amount of load they can endure before they are overloaded to the point of strain. This could be a muscle strain, tendonitis or stress fracture in a bone and usually comes with some kind of pain or discomfort.
If you gradually increase volume, then the tissues will also build a tolerance to load in a healthy way and you will feel great. But if we do too much too fast or too much over a longer period of time then we can overload the tissue to a point of pain. ALSO you must do an adequate amount of strength training to get your tissues strong enough to match the load of running.
The reason why I am bringing up volume today, is to highlight that an often overlooked piece of volume is to look at what we have been doing in the past. In the last year, 6 months, several months or weeks. I get patients in often who have returned to their activity after a period of time when they have had a change in their routine and end up getting hurt. And don’t know why.
For example, you can usually run 15-25 miles/week with no problem. Over the last 3-4 months, you have run more or less the same volume BUT you stopped doing strength because you are busy or say your gym closed. Why do you get hurt now? A part of the routine changed - the strength piece so the tissue was not strong enough to match the load of your usual running volume.
Just some food for thought. Volume is king and queen for managing tissues and their loads as we continue to enjoy our active pursuits. AND as we age, this gets even more critical but that is whole other conversation. ;)