"maybe take a week or two off to see if it gets better" just gets me blank stares of disbelief. But i took yesterday off, i can't take off next week because ....
I grew up in Boulder CO and some of those folks cannot comprehend taking a day off let alone a real break. Like, dude, it rains once a year here and you're gonna whine that you can't climb today? Sheesh
It's pervasive in most sports. Even weight lifting where rests are basically manditory. Still you get absolute chumps who injure themselves out because they work out too often.
Meanwhile I've been half-arsing my weight lifting routine for years, but have made and maintained far larger gains, through the benefits of junk food, attainable goals, and laziness.
Can confirm. I'm deep into my second year of (a proper) lifting (regime) and I'm doing it with far less frequency and weight than I would've imagined at the start, due to chronic minor injury from constant overreaching in the first year.
Yes, all of those things. Some runners are afraid to rest because they think they will lose their ability to run if they don't run every day. They're just neurotic. It's okay to rest a day or a week or a month or even a year. I've been distance running since the age of 13 and it's necessary to rest sometimes. There's no shame in resting, and ability to run will not be lost unless there's some irreversible injury, which is rare for most healthy people.
Not a runner, but for me the feeling is that I can workout for 364 days a year, but if I miss one single day, then the habit is broken and it takes the willpower necessary to move a fucking mountain to get back to the gym after that. It feels like I don't built habits no matter how many times I do it.
It's still necessary to rest, but the fear is legit.
When I fall off my routine I lose a ton of progress. That first hundred K after a long rest absolutely sucks for me. I won't run on an injury, but I understand the fear of the pit.
Don't ignore pain, listen to it. If it hurt that's because you need to fix something. So think of what you have done that cause it. Did you change your habit? Why on this side and not the other? Did something different happened, not necessary in sport, but in your life?
Then try to change and see if you fixed the problem.
I need someone like that for my PT exercises, because I forever get stuck in a cycle of pain -> start consistently doing PT again -> it’s fixed, I don’t need to do PT! -> why do I hurt?