How to Get Hurt

My top priority as a running coach is to create an enjoyable training and racing environment for my athletes. Typically, the key to "enjoyable" exercise is remaining healthy, as injuries cause setbacks, pain and frustration. Between 20 and 90 percent of endurance sport participants, though, report experiencing injury during training, and virtually all athletes in all sports experience aches, pains and minor injuries at some point.

Why is this -- aren't sports and exercise programs supposed to benefit our health and not cause injury? Beyond a handful of factors, uncertainty remains on how to identify participants at risk for injury during sports and exercise; that is, researchers are not quite sure exactly why runners get hurt.

Based on my experience as a coach and athlete, beginner, novice and intermediate runners often make the same mistakes that lead to injury while training for a race, such as a half or full marathon. Thus, if you want to get hurt during your training program, follow these four steps:

1. D o the same workout every day (or most days per week).

Working in a physical therapy clinic for six years, I saw my share of injured runners, and on multiple occasions during assessments, I would hear, "I have a four-mile loop near my house that I run Monday to Friday, and then I do my long runs on the weekend." Whether you run, cycle, swim or strength train, performing the exact (or extremely similar) exercises multiple days per week not only leads to fitness plateaus, but overuse injury. Repetitive stress to our bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments eventually causes a breakdown in those tissues.

Building a fitness base is essential for any training program, and this should include lower-intensity aerobic exercise, like four-mile jogs. As important as this base may be, however, of greater importance is progressively enhancing your program -- which involves altering the intensity, volume and recovery. In other words, do not stay in the "slow, long-distance" base phase for the duration of your training program. To avoid repetitive stress syndrome, I suggest "doing the same thing, but different," which means jogging or running at different paces and on different surfaces. For example, replace a long run with a weekly interval workout, hike, tempo run or soccer game, while also recovering one to two days per week.

Further, alter your race schedule just as you alter your day-to-day training exercise selection. Injury rates are highest among athletes who compete in more than six long-distance races per year; thus, if you enjoy racing, I suggest trying new events. A 10K this month, sprint triathlon next month, a mountain bike race in two months and so on may further decrease your risk of injury.

[Read: 5 Keys to Injury-Free Running .]

2. Skimp on your warm-up.

The quickest way pull a muscle or roll an ankle is to not warm up. An active, dynamic warm up immediately increases blood flow, flexibility, balance and reaction skills -- all which can help prevent an injury. Consistently performing a dynamic warm-up prior to workouts can also improve your performance by enhancing muscular strength, muscular endurance and agility. And since research shows that a dynamic warm-up significantly outperforms a static stretching warm-up, the days of reaching down, touching your toes and pulling your arm across your chest are no longer.

An active, dynamic warm-up should include body-weight exercises such as lunges, squats and core exercises, as well as low-intensity agility activities such as high-knees, butt kickers and skips. If you have little time to exercise, shorten your planned workout by five to 10 minutes to always include a warm-up.

[Read: How to Identify a Running Injury .]

3. Push through a current injury.

The most significant predictor of sustaining an injury is the presence of a previous injury (within the past 12 months). This is true not just among runners, but athletes in all sports. The exact mechanism/reason for this is unknown, but whether someone is not fully healed or is just susceptible to injury -- because of poor running mechanics, structural characteristics or sub-par training habits -- experiencing one injury puts you at a greater risk for another.

[Read: Physical Therapy for Running Injuries .]

4. Focus on volume rather than quality.

Another strong predictor of injury risk is training volume (total amount of exercise per week in miles or hours). Running more than 25 miles per week is associated with an increased risk of injury, without an increase in performance. A total of 20 quality miles in a week, for example, is better for long-term development than running 30 slow-to-moderate miles per week (granted, some elite athletes are freaks of nature and can tolerate very high-volume training, but that is not you or I).

As mentioned, replacing a portion of slow, long-distance training with tempo or interval runs (as opposed to adding extra workouts) should improve the overall quality of your training program. Some studies do show that tempo training increases injury risk, which highlights the importance of establishing a fitness base, using proper technique for warm-ups, workouts and cool-downs, and seeking proper supervision (like a qualified coach). The bottom line: If you want to get faster, you need to train faster; more is not always better when it comes to training.

Adding variety, warming up, fully recovering and emphasizing quality in a training program may seem like common sense, yet as many as 90 percent of runners incur injury during training. The key to enjoying your next race is remaining healthy -- and the key to that is avoiding the most-common training mistakes above. In a phrase, stay healthy by "consistently training without overuse."

[Read: 10 Themed Races to Make Getting In Shape Fun .]

Justin Robinson is a Registered Sports Dietitian and Strength and Conditioning Coach who specializes in practical sports nutrition recommendations and functional conditioning techniques. Over the past 15 years, Justin has trained athletes from youth to professional level, including runners and triathletes, Major League Baseball players and U.S. Military Special Operations soldiers. Justin likes to practice what he preach and, thus, regularly completes in running, cycling and triathlon events. Follow him on Twitter at @JrobRD.