We review a new study on the risk of injury in triathletes vs. marathon runners. The results defy conventional wisdom.
Video Transcript
[00:00:00] Chris Case: Hey everyone, I’m Chris. This is Trevor. Welcome to another episode of Fast Chats. Today we’re talking about a study that also seems to run counter to a lot of the things that we’ve spoken about on the show before. Um, yeah.
[00:00:16] Trevor Connor: This one was a real Say what? Really?
[00:00:19] Chris Case: Yeah. It has to do with the rates of injury between various populations of athletes, marathoners.
And triathletes. Yep. It has to do with, um, the amount that they do, the amount of cross training they do. Um, again, it’s a complicated one in a way, but it really is fascinating because it’s different from what we
[00:00:44] Trevor Connor: think. Yeah. Do they put their hypothesis as they should in, in the introduction and hypothesize exactly what I would’ve written, what most I believe coaches would say.
Then proceed to show the results and go, basically everything we hypothesize is the exact opposite of what we saw. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so when you are dealing with runners and triathletes, a general belief is running is very damaging to joints, to muscles. Uh, so you’re gonna be more injury prone if you’re doing a lot of running.
Mm-hmm. Uh, the belief is cross training keeps your muscles in better balance. So if you do a lot, a mix of sports. You’re gonna have lower rates of, of injury. So you would see in triathletes, theoretically, less injury. And certainly when you’re coaching triathletes, you try to do more of the time on the bike and in the pool and just do form work and intervals running, because running is where you get injured, cycling and swimming, you don’t get injured there, so you wanna spend more of your time there.
This has always been the belief and mm-hmm. The only thing that they showed in the results that we believe that they, the results agreed with is that, uh, you see less injury with more swimming. That’s right.
[00:02:00] Chris Case: That’s right.
[00:02:01] Trevor Connor: But otherwise, what, what were the other results?
[00:02:04] Chris Case: Well, I mean, if you’re, they’re looking at the, the fact that, um, marathoners showed no higher rates of injury than triathletes, so.
If you consider triathletes people who are intentionally cross training, you would expect them to show lower rates. Yep. As opposed to someone who’s pounding the pavement running for a marathon training, um, day in, day out. And they didn’t show any difference between those, those groups, which was sur very surprising.
It
[00:02:33] Trevor Connor: is matter of fact, the, the more running the athletes did, the lower their injury rate. Yeah. Which is the exact opposite of what we think. The more cycling they did, the higher the injury rate, both upper body and lower body. And again, you know, as coaches we’re always telling our athletes, you gotta cross train.
It prevents injury. Well cross training correlated with higher injury rates. Yeah,
[00:02:58] Chris Case: the, I would say the one thing the study didn’t do a very good job of was speculating as to some why some of the whys. Yeah. It’s a very short study. Very, very short study. Um. We were speculating it about it as we were recording the podcast.
Um, elite runners, more experienced runners, perhaps they have better form, better technique, uh, better mechanics overall and therefore they’re getting injured less. The familiarity with the sport may lead them to run in ways that are less injury prone. So there’s some of that, but we’re speculating.
[00:03:34] Trevor Connor: Yeah, they brought up unfamiliarity that if you are, so this is the explanation for cross-train.
If you’re unfamiliar with the sport, uh, more chances you’re gonna injure yourself. And with triathletes, they have to divide their time between sports. So they’re not gonna do as much form work, as much neuromuscular work as a dedicated runner would. Um, likewise with cycling, likewise with swimming, uh, because they have to divide their time so much.
Another thing they brought up that I think is important is it could just be people who are more resistant to getting injury are therefore able to run more. Mm-hmm. ’cause people who are very injury prone are always gonna have to drop their volume. So it might not necessarily be that the higher volume of running is reducing injury risk.
Right. It’s the other way around.
[00:04:22] Chris Case: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:24] Trevor Connor: But you know, something that was important they didn’t mention, but I think is important to bring up. Is they weren’t saying that these people had no injury. Mm-hmm. They’re just looking at relative risk. So it could be, and, and this just wasn’t in the data, so this is a hypothetical.
The runners are having a, a, a certain level of injury. They are getting injured, but they’re doing a ton of time of strength training. They’re doing a ton of time on working on their form, and that allows ’em to do the higher volume, but also mitigate injury risk. And I am good to say. I think being in the, the weight room for all endurance athletes is very important to reduce, uh, injury.
We saw that in other studies, the triathletes, even though they are spending a fair amount of time in the pool, which reduces injury risk because they’re not doing triathletes, often don’t have the time to be in the weight room as much. They’re not doing the neuromuscular training mm-hmm. To really improve their form on the bike or running.
So even though the swimming is reducing their injury risk. The, it might be countered by what they’re doing on the bike and running. The sheer,
[00:05:32] Chris Case: the sheer volume of all the things that they’re doing means they’re not an quote unquote expert or familiar with any of them. Right? Yeah.
[00:05:39] Trevor Connor: So ultimately they’re seeing the same injury rates as runners.
But it’s, it’s the ratios, if you break down into the details might be different.
[00:05:49] Chris Case: Yeah. Well, we discuss a lot more of this study, more about the, um, maybe our recommendations and things like that on the podcast. So check that out at Fast Talk.
