Calf hurts should i run

For runners, sore muscles come with the territory. When you think of treatments for muscles recently beat up by the roads, you probably think of things such as foam rolling, massage, topical analgesics and anti-inflammatory medications. But there are also nutritional measures that can address muscle soreness in a few distinct ways.

One of the simplest things you can do to reduce the amount of tissue damage your muscles are subjected to during running is to consume a sports drink during your longer runs. When muscle glycogen stores fall low late in long runs, the muscles rely increasingly on breaking down their own proteins to provide an alternative fuel source. The more muscle proteins are broken down to keep you running, the more sore you are likely to be the next day.

Drinking a sports drink throughout your long runs will keep your muscles well supplied with their preferred carbohydrate fuel and preserve your muscle glycogen stores longer, delaying the point at which the muscles begin to rely on their own proteins for fuel. A second effective way to reduce muscle damage during runs is to consume some protein or amino acids before them. A little pre-run protein increases blood amino acid levels during the run, which appears to serve as a kind of biochemical signal that tells the muscles not to break down protein for fuel.

Consuming protein after a run is also a good idea. It has to be part of your regimen. Hi Marc Welcome to what seems to be a pretty big club. I guess we are all a bit different. I have moved to more flexible, lower drop shoes and followed some of the strength and running technique prgrammes on this website. I had a lovely 8 month period with no calf issues at all follwing this. My calves have flared up again, but I seem to be able to control it and minimimse the damage a bit now.

The advice above is also pretty sound I think. Try a few things and see what recipe works for you. A couple things I found that helped me out. Increase in salt, I take salt tablets as I sweat a lot and when your low on salt you tend to cramp up. She was able to work them out it hurts like crazy at first.

Hope that helps. I still have to watch it closely but did Ironman WI and made it through. Good Luck! Marc, today I goggled Running calf injuries and ran across your story. I am 51 yo and have an almost identical story to yours.

I was wondering if you have figured out anything that works for you? Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.

I was walking along a fairly level stretch having just skinned up alongside a piste. Having been on this planet a fair time — I saw nothing wrong in packing just half-a-litre of water in my day pack. Warming up? When I got back to the UK I went to see the doc. Marc Frohock, Any luck? In late I gave a kidney to my father and few months later saw the birth of my son. I decided to hang up the running shoes and track spikes and did.

Jump to summer of and the Olympics and I caught the bug again. A good month or two went by with no issues. Then out of no where during an easy 2 mile run I felt a little tightness in my outside right calf followed by a sharp pain like a nail being hammered so much that I was forced to slow down eventually to a walk. I took a couple days off and tried at it again with no luck. The pain would eventually move to the inside of the calf and stay soar for a day or so.

I would rest months at a time, get back up and running and within weeks to a month or so it would come back. Eventually alternating from right to left calf with the same pain.

It was so frustrating that I looked into a sports specialist who ran test and an mri and found no tear. I was sent to a physical therapy center that handled athletes of all calibers. I went twice a week for about 6 months for approximately 3 months. They would heat the legs, stretch them out, put me through stretches and plyometric drills, some days treadmill and finally ice the legs and send me on my merry way.

After I was done at this place I was sent home with stretches and core workouts and told to start gradually running. I did and thought all was good. Frustrated I threw my shoes in my closet and told them to go to hell. I began to alternate running and swimming before this. This is a really informative article thanks. I have no idea if this is a strain or just a bit of an ache. I am unable to run and finding it difficult to put proper pressure on my left foot. I can walk but not using the usual rolling heel to toe movement.

Is it best to see a physio or sports masseur first? A good running specialist physio will be able to give you a thorough assessment and diagnosis of the root problem. Sorry to hear about the ongoing agony you have been experiencing. The stabbing pain and especially the knot sound like symptoms of grade 3 strain from what I read.

I think a visit to a doctor will be worth the trouble; from a guy who strives to avoid them outside of a routine annual exam. Everyone else: glad to find you all here because I had my first experience in a marathon this past Sunday. It was very much as Cesar had described with tightening and the nail driving. Just before 30k I felt left calf tightening for 50 to meters. Thinking a cramp I pulled off at a loo and water stop to unload and then load.

I mention because I was stationary for the unload and was walking a few steps to load up at the water line when SNAP. With my first attempt to continue walking, I was immediately aware something was wrong. The pain was acute. No knots or bruising though. From my reading up on this injury, my first at 44, it appears this could be the end of a Boston qualifying time which I was on the way to nab. But the following article appears interesting. Maybe a bit of a paradigm shift in what appears to be a general school of thought.

Update to January 23, post for benefit of anyone going through this: Got back to a normal walk in about a week or so. Slowly and cautiously worked up to several 5 mile runs a week, currently at a ish pace. Long run is at 8 miles now. Just signed up for the same January marathon I injured myself in. Obviously worlds away from the doomsday outlook I had this past January. Hi I am a mountain runner who is now 56 years old I also cross country ski and bike ride to keep in shape.

I have had several years where I get these calf injuries which really keep me from training like I would like. I usually get up to maybe 4 or 5 mile runs several times a week then it seems I began to have problems.

The injury starts as my calf tightens up usually when running up steep hills. After several minutes it will hurt like a sharp pain in the middle of the calf. I have had this occur in both legs as well in different parts of my calves. It is so frustrating. After reading your site info and the letters from other athletes I feel like I am not alone.

I believe that doing the hops and jumps to improve elasticity and strength might help me to return to running and hopefully be able to train at a level where I can do longer races again likes PIkes Peak or the la Luz trail run. I am so sad that I have not been able to run consistently now for so many years because of this injury.

I feel it is probably partly from an imbalance and or weakness with too much tightness. Maybe all the biking and uphill fast hiking have kept my calves too tight or weak for the running motion and eccentric contractions that they have to take when running up steep mountain trails and of course downhill as well. Any advice on helping get my calves more able to handle the training.

I heard wearing the compression socks might help as well as doing the hops and jumps and also shorter hill sprints and bounding to condition the fast twitch fibers and balance out my imbalanced body. I feel my quads and glutes are very strong but maybe my calves are too weak in proportion?? All the biking and Nordic skating make them very strong.

I am also going to see a foot doctor to see if maybe I need arch supports or orthotics for my pronation which I do have to a minor degree. Instead of loosening up as you continue, it just gets worse. In medical circles, the calf muscles are referred to collectively as the triceps surae , because there are three of them. But the triceps surae also include the soleus, which is a shorter, more slender muscle that connects to the Achilles tendon and runs lower and deeper than the two head of the gastrocnemius.

Soleus strains are a little more difficult to diagnose, because they can sometimes masquerade as Achilles tendon problems if they occur low enough along the muscle. Soleus strains can be distinguished from a gastrocnemius strain by comparing the pain elicited from a traditional straight-legged calf stretch to the pain from a bent-knee calf stretch.

With any type of calf strain, you might be able to feel an area of muscle tissue that is especially tight or tender, either by palpitating with your fingers or rolling on a stiff foam roller or PVC pipe.

According to J. Bryan Dixon at the Marquette Sports Medicine Institute, the gastrocnemius is more prone to injury for two reasons. First, it crosses two joints the ankle and the knee , and second, it has a higher proportion of fast-twitch type muscle fibers. In contrast, the soleus only crosses one joint, and has more slow twitch muscle fibers. This is usually used in severe strains and frank tears to the muscle.

A study on muscle strains in Australian football players identified some useful predictors of calf strains in athletes. First among these was a history of previous injury to the same location. Some people seem to be prone to calf strains, and a recent or historical calf strain is by far the best predictor of this.

There are likely biomechanical roots to recurrent calf strains—whether for gait-related or anatomical reasons , some people rely more on their calf muscles to generate power , or have a muscular structure that is less able to handle high loads. Another risk factor for calf strains was age. Older footballers had a higher incidence of calf strains but not strains to some other muscles. One study by researchers in Sydney, Australia suggests a connection between lower back problems and calf injury.

In their paper, they demonstrate that injuries at the L5-S1 level are increasingly common as Australian football players get older, and they hypothesize that nerve compression at this spinal joint could explain why calf strains, but not some other types of muscle strains, are also more common as players get older.

While this has not been validated in independent studies, it is nevertheless an interesting avenue for explaining why calf strains occur more often in older athletes. Obviously, your initial priority is to reduce stress and allow healing, while later on in the recovery process, your focus should switch to rehabilitating and increasing the resilience of the injured muscle. When it comes to reducing stress on the calf, you probably already know what to do—stop running, cross train for a while, and if you do run, avoid high speeds, steep hills, and shoes with an aggressive heel-to-toe drop.

One less obvious way to reduce stress on your calf is to evaluate whether there are any deficiencies in your gait or muscular strength that are increasing stress on your calf muscles when you run.

Since the calves help propel you off the ground, some simple biomechanical analysis predicts that if you have a deficiency in your glute muscles the other main muscle group that propels you off the ground , you might need to rely more on the calves for forward propulsion. As such, strengthening your hip muscles should be a priority. This is especially useful since hip strength work can be done very early in the rehab process, while your calf is still too tender to do any calf-specific strength work.

Some medical professionals suspect that this is because calf strains create scar tissue or muscular adhesions, which can predispose the area to being injured again—or prevent healing in the first place.

Set a timer and roll for a full two minutes, starting at the bottom of the calf muscle and gradually kneading your way to the top, then rolling back to the bottom in one smooth motion before repeating. More aggressive therapies like Active Release Technique ART and Graston Technique the research on both of those treatment methods here are worth a shot if you continue to have calf trouble. These manual therapies seem to help runners with chronic, recurrent soft tissue injuries, including calf strains.

For support, you might also find compression socks or a calf sleeve useful. Be sure to measure your calf and ankle circumference so you can get the correct size.

The best form of cross training for this injury is Aqua Jogging.