Why You Keep Getting Injured (And It's Probably Not Your Shoes)

"Why do I keep getting injured?"

That's the question. Hands in the air, frustrated, maybe a bit broken — every runner who's been stuck in the injury loop has asked it. Sometimes out loud, sometimes to themselves at 2am after another niggle has flared up.

Char and I spent a whole podcast on this recently, and the more we talked about it, the more obvious one thing became: there's no silver bullet. Injuries are almost never one thing. They're a combination of factors layered up over weeks or months, typically starts off as a niggle- ends up as an injury! If you identify with a few of the things I'm about to walk you through, you're likely going to be on track with getting some improvement with your niggles or injuries.

This is the honest version. The list we'd give an athlete sitting across from us at a coach call. Not the version that ends with "just buy these shoes."

You're ignoring the warning signs

Most runners don't start running just to chase a PB.

They run because it clears their head, helps manage stress, improves their health, or simply becomes part of who they are. Running gives so much back that it's easy to understand why people don't want to stop.

That's exactly why so many runners ignore the early warning signs.

A tight calf becomes a sore calf. A sore calf becomes a strain. The same ache keeps showing up after every run, but instead of asking why it's happening, we convince ourselves it'll settle down on its own.

The problem isn't the niggle itself.

The niggle is your body telling you something isn't working. Maybe you're training too hard, recovering poorly, skipping strength work, under-fuelling, or trying to progress faster than your body can adapt.

The longer you ignore those warning signs, the louder they'll usually become.

Listening to your body doesn't mean giving up on running. It means dealing with the cause before a small problem turns into weeks—or even months—on the sidelines.

You're doing too much, too fast, too often

This is the classic. More is better, right? Except it's not when we're tipping ourselves over regularly. Most runners we see in injury holes are running too much, racing too much, or running too fast on what should be easy days.

That last one's the sneaky one. Intervals are sexy. Tempo runs are sexy. 4:30 pace on a
Tuesday morning feels productive in a way that 5:30/6:00 pace cruising doesn't. But sometimes your easy pace is meant to be a lot slower than you think it is. If 80% of your runs are at moderate-to-hard effort because you keep showing up to the fast group run, you're not building a foundation, your not gaining adaptations, and your not absorbing any training effectively. You're just stacking fatigue, or stress, or an over elevated nervous system.

The Strava Glory trap

Comparison is the fastest way to misjudge your own training load. You see someone running 100k weeks and you start thinking you should be doing the same. But how long have they been running? Did they grow up doing sport? Are they recovering well? You're comparing your insides to someone else's highlight reel, and the result is usually too much volume or too much intensity too often.

It's not just total volume either — it's foundation. Two years of running is a different beast to twenty years of running. Two years of running on top of a lifetime of sport is different again.

There's no shortcut around that, even when Strava makes it look like there should be.

You're not recovering

Sleep, nutrition, downtime — the boring stuff. Most runners I work with who can't break the injury cycle are lacking in this area: Sleeping under seven/eight hours per night, under-fuelling, or both. You can't progress training if recovery doesn't progress alongside it.

If you’re waking up in the middle of the night hungry, that’s a red flag that needs some attention!

Your fuelling isn't keeping up with your training

This one snuck up on me personally. You can base train at a certain volume, eat a certain way, feel fine. Then your training increases. The intensity goes up. The long runs get longer. But your fuelling hasn't moved. You're carrying the same nutrition load into bigger work, and suddenly you're feeling flat, your mood drops, your stomach feels like it's running from a tiger, and you can't figure out why.

There's also the fasted training myth — "I feel better when I'm fasted." You might. But your stomach also forgets how to handle fuel, and then when you actually need to fuel in a race or a long run, you struggle. Your gut needs to be trained too. Even your easy runs should be fuelled prior, and anything over around 70+ minutes of a continuous training activity in conjunction with a solid training schedule should be fuelled/hydrated while on session- this helps your recovery no end!

Another pattern to watch: you stop feeling hungry. That's not your body running efficiently. That's your nervous system stuck in fight-or-flight, suppressing the signal. If this sounds like you, get a sports nutritionist involved. We work closely with Hannah from Real Health Sports Nutrition (also one of our CMF coaches), and she's helped a lot of our athletes get this dialled.

Your mindset is working against you

We are what we say we are! We tell ourselves stories- examples: "I can't handle more than 60km per week." "I always break down in week 4 of a block." "I'm not built for long stuff." And then we live inside that story and never test it. Sometimes we spend years building up stories in our heads about all sorts of things. This only serves to make the barriers and limitations bigger and bigger. I'm not saying that things arent real and its all in your head, I'm saying- lets just be mindful about what are brains tell ourselves about ourselves. For me personally with my autoimmune background- the less power I give it mentally the less the symptoms are. Yes- taking practical steps to look after my health and wellbeing are important, but so is my mental approach to myself and the trajectory of my health! 

The flip side: sometimes there's underlying life stuff that running is 'helping' you avoid. Running is incredible therapy, but it's not a therapist. We've worked with athletes who've made massive running gains and then hit a wall, and the wall turned out to be life stuff, not running stuff. Growth mindset comes, either with our help as coaches, or sometimes other interventions, and boom- the running comes right and new PBs are unlocked.

I say it a lot in a banter kind of a way — you come for the run coaching, you stay for the life coaching! There is truth to that though, because the ‘’lighter’’ we are as athletes, the more energy and recovery capacity we have, the more consistent injury free higher performing we’re going to be. And at CMF Running, we are all about helping athletes be the best they can be- whatever that is to them.

You've got an underlying health issue 

Autoimmune health issues, gut problems, hormones running riot, low iron — all far more common than people realise, and they all affect recovery and progression between running. I have my own autoimmune background I have to be mindful of in my daily life.

I have to make sure I follow certain protocols that I’ve learnt over the decades (including
mindset!) in order to maintain good health. When my training load is higher, I have to be even more disciplined with my protocols in order for me to recover well between sessions and thus get the adaptations and consistency that improving at running requires.

Happy to say at 44 years old, my health is the strongest its ever been which means I can train well!

You're following the wrong plan

This is getting more common. Apps and ready-to-go plans are everywhere, and they're built around the goal you punch in, not the runner you actually are. For example, If you tell an app you want a 3:30 marathon but you're realistically a 4 hour marathoner (huge difference in race pace!), the app will prescribe your easy runs at 5:30 pace when they should be at 6:15 ish pace. Every easy run becomes too hard. The load is wrong. The adaptations don't happen. And you get injured… Or if you don’t get injured, you don’t fulfil your potential on race day as you havent training specifically to your physiology. 

When we onboard an athlete at CMF, we don't ask what their goal pace is and work backwards (well we do, but its not solely dictating the training prescription!). We figure out where they actually are — analysing their data, and often a lactate threshold test — and build the training around the athletes physiology and what's best going to promote the adaptation that we are looking for. That's the difference between a plan that works with where your physiology is at today, and a plan that’s cooked up by an app because of the mis- information we’ve unknowingly fed it.

Solutions and tips to stop you getting injured?

If you've recognised yourself in some of the points above, don't panic. Most running injuries aren't caused by one catastrophic mistake—they're the result of lots of little decisions that slowly add up over time.

The good news? Those decisions can be changed.

Here are a few places to start:

• Be honest about what your body can currently tolerate and absorb effectively  Train for the runner you are today, not the runner you want to be six months from now. That doesnt mean never challenge yourself; it means just be real. Its your running and your training- not someone else's. 

• Respect the niggles. You don't need to stop running every time something feels sore, but you do need to pay attention. Small issues are much easier to fix than major injuries.

• Look beyond the running itself. Sleep, stress, nutrition, strength training and recovery all influence how much training your body can absorb.

• Get help when you need it. A physio can identify the problem. A nutritionist can help you fuel properly. A coach can manage your training load or your return to running protocol. The right support usually saves months and even years of frustration.

• Stop searching for a magic fix. New shoes, recovery gadgets and supplements all have their place, but they rarely solve the underlying reason you're getting injured.

Every runner has a training sweet spot. There's no magic weekly mileage that works for everyone. The right amount is the amount your body can consistently recover from and adapt to, while balancing everything else life throws at you. That number will change throughout the year—and that's completely normal.

One of my favourite coaching quotes comes from Steve Magness:

"90% of coaching is preventing athletes from doing stupid shit."

It's funny because it's true.

Most runners don't get injured because they lack motivation. They get injured because they do too much, too soon, or too often. Ignore the warning signs, or convince themselves all kinds of stories and that things are going to magically come right on their own without any proactiveness on our part.

Sometimes the smartest training decision just isn't doing more.

It's having the discipline to do what's right for your body today, so you can still be running months and years from now. Consistency trumps all! 

Coach Chris

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