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Lead Stories: Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Do triathletes get injured more often than one-sport athletes?

Posted March 12th, 2007 at 12:29 PM by Hariz Siddiqui

Section: Running & Training, Injury & Rehab, Cross Training, Health & Fitness, Injury & Rehab

Triathletes are injured only about one third as often as marathon runners even though they do far more work in their program of swimming, cycling and running. Training intelligently for three sports is less likely to injure you than training very hard for one. Training is limited by damage to skeletal muscles.

Every time you exercise, your muscles develop small tears with bleeding. It takes at least 48 hours for muscles to heal from exercise. Each sport stresses a particular group of muscles most. Marathon runners who train every day stress the same muscles and often do not allow adequate time to recover from the previous day’s workout, so they are at increased risk for injury.

Top triathletes train in different sports on consecutive days. Running stresses the lower leg muscles most, cycling stresses the upper leg muscles most and swimming stresses the arms and shoulders most. Triathletes usually set up a workout schedule that includes two sports on one day and one on the next.
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