Don't get injured

January training has begun. Fresh start, new focus, ready to build.

But the hamstring pulls and Achilles problems that show up in March aren't random bad luck. They're the result of programming decisions made right now.

Training starts well, volume builds, everything feels productive. Six weeks later, injuries start appearing. Because the programming had fundamental problems that took time to surface.

The good news is these injuries are preventable. They come from specific mistakes that can be identified and fixed before they become problems.

Let me walk through what actually causes breakdowns, and what you can change right now.

1) Running at 80-85% intensity multiple times per week creates the worst of both worlds.

This is intensive tempo disguised as speed work. It feels productive because the effort is high, breathing is hard, work is getting done.

But 80-85% is too hard to recover from quickly and not hard enough to improve maximum speed.

Real speed development requires 95-100% intensity. That's where the neural adaptations happen. Recovery work should sit at 70-75% to let the nervous system reset between quality sessions.

Medium intensity doesn't provide either benefit. It accumulates fatigue without meaningful stimulus for speed development.

Athletes end up in a perpetual state of moderate tiredness. Never fresh enough to run truly fast on quality days. Never easy enough to actually recover on low days.

That constant moderate stress is what sets up soft tissue injuries weeks later.

The solution is eliminating almost all work at 80-85%. True high-low training means sprinting at 95-100% with full recovery between reps, or running easy tempo at 70-75%. The middle ground needs to disappear.

2) High-intensity days scheduled too close together prevent proper recovery.

Maximum velocity sprinting fatigues the central nervous system. That takes 48-72 hours to resolve, not 24.

Scheduling quality work on back-to-back days or with only one day between creates accumulated fatigue. Athletes might report feeling physically fine, but CNS fatigue shows up as slower times, increased ground contact time, loss of coordination.

The mechanics deteriorate even when everything feels okay subjectively.

When you practice sprint mechanics while the nervous system is still fatigued, you're reinforcing slower movement patterns.

Minimum 48 hours between high days. Preferably 72 for maximum-effort work at 100% intensity. This isn't a suggestion that varies by athlete toughness. It's how the nervous system functions.

3) Competition phase volume stays too high while racing weekly.

Building fitness through GPP and SPP requires volume. But when competition starts, that volume needs to drop significantly.

A 100m race at maximum effort is a high-intensity CNS stimulus. It's equivalent to a quality training session. Weekly racing plus maintaining SPP training volumes creates total stress that exceeds recovery capacity.

The result is athletes who peak early in the season and regress by championships. Accumulated fatigue builds week over week instead of performances improving.

During competition phase, sprint volume should drop by 40-50% from SPP levels. Racing provides high-intensity stimulus. Training maintains sharpness without adding fatigue.

Fitness doesn't disappear in 1-2 weeks of reduced volume. Detraining takes 3-4+ weeks to begin.

4) Completing prescribed volume despite technical breakdown reinforces poor patterns.

Sessions where quality deteriorates after rep 3 or 4 but you push through to finish what's written on paper.

Your nervous system learns whatever pattern gets practiced most frequently. It doesn't distinguish between good reps and bad reps.

Sloppy mechanics practiced repeatedly become sloppy mechanics in races.

Technical breakdown is also when injury risk spikes. Loss of front-side mechanics means excessive hamstring loading. Increased ground contact time means excessive stress on Achilles and lower leg structures.

Stop the session when quality drops.

Better to complete 80% of planned volume with excellent execution than 100% with degrading form.

Watch for the signs. Front-side mechanics breaking down, ground contact times lengthening, tension appearing in shoulders and face. When those show up, the session is over regardless of what's written in the program.

5) Training hard for weeks straight without planned recovery blocks prevents adaptation.

Adaptation happens during recovery, not during the workout. Supercompensation requires a period of reduced stress to occur.

Without deload weeks, stress stacks upon stress without allowing the body to actually adapt. Performance plateaus, then starts regressing. Injury risk climbs until something breaks.

Every 3-4 weeks of hard training, schedule a deload week. Cut volume by 40-50%, maintain intensity at 90-95%, eliminate or drastically reduce plyometrics.

Athletes return stronger after a proper deload than they were before it. The recovery window is when fitness actually improves.

What needs to happen now.

Audit your current program. Identify any work at 80-85% intensity and either eliminate it or convert it to true high or true low.

Check spacing between high days. If you're scheduling quality work with less than 48 hours between sessions, restructure the week.

If you're in competition phase, calculate current volume against what you were doing in SPP. Cut if needed.

Watch videos of recent sessions and honestly assess whether technical quality held throughout. If it didn't, reduce volume and prioritize quality cutoffs.

Schedule your next deload week. If it's been 4+ weeks since the last one, make it soon.

These aren't advanced concepts. They're fundamentals that get ignored because they require doing less, and less feels counterintuitive.

But your injury rate this year might be determined by programming decisions made in January. Small corrections now prevent major breakdowns later.