COACH’S CORNER - Break The Stop-Start Cycle by James Sieber

At some point after an injury, you get cleared to run again. That moment feels exciting, and it can also feel risky. But the hard part isn’t the first run. The hard part is what comes next.

Hopefully, you have been working with a sports practitioner to safely return you to running.

But then what? Do you just jump back to your old ways, or old plan?

Not at all. What we need is a way to make good decisions, over and over, so training builds while symptoms settle. Regardless of whether you are working with a coach or not, we all need to understand how to interpret signals from the body, recognise if something is too much, and re-learn how to trust our bodies.

This piece is written for any runner, and it’s injury-agnostic on purpose. It won’t tell you exactly what to do on Tuesday. It will help you understand what to pay attention to, what to keep doing, and what not to rush. And, ultimately, how to trust your body and not get stuck in an injury cycle.

The big idea

A good return to training isn’t about doing what you used to do. It’s about being understanding where you are now and what may have caused the injury in the first place.

You want your training load to rise over time while your symptoms stay the same or trend down. If load rises faster than your body can adapt, something usually gives. Sometimes it’s the original injury. Sometimes it’s a new one that pops up because the system is under-prepared.

What “load” means for trail runners

Most people hear “load” and think distance or time. In trail running, “load” is bigger than that. It includes how much climbing and descending you do, how technical the trail is, the weather and environment you are in, and what condition your mind and body are in when you run.

Downhill running matters here. You can be running “easy” and still put a lot of stress on your legs if the descents are long or steep, and even if they’re not to be honest. That’s why trail returns often go wrong, even when we think we’re behaving; we normalise vert so much on trails that we forget how much impact downhill running can have on our bodies.

The signals to pay attention to

You don’t need fancy gadgets to return well. You need to notice patterns. Your body is giving you feedback all the time, and the skill is learning how to listen without panicking.

The first signal is symptoms, and you need to check them in three places. Notice how you feel during the run, a few hours after, and the next morning. Many issues don’t show up properly until later, especially after a trail session.

If symptoms settle quickly and you feel normal the next morning, you’re usually on the right track. If symptoms build week to week, or you regularly wake up worse the next day, you’re usually pushing too hard. That’s not failure, and it doesn’t mean you’re back to square one, it’s information.

The next signal is recovery, and it’s often the one runners ignore. When recovery is good, your body adapts and strengthens. When recovery is poor, even normal training can become too much. This goes for any stage of a training plan: training without sufficient recovery causes breakdown, not growth. More does not equal more.

Watch your sleep quality, your energy throughout the day, your general mood, and your sex drive. If you’re more irritable than normal, your appetite is down, or you feel flat all day, treat that as a yellow flag. It doesn’t mean you have to stop running. It means you need to double down on recovery.

Confidence is another signal that matters more than people think. If you don’t trust your body, you either avoid the exact things you need to rebuild, or you overdo sessions to prove you’re back. Both paths can keep you stuck.

Before a run, ask yourself a simple question: how ready do I feel for today’s run? If the answer is a bit ambiguous, you’re normally okay, but if there is a clear fear or concern, don’t ignore it and “push through.” Especially early in a rebuild, choose the Safer version of the plan, bank a win, move on, and use this as evidence to inform future decisions.

The non-negotiables

Most re-injuries happen when runners do the obvious running part, then drop the boring support part. The basics aren’t exciting, but we’re what make a return stable. If you keep these in place, everything else becomes easier.

Strength training should be part of your week permanently. It helps you rebuild tissue capacity, keep your movement more stable under fatigue, and reduce weak links that get exposed on trails. It doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be consistent.

Rehab also needs to stay in longer than you want it to. A common mistake I see is stopping the rehab the moment you feel okay. That’s like taking your seatbelt off because you survived the first few minutes of driving.

Fuel matters as well, and you don’t need to make this dramatic. You can’t rebuild a stronger body if you aren’t giving it enough building blocks. If you keep getting injured, feel constantly tired, or have bone stress issues, it’s worth asking whether you’re eating enough for your training and your life. Meeting the energy demands to fuel performance is a skill, and we all need to practice it. If in doubt, reach out to an endurance sports dietitian for help.

Sleep is training, too. You don’t need perfect sleep every night, and no one should be aiming for perfection. But if sleep is dropping for weeks, treat it as a warning sign that your body’s capacity to recover is shrinking. Trying your best to keep a routine that has lights out before 10 pm can do wonders for your recovery and injury resilience.

Sequencing rules that prevent most mistakes

If you want one simple way to avoid the common traps, follow the sequencing rules. They are basically “don’t do this before this”; I think of them as ticks on a checklist needed to move on. Most of the time, we don’t get injured during a return because we did something crazy. We get injured because we did something normal, just too early.

Don’t add intensity until your easy running is stable and back to a volume close to pre-injury levels. Faster running increases impact forces, meaning a much higher rate of load on the bones and tissues. Speed isn’t bad, it’s just powerful, and it needs a base.

Don’t grow the long run before the rest of the week feels solid. Long runs are fun, and we feel like “real training,” especially for trail runners when we are used to big days in the mountains. However, they also come with more fatigue, more stress on the body, and depletion, which is a perfect recipe for injury if you’re not ready. The long run serves a purpose in training, but the consistency of weeks beats fun long runs every time.

Don’t change everything at once. Only change one main thing at a time, like frequency, duration, elevation, technicality, or intensity. When you change two or three together, you overshoot the load without noticing, and you can’t tell what caused the flare-up.

Don’t treat trails like we’re just “easy running.” An easy effort can still be high load if the terrain is steep, technical, or downhill-heavy. When you return to trails, start kinder than you think you need to, then build from there.

Don’t stack hard days until you have full confidence in your body and know you are recovering. You don’t need to earn your fitness back in a week. If stress is high or sleep is poor, the smartest thing you can do is keep things simple for a few days.

What adding intensity should look like early on

When we hear “don’t add intensity too soon,” we sometimes think we must run slow forever.

That’s not true. The goal is to add intensity in the lowest-risk way first, then build gradually. Short strides can be a great option here. Think of them like practising smooth running, not proving fitness. They should feel fast but relaxed, and you should stop while you still feel crisp.

Another option is controlled pick-ups inside an easy run. These aren’t all-out, but small surges where you run a little quicker, then settle back down, for 30 to 60 seconds.For trail runners, gentle uphill pick-ups can be useful because they reduce stride length. But if your calf or Achilles has been part of the story, you’ll want to be careful with hills early.

Either way, keep the dose small, leave plenty in the tank, and give yourself more rest than you think you need.

A simple weekly check

If you want a quick way to reduce guessing, use a basic traffic-light check. It isn’t medical, and it isn’t perfect. It’s just a way to notice trends before they become problems.

Green looks like stable or improving symptoms, a normal next morning, steady energy, and reasonable confidence. That usually means you can progress slowly if you want to. Yellow looks like inconsistent symptoms, poorer sleep, lower mood, or nervousness about sessions, and it usually means you should hold steady and simplify.

Red looks like symptoms rising week to week, pain that changes how you move, or next-day soreness that clearly escalates with each run. It can also feel like you’re constantly surviving training instead of absorbing it. That’s the time to pull back and get support, because guessing and grinding usually make it worse.

Whilst using this check, again, trust yourself. Just because your coach has put it on the plan doesn’t mean you need to blindly follow it. Communicate with them, share your concerns, and if you aren’t happy with the answer and want to reduce, trust your gut. You know you the best.

Closing thoughts

A return to running is not a race to the next event. It’s a practice in patience and consistency.

If you can keep the basics in place, notice the signals, and respect sequencing, you give yourself the best chance of building back for the long term.

Most runners don’t need more grit. We need a clearer way to make decisions. Once you have that, progress gets a lot simpler.