Running is a great way to stay healthy and active. It's low cost, requires minimal equipment and you can go for a run pretty much anywhere. Regular running can also benefit your mental health, releasing endorphins and giving you time to think.
Like most sports however, it does come with some risk of injury. It is important to listen to how your body feels, and support your performance with a gym and physiotherapy plan.
Our Team at Oriam Clinic have shared a few top tips for runners at three key stages; recovery, maintenance and improvement. From your first 5k Parkrun to your first Edinburgh Marathon; strength training and physiotherapy can help you perform at your best and enjoy the sport for years to come.
Injury Rehab
One of the key factors for any injury rehab is time. It does take time to properly heal after an injury, no matter what rehab plan you follow. Trust the process, a thorough rehab plan can pay-off in the long-run, helping you return to full performance and reducing the risk of re-injury in the future.
Working with a physiotherapist at Oriam Clinic can help you return to running with confidence through a full programme of training and assessment. Everyone's rehab journey will look different, but a standard programme may include: injury assessment, gym sessions, hydrotherapy sessions and return to play testing.
Our experienced team can create a programme of training and treatments to support your injury rehabilitation with graded progressions and regular assessments. Many of our gym and hydrotherapy sessions are group based, which is great for motivation, especially when progress may feel slow.
Maintenance
Feel like you've got to a comfortable stage with your running? Found a good rhythm and pace? Whilst you may not have any big ambitions for your running just now, regular strength training and physiotherapy can still help you stay comfortable and injury-free.
Our bodies are great at adapting around weakness or pain, relying on other muscles to take up the slack. Over time, this can create an imbalance in your strength and mobility, potentially resulting in a running injury. In our Running Assessment, your physiotherapist will help you identify areas for improvement and deliver a strategy to help keep you running comfortably.
Improvement
Have you been running for a while but found you've plateaued on your timing or distance? Physiotherapy and strength training can also help you unlock that extra level of performance. A Physiotherapy session or Running Assessment can help you better understand the biomechanics of your body, identifying your strengths and weaknesses.
Once you know what areas can be improved, then physiotherapists can work with you to create a program that will help to find that extra edge in your running performance. If you are training for a particularly tough challenge, hydrotherapy and massage can also help improve your recovery after a tough training session.
Our Fitness Team also offer regular 5k and 10k running programmes if you need support with reaching your next running milestone.
This article was first published in February 2024. Last revised April 2026.