Feeling pain when you run? Your body is telling you something is wrong, and it is better to listen early than to run through it and end up sidelined for longer. Managing a running injury means getting a diagnosis, adjusting your load rather than stopping everything, and coming back gradually.
The short answer
- Unusual pain that persists deserves medical advice: a sports doctor or physiotherapist.
- Complete rest is rarely the best option: for many injuries, adapted activity helps healing.
- Moderate pain during exercise can be acceptable if it settles by the next morning and does not increase from week to week.
- Cycling, swimming or deep-water running help you keep much of your fitness.
- Return to running in stages, increasing the load little by little.
Contents
What types of running injuries are there?
Injuries can affect bones, muscles, tendons, joints or ligaments. Some happen suddenly, like a muscle tear or an ankle sprain. Most running injuries, though, come from repeating the same movement with more load than your tissues can handle: at the knee, patellofemoral pain (runner’s knee) or IT band syndrome, at the shin shin splints, under the foot plantar fasciitis.
If you have unusual pain, the best move is to get medical advice, ideally from a sports doctor or a physiotherapist. An osteopath may take a more global approach: knee pain can be linked to what is happening at the hip or ankle. Seek help quickly if the pain is sharp even at rest, if you cannot put weight on your foot, if there is significant swelling or pain on a precise spot on a bone: these signs should not wait.
The first few days: protect without immobilising
For soft-tissue injuries (muscles, tendons, ligaments), two physiotherapists specialised in running proposed an acronym: PEACE & LOVE (Dubois and Esculier, 2020). In the first days, you protect the area by avoiding what hurts, elevate and compress if useful, and avoid anti-inflammatory drugs, which may interfere with tissue repair. The authors also question the routine use of ice: it eases pain, but its benefit for healing has not been shown.
Then comes the “LOVE” part: gradually reloading, staying optimistic, moving without pain to boost blood flow, and doing appropriate exercises. It is a general framework, not a protocol to follow alone: your health professional will adapt it to your injury.
Take stock to understand what happened
Without questioning everything, this is a good time to take stock. Did you increase your volume or intensity too fast? Were you tired, stressed at work or at home? Are you sleeping enough and eating enough? On the gear side, do your shoes need replacing? Most of the time, an overuse injury comes from a gap between your training load and your capacity to handle it at that moment.
Try to accept the situation quickly and switch to “active recovery” mode. The diagnosis will tell you what you have and help you set up a plan with your physio or doctor.
Stay active while injured
For a long time, complete rest was the rule. We now know that, for many injuries, staying appropriately active helps healing, unless immobilisation is required. So the question is not “run or don’t run”, but “how much activity can my injury tolerate?”.
Use pain as a thermometer
For Achilles tendinopathy, a randomised trial showed that continuing to run and jump while monitoring pain gave results no worse than stopping these activities (Silbernagel et al., 2007). The rule used: pain up to 5 out of 10 during exercise is acceptable if it has settled by the next morning and does not increase from week to week. This model was tested for the Achilles tendon: ask your physio whether it applies to your injury. For a bone injury such as a stress fracture, the rules are much stricter.
If you can run, you can for example alternate 2 minutes of walking and 3 minutes of running, repeated 4 to 5 times to start, then up to about ten times. You keep the habit of the running movement and some muscle tone, without aggravating the injury.
Keep your fitness with other sports
You can do cross-training such as deep-water running (running in the water), cycling or swimming, as long as they do not trigger pain. In trained runners, a few weeks of water running or cycling instead of running maintained their VO2max (Eyestone et al., 1993). See these activities as a source of enjoyment rather than a chore.
Mental imagery: an interesting extra
You can also practise visualisation, imagining yourself running or doing your sessions. The evidence is encouraging but needs nuance. In one study, people whose wrist was immobilised for four weeks and who imagined contracting their muscles lost about half as much strength as the others (Clark et al., 2014). That does not prove visualisation replaces a runner’s training, but it may limit some losses and help you stay mentally engaged with your goal.
During this period, also make sure you sleep well, eat well and stay hydrated, and keep up gentle activity like yoga if it does not hurt.
Return to running gradually
Return to sport is best seen as a continuum rather than a date: first returning to activity, then to your sport, then to your performance level (Ardern et al., 2016). Validate each step with your health professional, based on how you feel and not just the calendar. To help, we have put together return-to-running programmes that build the load step by step.
Managing an injury in your RunMotion Coach app
In the RunMotion Coach app, if you are injured, say so in your fitness status. You can choose to stop your training completely, or to reduce load and intensity. You can also add cycling or swimming, or even strength and conditioning, to stay in shape without stressing the injured area. If you don’t have the app yet, you can try it free for 7 days.
FAQ: managing a running injury
Should you stop running completely when injured?
Not necessarily. For many injuries, adapted activity helps healing. Only a diagnosis tells you how much activity is possible, and some injuries, such as stress fractures, require real rest.
Can you run through pain?
In some cases, moderate pain is acceptable if it settles by the next morning and does not increase from week to week. Ask your physio whether this applies to your injury.
Should you ice an injury?
Ice can ease pain, but its benefit for healing has not been shown. Avoid anti-inflammatory drugs without medical advice.
What sport can you do with a running injury?
Cycling, swimming and deep-water running are the most common, as long as they do not trigger pain. They help you keep much of your fitness.
Active recovery
Hang in there! Get a diagnosis, stay active within what your injury tolerates, and come back in stages. Then use the experience to put in place what will help you prevent running injuries. Keep in mind that every case is different: nothing replaces the advice of a health professional. And when you are ready for a plan built around your comeback, RunMotion Coach is here to help.
Updated on 30 October 2026.
Sources: Dubois and Esculier, Br J Sports Med, 2020 · Silbernagel et al., Am J Sports Med, 2007 · Eyestone et al., Am J Sports Med, 1993 · Clark et al., J Neurophysiol, 2014 · Ardern et al., Br J Sports Med, 2016.
