How can stress fractures be prevented

Cross-train to keep from overstressing your feet and legs. Add strength training to your workout. Don't exercise through returning pain. Check with your doctor if pain continues. Related Articles.

Show More. Cookies help us improve your website experience. This can help you stay active during healing. After a few weeks, your health care provider may give you the OK to slowly start to increase activity. The provider may recommend physical therapy to help you safely return to sports. If found early and treated correctly, most stress fractures heal well. But going back to activities too soon can make a tiny stress fracture larger and harder to heal. Follow the doctor's directions so that you can get back to activities and sports as soon as possible.

Reviewed by: Richard W. Kruse, DO and Susan M. Dubowy, PA-C. Larger text size Large text size Regular text size. This unfortunate reality is especially true for the bones within our feet and ankles that we heavily rely on every single day. A stress fracture is an overuse injury that often occurs in the following areas of the foot and ankle:.

Extremely common in runners and athletes who participate in running sports like soccer or basketball, stress fractures develop over time as the result of repetitive force being placed upon the bone. The repetitive force is repeated so frequently that our bones and surrounding muscles do not have adequate time to heal. If our activity levels are too high on a specific bone area such as the foot or ankle, the breakdown of older bone accelerates.

The bone then weakens and is highly vulnerable to stress fractures. If the above treatments are not enough, surgical treatment may be required for the bone to heal.

When thinking about what might have caused a stress fracture in our foot or ankle, many of us only attribute exercise as the culprit. You must remember that walking to and from the kitchen or up and down the stairs numerous times a day adds up and places stress on the bones of your feet and ankles.

With many of us working from home, it is likely that we are walking barefoot on hardwood floors for extended periods of time. So, while it might feel as though our activity levels are not as high when we are confined to our homes, the stress levels placed on our bodies still remain.

Stress fractures occur when too much weight or stress is put on a weakened bone. It's often the result of an imbalance in bone health caused by actions that outpace the body's natural bone rebuilding process.

See Stress Fracture Risk Factors. But this is good news, because it means that with proper training practices and other strategies, you can prevent stress fractures from occurring.

See Stress Fracture Causes. Make training adjustments gradually. Any dramatic increase in the frequency, duration, or intensity of your workouts can raise your risk for stress fractures. If you want to add time or intensity to your training program, do so over the course of weeks or even months, depending on your goals.

Be careful when changing surfaces. Stress fractures can be triggered when you switch from running on a treadmill to asphalt, so make transitions cautiously.