https://www.rockstarrunners.com/

Endurance Therapy and Performance, Met Con Leeds, Topcliffe Lane, Morley, Leeds (2026)

10/09/2026

Waiting until you’re completely symptom-free before you start running again isn’t always the best approach.

While you’re resting, the capacity and tolerance you’ve built through training can start to drop too.

So when you eventually return to your previous training load, there can actually be a bigger gap between what you’re asking your body to do and what it’s currently prepared for.

That doesn’t mean you should ignore pain and push through everything either though…😅

Sometimes a short period of rest or a bigger reduction in training is absolutely the right call - particularly if symptoms are worsening, significantly changing how you move, or aren’t settling as expected.

The important bit is understanding what you’re dealing with and what you can safely continue doing.

That’s where a proper assessment can be really useful. Rather than simply being told to stop running until it feels better, you can work out what needs modifying, what you can keep doing, and have a plan for gradually building your capacity back up.

We rarely chase zero symptoms in the early to mid stages of rehab.

We discuss the specifics that you need to be aware of, and build out a plan to build things back up safely and effectively to get you back training and racing!

Feel free to drop me a message if you have any questions! 🤘

26/08/2026

So what?

This is a question I find myself asking quite a lot in coaching.

Not because the stuff that happens to us doesn’t matter.

Sometimes training goes to s**t.

Work gets busy. You don’t sleep well. You get injured. The kids are a nightmare. You miss sessions. Motivation disappears. The weather is horrific. Your race doesn’t go to plan.

And sometimes having a moan about it is completely justified.

I do plenty of it myself. 😂

But eventually, after we’ve acknowledged all of that, there’s a really simple question:

So what?

Not “so what, stop whinging.”

More:

“Okay. That’s where we are. So what are we going to do now?”

You missed a week of training.

So what?

What’s the next logical step?

You’ve picked up a ni**le.

So what?

What can you do today that starts moving things in the right direction?

Your race went terribly.

So what?

What can we learn from it and change next time?

You can’t change the training you missed.

You can’t undo the s**t race.

You can’t magically remove everything going on in your life.

But you nearly always have some control over what happens next.

And most of the time it doesn’t need to be some huge motivational comeback.

Go for the easy run.

Do the rehab exercises.

Get an early night.

Book the appointment.

Adjust the plan.

Start again tomorrow.

So what are you going to do now?

Find the next logical step.

Then take it.

Not sure what that looks like? Drop me a message and let’s figure it out.

22/08/2026

A ni**le doesn’t always mean you need to stop running.

And it doesn’t always mean you need another set of rehab exercises either.

Quite often, the most useful thing we can do is look at the whole picture.

How much are you running?
Where is the harder work sitting?
What does your strength training look like?
How well are you recovering?
What changed before the problem started?
And importantly - what CAN you do right now?

That’s a big part of how I approach working with runners.

Rather than treating running and rehab as two separate things, I want to work out how we can adjust the overall training picture (which looks different case by case), so that you can keep moving forwards.

Because the goal isn’t just to make something stop hurting.

It’s to build a plan to get you back trusting your body and being able to do the things you actually want to do again without having to worry about injuries stopping you in your tracks.

19/08/2026

Praying to the rock Gods this morning after a run of crap sleep. 😴

Today was the first time I’d ages I’ve had to bail out of the prescribed session, but it was totally the right thing to do.

This was always going to be a hard session from the get go. Then, waking up loads through the night meant I wasn’t exactly feeling it when my alarm went off at 5:30am.

I was going to do the session outdoors, but got in my own head a bit about getting back in time for my first client, so opted for the treadmill.

5k intensity intervals on the cards, and a good proportion of it got done TBF.

After 3 x (4 x 2mins hard 1min easy) though, I called it.

Sometimes it’s about giving s**t a go, but knowing when it’s the right time to knock it on the head too.

I set a minimum requirement before the session of 2 sets, and finished with 3 out of 4, so today I’m taking that as a win.

All refuelled and rehydrated, and ready to go again tomorrow which is the main thing.

Who else is having crap sleep ATM?

15/08/2026

Is pain THIS simple?

Absolutely not.

Is this something that comes up time and time again?

Yup!

‘Tight muscles’ aren’t why you’re in pain…

It just part of the body’s response to the pain experience.

Muscles don’t just randomly get tight and painful.

Some treatments can feel great and provide a short term relief for sure.

If that’s where the thinking ends though, any initial progress will likely stall if the actual issues aren’t addressed.

If you need help getting back to sport, drop me a message and let’s build you a plan of action. 🤘

10/08/2026

“I was always worried about doing too much.” - Emma (AKA Miss Consistency).

One of the biggest frustrations for runners with a long-term injury isn’t usually the injury itself.

It’s the constant second guessing.

“Can I push today?”

“Should I skip this session?”

“Am I making things worse?”

Eventually, running stops feeling enjoyable because every decision feels like bit of a gamble.

That was where Emma was around 18 months ago.

Despite being an excellent Sports Therapist herself, she reached out because it’s incredibly difficult to be objective when it’s your own body.

We didn’t jump straight into chasing PBs.

We started by building confidence.

Not through endless treatment.

Not through avoiding running.

But by gradually exposing her hamstring to the right things at the right time, monitoring how it responded, and how she was feeling, then progressing from there.

Over time, the conversation has changed.

Instead of asking...

“Is my hamstring going to cope?”
..it’s now became...

“How much faster can I get?”

Since then she’s achieved:

🏅 5k PB
🏅 10k PB
🏅 10-mile PB
🏅 20-mile trail PB
🏅 1/2 Marathon PB - Incoming!
..all whilst continuing to manage a long-term hamstring issue that’s still making great progress.

When I asked what had changed the most, it wasn’t the race times.

It was this:

👉 “Confidence in the paces I can hold onto in races & training sessions.”

That sentence sums up why I love doing what I do.

Because most runners don’t need someone to tell them to stop running.

They need someone who can help them understand what they can do, prove it through training, and rebuild trust in their body one step at a time.

The goal isn’t just getting you out of pain.

It’s getting you back to believing you’re capable of doing hard things again too.

Brilliant work, Emma. Now let’s bag that 1/2 marathon PB! 🙌

05/08/2026

Be honest...

How many of these have you done? 👇

“I’ll just jump into the club session.”

“That workout on Instagram looked decent.”

“Everyone else is doing it... it’ll be fine.”

“This was meant to be an easy run... until Dave went up front and pushed the pace.”

Sound familiar? 😅

The sessions themselves aren’t the problem.

The problem is they often have nothing to do with your current fitness, training history, recovery, or goals.

Just because a session is hard doesn’t mean it’s the right session for you.

Your body doesn’t know that it was Tuesday night at run club.

It only knows the stimulus you’ve given it.

The runners who improve the most aren’t usually the ones doing the hardest sessions.

They’re the ones doing the right sessions, consistently and progressively.

So next time you’re lacing up, ask yourself...

“Am I doing this because it’s right for me... or because it’s what everyone else is doing?”

(And if Dave says, “This is easy...” ...it’s almost certainly not.) 😉

03/08/2026

You enter a 10K.

You download a programme full of intervals, tempo runs and race-pace sessions.

Eight weeks later: ‘PB. Easy.’ You say….

Except it doesn’t really work like that.

A few weeks in, the harder sessions are naffing you up. Your easy running becomes inconsistent, strength training goes out of the window and that same old ni**le starts making an appearance again.

Then you start wondering whether you’ve picked the wrong programme.

The programme probably isn’t the problem.

A programme can only work with the fitness you bring into it.

Read that again. ☝️ (Yeah I know, I hate it when people write that too - soz).

It can’t squeeze months of aerobic development and resilience work into eight weeks.

It can’t magically give you the strength and tissue capacity to handle more running.

And it can’t sharpen fitness you haven’t built yet.

One of my runners hit a cracking 10K PB yesterday.

Yes, we used a 10K-specific block to prepare for it. But the result wasn’t built in those final few weeks.

We’ve been building his fitness and capacity for a long time. The specific work just helped sharpen everything and bring it together on race day.

That’s the bit runners often miss.

The sexy sessions you see on Instagram aren’t the secret.

It’s the months of fairly boring, consistent work behind them that make those sessions actually useful instead of just doing them because Dave at run club said you need to when training for a 10k.

Just something to give the grey matter a tickle on a Monday evening. 🤘

02/08/2026

What an incredible week with amazing people! 🤩

Devon > Bristol > Edinburgh

All refreshed and ready to get stuck back into rehab and coaching!

LFG 🤘

Endurance Therapy and Performance

10/09/2026

26/08/2026

22/08/2026

19/08/2026

15/08/2026

10/08/2026

05/08/2026

03/08/2026

02/08/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request