Preventing Trail Injuries: What Actually Works

Every runner knows the sting of injury. For trail runners, it can feel like the risk doubles: ankles on uneven ground, knees absorbing descents, hips tightening after long climbs. Stringing together weeks of training without a setback sometimes feels like luck.

But it isn’t luck. While you can’t control the unpredictability of trails, you can control how prepared your body is to meet them. Prevention isn’t about doing everything. It’s about doing the right things, consistently.

Build Strength That Carries You Forward

Trail running is one foot at a time, constantly asking your body to stabilise, adapt, and absorb. That’s why the strength that matters isn’t about heavy lifts for aesthetics, but functional movements that prepare you for the reality of the trail.

Single-leg work like step-ups and split squats teaches balance and control. Hip and glute stability: band walks, side planks, bridges - keep your knees tracking strong, a key consideration for women who often experience higher knee stress due to wider hips and alignment angles. And then there’s the often-overlooked piece: the deep core and pelvic floor. These are what keep you steady when the trail shifts underneath you.

Alex Bell from The Running Room puts it simply: the goal of strength work isn’t restriction, it’s capacity. You don’t want to protect yourself by holding back; you want to build a body capable of more. At Her Trails, this is why strength isn’t an optional add-on. Every training program includes a Strength for Runners block to keep you durable, not just fit.

Don’t Neglect the Small Things: Feet and Ankles

Injury prevention starts at ground level. Strong feet and ankles are what let you move across ruts, rocks, and rolling terrain without folding.

Barefoot drills, calf raises, and single-leg balance work are simple, repeatable habits that build resilience where you need it most. They don’t take hours, but their impact compounds over time. Think of it as insurance for the terrain you can’t predict.

Learn to Love the Downhill

Climbs get the glory, but it’s the descents that quietly break bodies. Quads, knees, and ankles take the load, especially when you brake hard with long strides.

Downhill resilience comes from both strength and technique. Eccentric quad work (slow step-downs, controlled squats) trains your muscles to absorb impact. On the trail, shortening your stride and staying tall allows gravity to help you instead of fighting it. And confidence matters as much as mechanics: tension is what leads to awkward landings. Practice descents in training until fluidity becomes second nature.

Recovery Is Prevention

The body doesn’t adapt from training, it adapts from recovery.

For women especially, under-recovery is one of the biggest drivers of injury. Sleep is your first line of defence. Eating enough is your second. Low energy availability is behind more stress fractures and burnout than any single training error. Carbohydrates, protein, and micronutrients aren’t optional, they’re structural. Add in short, regular mobility sessions for hips, calves, and thoracic spine, and you create a system that bends instead of breaks.

Why the Female Lens Matters

Generic injury advice often ignores the realities of female physiology. But your body deserves specificity.

Low iron or inadequate fuelling can compromise bone density. Hormonal changes can make ligaments slightly more vulnerable around ovulation. And a stable pelvic floor isn’t just about avoiding leakage: it’s about efficient power transfer with every step. These aren’t weaknesses. They’re realities. When you train with them in mind, you run stronger, longer.

The Bottom Line

Injury prevention isn’t about bubble-wrapping your body. It’s about building strength that reflects how you run, training feet and ankles to hold you steady, approaching descents with skill, fuelling and recovering with intention, and respecting the specifics of your physiology.

Alex Bell reminds us: prevention is less about restriction and more about creating capacity. At Her Trails, we couldn’t agree more. Trails will always carry risk. But with the right preparation, you meet that risk with resilience, and keep showing up, not just for this race or this season, but for the long game.

Reflection Prompt

What’s one strength, foot-care, or recovery habit I can add this week that my future trail self will thank me for?