Athlete Interview: Josh Singh
Josh Singh. Arcadia High School’s current fastest distance runner. With times of 15:02 in the 3 mile and 9:48 in the 3200 meters, Josh seems invincible. But what happens when someone like Josh gets injured? How does he handle it and how does it affect the future of his cross-country training? In this article, we interview Josh and get insight into the matter.
What has your experience been like getting injured? How did you develop the injury and how did it affect your training and races?
“I first experienced an injury when I had my IT band injury sophomore year and it was a nightmare.” Singh says, “It happened because I wasn’t taking care of my body as a runner by rolling, massaging, and stretching my legs while doing high mileage like 80 miles a week. My actions during the training cost me 2 races where I had to rest. This IT band injury made me feel pain every time I tried to run, therefore my coach told me to rest.”
What methods did you use for rehabilitation physically and also mentally?
“After the injury happened, I started taking care of my body a lot more by ice bathing, stretching, and rolling every day which helped me heal faster than I imagined. This was mentally challenging because I was seeing my teammates running and grinding without me but my coach told me not to worry too much and that I would crush this season no matter what since I had done a really good job by getting the miles in and having consistent training. I didn’t believe him because I just thought it was impossible.”
Can you give some tips to other athletes who might want to prevent getting this injury and how to cope if they are injured?
“Some advice that I would like to give to the new runners is to always roll, stretch, and ice bath if needed in order to stay injury-free because I’ve made this mistake in the past and now I’ve experienced how it’s like being injured at the beginning of the season because I was being irresponsible. But if you do end up getting injured and have IT band syndrome, I would advise to take it easy, don't run if you’re injured and ice bath as much as you can after rolling and stretching.”
After recovering did you perform better or worse? How did you rebuild your strength for the future?
“After recovering from IT band syndrome surprisingly my coach was right I performed way better and shocked a lot of people because I ran a 9:52 in the 3200 meters race as a sophomore which was 90 seconds faster than my PR from freshman year (11:30). I think my body was just too tired and not taking care of it gave me this injury in the first place but I had performed really well.”
Josh is feeling extremely strong for this upcoming track season as he has high aims for the mile and 3200-meter events. Since this is his last year of high school competition, Josh will do his best to prevent any future injuries. Good luck Josh!