The University of Canberra is looking for people over the age of 18 who walk or run more than 40 kilometres a week to join a study being conducted into sports injuries.
Olympic race walker turned researcher, Rachel Tallent (pictured) has teamed up with Associate Professor in Sport and Exercise Psychology, Richard Keegan to identify future strategies for injury management.
Together they are tracing whether athletes with greater ‘interoception’ (the sense of the internal state of the body) have experienced less lost, or modified, training time due to injury in the past two years.
Ms Tallent said interoception was something that could be taught and it was important to learn to use it in decision-making.
“It could mean the ability to distinguish between typical fatigue or deep exhaustion, slight soreness or something that could lead to serious injury,” Ms Tallent said.
Dr Keegan said that in a sporting context, it could be important for preventing injuries in athletes caused by overtraining or overuse.
“Sometimes athletes just push through the pain when they shouldn’t, ultimately making things worse,” Dr Keegan said.
“We have also been doing research at UC on building resilience, and it seems like people with greater self-awareness are just more resilient.”
Ms Tallent competed at the 2015 World Athletics Championships in Beijing and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in which she battled a stress fracture in her left femur during the 20 kilometre Olympic walk.
“I’m interested in the subject because of my own injuries,” she said.
“After the Olympics, I had three more stress reactions in my right tibia.”
She said the research project also aimed to identify factors which moderated the relationship between interoception and time lost due to injury.
Readers interested in taking part in the study can contact Dr Keegan at UC at