I recently attended a workshop in Melbourne at the Hawthorn Football Club training facility in Malvern at Waverley Park. The workshop was run by The Biomechanics Lab based out of South Australia.
I did not know what to expect from this course as it was predominantly targeted at Podiatrist’s (I think the make-up for the attendees ended up being 47 Podiatrists, Myself as a Myotherapist, an S & C Coach and a Physio).
Various topics were covered throughout the day, but the main topics included were:-
Principles of athlete screening & determinants of performance.
Consideration of injuries to the leg & foot during running.
Principles of exercise prescription and rehabilitation.
Practical session – Going through some different taping techniques.
Overall, it was good to get a couple of new bits and pieces from the course to add to my Gait Analysis service at the clinic in South Melbourne. It was good to see it from a Podiatrist’s perspective regarding what they place importance on while evaluating a patients’ gait.
The day included a lot of research reviews in topics that are relevant to working with the running patient as well as some more practical aspects for attendees to take away which included some specific taping techniques to help guide the clinical decision making process further to help determine what will be an effective intervention for the runner as well as some different strength & conditioning considerations.
Assessment – Going through various screening tests.
I am hoping to put together a couple of general strength & conditioning videos over the coming months (when time allows) that will touch on some of what was covered in the course, as well as some more common things I have found helpful over the last few years when trying to have an injury decreasing effect on the runners I am working with at the clinic)
Overall not a bad Saturday out. I’m looking forward to making a couple of minor tweaks to how I run my Gait Analysis at the clinic in South Melbourne and continue to help my patients get back to full training and racing following injury.
I wanted to put together a quick blog post after conducting some running analysis sessions at the start of April with some SportsMyo patients and talk about some of the common findings as well as the strategies that we have used following the analysis sessions to try to correct any biomechanical faults that we picked up.
I will focus on the 3 most common area’s that my patient’s showed area’s of sub optimal function and the area’s that we have now targeted going forward.
1. Cadence
Cadence or leg turnover, in general, was slightly below what is considered optimal. In saying this, it was a broad spectrum, with some patient’s being at the lower end of this spectrum and other’s being close to the ideal. When taking into consideration the running pace that we undertook the video analysis at (the speed was what the runner would do the majority of their weekly mileage at), about 1/3 of the patients left with this as a key area of focus to work on in their training. Increasing cadence will generally allow the runner to decrease the impact forces and, as a result, will enable the athlete to handle their current training load with more ease, as with any training change. However, there will still be an adaptation phase where the athlete will have to adjust to the new stimulus on their musculoskeletal system.
When making the change to a higher cadence, start with a gradual change and progressively increase from there. It is important to monitor your speed when playing around with your cadence, as commonly when an athlete attempts to increase their cadence, they will just run faster instead of increasing their leg turnover. So initially, the goal is just to increase the cadence while maintaining the same training speed. Focussing on your cadence on easier training day’s is recommended as a starting point. It is possible to get different metronome devices to help you gauge your cadence while running. However, this wouldn’t usually be needed, and just focussing on a slight increase in your typical cadence will be enough initially.
2. Hip stability
About half of the patients who undertook the running analysis session, whether on the treadmill or outdoors, showed poor hip stability. Once again, there were various degrees of this. To some extent, this was an expected finding of the gait analysis prior to the testing as it is very common for all sorts of different athletes and the general public to have poor hip stability.
Essentially, the testing showed us that when the runners were landing, they found it very difficult to keep a ‘neutral’ pelvis. They would ‘collapse’ onto the hip on that side when landing. This has the potential to lead to different lower limb problems in the future at the hip, knee, ankle and occasionally through the lower back.
As well as setting the individual up for different lower limb pathologies and biomechanical overload, it would be common sense to think that this also would be a less than efficient way for the human body to move.
Three images highlighting likely weakness through the left Glute Medius. As the body weight is transferred onto the left leg, the pelvis progressively drops towards the right indicating weakness.
For these patients, a strengthening program was given with specific exercises depending on what their gait analysis and assessment were showing us. In general, we used quite a lot of Glute focussed exercises primarily aimed at helping the patient build more strength in the landing position. Hence, they are better able to handle the landing forces of running. Some patients were very weak in this area. Therefore, we had to start the exercises at a very basic level. Others were able to go straight into some single leg work using additional resistance bands to encourage further muscle activation and resistance.
3. Hip extension
A limited hip extension was the last area that some patients are now focusing on due to their running analysis session. Again, this was more common to those patient’s that were triathletes or had desk-bound jobs during the day. Both of these activities require a large amount of time with the hip flexors in a shortened position. As a result, they don’t tend to like being lengthened as much and can adapt to that shortened position.
We have tackled this with Myotherapy treatment at the clinic at SportsMyo and focussed on stretching of the hip flexors as well as providing hands-on treatment techniques and dry needling when it has been indicated and followed this up with take home stretches aimed at both the Illiopsoas and Rectus Femoris the two main hip flexor muscles that will be in a shortened position in this case.
Craig Alexander demonstrating good hip extension after coming off the bike at the 2015 Geelong 70.3
To summarise, the majority of patients that have attended a running analysis session have gone away with something to focus on with their body that should now allow them to adapt to their training loads easier. However, there was a couple of patients that were very good from a biomechanical perspective. They will now go away and focus on the structure of their training plans with their coach or work out a recovery plan around their training and racing schedule with me at the clinic in the lead into their next lot of racing/competition.
A real highlight for some of these patients was the ability to get the feedback and actually see on the video footage what was actually happening with their body while they were running and under stress.
A real highlight for some of these patients was getting the feedback and seeing on the video footage what was happening with their bodies while they were running and under stress.
If you are experiencing pain, coming back from an injury or looking to have your running technique analysed and given direction as to what you need going forward, then feel free to book online here or get in contact at toby@sportsmyo.com.au to discuss your needs.
