The Ultimate Running Injury Guide

the rates of running related injuries has been on the rise since the 1970s it is now estimated that up to 79 percent of recreational runners will end up with an injury after just one year of running these statistics are not good considering that running is pretty much built into our DNA if these rates of running related injuries had occurred among other animals like lions for example well we would only have known that they have existed through fossil records and almost wouldn't survive with these statistics in fact it is only due to technology that we are still alive with these injury rates therefore that fact that we still exist implies that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were not plagued by the number of running related injuries that we see today so what has gone wrong and how did we get to this point well the scientific literature points to what is known as risk factors the authors of a popular literature review found that there was a significant rise in injury rates when training volume exceeded 64 kilometers of running per week a recent study on the ethiopian long distance runners had similar results injury rates spiked significantly among athletes who ran more than 60 kilometers per week running on uneven surfaces such as in trail running seems to be another risk factor for injury a meta-analysis of 17 related studies found that previous injury was also strong risk factor for future injury however these risk factors don't tell us the whole story to see the full picture we need to be asking ourselves why something is considered a risk factor for example why is it that running more than 60 kilometres per week drastically increases one's risk for injury and why do previous injuries often reoccur they are so many athletes who run ultra marathons train high volume and do so on varying surfaces without getting injured why can they do it while the majority can't are these individuals just anomalies genetically superior or have these individuals just found ways to reduce their risk of injury one such athlete is Dean Karnazes an american-born Greek who is famous for running 560 kilometers in 80 hours and 44 minutes in 2005 without sleep a year later he ran a marathon in each of America's 50 states in 50 tickets of days so how does a man like Dean who has accomplished these extreme physical feats and he's known to run about 50 kilometers a day in training not get injured well he actually answered this question in the seminar he did a few years ago at Google this is what he said so you know a couple things that I have that work in my favor I have pretty good biomechanics so my alignment is really good and that means when I run I don't pronate or supinate I've always been what's called a mid foot striker so there's kind of this trend now in running kind of barefoot running minimalist Footwear which encourages you to strike mid foot on your stride with shorter smaller steps with a kind of a canter your body that's slightly forward what they found that people who strike mid foot are less prone to injuries but what they do is they've done analysis of people on a soft surface like on a soft treadmill and found that most people running barefoot on a soft surface will inherently strike mid-foot but then when you put them in a big padded shoe with a big evie a slab under their heel they'll go to this heel toe roll and it's that heel strike to the rolling motion that causes a lot of running related injuries I've never had that I've always had a natural gait and had naturally good alignment so what Dean explains here is that running into thick padded shoes promotes a heel striking movement pattern the change in running style is probably due to the fact that the cushion shoes block a lot of the feeling we get with the ground upon impact this makes sense because as a test if you have to take your shoes off then jump and land on your heels you'll get such a shock jolts of your body that you'll make sure you never land on your heels again so to reiterate barefoot runners who predominantly forefoot strike or able to utilize the Achilles tendon and calf muscles more efficiently while running these connective tissues and musculature help prevent injury and enhance athletic performance ross Edgeley the man who famously swam around Great Britain agrees with these statements let's see what he had to say in his video on how he was able to run 30 marathons in 30 days skill and and that sounds really odd to many people because there's something we're innately born to do but so many people are doing it wrong allow me to explain what I mean by that basically because of the invention of the shoe a lot of people encourage now to heel strike and what that means is as they're running if you imagine that's their foot they're basically putting a lot of pressure on the heel and they're not forefoot striking and actually running on on the balls of their feet like arguably mother nature intended now it's still debated to this day and you know in sport science there's not necessarily an agreed consensus yet so I think that's important to note but if you look at a totally and and look at the Anthropology the human runner you know we developed these you know ligaments tendons the Achilles heel all of these things were created the architecture the actual foot were created so you forefoot strike and therefore absorb all of the pressure again this is a man who should be riddled with injuries due to the volume of physical training he puts his body through every day but obviously these guys have figured out how they can remain injury free and the cool thing is that they are sharing this wisdom with us nevertheless I'm still a scientist so despite these testimonials I would like some type of scientific validation I mean can modern footwear really be causing such havoc on our bodies and the way we run I thought they are supposed to help prevent injury by fixing the way we run well let's see what the science has to say about this can specialized running shoes support the arches of our feet to improve the way we run and ultimately reduce our risk of injury well a study published in the Journal of strength and conditioning research was conducted by the US Army on over 3,000 soldier trainees to see if specialized running shoes could reduce injury rates during the grueling nine week basics training protocol the researchers split the participants into two groups a control group and an experimental group those in the control group were all given the same standard stability shoes made by New Balance regardless of the shape of each participants foot Sarge however each individual in the experimental group was assigned and needs specific type shoe those assisted having flat arches received control type shoes those with high arches got cushion table shoes and stability shoes were allocated to those with normal arched feet the participants in this group could then choose from the various mainstream manufacturers that produce specialized models that catered to their prescribed needs as recommended by the various shoe companies after the nine weeks of basic training the results were astounding no differences in the injury rate was found between the two groups even after accounting for factors such as gender and previous injury the results from the study suggest that specialized running shoes might not be as effective at preventing injuries as once thought perhaps sticking a band-aid over a problem in the form of fancy footwear is not the way to solve the root cause of the problem we would probably be far better off targeting the body directly so that we can build up its natural structures to support themselves this makes total sense to me I mean if excessive pronation or collapsed arches commonly looked upon is flat feet is such a problem then surely we can't just solve the issue by wearing a pair of fancy shoes well let's break it down to see why modern foot way has missed the boat wise modern foot way causing flat feet and excessive pronation the feet are comprised partly of 100 stabilizing muscles and 105 sensors which work together to detect the ground and maintain a stable arch during walking running and every other athletic movement unfortunately modern foot way with the arch supports and thick soles plant the foot sensors as a result the internal musculature are no longer stimulated to maintain an arch causing them to become lazy and weak flat feet and over pronation are signs of this dysfunction we could compare the function of the foots bony structures to that of the spine and its surrounding musculature like the core meant to stabilize it continuing this thought the ankles then act as the hips meant to hinge and generate the moving forces just like we shouldn't rely on a weightlifting belt to always stabilize the spine so we shouldn't rely on modern footwear or inner soles to stabilize our feet so too much support is obviously not optimal especially when we have innate structures that are very capable of supporting themselves if given a chance this is where our sensory feedback becomes so important as briefly mentioned in the animation basically we rely heavily on a sense of touch to stimulate through electrical impulses our muscles to contract and adjust themselves to our ever-changing environment this concept can be best explained with our hands a surgeon for example relies on his sense of touch to perform high precision surgery now you wouldn't see a surgeon wearing oven mitts while performing an operation right no thick gloves would dull the sensation in his fingers and restrict the motion of his hands and consequently the ability to react quickly and be precise during the procedure instead surgeons use ultra thin and flexible latex to protect the patient's from infection while still preserving this sense of touch and fine motor skills this concept can also be applied to the feet where we also have a dense network of nerve endings just like in the hands barriers like thick-soled shoes placed between our feet and the ground can also hamper our sense of feeling of the environment the potential result of such a restriction is severely altered balance and motor patterns which changes the efficiency in which we move and increase our risk of injury to understand this concept further let's take a look at the spring model we built from the design presented by the University of Calgary to represent the muscles that attach around the ankle in the paper titled barefoot running some critical considerations the barefoot model has four long elastic bands which represent the bigger muscles from the league that attach around the ankle and which behave as the primary movers capable of producing large amounts of force over a wide range of motion the shorter bands to represent the smaller muscles coming from the foot which make fast and precise micro adjustments in response to the ever-changing environment making them excellent stabilizers as can be seen in the model the stability potential of the smaller bands is due to the placement line of action and size which help them react faster in the big bands ok so now what happens when you stick a stiff thick-soled shuen well as mentioned earlier the foot is restricted due to loss of sensation and fine motor control of the smaller muscles it's the same as removing the little bands in our ankle model as an experiment we compared the overall stability and reaction sum of these two when the uprights representing the shinbone was agitated to do this we set up a camera on a fixed tripod shooting at 60 frames per second for high-speed capture we also fixed the base plate to a table using double-sided tape so that it didn't move around a board with angular measurements was fixed on the backdrop as a reference to compare the range of motion between the upright of the two models then one at a time the uprights were pulled back to in range and released the first model which includes both the small and large bands moved past its resting position set at 0 by around 29 degrees and took 41 frames to find stability when we removed the small bands and repeated the test the upright moved past its resting position by 37 degrees and took 46 frames to find stability that's a 28 percent increase in range of motion and a 12 percent increase in time to stability when the small bands were removed when we superimpose the two images the differences in stability and reaction times can clearly be seen so what is this experiment show us well it shows that we rely on our smaller muscles to keep us stable and prevents excessive movements at end ranges of motion this can be especially helpful during loading tasks such as on impact during running to prevent injury through the wall when those small muscles are active not only do they react quickly so that we can easily navigate the surfaces we are moving on but they also remove excess stress from the big muscles which would otherwise have to do both the moving and the stabilizing it's no wonder that hamstring and calf pulls as well as shin splints are so common these issues can be a sign that the bigger muscles are overloaded with work that they shouldn't be doing its then no surprise that studies have shown that balance is improved when barefoot compared to wearing shoes because the small muscles are unrestricted and thus able to do their job so in conclusion if you want to improve your balance and athletic ability and reduce your risk of injury while running then it might be time to liberate your feet from the confinement of modern Footwear completely and exercise barefoot or at the very least utilize barefoot shoes which are designed to mimic favoured motion I've been wearing barefoot shoes for a few years now and they really have made a drastic improvements in the way I move and consequently the way my body's developed from exercise we will be covering more running and it's related topics in the future so consider subscribing to check those out when they become available we have also done a review on Bedford running shoes in the past which can be seen here anyways thanks for watching and until next time keep on exercising your health Cheers [Music]

Channel: Barefoot Strength

Views: 44,817

Keywords: running barefoot, barefoot running, common running injuries, running pain, forefoot running, minimalist running, heel striking

Id: d9I9VEyO1n8

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2020