gait mechanics Archives

The Key to a Good Race Photo? Coordination.

November 8, 2024October 30, 2019 by Lorin Wilson

The Key to a Good Race Photo? Coordination. Have you ever looked at your race photos and thought to yourself, “WOW. How did I even finish my race? My body seems to be moving in every direction except forward!” Make your next set of race photos look more graceful by improving your coordination.

When most people hear the word coordination they think of “hand-eye coordination.” These individuals are not wrong. However, when we speak of coordination in the context of running we mean being able to orchestrate the muscles, joints, tendons, and skeleton to execute the desired movement. We develop coordination through challenging our proprioception, kinesthetic awareness, and nervous system.

Proprioception is the mechanism that allows us to know where our body is in space. For example, if you were in a pitch-black room, you would still know where your hands were without having to look at them. Kinesthetic awareness is similar to proprioception but allows us to sense body movements. These mechanisms work by transferring information from our muscles and joints to our brain.

Most individuals have underdeveloped proprioception and kinesthetic awareness and are over-reliant on their visual system to activate their muscles. To test this, balance barefoot on one leg with your eyes open for 30 seconds. Now try the same thing with your eyes closed. If you fell over as soon as you closed your eyes, you are over-reliant on your visual system and lack proprioceptive awareness from your muscles and joints. If your muscles and joints aren’t sending appropriate data to your brain, it makes it extremely challenging for your brain to coordinate efficient movements. Lack of efficiency implies that the wrong muscles will be recruited during a movement which will lead to a lack of stability and power. All of these things combined can lead to a higher probability of being injured while running.

In addition to building proprioception and kinesthetic awareness, you can improve coordination by developing neural pathways. The brain and spinal cord make up the central nervous system. Nerves that enter and exit the spinal cord run to every muscle in your body making up the peripheral nervous system. You can improve these pathways from your brain to your muscles by movement repetition or muscle memory. The more you perform a movement, the stronger and faster the communication from your brain to your muscles will be. Running is a high impact exercise. In order to improve the neural pathways without the increased loading rate of running, perform parts of the running motion in less impactful ways. For example, perform three rounds of butt kicks, skips, and high knees for 15 to 30 seconds each, three to five days a week. These exercises look very similar to running without the same loading rate. Meaning, you can improve your pathways for running and enhance your coordination with less strain on the body.

The Key to a Good Race Photo? Coordination. Butt Kicks. — View example of butt kicks

The Key to a Good Race Photo? Coordination. Power Skips. — View example of power skips

The Key to a Good Race Photo? Coordination. High Knees. — View example of high knees

Thank you for taking the time to read our RunLab™ Blog! We hope that you use this information to run more injury free and to optimize your running performance.

For more information about the RunLab™ team and to get your running stride analyzed by one of the preeminent gait specialist teams in the country, please visit WWW.RUNLABAUSTIN.COM

Outside of the Austin area? You can still have your running stride analyzed by one of the best teams in the country. Just visit WWW.RUNLAB.US to see where our partner filming locations are based or choose the self-film option.

RunLab™. Helping runners help themselves.

ABOUT LORIN WILSON

Lucky enough to be a part of a great running program in high school, Lorin not only went on to win the 2007 Texas 4a State Championship in the mile but also went on to earn a track scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin. Lorin graduated from the The University of Texas at Austin with a major in Exercise Science and a minor in business. While still attending UT, he began coaching distance running at St. Stephen’s Episcopal school where he would coach student-athletes to break school records in the 400 meter, 800 meter, 1600 meter, 3200 meter, 5000 meter, 4×400 meters, and 4×800 meters. After graduating from UT and during his aforementioned tenure at St. Stephen’s, Lorin also worked for the local Austin non-profit Power For Parkinson’s as a fitness instructor, which provides free fitness programs for individuals with Parkinson’s disease. No longer a trainer at Power For Parkinson’s, Lorin does fundraising campaigns for Power For Parkinson’s. During this period he also started BlueSky Running LLC, which provided on-site Yoga programs for employees of the Austin Independent School District (teachers, administration, bus drivers etc).

Lorin has the following physical training certifications: National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) Certified Personal Trainer, Performance Enhancement Specialist (NASM), Corrective Exercise Specialist (NASM), Senior (elderly individuals) Fitness Specialist (NASM), Fitness Nutrition Specialist (NASM), RunLab Clinical Gait Specialist, USA Track & Field Level 1 Coach, and a USA Yoga Alliance 200 Hour Certified Yoga Instructor certification earned while studying in Rishikesh, India. Lorin is a MBA Graduate with an emphasis in Accounting from Texas State University. He was also the President of the Texas State MBA Student Association and a Future Texas Business Hall of Fame Scholarship Recipient.

Lorin has a marathon best of 2:37:05 (5:59 per mile pace) run at the 2011 Los Angeles Marathon. He ran his first 100 miler in 17 hours 30 minutes (10:15 per mile pace) in Flagstaff, Arizona in September 2018. He ran the 2019 Boston Marathon in 2:37:59. He also has three top 10 finishes (5th, 7th, and 10th) in the Capital 10,000, the largest 10k in Texas, with the latest two being 2016 and 2017. Lorin looks forward to working towards his goal of making high-quality fitness accessible to everyone while he continues to train for 100 mile races.

LEARN MORE:
RunLab™ Podcast RUN.
RunLab™ YouTube channel

Balance and Stability Training Can Improve Your Running Times

November 8, 2024October 17, 2019 by Lorin Wilson

Balance and stability training can improve your running times. We’ve all done it. Happily trekking along, enjoying our run, and then BOOM. On our faces in the dirt. Usually just as some super cute runner passes by with a pitying “awww well THAT must be embarrassing” kinda look. We get up, dust off our pride, and start swearing that that root just came right out of nowhere!

We see runners who have had unfortunate spills all the time at RunLab. They wander in hoping we can help prevent these little trips and falls in the future. What we find more often than not, is that when we assess the individual’s ability to balance on one leg for 30 seconds, they are unable to perform this simple exercise. Now, imagine hopping forward from one leg to the other repeatedly in rapid succession if you can’t even STAND on one leg for as little as 30 seconds. If you are unable to balance statically, it gives insight into how much your body must work to keep you upright while running. Each unstable step is causing micro-damage to your body. Over time this damage will lead to injury.

A lack of balance and stability is not reserved for beginner runners. We often see similar stability limitations in our elite runners. Many of our elite marathon runners are Olympic trial qualifiers who have run the marathon at a sub 5:18 a mile pace. The reason we see stability problems in these elite athletes is because the majority of their strength programs consist of working gross motor patterns. Meaning, they repeatedly perform movement patterns using their large primary muscles. In addition to running, they perform exercises such as squats, lunges, step-ups, and push-ups. While these exercises are great for building strength and should be performed, they tend to neglect the smaller stability muscles. This is evident when we have the athletes perform the same exercises in a slow, controlled manner. They are unable to successfully complete the movement, proving a lack of stability and proper core activation. Both elite and beginner runners will benefit by adding traditional balance exercises, as well as compound exercises that challenge their pelvic floor and spinal muscles simultaneously.

Runners tend to lack stability because we fail to work our muscles in multiple planes of motion. Muscles work in three different planes to accelerate, decelerate, and stabilize motion. These three planes are sagittal (forward/back), frontal (side/side), and transverse (rotational). If we only perform exercises in the sagittal plane (sit, run, cycle, etc), the muscle fibers will start to lose their ability to operate in the other planes, thus causing instability.

Balance and stability are a complex interplay between having proper muscle strength and coordinating the muscles to do their job at the right time (timing of contractions). While there are many underlying physiological attributes to make this interplay successful, it is relatively simple to improve your balance.

Let’s talk about what types of balance and stability exercises can help improve your running times. In order to see performance improvements, incorporate balance drills into your workout routine three days a week. Begin with traditional static balance exercises such as standing on one leg for 30 seconds or performing 10 Romanian deadlifts on each leg. Then progress to performing the exercises on an unstable surface such as a foam pad or Bosu ball. . Balance and Stability Training Can Improve Your Running Times, static balance exercises on unstable surface

After you master these exercises, start performing dynamic single-leg exercises in a slow, controlled manner. Try 10 step-ups with rotations and 10 lunges to knee with medicine ball chop.

Once you feel comfortable and stable performing these exercises, progress to dynamic balance exercises such as speed skaters with a static five-second hold on each leg. Perform three, 30 second rounds.

These balance exercises are just the beginning. There are many variations and ways to keep challenging your body in the frontal plane. Start doing them regularly and you’ll be surprised at the benefits!!

Also, give that guy a hand next time you see him lying face-down in the dirt. Just sayin… 😉

Thank you for taking the time to read our RunLab™ Blog! We hope that you use this information to run more injury free and to optimize your running performance.

For more information about the RunLab™ team and to get your running stride analyzed by one of the preeminent gait specialist teams in the country, please visit WWW.RUNLABAUSTIN.COM

Outside of the Austin area? You can still have your running stride analyzed by one of the best teams in the country. Just visit WWW.RUNLAB.US to see where our partner filming locations are based or choose the self-film option.

RunLab™. Helping runners help themselves.

ABOUT LORIN WILSON

LEARN MORE:
RunLab™ Podcast RUN.
RunLab™ YouTube channel

Strength Training To Enhance Running Performance and Prevent Running Injuries

November 8, 2024October 9, 2019 by RunLab.US

Integrating strength training to enhance running performance and prevent running injuries is important for all levels of runners. At RunLab, it is not uncommon to hear from clients, “I can barely do a push-up.” “I never do strength training. I don’t want the bulk to slow me down.”

Runners need more strength as a population. This is a universal truth, and yet runners almost seem to take pride in the lack of strength training they do. Somehow the idea that strength training is detrimental to one’s running performance has taken a space in the collective running consciousness. Often neglected by distance runners, strength is very important for injury prevention and performance optimization and is often neglected. Having adequate strength will lower the probability of injury by preparing muscles to accept increased demand during training cycles.

In order to understand the importance of strength in the context of gait, let’s take a quick look at each phase of the running gait cycle:

If you look at the pictures, you can see that you are performing a series of single-leg squats and hops in rapid succession when you run. Due to the explosive nature of running, you are producing four to ten times your body weight in force PER STEP. It is vital to have sufficient strength to accept these loads if you hope to run injury-free. If you do not have ample strength in the primary working muscles, you will start to recruit smaller secondary muscles to perform the role of the primary muscles. Secondary muscles are not adequately equipped to do the job of a prime mover, either due to size or position in the body. Too much reliance on secondary muscles will result in a premature break down and aberrant movement patterns programmed into your body over time.

It is important to understand that strength comes in various forms. Functional strength is even more important than brute strength when it comes to a repetitive motion exercise like running. Being able to squat 2,000 pounds is an example of brute strength. However, this type of strength does not translate well to running. Functional strength is the ability to use your strength to perform your desired movement pattern under repetitive load. In order to be able to transfer strength to the desired movement pattern, one must be able to coordinate muscle firing patterns efficiently. Having functional strength will not only allow you to have more control over where the load is being produced while you are running, but also how efficiently the absorption load from the ground is transformed into propulsion energy. You gain functional running strength through performing exercises that look very similar to the running motion. Think of single leg squats, step-ups, or single leg plyometric exercises.

Strength Training To Enhance Running Performance and Prevent Running, single leg squatInjuries — Single Leg Squat

Strength Training To Enhance Running Performance and Prevent Running Injuries, Step-ups — Step-ups

One important point in regards to strength training is the concept of “bulking up”. With regards to bulking up, it is important to understand that strength has two major components. One component involves the nervous system’s ability to recruit motor units. Your brain is a major piece of hardware. From your brain, you have nerves that act as wires that conduct electrical signals to motor units that control muscle contractions. The more you perform an exercise, the thicker the myelin sheath, or the insulation surrounding the nerves, becomes. This makes the signal from your brain to your muscles more efficient. The more efficient your brain is at activating motor units, the more force production you are going to be able to generate and thus the stronger you are going to be. Nervous system adaptations happen rather quickly and the strength gains you experience within the first eight weeks of a strength and conditioning program will be neurological.

The second major component of strength is the cross-sectional area of your muscle. You gain cross-sectional area, or hypertrophy when you cause micro-trauma to muscle tissue through exercise. The stressed muscle repairs itself by having the myofibrils increase in thickness and number. Cross-sectional muscular gains take at least eight weeks of training. This is part of the reason to get your running gait re-analyzed every eight to twelve weeks. This gives an adequate amount of time for neurological and muscular strength adaptations to take place.

A final word with regards to the idea that strength will “bulk you up and slow you down”. The main components contributing to muscle bulk are nutrition and the amount of testosterone in your body. You would have to work a muscle very hard, have the right amount of testosterone, and eat a specific diet to bulk up significantly. The amount of high intensity cardio most distance runners undergo keeps muscles lean, but we are often missing the strength to take full advantage of our high intensity workouts, which leads to injury and suboptimal performance.

Consider adding regular strength sessions into your weekly routine to help enhance running performance and prevent running injuries. Your body will thank you for it, and so will your mind when you hit that next PR because you didn’t break down half way through the race!

Thank you for taking the time to read our RunLab™ Blog! We hope that you use this information to run more injury free and to optimize your running performance.

For more information about the RunLab™ team and to get your running stride analyzed by one of the preeminent gait specialist teams in the country, please visit WWW.RUNLABAUSTIN.COM

RunLab™. Helping runners help themselves.

ABOUT LORIN WILSON

LEARN MORE:
RunLab™ Podcast RUN.
RunLab™ YouTube channel

How Anatomical Structure Can Affect Running Mechanics

November 8, 2024September 23, 2019 by Lorin Wilson

You might be wondering how anatomical structure can affect running mechanics. Have you ever heard “You look funny when you run, you should be facing your feet forward!”

This single statement, usually coming from a well-intentioned friend, trainer, coach, or therapist who knows just enough to be dangerous in the world of running biomechanics, accounts for weekly, if not daily, client encounters at RunLab™.

We’ve all heard at one time or another that we need to squat or walk or run with our feet facing forward, but this antiquated look at movement is leading many people down the road to injury on a more frequent basis than you may think.

Curious?

You should be. Understanding your unique structure and the way that you move in relation to it, is vital to both injury prevention and performance development.

If you take a second to really look around your local running group, you will see body shapes that come in every variety imaginable. Short, tall, thick, thin, bow-legged, knock kneed, flat-footed, high-arched, and on and on and on. It is important to make note of your own unique shape and structure because this affects the way you move in relation to the person next to you.

In the rehab and training world, you will frequently hear cues about facing feet forward when walking, squatting, or running. This is merely one example of the way we are too often looking at running with a telescope instead of a microscope. It is true that, across a population, it is more common for people to have neutral positioning of their hip and knee, which allows the foot to face forward without undue stress on the joints above. However, there is a significant portion of the population which has variability in positioning of the hip or knee joint. The tibia (lower leg bone) often faces inward or outward in relation to the femur (thigh bone). In addition, many people may have a slightly outward or inward facing hip joint, positioning their foot slightly in or out naturally.

You can probably already see the issue here. If someone with a structural variable tries to “correct” that variable, over time it will put excess load on an area unaccustomed and poorly positioned to accept that load. This leads not only to injury, but also to inefficient movement patterns and a limitation in performance.

As mentioned above, these trainers and therapists are often well-intentioned. The thought process being that an underlying functional limiter is the cause of this “movement flaw”, as opposed to a structural variable. It is assumed that the runner has a range-of-motion or strength imbalance somewhere in the body that can be “fixed.” However, this is frequently an incorrect assumption and requires assessment by someone who knows how to tell the difference between a structural variable and a functional limiter.A great illustration of structural variability is Marathon Olympic Silver medalist Priscah Jeptoo. Arguably once of the worst looking gaits many of us have seen. However, she is winning marathons…so what gives?

How Anatomical Structure Can Affect Running Mechanics: Example of knock knees — https://www.running-physio.com/priscah-jeptoos-knee/https://www.running-physio.com/priscah-jeptoos-knee/

Priscah has what is referred to as valgus knees. Valgus knees are essentially “knock knees”, meaning her knee dives in towards her midline. This structural variable often leads to increased internal femoral rotation, increased tibial rotation and finally rapid and often prolonged pronation. When comparing Priscah to many other runners, the important distinction is that many people have a gait that looks like this because of muscle weakness, which is a functional issue that can be addressed through strength and gait work. However, if you have a structural variable like Priscah, you will never strength train your way out of a valgus knee, no matter how many glute exercises you do. You unique anatomical makeup can make you more adept at performing a certain movement skill, or less adept, depending on the extent of the structural variable and the skill being undertaken. Just as in swimming, gymnastics, dancing, basketball, baseball, football or any other sport, there are dominant body types that tend to be built to succeed in any specific sport. However, there are always outliers and body shapes that don’t fit the “norm” for the sport that still achieve great success. The key is knowing where YOUR unique strengths, weaknesses, and structural limiters are so that you can work with your body’s natural design, not against it.

In the case of Priscah, or any athlete with valgus knees, she is at a higher probability of sustaining injury in the medial (inside) portion of her knees, low back, and shins, along with a few other key areas than someone with neutral knees. To combat the higher probability of injury in these specific areas, her strength work is likely focused on doing more work on strengthening muscles that will counteract these additional forces. This is why understanding your unique weaknesses and structural limiters is vital to formulating a customized plan to tackle your weakest areas and injury-proof your body in the best way possible.

ABOUT LORIN WILSON

Thank you for taking the time to read our RunLab™ Blog! We hope that you use this information to run more injury free and to optimize your running performance.

For more information about the RunLab™ team and to get your running stride analyzed by one of the preeminent gait specialist teams in the country, please visit WWW.RUNLABAUSTIN.COM

RunLab™. Helping runners help themselves.

LEARN MORE:
RunLab™ Podcast RUN.
RunLab™ YouTube channel

What The Heck Is A Gait Cycle?

November 8, 2024September 16, 2019 by Lorin Wilson

Ever wondered “what the heck is a gait cycle?”

“Lengthen out your stride”, “Shorten your stride”, “Pick up your knees”, “Heel striking is bad”, “Run on your toes and fall forward”, “Your glutes aren’t firing”, “Barefoot running is the most natural type”, “Max cushion will prevent injury”….and on and on and on….

Most of us have heard throughout our lives there is a correct way to run. This “correct way” tends to change every few years along with the shoe industry, and advocates will swear by each new truth. It is not surprising that runners are so confused on what they should focus on when they are out running.

The fact is, there is no one correct way to run. Everyone is unique in both their underlying physiological attributes, including structure, strength, and range-of-motion as well as in their goals.

The key to running with your best form is to gain as much understanding about your unique body, and about running, as possible. This basis of awareness starts with an understanding of the phases of the gait cycle. Understanding the gait cycle and basic running mechanics is the framework to beginning any running-specific training program. A foundation built of sound biomechanical patterns is imperative before adding volume and intensity to the mix. If you do not move efficiently, you greatly raise your probability of getting injured.

So, what the heck is a gait cycle? The term gait cycle is used to describe one revolution of the body when walking, running, or sprinting. The pieces of the gait cycle can be broken down into an infinite number of parts, with the most basic version involving four stages.

FIRST STAGE
Initial Contact: The initial moment your foot hits the ground.

SECOND STAGE
Initial Loading Response/Midstance: Load acceptance phase of the gait cycle. All of your body weight is on one leg. Your body is trying to control three to ten times your body weight in force.

THIRD STAGE
Push-off: Hip extending behind you which drives your body forward.

FOURTH STAGE
Swing: Should include a “flight phase.” Your leg swings through the air preparing to make contact with the ground again to complete the gait cycle.

Understanding the gait cycle at a basic level is important for any runner. Improving efficiency will both lower the probability of injury and enhance running performance due to decreasing aberrant load on the body and decreasing the recruitment of muscles not meant to accept load or push your body off the ground. We find that many of our injured runners have ended up injured because they have tried to change something about the way they run without really knowing why they are making the change. Your gait cycle is as unique to you as your fingerprint and you should never make any type of change without fully understanding both why you are making the change and how it will affect other parts of your body. It is very easy to fall into the trap of reading something about the “right” way to run and trying to modify your movements without truly understanding how your structure, range-of-motion, strength, injury history, neuromuscular control, and goals play into ideal mechanics specific to you.

TAKE-HOME MESSAGE:

Your unique gait cycle is determined by a myriad of factors, including morphologic and physiologic factors. Anatomic structure, range of motion, strength, endurance, coordination, elastic energy return, symmetries between right and left, injury history, and workout history all affect the way you move.
Changing running form without context and a deep understanding of the biomechanical factors unique to you can result in decreased efficiency and even injury. There is no “one-size-fits-all” model when analyzing movement mechanics or determining running form ideal for an individual.
Do not change your running form if you do not know why you are trying to change something or how it will affect the rest of your body. Every change, no matter how minute, will affect the entire body. This can be good or bad, depending on many factors and what your specific goals and limiters are.
Analyzing the gait cycle is a lot like statistics. A data set is gathered, but that data set must be analyzed and interpreted relative to the specific case to determine its relevance.
Your gait cycle is unique to you. If you enjoy running and would like to lower your probability of being injured, consider getting your gait cycle analyzed by professionals. You have coaches or teachers for almost every other aspect of your life. Why not running? Be wary and do your homework. If someone tells you there is a “right” way to run, doesn’t do a structural, strength, and range-of-motion assessment on your full body, or tell you a shoe can “fix” your issues then that person does not truly understand biomechanics enough to help you.

ABOUT LORIN WILSON

Thank you for taking the time to read our RunLab™ Blog! We hope that you use this information to run more injury free and to optimize your running performance.

For more information about the RunLab™ team and to get your running stride analyzed by one of the preeminent gait specialist teams in the country, please visit WWW.RUNLABAUSTIN.COM

RunLab™. Helping runners help themselves.

LEARN MORE:
RunLab™ Podcast RUN.
RunLab™ YouTube channel

Kids In Sports

November 12, 2019March 19, 2019 by Dr. Kimberly Davis

THE MYTH: Athletic kids get injured in the same way athletic adults do.
THE REALITY: Kids don’t sprain/strain nearly as much as they break. At one point, our sports therapy clinic had twelve kids with broken backs coming in for rehab between the ages of 10 and 15. TWELVE!

Which sports? Soccer, football, and gymnastics. Why? Because nobody was paying attention to their mechanics and their complaints of back pain were being chalked up to strained muscles, sprained ligaments and “tightness”. Hot on the heels of XC season, track season is now in full swing. RunLab is always inundated with injured kids this time of year. How can we slow down this trend? Read on…

When it comes to young athletes, I have noticed a disturbing trend in the last decade that shows no sign of slowing. Kids no longer rotate haphazardly through several sports during the school year, with the occasional ridiculous intramural thrown in for fun. Our choices were things like badminton, floor hockey, and pickleball…basically the stuff that incites the quizzical “what is that sport again” look when you say you have to go to practice. Nowadays, it is the norm to find even the most mediocre young soccer player, gymnast, or runner training year-round in a single sport, much the way a college athlete might train.

Often this means they are not only participating on a school team, but on a club team as well. Their parents are spending weekend after weekend driving them to tournaments and meets, not to mention the morning and event practices during the week. The problem with this trend is that kids are getting injured like crazy. We work with a ton of kids at RunLab, from brand new athletes to JR Olympic medalists, many of whom either currently have or have had injuries significant enough to require surgery. Most of our competitive middle and high school runners are running somewhere between 40 and 60 miles per week, which is A LOT for a young kid who still has open growth plates. Much of the time this high weekly mileage is a result of two major problems. One, a major disconnect between two separate coaches (school and club) who aren’t kept abreast of what’s going on with the athlete outside of their team’s training program. And two, extremely motivated young athletes that think more training is better and are adding on their own mileage outside of their supervised training.

We helped an 11 year old runner with hip pain who was being forced to run in gym or risk receiving a failing grade, despite the fact that she was preparing for Indoor Nationals and was logging 30-40 miles per week outside of school. I have countless similar stories involving young football and volleyball players being required to play despite possible low back fractures (this is a common injury in any sport requiring a lot of extension through the lumbar spine), swimmers being forced to survive “Hell Week” (a brutal several hour per day rite of passage for young swimmers) despite rotator cuff tears, and gymnasts being convinced to continue practicing with sprained ankles and low back pain. The number of ACL tears and broken lumbar spines in young soccer players, volleyball players and gymnasts, along with preventable overuse injuries like stress fractures in cross country and track runners before they even make it out of high school is staggering. At RunLab we make it a point to be in close contact with coaches of young patients that we treat, in an attempt to make sure we are all on the same page in keeping kids injury-free, but it is also vital that parents take an active and informed role in a child’s training schedule. Dreams of playing or running for a D1 school are quite easily shattered with a blown ACL or broken lumbar vertebrae.

So what can you do as a parent to help prevent injury in your young athlete?

• Closely monitor your child’s mood. This is tough with teenagers but you know, better than anyone, what is normal for your child. If they are constantly fatigued, getting sick more frequently than usual, or especially irritable or moody, look at what’s going on with their training, it may be time for a day or two off (and I mean REALLY off…like sit and watch movies and eat popcorn kinda off…not two days spent in the gym instead of on the field or track).

• Nutrition is HUGELY important in young athletes. They are growing like any other kid, but they are asking a lot more of their muscles and joints than a sedentary child. It is difficult to force healthy eating habits at school, but teaching your child the link between increased performance and nutrient dense food might be all it takes to get them to buy in. It is especially important to closely watch young female athletes, who are at major risk for developing body image issues and Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Be familiar with the female triad (stopping of menstrual cycle, disordered eating, and decreased bone mineral density) and how to prevent it. This is a BIG deal in young athletic girls and is much more common than you might think. As they go through puberty and begin to put on adult weight, their running often slows down temporarily, leading talented runners to worry about their running, thinking they need to train harder, run more, or eat less.

• Choose your club coach wisely. Make sure that the coach understands not only your child’s true talent level for the sport, but also his/her short and long term motivation. If your child is on the team for camaraderie and fun over commitment to winning and a college scholarship, forcing your (no matter how talented) kid onto the wrong team can have serious mental and physical repercussions.

• Kids are rarely in need of more stretching. Unfortunately, it is a standard practice in the athletic world (and all too often in the medical field) to tell people they need to stretch more no matter what their actual range-of-motion looks like or what type of injury they have. I had a 12 year old runner with a hamstring injury whose doctor was insistent that she stretch her hamstrings daily. Not only could she touch her knee to her forehead, her hamstring was strained and thus, overstretched already.

• Proper shoe choice is important, don’t skimp on this, especially if your child’s sport involves a lot of running. The wrong shoe can lead to injury, unnecessary soreness and muscle fatigue, and decreased performance.

• Make sure that each coach knows what the other is having your child do. Having everyone on the same page will help prevent overtraining, which leads to injury. When forced to choose one workout over another, choose quality over quantity.

• Muscles need hormones like testosterone to grow in size, meaning that to build muscle mass, kids must have gone through puberty. his means doing any type of weight or resistance training with anything other than body weight is putting your child at risk for injury without any added benefit. Keep the “strength sessions” to play-based stability and skills training. The payoff is huge and the potential for injury is much smaller.

To sum it all up, never underestimate the importance of skills training, even in sports like cross country. Hip stability, proper and balanced flexibility and strength and a strong core are vital to injury prevention in any sport. Unfortunately, most kids are not going to go on to play college sports at a high level, and even fewer of them will move on to the pro ranks. Is it really worth risking injury to a body they are going to have to live in for the rest of their lives? They may think so, but that is where we as parents, coaches, and doctors need to step in and help guide them. Remember tetherball four-square, and roller-skating? Despite the very adult way many of these athletes approach their training, they are still kids, and they will be much healthier adults if equal attention is not only given to regimented training, but also to what kids do best (or used to)…play.

Now…find your kid and go build a fort.

IN SUMMARY:

Kids don’t sprain, they break. Take lingering pain seriously.
Most kids don’t usually need more stretching to fix an injury, they are already bendy (sometimes too bendy). Make sure that you are seeing a doctor who is used to working with young athletes.
Certain sports predispose kids to spondylolysis and/or spondylolisthesis (broken and sometimes dislocated vertebrae in the low back). Watch for ongoing low back pain in football players (especially QBs), tennis players, soccer players, gymnasts, dancers and track & field athletes.
Kids who don’t “specialize” in one sport early on will experience less load in the same area over and over and over again, which is a healthy thing for growing bodies.
Watch the running volume in kids participating in club and sport, the cumulative volume sometimes spikes drastically as they enter high school and can break even the most gifted runners.
Girls will often slow down temporarily as they hit puberty and put on weight. This is normal and their speed will come back, but watch their eating and training habits closely as many will worry about their speed and start overtraining or under eating.
Growth plates aren’t closed until the late teens, be careful with volume.
Prepubescent kids can’t build muscle-mass, so added weights risk injury without benefit. Focus on skills based training and body weight exercises.

ABOUT DR. DAVIS

Dr. Kimberly Davis is the Founder & CEO of RunLab™, a motion analysis and gait diagnostic company headquartered in Austin, Texas that provides runners anywhere in the country access to comprehensive gait evaluation services through www.RunLab.us. An Ironman triathlete and ultra-distance adventure racer herself for over 20 years, Dr. Davis has dedicated her career to the study of clinical biomechanics and helping runners get back on the trails, improve their performance and enjoy running again. Working as part of sports medicine teams for over a decade, she grew tired of hearing her patients say they had been told not to run or that “running is bad for your knees” by their doctors without any discussion about biomechanics. She launched RunLab™ Austin in 2014 as a running-centric healthcare facility built entirely by, and for, runners. It has since grown to become one of the nation’s preeminent gait evaluation and training facilities in the U.S. Working with every age and experience level runner, from Olympic gold medalists and world champions to brand new runners, kids, and runners with special needs such as down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and a wide variety of movement disorders. Recognizing a lack of consistency and quality in gait analysis across the country, Dr. Davis launched RunLab.us in 2018 as a means for runners to access her industry-leading gait team from anywhere in the United States.

Thank you for taking the time to read our RunLab™ Blog! We hope that you use this information to run more injury free and to optimize your running performance.

For more information about the RunLab™ team and to get your running stride analyzed by one of the preeminent gait specialist teams in the country, please visit WWW.RUNLABAUSTIN.COM

RunLab™. Helping runners help themselves.

LEARN MORE:
RunLab™ Podcast RUN.
RunLab™ YouTube channel