The 2015 American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting is on this week in San Diego. I always enjoy perusing the abstract book for this meeting as there are usually more than a few gems of relevance to my interests. This year was no exception. Rather than review a select few in detail like previous […]
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Running on a track could be associated with a greater risk for heel pain
There is not a lot known about risk of injury from running on different surfaces. Despite claims that softer surfaces are better as there is less impact, the available evidence shows that the injury rates between hard and soft surfaces are the same (I discussed that here). Now we have this new study: The Association […]
Impact forces between barefoot and shod running
I have been around this stump many a time and here we go again: PEAK IMPACT GROUND REACTION FORCE DURING BAREFOOT AND SHOD RUNNING Meredith, K; Castle, B; Hines, D; Oelkers, N; Peters, J; Reyes, N; Conti, C; Pollard, C; and Witzke, K International Journal of Exercise Science: Conference Proceedings: Vol. 8: Iss. 3, Article […]
“Running barefoot may increase injury risk in older, more experienced athletes”
This press release is starting to the rounds: Running barefoot may increase injury risk in older, more experienced athletes Older athletes less likely to adapt running style to “minimalist” shoes LAS VEGAS – In recent years there has been an explosion in barefoot running, as well as the purchase and use of “minimalist” running shoes […]
Peroneal Tendinosis and ankle sprains in runners
Just back from a great day doing the Run For the Kids with the family and this one caught my eye: Peroneal tendinosis as a predisposing factor for the acute lateral ankle sprain in runners Pejman Zia, Emir Benca, Florian Wenzel, Reinhard Schuh, Christoph Krall, Alexander Auffahrt, Martin Hofstetter, Reinhard Windhager, Tomas Buchhorn Knee Surgery, […]
Differences in injury rates between…
… barefoot vs shod? … foot strike pattern? This just showed up in my alerts: The Science of Running: Factors Contributing to Injury Rates in Shod and Unshod Populations MacKenzie, Ryan; MacKenzie, Lene; Martinez, Alicia; and Cardoza, Marisol Student-Faculty Research – School of Physical Therapy. Paper 6. 2014 This appears to be a poster presentation […]
How poor are runners at self-identifying their foot strike pattern?
I previously reported on some comments from a running conference last year: In an online survey via Runners World that got 2,169,282 responses, the self reported foot strike was 15.7% forefoot strikers; 40.9% heel strikers; 43.4% midfoot strikers BUT; observed in slow motion videos of 11000 runners at the 2013 Boston Marathon: 95.6% heel strikers; […]
Foot posture (‘overpronation’) and the risk for overuse injury
I hate re-litigating an issue that I have written about so many times before (here, here, here, here, here, here and here) but here goes anyway: Early in my career, ‘overpronation’ was widely considered a problem, but by the late eighties I started to say that ‘overpronation’ was not a problem and since then have […]
Selecting the right running shoe based on brain activity
How cool would that be? How feasible and practical it will become is another question, but that is exactly what these authors below proposed. They stated: When consumers purchase shoes, they often try on a few pairs and make a selection; that selection may indeed be instinctive, but such a purchase may not always be […]
Riddle me this ….
We evolved: barefoot got plenty of exercise chasing animals to survive the air was fresh ate well (paleo) and had a life expectancy of 35 years Now we: wear shoes get less or no exercise the air is polluted eat junk food yet we somehow manage to live to 85 years What am I missing? […]
Arch height and running shoe prescribing …all is not as it seems?
The prevailing paradigm for a long time for the prescription of running shoes was based on concepts like the amount of “pronation”, the related issue of arch height and foot print analysis. The accumulated evidence, despite the widespread nonsensical writing about “overpronation” (and fueled by a healthy dose of the Dunning-Kruger effect) pointed to this approach […]
Is this a ‘Fadotomy’?
Until five minutes ago, I had never heard of the word ‘Fadotomy’. A fadotomy is apparently the anatomy of the transformation of a fad into the prevailing paradigm… well at least that is what one reference I could find called it, so I doubt it is going to be come the prevailing vernacular as a […]
Myofascial self release and how to ruin a good study
POSTSCRIPT: The manuscript of this paper has now been changed and a number of my comments are redundant. Please see the comments below. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I feel really sad when I see what is a well conducted and thought out study that the authors do the wrong analysis on and it got through the peer review […]
Effect of shoe drop on running mechanics
The topic of the “drop” keeps coming up and has generated a lot of interest as well as the usual rhetoric and propaganda. It is defined as the difference between the heel and forefoot height of the shoe, which is more appropriately called the ‘pitch’, but the term ‘drop’, rightly or wrongly, has become the […]
The Functional Movement Screen and Running Injuries
To be honest, the Functional Movement Screen is not something that I have really paid a lot of attention to. It is becoming a popular topic and attracting increasing attention. I have scanned some abstracts on it periodically, but it never really grabbed my attention. There have been a couple of studies of it in […]