From the category archives:

Sports Medicine

Achilles Tendinopathy and Body Mass Index

May 18, 2013

Achilles tendinopathy is no different to any other overuse injury in that the cause is the cumulative loads in the tissue are beyond what the tissue can take. There are a number of factors that increases the cumulative loads and make the tissues more susceptible to those loads

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Preferred Foot Strike Pattern and Soft Tissue Vibration

May 18, 2013

The simplified version of the ‘ Preferred Motion Pathway ‘ model is that each individual has a preferred pathway for a given task (and that will vary from person to person). The model considers that if you function within that pathway, then you are more efficient and have a less risk for injury. If you function outside that preferred pathway, then you are inefficient and at greater risk for injury

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Are there really that many ‘dumb’ runners doing this?

May 15, 2013

I had to roll my eyes at this in my alerts this morning.

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Foot Strike Pattern and Injury Rates

May 14, 2013

Like the running economy and footwear type issue, I have been meaning to write for a while an article that summaries the studies on the differences in injury rates between heel strikers and non-heel strikers; but before I got to doing it another two studies appear, so its worth writing about those. To date we have 4 studies (now 6) that have looked at this: Daoud et al (2012) was a retrospective review of 52 almost elite level track runners ( that are not close to being representative of typical runners ) which found the injury rate in the heel strike group was almost double the forefoot striking group.

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Running Shoes and Running Economy

May 14, 2013

I have been meaning for a while to write an article on all the differing results on the studies that have looked at running economy in traditional running shoes vs barefoot or minimalism. I wanted to create a table of all the studies to look at the results. I still will do that, but we have just had a flurry of new studies on this topic in the abstract book for the American College of Sports Medicine meeting to be held in Indianapolis 28 May-1 June.

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Running Asymmetry, Loading Rate and Injury Risk

May 14, 2013

Asymmetry in the gait is common and is assumed to not necessarily be a good thing for a unidirectional activity such as running, especially if the asymmetry is in impact loads. Various intervention strategies are often used to make the gait more symmetrical, if the asymmetry is assumed to contribute to any injury or gait inefficiency that is present. There is always a few exceptions to these assumptions by appealing to the occasional elite runner who does run with an asymmetrical gait

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Latest Figures and Surprise Comment on Running Shoes Sales

May 12, 2013

The commentary on athletic foot sales for the first quarter of 2013 has just come out from SportsOneSource . The analyst, Matt Powell made the following comments: Running, declared dead by the stock market, continues to accelerate. Sales of Running shoes grew in the high singles for the period.

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Funny: Hitler’s Barefoot Running Strategy

May 8, 2013

Some light relief: As always, I go where the evidence takes me .

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Behavioural Risk Factors for Running Injury

May 8, 2013

This is getting somewhat out of my area of expertise, but I still going to write about it! This study looked at a selected group of parameters to prospectively determine which one of them was a risk factor for a running related injury.

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Tibial strain and barefoot running

May 8, 2013

Tibial strain and impacts have been getting a lot of attention lately due to all the comments about heel striking being the cause of most running injuries (its not) and this is an important reason why there should be a midfoot or forefoot strike when running. Transitioning away from a heel strike does reduce that ground reaction impact, but it is not possible to reduce the load on one group of tissues without increasing it on another group of tissues. There has been very little attention in the literature to the increased load on other tissues to offload the tibial impacts.

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