Optimal Performance and Physical Therapies/OPPT: Northdale/Carrollwood

04/03/2025

10/02/2024

06/16/2024

Hip & core exercises may help prevent running injuries! 🏃‍♂️🏋🏾‍♀️

New research from Mari Leppänen and colleagues just published in has encouraging results.

They utilised 8 exercises which could be progressed over 4 levels of difficulty (front plank, side plank, pelvic lift (bridge), band squat/ band walks, banded hip flexion, lunge,side lunges and deadlifts). The programme was completed 2 to 4 times per week. It was designed to be challenging, “The strength exercises were instructed to feel heavy and to be performed until fatigue, but with good quality”.

2 of the rehab sessions per week were supervision by physiotherapists and tended to be before running. All groups performed the same running programme to help reduce the effect of different training loads on running injury.

What about the foot and ankle strengthening?

The results weren’t as positive here and they actually faired worse than the control group in some areas. A possible reason for this is that the foot and ankle exercises may not have had sufficient load to prepare for the demands of running. For example calf work was very low level and it doesn’t appear that any additional load was added.

Did the stretching in the control group help?

The authors commented on this, “We observed a notably low number of acute thigh and calf injuries in the stretching group supporting the previous findings of possible beneficial effect of stretching on the risk of muscle injuries”. It didn’t seem to have an impact on reducing overuse injuries which are far more common in runners.

Important Considerations

The strength exercises were performed before running training which may not be ideal as it can cause fatigue. There were 8 exercises in total which took 20 to 35 minutes to do. A shorter programme may be more realistic, particularly for those with high ‘life load’! Despite this these are positive findings that hopefully can be built upon with future research

Reference: Leppänen M, Viiala J, Kaikkonen P, et al. Br J Sports Med Epub ahead of print: [7/6/24]. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2023-107926

06/16/2024

🏃‍♂️Cadence is a continuum not a magic number for all runners to aim for!

As cadence tends to change with speed, incline, body height and age it doesn’t make sense to suggest a rigid target for all (such as the ever popular 180 steps per minute)!

Instead we should look at cadence (AKA step rate/ stride frequency) in the context of the individual, their other gait characteristics and their needs.

Let’s illustrate this with a couple of clinical examples:

🏃🏽‍♀️Runner 1: Cadence of 156 at their preferred pace on the flat. Over-strides and reports patellofemoral pain when running. Goal, reducing knee pain.

Increasing cadence by 5 to 10% may help address over-striding, reduce knee load and decrease their symptoms. So we could test it and see how the runner responds but remember it’s likely to be most beneficial when used at a similar pace, incline etc.

🏃🏾‍♂️Runner 2: Cadence of 178 at goal pace on the flat. No over-striding and not injured at present. Goal, enhancing performance.

Cadence is high so a further increase may actually be detrimental to performance. If we increase it too much then there is less time to push on the ground and as a result the runner may lose flight time and stride length.

There are better options for improving performance for this runner such as optimising their training and recovery, including S&C or adding plyometrics.

And lastly… a practical point for gait analysis 👇
Make sure you record speed when assessing running gait and determining cadence. This is easy to standardise on a treadmill so you can get consistent results and see a more reliable response to your gait retraining cues.