Runners are not all injured all the time and some have fewer
injuries than others, but most are interested in avoiding running injuries. And no wonder! Injuries take away from training time, making
it harder to achieve goals. They can
linger for a long time and can lessen our enjoyment of our favorite
activity. Injuries affect our walking
gait. They can be discouraging, even frustrating, and can necessitate life style
changes affecting our self image.
When we are injured,
our attention is drawn to the problem area because that is where the pain or lack
of function is manifesting itself. This
is good. It is our nervous systems way of getting our attention and having us
take care of the inflammation. But running is a whole body activity so improving
the organization of the entire activity, that is the entire self in running,
will also improve the activity of the parts. I work in physical therapy and we
often prescribe exercises or “stretches” to help strengthen the core, upper
extremity, or lower extremity, or promote more movement. This can be very effective.
However, there is an element of the process of improvement that is often
overlooked, the way we organize an entire movement, in short, our running form.
While many things may help with injury prevention or recovery, none of them can
take to place of learning to improve what we are doing.
Because of the way the human body is engineered, running is
not a simple matter of putting one foot in front of the other. We have a spine and shoulders that are
capable of moving and counterbalancing the activity of the lower body. We have
hips that are ball and socket joint and are capable of swinging and
rotating. As a result of our
construction we do not just put one foot in front of the other, but our forward
motion is a more complex sort of spiraling forward, involving a motion that
propagates from the feet upwards towards the head.
An example of what we are talking about is the knee joint
which is often mentioned by runners as a trouble spot. The knee functions
basically as a hinge joint. It cannot function alone but must always operate as
part of the kinetic chain which involves the foot, ankle, knee, and hip, and
extending to the pelvis, spine, and shoulders.
If the hinging of the knee is used as it is designed, then it is because
the hips and the rest of the movement chain are organized so that it can be used
that way. So each body part, that may be overused while running, must be differentiated
by function and then integrated harmoniously into the whole. We also need to be aware of our power center,
the hips and the core, delegating most of the work to them, so as not to abuse
the smaller parts such as the feet.
In short, nothing can replace learning, as a source of
injury prevention.
Scott Forrester conducts Awareness Through Movement ™classes
at Mountain Valley Therapy in La Grande. Contact him at scottrun400@yahoo.com
