Lower extremity stiffness (“leg stiffness”) describes the resistance the joints and muscles in your lower body will have to movement when your foot contacts the ground during running. Think of your leg as a spring; the more tightly coiled spring will be stiffer, the more loosely coiled will be more deformable. A stiffer leg is...
Cadence, or the amount of steps taken each minute, is a common and effective running assessment. This assessment can be done in both healthy and injured runners, but its’ modification is most impactful in the latter group. In our Boulder Physical Therapy practice, we routinely utilize running gait retraining to reduce abnormal forces in the...
With access to miles of paths and acres of open space running remains one of the most popular outdoor activities in Boulder. Despite its’ accessibility, low cost of participation, and health benefits running related injuries keep many from training or competing at their preferred levels. One recent area of research has focused on gait retraining...
Despite improvements in coaching, training schedules, and running shoes the vast majority of runners can expect a running related injury in their career. The majority of these injuries are overuse in nature secondary to an overload of the injured tissue (muscle, bone, joint, tendon). In short, too much too soon without adequate time for tissue...
Running remains one of the most popular forms of exercise due to its’ convenience, low cost of entry, and aerobic efficiency. It is difficult to replace the same health benefits you receive from a 30 minute run with another mode of activity. Unfortunately the rates of running related injuries have not been reduced with improvements...
Running economy, similar to miles per gallon in a car, is the amount of oxygen and energy required to propel a runner over a given distance. In addition to fuel utilization, runners with better economy demonstrate better running form and a faster processing of metabolic wastes during exercise. This measure has been shown to have...
Many high level and recreational runners avoid weight training due to fear of building muscle or bulk which may be detrimental to their performance. On the surface this argument makes sense because a larger runner would have to expend more resources (fuel, oxygen) at at given speed and distance. One of the first flaws in...
Previously it was thought Physical Therapists should withhold strength training from endurance athletes or have athletes perform exercises with high reps (>15) and low weights (30-45% 1 rep max). These incorrect guidelines and prescriptions created insufficient training loads in endurance athletes and even worse led many endurance coaches and athletes to avoid weight training all...
Distance runners are a frequently injured group of athletes with up to 90% reporting a running related injury requiring time off from training or competition. Authors report low back pain is one of the most common sites of pain likely secondary to underlying core and hip weakness. Runners repeatedly land with 2-6 x times their...
There are few clinical examples that remind me of how far we have come in orthopedic Physical Therapy practice than assessing bony SI landmarks. As the popular clinical pendulum swung these landmarks were assessed in patients presenting with low back pain to hip pain and even to distant regions such as ankle and neck. Thankfully,...
