Injured Athletes Part #2

Yesterday we went over how frustrating it is to see so many athletes injured in the sport of Track and Field. Specifically the runners. It is such a fundamental part of our physical lives. The ability to run is so incredibly easy as a young kid. Why walk to the end of the sidewalk when you can sprint to it? Why run to the end of the sidewalk when you can run to it, turn around and run back, then run back to the end again. This is the mentality most young kids have. They choose to run everywhere they go simply because it is fun and for them it is effortless.

We lose this ability as we age and no it is not simply due to age. We slowly become less active as we age and the less active webecome the less stimulus our muscular system gets which leads to a lack of overall muscular efficiency. I realize this is not always the case. I have had plenty of clients who sat around all the time as young children and then tried to become more active as adults. It is usually quite the project and typically they are lacking in some key areas of power and speed that were never fully developed when they were young.

There is a very specific muscular sequence that is required for us to be able to run without any resistance in our strides. Why are some distance runners able to do 60, 80, even 10 miles a week or more without any negative side effects at all while others battle constant shin splints, plantar fasciitis, muscle pulls, and other tendonitis issues? The difference is the efficiency of the machine they are working with.

Check out this link to the Medicine Plus Medical Encyclopedia. In it they list out several different gait patterns in regards to walking, then list out the various causes of why someone would have these issues. Here is a fun experiment for you to try. Go to a local busy park where there will be a significant amount of walkers and runner. Watch their gait patterns and you will be amazed at how much different one person will look from the next.

I looked for quite awhile on the internet and noticed that almost all research and studies in regards to gait pattern dealt with groups of individuals with some form of  birth abnormality or with individuals who were already suffering from a symptom of a poor gait pattern such as osteoarthritis in the knees. I was unable to find any research as to why individuals have various gait patterns who are not suffering from some kind of physical ailment or disease.

So how can it be that we all have such various patterns as we walk and run if we all have the same basic muscular system? In our opinion these variations come from several factors. Genetics plays an obvious roll but the most important factor of all is the type of stimulus that we give to our muscular system. This is where the training component comes in. Training for a balanced muscular system and one that is able to utilize the proper muscular patterns to promote efficient movement of the skeletal system is in our opinion, the secret to being able to run without the risk of both pain and injury.