New trends in the prevention of running injuries (day 2)

Posted In: ChiRunning January 26th, 2011 divider No Comments »

On Saturday, we we’re pretty happy to be indoors since it was -100 outside. All the brain power in the room made it nice and toasty!

Day two was mostly about biomechanics, the type of injuries incurred by runners and running shoes. We looked at research done on each.

Again it was nice to reaffirm my beliefs that ChiRunning is the best technique to learn if you want to have proper biomechanics and minimize the risk of injuries (the focus of the entire course). Not everyone is sold on the ChiRunning “package” but it seems all the experts agree that the technique works!

We then looked at the type of injuries and stresses (mechanical vs physiological). It was interesting to note that the vast majority of injuries come from the mechanical stress and there are ways to modify that stress such as volume, intensity and cross-training.

The most interesting portion for most people was probably the work done on running shoes. We looked at studies done that show that shoes do no prevent injuries and in most cases even cause injuries. Looking at the history of shoes, the new “minimalist” shoes of 2010 look a lot like the running shoes of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

I tend to tell my clients to ease into racing flats to minimize injuries but Blaise prescribes his patients to go straight to racing flats. We’ll see how it goes over the next few months…

After the day full of sitting, the instructors and two star students (myself included) went for a nice run around Scotiabank Place. It was only about a 40 minute jog but it was nice to get outdoors and to feel somewhat hardcore considering the temperature!

Stay tuned for more info and my top five findings next post.

A bientot!

Eric