New trends in the prevention of running injuries (day 3)

Posted In: ChiRunning January 27th, 2011 divider No Comments »

Last post on the course I’ve been telling you about for a few days. For this month anyway!

Sunday started with a recap of the first two days and then we got down to the new business. It was all about orthodics, surfaces, training programs, conditions that occur in the longer races and ended with tips and tricks of the trade by Blaise.

The orthodics part was a bit bold for some folks as Blaise spoke about them being overprescribed and not always fulfilling their need. The case was made for an orthodic for the short term for some specific cases such as metarsal proplems.

Contrary to popular beliefs, surfaces do not change the ground reaction force as our feet adapts to the change if you have proper running form. That was startling but test it out for yourself next time you’re out. Just make sure you’re not wearing the big bulky shoes as your feet won’t be able to interpret the difference!

The talk about training programs centered around gradual progress but didn’t reveal any new theories from what I could tell. It was similar to the stuff I heard when I did my ChiRunning and triathlon coaching certifications. Blaise made some great points about varying the different types of stress to make sure your athletes aren’t doing the dreaded “too much too soon”.

Blaise then highlighted some of the conditions that occur during races and it seems that hyponatremia due to excessive water intake was the most observed condition in races, not dehydration. Keep that in mind next time you do a marathon!

Top five trends I got from the course:
1. The body will adapt
2. Ground reaction force is what causes injuries
3. Minimalist shoes are the way to go
4. Exercising will help in the long run, even if injuries occur
5. ChiRunning is the best technique out there to learn proper biomechanics

Here it is, a 3-day course in less 1000 words!

Send me questions if you would like to know more about the course or my views on it. It covered a lot of different conditions and I’m trying to keep it brief on here so if you have/had any injuries, drop me a line or simply comment.