Training, injuries, coaching, and more
Do you have a sharp, aching pain on the top of your foot when you run? If so, it might be a metatarsal stress fracture. The metatarsals are perhaps the most elegant bones in your lower body. The five long, slender bones extend from your midfoot to your toe joints, and despite their small size, ... Read more
An MRI reveals a tibial stress fracture Traditionally, overuse injuries to the bone in distance runners are divided into two distinct categories: stress reactions and stress fractures. Runners who develop pain along one of their bones hope desperately that they have the former and not the latter, since the usual prescription for stress fracture recovery ... Read more
Introduction Achilles tendonitis is an extremely common injury, not just in running but in many sports. The severity of overuse injuries to the Achilles tendon can range from dull soreness that barely impacts your ability to run or play sports to chronic, debilitating pain that can last for months or years. Fortunately, due to its ... Read more
In the course of writing my previous article on tibial stress fractures, I did a lot of thinking and reading about the role of impact and leg stiffness in the genesis of injury. There’s a lot of back-and-forth on the subject, with few clear answers from the wealth of research that’s been done. Before we ... Read more
Tibial stress fractures are related to medial tibial stress syndrome, which you can read about here For an in-depth discussion of return-to-running programs after a stress fracture or stress reaction, see this article This installment of the Injury Series deals with tibial stress fractures, one of the most serious of the common running injuries. A ... Read more
Two very different footstrikes captured on high-speed video This post is a bit behind the times, but I thought I'd get it out there regardless. This post is a short analysis which takes a look at the latest research from Daniel Lieberman's lab at Harvard University. Lieberman is, of course, famous for his paper on ... Read more
Today we are tackling the most common running injury of all: patellofemoral pain syndrome, alternatively known as runner’s knee, anterior knee pain, and (sometimes erroneously) chondromalacia or chondromalacia patellae. As is often the case, there is some controversy about the naming. “Patellofemoral pain syndrome” or PFPS is the broadest and most common term, but is ... Read more
It's been a while since we've thoroughly reviewed an injury, so today we'll be looking at another one of the "big five" most common running injuries. We've already seen how treatment for Achilles tendonitis has been revolutionized by specific eccentric exercises to remodel damaged tendon collagen; today's topic is iliotibial band syndrome, sometimes also referred ... Read more
Introduction Back in August, we saw how a rehab program consisting of eccentric heel drops with a bent and straight knee reversed damage to the Achilles tendon by inducing collagen remodeling. One thing I didn't make clear enough is that Alfredson's eccentric heel drop protocol, developed in 1998, was designed for midpoint Achilles tendonitis. In ... Read more
Note: Patellar tendonitis should not be confused with patellofemoral pain syndrome, or "runner's knee," a different injury in the kneecap area with a different ideal treatment protocol Last time, we saw how an injury rehab protocol consisting of eccentric heel drops can remodel collagen in an injured Achilles tendon. The intervention was impressive for two ... Read more