Skip to main content

Good Running Form and Technique: Just think TALL

By

Good Running Form and Technique: Just think TALL

Running Woman.jpg


Running, whether it is competitive or just for fun, is a popular sport and an affordable and efficient way to add fitness into your life. It is an important aspect of many sports such as basketball, football, soccer, and tennis, but for some, they only run and it is a passion and a way of life. Many people enjoy the occasional 5km run for cardiovascular health and exercise or they have future goals of running a half or a full marathon. Whether you run for good health, exercise fitness or competitively, running is REPETITIVE! 
Without proper running form and technique, small errors add up over time, day after day, that can lead to painful injuries. This is usually due to poor running technique, muscle imbalances or weaknesses. 
Common Running Injuries seen in practice: 
  • Repetitive Strain Injuries
  • Iliotibial Band Syndrome (knee pain)
  • Shin Splints (Pre-stress fracture)
  • Hip pain
  • Low back pain
To help combat and prevent these injuries from developing, it is important to incorporate a conditioning program into your routine as well as to practice good and proper running form to help reduce the strain transmitted throughout the tissue. Regular evaluations and treatments from a Chiropractor will also help to prevent and alleviate this accumulated repetitive trauma and help to correct any muscle imbalances that are developing.  
Guidance on Proper Running Form:
  • RUN TALL - most important thing to remember - run with your head over your shoulders, shoulders balanced over hips - avoid slouching and leaning forward!!!
  • RUN RELAXED - avoid being stiff, relaxed face, loose jaw, relaxed shoulders
  • Light foot contact - avoid being heavy and loud footed, light footwear can help
  • Ankle dorsiflexion - make sure you have good ankle range of motion - this will allow your foot to clear the ground
  • Arms swinging forward - avoid crossing your arms in front of your body
  • Practice running form during warm up and cool down


Ankle Dorsiflexion 

 
A few exercises to incorporate into your conditioning program:
  1. Leg swings
  2. Butt kicks
  3. Seated prayer moving forward
  4. Knee highs
  5. One-legged or double-legged hurdle hops
  6. Eccentric abdominal training with a theraband 
How a Chiropractor can help to improve your running form and technique
  • Chiropractors can help by evaluating your posture and biomechanical gait to detect any malalignments
  • Evaluate and correct your running form by watching a taped video of you running 
  • Detect accumulated repetitive trauma in the body
  • Provide treatment for injuries that are developing such as spinal manipulative therapy, soft tissue techniques, and therapeutic taping
  • Develop a conditioning program specific to you


~ Dr. Romana Schmidt, DC
Ankle Dorsiflexion image: By Osteomyoamare (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The amazing world of Yoga Tune-up® Therapy Balls!

By
Course materials I recently attended The Roll Model Therapy course with Rachelle Gura, a certified Yoga Tune Up®, meditation, and Pilates teacher, to expand my knowledge and skill of rolling out tight tissue and trigger points. If you haven’t heard of or been exposed to Yoga Tune-up® Therapy Balls, I would like to take this opportunity to discuss with you how great they are! Yoga Tune-up® therapy balls were developed by Jill Miller, the co-founder of Tune Up Fitness Worldwide and creator of the corrective exercise format Yoga Tune Up® and The Roll Model Method®. Yoga Tune-up® balls are these cool “grippy, pliable rubber balls that help eradicate your aches and pains and reform your body from the inside out.” They are a great take home treatment tool that I recommend to many of my patients, family and friends that are in need of joint and muscle pain relief, stiffness, and tissue tension when I’m not around! They work differently than other tools that you have around yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Famous Millennium Syndrome: Text-Neck Syndrome

By
The famous Millennium syndrome: Text-Neck Syndrome It's a busy time of year with most of us starting to stay indoors as the cooler temperatures approach us. So many of us have our heads glued to our laptops and smartphones that, if it hasn't already, is causing a tonne of strain on our neck and upper shoulders. Some of us develop neck pain and tightness in our shoulders and when it gets really bad, a constant, nagging headache sneaks up on us.  This is called  Text-Neck !  Text-neck syndrome  is a constellation of symptoms caused by a sustained stress and strain to our neck and shoulders from holding our neck forward, sometimes looking down, with our upper back hunched forward. Many of us do this for 8 hrs a day! That's a long time to hold your head in that awkward position, which is why many of us are developing text-neck! The pain and headaches are signals from our brain that something is wrong. So how do we fix...
Post a Comment
Read more
By
Welcome to my  Healthy Tips Blog!  I am happy to be able to share with you great tips on how to stay healthy, fit and feeling great! I will be posting great tidbits on a regular basis that I hope you will find educational and inspiring. Please stay tuned! ~ Dr. Romana
1 comment
Read more