By running style we mean your posture whilst running. We mostly develop our unique running style at a younger age and this remains with us (and often gets worse) into adulthood. Changes in posture will result in a change in angle of the Ground Reaction Force (GRF) as it passes around the foot, knee, hip and upper trunk. A change in this GRF results in a change in muscle activity around all the aforementioned joints. Often muscles are over and under worked and we can reduce this muscle imbalance by changing the angle of the GRF. And to alter the GRF to need to alter how the foot contacts the ground.
Still reading? Good, bare with us it becomes simpler…
So, based on what we have described of the GRF and its effect on muscle activity, we can assume that the wrong running style, for your body, may impact badly on the muscles and the joints of the feet, ankles, knees and hips as well as hindering your running performance!
It’s crucial to identify problems early on as ignoring them can cause serious problems for your future mobility and affect the longevity of your running career.
Although it seems like a pretty basic function, there are actually ways to run better! A Running Analysis at The Foot and Leg Clinic offers a way not just for you to avoid injury, but also for you to run at maximum efficiency and to get the very best results from your training sessions.
https://thefootandlegclinic.co.uk/running-assessment-running-analysis
Technology we use
We have heavily invested in our gait analysis software in-order to provide an accurate and interesting running assessment.
We provide a detailed report of your movement patterns captured by;
- Natural motion treadmill (only 1 in Scotland)
- Cameras positioned to capture and measure the angles of rotation around the foot, knee, hip, spine, shoulder at BOTH side of the body and front and back (we don’t just capture movements of the back of the leg).
- Sensors along the treadmill measure your step lengths and timings spent loading each different area of each foot.
- Specialist clinician
What we do with your gait analysis information
- Collecting gait analysis info is the easy part (once you have the fancy equipment). It is knowing what this information means that is important. Our biomechanical specialist clinician performs our running assessments.
- The experienced clinician can decipher the collected data to give a detailed understanding of your movement patterns, highlighting asymmetries, muscle imbalance and impairments in the neuromuscular feedback loop.
- You will be prescribed changes to your running style in conjunction with a strengthening programme to restore/improve the balance of muscle activity.
Typical advice you’ll be given
- modifications to your foot placement, body lean, rotation, arm swing,
- changing the type of footwear you run in
- creating an orthotic insole for your shoes (which we custom make from carbon fibre at our workshop here in Glasgow)
- or developing a program of strengthening / stretching exercises to reduce weakness, stiffness, tightness and joint hypermobility.
What happens when you leave the clinic
- we work in conjunction with a running coach, who will ensure these running gait changes materialise when he runs with you on a weekly basis in the real world – ie your usual running and training environment.
- Two months after the initial assessment, we review the running gait changes on the treadmill with the cameras and computer software to make sure the modifications are working for you and recommend further adjustments if necessary
