Gait Analysis: Retrain your gait for 62% less injuries
Chan et al. (2018)’s recent study: Gait Retraining for the Reduction of Injury Occurrence in Novice Distance Runners. Illustrates a lot of important points about gait, and running pain.
It’s well known that around 85% of beginner runners experience an injury in the first year of running. This study set out to find out whether or a gait retraining intervention for these beginners would reduce their rates of injury for the next year.
This study was a randomised controlled clinical trial, with a group of 320 beginners split up into two groups. Both groups received 2 weeks of training with 4 sessions per week. The first received a specific gait retraining intervention. The other group just practised running on a treadmill.
The proposed mechanism of action was through reducing their vertical ground reaction forces during normal gait. There is a strong association between high ground reaction forces on landing, and many common running injuries, such as shin splints, and stress fractures. This is due to higher forces at the moment of ground contact, being poorly shock absorbed by the runner.
After training, the gait intervention group showed significantly lower rates of vertical loading forces, compared to the partial intervention group after the two weeks training. At a follow up, one year after the intervention, the rates of injury were 62% lower in the intervention group.
This shows us that gait ground reaction forces are not fixed variables, but rather alterable metrics that have real world implications for injury. Using visual feedback to quantify and communicate this information to the runner, can help them alter their gait for the better. These changes are long lasting, they aren’t a quick fix, they’re changing a lifetimes habits for the better. So much time and money can be saved through prevention, rather than merely treating common running injuries.
You can see an example of how I personally resolved 4 years of chronic shin splints through gait retraining here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MikPqDG5ZCE
I go through step by step, all the processes involved.
