Are you experiencing running-related pain or injury?

Are you experiencing running-related pain or injury?

November 7th

Check out our Podiatric Biomechanist Pep Karalus completing a running assessment to identify three dysfunctional movement patterns that may be contributing to this clients persistent left knee pain.

Reduced right hip extension

The first dysfunctional movement pattern in this clients running that I can identify pretty quickly is his lack of right hip extension..

As a result of this, he’s spending increased time in stance phase and appears to be more flexed in his trunk.

This running posture is really inefficient and could very likely be contributing to this clients long standing history of knee pain.

A number of factors could be causing this adaptive posture, however the most common causes I see that contribute to a lack of hip extension are lack of hip mobility, pelvic stability and/or posterior chain strength.

Lateral trunk flexion to the right

The next thing I can see here is this client has a pretty significant lateral flexion of his trunk to the right.

Again, this movement dysfunction could be happening due to a number of factors that I want to assess further, but it could actually be happening as a result of his reduced hip extension on that same side. If you don’t have adequate hip or spinal mobility, the trunk will often compensate by side flexing like we can see here.

Often the upper body is forgotten about when assessing running biomechanics, however if movement dysfunctions like this aren’t addressed, then they can significantly impact how forces are transferred throughout the body and lead to unwanted pain and injury.

Poor push off

Another inefficient loading pattern I can see is this clients push off. Based off my other observations, I’m not too surprised about this as reduced hip extension, lateral trunk flexion and poor push off often present together.

From here I’d be wanting to do a more specific movement screen and in particular have a good look at this clients hip, thoracic, foot and ankle mobility, as well as his posterior and lateral chain strength. This will allow me to more accurately identify the reason for this clients knee pain and see how we can improve his loading patterns.

Often it’s a combination of some areas of the body lacking mobility, whereas others lack strength and stability.. but that’s why I love having such a great team here at Kinematics to support our clients not only with hands-on treatments, but with the right exercises to ensure we get you back moving well and pain free for the long term!

By Pep Karalus

Podiatric Biomechanist

Book with Pep here.