Alexandra DeJong, a Sports Med Res contributor and PhD Student at the University of Virginia, leads our first webinar entitled “Pushing the Laboratory Boundaries for Analyzing Running”.
2 Comments
Nicole M Cattano
on August 12, 2019 at 7:54 pm
Great webinar! Thanks for sharing. This is all very interesting, but some of the technology is not available to the average clinicians. I like the use of a metronome, but are there any lower tech options for gait training to help clinicians to use to monitor readiness to return to play or injury risk?
On behalf of Alex:
Hi Nicole, Thanks so much for the response! I completely agree; technology can be great if your have the access, but certainly is not realistic in all settings. The types of low- or no-cost options really depend on the outcomes you are trying to change for your runners. Rich Willy and colleagues conducted a study that simply used mirrors as a form of feedback to reduce hip adduction during running for patellofemoral pain patients with successful outcomes (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22917625). Some other researchers have used very basic verbal cues such as “land softer” to effect a change in the amount of loading during the stance phase of running with similarly positive results. In terms of cadence, a verbal cue that would anecdotally be preferable is to “pick your feet up as soon as they touch the ground”, or something to this effect. Additionally, using music with a certain number of beats per minute may be useful to instruct runners to keep their cadence to the pace of the beat. These are all potential avenues to consider for inexpensive gait-training interventions. There is certainly an opportunity for continued research in this area to investigate for clinic-based gait-training. Thanks again for interacting with this post, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions or suggestions! – Alex
Great webinar! Thanks for sharing. This is all very interesting, but some of the technology is not available to the average clinicians. I like the use of a metronome, but are there any lower tech options for gait training to help clinicians to use to monitor readiness to return to play or injury risk?
On behalf of Alex:
Hi Nicole, Thanks so much for the response! I completely agree; technology can be great if your have the access, but certainly is not realistic in all settings. The types of low- or no-cost options really depend on the outcomes you are trying to change for your runners. Rich Willy and colleagues conducted a study that simply used mirrors as a form of feedback to reduce hip adduction during running for patellofemoral pain patients with successful outcomes (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22917625). Some other researchers have used very basic verbal cues such as “land softer” to effect a change in the amount of loading during the stance phase of running with similarly positive results. In terms of cadence, a verbal cue that would anecdotally be preferable is to “pick your feet up as soon as they touch the ground”, or something to this effect. Additionally, using music with a certain number of beats per minute may be useful to instruct runners to keep their cadence to the pace of the beat. These are all potential avenues to consider for inexpensive gait-training interventions. There is certainly an opportunity for continued research in this area to investigate for clinic-based gait-training. Thanks again for interacting with this post, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions or suggestions! – Alex