Category: Biomechanics

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Supination Resistance

Supination Resistance is another one of those topics that I find myself writing about a lot (eg here and here)and something I have been banging on about in my Clinical Biomechanics Boot Camps for years.That is how important I think that the concept is.

The concept has its origins in the concept of overpronation probably not be all that it is cranked up to be, so rather than focus on “overpronation” perhaps he focus should be on the forces that are associated with the function of the foot and pronation. It just makes a lot more intuitive sense o be focusing on the forces rather than the motions. It is the forces that actually do the damage to the tissues rather than motion. Motion is not painful.

I have certainly done a lot of research on it and unfortunately never quite got to publishing it. I did summarize most of the research done in this post.

This video from PodChatLive on the supination resistance text brought together all the researchers on this topic.

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Peroneal Tendonitis

You see peroneal tendinitis come up often as questions in forums, so a while back I wrote a lengthy post on it that a lot of people refer to, which is great as I really wanted to get the information out on this.

It is a condition that I often see from comments in forums that is frequently mismanaged. I do spend a lot of time on it at my Clinical Biomechanics Boot Camp course and like to tell the story about how I used to hate seeing it as my success rate used to be close to 100% failure; now its close to 100% success. The change was that dramatic once i realized what was going on with it; hence my reason for writing the blog post that I referred to above.

HINT: it almost always occurs in those with low supination resistance.

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Wacky Tastes in Running Shoes

I have pretty much been running on and off my whole life. As of late, I have struggled a lot due to workload issues to find the time to do as much as I would like and an old injury with a bit of osteoarthritis now. I do plan on getting back and running another marathon within the next few years if I can, but let’s just wait and see.

I have had a lot to say about running (I obviously have a blog on running) and running shoes are no exception. Usually, I have run in what is the most traditional running shoe of the time. Lately, I have been mixing it up. The evidence does support having more than one different shoe in the rotation to mix things up to load different tissues differently. This does seem to have a protective effect for injury.

Recently I have tried a couple of unusual shoes and am aware of another in the mix.

I do some of my runs in the Airia One’s and have blogged about them. This is a shoe with a lateral slant in the forefoot, zero drop and a large toe spring. It certainly makes you run differently and use a different set of tissues.

I also recently got a pair of Enko’s which is spring loaded in the heel. Running in them is certainly a very different experience. I see a lot of anecdotes from people who had to give up running, now able to run because of these shoes. What I find intriguing in social media about these is the number of negative comments from those who have not tried them … go figure that one out.

The third shoe in the mix is the Ampla which has a spring loaded plate on the forefoot to help encourage you to run on the forefoot rather than heel strike. It came on to the market at a time that all the rhetoric and propaganda was that heel striking is evil and everyone should be forefoot striking. Turns out all that rhetoric and propaganda was wrong, but that has never stopped people in the past.

One thing I do find interesting about these “tech” shoes is the criticism of them in social media from those who have not even seen them, let alone tried them.

Mix it up. I do. The evidence supports that.

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Anterior Compartment Syndrome

This is something I have a lot to say about and talk about a lot during the Clinical Biomechanics Boot Camps. The main reason I like talking about it is that it is something I used to hate seeing. The % of successful outcomes with conservative treatment was almost always pretty close to 100% failure. Surgery was always a good option to send these people of to. That was until this study and discussion here. Transitioning a runner from a heel strike to more of a forefoot strike and shortening the stride length to increase cadence now has a pretty close to 100% success rate! I like talking about that.

However, what makes it interesting is considering this in the context of how much evidence is needed to change clinical practice. As all we have is that one small study, which has no control group (but the results were dramatic) and a biologically plausible and theoretically coherent mechanism. I like to ask people is that sufficient to change clinical practice? Theoretically it should not be. In a perfect world, clinical practice does not change until there is enough randomized controlled studies to be combined into a meta-analysis to show that we should change practice. Unfortunately, the real world and clinical practice does not work that way. This study on anterior compartment syndrome makes for an interesting discussion point on my courses.

I have been talking about this as part of the Clinical Biomechanics Boot Camps for many years now. What is really flattering is when a participant in one of those courses contacts me down the track to say they tried what I suggested and it works. I like talking about that.