{"id":2517,"date":"2012-02-22T21:31:13","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T20:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/?p=2517"},"modified":"2012-02-28T00:06:10","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T23:06:10","slug":"to-strike-or-not-to-strike-that%e2%80%99s-not-the-only-question-for-running-and-injury-prevention-researchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/2012\/02\/22\/to-strike-or-not-to-strike-that%e2%80%99s-not-the-only-question-for-running-and-injury-prevention-researchers\/","title":{"rendered":"To Strike or Not to Strike? That\u2019s not the only question (for running and injury prevention)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo courtesy of Andrew Malone, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Running biomechanics and footwear\u2019s (from bare feet to orthotics) relationship to injury generates lively debate.\u00a0 And not just among sports clincians. A recent NY times article boldly asked – Does Foot Form Explain Running Injuries?<\/a> The article profile\u2019s the running professor, Daniel Lieberman\u2019s (Evolutionary Biologist, Harvard) and Mr. Daoud\u2019s (Medical Student, Stanford) research on 4 years worth of data gathered from Harvard\u2019s cross-country running team. The researchers investigated footstrike (heel vs. toe) and rate of injury.<\/p>\n

Beyond running style, Lieberman advocates for daily physical activity. In the BMJ podcast, Evolved to Run<\/a> (that also features Steven Blair and Karim Khan), you\u2019ll hear Lieberman say:\u00a0 \u201cwe live in an abnormal world where people sit all day long.\u201d What Lieberman positions as \u2018normal,\u2019 from an evolutionary perspective, is human bodies adaptation to having physical activity integrated into daily activities. In short \u2013 \u2018the abnormality\u2019 results from the dissonance between being \u2018built to run\u2019 and the post-industrial epidemic of sedentary behavior. You\u2019ll hear more on the impacts of physical inactivity and the \u2018 physical activity dose\u2019 required\u2019 to increase health from Blair and Khan on that \u00a0podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lieberman and Daoud concluded that \u201crunners who landed on their heels were considerably more likely to get hurt,\u201d but a forefoot running strike did not neccessarily prevent injury. Also, the researchers caution against changing your running style if you are injury-free.<\/p>\n

And BJSM readers will know that ground\/foot impact is not the only factor to take into account. What about knee and hip control? Also from Harvard, PT Professor Irene Davis illustrated that gait retraining – providing runners with feedback about landing forces – swiftly reduced anterior knee pain. Read the (free) Editor\u2019s Choice article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, while it may be premature to (run or) jump to conclusions about any one \u2018superior\u2019 approach to running, it\u2019s clear \u00a0that 30-60 minutes of forefoot and\/or heel striking is better than no strike at all.<\/p>\n

Related BJSM Articles <\/strong><\/p>\n

RF Pinto, TR Souza, and CG Maher. 2012. External devices (including orthotics) to control excessive foot pronation<\/strong>. Br J Sports Med. <\/cite>46:110-111.<\/a><\/p>\n

K Mills, \u00a0P Blanch, \u00a0P Dev, \u00a0M Martin, \u00a0and B Vicenzino. 2011. A randomised control trial of short term efficacy of in-shoe foot orthoses compared with a wait and see policy for anterior knee pain and the role of foot mobility . <\/strong>Br J Sports Med. <\/em>Published Online First: 18 September 2011<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Hirschm\u00fcller, \u00a0H Baur, \u00a0S M\u00fcller, \u00a0P Helwig, H-H Dickhuth, \u00a0F Mayer. 2011. Clinical effectiveness of customised sport shoe orthoses for overuse injuries in runners: a randomised controlled study. <\/strong>Br J Sports Med<\/em>. 45:959-965 Published Online First: 12 August 2009<\/a><\/p>\n

RTH Cheung, RCK Chung, \u00a0GYF Ng. 2011. Efficacies of different external controls for excessive foot pronation: a meta-analysis<\/strong>. Br J Sports Med <\/em>2011;45:743-751 Published Online First: 18 April 2011<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Running biomechanics and footwear\u2019s (from bare feet to orthotics) relationship to injury generates lively debate.\u00a0 And not just among sports clincians. A recent NY times article boldly asked – Does Foot Form Explain Running Injuries? The article profile\u2019s the running professor, Daniel Lieberman\u2019s (Evolutionary Biologist, Harvard) and Mr. Daoud\u2019s (Medical Student, Stanford) research on 4 […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,1,187,1811],"tags":[2024,2815,8272,2649,2814],"class_list":["post-2517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debates","category-uncategorized","category-hot-topic","category-injury-prevention","tag-bjsm","tag-footstrike","tag-injury-prevention","tag-lieberman","tag-running-injuries"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}