The members of Harvard University’s men’s and women’s distance running squads are young, fast, fit, skinny, bright, disciplined and, without exception, dutiful. Every day during the cross-country and track seasons, they enter their mileage and pace into an online training Web site overseen by the team’s coaches and trainers.
They also, like most serious runners, get hurt with distressing frequency, often missing practice due to aching muscles or over-stressed bones. Each of those injuries, no matter how niggling, also gets duly reported and entered into the computer.
Meaning that these student athletes, in their high-achieving way, fashioned an excellent database through which to examine running-related injuries, as evidenced by a study published online last month in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise....To look into the issue, Mr. Daoud, who had been on the cross-country team as an undergraduate, and Dr. Lieberman not only gained access to the team’s training database, they also gathered the team members and videotaped them.
No one is always a forefoot striker or a heel striker. Your form depends on many factors, including your speed, the terrain, whether you’re tired and so on. But most of us have a predominant strike pattern, and so it was with the 52 Harvard runners. Thirty-six, or 69 percent of them, were heel strikers, while 16, or 31 percent, were forefoot strikers. The proportions were similar regardless of gender.
More interesting was the distribution of injuries. About two-thirds of the group wound up hurt seriously enough each year to miss two or more training days. But the heel strikers were much more prone to injury, with a twofold greater risk than the forefoot strikers.
This finding, the first to associate heel striking with injury, is likely to fuel the continuing and not-always civil debate about whether barefoot running is better. (It hurts to hit the ground with your heel if you’re not wearing shoes.) But both Dr. Lieberman and Mr. Daoud, now a medical student at Stanford University, are quick to point out that their study did not in any way address the merits of going barefoot.
All of the Harvard runners wore shoes, and most, as Dr. Lieberman says, “wore different shoes every day of the week.” Some ran in well-cushioned shoes and became injured, while others did not. Likewise for those who usually ran in minimal racing flats. Some got hurt; some did not. And forefoot striking, over all, was not a panacea. Many of the forefoot strikers were felled by injuries.
But in general, those runners who landed on their heels were considerably more likely to get hurt, often multiple times during a year.
Does this mean that those of us who habitually heel-strike, as I do, should change our form? “If you’re not getting hurt,” Dr. Lieberman says, “then absolutely not. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”
But, says Mr. Daoud, who was himself an oft-injured heel-striker during his cross-country racing days, “if you have experienced injury after injury and you’re a heel-striker, it might be worth considering a change.” (If you’re unsure of your strike pattern, have a friend videotape you from the side as you run, he suggests, then use slow motion to watch how your foot hits the ground.)
Entire Article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/why-runners-get-injured/
Nice article Tao. I would
Nice article Tao. I would offer the following:
Running injuries are in their simplistic form caused by one of two things (and sometimes both). 1- Overtraining, 2- technique.
Which is the more norm? Who knows. The overtrained athlete never looks at themselves as being overtrained and its hard to say if an athlete is overtrained by just looking at mere numbers. You also have to take into account rest, recovery, nutrition, sleep, stress, etc. The rule of thumb is 10% distance/ minutes each week at maximum, but again that's just a rule of thumb. Then there is the talk of intensity. How much, how often? Sometimes its good to over train (for a week or two) to stress the body and build. If you have been running for years and all of a sudden have running injuries and coincidentally have increased intensity/ duration, then your injuries are most likely caused by over training.
Injuries from technique- Now if your the type that always has injuries from running regardless of intensity/ duration then your injuries are most likely caused by technique. Now technique and shoes are two different things. If you think technique is causing your injuries then make the change (heel strike to forefront) but back off the mileage a lot and eliminate the intensity. It's gonna take a while to perfect the new running form (up to 12-16 weeks even). The best time to make this change is the lull in your season where there are no races to prep for. Don't increase the mileage or intensity till you have been able to run injury free for some time (that time frame will depend on how often you usually get injured). If you usually get injured say every 3-4 weeks, then go 6-8 weeks of of being injury free before increasing intensity/ volume. The one thing you want to be sure of is that the cause of your past problems were technique and not volume/ intensity. Lastly, DON'T CHANGE SHOES QUITE YET. Stay in the shoes you are in currently. You don't want to change too many things at once (too many variables). The funny thing about running shoes is that there have been more running injuries since the invention of the "running shoe" vs. when there were just leather soles (Converse).
Running shoes will start me on a whole other rant, but to keep it short, all these high-tech running shoes have one thing in common (except minimalist shoes) they separate the runner from the ground and mask the stress put on the legs,knees, spine, etc. I'm not an advocate for vibram or running barefoot, but there is something to what they are selling (provided your racing on just soft grass and no rocks, concrete, etc.).
Becoming and staying injury free is an art and not a science. Really understanding your body, how it responds, and know what it needs is the key. Unfortunately it takes years and years of running consistently before this language of the runners body is understood.
+1 to everything Jarhead
+1 to everything Jarhead says. I rebuilt my running over a period of time, starting with the ChiRunning technique during a seasonal down time, and eventually progressing to minimalist and barefoot-style shoes. But, I have seen a lot of people try to change too much too fast and end up injured.
To Jarhead's list though, I would add a third cause of running injuries, and that is muscular weakness and imbalance. I think a lot of times what drives poor form is an inability to hold good form due to weakness, imbalance, and/or skeletal issues/prior injuries. When I work with people as a trainer, I am amazed at how many runners/triathletes cannot do a simple squat. Have no strength in their hip flexors. Do not have enough Core muscular strength to hold themselves upright for a 10k, let alone a marathon. Have no achilles flexibility. Until these issues are resolved, working on finer points of technique may not be all that useful. A good strengthening and stretching program can prevent a lot of problems down the line.
One of the coaches I work
One of the coaches I work with says he finds that people who "only run" seem to have more injuries than people who do other sports as well as running. It could be for the reasons Ironmom listed above. I am not sure about the shoe argument, although it is easier to learn midfoot technique with a minimalist shoe.