Are frustrated by knee pain when you are running? One thing you may not have thought of as important is the strength of your calf muscles.
The muscles in the lower leg absorb a lot of force when you are running. Continue reading “Knee Pain When Running – What’s Missing?”
In my opinion, the biggest misconception about runner’s knee is that it is their quads that are the problem.
Yet why after stretching them and foam rolling them to death why is there no change in the knee pain?
Continue reading “The #1 misconception that runners have about runner’s knee?”
ITB pain or ITB syndrome, call it what you will, is a very common complaint amongst runners. Yet most runners don’t understand what is actually happening that causes the pain or what to do about it. Continue reading “What’s The Biggest Obstacle Runners With ITB Pain Face?”
There are more than 3 but will stick to the 3 biggies that I see on a regular basis.
So, do you have the drum brakes off an old 60’s Mini or some lovely ceramic monsters off a modern Ferrari?
Accelerating is easy but coming to a stop takes some serious work. In fact, I would say it is much more important than being able to accelerate. Continue reading “Mini or Ferrari – How Are Your Brakes?”
As obvious as it may sound but getting your breathing correct is really important.
I’ve noted before that I place a big emphasis on breathing during the rehab process. I do this because of how we can influence the autonomic nervous system, basically how we control whether we are in rest and digest mode or fight/flight mode.
I was reminded yesterday of how big an impact it can have.
I have to admit that the tagline on the photo is a blatant steal from the Lego Movie.
If you haven’t seen it, I have several times now, though not by choice, the main character sings this at the start of his day. Well before everything goes a bit Pete Tong and Bad Cop and President Business get in on the act.
When back pain, or any other issue, appears on the seen it can seem a bit like this where one day it’s “Everything Is Awesome” and the next it’s like you’ve been struck with the evil Kragle and can’t move.
It’s pretty hard to feel like everything is awesome at this point. Continue reading “Everything Is Awsome”
General aches and pains are part and parcel of life but they come and go. It would be unrealistic to expect to be able to avoid them if we are honest given the many different ways that they can come about.
From getting so busy at work that getting sufficient rest is an issue to stumbling whilst running for the bus. These tend to come and go. Work calms down, you get more rest and don’t notice the minor niggles anymore.
When they do persist what can be done about it?
It’s the million dollar question if I got paid every time someone asked me “is sports massage painful?” I’d be very rich indeed.
So is sports massage painful?
How long is a piece of string?
The answer is It can be, it doesn’t have to be and sometimes it’s unavoidable. Continue reading “Is sports massage painful?”
I recently posted about 3 approaches that are commonly used to reduce knee pain that don’t work, at least in the long term. But what can you do to reduce knee pain when running?
The first step with any injury/pain is to reduce the amount of the activity that brings it on. In the case of acute injuries, tears, and sprains, this is pretty obvious and initially, this will likely be that the activity is reduced to zero.
This won’t be zero activity just zero in terms of anything that is likely to stress the knee and surrounding structures whilst you go through rehab. As things improve it is ok to have knee pain when running so long as it isn’t a lot. More on that later.
What about more chronic pain or one that has come on slowly? Things like ITB syndrome, runners knee, PFP or similar problems.
The first port of call is to reduce the activity, in this case running, to the point where there is no knee pain.
To begin with this might still be zero but only for a very short period of time and only in the most severe cases. Outside of these, we need to find the combination of duration and intensity that can be done regularly that doesn’t make things worse.
