Knee Pain and doing your exercises

A couple of athletes have come to me recently with knee pain. One, a very good runner, the other, an alpinist with a history including an ACL rebuild. The thing they had in common was that in the last year they had done some excellent gym work, building up their leg strength and proprioception. However, for whatever reason, in the last 6 to 8 months this level of rehabilitation, or in fact any level of work in the gym, had completely tailed off. Despite this, their levels of activity in sport had stayed the same or became greater. Everything has … Continue reading

Stop telling people to stop running

How many times have you, as a runner, been told that you have an injury and can’t run- so maybe you should go and do some swimming instead. Or yoga? How many times have you as a Therapist told a runner to do this? As a tip to the Therapists. Please don’t. It is one of the most frustrating things to hear as a runner and pretty much the worst thing you can do (in their eyes) as a Therapist. Just because someone runs as a hobby, it does not mean that they can swim – or that they enjoy … Continue reading

Is sponsorship detrimental to athletes health?

I’ll begin with a quote from a podcast I’ve just finished listening to: “Lets get a brand to put money behind the health of the athletes instead of behind the medals”. – that was a comment on a blog about RED-S by Trent Stellingwerff – (it was the Science of Sport podcast, if you’re interested). I don’t disagree with this sentiment, in fact I wholeheartedly encourage it, but I do see a couple of problems with it. In the world of elite sport, it would seem that one thing matters to sponsors. Medals. Medals bring fame, occasionally notoriety, but above … Continue reading

Where do you tie your shoe laces?

Ok- I’m not looking for the trite answer of “on the top of my shoes”- I’m thinking specifically, and the reason I ask is because it can show a couple of interesting things, and also leads to some difficult to solve (if you havent been noticing) problems. Minor case study I had a fellrunner come in for ankle pain a while ago . It was just one ankle, on the lateral (outside) area. His training had not changed in the past few weeks- similar distance, ascent, training load etc, so none of the classic problems that precede something going “wrong”. … Continue reading

Running injuries are Load management issues

I see quite a few running injuries in clinic. They basically boil down to overload – either in the short term or long term. Short term overload/ trauma: Fall over and hit a rock, twist an ankle, tweak a knee – that tends to be a short term overload. You know you’ve done something specific to a particular thing because you remember the thing that happened. Trauma is a bit of a dramatic word to associate with it, but it is the one that we tend to use. Long term overload/ training error The other end of the scale is … Continue reading

RED-S – what?!

This is something pertinent, as in the past year I have gone from not having heard of RED-S, to suggesting that patients really start thinking about it as a cause for stress fractures, and enabling them to swerve a downward spiral into long term injury and depression. Where has this come from? You may have heard of the Female Athlete Triad. Effectively it is a combination of Low energy availability, Menstrual disruption and Poor bone health. It was originally seen as a rigid structure – a diagnosis, which was not particularly useful when you have someone turning up with a … Continue reading