Managing a Running Injury: Mandy’s Story
Sometimes it’s good to read about other peoples experiences and hopefully give you an interesting insight into how we manage injuries and address some of the physical problems which limits our patients’ efforts to participate in their chosen activities.
Mandy, one of our physios, has put herself forward to share her story. At 64 she enjoys being relatively active and in September along with her husband, started “Couch to 10K”.
- Running 24 K per week, onset pain in her left leg at night. Legs feeling tight most of the time. Physio management: reduction in weekly mileage, additional gluteal strengthening and hip flexor stretching. Hands on treatment and acupuncture settled the pain immediately.
- Post Christmas, after a period of relative rest her running distance increased to 12 K a week, alongside a strength and conditioning programme. Running okay although constant feeling of tightness in legs despite stretching regularly. Onset fidgeting legs disturbing sleep. Physio management: Running Assessment with Bev Brocklehurst:Low cadence (step rate), over stride already tensioning her tight hamstrings, and lack of general hip mobility is potentially overloading, her lower back causing irritation and referral of pain into her legs.
With focusing on running technique over the next few weeks and continuing with remedial exercises, an improvement should be seen in both performance and symptoms. It is important to note that muscles take a minimum of 8-12 weeks to begin strengthening and 6-8 weeks to lengthen.
Follow-up in the next two weeks to review symptoms and progress technique, strength and flexibility.
Bev elaborates:
You can see that Mandy has a very wide stride length, further increasing the strain on her already tight hamstrings. Combined with her general lack of hip mobility, the adjacent lower back area has to compensate and move more to make up for the discrepancy in the stiff joints. This can put a lot of stress on her lumbar spine and potentially result in referred pain down the leg. She also has a low step rate per minute (cadence) which again tends to result in increased stress on the joints and soft tissues of the legs.
You can see that Mandy has a very wide stride length, further increasing the strain on her already tight hamstrings. Combined with her general lack of hip mobility, the adjacent lower back area has to compensate and move more to make up for the discrepancy in the stiff joints. This can put a lot of stress on her lumbar spine and potentially result in referred pain down the leg. She also has a low step rate per minute (cadence) which again tends to result in increased stress on the joints and soft tissues of the legs.
Posted by: AislingBirch
Date: Sun, February 18, 2024
