Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Persistence Hunt - and avoiding Achilles injury!

This is a great YouTube video that shows why we are really born to run. You can see why we also have great abstract imagination - how else can you put yourself in an animals shoes and work out where it would go? Interesting to see that only one runner is chosen for the chase - this must be the tribe member with the highest proportion of slow twitch muscle fibres! Pity the guy is using running shoes though. Despite that - watch his left foot as it strikes the ground in slow motion - striking with the outside of the forefoot even though he's in clumsy modern shoes.


How ChiRunning can injure the Achilles and how to avoid this problem.
I've worked out why barefoot running has given me an Achilles tendon injury. In ChiRunning and Pose technique they talk a lot about relaxing the ankle and to avoid "pushing off" and so stressing the calves and Achilles - but there is a problem here. If you relax the ankle too much when trying to lengthen the stride behind you then it just turns into an Achilles tendon stretching exercise! The result of this is greater stress on the tendon and a shortening of the stride. If the ankle and foot are used then the stride is completed with the ankle extending and the foot flexing - lengthening the stride. Trying to completely relax and avoid pushing off causes the heel to remain on the ground as the body moves forward and for the foot to be just "picked up". This shortens the stride by almost the length of the foot and puts a slight stretch on the Achilles which eventually leads to injury. The ankle and foot have to remain active and strong so they can't be completely relaxed. The foot and ankle might not be needed directly for propulsion - but it's the final part of stabilising the height of the centre of mass as it "falls" forward - the ankle and foot lengthen the stride and maintain the constant height of the Centre of Mass. This is missed out in ChiRunning.

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