Running Injury Evaluation: What You Should Know
Running is an awesome form of exercise, and in light of recent events and being stuck at home for some time, more people than ever are running as their primary form of activity. Unfortunately, as great as a “runners high” feels, sometimes we’re met with the low of a running related injury.
As a fellow runner who sustained a knee injury during peak training, I understand your frustration. Suddenly, the thing that makes you feel like you’re on top of the world is painful, uncomfortable, and much harder than usual. The good news is that you don’t have to run with pain, or even stop running, forever. We at Kinetic have some very qualified physical therapists that specialize in treating runners. Our goal is to keep you on the road, trail, or treadmill and treat your pain at the same time.
So at this point you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Okay, that all sounds great, but what makes you different from other physical therapists?”
Great question! Let me take some time to answer that for you and tell you why we are a good fit for runners.
Here at Kinetic Sports Medicine and Performance, our evaluations look quite different from your typical, run-of-the-mill physical therapy clinic. We take exquisite care to dive deeper into your injury and you as an athlete so we can provide you with the best plan moving forward.
Let’s walk through what an evaluation would look like if you were a runner that came to see us for the first time.
We’ll start by talking about your injury and going through your relevant past medical history.
- When did the pain start?
- What makes it worse?
- What makes it better?
- Any previous injury history?
We’ll also dive into your current training regime and goals.
- How many miles are you running per week?
- What kind of running workouts (tempo runs, intervals, etc.) are you doing, if any?
- What type of terrain are you training on?
- What do you do for recovery?
- Do you have any goals or races you’re signed up for in the future?
We find that learning about your running history and specific running related goals is crucial to building a plan to reach your goals as a runner.
“We find that learning about your running history and specific running related goals is crucial to building a plan to reach your goals as a runner.”
Dr. Sydney
Once we have a pretty good idea of your history and goals, we’ll get to the objective tests and measurements. Hang with me. This is the cool part of the running injury evaluation.
- Range of motion measurements, palpation, and special tests:
These are considered our evaluation basics, and include seeing how well you move and what motions cause you pain. We want to start narrowing down our list of potential diagnoses and this is a great way to start. We can get a pretty good idea of movement restrictions and what tissues are involved during this part of the evaluation.
This often gives us information about what tissue is leading to the pain or discomfort. However, we want to dig even deeper to get to the underlying cause of the injury. We believe in long term solutions and not quick fixes. If all we do is calm the pain down and we don’t address the root cause, often the pain will come back again in the future.
- Strength testing:
There are plenty of ways to track and assess strength, but in our clinic we use a dynamometer that shows the amount of force exerted against it. Unless your injury does not allow for strength testing, we always look at hip, quadricep, and hamstring strength for runners. If you are dealing with an injury, it’s extremely important that we address any deficits in an attempt to support the area as best as possible. For example, if you’re dealing with knee pain, strengthening your quads will better support your knee joint and can decrease some of your pain and discomfort as a result!
Another reason we perform strength testing is because research consistently shows that athletes who have a strength difference greater than 10% side to side (or leg to leg, in the case of runners) are at an increased risk of injury. Think about it as if you’re running with a flat tire. If you continue to run on that flat tire, the wear pattern on the rest of the “car” can be affected as well. When we assess strength, we can identify and address any deficits early as a means of preventing further breakdown that could occur. If you’re already dealing with one injury, why wouldn’t we do everything we can to avoid additional injury!?
- Force Plate:
Force plates are like a functional MRI for runners. They are basically really expensive bathroom scales that you jump on that allow us to see how you quickly produce and absorb force, and deal with impact. (Learn more about force plates)
Often, when we tell a runner we’re going to have them jump as a part of their evaluation, they look at me like I have 3 heads. But, it is always a great source of information!
When performing a force plate assessment, we can understand if you favor one leg, or if you have difficulty absorbing or producing force. What usually ends up happening is an athlete realizes, “Wow, that was really hard to do on my left leg, but was easy on my right”. So, what do you think happens when you run? Running is essentially a single leg sport! If one leg dominates the situation, we can have all sorts of issues and challenges (similar to the “flat tire” comparison in our strength assessment). The force plates give us a microscope into how your body moves and what we can do to improve it. The better you absorb and produce force on each leg, the easier it is to run!
- 3D Running Motion Capture:
Okay, this might be my favorite part of our running injury evaluation.
With 8 sensors strapped onto your trunk, legs, and feet, you’ll run either overground or on the treadmill at various speeds, based on your training. Our 3D motion system will capture a wide range of data while you run, including stride kinematics, how your body moves with each stride, foot strike, and other qualities, such as cadence and stride length. We can view this data side by side with live video of you running to paint the whole picture for the athlete and clinician. Information like this is extremely helpful for not only understanding movement characteristics that could be contributing to your pain, but it can help us better understand how to enhance your performance, as well!
At the end of the evaluation, you will have a clearer understanding of what specifically hurts, the underlying issues that are contributing to the pain, and a clear plan on how to address the issues. Then, we can get you ready to run without pain, and potentially even increase your performance!
Now that you have a better understanding of what an evaluation with Kinetic looks like, it’s time for you to come in! We want to keep you running, but if that’s not in the cards for you right now, we’ll provide you with a lot of things you can do in the meantime to better prepare you for running in the future!
Over the past three years we have worked with over a hundred Milwaukee area runners and helped them return to pain free running and improve their running performance. Learn more about our philosophy of treating runners here or reach out to schedule a free injury consult today!