INJURY FREE RUNNING - The Alluring Promise And the Disillusioning Truth

I was forced to write on this topic by my daughter Lana, who felt that we were leaving this area in a shadow, in an equivocal, illusive state, as if it's something that people can handle by the way, by some magic trick, pill, new shoes, equipment, overnight change of something or by some "simple" formula, etc. I could continue this list forever, but I guess you get the idea.

The underlying ground for our discussion should be an old saying, "there is no such thing as a free lunch", which I often heard from my good friend, a very successful Miami lawyer. It is very true in reference to nature as well. We have to pay the price for everything we get with our labor, as was pointed by Leonardo da Vinci. We have to accept this, whether we like this or not.

So where does this injury free running come from? If it is so simple, why don't we get any positive results for such a long time? Injury problems in running emerged in the 70s, when the running boom hit the western world as a new fashion wave of healthy society development. It was the way out for the modern people to save themselves from self destruction through alcohol and tobacco abuse, from psychological stress of intense work and social conflicts.

Running came as the savior. But it wasn't as simple as we all thought about it before. Together with pleasure, injuries came as a sudden cold shower. In the 1977 survey Runner's World magazine stated that 2 from every 3 runners were injured every year in the US. By that time there were over 15 million runners only in the US. It became a real problem. What was the solution?

Actually the solution hasn't been found to this day. At the last ASCM annual meeting in June 2005, in Nashville, Tennessee, I was surprised to learn from the speaker delivering a speech on "Running injuries: prevention and treatment" the striking number of 85%. This many runners are injured annually in the US. A stunning "progress" after 30 years of hard work! Please, forgive my sarcasm, but I can't accept these numbers quietly, because behind these numbers are real people with their real pain, frustration and suffering. Think about the costs of these injuries for them and society in general!

Now I know why sometimes at my clinics all 100% of attendees were injured people. I thought that I am just dealing with a specific group of population trying to resolve their problems through learning how to run proper.

So, no matter how hard we were trying to fight the problem during these 30 years by improving the shoes, methods of training, and medical methods of treatment, by advancing knowledge of coaches and runners themselves, by doing a lot of scientific research, by publishing tons of new books and articles about running, we actually failed. Everybody seemed to gain from the running boom: shoe and outfit manufactures, coaches, doctors, writers and runners as well to a certain extent, only they still continue to suffer from their injuries as they did before. Nothing helped.

In the long list of causes of injuries researchers usually include many things: too much too soon, too quick of increase of volume and intensity of running, wrong shoes, wrong surface for running, anatomical misalignment of the runner's body ("bad genes"), etc., but nothing related to running itself, the way we run, the technique.

How did we forget about this thing? God knows. But, I think, it's because we never thought it could be the real and the strongest factor of the problem. We just missed it, we just didn't even think about it, because running is so "simple" that we don't need to be concerned about it. This ignorance cost us tremendously up to date. As Derek Bok said: "If you think that education is expensive, try ignorance".

We have to step away from the illusions of the past - that something will solve our problems overnight, the illusions that medical treatment will help. Yes it will help, but only if you drop the running from your weekly routine while going through the treatment. You can get a cortisone shot to keep your pain down, but it will last only for as long as you continue the shots.

You can even somewhat recover if you just stop running for a while, but you'll be upset and frustrated from inability to run. You can buy some new shoes, which offer various types of cushioning, stability and motion control, something very illusive and suspicious. If you think, that this is a substitute of what the brain with billions of cells and their divine organization are supposed to do, than you reasonably will doubt it. We can insert customized orthotics in our shoes, but it's like giving you a cane instead of developing your muscles. Is that what we really are looking for?

Is there a way to run happily without pain? Are the running injuries fatal and is the negative outcome a form of payment for our dedication, pleasure and passion? I am positive about this, but please take notice that there still is a price for getting to this state of running. The answer is really simple, and without any tricks and magic overnight transformations from injured to a healthy runner. We have to change the state of our mind first. We are survivors, and this is a very specific state of our mind. Lawrence Gonzales in his book "Deep Surviving" pointed out that one of the most important conditions of surviving is facing the reality.

What is the reality of our running injuries? They've been appearing already 30 years despite our many efforts and approaches, so it should be "something else" there which was not looked at before. What did we miss there? Let's begin with the skill of movement or running technique. It was completely ignored for 30 years, but fortunately it is slowly changing now. I see the signs of it everywhere. The last year in October issue Runner's World magazine published an article about the Pose Method and called it "Save your knees". More and more people now are interested in the running technique. Several books have appeared on the market about running technique and different methods of teaching. All of them are promising to reduce the injury rate in running. So, it looks like the "ice" is breaking.

Nevertheless, we are still far a way from a satisfactory resolution of the present condition of the problem. Which direction do we need to move in? As I mentioned already, we have to change the state of our mind and accept the simple fact that injuries are a result of a lack of education and skill development. We need to conceptualize the injury problem and build the logical structure of our knowledge about them, transferring it to the practical field of running. We can prevent them just by knowing where they come from and what we are supposed and not supposed to do.

What does the above statement mean? It means that in order to run injury free we have to work on it.

Dr.Romanov

To be continued next Tuesday!