Notes
Tuesday I went to the UVa SPEED Clinic, where I worked through my gait and various injury issues with Jay Dicharry. (See http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=21192&CategoryID=&PageNum=1).
Whoa, was that a mind-blowing experience. After a 45 minute review of my injury history and some physical assessment, he put me on a $750,000 treadmill so he could see trace the force dynamics of my strides. The machine showed exactly how much force my foot was exerting on the treadmill, creating an EKG-like trace I could see on the computer monitor in real time. After the treadmill Jay worked through a bunch of exercises to rebalance my muscles and allow me to run with better form. All told it took about 2.5 hours for the whole visit.
Basically, while I tend to run on the mid-foot and with high cadence (both good), I don't have proper hip extension, which is cutting off my backswing. The result is an imbalanced gait, with the muscles in the front of the leg (i.e., hip and quads) doing too much of the work vis-a-vis the muscles in the back of the leg (i.e., glutes and hamstrings). This causes a kind of shock force at the front end of each stride. If I were running with perfect form the form the force trace would look like a sine curve with weight being smoothly exerted and released on the treadmill. Instead, at the front of each 'uphill' in the curve (i.e., where my foot first hits the ground and starts to take on weight) there is an 'eccentric shock' bump where the force rises way too fast. The shock is really hard on the legs, and probably causing a lot of my foot/ankle injuries.
To fix the problem in my stride I'm supposed to work on my posture and my backswing. If successful, I will stop 'reaching forward' so much and getting that nasty shock force on each stride. It's going to take a bunch of practice.
I will also have to do a bunch of glute and balance exercises to get the backswing working. I need to do more core anyway, so I guess I'm looking forward to that. Sort of.