Heel Striking Leads to Injury? (Read 1215 times)

Here's the image of a different animal (not an ostrich) but illustrates well.  This kangaroo is putting her entire foot on the ground right now (you can't really see it)--not a cute joey with his paw on the ground!!. ;o)  See the round area right underneath a HUGE thigh?  THAT is the knee and you can see that on the ostrich image too.  And what goes down and, at the right angle, starts to go forward; that right angle is the heel.  The rest of it, the part you can't see, is her foot; yes, it's quite long and they don't use the entire foot to run (or leap), they only use their toes to run.  NO OTHER ANIMAL run heel-to-toe but anti-Leiberman homosapience runner.

This one shows well too.  See the similarity of how WE pedal? :

Some of you might have heard "coil effect"?  It's something about Achilles tendon needed to "be fired up" to store energy before it propels you out.  I haven't quite studied it closely but, from just a glance at it, it makes sense to me.  And no animal illustrates this coil effect better than kangaroo.  If I remember it correctly, kangaroo has the longest (per ratio) Achilles tendon in the animal kingdom and they use this coil effect very, well, effectively.  When they are resting (as the first image), you can see they put down their entire foot and you can see the knee pointing forward and ankle backward.  When they run--or hop--, they ONLY touches their toes, probably never even put their entire foot down on the ground, and create some 30-feet strides.  That's almost like world record long jump for EACH STRIDE.  But then again, they are hopping on both feet which is illegal in the long jump event... ;o)

I'm confused -- which part of the chair is the ankle and which part is the thigh?

Check out the ankle on this cougar: 

Somewhat related to what Jeff had mentioned in another thread, for distances like the marathon etc, is it possible to maintain a particular footstrike through out the marathon, especially a question to forefoot / midfoot runners who may start out that way in the race? Is fatigue and type of footstrike just correlated or is there causality as well from the former to the latter?

What about when you run trail i.e. uneven ground? There, you would have to continuously keep changing your strike pattern depending on how the ground undulates - so then, is there an optimum strike pattern for trail, if forefoot is "prescribed" for flat surfaces?

For a mediocre runner like me who wants to rise above mediocrity, i have fallen back on believing that mileage is the one non-negotiable factor in improving my running (not just mindless miles but intelligent mix-up of various workouts etc). The other is losing unwanted body weight but hopefully if i get the former right, the latter will be an outcome. Foot strikes / specific shoes / forced biomechanics etc all matter but dont take centrestage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At first, I thought they were comparing the definition on her legs but, as it turned out, I guess they call this "ostrich beach chair"...  Well, what do you know?  We learn new things every day... ;o)

Chair?  What chair?

she's married

We they all are, that's what makes them fun.