When you switch from walking 🚶 to running 🏃, have you ever thought what you change? Of course you don’t! It’s so engrained in our motor patterns, that we don’t think of what running actually is
There’s a few changes:
🔺A ‘Flight’ Phase (that’s right, you’re literally floating )
🔺More Joint Range of Motion
🔺More Ground Reaction Force 💥
🔺More Eccentric Muscle Use (Muscles work to control you landing)
This circles back to injuries ➡️ if you haven’t ran or played a sport in YEARS, you’re using muscles and joints that haven’t been active at that level
This is especially important when you’re ‘floating’ and the lead foot 👟 makes first contact with the ground (stance phase). A few things happen ➡️
🔹The shin muscles contract to stabilize foot landing
🔹The quad muscles contract to slow knee flexion
🔹The side-hip muscles contract to stabilize 〰the pelvis
The whole process loads the joints and muscles up to 4️⃣times your body weight when you jog (Nilsson, 89)
This is all good when you run around the block . But say you go for that Marathon your friend signed you up for? You take around ~ 55,000 steps during a marathon! It means if you have a flaw during ➡️ landing ➡️stance phase, this is magnified over FIFTY THOUSAND times. Even worse if you’re tired 😴
