Do Simple Running Technique Changes Reduce Pain and Change Injury Causing Mechanics

Plain-language summary

This project aims to investigate whether an increase in step rate can be used to reduce pain and injury causing movement patterns in runners who are currently experiencing achilles tendonopathy, iliotibial band syndrome, patellofemoral pain syndrome and medial tibial stress syndrome. Many injuries have been reported to share similar injury causing movement patterns. For example iliotibial band syndrome and patellofemoral pain syndrome have been reported to be caused by increased side to side drop of the pelvis and inward movement of the hip. Gait retraining is a method of changing the way people run in order to change movement patterns.Increasing step rate may present a gait retraining method that does not pose further injury risks and can be used across multiple different injury populations. Studies have shown increasing step rate can reduce frontal plane movement patterns at the pelvis, hip and foot as well as reducing sagittal plane joint angles such as ankle dorsiflexion. Based on the changes in movement patterns increasing step rate has been recommended as an intervention for the treatment of patellofemoral pain syndrome, medial tibial stress syndrome, iliotibial band syndrome and achilles tendonopathy. Therefore this study aims to investigate whether an increase in step rate can reduce pain and change injury causing mechanics in runners currently running with patellofemoral pain syndrome, iliotibial band syndrome, medial tibial stress syndrome or achilles tendinopathy. The aim of the project is to use a simple gait intervention, increasing step rate to investigate if this technique change can reduce pain immediately, at short term follow up and long term follow up. The project will also look at whether an increased step rate can be maintained at follow up and whether this changes movement patterns proposed to be the cause of injury. Runners will be recruited from local running clubs and competitions using poster advertisement at running clubs and emailed to running clubs

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