Lee opened a Yorkshire Sports Medicine Group meeting earlier this month on the subject of running. The brief was to walk a multi-disciplinary clinical audience — sports physicians, physios, podiatrists — through the current evidence on running re-training: whether changing a runner’s technique can improve performance and reduce injury risk.
The short answer from the literature is that it can, provided the changes are objectively measured rather than guessed at. The talk covered which gait parameters have the best evidence behind them (cadence, step length, foot strike position relative to the body’s centre of mass) and how the 3D gait analysis we run at our York Clinic lets us measure those parameters reliably and re-test after intervention.
A couple of case examples followed — patients where the data led to a specific technique change, and the change held on follow-up testing. Useful evening, good questions, and a few onward referrals into clinic since.
Speaking at and engaging with local clinical groups is part of what we do alongside seeing patients. It’s how the wider Yorkshire sports medicine community keeps up with what’s available, and it keeps us sharp as well.
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Lee Short MSc DPodM is a director and senior podiatrist at Podiatry Clinics (Yorkshire) Ltd.