Tag Archives: rehab

Day 3: Top 5 gifts for Endurance Athletes

OK gang – let’s say that you are an athlete who has to stand on one leg at some point in your sport. This could be running straight ahead, cutting laterally on the soccer field, jumping up for a rebound during a game of pick up – literally any weight bearing sport! You need to learn how to properly USE your foot. So many running athletes don’t have proper coordination of muscles inside their foot. If you can’t move your foot, your foot position will fall apart when running, jumping, cutting, and anything else you do.

What’s the secret?

#1 – understand your foot. Years ago, I made this video for Running Times. The focus was on how to prepare your foot for minimal running shoes (because that was the trendy thing to talk about at the time) but let’s be 100% honest here – the criteria I point out are valid and critical for ANY running athlete. So take a look at it, and make sure you can separate out the “right way” to use your foot muscles. Yes, its hard for most of you, and yes it gets better really, really quickly if you invest a few minutes a day. If you want more, check out my interview with Ryan at MOVEMENT FIX where we talk in depth about how feet work, and how to make your work better!

#2 – buy a MOBO Board

This is a 2021 update. In the past I recommend a rocker board…..but those still let you cheat the way your foot works. I saw a problem in need of a fix, and developed, patented, and launched MOBO. Yes, I made the thing your body needs, yet you didn’t know exists. Want to become durable? Want to become BETTER? Want to improve your performance? Check out moboboard.com and see what you can do to improve your connection point to the ground – your feet!!!

Note – the rocking motion in MOBO is quite different than a “wobble” board. A rocker board pivots around 1 single axis and is great to “train” proper foot stability. A wobble board is essentially a ball on the bottom of the board and is completely unstable in all directions. Sure, a wobble board is more unstable, but its one situation where more instability isn’t better. And the cur out for your toes take the experience to another level entirely, and doesn’t allow you to “cheat” with the muscles in your calf and cues you to use the muscles IN your feet! Get a MOBO board, and have fun improving your balance!

The Traveling Runner: how to maintain benefits from weights when you don’t have a gym

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Does anyone else live in a bubble where time-zones tick by as fast as minutes? Last night I got back home from one trip, unpacked, repacked, and flew off again this morning….traveling can be tough on our routines, and unfortunately, wreak havoc on our athletic efforts. Let’s face it, on some trips we have hours on end to utilize the high end gym (that is likely nicer than the one you have at home!). But for most of the time, it’s a pulley machine, a swiss ball, and a treadmill stuck in a standard sized hotel room masquerading as a “gym”. Not really an ideal environment to push the limits. And on top of limited equipment, you likely only have about 30 min between answering emails from your “regular work” on top of everything else demanding time on your trip. So how do you maintain your benefits of your weight work while facing the demands of traveling?

Its easy to say – OK – no weights, I’ll just go for an easy run. No harm in this at all. But for those of you really dedicated to making gains while on the road, there is a will, and a way. Take a look again at the previous post on ways to improve your neuromuscular recruitment. If the weight room isn’t set up to help you kickstart those fast twitch fibers, hitting some local hills, or even doing sprints in the parking lot go a long way.

But remember, the goal of these is to go HARD. Really hard. As hard as you are working on the last few reps in the weight room. And to go that hard, it means you have to rest between intervals. For those of you who think that rest is only for the weak, let’s look at what sprinters do. People who run hard for a living (sprinters) take approximately 1 full minute easy for each 10 meters they run. So yes, a 30 meter sprint means 3 minutes rest before the next one. And keep the durations short. Intervals over 40 meters aren’t helpful. And while sprinting hills is really tough, the effort should still be quite high and be limited to less than 20 seconds of effort. Throw your shoes on, hit a short easy run, some dynamic warm-up moves, and then hit some intense hills or sprints. Jump in the shower, and get back to travel life……knowing you did something for yourself before the day even started.

Anatomy for Runners: Top 9 Thought Provoking Books of 2013

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Its always nice to get a shout out. Steve Magness is one of the “better thinkers” in the world of running, coaching, and athlete performance, and I respect his opinion highly. Apparently, Steve is nice enough to respect mine as well, and named Anatomy for Runners as one if his “Top 9 Though Provoking Books of 2013” – thanks Steve. If you live under a rock, and haven’t come across his amazing blog, I highly recommend checking it out: the Science of Running.

And while I’m at it, I’d like to say thanks to all of you who have purchased the book. I teach all over the country, and the number of clinicians and coaches who already have the book, and actually USE it daily on their teams and patients is, well, quite humbling. I know the little niche I operate in will never reach the status of the Harry Potter, but there are over 11,000 of you around the world reading this book over the past year. I hope its making you rethink the way you approach your training, and your patients, your teams, and ultimately producing better results. If you’d like to pick up a copy, click on the link on the right side of the page!

The work of a decade of my career, bound into the “take home version” for you.

The Bat-signal has been lit: time for a PARTY!

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Want to see what we are up to @ Rebound? Come grab a beer, some eats, and join us for our open house this Thursday! (superhero dress optional)

Pace Maker: an interview with Today in PT

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Today in PT is a magazine for the physical therapy profession. They wrote:

Americans are increasingly on the run, with Running USA’s 2012 State of the Sport report counting nearly 39 million runners. Runners spend nearly $2.5 billion annually on footwear, according to the report. But, unfortunately, new shoes don’t come with accurate information and proper training to safely and successfully pursue the activity. For that, Today in PT turned to Jay Dicharry, PT, MPT, SCS, author of “Anatomy for Runners: Unlocking Your Athletic Potential for Health, Speed, and Injury Prevention.” click here for the rest

They threw out 10 questions, and i threw out 10 answers. Check out the link if you’d like to see some of the reasons why i do what I do, a few lines on the book, and why i got into this aspect of athletic injury care in the first place.

Running Injury Management on Therapedia

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Fresh off teaching this past weekend at University of Michigan – a great group of folks joind together for a course called “Putting the Athlete Back in Triathlete: a clinician’s role in care of the endurance athlete.” …….and more content to come.

I’ve been invited to be a part of Therapedia’s webcast series, and its airing Thursday this week. And yes, it will be available to view after the course as well. Check out this link for what looks to be an interesting discussion!

Link

Coffee Talk: TrailRunner Nation Podcast

The guys at Trail Runner Nation podcast gave me a call, and asked a few questions. If you’d like to hear some inside scoop on what you can do to keep healthy and happy on the way to your next PR, grab some of your favorite brew, and tune in here.

We’ll debunk some myths, babble about footwear, talk about why we don’t treat injuries by treating symptoms, and discuss some cutting-edge approaches on strength training for endurance athletes. Its a long hour of conversation, but all this talk is aimed at ways to help make running fun. Because that why we do this stuff. And more fun is, well, just more fun.

UVA Running Medicine 2013: a recap

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What happens when you get 220+ clinicians in the room and talk about running? It was a beautiful day. About 55 degrees and sunny. The remnants of the 10+ in snowstorm on the ground helped dampen the air and made the sun feel even stronger. It’s a beautiful day for a run….but instead,about 220 clinicians sat inside, on their glutes, so they can learn to help you use your glutes better.

The 10^th anniversary of the longest running, running specific medical conference produced a host of content to help “us” help “you.” Do you ever wonder why running is as challenging as it is? How your running would change if you had no gravity to fight, arms to swing, or perhaps even legs to stand on? Dr Rodger Kram led us in 2 enlightening presentations on the energetics of gait. Talks like this completely shift how you think about running.

Dr. Eric Carson reviewed the current and future trends on cartilage repair. Take home: right now, cutting edge surgeons are able to offer some pretty incredible proceedures, and they’ll be even more magic to come in the future.

Brian Hoke, PT helped us think critically through our video gait analysis. Anyone can watch a video in slow motion, but learning what to look for is critical.

Your’s truly helped clinicians through their musculoskeletal exams as they relate to a runner’s needs. No one can tlak about “correct running form” unless you understand that each runner is an individual with unique needs and attributes. If you understand how a person’s body wants to work, you can understand how to help that person run. For those of you who read the screen’s in Anatomy for Runners, that 8-point exam just got a whole lot more thorough: 32-points to be exact.

Dr Sibohn Stattua reviewed the literature on the female athlete triad. Turns out that there is more to it than just low energy intake, menstrual irregularity, and poor bone remodeling…..the triad is turning into a square? That’s right, there is a 4^th “leg” to the triad, and this one might be even more severe of a long term complication from this complex disorder.

Eric Magrum, PT discussed the current research on the #1 injury affecting runners: anterior knee pain. He told us why runners with chronic pain in the knee try to avoid their pain. The problem is that the compensations we adopt to avoid pain in the knee are just as much of a problem as the original cause itself.

Kyle Kiesel, PhD, PT helped us through an eval process to identify core imbalances that affect far more than just the core.

And finally, Dr Bob Wilder guided us through the process of guiding you back to your running in explaining the best return to run programs after an injury.

Clinicans getting to know their feet: a scene from our lab session

And that doesn’t even mention the incredible lab session on Saturday by Brian Hoke, Kyle Kiesel, Dr Mark Cuccuzzella, myself, and the amazing cookies that I ate at the afternoon break. Egos were dropped at the door, and we all got down to the same level to help runners do what they love: run.

As always, the conference returns next year……

Link

No Sleep Till Brooklyn

OK, so this may have just been an excuse to use the iconic Beastie Boys song as my blog title, or a way to share the great review that the Prospect Park Track Club from Brooklyn, NY wrote for my book. Check it out at the link!

Podcast with Jay Dicharry: A discussion with Healthynomics