Detecting the Early Warning Signs of Your Running Injury, ft. Brodie Sharpe

DOR Podcast #106: Detecting the Early Warning Signs of Your Running Injury

Injuries large & small plague almost every runner throughout their career. Detecting early signs of injury and stopping them before they turn into something serious will help us keep running consistently. Nate & Matt are joined by Brodie Sharpe, a fellow PT, who specializes in injury prevention and rehabilitation. They take a look at the nature of injury risk, how to reduce it, strategies & tools for rehabbing, and much more.

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About Brodie Sharpe

Brodie Sharpe is a Physiotherapist from Melbourne, Australia and the owner of the Run Smarter Physiotherapy Clinic. Brodie helps runners train smarter and dispels common running myths to help runners reduce their injury risk and overcome injuries efficiently. He spreads this information primarily through the Run Smarter Podcast which has climbed into the top 1% of podcasts globally, and his recent YouTube channel.

The Subjective: What are some of the early signs you look for when determining if you have an injury coming?

Chapters
00:00 - Intro
02:01 - Introducing Brodie Sharpe
06:08 - The basics of running injuries
15:40 - What puts runners at high injury risk?
19:26 - Early signs of injuries in runners
24:33 - Strategies for assessing the severity of & recovery from injuries
28:55 - What to do when injury symptoms start
39:07 - Differentiating between small niggles and full injuries
44:26 - The benefits of keeping a running journal
50:40 - Modifying routines while rehabbing an injury
53:30 - 3 Key ways to reduce injury risk
57:30 - Wrap-up

These Hips Don't Lie
By Chief Editor Matt Klein

It is all about the hips. These are the muscles that really help drive your leg behind you and push the rest of you forward during fast running. Most individuals tend to think the hip extensors are limited to the gluteal muscles, but that does not do justice to multiple powerful muscle groups that make up the hip extensors. First, we do have the gluteal muscles, which tend to be a weak point in the chain. Second we have the hamstring muscle group, which tend to be the over utilized group. Finally we have the adductors, which I have discussed previously how the adductor magnus especially is a powerful hip extensor.

I want to emphasize that all three of these muscle groups are important to both hip joint loading and power generation. A common mistake is to assume that all power comes from one muscle. The body however does not work by single muscles. It works in muscle groups, chains and systems. The power necessary to do everything that happens extension wise at the hip should not come from one muscle. The gluteal muscles do several things. Extending the hip is one of them, as is abduction, external rotation... and if we talk about the lower glute max fibers, actually hip adduction as well. The hamstrings extend the hip, flex the knee and can slightly internally or externally rotate the hip and knee depending on which hamstring muscles are firing (the lateral biceps femors or medial semitendinosis or membranosis). The adductors, especially the magnus extend the hip and adduct it as well. So all these muscles, despite being huge, have multiple actions and overlap. Can them compensate for another muscle if it is weak? Yes. Can that lead to overuse? Yes, because they already have a great deal to move and stabilize. Gluteal tendinopathy (overuse and chronic inflammation of the tendon) is a real thing. I have now treated 2 patients in my short time as a Doctor of Physical Therapy with this issue. And yes, they had weakness elsewhere that the glute was compensating for (one of the rare individuals that actually had high glute strength to start with). There are no magic muscles.

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