My fascination with running gait analysis began well over a decade ago in 2014 when I first watched physical therapist Dave McHenry analyzing the running gait of Olympic medalists Galen Rupp and Mo Farah on the OptoGait Treadmill in Portland, Oregon.
At this time, the first seeds were planted inside me that the way people run could have some correlation with their performance or potential for developing injuries.
As I progressed through medical school and my residency training, this became abundantly clear to me as I began to learn more about running biomechanics and physical therapy principles, and saw athletes of mine, that I either coached or cared for as a patient, consistently develop the same injuries on the same side of their body again and again.
It only makes sense to me that overuse injuries that we runners develop will likely have at least some connection to the thing that we do thousands of times again and again every time we go out for a run.
For this reason – I’ve continued to refine my approach over the last 4 years of not only performing gait analysis, a practice that has become common among physical therapist working with runners throughout the country, but also gait retraining–a systematic approach to implementing cues, running through constant checks and balances, and implementing a framework for the athlete to utilize as they run so that they have more awareness of what their body is doing and what they should focus on while they run.
Through this practice I’ve seen tremendous results in quickly reducing the typical aches and pains that many runners will have grown accustomed to that they thought were “normal”, but more importantly, it’s become an empowering tool that all runners can become equipped with to know exactly why certain injuries keep popping up and exactly what they can do to fix the cause of the injury.
Figure 1. Top: Running Mechanics before gait modification | Bottom: Running Mechanics after ONLY changing arm swing mechanics
If you are interested in gait analysis and gait retraining, you can schedule an appointment here. Whether you have an injury currently or you just want to be evaluated to see how you can improve your running performance, we will evaluate you as a new patient and perform an analysis, review it together, and let you know if we think our gait retraining program is right for you.
If you are enrolled in the gait retraining program, we will work with you directly on introducing 1-2 cues per session and only recommend the number of sessions we think you truly need. Price per gait retraining session is $150.
Tired of conventional treatment plans that treat the symptoms and not the cause? Want an expert evaluation to see if your current running mechanics have a correlation with your injury? Fill out the form below to schedule an appointment with us.
