We all know the feeling.

You feel clunky.

Uncoordinated.

Like one limb is lagging behind you.

Like you’re running on one leg.

If you’ve suffered a serious injury in the past, then you know that that first running session back post injury is different to any other one you’ll do.

You may have some fear around those first few steps.

But soon, just concentrating on synchronizing your steps is likely to take over the majority of your focus.

We know that ACL injury, achilles rupture and repetitive hamstring injuries are correlated with changes in running technique.

Studies have been used to draw that correlation, but we only really only need ask those teammates of ours that have been through the process and they’ll tell us the same.

We also know that inefficient running mechanics may be correlated with increased likelihood of injury as well.

However, not many aim to actually retrain their movement kinematics when they return to the field.

Part of this is just how much work is necessary to change someone’s running mechanics.

And the other part is that many don’t know how to do so.

So, athletes opt for the quicker route back to sport.

They skip it altogether.

And as a result, they sacrifice long-term reductions in rate of re-injury, for short-term speed of return back to sport.

They choose to ignore the issue.

And an issue ignored is a crisis invited.

But that’s another part of the story that I’ll leave for another day.

Today what I’m going to cover is why exactly your running mechanics change post injury.

So that you and other athletes like you can understand that there is still some work that you have to do.

And there is a way of solving the issue.

Firstly, when we suffer an injury, many practitioners will get us to immobilise the injured area.

This is all with the goal of reducing inflammation and allowing the injury to settle.

And in most cases this is absolutely necessary.

But only for a period of time.

After swelling and inflammation have been brought under control, it is then time to get some movement back into the joint or affected tissue.

However, although immobilisation can help us to minimise swelling in the short-term, it also typically also has the knock on effect of detraining the immobilised area.

Unfortunately many physical qualities obey a “use it or lose it” principle.

If we unload the tissue and don’t move it through its full range of motion, as well as not applying any force through it as well, then it steadily becomes less able to move through full ROM and accept/tolerate high forces.

And this inability to tolerate force affects many qualities.

The tissue becomes less compliant.

Muscle atrophy occurs.

Tendon stiffness reduces.

De-conditioning occurs reducing the tissues tolerance to loading.

And as a result, the deficit between the injured tissue/joint and its contralateral partner becomes greater.

This deficit is often identified to be one of the major issues.

And we often aim to reduce this deficit in our rehab and training in order to help the body to move more symmetrically and with less bias towards one limb.

As significant bias towards one limb increases our risk of further injury.

But why do we lose that co-ordination and feel so clunky when we return to running?

Well, the body is a system.

Think of each joint or tissue as a link in the chain.

If one link begins to degrade, then it affects the strength of the entire chain.

So, this is why in effective training, we must first identify the weak links in the chain, before training them to return or surpass their pre-injury state.

But the work does not stop there.

As our nervous system’s main job is to protect us.

So after an injury, the brain protects the body from going into positions and patterns that are likely to lead to pain or may be likely to lead to further injury.

So in our training, we must teach the nervous system that certain positions are safe and tolerable.

And in order to teach the nervous system that those positions and patterns are safe, we must train them under progressive conditions of stress.

That increase in stress comes in terms of force, speed, time or direction of loading.

And that doesn’t happen on its own.

We must train the disrupted neural pathways by going there more frequently.

We must teach the body to remember where it has been before.

We must teach it that it can now do so again.

We must show it that we are now more robust than we were before.

And we must give ourselves confidence by improving our ability to go there faster and more efficiently.

That’s why solely breaking down our rehab into training component parts doesn’t always work.

And that’s also why solely training the system in an integrated manner doesn’t always work either.

We must do both.

Break the system down into its component parts and train each of them progressively.

Before integrating each newly improved link in the chain back into the entire chain and training them as a collective.

That’s where our running mechanics work comes in.

We improve the athlete’s efficiency of movement to round off the entire process and reduce the risk of us ending back here in the future.

It’s not a matter of doing one or the other.

It’s about doing both.

Train each part in isolation.

And train the sum of the parts as well.

That’s how we return athletes to sport a better athlete than when they suffered the injury.

That’s how we return athletes to performance, rather than just returning them to play.