Value of Gait Analysis

Audio Transcript

Coach Tony: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Runners Connect Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast. I hope your day is going well and thanks for tuning in to the show.

I am here to answer your running and training questions so that you could train smarter, stay healthy, and achieve your goals.

Today, we have a great question from Jao Ming.

Jao Ming: I suffer from plantar fasciitis which means my training is somewhat limited. Should I do a gait analysis and what is the value of doing it? Will it make me faster?

Tony: First, let’s talk about what gait analysis is. It essentially just means having somebody watch you run.

Typically, they can watch you run barefoot or with shoes, if you’re trying to fit somebody– you can do it either way, but it’s essentially trying to you know watching somebody run. The focus is more on your feet, knees, and knees down below.

Whereas somebody maybe a physical therapist or somebody who’s trying to look at some more structural things and muscle imbalances and stuff is going to start to look a little bit higher.

A gait analysis is just essentially analyzing your gait which is your running cycle. Things that you look for with gait analysis is how somebody first land.

Typically, you’re going to land on the outside of your foot and you’re either going to land on the heel, mid foot, or fore foot. Most people land on their heel which is normal, and this is how shoes are designed for that type of impact.

Once that person first lands, the body’s trying to absorb impact it’s usually a few times your body weight. If you weigh 100 pounds, you’re looking at maybe 3 pounds of impact when your foot first lands.

Your body is trying to absorb that impact. Once it lands and absorb the impact, the next thing it wants to do is just move forward. We want to run forward and not just bounce up and down.

You first land, absorb that impact, and then your foot locks up and you propel yourself forward and you just keep repeating that obvious right from left and right and so forth.

What you look at with gait analysis as you look when a person now is what’s called the mid foot stance, so they’ve landed on their heel and now they’re still they’re fully supporting their body with their one foot.

The foot shouldn’t be rolling in a lot.

If it is, then that’s going to cause some alignment problems throughout your entire leg. It can cause everything from Plantar Fasciitis to Achilles tendonitis to post area Tibial tendonitis to knee pain, IT band pain.

It is not the source, but it can be a source and it can be a common source of a lot of injuries. I do think there’s a lot of value in gait analysis maybe on partial because I fit people for 12 years owning a run shop, but I’ve seen what the right type of shoes can do and how they can help.

It’s not a cure all by any means, but if you go in the completely wrong shoes and you know you can, it can lead to a lot of injuries.

I think there’s a lot of value in gait analysis to finding exactly what type mechanics you have and then getting in the right shoe.

I think it’s really important to kind of throw theory out the window if you will.

Let’s say Jao Ming comes into my shop and she has very flat feet. So, I watch her run and see her feet are flat. I can do two things right now. I can say I’m going to get you the most supportive motion control shoe in the world, but if I’m good I would say show me the shoes you’ve been running in.

Maybe Jao Ming brings me the shoe that has zero support, she’s run in it for 2000 miles, and she’s injury free.

She may over pronate, but relative to the shoes she runs in, she’s fine. She might just need a new pair of shoes.

If I go ahead now put her in a motion control shoe, I’m going to completely change her biomechanics and probably introduce injury.

You really have to put everything together.

Gait analysis on its own, watching somebody run barefoot, only tells part of the story. You need to look at what type of shoes does that person train in, what is her injury history and so forth.

Now let’s take another example of Jao Ming and say that she over pronates, and she has shoes with no support. She comes in and here she is she’s saying she has Plantar Fasciitis and I see that the shoe has no support.

Well now it’s safe for me to start to introduce some support maybe not a complete motion control shoe, but start to introduce some support.

That I think is going to start to help so long-winded answer to your question Jao Ming. Yes, I think there’s a lot of value in a gait analysis. You need to find somebody who’s kind of trained in doing that.

If you have access to a specialty run store, that’s a great source. We have some people that we work with that you can send a video.

For example, if you want to contact us, we can put you in touch with that, but I do think there’s a lot of value.

Will it make you run faster? I don’t know if it’ll make you run faster, but if it can improve your Plantar Fasciitis, you’re going to train more and then you could become faster.

One of the beautiful things about running is that there’s some value to form, but I’ve seen some amazingly fast people with really bad form and I’ve seen some people with the most elegant form run a bit slow. The beauty of running it’s not form is some part of the factor and speed but it’s really not a deciding factor. Thank you for your question Jao Ming and I wish you the best of luck

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