WFR #15: Avoid Kneesles | Wed 22nd Oct, 7:30pm | Prospect Park Weekly Form Run

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When: Every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. (run leaves at 7:37 abouts).

Where: Find The Big Red Pointer(TM) (center of the map, click here).

Distance: A single figure 8 lap of Prospect Park, ~4.6139 miles.

Optional Distance Sub-group: 3 miles or less if that's helpful (please let Run Leaders know).

Today's Direction: Right as you face the park at startup.

Pace: Welcome to all. Fun.

AQI: We're monitoring Air Quality Index here and have been asked to not run if the local index exceeds 125.

New Stuff:

I dragged this week's bubble ("Kneesles") to the top of the topics hierarchy and gave it a good shake. The result was this diagram. "Arm Swing",  "Bended Knee", and "Hips" all directly support the avoidance of "Dreaded Kneesles". While "Short Strides",  "Quiet Feet", "Recovery" and "Kneesles"-avoidance mutually support each other.

Just in case you'd like to explore, here's a pretty QR Code for Week #19:

Towards the end of Week #19 Notes (below "The Mantra"TM) there are links to all the WFR weekly topics.

This week's focus: Knees (injury prevention, ease/economy/efficiency, speed. Avoid Kneesles - week 15)

TL;DR: Take care of your knees. Short strides, faster turnover to compensate. Train your calf muscles (before they become cows and moo at you).

Great snippet from Healthline that sums up the point of this focus: "Running is not bad for your knees; running with poor form is bad for your knees" said Nicole Davis a CPT/group fitness instructor.

The idea is to counter landing ahead of your body, which is a “natural” tendency. Your knee must be slightly bent upon impact. This will allow your mid to forefoot to position itself directly under the knee and the supporting system of your body. A straight leg will not only negate your legs power potential (quads), but it will also cause a greater strain on the hamstring and calf muscles when they are called into action to unbend the joint.

Look at Kipchoge and his pacers. They're propelling themselves forward and the knees are always slightly bent, especially when landing. That is all, except two (perhaps three) pacers who look like they're heel-striking, knee-straight on landing and that's going to hurt over time.

Landing ahead of your center of mass is also what we call overstriding and is primarily an attribute of straightening the knee, but we mostly tell runners that to fix this you must stop heel-striking, which is true but it can also happen in midfoot-striking.

The problem of landing ahead of your body, is mostly caused by straightening the knees. So notice if you are straightening your knees, and instead keep them flexed. Landing under, instead of ahead of you, is not something you are born with as a runner. 

University of Rochester tips for runners: Runners Knee (avoid Kneesles) on how to avoid ACL injury, namely train and condition year round. Strengthen your hamstring and quadriceps muscles. The hamstring muscle is at the back of the thigh; the quadriceps muscle is at the front. The muscles work together to bend or straighten the leg. Strengthening both muscles can better protect the leg against knee injuries.

Before using harder shoes or running shoeless, learn safe foot placement while wearing good (low mileage) shoes that absorb landing shocks and allow the development of support musculature. As musculature develops, more of the absorbed landing shock is elastically returned as motive force with less lost through heat and sound via shoes and ground.

Recovering Healthy Knees

A number of running tips can help keep knees healthy and (as "knee"ded) return them to a less compromised state. Some of these tips also help reduce skeletal stress body-wide. The tips fall into the following 4 categories:

1. Minimize Impact Shock
   
2. Reduce Body Twisting
   
3. Avoid Habituated Damage
   
4. Don't Cheat (like me)

Minimize Impact Shock

Probably the most important single factor is the amount of stride-shock that is introduced during running. Bended Knee, Short Stride, Hips, and Quiet Feet, together with shoes that are in good condition, help to minimize and distribute stride-shock through the body and "Flatten the Curve"TM (that's the Energy-Curve, not the other more famous curve) by spreading the stride-shock energy more evenly during the stride. A less emphasized but important feature of Quiet Feet introduces the notion that muscles can be strengthened to store impact energy and return it to a useful point in the stride. Using the elasticity of muscles (e.g. calf) to absorb stride-shock and apply that stored energy to power a later stage of the stride, diverts damaging energy away from other less resilient tissues and structures. A specific example would be to bias the foot ground-contact towards the mid-foot and away from the heel, throughout the stride, which requires developing strong calf muscles (and can take a while to achieve). The energy stored keeping the heel off the ground is returned to the powering part of the stride, automagically as the foot passes under the body.

Reduce Body Twisting

Various torsion forces need to be countered without exposing less tolerant tissues to their ravages. The major body-torsion relievers are the arms which help apply a counter twist, distributing torsion forces along the spine and redirecting some of that torsion force forward.

Avoid Habituated Damage

Road Camber contributes to laterally-uneven running forces that can place damaging forces biased towards one side, including foot angle, sideways knee forces, spine strain, etc. This is why we alternate our weekly running direction during WFR. Running towards the center of a cambered surface (erm, A Road) is not always a safe option! If possible avoid knee twisting and try to keep feet pointing forward at all times. This does not work for everyone but pressuring the outer part of the foot, as it lands, can help straighten foot placement and reduce knee strain.

Don't Cheat (like me)

Having mastered front-foot strike and trained past calf-mooing stage I noticed that when running downhill I could roll my foot onto its heel, resulting in a (not quiet) second strike and a nice bonus kick forward. Over time this too contributes to Kneesles... Don't cheat like me!

These hints and tips should be applied carefully and (gently) over time. Everyone's body is different. Please be aware of how these changes are effecting you personally.

Related WFR Topics
"Bended Knee" #2 (bubbles), "Short Strides" #3 (bubbles), "Arm Swing" #4 (bubbles), "Quiet Feet" #6 (bubbles), "Hips" #9 (bubbles), "Recovery" #11 (bubbles).

Reading Bubble Diagrams:

Bubbles in the pictures are individually linked to the most recent notes. They are now no longer pictures (hooray), they're auto-generated scalable vector drawings.

Topics are related to each other. Some more or less directly than others. Bubble Diagrams (e.g. this week's topic bubble diagram) illustrate how they are related. Bubbles nearest the top are more directly related to this week's topic. The path to the top illustrates a chain of related topics. Topic bubbles are expanded once in their highest position (most closely related to this week's topic) and are colored blue (or colored black if this is a topic's only appearance). Duplicated bubbles are colored green, which is no less important than a blue colored bubble at the same vertical distance from the root.

Lines that join topic bubbles have been colored. Blue connecting lines illustrate a child topic (lower) supported by its parent topic (upper... think waterfall). Purple connecting lines illustrate the child topic supporting its parent topic. Black connecting lines indicate bi-directional (mutual) topic support. Lightly colored connecting lines indicate topics that are pulled out of the way, as the level they occupy is too crowded. One day 3D (AV) will allow us to walk through bubble diagrams (like tinkling mobiles hanging from your ceilings) and currently lightly-connected bubbles will just be viewable at a different angle (by spinning the view) and not colored differently. One Day... ahhh... One Day.

📢 ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢

Our PA batteries are still on charge.. 

📢 Weekly Daddy Joke 📢

Why should runners take care of their legs?

...They're so kneedy!