Should you embrace the barefoot sensation?

The thinking behind barefoot training

Barefoot running is certainly nothing new and many of the most popular running events, including the Olympics have seen barefoot competitors take home the title.

The more recent surge in the popularity of barefoot training is attributed to a recent publication, Born to Run, released by journalist Chris MacDougall in 2009. In his book, MacDougall recounts how he managed to overcome certain debilitating injuries by utilising barefoot running techniques from primitive Indian tribes in Mexico.

The thinking behind the approach is that removing the cushioning of the shod foot significantly alters the human running gait, which increases the level of involvement of the muscles around the feet and creates a more intense workout. Some supporters also claim that athletic shoes provide unnecessary support and that our bodies were naturally built and born to run.

Criticism has arisen around some of the risks associated with barefoot training especially training on certain surfaces, such as concrete or asphalt which can be quite hard on the joints. Sceptics also point out that our modern society has been developed in a way that demands shoes.

If you are keen to try barefoot running (even if it’s just to satisfy your curiosity about the shoes) here are some important considerations before you try barefoot running:

1. Professional Advice –it’s important to get professional and/or medical advice before starting a new training or fitness program. Be sure to disclose any health problems and past injuries to get the most appropriate advice.
2. Terrain – consider where you’ll be running. It may be worthwhile to start with softer surfaces such as along the beach and to start off by working a few barefoot running sessions into your normal routine.
3. Hygiene – it goes without saying that you should be mindful of your surroundings and of your fellow gym members. Bring a training mat or invest in minimal shoes like the Vibram Five Fingers if you will be training barefoot indoors.

Personal trainers, what do you think about barefoot running? Have you incorporated it into your training routine?

Author Bio: Paige writes on fitness and wellbeing as well as personal training courses for aspiring trainers.

Once you have mastered these exercises, keep them in your routine, but add some more challenging work. Activation comes first, we need to isolate the muscle in order for it to get going, but you pretty soon need to move into some more functional movement for the bum. Check out these bum exercises, a post a wrote a while ago that explains and shows you some of the best exercises to get strong glutes. Glute activation is very important for getting stable and strong hips…but we must always remember to progress.

Soft tissue work is the best thing for the hip flexors, and combined with stretches it is very effective. If you can get a professional to release them you will get the best results. Not all of us have the opportunity to get a massage as often as we would like or need, so it is important to be able to do your own soft tissue work at home. There are a couple of methods that you can do at home, and they are using a foam roller and also a tennis ball/ massage ball.

Everyone should invest in a foam roller. It’s the easiest method to do your own soft tissue work at home. Check out this foam roller on amazon, comes in different lengths.

Now…as I explained above the Rec Fem, which is a muscle that actually crosses the hip and the knee is part of the hip flexors, and is the first one that you can do work on by yourself with the foam roller. Here are two videos showing you how to do it.

Remember at first that it can be very painful, especially if you have never had anyone do any work on you before. Points that hurt more, stay on them, eventually the pain will start to fade away. These points that you hit may be trigger points, you can hit them even harder later with a tennis ball. Ensure that you do this often, at the start a couple of times a day. The fact is that tight hip flexors are often a result of our lifestyle. A lot of us work sitting down and our hip flexor muscles are in a shortened position all the time, so we need to do regular soft tissue work to counter act the fact that we are tightening the hips daily.

Try to work up as high as you can, you will hit the lower part of the psoas as well. Combine this with the tennis ball work and stretching regularly and you will be well on your way to releasing your hip flexors and reducing your pain.

What Is Wrong With Most Knee Rehabilitation Programs?

Too often they focus on the knee itself. As obvious as it may seem, this usually will not give you the relief you need and is not the cause of the problem. To have a healthy knee as a general rule you will need to have good mobility in the hip and the ankle, a strong knee joint, and have correct biomechanics when moving.

You may have heard about the VMO and it’s role in helping knee pain. That you need to activate the VMO preferentially and get it stronger in order to avoid knee pain. Sure, you may have some imbalances in the knee. but new research has shown that this might not be the case and activating this muscle by itself is extremely difficult.

Often you need to look elsewhere other than the root of the pain to find solutions. Think about patella tendonitis. The tendon is usually inflamed and overused, the tendon attaches to the quads, holy crap we best be fixing those quads then… right? Nope. Why would you do even more quad dominated exercises, try to fix imbalances around the knee if the problem is actually an overuse of the knee? Surely there are some biomechanics issues and weaknesses going on in surrounding joints, putting a whole lot of pressure onto the tendon.

If your hip or your ankle is malfunctioning, tight, immobile or weak you are automatically going to put pressure up or down the chain. Your knee is a significant part of that chain and it is often forced to do a lot more work than necessary.

So How Can I Help My Knee Pain?

Realise that everything that comes next is a general rule to help reduce chronic knee pain, and most of it comes from my own experience. As a volleyball player my knees take a beating, and these things without fail help to reduce my pain every day. Try them all and see what works for you, where you are lacking, and what you need the most.

Strengthen/ Activate

Lets forget the quads for a bit here, sure some of you may suffer from an ‘imbalance’ in the VMO and laterals quads, but I’m pretty sure you suffer from weak or inactive glutes as well. Realise that the glutes themselves may be strong, you just have an inability to get them to fire and activate, and use your quads instead.

People with knee pain often have poor hip control. The knee ends up doing a lot of work that in reality the hip should be doing. In order to take the pressure off the knees it is imperative that you get your glutes strong and functioning. The bridge is a great exercise to start with, do 3 sets of 15 on each leg, I promise you that will be hard. Start double legged if you need.

Check out this video on glute activation I made a while ago.

Last but not least here are 8 exercises that really engage your glutes. Enjoy.

Bum Exercises

Honestly, weak and inactive glutes are a huge contributor to knee pain, and an easy fix. The stronger your glutes are the less your knees are going to have to work.

Calf strength has recently come into play, and Aussie physic Jill Cook has done a lot of research into calf raises and how they can help reduce knee pain in general. Try to add in a couple of sets of body weight calf raises overtime you head to the gym, do a workout or a training session. Strong calves again mean less pressure through the knee, as they do a lot of work in take off and landing and do a lot of work absorbing eccentric forces.

Stretch

Stretching the right places is imperative, as we have discussed before. Stretching the wrong places can sometimes hinder your objective. One place that it is absolutely certain you need to stretch, are the hip flexors. One of the major hip flexors is the Rec Fem. It’s the muscle that attaches from your hip right onto your tendon, it is the most superficial muscle of the quads.

It can often get tight and cause a whole lot of knee pain. So stretch the hip flexors in general. Tight hip flexors will also result in a bum that is not as active, thanks to reciprocal inhibition. Stretch them, tight hip flexors suck and cause a lot of issues.

Self Soft Tissue Work

What is even better than stretching? Soft tissue work. Obviously the best thing you can do is go and get a professional to work out your kinks, but thankfully there is a much cheaper solution, and one that works pretty well. I am constantly using a foam roller and tennis ball/ massage ball to help relieve a lot of my knee pain. Here are the two I use…the thera roll is a crazy invention, hurts like nothing else, but really does give you a good myofascial release. It is better than your average foam roller, but to take it one step further, you should get on the tennis or massage ball.

Key parts to work on should be the…

Rec Fem

It is really important to give your rec fem an absolute beating. Roll it out to start, focus us and down the muscle, but eventually get onto the tennis ball, it will really help your knee pain. Pics and videos to follow, in the meantime lay face down, place the foam roller or tennis ball directly under the middle of your qauds, and move up and down. If you find a sensitive area, or trigger point, start flexing the knee.

Hip Flexors

Glutes

TFL

ITB

All these places, especially the Rec Fem, have the tendency to be tight and overused and with a little releasing will go a long way to relieving your knee pain. Tight glutes transmit onto the TFL and the ITB, a lot of stress on the ITB is a big cause of knee pain. Lets address all of these areas with some soft tissue work. You can see above the pics on how to use a massage or tennis ball, check out this video as well on using a foam roller. Remember that the thera roll gets in a little deeper.

Mobility

Having mobile joints above and below the knee are imperative to knee health. The ankle and the hip need to be mobile and moving correctly in order for your knee to function optimally and take the stress off it.

Here are some videos on exactly how to get that mobility through your ankle and hip.

Ankle

Hip

Check out this hip mobility guide at Volleyball Base.

Here are some more vids to help you.

Like I said guys, all of these things may not work for everyone, and most of them I have come across through experimentation. I help my own pain by continually applying these principles. Try it out, I have no doubt you will be able to reduce your knee pain significantly.

A calf trigger point will mean possible pain in the foot, heel, arch achilles or knee, as well as in the calf area itself. They can be the cause and aggravator of the painful syndrome plantar fasciitis. The point is, you want to get these trigger points out of your calf muscles, as they can lie dormant for a while and bite you in the bum when you don’t even know it.

Here is a picture of where you can locate some common calf trigger points both in the gastrocnemius, which is the more superficial muscle, and the soleus, the deeper muscle. Keep in mind when you are doing your therapy the way I describe, you don’t need to just focus on these areas, you might have some other tight areas that are or are close to trigger points that you can get some relief from working out.

Common calf trigger points

Middle pic is gastrocnemius, right pic is soleus.

How To Release Calf Trigger Points

OK now the how to. Here is an excerpt from my post on lower body trigger points. Remember that you can try to target the areas you see in the above picture, but a little bit of all round massage won’t hurt you either.

How To:
Start on your bum, raise yourself a little (the more of your body that is raised off the ground, the more pressure you can put through the ball…) and place the ball underneath your calves. Roll right from the Achilles up to under the knee. Slowly. Stop on any tender points and hold. As the calf is pretty wide, you might need to try a few lines, i.e medial, middle and lateral. See how you go.

The best thing you can do is experimentation, there isn’t one way to do everything, and you might find relief from using a tennis ball and rolling on it as I have shown above, using your own hands, getting someone else to get in there, or seeing a professional. Remember if the pain keeps on going, the latter is necessary.

My acupuncture treatment 2 weeks ago for knee pain...one in hand, shin and foot.

Chronic knee pain is something that hits a lot of people, and although I believe there are a lot of things you can do to ensure you have healthy knees, acupuncture is a treatment that will definitely make a difference. Especially in conjunction with lifestyle and biomechanical changes. Acupressure for knee pain is something you can do at home with your fingers in place of the needles, not as effective, but definitely another way to treat the pain.

Here is a video covering a couple of acupuncture points for knee pain to help reduce discomfort and pain in general. be aware that there are other points within the body to help, I have had needles stuck in my feet and hand and found relief from the pain. Can I explain this? Nope, but I know it works.

Dry Needling For Knee Pain

The more common treatment I get for my knee pain is dry needling through my tight areas. Quads and ITBS are common areas that are treated and I get significant relief. A lot of my knee pain comes from low soft tissue quality, repetitive jumping, and overall tiredness in the muscles. Dry needling is like a deep tissue massage in one go and can really get rid of a lot of trigger points very quickly. I swear by it and highly recommend it as an even more effective treatment than the traditional massage. I have had it done several ways, needles simply going in the trigger points, needles in the trigger points and then being spun (painful), crazy physios finding my trigger points with the needles and going in and out moving it around and trying to get that little ball released (very painful). This is very different to acupuncture, and often leaves me a little sorer directly after, but is by far my favourite treatment and one I turn to when I need quick release and pain relief.

These treatments are completely different and work on different principles. Dry needling is a direct soft tissue treatment used as an extension to massage, and acupuncture is a Chinese medicine approach. Knee pain sucks, so find out what works for you…. probably like me, a bit of both, coupled with exercises, soft tissue work and stretching. Get on it.

Illiopsoas: This is actually two separate muscles that we all know well as the hip flexors. Check out this post on tight hips to find out more about the problem that a tight psoas can cause. The psoas starts in the lower back and attaches to the femur, which is the thigh bone. The illiacus, the other muscle in this group attaches to the hip and the femur.

Rectus Femoris: Another big hip flexor, this is a long thin muscle that runs from the hip and attaches onto your shin bone, the tibia. It turns into the patellar tendon and is also part of the quadriceps group. Not only does it flex the hip it also extends the knee.

Tensor Fascia Latae: Otherwise known as the TFL and a little trouble maker, remember to get your tennis ball in there as it gets pretty tight. It is on the outside of the thigh, and starts at the pelvis and actually attaches to your tibia, which is a bone in your shin. It also works to abduct the thigh, and extends into the ITB, the illiotibial band, which if you do a quick search for you will find causes a lot of knee problems and gets tight easily. It is mostly made from fascia.

Sartorius: This is actually the longest muscle in your body and runs diagonally along the length of your thigh. Starting at the hip and attaches at your shin, it flexes the hip, abducts your leg, and rotate your thigh.

Pectineus: This muscle is very small and goes from the pubic bone to your femur. It is also an adductor of the thigh.

How To Loosen Hip Flexors?

There are three basic ways that you can do to loosen your hip flexors, and the reality is the best thing to do is do all of them. The three methods are:

• Stretching
• Soft Tissue Therapy
• Active Release

Let’s talk through these a little.

Stretching

This is a reasonably obvious one, but it is important to get the right stretches in. Your hip flexor is made largely up of a lot of fascia. Stretching is important, but you need to do it the right way, and it should be accompanied by other releasing methods. Ensure that you hold stretches for at least 30 seconds so you can start to release the fascia as well. You will actually feel your hip flexors releasing. Here you have an example of a stretch to do by yourself, and a stretch that you can do with a partner.

As you can see in this first stretch, you need to put your arms above your head to stretch out your body, stretch out the fascia. Reaching back behind starts to open up the hip flexors even more. Remember to hold this for at least 30 seconds.

This next stretch is one you can do in partners. Hold your knee whilst lying off a table, butt on the edge. Get the partner to push down onto the leg that is hanging off the table. STretch it for 10 seconds, then get the person on the table to push back up whilst you resist them for 5 seconds. Stretch them again passively for another 10 seconds, and push for more range. Remember the hip flexor is a tough muscle, you need to stretch it hard. This is called PNF stretching and is a very useful technique for getting range of motion.

Soft Tissue Therapy

Here is an excerpt from the Tennis Ball Therapy article explaining how to do soft tissue work.

This is a tough one to actually get trigger points done with the tennis ball, however this kind of work will give it a good release. The Psoas is often tight from people sitting down at work all day and having it in a shortened position.

How To:
About 2 cm right from your belly button is the initial place you want to put the ball. Lay flat and gradually raise yourself up of the ground. The higher you go the more stretch and consequently more pressure you put through your Psoas. Repeat this with the ball in the same spot a few times, then move it up and down slightly. Test out each area of the Psoas and find where you are tightest. Not everyone will feel something from this exercise, if you are tight in the Psoas I find the best way to get nice and deep where you need is some hands on active release work or acupuncture. However this is a good, cheap and convenient start!

Active Release

There is a phenomenon called reciprocal inhibition. Basically muscles work in pairs, and when one muscle in that pair is active and working, the other one will release and relax. Your glutes and your hip flexor experience this phenomenon. So what am I saying? Well, working your glutes will help to release your hip flexors, but even more so, working your glutes in exercises that stretch your hip flexors are even better. Lunges are a great exercise for this, but here is a picture of another great one. It’s called the bridge and it basically works your glutes and puts your hip flexor on stretch at the same time. Ensure that you feel your glutes working and contracting. Do it 10 to 15 times and 2 to 3 sets of it.

So here you have three methods to release your hip flexors, try them all and you will feel a difference.

His blog Powering Through has a ton of interesting and very valuable information. Check out these two posts that caught my eye right away.

http://williamwayland.blogspot.com/2011/08/functional-and-core-training-not-all.html

http://williamwayland.blogspot.com/2011/04/high-intensity-exercise-for-increasing.html

Some things we’ve discussed here on Laurens Fitness. There are a whole lot more interesting reads. It’s hard to sort through the shit out there, but this is one of the good ones.

Enjoy.