There are many considerations before lacing up the shoes and heading out for your first runs. These include:

👉your birth outcomes

👉your leg and hip strength

👉your pelvic floor health, strength and endurance

👉your hormones ( are you still breastfeeding?)

👉your support of your pelvis and spine (integrity of your inner core strength)

👉your pre-natal and pregnancy exercise levels

👉your body and fitness type.

Moore et al (2021) published a study with tests as guidelines for strength required for running. Here are the tests for running specific tasks. You can try them at home if you think you’re near to these measures. Can you achieve these without pain, bladder leakage, pelvic floor heaviness or abdominal dragging?

✅can you walk for 30 minutes?

✅can you stand balanced on one leg for 10 seconds or more?

✅can you jog on the spot for 60 seconds or more?

✅can you bound or skip for 10 metres?

✅can you hop on the spot 10 times or more?

These tests are no means exhaustive. There are many other tests assessing strength, balance, running specific and pelvic floor muscles control.

Find a physiotherapist who can assess and help you return to any sport after have your baby. She will be the expert in safe and timely guidance back to what you love doing - no recipes, completely individualised just for you! The Fix Program’s Mums&Bubs classes and post natal physio are the perfect lead into your running return after pregnancy and birth!

#runningmums #returntorunning #postnatalexercise #postnatalrunning #postnatalpelvicfloor

👉 What is a tendon?

Tendons are rope like, extremely strong structures connecting your muscles to the bone. They are made of strong lines of collagen, all sitting in parallel, making the strength of these extremely tough. They are everywhere, like the rotator cuff tendons at the back of the shoulder, the biceps tendon at the shoulder joint, the patella tendon at the knee cap, the hamstring tendon to your sit bone or behind the knee or the Achilles tendon to your heel.

With the work they have to do, injury is common (yep, like me with my Achilles, running and being a little older - but that’s another whole post on menopause and tendon health). Too much load, too fast a build in a new activity, poor biomechanics, a weak muscle, hormones. All of these things can create a weakness, poor collagen regeneration or recovery and over time, tendonitis or tendinopathy in any tendon of the body.

👉 What’s the difference between tendonitis and tendinopathy?

Tendonitis is an inflammation of the tendon. Tendinopathy is the degeneration of the collagen making up the tendon (and will always have a component of tendonitis going on also in the background).

Both are treated similarly, with very slow and graduated strengthening and pain management strategies alongside such as ice, massage, biomechanics improvement and training changes to incoorporate more time for regenerating collagen. Physiotherapists are highly trained in the latest evidence based research in the managing of tendon injuries and rehabilitation. 

This is often an extremely slow road! Pace it! Don’t race it!

#tendoninjury #tendons #achillestendon #hamstringtendon #patellatendon #supraspinatustendon #tendonitis #tendinopathy #physiotherapy #physio #paceitdontraceit #thefixprogram #thefixprogramsydney #thefixprogramonline

Knee pain affects 1 in 5 people in Australia, with the incidence increasing steadily with age. Osteoarthritis and overuse of the structures around the joint account for a huge slab of these.

But what about knee pain with running? Is it really true that running is bad for your knees?

OK, granted the load through your knees is greater with running than with walking, but how do other activities stack up? Here are the approximate forces that pass through the knee for each activity. This is according to 2 studies  - Lenhart et al. (2014) and Sanchis-Alfonso et al. (2016)

• Walking on level ground - 0.5 x body weight
• Cycling on level ground  - 1.5 x body weight
• Stairs, both up or down - 3-4 x body weight
• Running  - 4-8 x body weight
• Squatting unloaded  - 7-8 x body weight
• Jumping - 20 x body weight

I really believe that running gets a bad rap for the reason knees become sore, or why, for some, running is never given a good chance. Like any tissue in our body, our knees can adapt to the loads and stresses we put on them. How do we do this? With:

• exercise and indiviualised programs to correct, control and restore pelvic, hip and lower leg imbalances and bio-mechanics
• graduated programs of running, practicing the ‘pace it, don’t race it’ method
• cross training and running specific strengthening, where loads are controlled but delivered to the knee to adapt and become more resilient to the loads we ask of them when jogging.  

There is no one perfect recipe for exercise when it comes to knees and running. We are all different and  the way we move is so varied. Thorough assessment, holistically looking at each moving part, running analysis and breakdown, training program adaptations are all crucial in getting knees happy to play their part with running. This, thrown in with a persistent and motivated runner-to-be, can become the runner without the dodgy knees.  

If you really desire to lace up the shoes and start jogging, get your knees to a good running physio!