Preventing running injuries, patient by patient

Running is one of the most popular forms of exercise in Sonoma County but if estimates are correct, up to 80 per cent of them will suffer an injury sometime this year.

It's not that 2012 has been singled out as unusually dangerous. According to data compiled since the 1970s by the Biomechanics Laboratory at Wake Forest University, a majority of runners are forced to the sidelines each year with injuries.

That's where David Townsend comes in. The Santa Rosa runner and physical therapist has been successfully treating injured runners for more than 10 years, seeing patient after patient with painful hip, knee and feet problems. But he wondered if there were common threads that caused the pain.

Two questions came to haunt Townsend: Why so many injuries, and could the problems be prevented?

It turns out he wasn't alone in wanting to find answers. After reading every study he could find about injury prevention, he saw something in a book by Danny Dreyer that made a lot of sense to him.

Dreyer wrote about the benefits of barefoot running, now called the Chi method.

“Running doesn't have to cause injury,” Dreyer says. “Incorrect or inefficient running technique and training errors are the true culprits.”

Townsend had his answer and has become a guru in the local running community. At his Santa Rosa Physical Therapy clinic on Challenger Way, a procession of injured runners walk through his door.

They come wanting therapy so they can resume running and, just as important, learn how to prevent future injuries.

“Recent research is suggesting that people can greatly decrease the chance of injury by focusing on running form,” he said.

Townsend's message is welcome news to area runners.

“Approximately three per cent of Americans use running as a regular form of exercise or competition,” he said. With nearly 500,000 residents in Sonoma County, doing the math means there are 15,000 runners, up to 12,000 of whom will suffer an injury in any given year.

Townsend has new patients describe their problem areas (usually knee, foot, Achilles tendon or hip) and begins therapy on those areas. When they're ready, he proves his point by videotaping them to see if they are coming down hard on their heels.

If so, he has them take off their shoes and run barefoot. Patients will feel what it's like to moderate the impact with the whole foot.

“The way many people stride, it's an injury waiting to happen,” says Townsend, a former Casa Grande High track runner. “They come down so hard on their heels. The impact goes right up the foot to the hip.”

A study by Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman showed that heel-strikers collide with the ground with a force equal to as much as three times their body weight. In contrast, the Olympic exploits of distance runners from Kenya are legendary, and Townsend said there's much to be learned from the way they move.