Members of the United States army display courage, bravery and strength on a daily basis, but they may want to leave the scientific running studies to individuals who can better control all the variables.
According to findings presented at the American College of Sports Medicine, Maj. Bradley Warr suggested that there was no statistical differences in overuse injuries among army soldiers who ran with a heel-strike pattern compared to a forefoot-strike pattern.
For their study, army researchers took videos of soldiers while they were running to learn if teaching recruits to run with a forefoot-strike pattern would better prevent injuries. They analyzed the foot-strike pattern of 1,027 soldiers and found:
- The rate of overuse injuries was not significantly different between heel strikers and forefoot strikers (18% vs. 15%).
- Foot-strike patterns didn’t correlate to injuries in either men or women.
Army researchers decided the results proved that there is no need to implement a plan to help runners develop a safer running technique.
Flawed Study?
The army’s findings did little to convince Dr. Irene Davis, a physical therapist and director of the Spaulding National Running Center at Harvard University. She claimed that the study didn’t account for certain important variables, like which command group the participants belonged to.
“Some [of the soldiers] were in transportation, and they don’t run very much at all,” she said. “Some were infantry and they run a little bit, but there is a big group who don’t run. I think that’s a big flaw of that study.”
She also noted that the study was retrospective, and injuries were self-reported instead of being diagnosed by a trained physician. She said a smaller study of the Harvard cross country found that injury rates doubled if the runner used a heel-strike technique.
“To me, that’s a better, more controlled group with more valid results,” she said.
Dr. Warr noted that not every participant in his study was a regular runner, but he said that should strengthen the results, not weaken them.
“These data may be more representative of the typical recreational runner in the United States,” he concluded.
Dr. Silverman comments
I support the criticism posed by Dr. Davis. People who sit at a desk four days a week will obviously have lower injury rates than those who regularly exercise.
Although I believe the results are somewhat flawed, I think the study is a step in the right direction. I think it is a great move that the army wants to look for ways to prevent training injuries. They also mentioned that they want to do a follow up study with prospective data collection. This should provide researchers with more accurate injury data, and they can learn from the limitations of their first study.
Hopefully their second study will carry more weight.
Related source: Medscape