"Athletes First, Runners Second"

It's easy to make you a runner at a young age, it's better to make you an athlete first. First Move Well, Then Move Often Club

  KEEP IN MIND THAT THERE CAN BE A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HAVING A STRESS FRACTURE AND HAVING AN EATING DISORDER! 

Always bring cold water. Show up early to warm up with a jump rope. Feel free to bring your own jump rope, otherwise one will be available, The warmup includes the bear crawl, kettle bell, crocodile breathing, split squats, and walking the line (crossing the mid-line)

Skipping, benefits your running, it increases your running efficiency. So skipping, jump rope, bear crawls, and kettle bells are quality (low volume) activities. Running to much (high volume) can erode your movement quality, thus putting you at a higher risk for injury!!

                           Running is so easy to do, it’s easy to do it wrong.

Many runners attack the activity in a manner that is not sustainable. They are unprepared for the self-selected volume and intensity and just when they’re getting good at it they hurt themselves. There’s not much of an excuse for the injury when the cause was a focus on running quantity over quality.
If running is your identity, how are your heart rate variability (HRV), hydration, and sleep? - Deficits in those will hurt you, your cardiovascular endurance, and your running performance.
Sometimes, the best medicine for your running is other activities integrated into your running program. Knowing your limits is to know what you need to work on.
 

Young Runners Need To Read This Body Positive Message (womensrunning.com)

 

Body Image Issues and Eating Behaviors among Female Long-Distance Runners (calstate.edu)

 

Opinion | I Changed My Body for My Sport. No Girl Should. - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

Body Image Disturbances in NCAA Division I and III Female Athletes – The Sport Journal

 

Challenging Disordered Norms in Running Culture | National Eating Disorders Association

 

Understanding where threat and vulnerability fit into the risk equation gives you a better chance of managing injury risks with athletes.

Functional Movement Systems’ programming is based on being more proactive. To Gray Cook, this means recognizing and reducing risks for injury. That process starts with breaking down risks into its two components: Threat + Vulnerability.

Often teams and groups ask for sport-specific exercises and warm-ups, but that doesn’t always factor in risk. With sports, we already know the threats - for example, the shoulder in overhead athletes. Threats are part of the sport, but vulnerability is about the individual. Youth sports often import exercises from the pros, but pros don’t always share the same vulnerabilities as youth: growing pains, weak cores and tight ankles.

Warm-ups must address these vulnerabilities, even if the exercises don’t look like the sport - say rolling or bear crawls to recalibrate the core for soccer players. If you put too much focus on threats of the sport over the vulnerability of the players, you’ll build skill on dysfunction. Instead, make the athletes ready for the sport.

This activity is also great for youth who want to eventually be involved in the discus, shot put, high jump, hurdles, and pole vault!!

8/27/2021

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health are teaming up with more than 20 high schools across Wisconsin this fall to study how certain risk factors contribute to running-related injuries in high school cross country runners.

 

The study, which will be conducted entirely online using surveys completed by the athletes, will be used to determine how weekly changes in running volume can contribute to running-related injuries and the degree to which stress, sleep duration and quality, and participation in other sports have on these types of injuries. Running-related injuries are defined as any musculoskeletal pain that occurs after participating in cross country practice or competition.

 

Youth participation in cross country running has increased significantly over the past several years, with nearly 500,000 boys and girls nationwide participating in high school cross country during the 2018-19 season. Research has also shown that 28-38% of high school runners will sustain at least one running-related injury during a season and that injury risk is related to running more miles per week. As a result, parents, coaches, and medical professionals are calling for evidence-based guidelines for safe running mileage (volume) for youth runners. Unfortunately, there is no research to date that describes either appropriate weekly running volume or how changes in running volume might increase a high schooler’s risk of injury. Sleep and stress are also known to influence injury risk in other sports but has never been studied in youth runners. This research team plans to change that.

“We hope the results of our study will educate coaches, players, and parents about safe training volumes and lifestyle changes that could prevent running-related injuries in high school cross country runners,” said Mikel Joachim, study coordinator and PhD candidate in clinical investigation at UW’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.  “By reducing the number of these types of injuries, we can help preserve the health and well-being of these young athletes as they transition from high school into an active adulthood.”

A minimum of 350 cross country runners from more than 20 Wisconsin high schools will take part in the study. All athletes under the age of 18 will need parental consent to participate. Participation in the study requires one pre-season survey and a daily survey throughout the season. The pre-season survey includes questions regarding current and prior sport participation, prior injuries and surgeries, dietary habits, and current levels of stress and fatigue. The daily survey will be texted or emailed to participants directly and should take less than two minutes to complete. The daily survey includes questions regarding running mileage, duration, and intensity; prior night’s sleep duration and quality; current levels of stress and fatigue; and any injuries they are currently experiencing.

Parents are encouraged to reach out to their high school’s athletic department to learn more about the research and how their kids can contribute to the study.

High schools participating in the study

Dane County and adjacent

  • Baraboo
  • DeForest
  • Edgewood
  • McFarland
  • Middleton
  • Stoughton
  • Sun Prairie
  • Waunakee

Fox Valley area

  • Bay Port
  • Kaukauna
  • Menasha
  • Manitowoc Lincoln
  • Ripon

Southwest

  • Boscobel
  • Darlington
  • Fennimore
  • Lancaster

Milwaukee

  • Cedarburg
  • Hamilton Sussex
  • Homestead
  • Oconomowoc
  • Wauwatosa East

Janesville

  • Elkhorn
  • Janesville Craig
Last Updated  08/27/2021

 


. 2014 Jul-Aug;49(4):493-506.
 doi: 10.4085/1062-6050-49.2.19.

Middle school injuries: a 20-year (1988-2008) multisport evaluation

Abstract

Context: Data on the incidence of injury in middle school sports are limited.

Objective: To describe overall, practice, and game injury rate patterns in 29 middle school sports.

Design: Descriptive epidemiology study.

Setting: Injury data collected over a 20-year period (1988-2008) at a single school.

Patients or other participants: Boy (n = 8078) and girl (n = 5960) athletes participating in 14 and 15 middle school sports, respectively.

Main outcome measure(s): Injury status and athlete-exposures (AEs) were collected by certified athletic trainers. Incidence rates per 1000 AEs (injuries/AEs) were calculated for overall incidence, practices and games, injury location, injury type, and injury severity (time lost from participation). Rate ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to compare injury rates for sex-matched sports.

Results: Football had the highest injury rate for all injuries (16.03/1000 AEs) and for time-loss injuries (8.486/1000 AEs). In matched middle school sports, girls exhibited a higher injury rate for all injuries (7.686/1000 AEs, RR = 1.15, 95% CI = 1.1, 1.2) and time-loss injuries (2.944/1000 AEs, RR = 1.09, 95% CI = 1.0, 1.2) than boys (all injuries: 6.684/1000 AEs, time-loss injuries: 2.702/1000 AEs). Girls had a higher injury rate during practices (3.30/1000 AEs) than games (1.67/1000 AEs, RR = 1.97, 95% CI = 1.7, 2.4) for all sports. Only gymnastics (RR = 0.96, 95% CI = 0.3, 3.8) had a higher game injury rate for girls. Practice and game injury rates were nearly identical for boys in all sports (RR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.9, 1.1). Only football (RR = 0.49, 95% CI = 0.4, 0.6) and boys' wrestling (RR = 0.50, 95% CI = 0.3, 0.8) reported higher game injury rates. Tendinitis injuries accounted for 19.1% of all middle school injuries.

Conclusions: The risk for sport-related injury at the middle school level was greater during practices than games and greater for girls than boys in sex-matched sports. Conditioning programs may be needed to address the high rate of tendinitis injuries.

Keywords: adolescents; athletes; epidemiology; sports.

 

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Clin J Sport Med
 doi: 10.1097/00042752-200004000-00005.

High school cross country running injuries: a longitudinal study

Affiliations expand
    • PMID: 10798792

 DOI: 10.1097/00042752-200004000-00005

Abstract

Objective: To determine the incidence rate of injury among high school cross country runners over a 15-year period.

Design: Prospective-longitudinal.

Setting: Twenty-three high schools in western Washington State under the surveillance of the University of Washington Athletic Health Care System between 1979-1994.

Participants: One hundred and ninety-nine cross country teams.

Main outcome measure: Injuries resulting from running in a cross country practice or meet.

Results: There were 1,622 injuries for an overall injury rate of 13.1/1,000 athletic exposures (AEs), i.e., participation of a runner in a practice or meet. Girls had a significantly higher overall injury rate (16.7/1,000 AEs) than boys (10.9/1,000 AEs) (p < 0.0001). Girls also had significantly higher injury rates than boys for both initial (p < 0.0001) and subsequent injuries (p < 0.0001), especially those at the same body location (p = 0.0001). This difference in risk estimates was consistent over a 15-year period. Nearly three-fourths of the injuries resulted in < or =4 days of disability. Overall, higher rates of initial injuries were reported during practices (9.2/1,000 AEs) than in meets (7.8/1,000 AEs) (p = 0.04). Shin injuries had the highest overall rates of new injury (1.9/1,000 AEs) and reinjury at the same body location (53.9/1,000 AEs). Girls had significantly higher initial injury rates than boys for shin (p < 0.0001), hip. and foot injuries (p < 0.01), and higher reinjury rates for knee. calf, and foot injuries, respectively (p < 0.05).

Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that girl cross country runners are at higher risk of injury and reinjury than boy cross country runners.

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Injuries, burnout, eating disorders. Most coaches will focus on quantity, which means trying to get as many kids out for cross country as possible. But what about quality?

 About Cross Country: Many runners are very competitive during practice runs but are very noncompetitive during meets. The whole idea of "practice" is so you are competitive for the meets, yes that is why you are at practice. Up to 90% of runners do not want to be competitive during meets, so if you are competitive during meets, you will easily beat 90% or more of the runners. Not because you are a better runner than they are, you just decided to be competitive during the meets! This means being competitive in meets every year, not just your freshman and sophomore years. BUT, you have to remain healthy, and this is what separates the runners with real knowledge of injury PREVENTION.

 Competitive runners push themselves through discomfort, mainly the discomfort of shortness of breath. Most runners will back off a bit at that point, thus not improve much. 

 Running times, say running under 16:00 minutes (boys) for a 5K race does not mean you are necessarily an outstanding runner or even a healthy uninjured runner. A top performance on a flat course on a nice day will cover a 5K in 15:00 flat! 

 Racing strategies: Keep it simple. Remember that each race is part of your training during the season. Running in team packs: This sounds good but is not effective. Would you tell your top racers to slow down so the other runners on the team can keep up, thus you are running in a pack? There is a reason why Johnny can't keep up with Sam, or Nancy can't keep up with Mary. Each race should be used to train yourself for the state meet. Here is one example, strategy that I used in high school, I figured this out for myself, do not expect a coach to tell you this, your coach may not even have run cross country: Start each 5K race out fast and hang on the best you can. You will be far enough ahead of most runners, they will not catch you and remember you are a competitive runner, 90% are not. THEN at the state meet, start the race out a bit slower, the first mile about 5-10 seconds slower. You have to have a good sense of pace to do this. After that first mile, only a few other runners that normally are behind you might be a little ahead of you. Because you went a bit slower, you WILL be very fresh and run the last two miles VERY fast. So after that first mile, take off and enjoy passing others and running a personal best!!(assuming you are healthy)

 Cross Country training WILL create a dysfunctional body. There is nothing natural about logging miles. So you will need to counter act the running movement with other movements to PREVENT/CONTROL a dysfunctional moving body (an injury).

 When is the best time to get involved in cross country? I would recommend the 6th grade school system program. One program is enough. But you could wait until 7th, 8th, or high school to get involved. Starting early, say 6th grade, will not give you an advantage over someone who might wait until high school, maybe even 10th or 11th grade. A matter of fact starting early might just eventually burn you out or create a overuse injury.

 First of all, do not equate participating in a half-mile or mile run as cross country. The term "cross country" does not apply here, but is a way to get you hooked on the sport. You will find that when you actually join a cross country program, the miles you run per week will go up higher than you might of imagined. This is where you can get into trouble because your body may not be prepared for 20 or 30 or 40 plus miles/week. So you need to take a step back, get screened, then come up with a plan based on the screen results. The screen is not a performance test, it shows how well you move within your own body dimensions.

We are trying to identify movement dysfunction. Staying in balance or close to it will keep you healthy.
Another important topic is recovery. Recovery is where an athlete becomes stronger and healthier. The workout breaks the body down. Also very important is the issue of physical work. A running athlete should have enough reserve to function/work in society. This means performing physical tasks involved in the workplace (i.e. carpentry, lawn/tree care, retail employment, etc). Do not let running dominate your physical life.
This website will address athletes who choose to participate in cross country. The focus will be on injury prevention. Build a Foundation to your athletic program. First you need to be professionally screened.  Do not be afraid of learning about your own physical limitations. Then you can work on your limitations and reach your athletic potential without injuries.
Most runners go into cross country with physical issues( i.e. a short leg, previous injury, one side of pelvis larger than the other, ankle and knee issues, etc) thus its just a matter of time that you will experience some sort of pain or physical limitation. It is easier to hide limitations in cross country, but when you enter a track race in the spring, you find out how dysfunctional you move. The faster you needed to go, the more dysfunction we see.
Athletic mindset: How can I avoid injuries, both obvious and hidden, throughout my secondary school career, college career, and beyond. As opposed to: What do I need to do to be a state champion and receive a college scholarship. Remember, staying healthy will lead to possible championships and college scholarships. And of course you will actually learn something, which should be the function of education.
The athletes needs to slow down, way down, and start to focus on staying healthy, no one else will do this for you. It wont be easy, but then anything worthwhile isn't easy.

The young runner needs to start self learning  as early as 6th or 7th grade. As you go from middle to high school your body will change, thus your continued self learning will become even more important.

Keep in mind that a successful (high placing or even state champion) runner in high school does not mean they will be successful in college because they may be physically and mentally burned out after a high mileage high school career. If you have movement problems, 20 miles/week could be to many miles. It all depends on your personal movement situation.
Do not assume a state championship team is a healthy team!


This website will help guide you.

Have you had a Baseline Movement Screen to see how well (or not how well) you move? If you do not move well then what do you think will happen when you start "logging" miles on your poor movement? If you do have some movement patttern problems, you need to work on correcting and or managing them to reduce your chance of injury. Your health is the foundation to more success, and not just running success. If  you are not healthy, other variables like team unity will not help anyone in the short or long run. If you do not think health is that important, go visit a hospital. 

 

 

Don't assume that because another runner is placing high, (i.e. say in the top 10 in a cross country meet) that they are healthy. They may have stress fractures, an ACL injury, knee pain, an eating disorder, various biomechanical issues ranging from the foot to the neck, to name a few.

Your Value System & intellectual Curiosity
Do you value your health enough to learn and apply basic injury prevention knowledge?
What kind of off-season (if you have one) injury prevention program are you participation in (if any)?
 
If the sport you are participating in is creating injuries to you,   would  you consider yourself successful in that sport? Is doing everything you can to be injury free part of your goals to be successful?

Athletes need to be screened first and often. Keep in mind that athletes may have many coaches throughout their middle and high school careers, so athletes pick up a lot of incorrect training information.

After collapsing at state meet last season, North runner Luz ready for another shot

Oct 26, 2017

 

 

Fargo North runner Alex Luz could see the finish line. It was only 100 meters away. He was going to finish in the Class A boys top five at the North Dakota state meet. All the miles, bus rides, training and avoiding things like drinking pop had been for this final kick.

 

And then his legs gave out.

"Two miles in my legs felt a little different," Luz said. "I was running with someone from Bismarck, and he started to speed up. I said, 'I got to go.' It felt like there were pins going into my thighs. I kept going. It was state, so it's all your season's work. I was going to go hard. I just felt like I couldn't go anywhere."

Luz is the kind of runner North head coach Gary Mailloux has to tell to take a break. At the state meet, pins in his thighs or not, Luz wasn't going to stop.

"He's just a tenacious competitor," Mailloux said. "As a coach, you have to tell him to back off a little bit. Those who really get hooked on running you run for such a long time you feel you can't live without it."

Luz fell once, got up, ran for 10 meters and fell again. He watched from the ground as runners went by him. His sophomore season had come to an end with no finish at the state meet, and gone was any hope of North finishing in the top five as a team. His parents took him to the emergency room where he received fluids. He was dehydrated, after getting a bit sick the night before the state meet.

"I couldn't do anything," Luz said. "It just sucked."

Mailloux doesn't stand at the finish line at races. He waits for all of his runners to pass him on the course. He saw Luz go by him and figured North was in good position as a team. He got to the finish line and a North runner asked him if he knew if Luz was OK.

"Your heart sinks," Mailloux said. "Did he trip? How is he doing? Then, you think about the team outcome. He and his teammates had worked hard to be top-five finishers and without him it wasn't likely to happen."

The Spartans finished eighth as a team, and Luz had his motivation for this season. The junior will enter Bjornson Golf Course in Valley City, N.D., Saturday ranked No. 2 in Class A.

"I feel like last year I just overthought things too much," Luz said. "I don't think too much about races now. I definitely know that what happened last year won't happen again. I'm running this different than last year. When you run it takes like two years for a base to actually help, so it's showing now."

After collapsing at the state meet last season, Luz ran all through the winter with a group of North runners. During the track and field season, he finished fourth in the 800 meters, fourth in the 1,600, fifth in the 3,200 and was part of a 3,200 relay that finished second at the state meet.

"That group had an outstanding track season," Mailloux said. "He individually was outstanding season."

Luz had always been a fast runner in middle school. In sixth grade, after breaking his arm playing football, his parents told him to try to a new sport. He went out for cross country and has loved it ever since.

"It was hard at first, but I learned to love it," Luz said. " When I'm on my run by myself my mind goes clear, and I can just think about whatever I want. I've made all my new friends in it. I just love running. I just love competing. There's no better sport to compete than running."

Luz plans to do more than finish the race this season at the state meet.

"I think the goal is to win," Luz said. "It should be. I think I can do it. I just have go into having positive thoughts."

 

Home Stretch: DHS cross country concludes season at state meet

Oct 25, 2017

 

 

Coach Greg Jung doesn't believe in tapering off.

 

 

As most long distance runners train for a race, they begin to taper off their distances a week or more before their event.

 

 

As the Dickinson High cross country team prepares for their state meet in Valley City on Saturday, Oct. 28, head coach Jung has them working just as hard as any other week.

"I know we've been training harder," Jung said. "We actually had a normal week of training last week. We're even doing a few workouts early just to make sure we're sharp. Nothing too hard because we want them to be fresh. We've really been trying to focus on the mental part of it, making sure that they're taking care of themselves mentally as well as taking care of themselves physically."

A state meet takes a lot more mental preparation than a smaller regional meet. With twenty teams bringing up to ten runners each, the state meet is usually the largest runners encounter.

This season though, the Midgets traveled to the Roy Griak Invitational in St. Paul, Minn., where they saw the likes of 500 runners.

"I think that helps us out a little bit. I don't think we'll be as in awe as maybe we normally are," Jung said. "The atmosphere is completely different. You can tell that everybody is focused and it's definitely a state meet atmosphere."

Both the girls and boys team are young, and just two runners on the girls varsity team were at the varsity level last season.

Freshman Symone Beld leads the Midgets girl's team and ran her best time of 20:06 at the Western Dakota Association regional on Saturday, Oct. 14, good for 12th place.

"I've just been thinking of it as another practice," Beld said. "Physically, I keep icing my knee so it doesn't bother me and heating it and making sure I drink a lot of water and hydrate."

Brady Yoder, also a freshman, competed at the varsity level last season.

"(Yoder's) a pretty special talent," Jung said. "It doesn't happen often in boys distance running that young kids excel. It's very rare. We're really blessed to have a kid like Brady who runs as well as he does at his age."

Yoder finished fifth at the regional meet with a time of 16 minutes and 43 seconds, about 15 seconds shy of his best time this season.

"I'm just trying to stay relaxed this whole week," Yoder said. "Last year I was really nervous. I remember before the meet I was really nervous and that might of hurt a little bit."

Jung said he's hoping the boys team can place in the top ten on Saturday. The Midgets placed fifth at the west regionals, bested by Bismarck High, Bismarck Legacy, Bismarck Century and Williston.

"For the girls it's going to be a lot tougher," Jung said. "We were fourth in our region, but the unfortunate thing is, (eastern North Dakota) is super strong on the girls side. With Grand Forks Red River and Fargo Davies and West Fargo, they're just tremendous teams. ... It's going to be tough to be in the top ten, but it's definitely doable."

 

 

All in the Stance

By Dana Scarton

August 26, 2003

When Brian Bradley told Alexandra Giannini to crawl the perimeter of the carpeted meeting room, some observers may have recalled humiliations native to gym class and football fields. But Giannini didn't object.

Instead, the 29-year-old athletic trainer from Springfield shed her shoes, sank onto hands and knees, and circled the audience of about 40 fitness professionals. Then, still barefoot, she rose to her feet and paced back and forth, as she had prior to crawling. The crowd responded with approving nods. This time, Giannini, who suffers from a congenital defect in both hips that makes her feet point outward, walked with her feet pointing straighter.

"I wanted her to see that the most primitive exercise, like crawling, could get her to walk better," Bradley explained after the workshop, held in June at a hotel on P Street NW. "It reengaged her pelvis, which made her foot strike better. She felt more balanced, and that was just in one day. Imagine if she did the exercise every day."

Convincing people to engage in a regular program of peculiar-looking exercises is a big part of Bradley's mission. He is director of program development for the Egoscue Method, a 25-year-old therapy aimed at relieving chronic pain of the back, neck, shoulders and knees, as well as alleviating other ailments -- from headaches to bunions -- without drugs, surgery or manipulation.

Named after founder Pete Egoscue (pronounced ee-GOSS-kyu), a self-taught anatomical physiologist with a degree in political science, the Egoscue Method is an exercise therapy program that, like Pilates, Rolfing, the Alexander Technique and several other modalities, focuses on the role of alignment and posture in improved bodily function.

The Egoscue Method, which requires no equipment beyond a chair, an exercise mat or an empty expanse of carpet, involves individually tailored sequences of stretches and strengthening exercises meant to be performed for up to an hour a day. The program boasts clients in more than 85 countries; Egoscue has been embraced by National Football League standout Junior Seau and, late in their careers, by golf legends Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.

Most patients, however, are typical men and women between 40 and 70, such as David Hoagland of Potomac Falls. Back in 1989 while living in San Diego, Egoscue's home base, Hoagland experienced debilitating low-back pain. "It felt like someone had stuck a bayonet in my back," said Hoagland, now 52. "One doctor said I'd never run again. I couldn't live like that. Within nine months of starting Egoscue, I was back on the running track."

In addition to its San Diego clinic, Egoscue operates a smaller clinic in Stamford, Conn., and regularly takes its therapy on the road, setting up weekend clinics in or near major cities. The method also is finding its way into Washington area health clubs such as One-to-One Fitness centers in the District and Fairfax County, and Jungle's Gym in Burke.

Despite its spread, the Egoscue Method has not won the full support of medical experts or the fitness industry. Some orthopedic surgeons warn that while such therapy has merit, there are limits to how much it can achieve. Some personal trainers say the method is difficult for them to learn and the therapy too time-consuming or inconsistent with their prior training.

"We found holes in the Egoscue Method," said Christy DeNardo, fitness manager at The Sports Club/LA in the District, which recently scrapped a plan to institute a posture program based solely on Egoscue in favor of one that draws from techniques championed by several organizations, including the National Academy of Sports Medicine and the CHEK Institute, both in California. She said that some Egoscue exercise prescriptions were too long for clients to complete daily and that the approach wasn't backed by research.

Bradley points to the Egoscue Method's self-reported 94 percent success rate with its patients. He suggested that some fitness professionals may be frustrated because Egoscue does not merely require would-be postural alignment specialists to memorize exercises and then spit back the information on an exam. "It's not always a real good fit because we actually make them think about how to do something."

Still, Bradley did not characterize The Sports Club/LA decision as a negative development. "They weren't doing anything like this before. So even if they're doing a watered-down version (of Egoscue) now, someone is going to get well. And that's great."

A search turned up no studies of the technique. Pete Egoscue said he is aware of only one -- a 12-week program this summer at St. John's Riverside Hospital in Yonkers, N.Y. Bob Fanelli, clinical director of cardiac rehabilitation at St. Johns's, said final results are still being tabulated but that overall, the study's raw data showed Egoscue exercises to be a positive addition to cardiac rehabilitation programs. "In my opinion, [the Egoscue Method] is more effective than any modality that I've ever used as an exercise physiologist," he said. "Anything I can do to decrease the workload for my clients is good, because they're already compromised."

Asked why his method has not been the focus of more research, Egoscue suggested the scientific community lacked great awareness of the importance of posture, in general, or of Egoscue.

Back to the Blueprint

The concept behind the Egoscue Method is simple: The body has an original blueprint for standing posture. Picture the classic model of the human skeleton. Eight load-bearing joints -- two shoulders, two hips, two knees, two ankles -- all sit on horizontal lines that are parallel to one another and to the ground. If viewed from the side, the head, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles are vertically aligned. The side view also depicts the S-curve of the spine, which enables the body to distribute weight evenly from head to toe and serves as an enforcer of the body's uniform structure and symmetry.

The problem is that most of us don't resemble the blueprint. Look in the mirror. Does one hip sit higher than the other? Do your feet point inward? Are your shoulders rolled forward?

Spend a minute in the company of an Egoscue therapist and you'll become painfully aware of your bad habits. Even standing with your weight resting mostly on one foot is a no-no.

The good news is that all of this is correctable. "The body is very smart," Bradley said. "You just have to give it the right stimulus."

For Egoscue, the stimulus comes in the form of more than 400 stretches and strengthening exercises. These Egoscue-cises, or E-cises, target muscles responsible for holding our bones in correct alignment, which prompts the question: How did we slip out of correct alignment in the first place?

That's easy, said Pete Egoscue. We stopped moving.

At the heart of the Egoscue philosophy is the belief that the human body was designed to move. Think hunters and gatherers. They ran, jumped, lifted and threw. Modern man, on the other hand, rarely treks deep into the woods to stalk his dinner. Rather, he sits at a desk, drives a car, orders takeout and clicks a remote. All these environmental changes, says Egoscue, have weakened the muscles charged with supporting our bodies and enabling us to move as we were designed to move.

Picture Imperfect

Even those who exercise regularly are not immune. Doris Matteau, a fit-looking 56, played tennis regularly until February, when she felt a pinch in her back while shoveling snow. "The next day I couldn't stand up straight," said Matteau, who lives in McLean. Her doctor put her on an anti-inflammatory medication, which allowed her to straighten up long enough to go skiing. That's when her right leg went numb. An MRI showed a bulging disk in her lower back. Her options? Surgery or physical therapy. She opted for eight weeks of physical therapy, with limited success.

Meanwhile, Matteau had begun performing E-cises she received online. By mid-June, she had returned to the tennis courts. In late June, she stopped by a traveling Egoscue clinic in Herndon to have her program reviewed and updated.

Forty-eight people attended the three-day clinic, held in a cleared-out conference room. Many suffered from some type of pain -- either in the lower back or in one or more joints. Each visitor underwent a 90-minute evaluation and treatment with one of three Egoscue-trained therapists. The fee for the first visit alone was $350; a package of eight individualized appointments, usually spread out over several weeks or months, cost $1,500. (Fees for online treatment are significantly lower.)

All appointments began with patients in bare or stocking feet and shorts; women wore a T-shirt or sports bra, men went shirtless. They assumed a normal standing posture while a therapist shot digital photographs from four views: left side, right side, front, and back. Next, a therapist conducted a "gait analysis," studying each individual for imbalances that occur while walking. Finally, E-cises were selected based on each patient's dysfunction. All exercises were to be performed between appointments, requiring up to an hour a day.

"In Egoscue, you get very intimate with your ceiling," said Barbara Lamborne, 46, of Lovettsville, while lying on her back with one leg resting, knee bent, on an inflated cube. She discovered Egoscue after undergoing hip surgery and seeing six orthopedic surgeons, one chiropractor and five physical therapists for persistent hip and back pain. The key to Lamborne's pain and Matteau's back problems, according to Egoscue therapists, are imbalances in their hips. Matteau's left hip was a bit elevated and Lamborne's left hip jutted out when she walked. Lamborne says the Egoscue treatment hasn't gotten rid of the problem, but it has helped.

Simply alleviating pain by injecting a drug, replacing a joint or resting an injury rarely corrects the underlying problem, said Pete Egoscue. He insists that most chronic joint pain -- barring disease, certain traumas or genetic defect -- results from alignment problems. Until correct posture is restored, ailments will continue to occur, if not in the same joint, then in another.

"If we understand [pain] and truly can interpret it properly, then the body responds, and it responds very rapidly," Egoscue said.

Posture-correction techniques do have merit, said John Klimkiewicz, chief of orthopedic sports medicine at Georgetown University Hospital. "You certainly do compensate to a large degree with your other joints when a single joint is affected."

Klimkiewicz maintains that an approach that considers posture would be most useful in treating overuse injuries, such as tendinitis, or pelvic imbalances where a specific injury is not involved. Even certain types of back pain may respond.

"Purely mechanical problems," such as severely torn tendons, would be best treated by surgery, he said.

Klimkiewicz sharply disagreed with some claims of Egoscue's advocates, though, such as their insistence that bunions are calcium deposits that can be eliminated by changing the way a person's foot strikes the ground.

"A bunion is a crooked toe," Klimkiewicz said. "You fix it by straightening it [through surgery], and the pain will go away." Other conditions he deemed not likely to respond to posture techniques include carpal tunnel syndrome and scoliosis involving a large degree of curvature. This view is not shared by Egoscue.

"You've got to be just a little skeptical," Klimkiewicz said. "Does this type of treatment have applications? Yes. Is it a panacea? No."

Straightening Up

Formerly hampered by low-back pain, Linda Miller, 59, of the District, faithfully engaged in E-cises -- not at a clinic, but during a recent visit to One-to-One Fitness on K Street NW.

Trainers at the gym sprinkled posture exercise throughout clients' workouts, whether or not they had a history of joint pain. Even weight-training exercises, such as biceps curls and shoulder presses, were monitored for correct posture.

"People like to view exercise as a benign entity that would be good for everybody," said Pat McCloskey, director of training at One-to-One and an Egoscue enthusiast. "But if people are getting strong in a crooked position, then they are strengthening a crooked position and just making things worse."

Most of the clients appeared to be over 30, in good health, and seemed to appreciate the focus on posture and corrective exercise. Miller, for instance, said she now understands what exercises to do if her back pain recurs, and she's more cognizant of maintaining correct posture in everyday tasks, such as lifting.

Fitness professionals who want to remain current are likely to integrate postural assessment and correction techniques, if not from Egoscue, then from another program, said Brenda Johnson, a personal trainer with a doctorate in physical education who draws from the Egoscue Method in working with clients at Jungle's Gym in Burke.

"It's not just about a great set of abs or a great set of glutes anymore. For the client to get the best value in terms of injury prevention and in terms of longevity, there's a need to learn to view the body as an integrated whole."

*

Dana Scarton's last fitness story for the Health section was about Heavy Hoops.

Pete Egoscue devised his therapy while recovering from a war injury.

 

State Champ: Ford wins second Class A cross country title

 

Pleased, but not surprised.

It was Jamestown High School head cross country coach Ken Gardner's reaction to the 2019 girls state cross country meet results.

JHS junior Meghan Ford left Souris Valley Golf Course with her second state champion title on Saturday afternoon. The 2019 state champ crossed the line at 17:41 beating second-place finisher Hayley Ogle of Watford City by 48 seconds. It was the shortest gap Ford has won by this season.

"She pretty much dominated that race," Gardner said.

While Ford earned the top spot she was hoping for in Minot, there were elements of the race that Ford and Gardner are looking to improve upon before the Nike Cross Heartland Regional and the Footlocker Midwest Regional in November.

 

"The plan was to keep that first half-miler under control, not go out too hard," Gardner said. "That's been something that she's kind of been known to do, is get too over anxious and go too hard early on and that really affects the second part of her race.

"She did a little better with that today, I think could still do a little bit better -- saving an extra five or 10 seconds in the first mile. That's something we'll continue to work on. We have a couple more big-time meets to try and get that race she really wants to have."

Ford added.

"I do think I held back the first 200 meters because I was trying to draft off of somebody else so that I wouldn't have to take the brunt of the wind, but decided to surge and try to start creating a gap because nobody would take the lead.

"I did go through the mile way faster than I wanted, it was a 5:19 and I was hoping for a 5:30, so other than not going too fast at the start, I did run my first mile too fast."

Though Ford contended with minor health issues throughout the season, the state champ said despite a windy day on the course nothing seemed to hold her back and now that she's won one title her mind has shifted to her November meets.

"I felt great today," Ford said. "I am feeling better each week and I feel a lot more like myself when I race. I still think I can continue to improve going into the postseason meets though.

"For Nike Cross and Footlocker Regionals, I won't be focusing so much on what my time is other than pacing-wise. My goal is to place top five at Nike Cross Regionals to qualify for Nike Nationals and place top 10 at Footlocker Regionals to qualify for Footlocker Nationals."

While Ford's season did not come to an end on Saturday, it was the end for the rest of the JHS XC team. Gardner said he was proud of and highlighted the boy's team fourth-place closeout to the season.

 
 

"All of our top five had really good races," Gardner said. "Four of the top five had personal best times in the 5k and then the other one who was in the top five was like within two seconds of his PR. They put together the race they needed to today."

Juniors Gavin Haut and Ben Anteau led the boys' team. Haut finished with an individual fourth-place finish while Anteau ended the race in the No. 8 spot. Anteau crossed the finish line at 16:10 PRing by three seconds. Haut also hit a personal best that made him the Blue Jays' No. 1 runner.

"Gavin went out a little harder today," Gardner said. "The first mile, or maybe a little bit more than a mile, he was with that top three or four at the very front. He was able to still maintain. Place wise I don't know that it improved him a whole lot from where we expected him to be ... but he set like a 20 second PR toady.

"For the first time, (he) dropped under 16 minutes in the 5K which for a high school boy is a really tough time. He ran a 15:44 so if it wasn't in place it was certainly in time that he made a big improvement today and really showed he can run with the best of them when he lays it on the line like that."

It was a good end to a season for the Jays and looking ahead, Gardner said he sees potential with the talent in tow.

"Looking forward for us as a coaching staff on the girls' side, three of our top five girls are seventh graders," Gardner said. "There's some promise there for the future and we hope to take today's meet and continue to build on that.

"Out of our top five we've got a junior, three seventh-graders and a freshman so we're pretty young -- we've just got to ... get that body to put miles in over the summer and the offseason so they are ready to roll when the beginning of the season comes around next year."

2019 North Dakota State Cross Country Meet

 

Girl’s Cross Country: The Most Dangerous Sport in High School

March 14, 2019

 

When I ran my first competitive 5k in 2014, I told myself that I was going to quit cross country the second I finished. I was in eighth grade and had been running on the high school team for around two months in freshman races before I moved up to the varsity team for our league championship. I felt like I was dying of pain and didn’t know how I would ever get myself to run another race. But after I finished and did well, I smiled and forgot all about that moment until the next race.

Throughout my five years as a competitive runner, I have gotten used to feeling a lot of pain. I’ve run thousands of miles and have had more bad days than good, but the only pain that has really hurt my running trajectory didn’t come from a tough workout, early run, or race where I went out too hard: it came from injury.

In addition to the general aches and pains in my knees and legs on a nearly daily basis, I have had a stress fracture, two stress reactions, a strained calf, recurring shin splints, a muscle adhesion in my right quad, and complications with the growth plate in my left foot. To some, this list might sound like cross country might not be a suitable sport for me or that I have especially weak, injury prone legs; however, to almost all of the runners I have met, this story sounds all too familiar.

High school girls’ cross country has the highest injury rate out of any high school varsity sport, according to a study done by Dr. Stephen Rice, the director of the Athletic Health Care System. Most injuries in cross country are categorized as overuse injuries which occur from repeated mini-traumas to weaker body parts through repetitive activity, like running.

While cross country has relatively high injury rates overall, boy’s cross country was only ranked fifth on the list of injury rates in high school sports, a significant difference based on gender alone. A 15 year study conducted by Rauh MJ at the University of Washington tracked injury rates for high school cross country runners at 23 high schools and found that girls had a significantly higher injury rate than their male counterparts. The study found the rate of injury for females to be 53% higher than that for males.

“Most injuries come from weakness,” my physical therapist Janet Nelson told me at my last visit to her office. “Running is such a repetitive form of exercise that any weakness or issue with form is felt over and over again in your legs so that imbalances in strength and mobility are really impactful and often lead to overuse injuries.”

None of my injuries or weaknesses are out of line with what one would commonly expect for a female runner in high school and from what my own physical therapist and other doctors have told me, a lot of these problems can be improved by increased mobility and strength training.

Injury can have major negative impacts on the mental health of runners. In my own experience, being injured has led to increased anxiety and frustration with cross country and other aspects of my life as well. Injuries feel like a betrayal, and the process of coming back to running slowly to try and avoid re-injury is tortuous.

While I believe strength training could improve injury rates, there has to be something else to account for girls’ cross country topping the list of injury rates for all high school sports. Male athletes have a natural advantage physically, but the strength disparity between male and female runners isn’t as large as one might think. The girls on my team often lift roughly the same weight and usually do more strength training than our male counterparts.

Dr. Anne Hoch, the director of women’s sports medicine at the University of Wisconsin, agrees. “While weaknesses are often the root of overuse injuries and lead to the high rate of injury among runners generally, the gender disparity in cross country is more likely to come from girls often having inadequate levels of calcium, vitamin D, iron, and low caloric intake, setting them up for bone fractures and other injuries,” she says.

Nutritional deficits are a common issue for female runners. According to Dr. Margot Putukian, the director of athletic medicine at Princeton University, the frequency of these nutritional issues can be attributed to a combination of a lack of education about proper nutrition and unusually high rates of eating disorders.

Girls’ cross country also has the highest rate of eating disorders according to a study conducted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Improper nutrition can easily lead to athletes falling into the female athlete triad: undereating, amenorrhea, and early onset osteoporosis. This triad frequently results in injuries which helps explain the exceptionally high injury rate in girls’ cross country.

Eating disorders are a prevalent, but hardly talked about, issue in competitive running. There is a natural association between fitness and thinness in the sport and, consequently, an association between thinness and speed for many young runners. It is easy for female athletes to look at the girls who are winning, runners who are much thinner than the average teenage girl, and come to the conclusion that losing weight is the key to dropping time.

Being fast, at any cost, is an overpowering force in the culture of competitive running. In February of my junior year, I finished a mile race in Staten Island in the slowest time I had run since I was a freshman. After missing 3 months of that year due to injury, I was out of shape and extremely dejected. I walked off the track, into a hallway, sat down in an isolated corner, and began to cry. I blamed myself for being slow, for not trying hard enough, for getting injured, and for being out of shape. I thought of all the things I was doing wrong, many of them beyond my control, and was so angry that I didn’t feel like I looked like the girls who were running the times I wanted to.

“The desire to control every minute detail of our training, from hours of sleep to each tactical second in a race, leads young women, who due to biology and puberty often inevitably follow a non linear path in terms of peaking in our training and fitness, to feel that the only thing we can decidedly control is caloric intake and the appearance of our bodies.” said Ella Ketchum, a Poly alum and All-American in the 2 mile who currently runs at Dartmouth College.

At 5 foot 3, thin, and muscular, any onlooker would think Ella looks exactly how runners are expected to. However, she told me that when she would toe the line at big competitions, she felt as though she didn’t match the body type of the elite runners surrounding her.

“Now I feel like I have a much better attitude surrounding food and body image than I did in high school… and it’s still hard for me not to compare myself to the other girls on my team or that I compete against,” she said. Ella has had three stress reactions which have led to her miss entire seasons.

Emma Abrahamson, a former runner at the University of Oregon’s cross country team which won NCAA nationals in 2017, has said publicly that for a while, she “didn’t feel like she looked the right way in the uniform,” and while she never developed an eating disorder, she said, “the anxiety about the way I looked on the track permeated so many aspects of my life.”

Every summer from the time I started running in 8th grade to before my junior year of high school, I attended a cross country camp called “The Running School”. One of the camp’s staple classes was an annual nutritional seminar taught by Jim Wharton, a well-known stretching guru. Instead of addressing the prevalence of eating disorders in female cross country runners, Jim would always talk about the evils of sugar, benefits of not eating red meat, and easy ways to replace meals or snacks with supplements. His favorite phrase was “Food for fuel, not for pleasure. You run how you eat.”

In years of hearing this talk, I had never been told about the dangers of undereating in running or the ways that nutritional deficits can quickly lead to serious injuries. Girls in my cabin would eat granola bars for what seemed like every meal, and counselors told me not to eat pasta or other simple carbs. When I was entering 10th grade, I heard Jim Wharton’s nutritional speech for the third time and told myself that the solution to all of my running problems was to completely stop eating processed sugar and limit the amount of red meat I ate. I hadn’t improved from my 8th grade times in the ways I wanted to I took “you run how you eat” to heart and told myself that I would get faster if I ate the way they were telling me to.

I largely cut out sugar and stopped eating red meat and went into my cross country season expecting nothing but success. Instead, I ended up anemic. I passed out twice that season because I wasn’t eating properly or enough. My knees were injured on and off the entire year. My shin splints were worse than ever. I was generally unhappy and got slower.

Luckily, I didn’t develop an eating disorder, but the way I was eating wasn’t healthy and I didn’t know enough about nutrition to connect my injuries to my nutritional deficiencies. After a year, I was injured and sidelined for my junior year cross country season. It took another serious injury and disappointing races for me to realize things needed to change before I started my senior year.

Cross Country is a sport that has given me so much purpose and happiness, but the current culture surrounding nutrition and injury isn’t healthy or sustainable. Not only are girls not learning about proper nutrition, but many are taught information that can be detrimental to their health and running careers. We don’t need to make it harder for girls by reinforcing ideas that the way to be fast is to lose weight, and perpetuating a cycle of injury can quickly stall a running career in addition to hurting young girls’ self-esteem and overall mental health.

 

Coyotes place second in WDA; eyes set on repeat

    •  Oct 16, 2023 Updated 15 

    • At the start of the season, Williston High School's boys Cross Country team were ready to bring in a new era to the successful program, developing the next competitive state title team after graduating a number of key runner last year. 

      The Coyotes have seemed as though they have not missed a beat this season, staying consistent as a program as the team finished second in the Western Dakota Association Invitational on Saturday with 60 team points.

      This season, Williston has placed in the top three in every meet they have competed in; they have finished with three first place finishes, two second place, and two third place finishes. 

      Head Coach of Williston High School Boys Cross Country Shane Wahlstrom has been impressed with his team this season. Although it took him some time at the beginning of the season to learn his squad, Wahlstrom thinks the team is peaking at the perfect time. 

      "It was kind of uncertain and kind of rocky at the beginning. We graduated a really talented senior group. I think it took me until probably five weeks into the season until I could learn our team better. Each team is different, it seems simple ‘How hard is it to go out and run’. Each group is different, and they can tolerate a lot of different things, they like different types of workouts, different types of concepts," Wahlstrom said. "We are pretty young too. We have some guys, we have some older guys, but we are relying on some underclassmen in some big spots. I kind of had to learn where they are at and what their potential was."

      With the many seniors now off of the team, the younger athletes were looked upon to step up this season. Throughout the season, everyone on the team has come into their own as the season reaches its conclusion. As a team, the Coyotes have worked together all year, even during the summer.

      To begin the season, Wahlstrom wanted to ease his runners into the cross country season. In the past, too much training early left some athletes fatigued as the season reached the final month.

      "I feel like I have made mistakes in the past letting our seniors or our upper varsity guys by letting them train really hard in the summer, and I feel that has not worked well," Wahlstrom said. "Because when we get to this time of the season, we are kind of tired. We aren’t able to reach where we want."

      At the end of this season, Wahlstrom is completely comfortable with his team as his runners are feeling fresh heading into the state meet on October 27 and 28.  

      "After we got past the middle of September going into the end of September, I was a lot more comfortable about where our team was at. I am feeling really good about it now, I think our team right now is as good as I thought we could be. I hope we aren’t close to where we are going to be, but I can see us trending in the right direction," Wahlstrom said. "I think we are about where we would like to be, or where I saw us being up to this point." 

      Senior Thomas Haskins has boasted an excellent final season for the Coyotes as he has placed in the top five in every meet he has competed in and took first place in the Minot Souris Valley Invite on October 7. This weekend, Haskins placed second and earned his personal record for his career with a time of 15:42.7. 

      Haskins has competed with the Coyotes since he was in seventh grade. Wahlstrom has been proud of the work Haskins has but in for his career, especially this season. For it to culminate in his successful season has made it even more special. 

      "We could go back years for him," Wahlstrom said. "He had a really good summer of running. I had to do my best to keep him patient because he really wanted to go and run a lot. I wanted to keep him under control a little bit so that we could run our best now. So we still had room to improve and give him a chance to not only our team to win a championship but him individually to win a championship."

      Haskins has also been ranked top five in the North Dakota High School Association's Coaches Poll all season long. The confidence of climbing the rankings has helped Haskins compete with an edge trying to beat out those ahead. 

      "It’s helped me a lot with confidence to race," Haskins said. "You try to think about ranking and how I can be higher than them in the rankings every week."

      As a team, Haskins has liked what he has seen from his teammates this season. The goal is to stay focused heading into the final weeks. 

      "I feel that we have been going really good this year. Just trying to keep the team stable for WDA and state," Haskins said.

      Junior Hunter Hart has solidified himself as the number two runner on the team this season. To start the season, Hart looked to serve as one of the leaders on the team and set by example. Hart has done good by his word as he has looked to uplift everyone on the team throughout the season while leading by example. He posted his personal record in the WDA meet and finished 17th with a time of 16:41.3.

      "(I'm) really trying to get close to everyone on the team and really be a leader, helping everyone get to where we want to be at the end of the season and helping everyone get their goals," Hart said. "Not just the top five guys, we want the top 20 guys doing their best."

      The Coyotes will look to repeat their state title in the Class A State Meet on October 27 and 28 in Jamestown.