CALF SORENESS
Dr.Romanov
Calf soreness very often appears at the beginning of the learning process in the Pose Method and bothers the runner around 2-3 weeks while he is adapting to the new neuro-muscular coordination and to the regime of muscle loading. Is it possible to avoid these negative consequences? This is a constant question I am getting from our website's running forum and standard clinics. The fact of having muscle strain is the first indication of getting DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness)syndrome, which appears 12 to 48 hours after exercising and is characterized by tenderness and stiffness of muscles. The pain is caused by micro-tears of muscle tissue from only one reason basically - resisting gravity. The mechanics of the injury cause is very simple. During landing on the support the body moves forward and down towards the ground. The final muscle groups responsible for accepting the body weight are foot muscles, and calves are the strongest ones of them. The main biomechanical goal of the body movement over the support is to provide redirection from the downward-forward flow to upward-forward one without loosing momentum and horizontal velocity and even try to gain a little there. So, in the Pose Method this is achieved by landing the foot close to the point of projection of the General Center of Mass (GCM)on the ground, and proceeding with falling forward with minimum or no braking. The body weight downward movement is supposed to be finished, before the beginning of falling forward. But very often calves resist to this downward movement by getting tense, which is caused by the desire to hold the heel and prevent the foot from touching the ground. Why this is happening? The reasons could be different: wrong understanding and over-doing of the command to keep the body weight on balls of the feet. Another one could be: performing the push off with the foot activity. It could be done on the conscious or subconscious level, but the result is always the same - overloading the calf muscles. Biomechanical basis of it consists of counteraction of two forces, gravity and muscles activity, resisting the body weight, working simultaneously in the opposite directions. Who wins and who loses is not difficult to guess. The muscles suffer the consequences. How to avoid this trouble?
do not put too much effort into staying on the ball of the foot.
do not hold the heel too high above the ground. It's OK even to touch the ground with it, as long as the body weight is kept on the ball of the foot.
do not do any active propulsion or push off with the leg and the foot. Keep your perception of the foot as being not loaded, but on the opposite, as getting unloaded, when you start running.
concentrate only on the pulling action of the foot from the ground.
The body weight movement downward is finished when the body's general center of mass is passing over the ball of the foot on support. The logical consequence of it is the following: the faster the body passes through the vertical line over the ball of the foot, the faster the calf muscles are released from the body weight load. If during the downward movement of the body the calf muscles are not active, holding or pushing the body weight, then they receive less loading. It is very useful to run barefoot to learn the proper neuro-muscular coordination and to feel relaxation and looseness of the support foot and ankle. Jumps with the rope on one or both legs reproducing the Pose stance are good as well. These exercises teach you to synchronize the body weight moving down with relaxation of your calves. Start from these exercises and move on to faster and longer running without calf soreness. Dr.Romanov
POSE Method
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