Injury-Free Running: Your Illustrated Guide to Biomechanics, Gait Analysis, and Injury Prevention

by Tom Michaud

A no-nonsense guide for runners, trainers, and health professionals that shows how an understanding of anatomy combined with the latest in strengthening exercises can enhance injury-free running performance.

Each time a runner's foot hits the ground, an impact force averaging three times their weight travels through the body at more than 200 miles per hour, causing the bones to vibrate and tendons to stretch. An average runner strikes the ground more than 10,000 times per hour, resulting in a remarkable amount of force to the body. But the truth is those impact forces need not be as harmful as they sound. In Injury-Free Running, Thomas C. Michaud explains how an understanding of anatomy and biomechanics, coupled with the latest strengthening exercises and rehab protocols, can keep runners injury free. By modifying our running form and engaging specific exercises to improve tendon resiliency, we can learn to store and return energy more efficiently while also running faster and with less effort.

In this revised second edition, the author shows how

- Perform an at-home gait analysis to improve performance.
- Identify problems with strength, flexibility, and/or neuromotor coordination.
- Incorporate new exercises that enhance energy storage and return it to the tendons.
- Treat the 25 most common running-related injuries with the most scientifically justified treatment protocols.
- Select the running shoe that best suits your needs.

With over 40 illustrations, this book is ideal for recreational runners, as well as physical therapists, trainers, chiropractors, and sports medicine practitioners.

Genres: Health

224 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 15, 2021

Reviews

[Michael Northington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and informative. As opposed to offering quick fixes or a simple set of rules to follow the focus is on understanding anatomical impacts of running and how this can lead to certain injuries or why some shoes, inserts, or training devices are right for some people and wrong for others. Many of the chapters are more useful as a resource for looking up specific issues when they happen instead, so a straight through read can be dull at times, but the book is filled with useful information and interpretable diagrams to break down the sometimes difficult material.

[Marcus Sladden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super informative read, really dives into what it takes to keep you injury free from rehab exercises for specific injuries to ways that you can optimise your run technique!

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The information from this book has been invaluable to me and has slowly been coming to me naturally as the years go by. I took this morning to 100% read all of the book, but I’ve had 80% of this book read probably by the end of 2022. And I’ve reread the first 4 chapters multiple times. I just really don’t like to add a book to my “read” list until I’ve read it in its entirety.
Tom Michaud is the clear leader of knowledge when it comes to biomechanics (and it’s even cooler that he’s a chiropractor. I’ve now met him in person twice now, where I’ve travelled to St. Louis to try to soak in all of the knowledge he has. In fact, while I always knew I wanted to be a chiropractor, I fan-boy emailed him before I went to chiro school, where he gave me confirmation that chiro school was a path he’s glad he went down.
This book is a succinct wealth of information, it’s basically just a shorter version of his textbook human locomotion (although it is probably geared toward runners more). While I’ve internalized so many fundamental concepts, if I’m just completely spitting off the top of my head, some of them include:
1) Proximal muscles have larger muscle bellies and shorter tendons, reversed for the distal ones.
2) The first metatarsal is 2x wider and 4x stronger than the other metatarsals.
3) The best shoe selection for athletes are shoes they find comfortable.
4) Landing on the forefoot increases ankle injuries, landing on the rearfoot increases knee injuries.
5) Many factors are important for ideal running form, but some of the most important ones are that you land with your feet under you (for slow distance running, not the case at all for sprinting), your arm action doesn’t cross midline, you push off your toes. I think I’m missing some more important ones off the top of my head right now but oh well.
6) Great reference for rehab and treatment protocols.
As I’ve said, I’ve been sitting with this information for years and while a lot of it is familiar to me now, my understanding is still definitely not perfect. But I do love this stuff, and Tom Michaud is awesome and a research machine. He is truly an inspiration and I will be referencing his stuff for probably my whole career.

[Tian Foo Chou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manu useful nuggets of information that is practical and useful for my own implementation. I like the fact that the author make it a point to often quote studies done (even those with inconclusive results), so that readers can get a fuller appreciation of various views. I think this helps me make a conscious decision for myself, in terms of what to adopt to lessen my injury and improve performance. This very much aligns with the runner's golden rule: " Listen to your own body" and let me add: "and always learn from the body of knowledge penned by experts"!

[Joe Moya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend - great reference book as well.

Well organized. Current information. Simple, yet thorough. I would recommend this to runners/coaches at any level and physical therapists as well. Rarely do books cross over between complex yet simple enough to be applied in practical terms. Great reference book.

[Corey Runkel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty comprehensive, with just enough background into the orthodoxy before recommending results from the latest research. This gave me permission to change running shoes! Also I can add metatarsalgia to the list of things I have

[CherylR · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book. Explains common and not so common running injuries and then gives up to date information regarding treatment.

[Jordan Agmata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good stuff. I haven’t gotten injured this year so all credit goes to this book I guess

[Việt Anh Nguyễn Lê · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise and informative

[Bojan Avramovic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ako mislis da ces svaku povredu izbeci ili se nakon nje oporaviti pomocu vezbi istezanja onda je ovo knjiga za tebe

[chill guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good information, but sometimes i got confused in all the muscles' names. The illustrations are helpful.