The Importance of Balance for Running Injuries

Many running rehab programs are full of two-leg movements like squats and lunges, but these don't match as well with how you use your body while running, and can slow your recovery. 

When you break it down, running is just the progression of a single leg stance to a single leg stance on the opposite leg by "hopping" from one foot to the other. In fact, you are NEVER on both legs at the same time while you are running! In the rehabilitation of running injuries, the process of learning to control balance through single-leg stance exercises is fundamental to helping your muscles and nerves learn to work together correctly and improve the pattern that caused the injury in the first place. All of the running-specific exercises described in our program are based on the single-leg stance, progressing in difficulty from simple to more challenging versions of the movement.

Many standardized balance outcome assessments include standing on one leg as a test item (Browne 2001), and current evidence suggests that measurements of how steady you are during a single-leg stance phase may predict increased risk of leg injuries (Dingenen 2016). Measurements of improvement in single-leg stance balance may include increased time in a position, performance with the least amount of postural sway, or adding additional challenges to the task. Logically, exercises to improve single-leg-stance balance should precede and form the basis for exercises to improve functional running. 

Optimally, these single leg exercises should be performed with the body kept in a compact configuration that keeps your joints from working too hard and your weight centered over your feet, making it easier to balance.  To achieve this goal, all running-specific therapeutic exercises should be performed in a neutral, upright posture with the head, shoulders, trunk and hips aligned in the plane of a plumb line as viewed front-to-back and from the side (Wilk 2013). The chin is tucked back, with the head level and stationary relative to the trunk. The abs should be pulled up and in, in order to assist with this proper posture. 

If your rehab professional is forgetting to include single leg balancing exercises and focusing on double leg strengthening, you may want to look elsewhere for help!!