Physics...Physiology...Physical Therapy

Rough Landing: Hip External Rotation, is it needed for runners?

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This is Jonathan, an aspiring Boston marathoner. We met for a session without any significant pain or known issues, so everything should be perfect right? Here’s a video of his run form initially.

My first observation is how his left hip behaves upon impact, as well as the increased left side bending of his upper body at foot strike on the left side compared to the right side. Upon closer assessment, we found that his left hip is limited in external rotation (turning out), as well as extension.

Now why is external rotation significant with running? The hip just flexes and extends right? At the risk of getting too geeky here, it’s worthwhile to give a brief synopsis of why rotation is needed. As Jonathan’s left leg swings forward, it is flexing with the ground as it’s frame of reference, and the right leg is extending. This creates a natural right rotation of the pelvis, again with the ground as the frame of reference. So, relative to the ground, his left hip is flexing, but relative to his pelvis, the hip is also externally rotating (abducting too, but that’s for another time!). So, to answer the question, a healthy amount of external rotation is needed to allow for a graceful loading of the hip and core, without it, he has to compensate by loading his core in an asymmetrical and inefficient way. This can be a cause of low back pain with running, but thankfully Jonathan isn’t having any issues and addressing it now, is much easier than scrambling as you get closer to race time.

So here’s what we did to get the hips moving better. A general hip flexor stretch with the upper body helping (a good one for runners and anyone stuck at a desk!)

Next, a hamstring biased hip external rotation stretch.

Thirdly, a glute biased hip external rotation stretch.

And lastly, a stability exercise to tie it all together.

So after these drills, this is what he looked like.

Not a dramatic change, but he certainly looks more graceful and symmetrical through the hips and core. With consistent performance of these drills his form should become more efficient. Keep it up and perhaps we can do a ‘Jonathan reloaded’ post as training progresses. Great job Jonathan!

As a bonus, here’s another way to get improved hip external rotation. This is my favorite way to do it, but as part of this post’s session, we used the equipment on hand as this is where he will likely be doing his stretches most consistently.

Back pain due to hip weakness

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This is Taylor, a collegiate runner. She has had back pain off and on for several months. Her Athletic Trainer has told her that she has ‘dumb butt’ syndrome. I’m not particularly a fan of the term, but it’s understandable what he was referring to. I asked her what his basis was for that statement and she mentioned lying prone on the table and raising her legs. This isn’t a bad test, but we need to know what this looks like with running and what we can do about it. Here’s video of her running initially from the side and behind.

From the side, notice the poor knee drive and landing with her knees relatively extended and moderate overstride. With landing like this, the ground reaction forces will be accentuated and not properly absorbed throughout the calves, quads, and more importantly the glutes.

From this angle you can see how her hips have to travel side to side with each stride, this indicates that it’s requiring extra effort for the glutes to tolerate each landing well. The fallout of this is how much her spine is having to rotate to accommodate for this. Any wonder where the back pain is coming from?

So here are some drills we did to get the hips working properly. Full disclosure, we also did some manual therapy for hip flexibility that isn’t shown, but complemented the movements done here.

First, hip flexor flexibility in all three planes of motion.

Next, glute activation/loading in all planes.

Lastly, a simple form drill on the treadmill to practice knee drive.

After all this, here is what she looks like from the side and behind.

Notice the improved knee drive from the side which allows for happier landing and loading through the hips. From behind you can see that she has less side to side motion in her hips and low back. In the videos she’s certainly working hard to focus on the drills we worked on. As with anything, it will become more natural as she consistently works on these things. Great job Taylor!

Knee pain due to hip/core weakness

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This is Caleb, an elite collegiate runner. He has had intermittent pain in his left medial/anterior knee, medial shin, and lateral hip. Watch the video of him running to get an idea of where this might be coming from.

As you can likely see, he has a lot of frontal plane movement of his upper body (side to side). Ideally the movement of the head and shoulders should be minimal with side to side motion. This is usually caused by either weakness in the glutes, slow push-off in the forefoot, or some combination of both. I’ve known Caleb for about 7 years and can say that he’s one of the most diligent, hardest workers I’ve met, so watching this pattern is not because he hasn’t done enough side planks or other common core activities to strengthen. The issue rather is that the movement patterns themselves haven’t properly been developed. So, here’s a single leg drill that shows more closely the limited stability in the frontal plane, notice the difference in the right leg versus the left.

As you can see, he’s a little more shaky and slow to load and push-off on the left side compared to the right. Again, when tested individually according to traditional muscle strength testing, his muscles are strong, but when tested in a functional setting, there’s a breakdown in how quickly the load/explode occurs.

So, we need to figure out how to develop that side to side control, which will help him become a more efficient runner and hopefully decrease chances of injury. Here is a video of him running holding an 8# ball overhead, this makes it nearly impossible to have excessive side to side motion with running.

Notice how his core/head stayed more steady, but how much of a struggle it is for his hips and feet. This is a drill I encouraged him to do, with or without weight. Here are a couple other exercises for developing this pattern.

Again, Caleb has a few thousand miles on his legs, with some pretty established patterns, so we don’t see a huge change as far as before and after session, but here is a video of after the session, as well as while holding hands overhead to take away the upper body motion.

You can notice how his legs become more unsteady with hands overhead. Again, he has been relying on his upper body to absorb and rebound a lot of frontal plane forces, so when the hands go overhead, his upper body isn’t able to do this anymore, thus his hips and feet have to figure it out more, this will be a work in progress, but could certainly lead to greater efficiency with running. Good job Caleb!

Medial knee pain for a first time marathoner

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This is Ben. He is in training for his first marathon. He has no major concerns with musculoskeletal issues, but does have intermittent right medial knee pain, especially when increasing the mileage. Here is his run form initially:

The first thing that jumps out is the moderate toe out on the right side. The second thing from this angle is the asymmetry with arm swing and spinal rotation with left rotation being greater than right. My theory with this is that he is spending more time in the loading phase of gait on the right leg with a slow transition to push-off, thus his core is spending more time rotating to the left than the right. Here is another video of a test for ankle/calf/foot mechanics to see if that’s where the issue is.

It’s subtle, but notice how his right knee goes inward more than the left, as well as how his right hip has to rotate more than the left to accommodate the squat motion. This asymmetry lines up with what is seen with running. Also, if his right knee goes inward (increased valgus), this will cause repetitive stress on the MCL, pes tendons, and medial patellar capsule. This is the most likely culprit for his medial knee pain.

So here are a few exercises he is doing to work on calf/ankle/foot mechanics, as well as create better symmetry through the hips and core.

And since I can’t help but mess with run form a little, he also did a modified A drill on the treadmill.

After all this, here is a follow up video of his run after briefly performing these exercises.

Notice improved symmetry in the core and hips, as well as less toe out on the right foot. He will be doing these as a warm up for each run and hopefully will make another appearance to show off. Great job Ben and good luck with your training!

Linebacker turned marathon runner

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This is Kevin. He has completed several marathons in the past. When I first met him he had struggled off and on with calf pain. Initial observation of his running showed a ton of excessive side to side movement of his upper body, which usually indicates poor loading of the hips. I accused him of running like a football player, which he readily admitted! He also showed significant heel whip during mid-stance, which usually comes from hip flexor tightness and/or calf tightness. Tightness in the hip flexors limits your ability to internally rotate your hip, which is crucial for getting into hip extension and having a good push-off. The first video of him running was at the beginning of our session and is actually quite an improvement from when we first met, but there’s still room to improve!

So…where to begin. We first had to teach him to load his lateral hips better, so this video is of a simple single leg squat, but with the hands pre-positioned as shown and left toe touch to add a little stability, his right hip is being loaded in a healthy way.

We also did a simple run form drill to drive greater efficiency through the core. Holding his hands overhead forces him to cut down on the excessive side to side motion of his upper body. This drill could be done even more effectively holding a light to moderate weight or other object overhead.

We also did simple power skips again to increase the loading on the hips and improve efficiency of the load to push-off transition.

After all this, here is the new and improved Kevin running. Notice less upper body side to side motion and more efficient loading and push-off through the hips.

The action plan from this was to do these drills prior to every run, and also to intermittently perform the hands overhead and power skips for 10 seconds throughout his easy runs to continually remind his body how it’s supposed to be moving.

Great job Kevin!