Gait Analysis and Retraining
A different point of view.
Gait analysis is a service that always fascinates our patients. The ability to see yourself moving in ultra-slow motion from multiple angles can be genuinely insightful to both to you and to us! Lower limb pain and injury often have mechanical components. Gait analysis performed in our clinic allows a detailed examination of your dynamic movement during walking and/or running which often leads to valuable information about the nature of your problem and how we can address these factors with greater precision and effectiveness.
Autumn 2021 saw an enormous upgrade to our practice which now boasts a dedicated injury, performance and rehabilitation space. Here we can provide a one-to-one detailed assessment your balance, strength and, very excitingly, the way you move whilst running or walking; A specialised treadmill, slow-motion camera system and innovative analysis software allows us to identify important features in your gait that can steer the course of treatment, whether it be orthotic prescription, strength and balance work or gait retraining programmes.
Movement is medicine.
The way we move is, as you might expect, a very important part of why we might develop pain. Alongside training load (both the volume and rate at which we apply load to our bodies during exercise) it can be useful to think about whether the way we move is exerting unhelpful stress. The evidence these days is now very clear that completely resting an injury (in most cases) is a bad idea. Instead we need to look at ways of modifying our activity so the movements and loads that aggravate an injury are reduced whilst we work on rebuilding the strength and capacity to load the body properly again. Taping and foot orthoses can help, so can changing to other non-running activity like cycling. But for many runners, stopping running is the last thing they have any intention of doing! This is where we believe there might be another way: Gait retraining.
Our Sports Podiatrists, Holly and Robert, both have a keen interest in gait retraining and have pushed to develop in this area of practice where most other Podiatry clinics have yet to innovate in. Holly has direct experience both as a running coach and a very accomplished ultrarunner in her own right. Robert has lectured on the topic of gait retraining at several conferences and as part of university masters programmes.
A valuable tool in the toolbox.
The concept of gait retraining is to use various cues that will alter the way you move. This may be to change your stride length, your cadence, the width between your steps and so on. For example, if you are a forefoot striker with an achilles tendon problem, it might be beneficial to lower your cadence and lengthen your stride to reduce the load on the tendon. The cues/instructions we give are usually very simple. If you have shin pain in the form of medial tibial stress syndrome (MTSS) it might help to work on increase you step to shift the load elsewhere.
Gait retraining falls into the same part of the toolbox as foot orthoses, footwear changes and taping; they are all rehabilitation tools we can consider when trying to offload a painful tissue whilst we then build strength and capacity back into those tissues. Often those changes will only be needed in the short term (like many interventions) but in some runners we have found them to have longer-term benefits. Although injury fixing and, hopefully, prevention is what we’re generally aiming for, another fascinating area is gait retraining to improve running performance. Our Sports Podiatrist and Running Coach, Holly, has a particular interest in this area and can work with you on strategies that may not only get you over the finishing line pain-free but also faster!
Guide Prices
This service can be included in our musculoskeletal, sports performance and rehabilitation packages as indicated by your specific needs.
