Wellington Triathlete takes Resonance Podiatry’s Run3 for a test run.

We sent Matt ‘glass calves’ Berg to trial our new sponsor Resonance Podiatry’s 3D runnning gait assessment – here is his tale of imbalance and redemption.

The appointment starts with your running and injury background, I confessed to a litany of calf strains including one just 10 days prior. Then we moved into the first treadmill run. Darren strapped a gauge to my tibia to measure my landing impact and show my susceptibility to shin splints etc.

I chose to run at a comfortable 12 km/h and the cameras filmed me from the side and behind while the treadmill had sensors taking measurements of my foot landing.  In a few minutes we were back looking at some pretty detailed assessments that had come straight out of the program.  We could see immediately that my average foot fall on my right foot (my calf injury side) was further forward and had virtually no heel landing compared to my left.  Darren explained the measurements and why they were important. As you can imagine imbalances are not really a good thing and while some of my measurements were good, such as cadence and tibia shock, the program gave red lights to my landing, time on the ground and toe off as they were out of balance.

We reviewed the video footage and noticed that from behind my hamstring was not engaging on the right side until after I landed so I was taking more of the shock of running in my right calf! The side on camera showed the same foot landing in front of my hips too, you can’t argue with video evidence!

The 3D program is interesting too. It takes the video footage of you and overlaps a 3D image of you over the top of the ‘average runner’ (created by the program from the thousands of people it has assessed).  This enables you to see how you differ in technique and visualise it, I was surprisingly average.

The assessment moved into common strength and flexibility tests, I was average for most of the leg flexibility apart from ankle and hip internal (tight glutes). Not surprisingly I had a very poor calf strength test, only just getting to half of the goal number before I started to fail.

Darren then described the remediation exercise and stretch routine he wanted me to follow (hello calf raise heaven). I was emailed a 4 page report with photos and later I will have a 30 minute follow up session to confirm I have got the exercises and stretches right. I thoroughly recommend completing one of these assessments especially if you are someone with a history of suffering running injuries, they might just save your season!