| Dear Athlete, Most of us know a bit about the importance of 'biomechanics' – for example, how important it is to wear the correct footwear to prevent sports injury. However how many of us can properly define what 'biomechanics' means? Let alone explain exactly how it affects our bodies – not to mention our running performance? But most importantly, how many of us understand what we can do, as athletes, to improve our biomechanics in ways proven to add efficiency and speed to our sports performance? Biomechanics is definitely not something that athletes should leave to sports professionals. It's far too important for that! Indeed, an understanding of biomechanics is essential if you want to get the most out of your training and conditioning programmes. (I'll explain why in a moment…) At its most fundamental, biomechanics is simply the evaluation of movement technique (e.g. walking, running, skiing or swimming). In layman's terms: the study of how we move. It's important to understand that we can assess either the biomechanics of the whole body, or just one particular part of it. For example, when an athlete carries out a particular movement, like sprinting, hurdling or throwing a javelin, you can focus in on foot or shoulder biomechanics – or you can assess their whole body movement instead. It all depends on the purpose of the assessment. By viewing these movements, particularly the interconnecting segments of body parts, we are able to evaluate how one movement affects another via a chain reaction known as the 'kinetic chain'. And in doing so, pursue increased efficiencies in movement. The crucial bottom line is this: improve your biomechanics and you're instantly able to train harder and longer, and compete at a higher level. What's more, you achieve all this with a reduced risk of sports injury, simply because of the corrections you can make to hitherto-unrealised faulty movement patterns.
It's a genuine 'win-win' situation… Best of all, improving your body's biomechanics is something you can achieve yourself, without necessarily requiring the services of a coach or other fitness professional. All you need is the right knowledge to do it. That's why I brought together eight leading sports professionals, and asked them to write a special report on this essential topic – Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed. This special report has two key editorial objectives: - To show you, as a runner or other athlete, what to look for when evaluating your present biomechanical set-up.
- To explain how you can improve your own biomechanics – and gain the performance and other benefits that go with it.
Of course the report is also relevant to health professionals and sports coaches who want to catch up with the latest scientific thinking in this area. Because it provides all the necessary illustrations and diagrams – plus a list of further reading for those who may want to 'drill down' into a particular topic. Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed is a thorough, yet eminently readable report on the very latest thinking on running biomechanics. It dissects the major current debates in sports scientific circles, analyses the very latest scientific thinking – then spells out in plain English its significance for the serious athlete, coach and personal trainer alike. NB: both the analysis and training recommendations draw on the very latest evidence-based scientific research into biomechanics for runners – new findings that probably won't percolate through to the general sporting press for many, many months, if they make it at all… So if the closest you have come to experiencing biomechanics is asking your local running shop for the correct running shoe, then Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed will give you a wealth of knowledge on the varying levels of biomechanics, as well as a solid foundation of training tips to build on over time. Secure your copy today, and here are just some of the insights you'll learn: - Are the foot diagnoses made in high street shoe shops of any real value to a runner seeking the correct shoes?
- What problems are caused by excess pronation and supination – and what can you do to alleviate the situation?
- What simple changes in upper body movement can help runners avoid lower-body injuries?
- Do motion control running shoes really help runners who suffer from excess pronation?
- Details of a revolution in shoe design that hold's out the promise of reduced injury through strengthen foot musculature.
- How to build levels of physical robustness that ward off injury problems.
- Why training your toes – yes, believe it or not, your toes! – can contribute to running performance.
Because you're signed up on our Peak Performance web site to receive our weekly email newsletter, you qualify to receive this workbook at a greatly reduced price when you order your copy today. What's more, postage & packing is free. And you've got 30 days in the convenience of your own home, sports clinic or club to evaluate the book for yourself, and see if it's worth keeping. So here's what I suggest. - Order your copy of Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed TODAY.
- Read it cover to cover
- Put its expert findings to work for you for a full 30 days.
- Judge for yourself how much better an athlete you are at the end of that 1-month period.
- If you don't feel you're stronger and quicker – and that your running performance has been enhanced – then return the book to me for a full refund.
I'll return every penny you've paid promptly – and without question. It's the least I can do in return, given you showed such commitment to your sport. Yours sincerely, 
Jonathan Pye
Publisher,Peak Performance
Click here to go to our special, 42% discount offer. Or read on to learn more about Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed. Meet my team of biomechanics specialists – all of them experienced professionals whose advice you can trust All eight contributors to Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed have first-hand experience of competing at elite levels of sport and/or have practiced for several years in elite sporting circles. Together they bring a wealth of practical, firsthand experience to this core topic so you can have 100% confidence in what this report teaches you. Judge their expertise for yourself: Raphael Brandon MSc is a sports conditioning and fitness specialist, working as the London region strength and conditioning coach for the English Institute of Sport. | Paul Brice is a biomechanist with the English Institute of Sport, West Midlands. | Sean Fyfe is the strength and conditioning coach and assistant tennis coach for the Tennis Australia National High Performance Academy based in Brisbane. He also operates his own sports physiotherapy clinic. | Matt Lancaster is Australian-born and moved to the United Kingdom in 2000 and is currently employed by the English Institute of Sport as lead physiotherapist for the London region. | Alicia Filley PT,MS, PCS, lives in Houston, Texas and is vice president of Eubiotics: The Science of Healthy Living, which provides counselling for those seeking to improve their health, fitness or athletic performance through exercise and nutrition. | Andrew van Rensburg is the South African elite triathlon team's physiotherapist and strength coordinator. He has a special interest in biomechanical alignment, sports injuries and clinical pilates and is director of Physiosculpt, a physiotherapy and pilates centre in Johannesburg, South Africa. | John Shepherd MA is a specialist health, sport and fitness writer and a former international long jumper. He also directs most of the video clips featured on our Peak Performance web site – so he has a particularly acute eye for biomechanics! | Scott Smith is an Australian physiotherapist, working at Albany Creek Sports Injury Clinic in Brisbane, specialising in running and golf injuries. He is currently working with Australian Rules football teams in Brisbane. |
Just imagine what it would cost for just a couple of hours of consulting time from any one of these professionals. Yet today you can order a 90-page report that distills the very best of their thinking – all eight experts – for the equivalent of a few cups of coffee on your local high street. Click here to go to our special, 42% discount offer. Or read on to learn more about Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed. Distance Running – is poor upper and/or lower body running technique predisposing you to sports injury? The action of running requires the body to absorb continuous repeated impact forces, which is why running-related injuries are such a common presentation in any physiotherapy or sports medicine clinic. Indeed, many elite endurance runners require a weekly physiotherapy treatment, all year round, to counter the rigours of their training regime and competition schedule. But it's not just at the elite level that running has such effects on athletes. Many Masters-level and other runners encounter the side effects of faulty movement patterns. So Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed kicks off with a chapter that explains the fundamental biomechanics of running. First focusing for each body part on what is considered 'normal' mechanics, then discussing how deviations from that norm may increase stress on the body, and lead to injury. NB: our discussion centres on distance running, and therefore research from the analysis of running speeds between 12 and 16 kph (about 8 to 6 minutes per mile). The sprint action (9-10 metres per second or faster) is distinct from running at these more moderate speeds. We take you through the complete 'running cycle', from the 'stance' phase (including the two sub-phases: 'absorption/braking' and 'propulsion'), to the 'float' phase, describing as we go the mechanics of every body part from the ankle, knee, hip and foot, through to the upper body and arms. I guarantee this: you'll never again look at the 'simple' art of running in the same way! As the discussion progresses we look at what factors at each stage of the running cycle can contribute to injury – and what steps you can do to counter them. You'll find that this elevated understanding of how the running cycle works enables you to pinpoint areas for possible improvement in terms of muscle strength, flexibility and running 'form'. The section also features the findings of a very recent study into running shoe choice and foot loading during running. In this study, scientists from Hong Kong sought to answer the question of how effective for runners who suffer from excess pronation are motion control running shoes compared to 'neutral' running shoes. In particular, how do they change the foot motion and loading forces during running? To answer this question, they measured the changes in plantar force at the beginning and end of a 1.5km running session in 25 recreational runners wearing motion control shoes. The runners were selected so that they displayed 6 degrees or more of pronation during their normal running action. The measurements were achieved using special insole sensors to register the plantar forces during each foot-strike. The scientists then compared the results to those obtained when the runners wore neutral running shoes. The results were somewhat unexpected… Click here to go to our special, 42% discount offer. Or read on to learn more about Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed. Could this revolution in shoe design be the 'holy grail' for athletes seeking an end to running injuries? The human foot was never designed for wearing shoes. It functions best when walking barefoot on soft natural ground, yet most of us in developed countries spend our lives entrapped in supportive and restrictive footwear and walk on hard, flat surfaces. We can say with some confidence that where an individual has a particular foot type (pronator or supinator) involving excessive movement, the wearing of shoes/trainers that limit or restrict these movements is likely to be beneficial in limiting or reducing the risk of injury. On the other hand, shoe support can simply mask the underlying problem without tackling the weakness that may result in injury. It's little wonder foot problems are so common – and not just amongst runners with punishing training schedules. Now a fundamental new design in shoes holds out the promise of strengthened foot musculature, and an associated reduction in injury. In Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed we survey the evidence for this claim, reviewing three recent scientific studies on the subject. The first piece of research – from the Human Performance Laboratory in Calgary, Canada, concluded that this new shoe design: - Increases rotational ankle movement, notably plantar flexion and foot inversion (particularly in the first half of ground contact).
- Decreases ankle joint impulses for the knee joint, which means that the knee has to withstand fewer repetitive rotational stresses (27% reduction).
- Increases the user's oxygen consumption by 2.5%.
- Increases movement of the 'centre of pressure' during standing, which allows force to be dissipated across a greater area of the foot. (High forces going through small cross-sectional areas of the foot are strongly linked to an increase in injury incidence with repetitive foot strikes over prolonged periods.)
Based on these findings, the researchers report that the shoe strengthens the intrinsic muscles of the foot and ankle complex, while reducing loading through the ankle joint. The other two studies were similarly positive – holding out the tantalising promise of a reduced incidence of injury in runners who wear shoes utilising this revolutionary new shoe design. We provide full details of the studies so you can make an educated assessment for yourself. Click here to go to our special, 42% discount offer. Or read on to learn more about Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed. Injury Rehabilitation – do you know how to correctly devise a tailored and graduated programme? Sports therapists may sometimes stick to a very limited range of rehabilitation exercises, which means that they are unable to prescribe with the kind of specificity that clients need in order to make a full recovery that will return them to their sport and prevent a repeat of the injury. However, with an improved appreciation of mechanics, therapists should be able to design a far more comprehensive range of exercises, customised to the particular needs of individual clients. At the beginning of the rehabilitation process, exercises should be simple, aimed at correct muscle activation and building up basic strength. But as athletes get further along the rehab path, they need more specific and more challenging exercises. If the athlete fails to achieve (or regain) high level training of their muscles in terms of strength, speed and type of activation, degree of muscle stretch and joint position, then they will remain susceptible to injury once they return to sport. So the next section of Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed examines movement principles from the perspective of the health professional seeking to devise tailored and progressive exercise regimes. The discussion uses the case study of an injured female sprinter to illustrate the issues involved – providing along the way some valuable lessons for health professionals and athletes alike. Click here to go to our special, 42% discount offer. Or read on to learn more about Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed. Injury Prevention – how do you build the necessary robustness to avoid problems? There's more to reducing the risk of sustaining a running injury than incorporating a couple of stretches and the odd weights session into your training routine. So what steps can athletes, coaches and health professionals take to reduce the likelihood of injury? The next section of Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed draws together key aspects of running mechanics and the principles of biological robustness to explore practical ways in which you can adapt your own training to minimise the stresses and strains on your body. (Biological robustness describes the ability of a biological system to maintain its core function in the face of stresses and uncertainty occurring within the system or its environment.) The discussion identifies a number of strength exercises you can do to build robustness into the key running muscles, and explains the correct way to carry them out. It also considers the crucial issue of coordination, and provides a number of conditioning exercises to improve this vital ability as well. Click here to go to our special, 42% discount offer. Or read on to learn more about Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed. Core Training – do you know the right way to do this to improve your stability control? Sports therapists will tell you it is almost impossible to work in this area these days without being involved with some aspect of core conditioning and core strength work. But how sure can we be that there is benefit to be gained from targeted retraining to strengthen stability muscles? Are we all in the grip of a long-running fitness fad, or does the evidence support the notion of specific retraining to optimise performance and wellbeing, whether that be for elite athletes, happy amateurs or desk workers keen to keep fit? In Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed we review the latest evidence for using core training techniques to improve athletes' stability control. First we recap some basic anatomy, specifically what the research tells us about the way core muscles work. Then we review the details of a 4-stage core muscles training programme. We examine the reasons why core stability is such a valuable tool for rehabilitation and performance enhancement, provided the movement patterns are biomechanically efficient and improve functional movement. A discussion of practical value to therapists, coaches and athletes alike. Click here to go to our special, 42% discount offer. Or read on to learn more about Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed. Lower Limb Training – performance-enhancing 'secrets' to help you raise your game Think about the physical requirements of a sprinter in full flow, and it's the powerful thigh muscles that invariably come to mind. But as the next section in Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed explains, neglecting lower limb training not only increases the risk of injury, but also limits an athlete's potential to maximise athletic power and injury avoidance. First we identify the muscles, tendons and other supporting tissue concerned, and describe how they work together to produce the action that is involved in walking, running and sprinting. Then we home in on the specific exercises that are best employed to reduce the incidence of injury in runners and other athletes. The discussion not only identifies and describes each exercise, it also suggests the most appropriate routine for you to use. Everything you need to put the training programme into action. Details of your special discount offer As a registered member of our Peak Performance web site, you qualify for a copy of Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed at a special discount. Place your order today and you pay just $34.99 (£21.46) instead of the full price of US$59.99. You save 42%. Our Unconditional Money-back Guarantee: if, for any reason, you decide Running Biomechanics: increase efficiency, strength & speed doesn't deliver what we promise, just let us know within 30 days. We'll refund your money in full, immediately and without question. To order your copy, simply go to our secure site, which is administered and guaranteed by Worldpay, and enter your delivery details. Don't forget: order your copy today and we'll pay the postage costs. | 
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