The talk, at the Expo Center at the Boston Marathon this year, had an intriguing title: Using Biomechanics to Predict Running Injuries. And the lecturer, Dr. Thomas W. Vorderer, a podiatrist at the division of sports medicine at Children's Hospital, one of the Harvard hospitals, spoke with great conviction.
You can prevent injuries, Dr. Vorderer said, or, if you get them, can make them heal if you learn the right way to stretch and if you stretch regularly. And you should also learn the right way to run; in general, he said, runners should strike the ground with their heels first. If they strike with their midfoot or forefoot, he said, they are just asking for injuries.
Dr. Vorderer speaks from experience: he was a competitive runner for years and said he trained with fantastic coaches. And he says he has helped countless runners rid themselves of chronic injuries by figuring out why they were getting injured and teaching them, for example, the right way to stretch. He has e-mail messages from grateful patients, thanking him for solving problems that threatened to end their running altogether.
But exercise physiologists say none of what he espouses has been established by rigorous studies. Stretching evidence is so inconclusive that two large studies are now under way that randomize people to stretch or not and ask whether it prevents injuries, does nothing or increases injury rates. No one knows what the answer will be.
As for running styles, a credible study in 2007 showed that running form often depended on running speed. The slower people run, the study found, the more likely they are to strike the ground with their heel first. The same runners, going more slowly, run differently from when they run fast.
There is no right or wrong way to run, said Peter R. Cavanagh, a professor in the department of orthopedics and sports medicine at the University of Washington. And even if there is, he said, it is not clear that people can permanently change their natural stride.
Dr. Vorderer says that he knows experts often disagree but that the art of sports medicine is to understand individuals.
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