Does Posture effect your Running?

By Dr Karli Plowright (Family Wellness Chiropractor - Nomad Chiropractic Mosman)
Chiropractor and Exercise Scientist

  • Do you find there is something missing in your recovery from running?

  • Or that you tend to pull up sore continuously from your runs?

  • Have you considered that this could be due to your posture whilst running, or even an injury you have but have not yet been diagnosed?

  • Are you just wanting to improve your runs functionally?

Posture and running

Good running posture (or walking for that matter) is essential to optimize your whole body function whilst running. Not just to reduce potential risk of injury but to enhance breathing effectiveness, reduce stress on the shoulders, lower back and lower limbs.

To enhance breathing during running, posture is key.

Do you find it is hard to get a big breath in or you are constantly getting stitches? Keeping the body upright rather than hunching forwards, relaxing shoulder down and back and having your head up so the eye gaze is in front of you is a nice way to set posture whilst running. This will allow your ribcage and lungs to be able to work at full capacity and is likely to help with breathing whilst running.

If you feel yourself running with an arch in your lower back, this would be limiting the function of your gluteus maximus - the biggest muscle in your butt, whilst running! This could be caused by tight hip flexors pulling your pelvis into a forwards tilt or lack of core control which may be causing poor lumbo-sacral posture - hence the arch in your lower back! Check out my post on pelvic tilt at @karli.chiro

Some home care tips to help

Stretching dynamically before a run to warm up the body. This could include things like

  • Leg swings

  • Squats

  • Ankle circles

  • Arm swings

  • Shoulder rolls

  • Neck lateral flexions movements

  • Neck flexion and extension movements

Glute strengthening

  • Clams. Side lying, begin with your knees bent and touching, raise the top leg to open the hips and then lower back down

  • Side lying straight leg raises. Next progression to your clams, both legs straight and stacked ontop of one another, lift the top leg and then lower back to your other leg.

Posture pole

Laying on top of the foam roller or rolled up towel with your head up, extend the arms open whilst keeping the knees bent for balance. Feel a nice stretch / open through the middle of the spine and chest / shoulders. This one is nice after a run!

Why chiropractic helps

Your Mosman Chiropractors Karli, Sandy and Lucy will help to assess your full body to see if any tension is being held in the wrong areas or to assess whether there is any injury. Chiropractic may be likely to help with improving range of movement throughout the joints, in particular the hips, knees and ankles. Also helping with allowing pain free movement, whether we assess and find this is coming from posture, injury or anterior pelvic tilt, the goal would be to improve function of running and allow for better recovery.

Book online to get assessed; and get to help with your running!

Till next time,

Chiro Karli :)

Nomad Chiropractic Mosman

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Book in online with your Mosman Chiropractors Lucy Bartlett, Olly Kerr, Kristin Webb and locum Sandy Ghobrial at www.nomadchiropractic.com.au

Located at: Suite 1, 563 Military Road Mosman NSW 2088 Rear entry
Ph 02 9969 7503
www.nomadchiropractic.com.au

For More Information head to: www.nomadchiropractic.com.au/chiro-research

*Note: Karli Plowright moved back to WA in December 2022 and as such is no longer a practitioner at Nomad Chiropractic in Mosman. All of the practitioners at Nomad Chiropractic are trained in the above.