How a person runs, their gait biomechanics, can help us to better understand what injuries they may develop. Over the past few years, we have been collecting large amounts of data from thousands of runners from around the world. To do this, we have developed the infrastructure and a worldwide network of research and clinical partners to help advance the objectives and the proposed research. Currently, 12 universities and 30 physiotherapy clinics are linked to our network and provide data to the database. It is the world’s largest research database of clinical and 3D biomechanical information.
Using sophisticated high-dimensional statistical methods, we can analyze the movements patterns from hundreds of healthy runners and find “clusters” of runners that have similar movement patterns. These are the runners in the “Green Zone.” Outside of the Green Zone are thousands of runners who were injured when their data was collected and they create the “Red Zone.” If we have a healthy runner, who has no pain when they run, and their gait patterns place them in the Red Zone, they run like an injured runner. We hypothesize that they are at a high risk of becoming injured as compared to someone who’s data falls within the Green Zone. If their gait patterns place them in between the Green and Red Zones (the Yellow Zone), then we hypothesize they they are at a moderate risk of getting injured.
Want to know if you fall into the Green Zone?? Volunteer for this research study and help us advance our injury prediction research. Contact our Research Coordinator, Karen (kpulsife@ucalgary.ca) or call 403-220-7411. Injured?? Then book an appointment with the Running Injury Clinic (https://runninginjuryclinic.com/contact-us-2/) or call 403-460-5642 and we’ll figure out the root cause of your injury.