Fitness Fads And Injuries Over The Years

I was walking in the bush the other day wearing a pair of thongs when I reflected on the barefoot running movement. Vibrams and other minimalist shoes, the law suits, the injuries and everything in between. I reflected on some of the other fads and inventions I've seen come and go. Us humans can have a tendency to just take things a little too far. So I've indulged myself and revisited a few trends/ inventions that have come and gone, taking a look at some of the injuries they’ve caused.

Let's start with the Born To Run book. Yes I read it. Yes, I told people to throw away their orthotics. 

For the record, I encourage my kids to run in bare feet and play sports in bare feet. I run around in bare feet. I know this is an investment in the future of their foot and ankle strength which will pay dividends when they are older. I also purposely spend a lot of my day in bare feet. 

But … if i’m running a marathon, half marathon, or anything in between, i’m pretty ok with a bit of cushioning under my feet. If it’s ok for Kipchoge it’s ok for me.

I saw some gnarly Born To Run injuries. Chronic calf tears from people that just transitioned too quickly and refused to stagger back from a less supportive shoe, rather than straight from super supportive to minimalist. Stress fractures from people doing long runs with minimalist shoes and no slow transition. I saw one patient whose feet had transformed into a pair of vibrams. The muscles of their feet were vibram shaped. Yes, vibram shaped.  

A lot of those people that did a large volume of running in those minimalist shoes now have to wear these to keep running

Now I know some of you still run David Goggins mileage in minimalist shoes and are triggered by this. Consider yourself biomechanically blessed! 

Another trend that springs to mind is sitting on swiss balls at work all day. If you sit on one and it helps you, please ignore me and keep it up! But for a lot of people they were using swiss balls to prevent hip, groin or back pain. A swiss ball is an unstable surface, so if you’re not strong enough to stabilize on the unstable surface, you have to grip through your big muscles. They aren’t used to doing this role so get tired and tight quickly, compressing joints and over tightening your core, which can also be a key driver leading to pain! There is even a study that showed replacing your desk chair for a swiss ball leads to spinal shrinkage (not sure how you measure this) and concluded there were more disadvantages to sitting on the ball than the chair. 

Now the next inventions are the Physiotherapy machines from the 80’s,90’s and early 2000’s. Therapeutic Ultrasound (not muscle imaging) and the Tens/ Interferential machines. Special shout out to the hot pack. I apologise if you ever heard me say “let's put a heat pack on your back for 10 mins before I get into the rough stuff”. 

Placebo at its greatest! I’m yet to find evidence to show it works and if someone you’re seeing still uses them then perhaps it’s time to change. 

My all time fave are infomercial ab machines. Trying to get you a six pack. So good. Isolating your abs and making them super tight is a great way to injure your back. Yes - your core can get too tight, and this was a pretty common response to these things. Training your abs doing hundreds of reps lead to loads of back pain; and those really slumpy postures, purely because the weak back muscles have no chance with such a “ripped” six pack.

When I reflect back on fads and inventions that seemed great, they maybe weren’t that great. Or … we just took it a little bit far.

I apologise for the above over the years. At least now we have more evidence based treatments than placebo based treatments!