Hi, I’m Ali. I’m one of the physios from treatmyachilles.com. Today, I’d like to
talk to you about different muscles that we use when we're running – running as a sport,
but also running inclusive of other sports, so, other sports that you would use running in,
like racket sports or ball sports. These muscles are important because they all work together
to create the force and the power that we need to run, and therefore we need to think
about all of these when we are rehabilitating an injury such as an Achilles tendinopathy.
At treatmyachilles.com, we are a virtual online physiotherapy service specialising in Achilles
pain. And if you would like to have a look for any more information or indeed book an appointment
where we can assess you and set you off on your rehab journey, then the information is found below
on our YouTube videos. So today, I would like to illustrate which muscles we use when we do
running and how that relates to the Achilles and the calf. And we also then will have a look in
a later video about why this is important and strengthening exercises that relate to that.
So when we run, we run with different phases. We run with a phase where our leg is on the floor,
and that's the loading phase, and we run with a phase where our leg is in the air and stepping
forward to move again, and that is called the swing phase. If we think about our Achilles
at the moment: Our Achilles attaches into our heel, and it's made up from the two calf muscles,
the gastrocnemius and the soleus, which I hope is on a picture that you can see now. These calf
muscles come down, and they attach into that Achilles tendon, and they come into your heel.
When you are in that loading phase, that Achilles tendon acts a bit like a spring;
it recoils and collects all the energy to be able to be released and push you off to take that step
forwards. So therefore it's important to look at how robust that calf and Achilles complex is with
how it can manage strength, how many reps it can manage, and what symptoms you get during and for
24 hours after doing activity. And that is one of the main treatments for an Achilles tendinopathy.
But the calf doesn't work alone when we're running, and in that loading phase and
the pushing off, it works in conjunction with other muscles. I’m going to show you those now.
So, if we're thinking about a loading phase. The loading phase – if I just adjust this so
you can see my feet – is when you take a step forward and your foot is planted to the ground.
As you're taking that step forward, what you're using is the posterior chain behind you.
So that's your glute muscles at the back, and it's also your calf muscles,
and a lot of your quads muscles on the front. Once you've done that phase to push off, we get that
recoil that we talked about, that elastic movement to push you off – a little bit of hamstring work
as well. As we do that phase, we then have our swing-through; so, we've taken our step forward
and our leg is now coming forwards, and here we start to use more of the hamstrings at the back
and a bit of glutes to slow our leg down and control that movement as we take a step
forward. And that doesn't matter whether we then land more on our heel, our midfoot,
or our forefoot; we still use those same muscles in that deceleration phase. When we're sprinting
or running, so going at a faster speed, we tend to then have a little bit more emphasis
on those hamstrings and also the hip flexors, which are right on the front of your hip here,
as you swing through. So, if you are a sprinter or do a sport that involves sprinting, we would
then be interested to have a look at what's going on with those hip flexors and those hamstrings.
But we'd look at it more from a power perspective. So what I mean by that is, can you create a force,
can you contract that muscle with good quality high speed to create enough force for you to do
your sport and to sprint? Thank you very much for listening to this. And if you would like
to then listen to the second part, we go through why it is important to think about strengthening,
if you're doing any sports related to running, for all of those different muscle groups.