Running Research Digested: Beginner Trail Runners

The basics

Trail running occurs on unstable surfaces, which means that proprioception, foot and ankle stability are foundational to running confidently and injury-free.

Incorporating regular foot and ankle strengthening exercises, as well as exercises that challenge ankle stability in running specific patterns are important for enhancing on-the-trail comfort and performance.

Ensuring proper ankle-knee-hip alignment when running is crucial to avoid injuries. This may be targeted through specific exercises that promote optimal alignment under load or while resisting forces that aim to destabilise proper alignment.

Strengthening the stabilisers of the ankles and hips is crucial to ensuring running stability and reducing the risk of niggles creeping in. Stabilizing muscles at the hips, ankles and knee joints provide support around these joints as they absorb impact through walking and running on various surfaces and terrains. Strengthening stabilizers at these areas of the body is important to ensure running efficiency and reduce the risk of injury at these joints.

Trail running incorporates steep ascents — often hiking — and descents. Having strengthened leg muscles will assist in effective climbing and descending hills safely, as well as absorb impact of running steps. This is helpful for reducing energy usage, and provides less strain on the hips, ankles and knee joints.

This is especially true in terms of developing more posterior chain strength — for example, your glutes — to support the quadriceps that often get overburdened. Runners should aim to incorporate exercises that strengthen the glutes and hamstrings or target their recruitment in running specific movement patterns (aiming to then translate this onto the trails).

This should include a lot of eccentric emphasis — aiming to control the load being used and absorb the force as the muscles lengthen through the involved joints’ ranges of motion.

Appropriate exercises on other machines and equipment in the gym can be used to condition the posterior chain (calves, hamstrings and glutes) appropriately. A few sessions using the Grucrox eccentric bikes is recommended for this, as the resistance on the bike facilitates an increased applied force response by the runner, thereby activating the calves, glutes and hamstring. This is recommended because the Grucrox bike enables muscular strength to develop during cardiovascular exercise without heavy impact on the hip, knee and ankle joints. Isolating the muscular strengthening of the posterior chain muscles will allow for these muscles to respond appropriately when increased impact and pressure on joints takes place during trail running, especially because trail running involves adapting to uphill and downhill terrain.

Adequate mobility is important. Ankle and hip mobility are the most important for trail runners: ankles in terms of facilitating a natural running gait, being able to apply force properly to the ground uphill and absorb force properly downhill, as well as adapt appropriately to changing terrain.

Hip mobility is important for repeatedly climbing high steps or navigating through complex terrain.

Having adequate hip mobility reduces the chance of compensations occurring that over time may lead to injury. It also allows for strength to be developed through greater ranges of motion. This may be improved through both soft tissue mobilisation techniques and dynamic stretching.

Strength and conditioning sessions with trail runners should follow a periodised plan leading up to the goal event. With the end goal in mind, alongside being aware of runner’s strength and areas for improvement, a skilled and qualified biokineticist or running coach would be able to carefully plot strengthening phases as part of your training programme to help you become more ready for your upcoming running event. In periodisation, different techniques are employed to navigate training loads to promote peak performance for the event/race, with injury prevention in mind during each phase of a periodised plan. Some phases would incorporate a larger focus on strength and conditioning, while other phases promote increased mobility, muscular endurance and explosive power. Leading up to an event/race, your biokineticist or running coach would adjust training loads appropriately to keep you on track for having a great running performance on the day of the event/race. Additionally, recovery time is included in periodised plans, and recovery is important for joint and muscle strengthening, mobility and injury prevention.

Typical trail running injuries

The most common acute injuries from trail running tend to be ankle ligament sprains. This makes sense given the unstable running surfaces, slippery rocks or unseen tree roots. This is why proprioception training and ankle strengthening is so important.

The most common overuse injuries are knee joint pain (patellofemoral pain or PFP), ITBF syndrome and tendonopathies — for example, hamstring tendons, patella tendon and Achilles tendon injuries.

The PFP typically stems from underdeveloped posterior chains (weak glutes, hamstrings and calves), a deficit in eccentric muscle control and strength with overworked quadriceps and knee joints.

ITBF syndrome is common in trail runners and road runners typically as a result of weak feet and hip stabilisers, causing unwanted inward deviation of the knee upon landing which irritates the iliotibial band.

Tendon injuries are common due to increasing training load too quickly, coupled with the impacts experienced when running of changing surfaces. Tendons are known to take longer to adapt to training load, terrain changes and weather conditions affecting muscular efficiency. This highlights the importance of appropriate training plans that include incremental training load increases and decreases during the specific phases of a periodised plan, with a specific intention to provide tendons to adapt more smoothly, and to reduce the risk of injury. Usually, biokineticists have observed that the Achilles tendon is commonly aggravated by suddenly increasing the amount of climbing/steep running, and hamstring tendons and patella tendon take longer to recover from sudden increases in steep and/or fast technical descents, when not conditioned appropriately.