Back to Training Tips Table of Contents. After more than 75 calf pulls between 1987 and 1995, I believe I qualified as a professional patient. All of the emotional and physical setbacks that come with these life altering, or at least schedule altering, injuries for a runner were like a bad neighbor I couldn t get away from. Ironically, it was through my eyes as a patient, not as a sports medicine specialist, that made me truly see the void in the treatment menu available to the sick and broken.
Repetitive motion is a term frequently heard when discussing industrial injuries.
Many jobs involve the same motions with similar activities and, especially with people who aren t conditioned, injuries occur. But, when talking about athletics, specifically running, we ve never heard repetitive motion spoken in the same sentence as calf pull, hamstring pull, ilio-tibial band syndrome, low back pain, plantar fasciitis, patellar tendonitis, achilles tendonitis, or hip pain. After living far too long as a disabled patient and desperately looking for that glorious glass of water in the desert, I realized that all of these injuries were nothing more than repetitive motion disorders. Muscles fail to recover fully before we ask them to perform again. And when we push a muscle beyond what it is capable of doing, bad things happen.