Articles

Running Injury Free:
Keep Muscles Relaxed, Use Exercise for Healing

Boulder Planet May 5–11, 1999
By Shelly Schlender

Douglas Wisoff won his age group in 100-mile ultra-marathons, and he won them injury free. As a physical therapist, he has helped hundreds of people overcome problems that ranged from a jogger’s achy ankle to professional athletes whose painful muscles blocked top performance.

But recently the 50-year-old, nationally ranked ultra-marathoner faced an injury that threatened his own racing. Wisoff tried many solutions, but the pain just got worse. What was it? That awful growing callous on his left big toe. It really hurt. And when the pain won’t go away, the tall lanky athelete says,"I’m as much of a baby as anyone."

So maybe it wasn’t a torn thigh or an excruciating knee injury. In fact, Wisoff says, "knees are easy!" To heal his own bonked knees, he keeps running with more attention on form. The balance and relaxation of proper form helps most pain vanish. He adds," When directing yourself in the right way, the flow of lymph, blood and energy from exercise actually speeds recovery."

Wisoff loves good form, for when anyone runs fluidly and loose, it’s like a constant massage. "When a deer leaps," he says, "when a galloping horse seems to float above the ground, that’s how running can feel."

This joyful lightness wins races, too. But it’s hard to feel light with an aching toe. Even when it’s just a bump of thick skin. He lifts his hands, remembering. "Pain can become the center of your universe."

Wisoff has seen it many times: The longer things hurt, the more mistakes people make. They pull or lean away from the pain, creating imbalances that aggravate the problem. They unconsciously tense, and become brittle; increasing inflammation around the injury and increasing pangs in exhausted muscles.

Take backaches. In the majority of cases, it starts with twinges in a slightly over-tight muscle. If people unconsciously tense against the pain, the muscles just get tighter. Eventually, this relentless pull can force spinal discs to bulge. Even healthy discs, pulled this hard, may rupture. All because of muscle tension.

Wisoff knows how problems such as slipped discs begin. So despite his aching toe, he tried to stay loose. It wasn’t easy. A 1996 report in the British Medical Journal states that a callous can get so bad, it can seriously affect how people run, walk, or want to move at all. And one pain often leads to others. Pain can make anyone quit an exercise they love.

"They decide pain’s just part of aging." Says wisoff, "but it’s usually a simple equation. A plus B plus C equals Injury. Solve the equation, and you solve the injury, too."

Of course, he snipped off the callous. It grew back, indication that something was still squeezing or skidding enough to irritate his skin. But what?
Shoes often pinch and rub. But he was wearing the same shoe style that he had for years, and was switching between two pairs, so the transition to new ones stayed smooth. In his case, shoes weren’t to blame.

Maybe he wasn’t relaxing enough. After all, teaching people to relax their hips, backs, shoulders, and thighs is how Wisoff solves many painful problems. Otherwise he says, "People may never learn how to sense where they are holding tension. It becomes normal. So they sit, run, and walk with bad form, and they tear themselves apart."

It’s hard for anyone to observe himself or herself. So for his maddening, callused, painful toe, Wisoff asked other sports therapists to both look at is foot and to analyze his running mechanics. His stride looked good, and there was nothing outstanding in the video of his running gait. However a chiropractor who specialized in sports medicine, looked at his toes and found that the left big toe didn’t bend back as far as the right. The prescription for that was orthotics.

Orthotics are semi-stiff inserts you can place inside a shoe. "They turn the foot in a way that alters its biomechanics and relieves pain." Wisoff thinks they’re overused. He’s seen many problems overcome without their use. "Besides, what if an orthotic masks growing tension? Wisoff shrugs. "Where does all the osteo-arthritis come from?"

When symptoms go underground, small habits of imbalance can smolder until "suddenly," there’s an injury and people turn to drugs and surgery. They take to heart an expert’s declaration; "You’re growing older."

As a 50-year old athlete and physical therapist, Wisoff loves to rescue bodies that others have condemned. "Old" to most Americans means hanging up their running shoes. But in its original Latin/German form, "old" means to nourish, strengthen, and deepen.

Hoping that his years of experience would help him now, Wisoff studied his toes. The left one did stretch up less then the right. Loss of extension usually comes from an overly tight muscle. Inside his running shoe, where on one could see, he suspected that a muscle called the flexor hallucis brevis was overly contracted. Should he glare at it, commanding it, "Relax flexor hallucis Brevis … "?

"You can’t make a muscle relax," he says laughing. "Its not a trying thing it’s a letting thing, you let it relax, and that is a skill when it comes to specific muscles.

There are techniques, including gentle exercises that help you feel when you are holding muscles tight and when you are relaxing them."

On his next run he observed that, in fact, he was keeping that muscle that runs from the bottom of the foot into the big toe contracted causing the pressure of toe off to hit the callused area. When he let the muscle relax the result was dramatic. "The pain went away almost immediately, and the callous was gone in a few weeks."

He shares similar solutions to all kinds of pains during a talk at Runner’s Choice. "Why do we run?" he asks the crowd of 60. "Because we know how good it can feel. How good can it feel? I don’t know yet, but that’s why I keep running."

Someone from the crowd asks him about orthotics. He replies that there are legitimate applications for the use of orthotics, and then he relates what happened to his own sore toe, plus everything it taught him. Amid chuckles from the crowd, Wisoff tugs off his shoes. The left big toe wiggles as high as the right and everything is callous free.

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