Learn where you injuries come from and how to eliminate the cause.

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It is important to first understand that the foot and lower leg were designed to move, and not to be stuck in stabilizing- or motion control-shoes. The foot consists of many little bones and joints, all eager to perform specific movements, including a lot of rotation.

Most ordinary shoes on the market as well as running shoes are rigid, allowing hardly any normal movement, causing malfunction of the foot, which again cause malfunction of all the joints and muscles higher up in the body.

When running barefoot, the foot lands on the front part of the foot.  The ankle is in plantar flexion (pointing downwards), and the knee in slight flexion, which means that the Plantar Fascia, calf and Achilles are all in a shortened position (the strongest position), and are able to supply the body with the necessary shock absorption to protect the joints.

When running in a normal running shoe, with a heel of around 24mm, the foot lands on the heel.  The ankle is in dorsiflexion and the knee in full extension. This puts the Plantar Fascia, calf and Achilles in a lengthened and therefore weakened position, robbing the body from its natural shock absorption.

Prior to the ‘evolution’ of the running shoe around 35 years ago, runners were using completely flat shoes. They were landing on the front foot, had great shock-absorption and not many injuries. When Nike developed the ‘new advanced running shoe’, now adding a heel to the shoe, they soon realized that they had to add a lot of shock absorption to their shoes to try fend of the ever increasing shin splints, stress fractures, knee issues etc. Soon more injuries arrived and shoes were made more rigid to stabilize the foot. As the runner’s feet became weaker and the body was less able to interpret information from the foot, athletes started to over-pronate and ante-pronation shoes appeared on the market. By splinting the foot even more, the whole leg became weaker, which called podiatrists into the runner’s market and athletes were advised to support their ever increasing weaknesses even more by using orthotics.

Most athletes are aware of the typical injuries they come across when moving from ordinary running shoes to spikes on the track or to racers. No-one realized that they have been doing all their base training in normal running shoes, weakening their calves and then as soon as they start their speed training, they move into a flat shoe which forces them onto the front foot, but without any calf strength. This is the ONLY reason why spikes and racers ’cause’ injuries.

You cannot base train on a heel strike shoe and then expect to do quality training in the non-conditioned front-foot-strike position!

So how do you repair the damage caused by running in orthotics and rigid over-structured shoes?

1) First strengthen and mobilize your feet by walking barefoot or in barefoot-shoes like the Vibramfivefingers.

2) At the same time, buy a flexible midfoot-strike shoe with a medium heel (around 15mm) to start strengthening the Plantar Fascia, calf and Hamstrings.

There are quite a few flexible neutral shoes on the market of which I will name a few:

Saucony Kinvara

Inov8 Arrow 2

Adidas Canadia

Nike Run Free

Puma Faas

Start by running every 3rd day in your flexible shoes, allowing the muscles in the foot and calf to recover in between. You will know that you can progress to every 2nd day when your calf and foot starts to loose their stiffness after a day. Eventually you will do all your runs in the flexible shoes. This period of preparing the foot and calf should take at least 12 weeks.

Notice no quality training!

3) You are now ready to advance to the natural front foot strike. Again follow the same routine, first every 3rd day, then every 2nd day and eventually your body will be strong enough to supply its own shock absorption.

Barefoot-shoes include racers, Vibramfivefingers, and all running shoes with no heel and a totally flexible sole.

Do keep in mind that barefoot runners DO NOT STRETCH THEIR CALF MUSCLES because they know that their calf is their strength and a lengthened calf looses its function. Runners in heel-strike shoes normally have lengthened and weak calf muscles. The weaker the calf, the more it will cramp and the more they stretch it…. a vicious circle.

Running barefoot will not only reduce your risk of injuries but will also make you a lot faster. You cannot run fast without strong calf muscles.

I see so many athletes in my practice with quite extreme ‘flat feet’, with no problems. Many of the top marathonners in the world have flat feet and yet they beat all the ‘normal’ feet in the race. The only time it becomes a problem is if it is due to weakness, which then will cause pain in the ankles, knees and hips.

To find out if weakness is the cause, you should do the Bunkie Test for the medial line. All normal functional bodies should be able to hold this position for 30 seconds without discomfort.
If weakness shows to be a problem, it will help to get a lynotherapist to release the fascia  (just like the grannies in the Caribean), which will put the muscles in a neutral position. Muscles need to be in a neutral position to be functional. If the foot is stuck in the ‘clubfoot’ position, the muscles are unable to work. Once the foot is in the neutral position, the muscles become functional and can be strengthened. It is therefor inportant that whenever you experience weakness in any area in the body, to find out where the fascia is stuck. Stuck fascia always causes an alignment problem, which will result in weakness.

If you try to strengthen muscles that are not in a functional position, it becomes a long discouraging process. So do make sure that you always first have the fascia released and then start the strengthening.

Orthotics support weakness and is no solution for flat feet. Operations add even more scar tissue, leading to more stuck fascia and will eventually even cause problems in related areas.

So do your Bunkie Test, release the fascia and strengthen what shows up weak and your flat feet will never be a problem.

When riding bigger gears, you use mainly the big bulky Quadricep muscle on the outside of the thigh. This muscle responds by shortening, which causes lengthening of the much weaker VMO muscle on the inside of the knee. As soon as a muscle has to contract whilst stuck in a lengthened position, it can only do that with muscle spasm. This will cause triggerpoints and any contraction of the muscle becomes painful.

You will experience this problem particularly after riding harder or further than usual or after riding hills. Once the muscle spasms up, the only way to get rid of the pain is to get off the bike and apply ice or massage, which can become quite a serious problem if this starts happening in racing season.

So how do you prevent or fix this problem?

With all imbalances it is important to first release the tightness in the muscle that has caused the problem, which in this case is the big lateral Quadriceps.

On this picture we show the neutral length of the Quadriceps. If you can not get into this position, the Quad has shortened and you need to have the fascia released to lengthen the muscle. Stretching could do the trick but will take a lot longer. Best is to find a therapist who is familiar with myofascial work which will release it quickly and effectively.

The second step will be to strengthen the VMO and the best way to do this is to use the following 2 Bunkie exercises as a warm-up before cycling, holding the position 6×6 seconds on each leg.

Finally I can never stress enough the importance of riding with smaller gears and higher cadence. The incidence of injuries are just so much lower and your riding will be much more balanced and efficient.

The cause

Shin-splints are caused by weakness of the muscles on the inside of the calf. The pain normally starts when the athlete suddenly increases his training, without allowing the muscles to become gradually stronger. It could happen at any level of training; I have seen  2 different athletes this year who developed shin splints within 3 months before they were due to compete in the Olympic Games.

When testing muscle strength on athletes with shin-splints, I always find the weakness on either of these 2 exercises:

The first exercise on the back will show the strength of the back of the inside calf and the exercise on the side will show the strength of the inside of the calf.

All athletes at all levels should be able to hold these 2 positions without any pain for 30 seconds. If you are not able to do that, the muscles in the weak areas will need to use cramping and muscle spasm to fake the contraction, which will lead to a pull on the membrane around the tibia bone, resulting in swelling and pain.

How do these muscles become so weak?

I find the main causes of this weakness as:

• Tightness of the power-lines. If you train continuously at high intensity, which is relative to your level of fitness, the power muscles becomes stronger in comparison to the stabilizers. The fascia (connective tissue) now becomes thicker around these power muscles to add more support, resulting in less support around the stabilizers, causing an imbalance. We often find that the fascia around the Quadriceps is very shortened and thickened which ‘opens’ up the fascia and support on the inside of the calf, resulting in muscle spasm and eventually shin splints. So make sure you check the length of the anterior line (Quad stretch test) to prevent this situation.
• The use of anti-pronation shoes and orthotics. Podiatrists will recommend orthotics if they notice that you are a pronator. What does it mean when they say you are a pronator? All it means is that the insides of your legs are weaker than the outsides, causing the ankles to pronate inwards. In stead of just strengthening the muscles, they recommend an orthotic or shoe that will support your ankle, leaving you with even weaker muscles. Notice how thin and weak your leg becomes after it has been supported in a plaster cast for 6 weeks. This is exactly what happens to your inside leg muscles if they are supported by a shoe or orthotic. They become even weaker!

So how do I fix my shin splints?

• Do the stretch test and stretch your powermuscles to the neutral position.
• Test your Bunkies and exercise the weak Bunkies until they can hold 30 seconds.
• Buy neutral shoes and walk as much barefoot as possible to strengthen your ankles and feet.Walk a steep uphill for 5 minutes a day to strengthen your shins.
• Find a good masseur to release all the tight connective tissue on the shins.
• Never train into pain. If your muscles are not strong enough to allow pain-free training, you owe it to them to prepare them properly to handle the new workload.

‘Hi Benita, It’s taken me a while to get into the program but I’ve switched to your system of Bunkies and stretch tests now and I can see light at the end of the tunnel. My physio suggested I have a gait analysis done and the orthotist confirmed that I’m neutral but says I should consider an orthotic custom moulded to my foot to eliminate “slight pronation” which showed up on the foot scan. Could there be any benefit in an orthotic even if I’m neutral?’

My comment

If the foot scan shows up ’slight pronation’, all it tells me is that the muscles on the inside of the ankle are not strong enough to keep the foot in a the neutral position. This athlete has 2 choices:

1. Support the foot with an orthotic which will ‘correct’ the pronation. Keep in mind though that once you support muscles they become lazy since they do not need to work anymore which means they end up even weaker. Orthotics are excellent for patients who are too old or for specific reasons not able to strengthen their muscles anymore, but not for athletes who need their bodies to be as strong as possible.

2. Strengthen the weak muscles until it is able to support your foot in a neutral position. Test your Bunkies and find out which muscle lines are not as strong as they should be, and then use the Bunkie as an exercise to improve your strength. With ‘pronation’ your weakness is most probably on the medial line and I suggest you keep doing that Bunkie regularly for a few months to build up your strength.

Be aware: A runner who choose ’support’ over strength will not be able to perform optimally.

There are many functional exercises you can do to strengthen the ankle;

1. The ‘ballerina exercise: Stand on one leg, with the foot turned out 45 degrees. Make sure your hips are facing forward. Lift up onto your toes as high as you can and hold the position for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 times 1x day.

2. Walk barefoot on soft surfaces like sand or soft grass

3. Walk on the heels while lifting the big toes as high as possible

4. Stand on one leg on a ‘balancing sponge’. Bend and extend your knee, making sure that the knee stay in the neutral position as you go down. Do 10 repeats each side.

If you want to run without injuries, you need the following:

1. A fully flexible, neutral body with no tightness anywhere that might cause imbalance. To achieve this, you need to test your body to find the tightness and then remove it.  Once your body is neutral, running barefoot or in neutral shoes will ensure free balanced running and prevent injuries. If you already have a fully flexible and neutral body, and you run in ‘anti-pronation’ or ‘motion control’ shoes, the shoes will force your body into imbalance, which will result in injury.

2. A strong enough body for the amount of training that you plan to do. You cannot take your 1100cc vehicle out on a 4×4 route; it will fall apart. Likewise you cannot take a weak body and train high quality or quantity without getting injured. By building specific strength for the specific running you plan to do, you ensure that your body will remain balanced and you will remain injury free.

3. A proper training program that suits your body-type and strength. Progressing gradually is the key to injury-free running.

All the chronically injured runners who come to my practice for help have all or some of the following:

• Tight stretches

• Weak stabilizers

• Orthotics to support the weakness (for example ‘over-pronation’)

• Shoes that are not neutral

• No proper training program/infrequent running (less than 4x a week)

• Too strong/fast training partners

However since 1995, I worked with professional athletes who were tired of chronic recurring injuries and we decided to start a research program to develop a method that would permanently fix and prevent running injuries.

At the time I came across Aaron Mattes’ work, Active Isolated Stretching (AIS,) with which he had excellent results. He propagated 2 sec stretches and when I compared his way of stretching to the old 20 second stretches, it was much more effective, gave much quicker results and without weakening the muscles the way the long static stretches did.

In my research I found more than half of my athletes completely overstretched and along with that they were extremely weak when tested on my Bunkie Test. (they were all using regular 20second stretches). Chronic calf injury athletes were all stretching their calfs regularly, the chronic Hamstring athletes were doing regular long Hamstring stretches, etc.
Initially we made them stop their stretches completely and within about 2 weeks, the muscle strength started picking up and the tightness they felt when training, disappeared.

I then stopped all the 20 second stretches with all my athletes, measured their muscle length according to my tests shown in RW, and only allowed them to do 2 second stretches (5x2seconds) where they lacked range of movement. I suddenly got rid of hardcore injuries like Piriformis syndrome, ITB, chronic muscle tears, etc.

I continued researching and found that the tightness athletes experience during stretching, came from the connective tissue which surrounds the muscle, and not from the muscle itself. By releasing the connective tissue with my hands, I could in most cases get muscles to the full range of movement within a few days, something one can hardly achieve by stretching.

Eventually I have put it all together and developed the Lyno Method where the focus is on balancing the length of muscles to ensure neutral running. I now use the Lyno Method on all my runners; strengthening only what is weak, and stretching only what shows up short, and the results are brilliant.

Most of my ‘maintenance’ runners who have been on my method for a while, never stretch any muscles at all; they check their range regularly as indicated on the pictures in RW, only to make sure they are still running neutral.

The 2nd and 3rd stretch on the RW page are the only 2 stretches I use in my method. They combine all the stretches necessary for runners since they deal with the dominant muscles (Gluteus, Hamstring, Quad and calf) on the outside of the legs. The ‘straight-leg’ Hamstring stretch, the groin stretch, the common ITB stretch and the common ‘push-over-the -wall’ calf stretch all caused lengthening of the ‘weaker’ running muscles and resulted in injuries.

I always use the example of an elastic belt around your waist. If you keep stretching it out for long periods every day, it will soon loose its elasticity and your pants will fall off. The same happens with muscles that are stretched continuously; they loose their contractibility and become weak and unable to function effectively.

Stretching is about lengthening. Do it cautiously and stop once you have reached the desired length. An overstretched muscle can only function with muscle spasm which results in cramping, a feeling of tightness and injury.”