Whereas some enjoy sitting down and reading blogs with a coffee, I’m aware it’s not how everyone best consumes information. As such I’ve been using Instagram to try and present some of my older blogs in a different way – with (hopefully) eye catching infographics designed in a flowing ‘carousel’ style. Along the way I’ve generated some graphics on there which I realise are topics I’ve not yet written blogs on, so I am going to try and make sure for every bit of content I generate, I do so in the written form here on the blog and then in the more eye catching manner on Instagram. If you aren’t ..read more

Strength training for runners; it seems pretty intuitive. It’s reasonable to say that the vast majority of running injuries we see are due to training error – or to put it more simply; exceeding the capacity of a given tissue at a given time. Thus, when we are guiding injured runners back from injury, strength work will often be a part of their rehabilitation to try and equip the body to cope better with applied external forces in future. Thus, it feels quite sensible to recommend strength work to any runner who is currently uninjured (whether they be new to running or are perhaps an experienc ..read more

I touched on this during a recent chat with Matt Phillips on RunChatLive (catch it HERE if you missed it) and have had several messages about it since so thought I’d just milk the analogy as much as possible and put it all down in one place for those interested. It is of course just an analogy, and not completely perfect (counter points welcome). The way foot orthoses are often framed as ‘arch supports’ or ‘rearfoot correctors/aligners’ (both historically and currently) is something that there is a rising argument for moving away from; primarily as it is not in keeping with any reasonable inte ..read more

As clinicians it has never been more important to be evidence based (informed), to audit our outcomes, and essentially do the best we can by our athletes. Yet what we are not taught during any of our years of training is just how flawed we all are as humans when it comes to the way we think and our (potentially detrimental) desire to search out patterns, formulate relationships between things and attribute causation. There are numerous ‘logical fallacies’ (errors in reasoning) we fall foul of which have significant implications for all healthcare, including Podiatric practice, and it is import ..read more

What are the three most important parts of an initial consultation? As the old saying goes: “History, history, history”. There are many facets to the history taking, such as the language used and style of questioning adopted (to name but two), but the focus of this blog is not how a clinician speaks; rather how (or if) they listen. On average, an individual brings between 1.2 – 3.9 concerns to a consultation and it is worth noting that the order they present them in is not necessarily related to the order of their importance. Therefore, the earlier we interrupt their narrative the higher the c ..read more

I’ve been mulling over this one for a while and two things pushed it to the front of my mind. Firstly, a discussion on one of the Podiatry Facebook groups recently which, as is often the case, turned into a Root Vs Tissue Stress debate (which I’ve started thinking is actually quite unhelpful). Secondly, a great blog from Prof. Nester entitled “Foot Biomechanics is Dead. Discuss” which was actually a far less provocative blog than the title suggests and was more a call for people to appreciate that the human foot is far more complex than just being a triangle stuck on the end of the l ..read more

One of my earliest (and popular) blogs was Choosing Running Shoes: The Evidence Behind the Recommendations. This is almost 7 years old now, and it felt like the right time to write a more up to date piece based on some recent online discussions I have read. READ THIS PARAGRAPH FIRST: The title here is intentionally provocative and controversial. Firstly, count to ten and take a deep breath. This blog (and remember it’s just a blog) does not necessarily reflect the way I practice. Furthermore, there are several caveats, which are listed in the text below. Additionally, let us admit that none of ..read more

A few weeks ago in Sligo, Ireland, Firefly Orthoses held an MSK Summit in a format that the conference circuit had never seen before (within our world at least). All 20 lecturers gave rapid fire 10 minute presentations (a bit like TED talks) on a wide variety of topics and all of these are now freely available for anyone to view here, along with the panel discussion on ‘Root Theory’ that took place on the evening of day 1. My lecture was a very brief summary of Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome and a cursory introduction how modifying step width is thought to potentially help in certain cases ..read more

So this post is inspired by a blog I recently read on the Run3D website (see here) which was entitled “You aren’t still using 2D gait analysis… are you?” I’d recommend giving it a full read before continuing here so that you can see the context of my response. The opening sentence reads like a tabloid headline: “2D gait analysis just isn’t good enough anymore” This is the theme of their blog entry and certainly worthy of further discussion. From their perspective 2D gait analysis is apparently “ancient technology”. Is this factually accurate, or possibly just marketing hyperbole from ..read more

Yesterday at the Annual Conference in Sports & Exercise Medicine in London I gave a workshop alongside Dr Simon Lack, a Physiotherapy colleague who has a PhD in patellofemoral pain (PFP).  The topic we approached was essentially the age old debate: when managing patients/athletes with PFP do we focus on a top down (proximally driven) approach or a bottom up (distally driven) approach? Or both? More importantly, as clinicians how to we make evidence informed decisions on this? [The conclusion won’t surprise anyone – an interdisciplinary team approach is king]. Simon covered the top end ..read more