Biokinetic Blueprint

Running, one of the most challenging feats our bodies can perform, is actually innate to us as humans, with our elongated limbs, upright postures, and inherent endurance capabilities making us perfect runners. However, it is interesting that running, despite being a natural activity, is responsible for a significant number of injuries in endurance sports, including well-known ones like plantar fasciitis, shin splints, and ITB syndrome. As part of my master's degree research focused on triathlete injuries, it became clear that the majority of injuries were running-related, accounting for 68% among males and 74% among females in a cohort of 60 triathletes. These statistics highlight the various factors that come into play when it comes to running, such as running form, warm-up and cool-down routines, strength, flexibility, endurance, footwear, and the fundamental ability to coordinate fluid and efficient forward motion. In this post, I will shed light on two of these attributes and p...

My background for ending up doing endurance sports is one that many people have heard of, and it's become a natural progression these days. I played many sports as a youth and excelled in many of them before deciding to stick to rugby and cricket in high school, where I made the 1st team and provincial representation. University led me down the rabbit hole of playing provincial rugby and 1st team club rugby. The bravado of our national South African sport, with muscle-bound, gym-induced, raging hormone males was great during my twenties, where a lot of excess testosterone needed to be blown off. However, it is well known that rugby players' careers are short-lived for the obvious reason. It is a contact sport, and injury is an inevitable part of the game. Unfortunately, this is where I fell short on the rugby side and inevitably where my introduction to endurance sport started. Let the suffering begin! The next month of blog posts is going to give insight into some of my favour...

I have held onto a statement that a professor made during a conference on "Exercise is Medicine." The statement, initially posed as a question, was intriguing and left the audience, which included exercise therapists, doctors, and physicians, quite baffled. The statement went something like this, and forgive me if I don't get it 100% right: "If you could have one pill for the rest of your life that could cure 90% of chronic diseases and prevent aging, would you take it?" Now, I'm sure you've already worked out what I am referring to, and the medical professionals in the room had also started working it out. However, it came as a bit of a shock to everyone. The inevitable answer was exercise – something very simple, yet the majority of people find it hard to even fit in the minimum requirement of exercise per day, week, month, or year. How is it that, as humans, the quickest, easiest, and path of least resistance is inevitably the road we take, even to ou...