Has anyone in the Washington, DC area had a gait analysis / stride tuning session that they would recommend? My primary motivation is to get feedback on improving run efficiency/speed, while continuing to remain injury free.
It seems there are mixed opinions on the value of gait analysis. But for those that have had a positive experience, any feedback on what helped or specific things I should look to come away with? i.e. ‘Reasonable bike fit expectations’ but for analyzing my run.
Thanks.
have you been to pacers in alexandria?
Check out Montgomery County Road Runners. I have not done it however they offer a “stride clinic” which seems very detailed:
https://mcrrc.org/training-programs/run-performance-lab/
Go to the Speed Clinic at UVA
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Go to the Speed Clinic at UVA
x2 for this- the Speed Clinic at UVA is one of the top places in the country for this type of analysis. Not cheap, but they are on another level and absolutely worth it if you have some chronic injuries/issues. ( I took a quick tour a few years back)
https://med.virginia.edu/speed-clinic/
I would also second the suggestion for Pacers running stores in Alexandria/Arlington/Navy Yard, etc. I have found them to be much better than your average specialty run store in terms of shoes, gait analysis, etc.
My wife and I did a speed clinic session together a few years ago. We found the video analysis very instructive, and they identified some habits for each of us that were likely causing some injuries and/or pain. We walked away with a good list of exercises to perform to improve and address our forms. I can’t say we’ve been great about doing the exercises, but we have both had fewer injury issues since. All in all, a good experience that I can’t guarantee made a huge difference, but it was still worth the expense (and an excuse for a nice weekend in Charlottesville).
Pacers is a great shop, and where my running shoes come from. I did their quick “2-min” analysis on a treadmill to help select a shoe a few years ago. I was impressed that within 10s of running the guy asked if I had ever broken my right leg (I had), and have always been happy with their shoe recommendations. Will see if they offer a deeper review.
The Speed Clinic certainly looks quite in-depth and impressive. Will be taking a closer look at that. For those that have done that session, did you feel the human feedback and prescriptions were as high-quality as the tooling they use? Seeing a 3D animation of my skeleton running seems cool, but only if it results in great feedback that I can use. Were your sessions with the run expert listed on their site (Max), or was it a random grad student?
We got to see Max - I can’t speak to if he always does the sessions or not. He’s definitely knowledgeable, and seemed very good at applying his observations from the hundreds or thousands of other sessions that he’s done with clients to each of our cases. In our session, he identified issues ranging from foot flexibility to crossover tendencies to some bone structure observations. That said, I would actually be interested in going back to see if I’ve changed at all since hearing his feedback, or if these issues are simply persistent things that I can’t (or won’t?) be able/likely to fix.