Treadmill injury

[Lorena]

I've been doing fine specially on pavement and concrete, already finished a few 5K and 10K finally after 10 months of having get rid of shoes. I exclusively run barefoot and my soles and whole body had been adapting pretty well so far. Since I've been increasing my strengt and running workouts I decided to try a new one from an article a found. The guy who is inspiring by the way, does a workout which combines weight lifting (4 or 5 ) sets and run 1.25 miles on the treadmill between sets. I was feeling great but 15 minutes after finished it I noticed a bruise on my ankle and some tenderness in my tendon and on the left foot like if I was stepping on a stone on my forefoot. Nothing major and my PT treated me so i was great. But then I tried just 2 miles on the street as I always do and that bruise that has gone practically the next day came back and I felt some pain. From 0 to 10 let's say 3. My question is if the treadmill could be the problem. I never use it. I only run on hard surfaces or natural trails.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

 

[Kyrrinstoch]

I've noticed a VERY big difference between running on a treadmill and "normal" ground, mostly because of the "belt slap" effect on the treadmill.

Since the belt floats over the platform, there's a small amount of space between it and the platform. When my foot comes down and makes contact with the belt, my body's expecting that to be the ground, not the platform just underneath it. That slight delay from my foot striking the belt and then impact with the platform ends up being very jarring and the result is I tend to land harder than do on regular pavement. After a few sessions on the treadmill I usually adapt pretty well, but I then have the opposite affect of landing too hard when I switch back to regular pavement, because I'm expecting that delayed impact after initial contact.

It could be your bruising is being caused from a similar circumstance of jarring, hard landings on the treadmill. My $0.02 would be to pay very close attention to how you run on the treadmill vs how you run on regular pavement. The differences may be subtle, but could make a large difference.

 

[Barefoot TJ]

I never could run as well on a treadmill as I could on the ground. Even so, that's strange that the treadmill would cause that kind of injury.

 

[migangelo]

Not that I'm doing any sort of medical evaluation or giving medical advice here, just thinking out loud. A returning bruise there means muscle tear that wasn't given enough time to heal. It takes 6-8 weeks for tissue to heal. As far as the lifting and running between sets, cool sounding workouts usually aren't. Activity doesn't equal productivity. Everyone tries novel sounding things when it's the basics that will make the difference.

 

[Barefoot TJ]

Not that I'm doing any sort of medical evaluation or giving medical advice here, just thinking out loud. A returning bruise there means muscle tear that wasn't given enough time to heal. It takes 6-8 weeks for tissue to heal. As far as the lifting and running between sets, cool sounding workouts usually aren't. Activity doesn't equal productivity. Everyone tries novel sounding things when it's the basics that will make the difference.

And that's from Dr. Mike!

 

[migangelo]

Dr bf Mike if you will please.

 

[Lorena]

I've noticed a VERY big difference between running on a treadmill and "normal" ground, mostly because of the "belt slap" effect on the treadmill.

Since the belt floats over the platform, there's a small amount of space between it and the platform. When my foot comes down and makes contact with the belt, my body's expecting that to be the ground, not the platform just underneath it. That slight delay from my foot striking the belt and then impact with the platform ends up being very jarring and the result is I tend to land harder than do on regular pavement. After a few sessions on the treadmill I usually adapt pretty well, but I then have the opposite affect of landing too hard when I switch back to regular pavement, because I'm expecting that delayed impact after initial contact.

It could be your bruising is being caused from a similar circumstance of jarring, hard landings on the treadmill. My $0.02 would be to pay very close attention to how you run on the treadmill vs how you run on regular pavement. The differences may be subtle, but could make a large difference.

I've noticed a VERY big difference between running on a treadmill and "normal" ground, mostly because of the "belt slap" effect on the treadmill.

Since the belt floats over the platform, there's a small amount of space between it and the platform. When my foot comes down and makes contact with the belt, my body's expecting that to be the ground, not the platform just underneath it. That slight delay from my foot striking the belt and then impact with the platform ends up being very jarring and the result is I tend to land harder than do on regular pavement. After a few sessions on the treadmill I usually adapt pretty well, but I then have the opposite affect of landing too hard when I switch back to regular pavement, because I'm expecting that delayed impact after initial contact.

It could be your bruising is being caused from a similar circumstance of jarring, hard landings on the treadmill. My $0.02 would be to pay very close attention to how you run on the treadmill vs how you run on regular pavement. The differences may be subtle, but could make a large difference.

Thank you so much for your reply. What you said it's practically the same thing my massage therapist and PT explained to me. Since I never use treadmills that "insignificant" change from running on the road vs the treadmill was enough for my body to feel the difference so it qas like a complete kind of stress. The good thing is that after 5 days I was running again on the pavement without more issues. I know that for most people treadmills are not a problem. Actually when I was wearing shoes I used to run on them so I never felt any difference between hitting the roads or running on that torture machine! But certainly we feel what's really going on when we run barefoot so I learned something else