Calf tears and running – Your step by step guide to avoiding injury
You’ve been sitting in lockdown for a few weeks, and it’s not looking like it’s going to be lifted any time soon. Without a gym or sports team to go to you can feel your muscles withering away, your fitness stagnating – a flight of stairs becoming an increasingly worthy opponent with each passing day.
One day - a Wednesday, or is it a Tuesday? All these days in lockdown seem to merge - it hits you: A burning desire to get fit again. Perhaps it was a particularly nasty post-binge-eating regret session, or maybe the stairs finally got the better of you, leaving you battling for breath two steps from the top.
Whatever the trigger was, you grab your volleys or, if you’re a truly seasoned veteran, your joggers. The ugg boots get a much-needed break as you tie up your laces and prepare to hit the road. If you’re wise, you may even do a couple of calf raises or start off with a brisk walk to increase blood flow into the legs and calves.
Feeling ready, you start slow with a light jog. This feels pretty good! You feel like you’re floating, like a butterfly.
But the upcoming curb… it has a sting like a bee.
Not thinking about particularly much, least of all an unassuming curb, you go to step off the curb. Your foot leaves the earth, plants on the road and…
Pop!
You stop. It doesn’t feel like much, at least at first. So you go to take a step, and that’s when you feel it… Ow!
You’ve got a calf tear.
If you’re lucky, it’ll be fully healed in a couple of weeks. Not so lucky, and it’ll set you back 6-8 weeks. Really unfortunate, and it may require surgery. Either way, your dreams of running a marathon have been put on the backburner for the foreseeable.
Lamenting on your past, you think… was there anything I could have done to reduce the risk of this happening?
Well I’m glad you asked!
It’s a common mistake to underestimate the importance of strong calves, particularly for running. In the back of the calf there are two main “power muscles” – the gastrocnemius (the one that makes cyclist calves look like they’re smuggling Tupperware under their skin) and the soleus (who sits beneath the said Tupperware).
These two muscles shoulder a shocking amount of force; for a recreational jogger the gastrocnemius can take up to 3x the bodyweight each step, and the soleus can take a shocking 7X bodyweight, each stride.
Yeah… no wonder they tear on you!
[DISCLAIMER: If you’ve recently sustained a calf tear, please DO NOT attempt the tests below]
Here’s a quick test; find your nearest wall and use it for arm support as you stand on one leg. Now, on that one leg (with a straight knee), lift your heel off the floor and rise up onto the ball of your foot, before lowering the heel back down onto the floor. 1 second up, 1 second down, I want to see how many you can do before a) your knee bends or b) you fail to complete a full rep due to fatigue.
If you’re like the average Joe out there, you got somewhere between 15 and 25 repetitions. No mean feat, but keep this in mind – a lot of professional soccer teams ask their players to do 50 consecutive calf raises in this manner as a strength test (yes, no rest breaks), and those guys know how to run!
This is a test of the gastrocnemius muscle, and it’s an easy way to see how much strength (and endurance) you have in your calves. For our runners coming out of rehab, we recommend that they are able to do at least 35 to 40 of these calf raises consecutive before returning to competitive running.
‘Great’, you’re thinking… all I need to do is build up those numbers and I’ll be the next Eliud Kipchoge (WR Marathon holder).
Sadly there’s more to it…
That same calf raise exercise; take it up a step (with a step). Try performing the same exercise on a step, and this time when you’re lowering the heel let it descend BELOW the ball of your foot (again keeping your knee straight). Feel that sweet stretch in your calf? Making sure your calf muscles can work through their full range of motion is important to keeping them working at their best.
Think that’s enough? Far from it… sure you’ve got a strong calf muscle that can work through its full range, but can it work quickly? It’s important to make sure that before you resume jogging you can hop and skip pain-free. If not, it’s well worth practicing these vital steps prior to jogging, to make sure that your calf muscles are able to accept and generate load at the required speeds for running.
So there we have it… seems simple, right? And here you were thinking the two steps were 1) Rest, and 2) Run. Sure, you could do that, but it’s well worth making sure your calves are on your side before you risk re-injury and further delay of your goals.
We see a lot of calf tears in the clinic, and even more so since the lockdown has made recreational runners out of every second person working from home. If you’ve injured your calf and want to get back on track for your running dreams, or just want to figure out how to not tear it again, let our skilled physiotherapists guide you through the process, from injury to return to running.
References:
Rhys: Our physiotherapist who served as Head of Rehabilitation for the Western Sydney Wanderers professional soccer team for 6 years.
Schache AG, Dorn TW, Williams GP, Brown NA, Pandy MG. Lower-limb muscular strategies for increasing running speed. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2014 Oct;44(10):813-24. doi: 10.2519/jospt.2014.5433. Epub 2014 Aug 7. PMID: 25103134.