Abstract
In 2015, we were blessed with the opportunity to build a sports medicine program through embedded athletic trainers within the United States Air Force’s (USAF) Basic Military Training (BMT). The outcomes from that work were published in 2021. Faced with approximately 800 incoming trainees a week who had varying degrees of running experience, the recurrent influx of common running injuries week by week developed three essential questions: (1) what are the best current treatments to resolve complaints in time to support on-time graduation, (2) what can be done to help prevent recurrence, and (3) can something be done to prevent these injuries in the first place? The literature is replete with works of others discussing systemic approaches to resolving iliotibial band dysfunction, patellofemoral pain syndrome, compartment syndrome, and bone stress injuries. Through their guidance, we treated our patients with considerable effect reducing injuries resulting in time out of training potentially leading to attrition. Common threads from those studies and support by Maj Nathaniel Nye and Lt Col Mark Cucuzzella lead us to find connected themes for intervention. Much like LTC Zimmermann and Dr. Bakker discuss, we found gait retraining that intentionally targeted multiple running constructs which provided resolution to our patients. The short duration of USAF BMT meant resolving a fourth question which was how can we retrain running gait faster. Operationalizing the approach of increased cadence, core activation, and gluteal activation through a motor learning sequence established a pathway to achieve running forms touted in injury management literature within a single 1-hour session with notable outcomes. This article speaks to the third question in which we sought to curtail the worst running traits of slow cadence, fully extended knees at initial contact, and poorly controlled knee adduction moments to see if significant injury presentation could be ameliorated. It just so happened that we did this in groups of 50 with as many as three groups in a session.