Life Sciences Commons^™

Mechanics And Energetics Of Footfall Patterns In Running, Allison H. Gruber

Open Access Dissertations

The forefoot (FF) running pattern has been recently advocated to improve running economy and prevent overuse injuries compared to the rearfoot (RF) pattern. However, these claims have not been supported by empirical evidence. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the potential advantages of RF and FF patterns to improve running economy and reduce injury risk in 20 natural RF and 20 natural FF runners.

The first study found that the RF group was more economical when performing the RF pattern at a slow, medium, and fast speed vs. FF running. Only running at the fast speed resulted in …

Training, Nutrition, Injury And Lifestyle Characteristics Of Shorter Distance Triathletes, Loren Elizabeth Johnson

LSU Master's Theses

Triathlon is an increasingly popular sport in which an athlete competes in swimming, biking and running in a single competitive bout. Today there are more than 140,000 members in the sanctioning body for triathlon. However, there is little descriptive data about this group of athletes. PURPOSE: The primary purpose of this exploratory study was to describe the demographics, training habits, nutritional practices, injury occurrence and overall health status of triathletes and identify any differences between two studies that collected this information. The secondary purpose was to examine any significant correlations among the major outcome variables in the LSU study. METHODS: …