What Happens When Gavin from Cambridge 105 Tries Run3D?

Transcript – Gavin Chats to Suvanne 

Part 1:

Gavin: So I’m here with Suvanne at Cutting Edge Podiatry on Barnwell Road and we’re going to find out about a very exciting new toy here. But just before we dig Suvanne, just give us a little flavour, perhaps of your professional background at all.

Suvanne: My name’s Suvanne Southgate. I’m owner and lead podiatrist at Cutting Edge Podiatry. I graduated as a podiatrist in 2000 after an 11 year career in the Royal Air Force. I graduated from Northampton University and specialise in musculoskeletal medicine, which as a practise here we that’s what we generally focus on, but we also do routine foot care.

Gavin: Now when I said I was coming to the Podiatry centre, I think there was a vision from one of the presenters of me having my sort of foot scraped or something which may not make for a very thrilling radio, but there’s a very shiny gadget here. And we like a good gadget at Cambridge 105. There’s a very exciting looking toy in front of us. So tell us a little bit about this. I think you’re gonna fire it up in a moment.

Suvanne: Yes. We’re gonna get you on the Run 3D machine. But you don’t have to run on it. You can also walk. Basically it’s a data-driven piece of kit that shows real time movement of pelvis, hips, knees and feet. So really good for injury prevention. Treating injuries and also performance.

Gavin: It doesn’t always bode well on the dance floor if my pelvis and hips start moving, but hopefully we won’t have any sort of serious incidents today. It said on the preamble when I when I read the invitation, that I might bleed at some point and to watch out for that! (joke)

Suvanne: Today is not going be a bloodbath. You know you’re safe. You’re in safe hands.

Gavin: What do you want me to do next?

Suvanne: I’m going to put you put 37 different fluorescent markers on you. We’ll set you up on the on the kit so it can recognise you, and then we’ll get ready to go. It’s like I said, it will be real time data and it takes readings 200 times a second

Gavin: This sounds intriguingly exciting and clever. I think we need to hand back to Christine in the studio to play a song or two while I get set up, and then we’ll be back to find out a little bit more about this exciting machine. So over to you, Christine.

Trying Out Run3D 

Part 2:

Gavin: I’m here with Suvanne at the Cutting Edge Podiatry centre. As we mentioned earlier, we’re finding out a little bit about my gait on this whizzy new machine. I’m pleased to report no blood. (That’s apparently if you’re having a Veruca removed so that which wouldn’t have necessarily made for great radio this morning.) They was no blood, but I have been kitted out in lots of sort of bits of belts, and sort of clip on things. It feels like I’m about to do a bungee jump, but I’m on the relative safety of a treadmill at the moment. I think I’ve burnt about 5 calories. So Siobhan tell us what we’re trying to find out at the moment while I while I pace this treadmill.

Suvanne: Ok. So… We can see on the screen -we’ve got your little skeleton up there. So this screen is showing you in real time. It is showing frontal transverse and sagittal plane motion. So it’s picking up things like how wide your feet are apart. What are you over striding? Have you got too much pelvic tilt? These are all things that it’s picking up in real time, which is repeatable and evidence based. And that’s why this machine is so good at capturing potential risk factors for injuries.

Gavin: So I like the way you describe it as my little skeleton on the screen. There’s lots of kind of very clever things flashing up in in front of me here, which I don’t entirely understand, but you’re going to explain that to us in a moment. And why would ….(I mean, if you haven’t been kindly invited like I have to try this out for the radio)…. why would someone want to come and do this? What would be a good reason for coming on this piece of kit.

Suvanne: So people use it for lots of different reasons. They might use it for injury prevention if they were looking at maybe doing London Marathon in 2026. What’s their starting point and how can they best avoid injuries? Equally, as we get older, our joint mobility starts to reduce. So Run3D is looking at things like rehabilitation and things that people can do to actually maintain their range of motion. If you’re injured, you might come along to find out. Sometimes people get focused on a particular area of injury and actually the cause might be happening above or below it. So this piece of kit allows us to look at the whole of the lower body as opposed to focusing just on the injured knee for example (when the issue might actually stem from the hip).

Gavin: And my understanding is that you do different kind of results between walking and running. And I’m walking at the moment as  everyone will be pleased to hear unless you need me to break into a light canter or anything! But I’ll probably stick with walking. What sort of difference would it make if I was running?

Suvanne: It actually compares you to a different sample of the population. So the controlled data is 25 people who have been injury free for at least two years. So obviously for performance runners, it’s going to be 25 performance runners and for walkers it will be 25 walkers of a similar comparable to you who have been injury free for at least two years.

Gavin:  And so I think you’ve probably captured a lot of bits and bobs about me now and it’s almost it’s almost time to do a bit of analysis. Is that right?

Suvanne: Yeah, let’s do it. Wait, so how much do you want me to give away about you?

Gavin: Well, that’s a that’s a good question. I guess you need a little bit of time just to sift through the results. So we could hand back to Christine for a moment to play another couple of songs and then we could come back and you could tell the whole of Cambridge if not anyone else about my gait and my walking ability. So back to you, Christine. And I haven’t burnt 7 but11 calories now, so hopefully I’ll take that for the blue-green muffins we gave away last week. Back to you, Christine.

Getting The Gait Analysis Results  

Part 3:

Gavin: So I’m here with Suvanne at Cutting Edge Podiatry on Barnwell Rd in Cambridge. I’ve been on the whizzy treadmill and there’s lots of data about me up on the screen. It looks as though I’m kind of either above or below normal in quite a lot of different areas, but I I rarely seem to be normal. Is that fair?

Suvanne: I think you’re being a bit harsh on yourself, really. What we need to do is going to ignore the ones that are in the normal margins and we’re going to pick up the things that are down below. So looking at this frontal plane motion you can see this one’s actually quite high right at the top here. So this is suggesting that you’re you have an anterior pelvic tilt. So you’re walking with a bit of a lordosis in the lower back with your pelvis pain tilted forward. That will obviously affect everything below that. So if your pelvis is tilting forwards it will mean that you’ve got a very high hip flexion and a very low hip extension. And this is the angle of the femur in-line to the hip. So that will be correspondingly low and high, and equally the muscles will also change. So one set of muscles, this one will be quite loose and these ones will be quite tight.

Gavin: So it’s quite impressive what has been able to pick up in just a few minutes of walking. If I was to do this for a whole hour, do you think things would have deteriorated even further?

Suvanne: No, it is repeatable. That’s the great thing about this. If you were deciding to embark on a fitness programme, you could come and have use this to get your baseline figures. Then go and do your rehabilitation, and come back and get the results to see the improvement.

Gavin:  So if I wanted to rehabilitate myself, which people have been telling me to do for years, basically, what would be your practical recommendations arising from this in terms of how I should be trying to just walk around the town?

Suvanne:  So I would say that you didn’t need to do a bit of work around your hips, so your hip abductors and adductors and the front muscles here, the back ones, everything is quite asymmetrical. So we need to work on those. You could do with changing your trainers, so you’ve got quite a heavy heel strike here. So you’re quite off the graph here. So a very heavy heel strike, and correspondingly, you strike the ground with a relatively straight knee on the right side. So when you think of striking the ground with a straight knee, it’s gonna be lack of shock absorption. And it’s going to lead to injuries such as patellofemoral syndrome, medial tibial stress syndrome, which is shin splints, ITB band problems, so lots of knee issues, lots of knee pain going on there. If you can address this. (So you can’t obviously change the fact that you’re a heel striker. That’s what you are). So what we need to do is work around that, and we do that with accommodation of the we’re getting you in the right pair of shoes. We can slow a lot of these down, which is the amount of pronation that you’ve got here going on, so we can slow that down, either with orthotics that you wear inside shoes, if it’s the speed that’s quite a good way of slowing that down. But also you can do this with stability trainers as well.

Gavin: Well, I’m not a senior politician, but if anybody wants to buy me a new pair of trainers, then you’re very welcome to get in touch with the programme. Christine, you better get some 1970s disco tracks out because it looks like I’ve got to improve my hip action generally, so we better get started in a moment. Suvanne it has been really enlightening this morning. Let’s give you your free advert. Now tell everyone listening this morning how they could have a go on this machine for themselves.

Suvanne: Yeah, you can book it online at www.cuttingedgepodiatry.co.uk and push the BOOK NOW button. Equally you can phone up our reception on 01223 633 038. And we’ll look forward to seeing you soon.

Gavin: Well, thank you very much indeed for giving me my report this morning and so much kind of really great educational, educational content about how I walk around. I never knew walking around was so complicated, but it’s been a real eye opener this morning. So many thanks again.

Suvanne: No problem. Thank you very much.

Gavin: Back to you, Christine.

How Does Run3D Work?

As you walk or run on a treadmill, advanced 3D motion capture technology accurately measures your movement patterns 200 times a second via 39 small reflective markers on your legs and shoes.

Run3D compares your joint motion with a comprehensive database of uninjured joints to precisely pinpoint abnormal gait patterns, potential imbalances, and inefficiencies that might be holding you back.

An expert clinician will analyse your Run3D data to identify the root cause of your issue or injury. You will receive a detailed, personalised written report, including treatment suggestions and recommendations for appropriate follow-up.