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They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. That’s the situation I’ve found myself in regarding issues I’ve had with my hip flexors.

For years now I’ve struggled with my hips during long runs on the road, especially on my right side. For the most part, this has been manageable. I don’t ever really feel it on the trails. But time and time again it has caused me grief during marathons.

This first really became problematic during the 2023 Sunshine Coast Marathon. For the first 28k of that race I felt GREAT. I was cruising. But the final 14k was agony. Every 500m I had to stop and stretch both hips, but especially the right one.

This would give me enough relief to get going again, but only for about 500m before I had to repeat the process. Painful AND frustrating. (One bonus though - at that race the course was marked with extra tall, bright orange witches’ hats, perfect to hold onto while stretching out the hip flexors.)

For almost two years I just assumed the magic running fairies would visit me one night as I was sleeping, and sprinkle some fairy dust on my hips, miraculously curing them. But a few months ago, after the debacle of the Sydney Marathon during which I was in pain from the very first step, I decided to give up on the fairies and turn my back on insanity.

Instead, I took myself off to an exercise physiologist - Paul Peglar at START Training in Brisbane. I wish I’d done it years ago.

By chance, the day I saw Paul he had two uni students in with him. So as he was putting me through my paces, he was quizzing them. And that meant I got a running commentary on what he was doing and why.

This involved me lying, contorted in various different ways, on a bench while he and the students pull my legs in different directions - lifting, dropping, twisting and turning them.

The upshot of this was a theory - that I was “quad-dominant”, meaning my hamstrings and glutes weren’t pulling their weight while I was running.

I asked Paul why I didn’t seem to have the same issues on the trails. One of the key factors is proprioception, and how it’s activated to a greater degree when you are running on uneven terrain.

Proprioception is a kind of telepathic comms channel between your body and your brain. When it’s working well, it means the brain knows exactly where each part of the body is in time and space, without have to pay specific attention to it.

In running, it’s about feeling your foot strike, and exactly how your legs are moving in order to land where you want them to land. In road running, footfalls are predictable because the road surface, within reason, is flat and even. Each leg moves through essentially the same arc for each stride.

On the roads, running proprioception is turned down low. Stride length is consistent. It’s the same motion over, and over, and over, and over again - for 42.2k in the case of a marathon.

On the trails, it’s a different story. Running proprioception is turned up high. Your stride length varies because where you are placing your feet changes from step to step, especially on technical terrain. And when your foot hits the ground, your brain is hyper-attuned to making small adjustments according to how uneven it is underfoot. Otherwise you’d roll your ankle every other step.

All this means that, on trails, you’re not putting your hips under the same stress stride after stride after stride. It’s that relentless repetition in road running that was the cause of my grief.

Plus, when you’re road running, the rhythmic percussion impact of footfall after footfall can send force up your leg to your hip, which also doesn’t help much. As far as I’m concerned, this is just another set of reasons to run trails rather than roads!

Walking the talk

At this point we left the bench and headed into the gym for a gait analysis and a bunch of other tests. This gave Paul lots of useful data points. As I briskly walked from one end of the gym to the other and back, Paul started a running commentary for the students’ benefit, and mine.

“See how he’s leaning slightly to the left. And as his right foot comes through his heel is clipping his other shoe.” I then did a stride test. The result - 30-34, should be around 42. All this was confirming the original quad-dominant diagnosis.

My hamstrings aren’t working hard enough to get my foot out far enough in front of me with each stride forward. That means my stride is shorter than it should be. Paul then spotted the hole in my right shoe above my big toenail.

The diagnosis for that - because my hamstring isn’t firing, my leg is swinging forward without much elevation. So my foot is arching to try to keep me from tripping, and therefore my big toe is poking through the top of the shoe.

There was good news in all this. “You’ve not got an injury as such, it’s more of a dysfunction,” he told me. Sounded pretty dire, but the good news is it can be fixed by strengthening my hamstrings and hip flexors, and the exercises to do that are pretty straightforward.

So what did I make of this? It actually made a lot of sense. I have always been a “shuffler”, barely getting my feet off the ground with each stride. The hole in the shoe makes sense. I have four pairs of Asics Gel Nimbus 27s, which have been my go-to road shoe for about two years, and all four have a hole in that same spot.

Now we’d diagnosed the issue it was on to the remedy. Paul and his students ran me through a program that focuses on hamstrings, glutes and hip flexors. They are all fairly rudimentary exercises with names like “single leg glute bridge”, “double leg straight leg hamstring bridge” and my favourite, “kneeling donkey kicks - spiky ball”.

Almost immediately I could feel the burn in all the right places, so I’m sure it’s having the desired effect. Now all I need to do is stick to the program (easier said than done, I know), and with any luck my debilitating hip flexor pain will be a thing of the past.

So my message to you is this - if you have a persistent issue that’s hampering your enjoyment of running, don’t assume it will work itself out. Go and see an exercise physiologist. You won’t regret it.

Upcoming Events

There are way too many events for me to list everything that’s happening around the country, but here is a selection of upcoming races (with a bias towards South East Queensland).

The Running Calendar website is a great source if you want a comprehensive understanding of what’s available around Australia.