Soleus muscle - the secret of running?

Same here regarding running slow

What has helped me over the years that I do not see mentioned:

-Walk up and down steep long hills . I have a mile long hill if you just do uphill it will not work gotta do the downhills together they work well. My hill is 1 mile long at 10 percent grade I try and do this every day but always before any running.

-Barefoot walking running on soft surfaces

Thanks Charlie.

Used to live by the beach with no hills in sight, certainly not mile long ones !

What worked for me then was very high cadence, like 195 on an easy run. No pain.

But it's not really a solution because you end up almost running in place and not in a good form.

I now have plenty of hills and together with trying to lengthen my stride, I may have screwed it again.

I'll try walking hills now.

Secret of running...right.

I also have chronic soleus problems, any advice appreciated

When I do the feet flat knees forward to the wall stretch one has so much less motion than the other but I don’t know if it’s too tight, inflamed, torn etc.

have people here attempted to increase weight on their strengthening exercises? the muscle will only become stronger when it is faced with a higher level of resistance. not with an increase in reps or duration.

Wow. How did I miss this study? Many thanks. Very serendipitous.

My analysis suggests the hip flexor strength is key.

CoachB wrote:

I have chronic soleus injuries. I've got a permanent knot in my right soleus that is about the size of an unshelled almond. It never goes away. If I run to far or too hard, the muscle seizes up .

Have you tried prolotherapy or traumeel injections to break the knot apart?

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:My analysis suggests the hip flexor strength is key.

I feel more like Darwin put all the major muscles there for good reasons, and each is interdependent on all the others, with none being significantly more important than any of the others.

I've also recently sustained a calf injury, with sudden sharp pain that started randomly one morning on a very easy run on level running surface. I went in to see a physio and he gave me a good work-over and discovered that while the acute injury was in the calf (both soleus and gastroc were affected; I forget which was worse), in fact all the major muscles (and some of the smaller ones) were knotted, lumpy, seized up or otherwise impaired and not firing properly. Probably the calves were taking up too much of the distributed load (that or ~ 15 years of running all my training in flats, or the fact I'm a decrepit old man at 52...) and were the first to go.

In my case, I am having very good results working with this physio who is treating me with ART, supplemented by daily self-massage with a stick and foam roller, plus some focussed strengthening and stretching exercises. I've had ART several times in the past with mixed success; it's always worked best when the therapist was aggressive and caused pain, and never helped very much when the therapist was afraid to make me uncomfortable. This dude is Dutch, working in Italy, and used to work with football (soccer) teams, where he was accustomed to being asked for aggressive treatment to help players get back to their paying gig quickly. He inflicts pain masterfully. And I've been very pleased with the rate of recovery, at my age.

Given the limited range of running speeds (fast jogging to slightly less than 6 min/mile pace) analyzed in the quoted study, I would be curious as to how the data interpretation would change as speeds approaching traditional sprinting velocities were used.

Given that the activity of the soleus is markedly higher at lower running speeds just as the activity level of the gastroc is markedly higher in sprinting based on their general fiber type composition (soleus = slow twitch, gastroc = fast twitch) and force production profiles, I would imagine that a wider range of speeds analyzed would yield different conclusions.

I've seen the data and the force the soleus sees is surprisingly (at least to me) consistent across all ranges of speed. At least that's what I think the study said. Whereas some muscles saw dramatic difference in force production as the speeds approached one's maximum.

PoisonIvy wrote:

Given the limited range of running speeds (fast jogging to slightly less than 6 min/mile pace) analyzed in the quoted study, I would be curious as to how the data interpretation would change as speeds approaching traditional sprinting velocities were used.

Given that the activity of the soleus is markedly higher at lower running speeds just as the activity level of the gastroc is markedly higher in sprinting based on their general fiber type composition (soleus = slow twitch, gastroc = fast twitch) and force production profiles, I would imagine that a wider range of speeds analyzed would yield different conclusions.

I know that static stretching its not in vogue any more but have you tried agressive stretching of the soleus? Either with a pro stretch device or with your foot against a stair with your toes dorsiflexed up against the stair and you bend your lower forward at the knee. Hold for at least 1 minute. In addition to agressive massage this helped me the most.

The protocol given by Dr.alfredson is a general program, which means it's not specific to your body and needs. If it's painful, then you need to scale the program back. It could be the amount of reps, or sets. It could be the resistance. It is most likely the resistance(in this case, your bodyweight), rather than the amount of reps.

If eccentric drops hurt your calf, then you've gone too far. It means that bodyweight is too much weight for your calf, so try seated eccentric drops with a weight on your knee to serve as resistance. If it still hurts, then the weight is still too heavy. Take another step back and try calf raise holds. Essentially, you have to "crawl before you can walk". In this metaphor, the "walk" is the calf raise, and the "crawl" is whatever calf raise movement that does not cause you sharp pain.

The poster above got it.

Overstretching is often inappropriately considered the chief cause and treatment is mostly directed at improving flexibility of previously tight muscles. Whenever a weak muscle is forced to work beyond its capacity, it will tighten and, therefore, be more subject to stress and strain. It is imperative to always build the strength and endurance of muscles along with flexibility. For example, a possible reason hamstring and adductor reinjury occurs is because too much attention is paid to stretching and not enough time is spent in strengthening. With injury and accompanying disuse atrophy, strength is always compromised. If flexibility is the main treatment, and strengthening is not included, the flexibility that is achieved will be temporary. The weak muscle will demonstrate inflexibility when maximum strength is required and be subject to micro and macro trauma. Strength is usually increased by lifting increasing amounts of weight, while endurance is increased by lifting lesser amounts of weight with more repetitions.

Study had fastest speed = 5 meters per second = 400 meters per 80 seconds = 5:20 per 1600 meters.

Clearly you've never read the studies associated with the Alfredson Protocol. Or know anything about eccentric contractions. The protocol WILL elicit pain in the first few days--eccentric contractions always cause achyness in the beginning. But, if the pain isn't too severe, it's important to stick with it. Studies found that the protocol was overwhelmingly effective (vs surgery or any other treatment) even though it sometimes caused pain during the treatment period.

Good luck!

Hi,

I have a soleus problem since 2014 and i already tryed "everything" and sometime i run for 4 month's, sometimes only one week.....because the spasm at soleus alaway came.

Can you please tell me if anyone get fine?

Thanks

Pedro

Hey everyone with muscle problems.

Running with tight calves you're pretty much doing an eccentric strength exercise @ ~80-100 reps per leg per minute. You're ripping yourself apart.

As a quick test:

1) Find a wall.

2) Point foot at wall about a hands width away.

3) Keeping your heel on the ground, try and bring your knee to the wall without letting your foot pronate or the knee buckle inwards.

If you can easily do this. Great ignore this.

If you can barely do this. Work on stretching and strengthening those calves.

If you can't do this you shouldn't be running till you can at least barely do this. Take a week off and stretch twice a day.

For strengthening I would do weighted single leg calve raises while avoiding ecentric loading. Grab a couple heavy dumbbells and a 2x4 or whatever you can use as a platform. Use both legs to get back to to the ground. We do not want to anger the calve gods here. Just provide some gentle stimulation. If you wanna do the eccentric part too then I'd say just do one set otherwise do 3 sets of ~4-6 reps of a 12rep max weight. Do it twice a week after your speed workouts if you do any.

For stretching I have two for the calves.

The usual lean against a wall with a leg shot out behind you as you try and put you heel down

My second one is to target the soleus. Difficult little bugger in my case. It's pretty much the wall test I wrote about earlier but you grab a counter edge or anything you use to pull up on increasing your bodyweight so you can really stretch that mofo.

Also make sure you've got great hip flexor mobility as you don't wanna be overstriding and overworking your calves.

Ok I'm gonna go stretch for a half hour now good luck boomers.