Changes

From Fellrnr.com, Running tips
Jump to: navigation, search

Blister Prevention

997 bytes added, 01:03, 8 March 2013
no edit summary
===Exacerbating factors – Heat & Moisture===
Neither heat nor moisture will cause blisters, but they will make them more likely as they both tend to weaken the structure of the skin. If the skin is wet for long enough it will macerate, which sometimes called 'prune skin'. Macerated skin tends to wrinkle up, become white, quite soft and is far more likely to blister.
==Blisters and Calluses==
A callus is a thickening of the skin, caused by friction and pressure. While a callus can help protect against the friction and pressure that would create a blister, but if a blister forms anyway, the callus makes it treating the blister far worse. Trying to get through a callus to burst an underlying blister is painful and often fruitless. If you have a callus it should be viewed as a warning sign that something is wrong. Use this page to find and fix the underlying cause of the friction and pressure that is triggering the callus formation. It's best to remove the callus, but this should be done with care. I recommend gently filing down the callus with a nail file, taking a bit off each day. Don't aim to remove all of the thickened skin, but take it down to the point where you regain the flexibility. If you fix the underlying cause of the friction and pressure then the skin will stop forming the callus.
==Preventing blisters==
There are several key steps to preventing blisters.
===Running form===
Bad running form will not only make you slow and cause injury, but it is also a leading cause of blisters. With a good [[Cadence]] and running form, your feet will land gently and quietly on the ground, producing little shearing force or impact. A slow [[Cadence]] or a poor running form will produce a sharp shearing force that will tear at the skin, causing blisters over time. Running downhill can make the shearing forces far worse, and a poor downhill running style is likely to cause serious blisters. When running downhill, your foot should land softly and the braking force should be even for the time the foot is in contact.
{| class="wikitable" |- valign="top"|[[File:Foot-Landing-Badly.gif|frame|none|x150|Without paw-back, the foot is still moving forward at the time of contact, creating shearing force]]|[[File:Foot-landing-correctly.gif|frame|none|x150|Correct paw-back brings the foot backward in relation to the body, so that it touches down without any forward motion.]]|}
===Shoe Fit===

Navigation menu