At its face, there isn’t much to running, right? It’s just left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. But as simple of a description as this would be for running, it’s just not enough. For example, being asymmetrical in your steps can lead to problems like injuries and overall performance loss.
Lisa Colvin has been trying to figure out problems like this for her clients for years now. Colvin attended Northeast Louisiana University (now known as the University of Louisiana at Monroe) on an athletic and academic scholarship where she ran cross country, indoor and outdoor track & field and occasionally found herself swimming when the swim coach was in need of help.
During her undergrad she studied health and physical education and biology. She got her masters degree in physical education and counseling while teaching in the state of Louisiana and later went on to get her PhD at the University of Southern Mississippi in Exercise Physiology. Colvin also taught further and continuing education in biomechanics and ergonomics for twenty years. I tell you all of this because Colvin is a near master of human biomechanics. However, for years she was unable to tell her clients whether their feet were asymmetrical during their run, or if they had the correct shoes, or if they had a muscular imbalance which needed to be taken care of.
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All of these problems were fixed when Colvin began testing Kinematix’s TUNE. “TUNE will forever change the face of running,” said Colvin. “It’s been a 30 year journey from athlete to coach trying to help individuals reach their goals and their dreams while doing it in a responsible way.”
TUNE is a device which users can put right on their shoe and it will then track real-time data from their run. “For me, I have been looking and longing for this type of real-time, on the ground, information from your foot and I haven’t been able to find it,” said Colvin. “It is here now with TUNE.”
TUNE presents runners with two major positives. First, it helps prevent injuries before they happen. It can do this because it will tell the runner or coach like Colvin whether, for example, they’re symmetrical in their steps and whether the way by which they are pushing off the ground is the same for both feet.
“If you told me something hurt, up until now I’d have to get a camera out and try to look at how you’re running,” said Colvin. “I would then have to make a decision based on my 25 years of experience and my background.
Essentially, Colvin is saying that what once was a trial and error process is now boiled down to raw data and actual science in your shoes.
Along with helping to prevent injuries, TUNE increases a runner’s performance by doing exactly what was talked about before, providing unique information to fix the biomechanics. Naturally, the more mechanically sound of a runner you are, more consistent you’re going to run. The same could be said for swinging a baseball bat or kicking a soccer ball.
Colvin says she’s tried every single wearable on the market and hasn’t been able to find anything like TUNE. Now she can set up training programs for her clients to help them prevent injuries and return from injury, all the while becoming a better runner.
So yeah, there is a lot that goes into running, and Lisa Colvin is fully aware that TUNE helps to simplify the analytical process by providing real-time data.
Colvin made sure to stress the same point one more time saying, “This will forever change the face of running and the way that coaches will be able to help their runners.”