Frequently Asked Questions

We have a diverse therapy team which includes Doctors of Chiropractic and Doctors of Physical Therapy on-site. We also have several relationships with medical doctors both in Austin and remotely located should you need to be referred. Most of our clients see us prior to seeing their medical doctor because of our musculoskeletal specialty. We are able to refer for imaging as needed and will send you to the appropriate orthopedist or other medical specialist should we feel it would benefit your care. We feel collaboration is an important part of a comprehensive care model.

At RunLab, we believe if you are a human, you are a runner. Humans were born to run, just like fish were born to swim. We work with anyone who wants to move better. We have worked with individuals trying to lose weight, people trying to lower their anxiety/stress, improve their health, stroke patients, Down syndrome patients, Olympians, junior Olympians, and many runners who are trying to qualify for Boston or the Olympic Trials. If you want to move better, we want to work with you and will make the experience fun for you, no matter what kind of experience you have with running.

While we specialize in running biomechanics, we’re a comprehensive physical therapy clinic. We work with a wide range of patients, including patients pre- or post-surgery, patients with injury prevention goals, and patients with active injuries (running related or otherwise). 

Gait can take on many forms: walking, sprinting, multi-directional running, smooth surface running, technical surface running, hill running, or linear gait, amongst many other forms. Gait training is working on improving the efficiency of your gait mechanics. The specific gait training you receive is based upon your goals and underlying physiological attributes.

Our RunLab gait training sessions includes working with a Doctor and a Clinical Gait Specialist to improve your running form. Gait training sessions include a mix of mobility, stability, strength, movement training, and running with direct feedback depending on what your unique needs are. Our end goal is to help you gain more awareness of your body’s movement patterns, how to make these movements more efficient, and help improve the underlying physiological attributes to levels they need to be at for you to execute your movement goals.

You can want to move a certain way, however, if you don’t have the underlying characteristics it will not matter. We work with you on getting your body the attributes it needs.

Strength training is improving the ability of a muscle to either produce a greater amount of absolute force or to be able to withstand more repetitive strain. Strength training is just one component of gait training.

Running gait involves using your entire body in a specific manner to move through space. As a result, gait training includes working on your:

1. Elasticity (tendon health)
2. Endurance
3. Mobility
4. Nervous System Connectivity (Motor Patterns)
5. Balance
6. Core stability (posture)
7. Core rotational control
8. Strength
9. Structural Integrity
10. Symmetry

We can help change your running form within 5 seconds. However, LASTING CHANGE is highly individual. We all have different levels of fitness. We all have unique habitual movement patterns that will take time to “unlearn.” Some people are just going to learn movement skills more quickly than others.

The end goal is to get you to a position where you can reach ​your​ running goals. This usually occurs through developing body awareness (how am I moving and what does it feel like to change this?), getting your underlying physiological attributes to the desired level, and arming you with the tools to address day-to-day changes in your states of fatigue.

You will always need to take care of your body or else breakdowns will start to occur. In the beginning, the changes you make to your running form will be hard. You are literally trying to overwrite the current software in your body and recode it. Once you make your new running form “muscle memory” you will have to continue to do exercises to maintain this new form. However, once the base is built, it will not take as much work to maintain the new muscle memory. With that said, if your goals change, such as you wanting to run significantly more or run significantly faster, you will need to develop different gait patterns and understand when to use which ones to accommodate.

Yes! Due to many individuals flying into Austin for our services, we decided to build a virtual gait-training ecosystem. For more about our virtual gait-training services, visit runlab.us.