Dr. Megan Peach // #FitnessAthleteFriday // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Endurance Athlete division leader Megan Peach discusses utilizing hill running as a gait drill for injured runners, explaining the changes in running mechanics between running flat, uphill, and downhill. Megan also explains when and why to recommend uphill or downhill running Take a listen to the episode or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog If you're looking to learn from our Endurance Athlete division, check out our live physical therapy courses or our online physical therapy courses. Check out our entire list of continuing education courses for physical therapy including our physical therapy certifications by checking out our website. Don't forget about all of our FREE eBooks, prebuilt workshops, free CEUs, and other physical therapy continuing education on our Resources tab. EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION INTRODUCTION Hey everybody, Alan here, Chief Operating Officer at ICE. Thanks for listening to the P-10 ICE Daily Show. Before we jump into today's episode, let's give a big shout out to our show sponsor, Jane. in online clinic management software and EMR. The Jane team understands that getting started with new software can be overwhelming, but they want you to know that you're not alone. To ensure the onboarding process goes smoothly, Jane offers free data imports, personalized calls to set up your account, and unlimited phone, email, and chat support. With a transparent monthly subscription, you'll never be locked into a contract with Jane. If you're interested in learning more about Jane or you want to book a personalized demo, head on over to jane.app.switch. And if you do decide to make the switch, don't forget to use our code ICEPT1MO at sign up to receive a one month free grace period on your new Jane account. MEGAN PEACH I think both YouTube and Instagram are both live. Miracles. Good morning. Happy Friday. This is your PT on ICE Daily Show, and I'll be your host today. My name is Megan Peach, along with the Institute of Clinical Excellence, bring you this topic today of incorporating hills into your gait retraining toolbox. I am one of the lead faculty for our endurance division here at Institute of Clinical Excellence. and I teach both the live and the online versions of Rehab of the Injured Runner. So I'm super excited about this topic today. Let's get into it. So we have a lot of different tools in our gait retraining toolbox that we might use to keep injured runners running or return injured runners to a running program if they've had to take some time off. CHANGES IN RUNNING MECHANICS WITH UPHILL RUNNINGOne of the tools that we don't often use or that maybe we don't often think about as much of the others like cadence training or forward trunk flexion or maybe quiet running is incorporating hills into their current running program as a gait training tool to keep that injured runner running. And before we talk about specific injuries, I want to talk a little bit about the differences between running mechanics when we're running either uphill or downhill as compared to running over a level surface or a level ground. So when we're running uphill, a couple of things happen in terms of the sagittal plane gait mechanics that are different from running over ground on a level surface. One of those things is that our stride length So the distance from where the foot strikes the ground to a vertical line straight down from the center of mass, that's our stride length, that often will decrease when we are running uphill. And what goes along with that is also an increase in knee flexion at initial contact. So when we're running uphill, our knee flexion tends to be more than when we are running over a level surface. and it tends to be a little bit less in comparison. Also, another change that we typically see is a decrease in the angle of inclination from the foot to the ground when we'r