Relationships between Running Biomechanics, Hip Muscle Strength, and Running-Related Injury in Female Collegiate Cross-country Runners.

The sample was small: 20 runners were recruited, and only 19 provided end-of-season injury data, which reduced the study's ability to detect real differences. Running-related injury information was self-reported and may have been under- or misreported because of recall bias, misunderstanding of survey questions, or fear of judgment by coaches or other runners. Some runners may have been experiencing lower extremity injury symptoms at the time of testing, which could have affected the relationship between strength, movement, and later injury. Hip abductor strength was tested after treadmill running and with many maximal repetitions, which may have caused fatigue and affected performance. There was no standard running biomechanics testing protocol across studies, and this study's short treadmill trial may not have matched the fatigue of a typical cross-country training session. Results apply only to female collegiate cross-country runners who were injury-free at testing and ran at least 25 mi/week.

The authors state they have no financial affiliation or involvement with any commercial organization that has a direct financial interest in the manuscript. No funding or commercial involvement was reported.

Do not conclude that hip abductor strength and running movement patterns cannot affect running-related injury risk. Only 19 runners provided injury data, and several kinematic comparisons were close to significance (p=0.14, p=0.10, p=0.06), so the study may have missed real differences.