Running by the Numbers
How running physiotherapist, Chris Napier, is bringing lab-grade biomechanics into every assessment.
Physiotherapist
Dr. Chris Napier
Clinic
Restore Physiotherapy
Focus
Running Assessments
Field
Running Performance & Biomechanics
Dr. Chris Napier has spent 23 years as a physiotherapist, and for the last 13 of them, running has been almost all he does. Not running as a general service offering — running as a clinical specialty. He has built a career that spans private practice, and provincial and national team work in track and field, cross country, and road running, and has been a Team Canada physio at world championship and Olympic events. Since 2013, he has maintained an active research focus on running biomechanics, weaving it directly into how he works with patients day to day.
When you've spent that long thinking carefully about how people move, you develop a clear sense of what you can see — and what you can't.
What the Camera Couldn’t Capture
Before Plantiga, Napier's assessment toolkit was genuinely sophisticated by clinical standards. High-speed video from multiple angles. Kinovea software for frame-by-frame joint angle analysis. Slow-motion replay to spot the things that happen too fast for the naked eye.
But there were limits, and he knew exactly where they were.
“Knowing what I can get from my lab at the University, I knew what I was missing. I wanted to be able to measure both the spatial temporal measures alongside the asymmetries”
Cadence, for instance, required manually counting strides with a metronome or stopwatch — while simultaneously watching movement patterns on screen. Impact numbers were effectively invisible. Ground contact time, stride length, and left-right asymmetries in any of those measures were either estimated or absent entirely. He could hear differences in footfall. He could sometimes infer stride variability from video. But he couldn't measure any of it with precision.
It was clinical judgment filling gaps that data should have been closing.
Before Plantiga
High-speed video
Multi-angle · slow motion · Kinovea
Visual joint analysis
Frame-by-frame angle estimation
Cadence counting
Metronome · stopwatch · manual
Subjective impact read
Listen for footfall · infer from video
What was missing
Impact kinematics
Magnitude · variability
Spatial-temporal measures
Stride length · ground contact time
L / R asymmetry
Precise side-to-side comparison
Automated cadence
No counting — measured directly
Into the Assessment
The current workflow starts the same way it always has: subjective and objective exam, functional tests, range of motion, strength assessment. But when it's time to get on the treadmill, Plantiga insoles go in before anything else.
From there, the protocol adapts to the clinical question. Single speed for a standard assessment. Multiple speeds, incline, decline, or different footwear conditions when the situation calls for it. Plantiga works quietly in the background, collecting what the camera misses.
After the session, Napier sits down with the patient at his computer and goes through everything with them. He starts with video — it's intuitive, visual, easy for patients to understand — then moves into Plantiga's Explore tab to layer in the data. Graphs get zoomed in. Specific sections get highlighted. The numbers get mapped back to what they just watched.
“It just kind of helps to tie things in. I could listen for impact, but I wasn’t sure if I was hearing a difference. I could look at the video to see if one stride looked longer, but I couldn’t really tell. Now I get that with Plantiga.”
Every patient leaves with a report in their email inbox and a link to a shared folder containing their videos and Plantiga data.
Exam
Subjective + objective
ROM · strength · function
Treadmill run
Plantiga insoles fitted
Speed · incline · footwear
Review together
Video + Plantiga data
Numbers mapped to visuals
Delivered
Email report
Videos + Plantiga data
Different Shoes Cause Different Movement
One case became something of a turning point. A patient arrived with knee pain that was clearly impact-related — he'd been cycling through different footwear trying to find relief, without success. He brought a range of shoes to the assessment: a New Balance Minimus at the minimal end, a Hoka at the maximal end, and several options in between.
The data told the story immediately. Impact levels shifted clearly across shoe conditions. But what stood out wasn't just the magnitude — it was the variability. In certain shoes, impact variability on one side was markedly higher than the other. A subtle asymmetry, invisible to the eye, made visible by the insoles.
“It was just so obvious when we looked at comparing those different shoe conditions. The decision was made. He tossed one pair of shoes and said, ‘I’m just going to wear the Hokas’.”
The buy-in was immediate — not because the patient trusted Napier's clinical read, but because he could see it himself.
That case shifted something. Before it, Plantiga was a tool Napier reached for in some situations. After it, he started using it in all of them.
Shoe conditions
New Balance Minimus
Minimal cushioning · high impact and asymmetry
Mid-range options
Mixed results · inconsistent feel
Hoka
Maximal cushioning · even left-right loading
Impact · left vs right
Raising the Bar on Running Assessments
Napier is direct about the business dimension. Running assessments have proliferated — many clinics now offer them — but quality varies considerably. What Plantiga makes possible, he believes, is a genuinely differentiated service that justifies both the clinical investment and the pricing that reflects it.
“People are impressed when they come in and I tell them we’re going to put these insoles in your shoes and they can measure things that we can’t see otherwise. When I show them the report and all the different metrics — they’re impressed by it.”
That's not marketing language. It's clinical confidence backed by objective output: a practitioner who spent over a decade knowing exactly what he was missing, and now has it.
For Napier, the value isn't that Plantiga replaced his clinical judgment. It's that it finally gave the data enough resolution to match it.
The running assessment market
Standard clinic
Video
Visual read
Practitioner judgment
Patient trusts opinion
standard pricing
Napier + Plantiga
What changes
Video + sensor data
Objective metrics
Patient sees the data
Buy-in is immediate
Business outcome
Superior service
Impressed patients
Clinic differentiated
Premium pricing