I just watched a pretty good video called Evolution Running that said forefoot was better because your heel is all bone, and does not have shock absorbing capabilities.

fore

Fore is much better-

http://www.evolutionrunning.com/

This is an a piece from the site-

Injury Resistance

Many runners, and even coaches, assume that injuries are an inherent part of running. They believe that if you run with enough volume and intensity to stimulate increases in strength and endurance, sooner or later you will suffer from serious injury. I passionately disagree with this philosophy! One common denominator of almost all great endurance performances is a long period of uninterrupted training. Even small injuries can be incredibly disruptive to a training regimen. They should never be tolerated as normal!

I believe strongly that adjusting technique can reduce the frequency and severity of injuries dramatically. By minimizing impact stress, maximizing shock absorption, and distributing the remaining stress optimally, injuries can become rarities. By minimizing vertical displacement and landing with your foot correctly oriented and in the right position relative to your center-of-mass, impact stress can be drastically reduced. A runner moving his center-of-mass up and down during running not only wastes energy, but also causes injuries. The higher the center-of-mass travels during the flight phase, the more velocity it will gain during descent and the greater the impact stress will be.

Our bodies are designed with built-in shock absorbers. The muscles and connective tissues of the feet and calves are extremely elastic. Most runners bypass this shock absorption by allowing their heels to touch the ground. The heel has almost no shock absorbing capacity. The heel is made of bone, which is not elastic. Bone transfers shock very well, and injuries to the ankle, shin, knees, hips, and lower back result. None of these tissues is designed to absorb impact stress, and the resulting trauma eventually creates an injury.

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"You're guaranteed to miss 100% of the shots you never take" - Wayne Gretzky

Distant past -> heel striker
Past - > forefoot (pose)
Current -> in between with no injuries and 50+mpw weeks.

I place the heel instead of slamming it down. My lower legs can not take the "pose" method of running. One year with lower leg (pose) injuries every 3 to 4 weeks did me in. I run in nb900's now and have only had 2 weeks under 40mpw since November (one week in Cancun) and 8 weeks of 50 mpw. My turnover is around 90 per foot per minute on my easy runs.

my track and x-country coaches have always tlod me 2 run forefoot

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If a man does his best, what more can we ask?

not totally forefoot, but more fore/mid, but the heel never really hits the ground except during warmup and cool down, when it is "placed" after the fore/mid touch down.

I'm a definite heel striker. I still do ok.

fore. takes advantage of the natural spring like energy return system our feet have evolved into over millions of years.

I'm a heel striker too but I don't land hard on it and it is under my CG most of the time anyway.

I still feel that it is very personal the way your footstrike is and shouldn't be changed overnight. I agree with the fact that it can solve some problems but I don't agree with blanket statements that say that humans evolved as fore-foot strikers. How would we know unless we were there to observe?

In just about every picture I see of elite runners they are heel-striking. I watch the ITU tri series on OLN and they are heel striking too.

jaretj

Isn't that assuming that you strike the ground/brake you motion on impact, rather than "clawing" back as you land. It would seem that being able to roll you foot under you, first starting with a heel strike, is not too bad.

I know all the literature says forefoot is a better landing spot. But on another thread, someone listed the top marathon runners by foot strike and they were evenly distributed between heel, mid and fore.

It is also interesting to think about the biomechanics of pronating (which apparently is essential to good running) and how pronating happens when you start with a heel strike vs. a forefoot strike. Again, we're assumming decent runners, not the clop-clop / plod-plod joggers that make you wince when you drive by them.