Marcell_S...thanks (Treadmill vs outdoor) "Technique"

Triathlon Forum
1

Marcell_s mentioned that in his research they found that people who ran too much on the treadmill developed a bit of a “bouncy” stride which allows them to go “faster” by letting the belt pass under them while in flight, which works well on the treadmill but does not translate well outdoors because you just go vertical and not as far forward as you should. They found that these runners were using their glutes and their hamstrings less (Marcell, if there is a paper you can point to, that would be great for the ST crowd). Long story, but I had a pretty bad accident a few years ago, and I first had to “re learn” how to run on the treadmill for a number of reasons. In any case I ended up doing exactly what Marcel mentioned which was also enhanced because I was almost always doing incline running to keep the pace down and workload high (I did not have enough coordination and range of motion initially to run faster on a level, so I wanted high workload through incline).

Any case, after Marcel mentioned this, I noticed that my hip extension, hamstring engagement and glute engagement has been poor and it is somewhat “masked” when running too much on the treadmill. I know people will jump on here and say the frames of reference are identical indoors and outdoors, but I feel that the treadmill is at constant velocity all the time. Outdoors there is a slight deceleration and then acceleration within the stride that allows for proper engagement of the hams and glutes better than on treadmilll especially in the ranges above 9.3 mph (around 15 kph/4 min per k). I am hoping to get to the track tomorrow to work this a bit more as I am at a warm location not covered in snow now and can actually quantify.

2

there’s already a thread for this.

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/…;;page=unread#unread

3

Wasn’t there a long thread on this recently?

4

No, the long thread covered a zillion things. I am referring to a single bit of analysis that Marcell_s has done in his research that he posted in a comment and it applied 100% to what had evolved into my running gait on the treadmill without me even realizing. He did not even need to see me running to “observe” what I was doing. He just came to these conclusions from some of his research…I was not even part of his research…I’d just developed the same traits.

5

That makes me very happy Paul, thank you.
Treadmills are interesting beasts as everyone seems to respond to them differently.
And, much like the turbo which does a good job of simulating the outside if you understand what the differences are you can use that to your advantage.

For instance, a turbo allows concentration, long hard efforts without interruption. Sometimes relatively low inertia, forcing the use of auxilliary muscles around the pedal stroke.
etc.

The treadmill, encourages a more ‘anterior’ running stride. This is not a bad thing, as many athletes, particularly triathletes lack a good snappy knee drive and powerful efficient hip flexors. If they did they could run much faster off the bike as the hip flexors are relatively rested during the bike. So when you come off the bike if you have a good snappy strong knee drive combined with good hip extension from the glutes you will run well and relatively fresh muscularly. Its something I work on ALOT with my subjects and myself, lots of hip flexor drives with stretch cords.
I supplement this with lots of INCLINE running on the treadmill. If you are using a treadmill why not use it for what its supposed to be used for!
The progression session I have posted before is a great one.

But as you found out, this comes at a consequence as it alters your stride, so a combination of the two is best.
In my opinion a training plan including treadmill and strides (reps of high speed with focus on hip extension and glute input) can form a very powerful plan.

Thanks again.

Oh and research wise, Benno Nigg is generally the go to man on this, his group have done plenty of work on the kinematic differences between treadmill and overground running.

6

That makes me very happy Paul, thank you.
Treadmills are interesting beasts as everyone seems to respond to them differently.
And, much like the turbo which does a good job of simulating the outside if you understand what the differences are you can use that to your advantage.

For instance, a turbo allows concentration, long hard efforts without interruption. Sometimes relatively low inertia, forcing the use of auxilliary muscles around the pedal stroke.
etc.

The treadmill, encourages a more ‘anterior’ running stride. This is not a bad thing, as many athletes, particularly triathletes lack a good snappy knee drive and powerful efficient hip flexors. If they did they could run much faster off the bike as the hip flexors are relatively rested during the bike. So when you come off the bike if you have a good snappy strong knee drive combined with good hip extension from the glutes you will run well and relatively fresh muscularly. Its something I work on ALOT with my subjects and myself, lots of hip flexor drives with stretch cords.
I supplement this with lots of INCLINE running on the treadmill. If you are using a treadmill why not use it for what its supposed to be used for!
The progression session I have posted before is a great one.

But as you found out, this comes at a consequence as it alters your stride, so a combination of the two is best.
In my opinion a training plan including treadmill and strides (reps of high speed with focus on hip extension and glute input) can form a very powerful plan.

Thanks again.

Oh and research wise, Benno Nigg is generally the go to man on this, his group have done plenty of work on the kinematic differences between treadmill and overground running.

Thanks Marcel. What you are saying makes a ton of sense for me. I am “hopeful” that I my speed reduction post accident is not exclusively limited to motor control loss that I had and that some of it came about because of “learning” a different way to run. Keep in mind, I was first unable to walk properly and took several months working against my own body to “run” at first those runs were 4-5 mph range on the treadmill (prior to the accident I was high 37’s/low 38’s for 10k). Doing treadmill hills were actually very beneficial in working my push off as I essentially had none for some time. But as you said, doing that on the treadmill I was able to just push off with the calves without properly engaging the hip extension and glute engagement. Now that you made me more aware, I can literally see a loss of flexibility in my left hip extension phase which I did not even realize had happened until you brought this stuff up in the other thread. As I mentioned, I hope to get to the track tomorrow, as I find a controlled environment like that gives fairly precise feedback on small techniique changes (no different than going to the pool vs open water).

Dev

7

A good thread to bring a little light to that other mess. I think Marcell_S has some research to highlight what a few in the other thread were trying to say. And the anecdotal evidence holds some weight as well. I agree with Devashish Paul, it would be nice to see the paper if you can provide it. I’m happy to see there’s a fair amount. Thanks

8

Here’s the research. http://www.researchgate.net/...960524d86952fe86.pdf

Or
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/15301578_A_kinematic_comparison_of_overground_and_treadmill_running/file/9c960524d86952fe86.pdf

9

Very interesting thread. I generally stick to the treadmill in the winter and it definitely rang a bell right away when you mentioned the “bouncy stride”

Personally as a steadily improving “runner” who didn’t take up the sport until my mid 20s a higher knee turnover and more aggressive running stride has actually helped the tendency to shuffle imprinted in my muscle memory from when I started running doing 11:00’ miles out of necessity.

10

This may help you as well Dev -

http://thegaitguys.tumblr.com/post/9252105802/the-truth-about-treadmills-a-neurological
.

11

could you post the “progression” again please?

12

This may help you as well Dev -

http://thegaitguys.tumblr.com/post/9252105802/the-truth-about-treadmills-a-neurological

Thanks Rod, that was a useful article. Much appreciated.

13

Thanks for posting that, I have it in hard copy and was wondering how best to get it here.

The research is remarkably flaky on the topic of adaption though.
My observation was just out of curiosity as my work tends to focus on the landing of the foot and elements in the forefoot, rather than whole body kinematics. But it was something I was more aware of as a runner myself and a coach.

Yes of course - progression set.

Basic idea is 10 minute blocks, with approx 30 secs/1 min recovery - no more.

The first 10 mins you start on a pace that is comfortably hard on the flat, about tempoish pace.
Lets say for numbers sake 10mph. at a grade of 0.5 (I never start on 0).
You increase the grade by 0.5 every minute, so by the end of this first 10 minutes you should be on around 5%.
Knock the treadmill back down on speed and grade for 30 secs to 1 min.
Then go again, but this time starting at 0.3mph or 0.5kph faster than the previous set.
Also, on this one its a double whammy, as you increase the grade by 0.5 each minute till you hit 5minutes, then for the last 5 minutes you move it up by 0.5 every 30 seconds!
So you end up around 8%!

The next one is the same as that one, but again you increase the speed by 0.3mph/0.5 kph.

You keep doing this until you cannot physically increase the grade, feel a bit ill or feel like you are going to fall off. Then you stop and note your position.
This should be on either the 3rd or 4th set depending on how well you paced and whether you overdid it at the start.
The first one should feel pretty comfortable all the way through.
The second set should feel hard at about the 2-3 minute to go mark
The third set should feel hard at around 4 minutes to go.

Its remarkable how hard it gets very quickly once you pass 5 minutes.

Then next week, if you made it to the 4th set you start on the same speeds/grades as the second set. If you failed in the 3rd set you start where you did before and try and get further on in the 3rd set and try and finish it.

So it might look like this

10mph 0.5-5% (10 min)
1 min rest
10.3mph 1-8.5% (10 min)
1 min rest
10.6mph 1-7% - failed at 8 minutes 20 seconds

Next week try to get a bit further.

Enjoy!

14

Thanks for posting that, I have it in hard copy and was wondering how best to get it here.

The research is remarkably flaky on the topic of adaption though.
My observation was just out of curiosity as my work tends to focus on the landing of the foot and elements in the forefoot, rather than whole body kinematics. But it was something I was more aware of as a runner myself and a coach.

Yes of course - progression set.

Basic idea is 10 minute blocks, with approx 30 secs/1 min recovery - no more.

The first 10 mins you start on a pace that is comfortably hard on the flat, about tempoish pace.
Lets say for numbers sake 10mph. at a grade of 0.5 (I never start on 0).
You increase the grade by 0.5 every minute, so by the end of this first 10 minutes you should be on around 5%.
Knock the treadmill back down on speed and grade for 30 secs to 1 min.
Then go again, but this time starting at 0.3mph or 0.5kph faster than the previous set.
Also, on this one its a double whammy, as you increase the grade by 0.5 each minute till you hit 5minutes, then for the last 5 minutes you move it up by 0.5 every 30 seconds!
So you end up around 8%!

The next one is the same as that one, but again you increase the speed by 0.3mph/0.5 kph.

You keep doing this until you cannot physically increase the grade, feel a bit ill or feel like you are going to fall off. Then you stop and note your position.
This should be on either the 3rd or 4th set depending on how well you paced and whether you overdid it at the start.
The first one should feel pretty comfortable all the way through.
The second set should feel hard at about the 2-3 minute to go mark
The third set should feel hard at around 4 minutes to go.

Its remarkable how hard it gets very quickly once you pass 5 minutes.

Then next week, if you made it to the 4th set you start on the same speeds/grades as the second set. If you failed in the 3rd set you start where you did before and try and get further on in the 3rd set and try and finish it.

So it might look like this

10mph 0.5-5% (10 min)
1 min rest
10.3mph 1-8.5% (10 min)
1 min rest
10.6mph 1-7% - failed at 8 minutes 20 seconds

Next week try to get a bit further.

**Enjoy!

'Enjoy’ my ass:)

My quads ,heart and lungs are getting queezy just reading this

.

15

Oh the other hand, this study appears to show that what marcellus states is garbage. Your thoughts?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18460996

16

Firstly, that is the absolute difference, we are talking about adaptation and changes over time, a different thing entirely.

Also, differences were noted but not statistically significant. I would bet based on our work that those small differences would increase over time with adaptation.

17

That is the paper discussed in the other thread. The actual results are 180 degrees opposite from what they state in the abstract. Google the title and you’ll find a pdf of the whole paper.

18

Ah, very interesting. Well if it was discussed on Slowtwitch and “The Gait Guys” agree, that’s good enough for me. I had previously been taking the word of Casey Kerrigan, a Harvard Medical School graduate with a Masters in Physical Rehabilitation. She stated when speaking of treadmill versus overground running mechanics (undoubtedly before consulting SlowTwitch.com) regarding typical beliefs was that ". . . t’s all garbage. We found some minor changes, but they weren’t the ones people expected, and they don’t affect anyone’s running biomechanics.”

Thank you for the clarification.

19

Read the paper and decide for yourself, and then discuss. But that’s harder than simply being snarky.

Also be aware that Ms. Kerrigan’s reasons for doing the study were to “prove” there were few differences so that they could obtain research funding using treadmills. A hypothesis that contradicts dozens of other studies, and a hypothesis that the authors themselves admit was not supported.

But you’ll have to read the actual paper to learn that, not just cherry pick a runners world quote.

20

There is no definitive right or wrong answer to this. Nothing cut and dry. My original point was about observations over time in our studies (not looking at this) we aim to include this in the long term study as it could be quite interesting.

The aim of science is not to prove anything right or wrong necessarily but to aid our understanding.

If what science shows tallies with personal experience thats great, but often it just gives us more to think about.

Try not to jump on every comment on here and demand answers, because you won’t get any. Too many people want to be told how they (their body and mind ) work and its just not possible due to the uniqueness of the individual. So instead of demanding how about conducting your own science and see how you work.