After reading through the thread on a need for a running person I came to the conclusion that there are many people who know a great deal about running form. I talk most about swimming and don’t mind being shot down and questioned. We need someone to be a focal point on running. Someone who we can support,attack and question if need be.
I am going to start this off by offering some observations, then I am passing the baton to someone else???
Running fast involves two important ingredients: stride length and frequency. Stride length is a function of how far back your leg travels not how far in front of your center of gravity it hits the ground. Ideally your mid foot will hit the ground under your center of gravity and quickly travel back. Hip flexibility is a key ingredient. The greater your hip flexibility the faster your leg will travel back with less effort. An important factor that is involved is posture. Your hips should be directly under your shoulders as if your are being pulled forward from your navel. Your shoulders should be pressed slightly back and down keeping you tall. Your goal is to run without any bouncing movement. What goes up comes down not forward.
You will find that the longer your race, the lower your trailing leg will lift. There have been some great shufflers. Alberto Salazar’s feet barely left the ground. Dave Scott ran close to a 2:40 with a similiar gait.
Stride frequency - Some people are born with a high turnover; others have to learn it. Ideally you want your stride frequency to be between 85 and 95 strides per minute. By the way this is the same as your bike cadence. A great way to get your stride frequency up is to run on a slight decline. Shorten the front end of your stride, keep your arms fairly low and lean into your hill. Gravity will pull you down the hill faster than you could normally run. You body learns how to spin down a hill. At first it is very scarry. Most people get injured running down hill because they overstride. You must keep your strides short in front of you. Hit midfoot and move. This is a part of sprint asssted training. You are taking some of the load off so that you can move faster. When you get to the flats you will immediately run faster. You can literally learn how to run faster.
Key points: Posture, foot strike, stride length, stride frequency
Stride length is a function of how far back your leg travels not how far in front of your center of gravity it hits the ground.
Unless I am not understanding what you are trying to say this is a huge wrong. Stride length is simply how far one goes between strides and has nothing to do withhow far ones foot goes back and is probably more determined by the push off force and speed of the runner and nothing else (faster runners have longer stride length). In fact, going back too far is detrimental to running speed. Optimum running speed comes from minimizing the time on the ground with a strong push off and as soon as the leg is off the ground optimizing getting the foot going forward and minimizing the back mechanics. While the mechanics are somewhat different for sprinters and long distance runners, the principles off efficient running are the same but the sustainable forces are different so the mechanics must be altered. According to my consultants most speed improvement can come from working on improving the recovery and the biggest mistake most runners make is “excess back mechanics”, the exact opposite of what you say is optimal. There is a video on my web site that discusses this although it is primarily directed to sprinting mechanics as Aaron is a sprinter.
You are absolutely correct. The recoverying leg will drive you. In the water we work on range of motion at the hips by increasing distance between feet underwater but on land it’s the forward driving leg which creates the drive off. We measure stride length by dividing the number of strides into the distance travelled.
Keep it going you seem to know what you are talking about and can put into understandable language.
In general I agree with everything that Doug has posted except for the “backside” part of the stride, on which I strongly agree with Frank. I have a fabulous video of the 1996 Olympics 100 m final, where Donovan Bailey beat Frankie Fredricks (the fastest man to never win a 100 m gold…but a fine chap indeed). You can visibly see how Donovan’s explosive speed comes from the recovery and front half of his stride and while this is an exaggerated motion with respect to an endurance runner, the basic mechanics still apply.
One thing I have noted is that while the so called shuffling technique works well for some taller runners like Salazar and Dave Scott who inherently have a long stride length (for endurance runners), there are esssentially no short triathletes or even elite runners below the height of 5’6" who run sub 2:10 in a straight out marathon, or sub 2:50 in an Ironman without substantial “kick” (aka picking up their heel and almost kicking their own butts). Look at all the Kenyans on Welch winning Hawaii 1994 to see what I mean. If you take two runners, one 6’ and the other 5’6, both running 90 RPM, the shorter guy has to proportionally generate much more push off force to generate the same stride length and thus the same speed (of course, this is possible due to the shorter guys theoretically lower body weight).
Do Taller and Shorter Runners Have Similar Biomechanics?
Although the answer is probably yes, taller and shorter runners have similar biomechanics, there are some disadvantages to being a tall runner. As people get taller, they get heavier. But the relationship is exponential; that is, people get heavier at a faster rate than they get taller.
You are absolutely correct. The recoverying leg will drive you. In the water we work on range of motion at the hips by increasing distance between feet underwater but on land it’s the forward driving leg which creates the drive off. We measure stride length by dividing the number of strides into the distance travelled.
Keep it going you seem to know what you are talking about and can put into understandable language.
DougStern
It seems to me that “running” in the water offers a couple of big advantages and a couple of big disadvantages over “ordinary” running. The big advantages are the water resistance helps train the hip flexors and the effort is non-impact so it will not injure the runner and help rehab the injure. The disadvantages are it requires a pool and it doesn’t reproduce the running motion very well, especially as you describe what you have your athletes do. I believe PC’s have all of the advantagees of running in water with none of the disadvantages. The only disadvantage of PC’s being they require a fairly large up front cost. These differences probably account for the big improvements in running reported by most users of PC’s. You can’t do the better form unless the muscles needed for that form are adequately trained and you can’t train the muscles unless you can stress them enough to cause the improvements and the best way to stress them is to force them to do the form or a reasonable representation for enough repetitions. That is exactly what PC’s do, and it is all non-impact.
Those who advocate “just run more” (and there are many of them) as the best road to running improvement are wrong in my opinion. Running more will make people faster as the muscles become more capable but it will do little to improve technique and it is all impact so it risks injury, which will only slow the runner down, if it happens. IMHO, the best way to get faster is to make the muscles more capable (especially stressing the weak links) while, at the same time, improving form, and, avoiding injury. Best form will depend upon the event and the physical characteristics of the runner.
I was given power cranks this year and found them very challenging and enjoyable. My biking was immediately faster and I felt that my cycling was much for fluid.
I was given power cranks this year and found them very challenging and enjoyable. My biking was immediately faster and I felt that my cycling was much for fluid.
DougStern
How about your running? That is where most (not all) people report the biggest early beenefit. Do you see why I compare them to “running” in water?
There is a vital prerequisite to achieving ideal running form, and that is achieving ideal walking form.
A few recommendations, and be advised this list is being cut quite short right now…
Buy some headphones that will reduce the intensity of the external environment (frank’s got a pair to play with). Walk with them and note how loud your foot is striking. Reduce it such that you can no longer hear it. You are on your way to floating.
Place a book on your head; walk. You’ll notice you don’t need to waste energy by moving your head around to look at things, just move your eyes.
With your headphones on, be still, listen for your heartbeat. Once you’ve dialed into it’s rhythm begin breathing in sync with it. Once that is accomplished begin walking in sync with the previous two. Once you have your steps dialed in, begin a pattern where you close your eyes for the duration of your breath, only blinking them open for just a split second at the begininning of your inhalation and then closing them again. It is quite challenging to do this and walk a straight line AND keep that book balanced on your head, more so if you are walking on an uneven dirt path.
When you’ve mastered the previous exercises, try walking, shoes off, and keep your feet on the ground the entire time. Your soles will not be on the ground the entire time of course, you’ll have to drag your toes for the forward stroke. It’s actually quite challenging, and you may pick up a few points on the metrosexual poll thread going on around here, but it works tremendously for increasing fluidity. Once you’re adept at this, you can run quite fast doing this, though the foot does come off the ground ever so slightly.
When you’ve mastered these exercises come back to me and I’ll give you more, but if you come asking before attaining mastery, I’ll pluck your right eye out.
In triathlon the key is to be able to run efficiently. Lori Bowden is an awesome shuffler. If you look at her stride as a model for how most people should run (form-wise I mean) she is definitely not a great example. What she has done is made her stride very efficient for her. There are many variables which determine how fast you will run and what type of runner you become (ie. fast cadence, long stride, bouncy stride, etc.) When I used to race track and was 150lbs I had way more knee lift and looked much smoother that I do know after 15 years of racing triathlon and packing on an extra 20lbs (a lot of it in my quads).
I will be working extensively on some shorter, faster running this summer to restore some of the knee lift and speed lost the past few seasons due to ironman training.
Form-wise my $0.02 is that many triathletes are way too tense in their upper bodies when running. I coach a few kids that are competitive swimmers and run on my track and cross-country teams. I am constantly telling them to drop their arms and relax their shoulders.
I would love to say that my running has improved. After my last MRI I was told that running was no longer one of the sports I should be doing. My knees are a mess. I will continue biking and swimming. At this point in my life that is good enough for me.
I wonder how much of the Chi running is a rip off of Pose runing? The guy who wrote Chi running went to a Pose clinic a couple of years before writing his book.
I would love to say that my running has improved. After my last MRI I was told that running was no longer one of the sports I should be doing. My knees are a mess. I will continue biking and swimming. At this point in my life that is good enough for me.
DougStern
PC’s are perfect for people like you, who want to (or have to) run but have terrible knees, so need to be very careful. Randy Johnson (the baseball player) was put on PC’s by his therapist/personal trainer because of his knees. We have one customer who participates in both ultracyling and ultra running events. He no longer runs in training, doing all his training on the PC’s and his only running now is during competition. While doing no running in training is definitely the extreme, it shows what is possible.
Plyometrics are exercises designed to work specific stabilizer and small muscles, aids in stability, landing, and push-off. Examples of exercises include: skipping, bounding, jumping, hopping (see Ch 12 in Friel, section on run skills). Will it help your running? You bet. I have found it teaches you the feel of a strong pushoff. A good alternative is hilly trail running, my preference as my time is limited
If you’re training for a 10k, you’d probably never do more than the lesser of: 12-13miles (19k-21k) or 1.5ish hrs. If I was only training for a 10k, I’d probably do 15k max for my long run and spend more time doing VO2Max running and some speed work to get my speed up. But seeing as this is TRI training, I’d say you’d be better off to do a 1.5hr “LSD” (but at least with a negative split) run, a max1hr VO2Max session and a max1hr tempo run a week and probably no more (unless you have tons of time and recover well).
This is all great. Many of the people who subcribe to Slow Twitch are very well informed. We need to share the information and let it stand up to a critical analysis.
Zactly. One thing I see that most runners who do distances shorter than the marathon could do to improve their times is to do VO2Max sessions, 1 per week. These are HARD sessions, with your HR waaay up there. Example I would run 5k with my HR above 170 the entire time (for me that’s pretty high). 1mi or shorter repeats on the track are another good example of a VO2Max workout. VO2Max is one of the best indicators of non-endurance (i.e.: shorter than marathon) performance.
Also, speed workouts can be extremely useful, but are a great way to get injured. Unless you are a sprint or middle distance runner (i.e.: 800-1500m), no more than 1 speed session per 2 weeks. Great set-up is to alternate between speed workout and VO2Max workout weekly, so that you get 2 weeks between each speed session, 2 weeks between each VO2Max session. Allows for more recovery, lower chance of injury. Most people do too much in a speed session. Stick to 1mi warmup, 10(or less)x100M, walk back for recovery, 1mi cool down, no more no less.
I’d be EXTREMELY careful with plyos if I had just been diagnosed with trashed knees and told to never run again. Frankly, though they can be a great way to build explosive power and strength, I think the risk/reward is way too high for someone with knees in your condition.
This is the complete opposite direction from water running and PC training instead of “real” running.
