So now that I have running metrics I get to see my vertical oscillation. Mine seems pretty bad, often 11+ cm’s (I’m 179cm & 74kg FWIW). I have found that if I sort of crouch I can reduce the oscillation, it sort of feels to me closer to speed walking. I believe I am landing hip over foot, and I land midfoot and promptly drop the heel to the ground, then push of with quite a toe flick that will often flick debris when on loose surfaces. I can find articles on running economy etc, but nothing on the toe flick other than sideways flick, mine is backwards. I feel that I’m wasting energy. I’m thinking I need to have a punchier foot strike, but it seems so harsh that I struggle to believe it’s what I should be doing, and when I do do it my VO gets even worse. Does this sound like a recognizable flaw that anyone can think of, and highlight where I can focus my attention to improve?
Don’t quite understand, but will give you a bump and maybe someone else can help you out.
Reducing vertical oscillation during running has been shown to decrease running economy which begs the question why Garmin even has those metrics in the first place.
Reducing vertical oscillation during running has been shown to decrease running economy which begs the question why Garmin even has those metrics in the first place.
Could you cite that? I have found the opposite.
While the '78 cited paper (15, ) is unavailable:
A successful endurance runner is characterized ****by less vertical oscillation (15), longer strides (8), less change in velocity during the ground contact (18), and lower first peak in the vertical component of the ground reaction force, associated with a tendency to have smaller anteroposterior peak forces (34).
A quick glance at all the abstracts when searching: ‘running economy vertical oscillation’ seem to agree.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16195026
The study you cited does not examine the intervention of VO rather just looks at characteristics of elite runners.
Hi,
Right, firstly you are correct to question your vertical oscillation, excessive VO is wasted energy.
Just look at some of the North African runners, they display very little VO, Gebrselassie was apparently measured at just 1cm VO. Most of these athletes oscillate less than 4cm.
In my experience I see two patterns of VO, that is the ‘muscle drop’ pattern, where the predominant movement is downward as the athlete goes into stance phase (weight bearing). This is often the result of a landing in front of the pelvis, coupled with weak back and glute muscles which cause a sit down on landing.
The second type I see which is far more common is due to a push off at the back part of the stride. Contrary to popular belief we DONT push off the floor in endurance running, sprinting yes, but not in endurance running, or at least not a huge amount.
The pattern is often -
landing in front of the pelvis/landing in a way which drops the heel straight to the floor, dissipating all elastic recoil energy stored in the Achilles tendon.
Now this energy has gone we have no spring to get our foot back off the floor.
Many believe we lift the foot off with the hamstring, this is not the case, the hamstring only continues the momentum generated by the elastic spring, it is not strong enough to do the job on it’s own (this is often a cause of hamstring injury and tendinopathy)
So, without the elastic recoil/hamstring how do we get the foot off the floor, we push. We push with our quad with a straight leg and our calf.
This is not only tiring but can often lead to quad cramps, particularly in a tired muscle that has been working hard on the bike.
This push off then causes huge vertical oscillation.
So, how do you stop this? Reduce VO and so the wasted energy. The answer is you can’t do it by trying to reduce the VO actively.
You have to 1) address the landing point IF the landing is in front of the pelvis
2) address why you might not be using elastic recoil - most often related to point 1 above.
3) Look at cadence as a possible issue - if it is below about 175-180 it is pretty hard to use elastic energy as the foot spends too long on the ground and so the energy coiled in the spring is dissipated.
4) you cannot address cadence directly, often it is lowered by issues such as poor hip stability that cause you to NEED to spent more time on the ground to maintain stability.
Sorry if this doesn’t quite give you the answer you want.
I talked about this a little on the recent ‘Triathlete training podcast’ with Eric Schwartz as I believe our understanding on what dictates cadence is fundamentally wrong, and so the approach to improve both it and the use of elastic recoil is also not focussed on the right area.
Hi,
Right, firstly you are correct to question your vertical oscillation, excessive VO is wasted energy.
Just look at some of the North African runners, they display very little VO, Gebrselassie was apparently measured at just 1cm VO. Most of these athletes oscillate less than 4cm.
In my experience I see two patterns of VO, that is the ‘muscle drop’ pattern, where the predominant movement is downward as the athlete goes into stance phase (weight bearing). This is often the result of a landing in front of the pelvis, coupled with weak back and glute muscles which cause a sit down on landing.
The second type I see which is far more common is due to a push off at the back part of the stride. Contrary to popular belief we DONT push off the floor in endurance running, sprinting yes, but not in endurance running, or at least not a huge amount.
The pattern is often -
landing in front of the pelvis/landing in a way which drops the heel straight to the floor, dissipating all elastic recoil energy stored in the Achilles tendon.
Now this energy has gone we have no spring to get our foot back off the floor.
Many believe we lift the foot off with the hamstring, this is not the case, the hamstring only continues the momentum generated by the elastic spring, it is not strong enough to do the job on it’s own (this is often a cause of hamstring injury and tendinopathy)
So, without the elastic recoil/hamstring how do we get the foot off the floor, we push. We push with our quad with a straight leg and our calf.
This is not only tiring but can often lead to quad cramps, particularly in a tired muscle that has been working hard on the bike.
This push off then causes huge vertical oscillation.
So, how do you stop this? Reduce VO and so the wasted energy. The answer is you can’t do it by trying to reduce the VO actively.
You have to 1) address the landing point IF the landing is in front of the pelvis
2) address why you might not be using elastic recoil - most often related to point 1 above.
3) Look at cadence as a possible issue - if it is below about 175-180 it is pretty hard to use elastic energy as the foot spends too long on the ground and so the energy coiled in the spring is dissipated.
4) you cannot address cadence directly, often it is lowered by issues such as poor hip stability that cause you to NEED to spent more time on the ground to maintain stability.
Sorry if this doesn’t quite give you the answer you want.
I talked about this a little on the recent ‘Triathlete training podcast’ with Eric Schwartz as I believe our understanding on what dictates cadence is fundamentally wrong, and so the approach to improve both it and the use of elastic recoil is also not focussed on the right area.
I always visit running mechanic threads to read the BS and false info like this that’s always posted.
Edit: Oh I just realized you’re Marcell_S aka Thomas E. Hughes the pathological liar and chiropractor(not surprising).
Excellent, can you give some examples?
Chiropractor?
…landing in a way which drops the heel straight to the floor, dissipating all elastic recoil energy stored in the Achilles tendon. …I have read about this idea. In sprinters, and when I sprint, I can see this happening. But when I watch any running event I always spend some time focusing on their feet, have been doing this for years. It always looks to me like they make heel contact, which too me debunks the theory. I realize it could be hard to tell with so much movement going on.
That is a great study, it is a really good example of why forcefully altering running mechanics often makes runners slower.
forgot to add…
I can, and have, run on just the midfoot for up to about 12km, but the calves suffer. Saying that; last time I did it exclusively was a couple of years ago, and I was only a year or so into removing heel strike at the time.
There is a great video of Gebrselassie, Mo Farah and Bekele running in slow motion and it looks at their foot/ankles.
As they come into land the calf contracts slowing the decent of the heel and allowing the build up of energy in the Achilles, this is different from relaxing the calf and allowing the heel to drop.
Edit - The issue with trying to force a change in foot strike is if the full body mechanics are at fault i.e. poor hip stability, then all that will probably happen is overloading the calf. I always think it’s best to address posture/functional body strength - so core/hip are paramount. Then let footstrike take care of itself.
Ah, that sounds ok then. I did say I promptly drop the heel, but I think it is in fact more of the slowing you describe.
I did read one site that mentioned the possibility of actually landing with the foot behind the hips, and it being a problem. So on yesterdays run I tried to make sure my foot was directly under my hip. Only n=1 but the result of this was my cadence naturally increased, and VO decreased. One thing that stood out as very noticeable was I felt smooth over undulations & small rises, where normally I would slow a little more. I also felt more balanced on the downwards slope, sped up but didn’t have a rushed overstretched feel to it. I will be spending some more time on this.
Brilliant! You are learning your own cues to whether you feel it is working or not.
This is how you will move forward, great stuff! - no pun intended!
This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIWJgLxCDY4 the video you were thinking of? To me they all land with a horizontally flat foot, that lands on the outside edge and rolls into the full landing.
I think a toe push-off is a normal part of a running gait. Maybe it’s exaggerated by your shoes?
I’m not sure that you can change your form (for the better) just by thinking about it.
Running barefoot on grass seems to help. Running at a higher cadence seems to help. Run often. I think most people will eventually settle on what works for them.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16195026
The study you cited does not examine the intervention of VO rather just looks at characteristics of elite runners.
OK, now please explain why intervention trumps an obsevation study.
As mentioned above, forcing a new gait will certainly cause a short term decrease in economy and performance. Can we safely assume that 12 weeks was enough time for all those adaptations to take hold?
Further, that study did not isolate VO. It’s got pose running which creates short strides and less VO.
I won’t claim that elites are as quick as they because of low VO, nor will I deny the possibility they quick despite that low VO. But the theory is sound: movement (therefore energy) spent going up and down is wasted effort if you are intending to run here to there. If you want to dispute that, find better studies. I’ll read em.
I won’t claim that elites are as quick as they because of low VO, nor will I deny the possibility they quick despite that low VO. But the theory is sound: movement (therefore energy) spent going up and down is wasted effort if you are intending to run here to there. If you want to dispute that, find better studies. I’ll read em.
The explanation is not sound if you believe that running can be described using the spring mass model.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2625422
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~hgeyer/Teaching/R16-899B/Papers/Blickhan89JBiom.pdf
And there’s this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24276308
I think the explanation is sound if you consider the physics.
Your links don’t really point to much.
1st & 2nd link are the same information. And all they really say is that running and hopping require similar energy expenditure, but also say that they naturally choose flat angles of landing velocity (which I take to mean they don’t come down steeply, or does it mean something else?)
3rd link contradicts itself.
Stride angle was negatively correlated with RE
RE was positively correlated with ground contact time
stride angle was correlated with ground contact time
edit: although I suppose the correlation could be a directly opposed relationship