Photo Credit: Dublin Marathon 2008 by Flickr user William Murphy (nice Irish name), used under a used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

One area of running that gets pretty short shrift in most mainstream publications like Runner’s World, Running Times, and various stock training plans from the likes of Hal Higdon, Jeff Galloway, and others is your form.  It’s a tough topic to address for many reasons – first, it doesn’t feel like working on your form via drills or just thinking more about it would have the same payoff as knocking out a 10×800 interval workout.  Additionally, defining the correct form is so difficult because, frankly, there may not be a “right” approach that fits every runner.  If you are more or less flexible than normal, have imbalance in the strength of various of your running muscles, have different proportions in your body structure, or just got used to a different style, the “optimal” form for you may be quite different from that runner standing next to you at the starting line.

That being said, it seems everyone would agree that having a more efficient running form would have benefits for your performance, both through reducing your tendency for injuries and improving your race results at nearly any distance.  So, in the long run, it is worth putting some time into working on your form.  In fact, the whole movement towards minimalism in shoes, and the related belief that midfoot- or forefoot-striking is “better,” is really about form, isn’t it?  Many runners are clearly sensing this, judging by the popularity of Chi Running and a few other books discussing (rightly or wrongly) running form.

How do you go about doing this? First, trying to make a radical change in your approach in a short period of time runs a high risk of, at worst, injury or, at least, frustration and a potential drop in performance.  Often it is imbalance between various of the muscles and tendons that are required for running that leads to the limitations in improving your form.  Thus, your first step may have very little to do with running – it may involve a diagnosis of your existing form, strength, and flexibility to identify the weaknesses you need to address.  For example, weakness in the gluteus muscles, which is common in runners, may lead to an over-reliance on your quads or hamstrings to propel you forward (which, in the case of this runner, may have ultimately led to a hamstring strain).  Your past injury history may provide some insights into this, or you may need the evaluation of a physical therapist or chiropractor, or possibly more advanced running diagnostic services.

Second, like any improvement you seek to make in a process you use, you should only focus on one element at a time, and maintain your focus until you have mastered that element.  Running form improvements are only natural when they become deeply ingrained through practice, and this takes hours of work.  Moving too quickly from one element to another, or trying to focus on more than one improvement at a time, erodes the gains you can make in perfecting the targeted element of your technique.  I’ve seen Daniel Norton or Caleb Masland (can’t recall which) discuss, in some of their workouts, that they focused on “leading with their chest” or something similar – note they didn’t say “focused on my form.”  Golf coaches advocate allowing only one “swing thought” during each stroke to avoid the same issue of conflicting signals or a lack of focus.

Third, don’t jump right to the conclusion; this has to be a stepwise progression, in logical order, to reaching your goal.  If you are a heel striker, you can’t immediately jump to becoming a forefoot-striker just by trying to do so, or by buying different shoes.  Sure, stepping your way towards less shoe, specifically with a smaller heel-to-toe drop, may be a necessary element of the plan, but just buying some Vibram Five Fingers or starting to run barefoot risks injury when you haven’t taken the other steps necessary to prepare yourself for getting up on the balls of your feet.  In fact, Jay Dicharray of the UVA Speed Clinic, in a post on reducing your loading rate while running, argues that the front- or mid-foot strike is more of a result of focusing on landing with your center of mass as much above your foot as possible (and that, in fact, even if you heel-strike while running in this manner, your risk of injury is much reduced), and thus he advocates such elements as minimizing the arch in your back when you run (an area this runner has been focused on of late).  It seems that the combination of “leading with your chest” while minimizing the arch in your back would tend to improve your odds of developing a “better” footstrike.

So again, this post doesn’t attempt to prescribe the specific elements you need to work on to “perfect” your form, or the drills that may help you do so beyond just the “run thoughts” you should have on the road.  There are plenty of other sites that suggest drills for improving your form – once you know what exactly you are trying to improve. Frankly, I don’t think that it’s possible to provide a blanket statement that covers all runners.  But maybe, just maybe, this can provide you some of the starting thoughts on how to improve your form while advocating against the outright “jump to minimalist running” that other source might push you to believe is beneficial and necessary.  You may never be a barefoot runner, or a forefoot striker, but you can still make gains while enjoying yourself through taking a minimalist, step-at-a-time focus on form improvement.

Please be sure to visit the Minimalist Running Blog Carnival at Strength Running to see other discussions on this topic, mostly from bloggers more qualified on minimalism than this one is.  Additionally, Mark Coleman (FoCo Runner) has a great post on his own lessons on muscle strength and running form from his recent forays into physical therapy in dealing with his posterior tibialis woes.

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Tags: bloggers, form, goals, injury, shoes, Training

Posted in Training
12 Comments Posted by Greg