If you are anything like me then you are constantly looking to improve your race times without adding the tons of extra training that we actually know is needed. If we can only find that one small magical tweak to our form that will make us massively more efficient and shave time off our personal best.
If you take a glance at Google you will see multiple sources telling what you should do to achieve the perfect stride. The truth is, there is no such thing as perfect running form outside of theory books.
Many runners spend way too much time trying to change things that aren’t worth changing. Each of us has unique biomechanics so you might be trying to change something in your form that goes against your natural range of motion and can even make you less efficient and slower.
A case in point is the Canadian long-distance triathlete, Lionel Sanders. If you watch him run you will instantly say that his running form looks horrible. However, it works for his biomechanics and he is wickedly fast.
So when it comes to your running form there are a few things you might want to pay attention to. Read on to see the stuff you can largely forget about.
Active And Passive Running Form
The first key element that we need to look at is the difference between the active and passive parts of your running stride. By active I mean the parts of your running stride that are actively controlled by you, as opposed to the passive parts of your running stride that happen as a result of outside forces and your body’s natural reflexes to those forces.
When you are working on your running form, all of the hours that you put in to try and change a part of your stride that happens passively will be largely a waste of your time.
Your Heel Kick As A Passive Element Of Running Form
You’ll notice that when someone is running fast their heels come up much higher behind them, nearly kicking themselves in the butt.
Many runners think that by actively trying to lift their heels higher when they run, they will be able to go faster. This is not an efficient use of your training time, because the height your heel comes up behind you when you run happens passively.
The action of your lower leg is controlled by your thigh. The rotation point of your stride is your hip joint and because the thigh is closer to your hip it means that your thigh starts moving forward a tiny bit sooner and faster than the lower leg. Your thigh then just drags the lower leg with it as it moves.
Therefore, the faster and sooner your thigh moves forward, the more the lower leg snaps up and folds against the butt in a whiplash kind of motion.
Your Knee Drive As A Passive Element Of Running Form
Another common element of running form that you will often hear runners talking about wanting to improve is their forward knee drive. The sentiment being that a forward knee drive is a key element of being able to run faster.
The challenge with the forward knee drive is similar to that of your heel kick. Your knee drive is a largely passive action and is mostly controlled by the stretch reflex at your hip.
Essentially your hip acts almost like a slingshot as it extends and this pushes your body up and forward, using elastic energy to shoot your thigh forward.
Trying to force your thigh through this swing phase faster than an elastic reflex is not effective because you are trying to turn something reflexively passive into an active movement.
Your Foot Strike As A Passive Element Of Running Form
I have heard it said time and time again that heel striking is incorrect and that it can lead to more injuries.
The injury theory has been debunked by a group of researchers in 2019.
I found that landing midfoot made me less prone to having a foot slip from under me when running downhill on trails with loose surfaces. It hasn’t made me any faster.
Driving Your Arms Up And Forward As A Passive Element Of Running Form
Your arms do have an important impact on how fast you run. However, the forward part of your arm swing is a reflexive, passive movement in the same way as driving your knee forward is.
Therefore, when you intentionally drive your arms up and forward you are just wasting energy and reducing the efficiency of your shoulders – the rotation point of your arm swing. Because you can’t keep actively swinging your arms faster than your natural reflex, it could actually slow you down.
So What Should You Worry About?
I am not trying to say that running form is not important, because it is.
There are certain aspects of your form that are well worth paying attention to. Improving them can improve your running economy and make you faster.
One of the most important aspects of your running form is your body position or posture. When you’re running, your body should have a slight lean that starts from the ground, keeping everything in alignment so you could draw a straight line from your feet to your head. This will keep your body moving forward without wasting any motion. My coach used to call it using gravity to push you forward.
While driving forward with your arms may not be important, your arm stroke is.
The action of your arms helps you to maintain forward momentum, and your arm swing helps you to control your speed and your stride length.
The faster you swing your arms the faster your leg turnover will be. This is why, when people are making that final push to the finish line, you’ll notice they open up their arms and begin moving them a little faster.
While driving them up and forward won’t do much good, focusing on driving the elbows down and back can help stop your shoulders from elevating. Elevated shoulders create tension which limits your range of motion of your shoulders. This is something our coach was also very strict about. He wanted us to focus on pushing our elbows back, especially when running uphill. I find that pushing my elbows back opens my chest more and I can breathe better. It also keeps my posture tall with a forward lean.
The final part of running-form that you can directly control is relaxation. Staying relaxed while you run allows your body to move in a way that is most efficient for you based on your build and fitness level. This will help you run more easily.
Moving in a way that’s natural to you is the best way to stay injury-free so you can run more consistently. We all know that consistency is probably the single biggest factor in improving your performance.