Run Beautifully

I titled this post after a chapter in Matt Fitzgerald's book "Run: The Mind Body Method of Running" because I think it very simply and eloquently sums up the answers to many questions involving running form. Naturally, it is possible to go into great detail about footstrikes, arm carriage, pelvic alignment, etc. etc. etc. but I find it unrealistic and impractical to tell any group of people to focus on striking their foot directly beneath their hip, maintaining a specific angle of postural alignment or anything else extremely precise and specific. While it may benefit a runner to know all of that, the reality is that when you put your shoes on and hit the road, you can't watch yourself run through a Dartfish camera in super slow-mo. The best you can do is feel how you are running. I practiced this over the several months I spent recovering from Plantar Fasciitis, and I found a few consistent and practical practices.

The first is to recognize what beautiful running is. I've included a couple videos to look at and will describe them in further detail later, but nearly any professional race you watch will contain several runners who appear to be running effortlessly (they're not really running without effort, it just looks like it) and that is often beautiful running. If you can read this, you obviously have the internet, use it to look up videos of races (search Diamond League Races, Olympic Races, World Championship Track, etc.) and get a good impression of what the runners look like while running and attempt to mimic that. 

The above is a video I got from Runblogger.com. He uses this video to describe foot placement and show the gait of a barefoot runner. I think this is a great example of beautiful form and it leads nicely into the next way to understand good form: look at what's NOT there.

There's a lot of biomechanic research about where the best place to put your foot is, where you should carry your arms, what angle you should have at your hip and the like. But there is so much variability in all of that between the elite runners who display beautiful form (see below), that you cannot say with 100% certainty any type of "Do this" when it comes to running. You can, however, say "Don't do this". So look at the video above and the one below, what don't we see? Heel striking, locked knees, curvature in the upper back (humped back), head-bobbing, winged-out elbows and more.

Let's focus on the most important:

Heel striking: Learning to run on the forefoot, or mid-foot can only improve your stride. It's hard to do and it will wreck your calves for a while when you start doing it regularly, but the soreness in your calves will be far more pleasant than the after-effects of being a heel-striker for mile after mile. We'll discuss this more in depth in the future, but for now, just think about running on the forefoot or mid-foot. You may find that increasing your cadence (the number of steps per minute you take) will help.

Curved Spine: You'll see in the video below, there is some variability in arm carriage and placement of the feet, but you will see that 25.7 miles into a marathon these men are running with great posture in their upper back (Ryan runs with a slight forward lean at his hip). At the same time you see that, also note that their shoulders are loose and their arms are swinging cleanly. They don't have d-bag shoulders, as Kelly Starrett would say.

Head Bobbing: Finally, you'll see in both videos above, that the head is stable. Without hunching the shoulders the head is not bobbing, shaking, weaving, whatever heads may do. Also, the eyes are fixed forward, not down. That's not to say they're not looking at the ground, but the nose is at least pointed straight ahead (slightly up in the case of Geb), and if the eyes are looking down, it's without moving the head.

In the most recent issue of Track and Field News, Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazaar points out  that we teach our kids the skills of every other sport (baseball, basketball, football) but we never take the time to teach running as a skill. Running is the only sport that coaches say "it is what it is". Though humans are naturally made to run (another topic that will be discussed in depth in the future), we have adjusted our strides and picked up bad habits through several different mediums (shoes, inactivity, muscle weaknesses) and we need to re-learn the skill of running in order to be capable of doing it longer, faster, and with less injury.

Base Phase Run:

10 x 100m strides practicing form (Stride is not a sprint, but also not a jog. It's a speed you can use to focus on running with perfect form and turn your legs over quicker than you would during a run, but not as fast as possible); if you have access to a football field use that, otherwise do 10 x 15-20 seconds; rest as needed between strides

If yesterday's run was tough and you're recovering: 25-30 minutes easy and consistent OR

If yesterday's run was easy: 35-50 minutes easy and consistent; time dependent on distance of goal race.

Finish with 40 sit ups, 20 push ups, 10 pull ups (assisted pull ups are acceptable, if unable to do pull ups, do pull downs with a heavy weight to failure x 2)

Post distance run, mental technique used to find beautiful form, questions, comments and impressions of beautiful running.