EmailSo the London Olympics have been pretty exciting, right? All those rare sports a person only seems to watch once every four years, right alongside familiar favourites being performed at the absolute top level. To top it all off, watching this year’s Games have made me realize that I’ve been making big mistakes in my running technique for years.
A bit of backstory first. Growing up, my main sport was downhill skiing with a bit of running and golf on the side. The running was rarely competitive but after moving to the UK, the skiing and golf dropped of the radar pretty quickly and I started running in earnest. I’ve now run a few 10k races and two half-marathons with decent times in the 40 minute and 1:35 range for each event respectively. Unfortunately settling into my first year of lecturing took a big chunk out of my schedule and I’m only now getting back on the road after a year-long hiatus.
Which brings us to the Olympics. I was blown away by both Mo Farah‘s 10km victory and David Rudisha‘s world record in the 800m, and soon found myself looking up running technique videos on YouTube. This one in particular was a real eye-opener.
Having never been filmed running before, I had no idea whether I was heel-striking or not. My gut feeling was that I probably was but I headed out this afternoon for a short run to find out for sure.
After doing about a kilometer I was pretty confident that, although it wasn’t too extreme, I probably did have a heel strike. The picture below shows the difference between the two and once you’re aware of the distinction, you become attuned to the way your foot hits the ground quite quickly.
Forefoot strike (left) versus heel strike (right)
There were several good tips on the web for how to encourage forefoot striking, including hopping in place (like jumping rope) and using a slight body lean (from the ankles, not hips) while running to encourage the foot to land under your hips, rather than way out in front. So, after pausing for stretch, I tentatively leaned forward and absolutely took off.
I cannot believe the difference this made to my running – it feels like you’re flying along. That horrible braking sensation of jarring down on the leading leg is gone and you are propelled down the street with a spring in your step. Marvellous! Obviously it’s only one run, and I need to gradually build up the mileage with this new technique to ensure that I don’t hurt any previously untested muscles. What’s more, controlling pace is a bit tricky and you have to get used to the faster cadence.
But, for today’s short run, the results speak for themselves. The chart below compares the distribution of all the runs I’ve done between 3.3 and 4 km over the past three years, including a period where I was recovering from injury. These aren’t pace runs or anything, just normal daily runs, and if anything a bit slow, as I usually use this distance either early in a training cycle or as recovery runs. Still, I wouldn’t say that today’s effort wasn’t particularly different from these previous runs and the extra pace of the forefoot strike is obvious. I’ll just keep practicing and see how things go!
Comparison of heel strike and forefoot strike on short runs
When I was a wee lad in the 1970′s, I took up running. I never bought into the heel first style, which was encouraged for all but sprinters. The reason heel strike was preferred at distance is simple mechanics: while there is the strike shock, there is also little or no stress on the arch of the foot, which is what happens with ball strike in a distance stride (sprinter stride and distance stride differ). Further, the shoe manufacturers built ever more compliant heels into shoes.
I ran ball first just because it was more work, not less. You have to cushion the strike through the arch, which requires extra energy. The heel strike is just “falling” into the transitioning front leg. If you have the inclination, take up with a tai chi master. You’ll find out a way to step that is the polar opposite of common walking. Whether having this understanding makes a difference to a runner (sprinter or distance), I’ve no idea.
note that the nhs c25k plan (http://www.nhs.uk/LiveWell/c25k/Pages/couch-to-5k.aspx) teaches heel strike as “correct running form”
I turned to foot-strike technique this year too. Very similar observations. The motivation for me was knee injury prevention. I had overworked my knee last year, so this year I tried to do all the stuff to prevent the injury. That includes running more on country roads, running more hills, icing the knees after the run and foot-strike technique. What I like most about it is that it allows you to run much faster downhill and surprisingly it is easier to run uphill. All of this is related to higher cadence. Saying all this, I should note that I am complete amateur in running, never trained for it professionally. My best 10k is 49 minutes and marathon is 4:11. This all means that what I experience might be way off
There may be some differences here between people just getting into running and those with more miles under their belt. But I also notice several people in the comments on the NHS site warning people off heel-striking.