Running Form – 80/20 Endurance

One of my biggest pet peeves is the phrase “proper running form.” I can’t stand it. Why? Because it implies that there’s only one correct way to run, and nothing could be further from the truth. Even worse, it implies that good running form is defined by how the stride looks, which further implies that the most effective way to improve the running stride is to consciously endeavor to make it look a certain way. Again, nothing could be further from the truth.

Studies have shown repeatedly that when runners are asked to consciously alter their natural stride to make it look more “textbook,” they become less, no more, efficient. The well-known POSE Method is all about trying to make the stride look a certain way. A 2005 study led by George Dallam of Colorado State University-Pueblo found that 12 weeks of supervised training in the POSE Method left a group of eight experienced triathletes with less efficient strides.

The issue is that good running form is determined not by how the stride looks but by how hard a runner’s brain has to work to generate and sustain a given running velocity. This might sound weird, but it’s actually how skill in any motor activity, from archery to drumming, is defined. The more skilled you are in a given activity, the quieter your brain is when you do it. Conscious efforts to make the stride look a certain way are counterproductive because they unnecessarily increase the amount of brain activity required to run.

Okay, so where does this leave us? If the monkey-see-monkey-do approach to running more efficiently doesn’t work, what does?

Practice is the number-one factor. How do you get better at juggling? You juggle. It’s the same with running. Throughout every run you do, your brain is in constant communication with proprioceptive nerves in every part of your body, looking for ways to trim waste from the motor program it uses for running. This process is unconscious, automatic, and highly effective. In a 2012 study, Sharon Dixon of the University of Exeter in England measured changes in a number of stride features as well as changes in running economy in a group of 10 beginner female runners. These women trained for 10 weeks without any technique instruction. They just ran. During that period their running economy improved by 8.4 percent.

There is evidence that, although this process does slow down, it never stops. Indeed, ongoing, practice-based improvements in stride efficiency are probably the main driver of performance gains in runners who have already maxed out their aerobic capacity and other major fitness components. A 2011 study conducted at the University of New Hampshire compared various fitness measurements and also running economy in runners representing three different age ranges: 18 to 39, 40 to 59, and over 60. Unsurprisingly, they found that VO₂max, maximal heart rate, maximal speed, strength, and power all declined with age. But guess what? Running economy did not. And because factors such as muscle strength contribute to running economy, these findings suggest that, on a neural level, the oldest runners were actually more efficient than the younger ones.

In short, efficient running comes from experience, and experience takes time. There are certain ways to accelerate the process of becoming a more efficient runner, however. One such method is uphill interval training. A 2013 study led by Kyle Barnes of the Sports Performance Research Institute New Zealand found that six weeks of high-intensity uphill interval training improved running economy by an average of 2.4 percent in a group of well-trained runners. It has been speculated that uphill interval training serves as a kind of movement-specific strength training that enhances the springiness of the legs.

Springiness? Yes, the human body operates as a spring during running, and just as a pogo stick with a stiff spring will bounce higher than a pogo stick with a loose spring, a runner with greater leg stiffness is able to capture more of the “free energy” that rebounds from the ground into the foot after impact and use it to propel forward motion. Certain forms of strength training (particularly high-load weightlifting involving the legs) have been shown to improve running economy specifically by increasing leg stiffness on impact. Plyometrics training (i.e., jumping exercises) are also effective in this regard. A 1999 study by Leena Paavolainen and colleagues that reported significant improvements in 5K race times and in running economy after nine weeks of plyometric training also found a significant reduction in ground contact time, lending support to the spring theory.

Core strength training has been shown to enhance running economy in a slightly different way. Efficient running depends partly on efficient transfer of forces between the upper body and lower body. (This is one reason it’s essential to move your arms in opposition to the legs when you run). Core strength training aids this transfer and may also mitigate the negative effect of trunk muscle fatigue on running economy. A 2019 study appearing in the journal PLoS One reported that eight weeks of core strength training reduced oxygen consumption at a moderate running velocity by 4.6 percent in a group of college athletes.

Related to plyometrics are form drills—high knees, butt kicks, and so forth—which isolate and intensify certain elements of the stride. There is no scientific proof that doing form drills regularly has any beneficial impact, but the fact that they are almost universally practiced by elite runners says something. What you will discover if you do practice form drills regularly is that you aren’t very good at them initially but you get better over time. This improvement almost has to translate back to your running. And even if you can’t measure the effect, you can certainly feel it. Runners who make the effort to master form drills often report feeling more athletic.

Another proven way to improve running economy is barefoot running. When you run without shoes, you run differently. And if you do enough barefoot running, some of those differences transfer back to shod running. A small 2013 study conducted at the University of New Hampshire found that a 10-week barefoot run training program improved running economy by 4 percent.

Barefoot running has drawbacks, however. It’s impractical and even dangerous in many environments and requires a long period of adaptation that can be highly disruptive to the flow of training. An alternative to barefoot running that may offer the same benefits without the disadvantages is a clever little product called ShoeCue. ShoeCue is a unique, textured insole that fits inside any running shoe and works by enhancing proprioceptive feedback from your feet to your brain during running. Essentially, ShoeCue tells your brain when you’re landing too hard, allowing you to adjust your stride automatically as you go.

One final method of accelerating the process of becoming a more skillful runner is cadence manipulation. Each runner has a natural stride rate that tends to gradually increase with fitness and experience. As a general rule, it’s best not to interfere with this process, particularly if the interference involves forcing yourself to consciously think about your step rate. But there is a way to get a little practice at a slightly higher step rate that may soon be natural for you without turning your attentional focus inward, and that’s by running with a metronome set at 110 percent of your natural stride rate and matching your steps to the beat.

It’s best to do these “cadence runs” on a treadmill, as there is a natural tendency to speed up when trying to achieve a higher stride rate. Step one is to download a metronome app onto your smartphone. Next, hop onto a treadmill, start running at your normal easy pace, and adjust the tempo of the metronome to match your step rate. Now increase the metronome tempo by 10 percent, adjust your step rate to match it, and complete the run at this higher cadence. Do this one a week or so.

As you see, there are ways to become a more skillful runner, they just don’t include trying to look like Genzebe Dibaba when you run.

Basketball players shoot free throws more accurately when they focus on the back rim rather than on the action of their wrist. Weightlifters squat more weight when they think about pushing the floor away with their feet than when they concentrate on contracting their muscles. And runners run more economically when they focus on the road ahead than when they try to run with a high cadence or land on the forefoot or even simply think about their movements without trying to change them.

No matter how you ask your body to perform, your body will perform better if you don’t think about your body. The underlying reason for this seems to be that efficient movement requires a certain degree of receptivity to the environment in which movement occurs. To shoot a basketball well or lift weights well or run well, an athlete’s brain must “listen” to the world as much as it “talks” to the muscles. In the case of running, thinking too much about moving “correctly” makes the body less responsive to the ground, hence more rigid and less efficient in its action.

Many runners find this counterintuitive, but it is a well-demonstrated fact. A recent study by German researchers, for example, reported that recreational runners were more efficient when running while watching a video (external focus of attention) than they were when running at the same pace while thinking about either their movements or their effort level (internal focus of attention).

You can’t run completely unconsciously, however, nor would you want to. There is a minimal degree to which you have to think about your running while you’re running, and at very high levels of fatigue one really seems to have no choice in the matter—or rather, the choice is no longer between thinking and not thinking about your movements but of how you think about them.

As a runner myself, I have developed a few basic personal rules concerning when and how I think about my running while I’m running. In easy runs, which should account for the bulk of any runner’s training, I let my mind wander far away from my body for the most part, but I do periodically “check in” with my body as I go. On days when I’m feeling good, these check-in’s are largely a matter of actively enjoying the act of running—the rhythmic and counterbalanced swinging of my limbs, the sense of floating. On days when I don’t feel great, my check-in’s become more a matter of using my mind to try to increase my comfort level. I do this not by actively changing my form but by trying to find the enjoyment that is being masked by my discomfort and by giving myself little form reminders. More on these in a moment.

When I’m running hard in races and workouts and I (seem to) have no choice but to give more attention to my movements, I employ the very same reminders, but with greater urgency. There are three of them. One is a simple reminder to relax. I find that by telling my body to relax in moments of straining I am often able to reduce my perceived effort level very slightly without consciously altering anything about how I’m running. Perhaps I really am altering something that only sensitive instruments could measure; perhaps it’s entirely mental. But in either case, I think it works.

The second reminder I give myself is to grip the ground and thrust it behind me with my feet instead of passively landing, stabilizing, and pushing off. I think this form cue is more helpful than most because it focuses attention on the point of most direct interaction between body and environment rather than on the body itself. Meeting the ground actively (grip-thrust) versus passively (land-stabilize-push off) tends to minimize ground contact time, which is a strong predictor of running performance and an equally strong indicator of fatigue.

One other reminder that I use both when running easy and when running hard, albeit less frequently, is to run symmetrically. I have some body imbalances that cause me to run with my torso rotated slightly to the left, which causes my arms to do some strange winging as a knock-on effect. Trying to straighten myself out as I run is not something that will help me complete the grueling final miles of a marathon any faster, but there is a place for trying to contain asymmetries and other idiosyncrasies of form that may contribute to injuries, of which I’ve had my share. Unlike the aforementioned reminders to relax and to meet the ground actively, which are universally applicable, this way of thinking about running while running must be tailored to the individual runner. The idea is to think about and correct your particular injury-causing stride “flaws,” not anyone else’s.

If you ask the average running coach what good running form is, he or she will probably answer with phrases like “midfoot strike,” “high stride rate,” and “low vertical oscillation.” It is true that these and other form characteristics are common in top runners and less common in slower runners. But there are exceptions. Meb Keflezighi won the 2009 New York City Marathon as a heel striker, Ryan Hall set an American record of 59:43 in the half marathon with an unusually bouncy stride, and Mo Farah won 10 Olympic and World Championships gold medals with an exceptionally low stride rate.

The Basis of a Good Running Form

On the basis of the fact that no two champion runners run the same way, I would argue that no specific movement pattern defines good running form. What, then, is the true essence of good running form? One possibility is efficiency. This idea has a lot going for it. After all, what is it that you really want your running form to do as distance runner? Not maximize power–that’s for sprinters. Rather, you want your running form to minimize the energy cost of running so you can go faster and farther before you become exhausted. It doesn’t matter how you minimize the energy cost of running, biomechanically, but only that you minimize the energy cost of running. Obviously, some movement patterns are generally more efficient than others, which is why most of the best runners are midfoot strikers. Nevertheless, each body is unique, so we shouldn’t expect every runner to minimize energy cost in the same way.

As sensible as it seems to define good running form as that which maximizes movement economy in an individual runner, however, I think this definition misses the mark as well. The true definition of good running form, I believe, is the particular way of running that feels easiest to an individual runner. I can’t claim to have come up with this theory. I got it from Samuele Marcora, father of the psychobiological model of endurance performance. Here’s an excerpt from an email message Marcora wrote to me about his perception-based theory of biomechanics:

“Many specialists in this area. . . still think that the [central nervous system] controls locomotion to optimise energy. They envisage an optimal solution in which the CNS senses energy expenditure and adjusts locomotion parameters (e.g., step frequency) to minimise energy expenditure. There are some basic neurophysiological problems with this proposal. However, the biggest problem is that there are several instances in which the CNS chooses locomotion parameters that optimise perception of effort at the expenses of energy expenditure (e.g., walking to running transition). When energy seems ‘optimised’ this coincides with the optimal perception of effort as well. So perception is always optimised but energy expenditure is often not. The. . . conclusion is that the CNS optimises perception of effort rather than energy expenditure.”

Energy expenditure and perceived effort are closely linked. For the most part, movement patterns that reduce energy expenditure also make running feel easier. It is very likely that the evolutionary reason individual runners adopt the particular way of running they do is to minimize energy expenditure. But it is perceived effort that actually controls this process. In other words, running in the way that minimizes perceived effort is the means by which runners achieve the end of minimizing energy expenditure.

Consider what happens when you’re running along and you turn into a strong headwind. You hunch forward, don’t you? This natural adjustment reduces the surface area of your body and minimizes the energy cost of running into the wind. But the choice to hunch is made consciously, and what you are really doing as a living organism is trying to make running feel as easy as possible despite the headwind. What Marcora and I are suggesting is that this is what runners are doing all the time, although mostly in subtler ways not involving headwinds.

Perception of effort is tied to brain activity. In crude terms, the harder you have to think about your movements, the harder those movements feel. So your goal as a runner is to run as thoughtlessly and unconsciously as possible. This is why consciously changing the way you run is such a bad idea. No matter what you change, you will have to think more about what you’re doing because what you’re doing is unnatural, and this will make running feel harder.

This does not mean you are stuck with your current stride forever. Every runner’s stride evolves gradually over time as the CNS learns through repetitive practice how to move in ways that feel easier (and that usually also reduce energy cost). Consider something like running with a higher stride rate. If you force yourself to run with a higher stride rate right now, running will feel harder (if only very slightly) and you will probably also be less efficient because you have to think about what you’re doing. But guess what? If you just leave your stride alone and keep training, it is probable that your stride rate will increase somewhat over time, and this natural evolution will be associated with reduced perception of effort and likely also with increased efficiency. You have to earn your stride changes.

Evidence that thinking about your running is bad for your running comes from studies in which researchers look at the effects of attentional focus on running economy. A series of experiments conducted by European researchers has shown that runners become less efficient when they focus their attention internally versus externally, even if their internal attentional focus does not involve any effort to alter their running form. Let that sink in for a minute.

I only wish these researchers had measured the effect of attentional focus on perceived effort as well, because it is perception of effort, not physiology, that directly limits endurance performance. Becoming more economical doesn’t do a runner any good if this benefit comes at the cost of increased perception of effort, as no runner can run faster than he feels he can run. And based on his understanding of what good running form really is, Marcora believes it would be a mistake for runners to try to increase their economy through interventions requiring conscious form changes (i.e., internal attentional focus, i.e., thinking), even if these interventions actually worked. “What happens to perception of effort if we make people run in the way that gets the lowest energy expenditure?” he asked in our email exchange. “I bet it would go up considerably.” And when perceived effort goes up, performance goes down, because the definition of good running form is the particular way of running that feels easiest to an individual runner.

The Basis of a Good Running Form

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