RUNNING RIGHT: HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR STRIDE

[Source: Runner's World, “The Cutting-Edge Runner: How to Use the Latest Science and Technology to Run Longer, Stronger, and Faster”]

Efforts to improve technique through conscious control of movements are routine in sports ranging from baseball to the martial arts. Runners can do it too. The scope of such things is limited, though. You can't make your stride exactly like 5000-meter and 10,000 meter world record holder Kenenisa Bekele's just by consciously imitating it.

Following are 10 stride improvements that most runners can achieve through conscious control. Don't try to make all 10 of these changes simultaneously. Focus on one or two at a time, and make them second nature before you worry about the next refinement. Replacing deeply ingrained habitual neuromotor patterns with new ones takes time and discipline. Then you need to force yourself to repeat this new pattern with great precision on every stride of every run until it becomes automatic. Otherwise, it just won't stick. This is why casual attempts to improve one's stride seldom succeed, and why the myth that it's impossible to improve technique persisted for so long.

Eliminate your stance pause. Most runners pause briefly during the stance phase of their stride. It's a brief pause, but enough to cause significant deceleration. In the most efficient runners, on the other hand, this pause is nonexistent, or nearly so. The stance pause is when the foot is flat or almost flat on the ground, between the foot strike and toe-off phases. It is the moment when the body transitions from absorbing impact to generating thrusting force.

In efficient running, the objective is to collapse the elements of the stride footstrike, stance, and push-off into a fluid, unbroken movement with no stance pause. (Few runners can fully achieve this ideal, but any runner can move closer to it.) First, concentrate on retracting your leg as your foot approaches impact, a sort of pawing motion (the technical term in indeed pawback). By doing this, you are essentially beginning the push-off before your foot even lands, instead of passively letting your foot land and only then beginning to engage your muscles for stabilization and thrust. When you retract your leg properly, your foot feels as though it grips the ground rather than lands on it. From this point, all you have to do is keep thrusting backward, and you will have effectively minimized any stance pause and the deceleration that comes with it. In my experience, it is easy to distinguish that grip-thrust feeling from the usual land-stand-thrust feeling.

Run tall. Many runners tend to collapse in one way or another while their foot is in contact with the ground. The typical runner folds somewhat at the middle due to a combination of gravitational force and weakness in the core muscles. Often the pelvis tips too far forward, resulting in a slight but energy wasting "sitting-down" moment. In many runners, the pelvis also tips laterally, toward the side of the unsupported leg. To overcome this type of collapsing, concentrate on running more erectly. Imagine wires attached to your shoulders and pulling gently upward. Thrust your hips forward just a bit and gently engage the muscles of your lower abdomen. On impact,at the very instant of ground contact, strongly contract the muscles of your hip and buttock on the grounded side of your body and think "stability." Strengthening your core muscles through consistent resistance workouts will make it much easier to learn to run tall.

Relax your upper body. Most runners run with unnecessary tension in their arms, shoulders, neck, and even their faces, especially when running hard. All of this tension equals wasted energy. Your fingers, forearms, and upper arms should be loose, regardless of your speed or fatigue level. There should be no hunch in your shoulders, and your facial _expression should be placid. Use kinesthetic awareness to monitor tension levels in your upper extremity periodically as you run, and where you do find it, relax. Checking in on your upper-body tension level should become a part of the normal rounds you make with your conscious attention when you run. Extra vigilance will be required when you are running hard or fatigued.

Land on the midfoot. Landing heel first slows you down in three ways. First, it usually results from reaching too far ahead with the swing leg and consequently planting the foot far forward of the center of gravity, which increases the amount of energy you have to muster to lever your body forward. Second, when you land heel first, your foot sends force in a forward direction into the ground, which means that the ground sends an equal and opposite force in a backward direction into your foot, in the opposite direction you're trying to move. Third, landing heel first is less stable and increases the amount of muscle energy that must be used for stabilization.

Not every heel striker can transform himself or herself into a midfoot striker, but many can. A good way to begin the process is to practice running with shorter strides. Instead of reaching out far ahead of your body with the driving leg, lower your foot to the ground sooner, just ahead of your body. You will automatically land on, or nearer to, your midfoot. At first this will feel weird, as though you're shuffling instead of running. Keep doing it. When you get to the point where you can shuffle unconsciously, begin focusing on thrusting backward with greater force. In this way, you will begin to increase your stride length again without returning to overstriding. Now you can integrate the "grip-thrust" proprioceptive technique described above in point one, because it will complement your efforts to increase stride length through backward thrust instead of overstriding.

Use your big toe. The Metatarsophalangeal (MP) joint at the ball of the foot was designed to actively plantar flex (flex downward) during push-off. This squeezes a last bit of thrust out of this stride phase after the larger muscles on the rear of the leg have done their work. The rigidity of running shoes inhibits the MP joint from actively plantar flexing and over time more or less trains your foot to give up even trying. This reduces the power of your stride. You can get some of it back by consciously pushing off the ground with your big toe, beginning at its origin at the midfoot-forefoot juncture.

You will notice an immediate power increase when you do this, but you will also notice that your foot and ankle fatigue quickly (unless you let your mind wander, in which case you will automatically revert to not using your big toe). To make this change stick, as with all of the others recommended here, focus on repeating it with every stride of every run for some time.

Run Softer. The harder your feet land, the louder the noise they make. Because higher impact forces correlate with lower efficiency, when two runners are striding together at the same pace, chances are the one making less noise is more efficient. Some running coaches and physical therapists help runners reduce impact forces simply by telling them to make less noise when they run, and usually they can. The changes most often made (unconsciously) to achieve this effect are the beneficial ones of changing from heel striking to midfoot striking and reducing vertical oscillation.

Bounce less. Runners need to push themselves upward slightly in order to float between footstrikes. By becoming airborne, you can take longer strides than you do when you walk. In fact, faster runners spend more time airborne and less time in contact with the ground than slower runners. But as much as possible, you want to float forward rather than upward, and indeed faster runners tend to keep the top of their heads closer to the ground (relative to their height) than slower runners. The great English middle distance runner Sebastian Coe was especially well known for scooting straight ahead with minimal vertical displacement.

The problem of excessive bouncing tends to naturally dissipate with increasing running volume, but you can help it along with conscious control. Just concentrate on thrusting your body forward instead of upward. Tilting forward very slightly from the waist may help. If you study images of elite runners, you will see that their torsos are seldom ramrod straight.

Reduce torso rotation. Many runners rotate their torsos excessively to one or both sides while running. This is usually due to inflexibility in the shoulders or hips (the torso twists to further extend these joints) or weak abdominal muscles or some combination of these imbalances. So the best way to correct the problem of excessive torso rotation is to increase the flexibility of your shoulders and hips and to strengthen your abdominal muscles.

However, you should also use some conscious control and visual cues to maintain a neutral torso, because improving strength and flexibility will not automatically and completely correct a problem that is also a matter of habit. The conscious control cure is as simple a matter as engaging your abdominal muscles to prevent your torso from rotating. You can see whether you rotate to one or both sides by watching yourself in a mirror as you run on a treadmill.

Swing your arms symmetrically. No running stride is perfectly symmetrical, but the more symmetrical you can make your stride, the better. Visible asymmetries are always an indication that one or more parts of your anatomy are not doing their job correctly and are holding you back.

Many runners have an asymmetrical arm swing. One arm is bent more than the other, one swings farther across the front of the body than the other, or the two arms swing in disparate patterns. These asymmetries invariably bespeak left-right imbalances in the musculoskeletal system. These imbalances are often subtle and typically multiple, extending from neck to foot. Every runner should make efforts to learn his or her musculoskeletal imbalances and correct them through targeted strengthening and flexibility exercises. But again, these structural improvements need to be helped along through conscious control. It is very easy to practice running with a more symmetrical arm swing, especially if you start the process using the mirror to guide you. The aforementioned Sebastian Coe had an asymmetrical arm swing as a junior runner and was able to correct it by adulthood through conscious control.

Breathe right. If it is not already, your breathing should become one of the periodic stops on the rotating tour of your conscious attention when you run. Keep your breathing rhythmic and deep, but not artificially slow, drawing air from your diaphragm. Exhale with controlled force. When running hard, many runners who breathe properly at lower intensities allow their breathing to become shallow, excessively rapid, and wheezy. While you can't control how much oxygen you need when running hard, you can easily change your breathing style through consistent practice.