Running can feel amazingly effortless. There are three main stages you must go through before your running feels effortless;

Midfoot Strike Running reduce injuries, and improves your efficiency so that you can run more comfortably

Stage One - You want to land mid footed when running, as opposed to landing with the more common heel-first strike! Focusing on a PAWBACK MOVEMENT as the foot makes contact with the ground after the swing phase (recovery) makes landing MID-FOOT automatic. Keep the heel un-weighted throughout footstrike, landing from mid-foot to fore-foot. *avoid the tendency to over-exaggerate this by landing on the toes!

Pawing Back just before your foot lands and makes contact with the ground means that your leg is already thrusting backward when your foot makes contact with the ground. Pawing back permits and actually facilitates a midfoot landing, as opposed to a less efficient and damaging heel first landing. Landing with a heel strike dramatically increases impact forces and braking, reduces elastic recoil of muscle, and is essentially like driving with the emergency brake on.

Pawing back helps to reduce ground contact time in the stance phase. One of the key traits of the most efficient runners is the near total lack of any pause during the stance phase of the stride. The stance phase is when the foot is flat or almost flat on the ground, between the foot strike and toe-off phases. The longer your stance phase is (foot in contact with the ground), the more your available energy is lost/dissipated, resulting in less power and forward propulsion.

Stage Two - The second key concept is that of developing propulsion from the rotation of the core and hips. The push off (resulting from the hip rotation) should be passive and generally relaxed. A great drill to practice to get the feeling of this is to interlock your fingers together (hand to hand) and run with your hands on top of your head. Though it may seem a little odd at first, doing this removes the arms from the running motion forcing you to create forward propulsion from the hips.

Stage Three - After follow-through, focus on driving the knee forward powerfully, allowing the foot to lag well behind during leg-recovery. Use momentum, not muscular contractions, to raise the heel. A forward knee drive adds power and stride length to your running and helps set up a powerful pawing back of the foot as it makes contact with the ground. Again, remember that the heel should only come up behind you in response to the momentum of the knee drive, not as a reaction or action initiated by a contraction of the quad! This knee drive will always be more dynamic during faster running speeds, and less so at easier paces.

Stage Four - One very important way to begin the process of changing to a mid-foot strike with a pawback is to practice learning to run with a faster cadence. Your goal over time should be 85-95 stride “cycles” per minute (count the number of times your right foot hits the ground in one minute).

Stage Five - Many runners tend to collapse at the hips and pelvis when their foot comes in contact with the ground (they appear to be sitting when they run). This often results from lack of functional strength, and above all it wastes energy and can lead to a variety of overuse injuries. 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 to keep your pelvis neutral.

Engaging in some functional strength training to strengthen the entire kinetic chain will also help to prevent this collapsing. RELAX. 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. Practice running with loose fingers, forearms and upper arms; and with no hunch in your shoulders and a relaxed facial expression.

Stage Six - A 90 degree bend is about right, keeping your hands fairly close to your chest. This shortens the levers that are your arms, reducing the energy cost associated with their movement. Think about elbow drive, rather than hand drive!

Stage Seven - Good running form is ALL ABOUT creating horizontal, not vertical propulsion. Many runners who land with a heel strike tend to push themselves upward slightly in order to float between foot strikes. By becoming airborne you can take longer strides than you do when you walk. In fact, faster runners do spend more time airborne and less time in contact with the ground than slower runners BUT their time in the air is spent going FORWARD, not UPWARD! As much as possible you want forward, not upward movement, and, indeed, faster runners tend to keep the top of their head closer to the ground (relative to their height) than slower runners. Practice focusing on an object off in the distance, and see how much this object moves up/down when you run. Try to minimize this bouncing by practicing a more effective “pawback” during the phase where your foot comes into contact with the ground. Use quick light movements, not forceful ones, for propulsion, maintaining constant motion with the legs and feet.

Need some help with your stride, stop by the shop with your running gear and we can make suggestions using slow motion video gait analysis on our in store treadmill . We aim to keep the sessions short and give you a few things to work on, as it is easy to become overwhelmed when learning something new, and then have you come back once you have mastered the changes and then we can progress to the next level.

Note: This is a complimentary service to help assist your running experience, time spent with each customer may vary based on customer traffic.