- What can we learn from deconstructing
the running style of multiple time Ironman World Champion,
Mirinda Carfrae?
Let's find out.
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My focus here on this channel
is to provide you with all the coaching tips,
tutorials, and training info needed
for you to become a better runner.
If you've been around here for awhile,
you'll know that I'm a bit of a geek
when it comes to running mechanics.
We all need a hobby, right?
Well it seems like some of you guys
also like to dive deep into the technical side as well.
I'm frequently asked to add to the running techniques
analysis videos already on this channel,
like the one I did for Mo Pharah a few weeks ago.
I'll leave a link to that video in the description.
Today I want to take a look at some great footage
that Coach Matt Steinmetz has provided
featuring pro tri-athletes Mirinda Carfrae
on a one-hour training run off a 100 mile bike ride.
Long distance tri-athletes amongst us
are going to know exactly the importance
of these sessions, and precisely how her legs
are likely to be feeling as we watch this footage.
Okay, so let's start out, as we look at this video,
from side on, having a look at some basics.
Let's take a look at posture.
Okay, we can see that, when we look at Mirinda,
particularly as we come through and take a bit
of a pause here at mid-stance,
so the point where the foot is underneath the hip,
we can see quite clearly that there is that gentle
forward lean that we want to see from a nice,
smooth, efficient running style.
We don't want people to be forcing the forward lean,
in fact the forward lean is going to be a function
of pace rather than something I usually get runners
to consciously think about,
but we start to see that whilst she's holding her torso
in a nice upright position, not particularly
bent forward at the waist,
she's getting that forward lean from the ankle,
she's getting that forward lean as a whole body lean,
rather than we see from so many runners,
which is more of a pitch forward at the waist,
more of a kind of a bend in the middle.
She's achieving that, we need to then look at
what's happening in terms of stride length
and stride angle in particular.
So what you want to refer to in terms of stride angle.
We're looking at this point of toe off,
or really turned off stance,
where the foot is just about to leave the ground,
okay and at this point,
I want to see the separation we're getting
between lead thigh and trail leg.
Again, drawing very rough angles on here,
very, very rough lines on here,
sausage fingers drawing on an iPad.
But you get the idea here.
What we're starting to see is the telltale sign
that I spoke about in the Mo video,
and in fact, in a number of different videos
that I've created around this sort of subject,
is that as we get into this point of toe off,
we're starting to see that parallel line side.
So the way in which, if we draw a line down the trail leg,
and a line down the lead shin,
we're not a million miles away from the parallel lines
linking those two body parts, linking those two limbs.
What we've seen from so many recreational runners,
is that, at this point, again, as I've shown,
of toe off here, we start to see that the lower leg
of the lead leg is, rather than creating this parallel line,
or indeed as Mirinda's showing us here,
slightly shorter than parallel,
we're starting to see in so many recreational runners,
that at this point, they'd already be swinging
that lower leg forward.
There's a video that I, I'll leave a comment up here,
in fact, so you can see what I'm talking about.
But a video where I show the difference between
a runner who's over-striding and a runner who's not,
and the fact that it's this lead leg swinging out
in front of you, the lower leg swinging out in front of you
that sets you up to over-stride,
if you're going to over-stride.
And it's largely a function of the amount of which
you create this triple flexed position.
What do I mean by triple flexed?
I mean a combination of hip flexion,
lifting the knee up, knee flexion,
lifting the foot up underneath you,
getting into this elevated position,
picking the foot up underneath your butt
as it swings through, and the third part of that
triple flexion is ankle dorsal flexion.
Here, Mirinda's ankle looks adequately dorsal flexed,
not rigidly like you'd expect to see a sprinter,
but certainly enough to allow her to get
into this triple flexed position so that
as she comes through onto this next stride,
she strikes the ground,
if we take between this frame and this frame,
as she's striking the ground here,
she's not a million miles away from what we want to see
in terms of her landing that foot,
so the ankle is underneath a flexing knee,
perhaps a little forward,
but you've got to take into account
the fact that we've not got a perfectly steady camera
here either, as Matt's cycling alongside.
Okay, so it's not a perfect, a perfect vertical line,
but then again the ground that we're running on
isn't a perfect horizontal either.
I'd argue that's still 90 degrees to the ground.
So managing to land that foot underneath
the flexing knee, and again,
if we look at the opposite side,
it's going to be a very similar story.
As she lands between this frame and this frame,
it's where the load starts to get taken on.
This frame, I'd argue she's not fully loading yet,
she's just getting to that point where the heel
is about to touch the ground,
and the lower leg is, again, angled slightly,
terrible line that, there we go,
angled slightly forwards.
But actually, in reality, it's between these two frames,
and she, in comparison to so many,
again, recreational runners, where we see
that lower leg flick out in front
and they're starting to land almost off a more,
a more fully extended knee, so they're landing
way further out in front of themselves here.
Again, if we draw, draw the lines up a little bit.
Landing further out in front of themselves here,
slamming the brakes on, creating that over-striding,
deccelerative, load coming back at them.
Mirinda here is managing to land much closer
to underneath that flexing knee,
much more efficiently, much more effectively.
Makes for a shorter contact time,
she's running at quite a high cadence,
and as she gets into the position
where she's landing underneath that flexing knee,
you also see that again, as a long distance triathlete,
racing over Ironman distances,
she naturally is getting to that point
where she's not up on the balls of her feet,
she's not in this position where perhaps we looked
at a track five-K runner, track 10K runner,
perhaps they'd be working on getting that little bit
forward into a fourth position,
she knows that she's got a marathon to run,
after 2.4 miles swimming, after 112 miles on the bike.
It's that balance between what's going to be efficient
and what's going to be sustainable.
Sustainable to allow her to run fast over those distances.
She's the course record holder at Kona for the run,
the Ironman World Championships for the run.
She is, she ran that in, what was it in 2014,
it was two hours 50, 26.
That's, after a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike,
that is super quick.
And again, it's finding that form
that's going to allow her to do that,
given the fact her body is under duress already.
That's what I find so interesting
about looking at Ironman athletes in particular
in comparison to out-and-out runners.
Okay, if we look at the rear-on perspective,
let's just dial this back for a moment,
getting closer to rear-on.
What's interesting, let's get a bit further back.
As she strikes the ground, let's take her left leg,
as she comes and strikes the ground,
as she loads on that left-hand side,
so we can see here, foot's not touched the ground yet,
as the foot strikes the ground and we get through
to this point where the foot's closer to underneath the hip,
what we don't see, which we again see from so many runners
that we analyze day in, day out,
here, Kinetic Revolution, is the tendency for,
as we load on this single leg,
here, oh, no, there we go (laughing).
As we load, sorry about this,
as we load on single leg here, what we don't see
is that opposite side hip drop.
We see that Mirinda manages to keep that nice,
level pelvis, okay, and as much as we can
see through that t-shirt and getting an idea
of the contours of her body,
as she loads through that one side,
and again, as she then loads on the right-hand side,
we see that maybe there's a little bit more of a hip drop
on this right-hand side.
Perhaps we're getting a little bit closer
to seeing a touch of a hip drop,
but, in the big scheme of things,
as we roll this forward, frame by frame,
she's actually got a very stable looking pelvis,
in that frontal plane, that side-to-side plane.
Meaning that there's not gonna be a great deal
of what you can refer to as kind of energy leakage,
if you like.
More wasted energy into that frontal plane,
so side-to-side movement, where we want to be
as efficient as possible in those forward
and back movements, particularly driving yourself
forward, of course.
So again, looking like she's staying nice and efficient,
nice and smooth.
We've good control around the hips,
what you'd expect to see from a good runner.
A runner, even in the context of triathlon,
who is able to absorb this sort of training load,
week-in, week-out, to get to that high level of performance,
to get to a point where she's winning multiple
world championships.
Let's just again fast forward.
We'll take another side on view.
What I want to look at is the way in which,
we mentioned earlier, that forward lean,
the way in which she holds her torso nice and upright
within that nice quality hip extension that she's got.
So although she's creating a lot of hip extension,
which is great, again, for a triathlete,
someone who spends a lot of time on the bike,
good range of motion at the hip,
she's not having to lean forwards,
which is where we see so many athletes
having to get to to try and bluff this hip extension
if that's hard for their hip flexors.
As they're extending, as Mirinda's extending
through the hip on this left-hand side,
we see her driving this left leg back,
pushing the ground away behind her using those glutes,
those hamstrings to pull herself forward,
what we see is great amount of, again,
extension here at the shoulder,
on the opposite side.
Which creates this rotation, okay?
So we see this rotation, let's see if I can just
come back a couple of frames, get rid of the lines.
As we come forwards, we get this side to side
swaying rotation, but it's not this rotation
where she's in this kind of closed shoulder,
rounded shoulder position, closed chest position.
It's very much chest open,
and the rotation is extension and rotation,
working in opposition to balance to the extension of knee,
and rotation in the opposite direction
that's going from her hip and her pelvis.
So she's managing to actually do a great job
of creating this nice, positive rotation
through her torso rather than the negative
rotation we see from so many runners,
where they get into this position
where they're rounded forwards, they're driving
their arms across the midline,
they're driving forwards.
Mirinda here, as she's driving her leg back,
she's driving opposite side elbow back.
And it just looks like this nice, smooth,
flowing pattern, where we're getting the top half
and the bottom half working together nicely.
Okay, so, as we continue to look through this,
what I want to drop back to is this rear-on view.
Where are we?
Rear-on view here.
Getting closer, there we go.
Where we got the white line on the ground
as a reference point.
Naturally, with a runner running relatively fast,
again, don't know specifically what pace this is.
But if you look at this, as we will do in a second,
at full speed, you'll see that she's certainly not
hanging around.
The faster runners are traveling,
the closer we're gonna get to a fairly narrow stride width.
And with Mirinda's stride, which,
she's doing a good job, if you look at where
this left foot lands relative to the white line,
and then you look at where this right foot lands
relative the white line.
And again, we'll look at it again.
Left foot relative to the white line,
right foot relative to the white line.
She's managing to run a fairly narrow stride-width
without getting into this cross-over gait.
So we're not getting the left foot landing to the right
and the right foot landing to the left of the midline.
The two feet are landing to their correct side,
if you will, so the left's landing to the left
of this imaginary midline,
and the right to the right,
and we get a sense for that by looking at it
versus the white line that she's running alongside here.
We can see, if we show that again.
Where the right foot lands, where the left foot lands.
What we see so often from runners
is that the right food ends up landing
closer towards the left, and in relative terms,
the left foot ends up landing closer towards the right.
We get into this position, usually,
when particularly hip stability
is somewhat compromised.
We already mentioned that Mirinda looks
particularly stable around the hips,
better probably on the left than the right.
And she's showing that she's managing
to create this control in terms of stride width,
largely coming from that.
And because she's got control around her hips,
as well, we can see the way in which
there's no real side-to-side bob through the torso.
We can see the rotation here that I'm talking about.
As this right leg comes back into hip extension here,
we can see that she's driving back through the left shoulder
and we get this rotation, this kind of cross body rotation,
as she drives back in that direction,
and now she's about to drive the left leg back,
we're gonna see the right shoulder come back,
and again, we start to see the rotation
in the opposite direction.
We see that rotation, but her head stays perfectly
smoothly positioned.
There's a little bit of oscillation
which you'd expect, of course,
we need to get onto the next stride,
there's always going to be an element of up
and an element of forwards within that.
Okay, but there's none of this side-to-side bobbing
that we'd start to see from some runners.
Where they're expending a lot of energy
moving from side-to-side,
which usually compensation, again,
for poor stability when in the single leg position.
Mirinda, good and strong, good and stable,
torso nicely forward, nicely aligned
in terms of not particularly bailing out
into too much side-to-side movement.
Doing a great job of controlling that.
So what can we take from this?
In terms of looking at stride length,
where we looked earlier, or brake still
to start on here, the way in which
Mirinda, at a given pace, is managing to pick her foot
up underneath her, managing to lift her knee up
as she's coming forwards.
She's getting to a point for a given pace
where she's lifting her foot sufficiently,
she's picking her knee up sufficiently in front of her,
so that as that lower leg swings forwards
onto the next stride, it's not landing excessively
out in front of her, and even at this point,
with that rear foot's just about
to touch the ground, we're not a million miles ahead
of the knee, and as the foot loads, we're underneath
the flexing knee there.
Ideal, not overstriding, fantastic, again,
as we're coming through here,
we're gonna see a similar story,
so the foot, you can still see a little bit of light
underneath the midfoot there,
so again, not fully loading.
So really, let's talk about this frame
underneath her flexing knee, again, fantastic.
She's doing so because of the way the leg's
swinging through underneath the body.
The leg's swinging from underneath the body.
She's not shuffling along, she's picking her feet up,
and allowing herself to then land under that flexing knee
rather than overstriding.
Landing with a gentle heel strike, again,
as a long distance triathlete,
that makes a lot of sense, we need to find this
sustainable form, the form that you can maintain,
when you're prefatigued coming off the bike.
Able to maintain this form for 26.2 miles
of the marathon.
Again, very different proposition
to throwing yourself up onto the balls of your feet
and running as a kind of Brownlee style, perhaps, 10K.
It's where you're right up on the balls of your feet,
as per Alistair Brownlee.
So it's completely different proposition,
completely different form for the job.
I hope that's helpful, I hope that makes sense.
I certainly encourage you guys,
if you've got any questions, any thoughts around this,
as we watch through here again,
we can see that nice bit of positive rotation
through the torso, to work with those nice, stable hips.
If you've got any thoughts around this,
please do just leave a comment,
let me know if you've got any questions,
anything to add, anything that you want to
particularly point out, you can leave a comment,
a timecode rather alongside the comment.
And if you found this video useful,
please do hit that thumbs up button.
I hope you found this brief insight
into Mirinda's running form interesting,
and that it's given you some food for thought.
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I'll be back here tomorrow, and I'll speak to you then.
Bye, now.
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