- Running with proper form on...
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So it's all well and good to watch videos
of elite runners and break down their running techniques
but that doesn't help you much
on Sunday morning in the middle of your long run
where you might be running it in half their pace
10, 11, 12 minute miles or slower.
When it comes to running technique,
it's much easier to run with good form
when you're running fast.
But when you're trying to keep it slow and steady,
technique often starts to fall apart.
It's no coincidence
that it's when long runs hit 14, 16, 18 miles
during marathon training that runners often start
to get injured.
What can you do about that?
Well, I'll tell you what absolutely doesn't work.
And that's trying to force your running technique
into a high kicking super athletic style
that you've seen elites using.
For most of us it'll feel robotic, awkward,
and completely unsustainable.
When you do get tired during a long, slow, easy run
and you feel your form begins to suffer,
your best option is to focus
on these three specific areas of how you're running.
Let's start with the easiest to quantify
and get feedback on, your running cadence.
If you're not familiar, your running cadence
is the number of steps you make per minute as you run.
It should increase and decrease slightly
as you speed up and slow down.
That's because your cadence and stride length
are the two main factors that determine your running pace.
If you want to run faster,
you increase your stride length and your cadence together.
But as you slow down the tendency lots of us runners have,
is to reduce our stride length
but also allow our cadence to drop pretty much
through the floor and that's what we're trying to avoid.
Everybody's natural running cadence does vary
although a figure you'll hear suggested quite often
is 180 strides per minute.
Some runners will find themselves running
at a faster cadence than that at an easy pace.
And if that's you, that's great, but you might well find
that your cadence is lower than that.
Remember running at an easy, long run pace
will naturally cause your cadence to drop.
But the question is, how far does it drop?
As long as you are not over striding,
running with a cadence in the low 170s is just fine.
But as soon as you feel yourself beginning
to become heavier underfoot
and feel like you're making slower, more plodding strides,
it's time to focus on making shorter, quicker strides
to bring your cadence back up where it needs to be.
The goal to keep in mind, and it's useful visualization,
is to run with short, quick strides
without being forced to increase your pace.
Remember the idea isn't to run faster
and mess up the pacing of your long run.
The goal is to stay light on your feet
with a nice quick cadence
while maintaining a nice, consistent, easy pace.
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about two of the most important things
that'll hold your running technique together
as you get tired on long, easy pace run,
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Okay, back to running form.
And this is one aspect of running form
that's really helped me to hold my technique together
during so many challenging long runs over the years.
It's not about foot strike or focusing
on big movements like your knee drive,
which if anything would really start
to make you more fatigued if you were to focus on them,
once tiredness has kicked in.
Instead I want you to focus on how you hold yourself,
your running posture.
You might actually feel
that by increasing your running cadence,
you're already starting to feel
that you're running a little bit more upright
and that's no coincidence.
These things are really closely linked.
Chances are that you've experienced this yourself.
That as you start to get tired on a long run
you start to hunch forwards a little,
or in some cases a lot.
The shoulders roll forwards,
you begin to bend forwards at the waist a little
and stick your butt out behind you.
Now don't get me wrong, it's not as dramatic
as I, kind of, made it look then
but even subtle changes in how you carry your posture
can have big knock-on consequences
to your running biomechanics.
If you have a tendency to bend forwards a little bit
at the waist as you get tired, sticking your butt out,
it's going to affect your stride
and force you to reach a little further
in front of yourself with the lower leg with each stride
to cover the ground as your knee drive is sacrificed.
This will force you to start to over stride
and land much more heavily on your heels as you run.
Instead, focus on holding your hips up and forwards
while running, as if you're being pulled by the waistband.
Leaning forwards with the hips will encourage you
to run tall and make it much, much easier
for you to get a good drive from the hips
using big powerful muscle groups
like your glutes properly as you run.
You'll also find that holding your hips
up and forwards as you run
will help you to stop rounding your shoulders forwards.
The other thing that us runners do as we get tired,
is we begin to hold a lot of tension through our shoulders.
If you feel like you finish your long runs
with tight, tired shoulders, even neck muscles,
you should definitely try this.
People talk about pulling your shoulder blades back
and down to set yourself up in a good shoulder posture.
But I find that to be really rigid
and can't in a comfortable position for running.
Instead I want to focus on a simple visualization
and a cue of running with a long neck.
Try and imagine lifting your ears away from your shoulders.
It sounds silly, but as you try
to lift your ears away from your shoulders,
which is obviously something that we can't do,
as humans we can't extend our spines.
Just trying to do so will force you
to slightly depress the shoulders.
You go from being here to just depressing them slightly
in a far more relaxed, far more natural way
which will help you to prevent yourself
from elevating your shoulders as you start to get tired.
So when you start to feel
that little bit of tension creep in here,
and you're running feeling your shoulders
getting tighter and tighter,
simply think long neck and see if that's just puts you
in a slightly better position to stay relaxed
as you are running.
It's not about trying to force yourself
to run in a way that's unnatural to your body.
The key is to use them to reduce the effects of fatigue
as you start to get tired in your long run.
As the saying goes, it's not about who runs the fastest,
it's about who slows down the least.
Next, watch the video on screen right now
for some powerful tips to help you
become an efficient runner with proper running form.
And I'll see you over there.