Mark: When running, we tend to think about the movement of our legs, but have you ever
given much thought to your arms? Granted, obviously, we don't run on our arms, but make
no mistake because the way that we carry our arms can have a massive impact on our running.
Today I'm going to be running through a few tips and hopefully make running a little bit
more comfortable and easier for you. [music]
Let's start by stripping this one back a little bit. What do the arms actually do when running?
Well, in short, they help to provide balance and rhythm. There is also a direct correlation
between the movement of our arms and our cadence and stride length, and they can also help
to provide propulsion forwards during running. Now, a lot of you will have felt this when
walking and probably not even realized you were doing. If you were to slow down the movement
of your arms, that will decrease your cadence and slow your cadence down. If you were to
increase the movement and the speed of your arms, that'll increase your cadence. If you
were to over-exaggerate the movement of your arms, it's going to increase your stride length
and vice versa. If you to make that short and choppier, it's going to decrease that
length of your stride rate. Then also for you to get to a hill, you might use your arms
to help drive your legs up the hill. As I mentioned already, all of which you probably
do when walking and give very little thought to, you just do it. It's no different for
running really. Understandably though, many are concerned that excessive arm movement
is well, wasted energy and inefficient. Therefore, we end up seeing runners keeping their arms
quite close to their sides and restricting the amount of arm swing. Whereas in actual
fact, it's been proven that good rhythmic arm swing can help save somewhere in the regional
3% to 13% energy expenditure. Let me run through some key areas to help you.
[music] Okay, so do we hold our arms like so, like
so or like so? That is the big question. Essentially, you want to think of your arm like a pendulum,
swinging back and forth from the shoulder joint just here. Now, if I was to look at
the extreme here, straighten my arm right out and swing that back and forth. You can
see obviously the length of that pendulum has extended out. We've got a longer lever
here. It takes longer for it to travel back and forth. As I mentioned before, that will
have a direct impact on my cadence and my stride length.
Now, if we compare this to say a sprinter, they tend to hold their arm around 90 degrees
or more. That is because they want to cover as much ground per stride as they possibly
can, as they’re almost putting out that maximum effort per foot stride. Obviously,
in endurance distance running we do want to be a little bit more conservative and efficient
so we want a slightly shorter stride length. To do that, we want to reduce that pendulum
or length of that pendulum and lever. We're looking at more like a 90 degree or less.
To give myself as example here. Here's the bottom of my ribs. What I do is I brush my
hand just past the bottom of my ribs just there.
[music] This leads me on to, I guess, what we call
the lateral movement of the arms. In other words, do we want our arms to just go back
and forth in a very linear fashion or do we want them to come across the body to a degree?
Well, there isn't really any set perfect technique here. Even in the elite world, we see a complete
mix of arms styles and how they're carried. What we definitely don't want is the hands
to becoming across the center line. By center line, I literally mean a vertical line down
through our body. If our hands start going across that center line, it’s going to start
affecting our balance and our rhythm and therefore resulting in a loss of energy.
Now to help you out here, what I do is bring my hands up so it's almost touching my pack
and just below my collarbone. [music]
Following on from that, someone has mistakenly focused on driving the arms forward, I guess,
in an attempt to aid that propulsion forward. What we tend to see from this is by the arms,
just staying forwards and not going back enough, is that the arms then come across the body
across that center line as I just discussed. Whereas in actual fact, oddly, a lot of momentum
is actually created by the arm or the elbow driving backwards. I know that sounds quite
odd, but what it actually does is it puts your body into a more upright and forward
position and enables you to land your foot underneath your body far more easily. Then
also enabling you to propel yourself forwards all whilst keeping yourself obviously nicely
balanced. [music]
One way to improve this arm swing is actually to focus on our hands. Whilst actually running
out on the road or out on a trail, keep an eye out for your hands and what they're doing.
If you can see your hand throughout the whole arm movement and the whole swing, you're probably
keeping them far too far forwards. Ideally, what you want them to do is actually disappear
outside of your peripheral vision. In terms of the hands themselves and how we hold them
well, many runners and clenching them and keeping their hands far too stiff. That's
going to have an impact on tension through our arm.
If we want to keep our arms nice and relaxed and have a nice efficient swing with the arms,
we want to keep the hands really relaxed too. So just lightly hold your fingers together.
You need to put your thumb inside of that grip or just on top like so.
[music] Finally, if you're feeling pain, soreness
or tightness in your shoulders, in your upper back or even into your neck, it could be because
you're holding your shoulders too high and therefore storing quite a lot of tension in
them. This is really common and hopefully, a number of these previous tips will help
you out here. Failing that, something I do all the time, particularly so when I'm running
hard and I end up getting quite tense is I just drop my arms down by my side whilst I'm
actually running so they’re nice and floppy. Just relax them out and then I just gradually
start bringing them back into my stride, into their normal movement whilst keeping the shoulders
nice and relaxed. [music]
Well, there we go. I hope you found some of those tips useful today. Do not underestimate
the importance of your arms whilst running. The key is to keep them relaxed and use them
as you do when you're walking. I hope you have enjoyed today's video. If you have, give
it a like and make sure you're following GTN on social media. If you'd like to see more
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