- Okay, so how many of you watch
the top runners on TV in absolute awe?
Yep, they just glide over the ground
and make it look nothing short of effortless,
some may say they have the perfect run form,
but what makes it so perfect, so effortless or so easy?
Well today I'm going to be tackling just that
and exploring what we mean by the perfect run form.
(digital whirring)
Well getting out of the door and going for a run
is a fairly straightforward affair,
in fact it's the simplicity
of just whacking your running shoes on and getting out there
is what makes running appeal to so many of us.
That being said,
being able to run with some proper run form,
well that's not quite as easy as it might sound
because our unique running mechanics are all dependent
on things like our strength, our flexibility
and also how our bodies are built up.
So with that, everyone has a differing run form,
but ultimately the goal is to run
with as little effort as we can muster,
as efficiently as possible,
and crucially, without getting injured.
So in other words, the better our run form,
the easier it's going to feel,
and this perfect run form that I keep referring to
can actually be broken down into a few key areas,
and today I'm going to start with our upper body posture.
Well you might be listening to this now and thinking,
what on earth is he on about?
Upper body posture for running?
Running comes from the legs.
Well, you will be forgiven for thinking that,
but the truth of the matter is actually,
perfect run form and technique
should start from the top down,
so I'm actually going to start
by talking about our head alignment
because this is really key to our technique and form.
You want to make sure
that you're looking ahead towards the horizon,
I actually start by saying,
try to look around 20 meters or so ahead of you
rather than even looking down
at the ground in front of you or up above.
Also think about not pushing your head too far forward,
you actually want to make sure that your ears
are nicely in line with your shoulders,
and that leads me on,
try and stay loose and relaxed with your shoulders.
All too often we end up tensing up,
even shrugging our shoulders up,
and that's going to cost us
and waste some very valuable energy.
Now I definitely fall foul to this very often,
particularly as I get tired,
and a tactic that I've learned is actually
just to relax our arms down, shake them out,
and try and get our shoulders and arms relaxed
and try and bring those arms back in,
and hopefully with that you'll have
some nice relaxed shoulders.
We're talking about the arms here's,
it's actually often forgotten that they're crucial
in helping to propel our body forward,
in fact, the way that we move our arms
can either make us faster or it can slow us down.
Now we want to make sure that our elbows
are nice and close to our side,
not squeezing our side, should be fairly relaxed.
We also want to have our thumbs upwards
rather than across or down, or something like that,
and then imagine a line down the middle of our body
and our hand doesn't cross that line.
Now talking about our hands, again,
this is an area that's often forgotten,
but you really don't want to fall into the trap
of tensing those hands up,
particularly when you're doing a hard effort
or if you're in the middle of a race,
all that serves to do is waste more of that valuable energy
and maybe even increase tension
in the upper body or the arms.
We're now moving onto our next key area,
and this is our posture.
Now an all too often heard phrase is,
run tall, or running tall,
but what does this actually mean?
Well, for many of us we spend most of our day sat down,
either at a desk, at the wheel of our car,
or perhaps maybe for the luckiest who are out there,
on the sofa,
but regardless of where it is or why we do that,
unfortunately this can leave
us with fairly rounded shoulders and flexed hips,
which can transfer over into our running form
because by sitting in this position,
it ends up with fairly tight hip flexors which is then
going to inhibit our ability to activate our glutes,
and over time that's going to weaken those glutes
because we're not activating them.
Obviously this is not ideal and certainly not going to work
for our running and improving our run form,
now something I've always worked on with my running form
and a way of countering this is to imagine
that I'm attached to some sort of pulley
that's up in the sky somewhere,
and that's pulling me upwards from my chest
and that is then going to open up my hips.
Now on that note, there was a simple drill
that I found worked really well
to kickstart that good posture,
and I do a few times prior to a hard run session.
I think about standing tall, hands on hips,
eyes facing forwards to the horizon,
and then rise up onto the balls of my feet
and then start to gradually fall forwards
whilst focusing on maintaining that proper posture
as I ran through the stride at a good pace.
(upbeat music)
Well my last drill there actually leads me very nicely
onto our next big key area,
and this is our landing mechanics.
Now with that last drill,
we're very much utilizing gravity
as we started to fall forwards,
but a nice progression of that is the pose running method.
Now this is essentially saying,
we're trying to align our shoulders, hips,
knees and toes all together,
and this time we're on one leg
and we momentarily balancing on one ball of our feet,
before we fall forward,
using that gravity and then alternating
as we go from leg to leg,
and this is actually a method that's used
by a lot of top-level elite runners.
But how that foot lands is a huge topic for debate,
forefoot, midfoot or heel strike?
Well we tend to advise against heel striking
giving that it can increase the amount of force and impact
up through that limb,
it can also create a bit of a breaking force,
particularly if that foot is landing out in front first,
and let's not forget it can increase
our contact time on the ground given
that we've got to roll through the entire foot
rather than midfoot or forefoot
which is a lot quicker in terms of contact time.
That being said,
we do see all types within the elite running field,
heel foot, midfoot, forefoot,
but one thing that is similar and is consistent
across all of them is where their foot lands,
we'll see all of them with their foot landing
under their center of gravity
which is going to enable that momentum carrying forwards
which again is very similar and aligns very nicely
with the pose running method.
Well there we go, perfect run form is a combination
of good posture, aligned in a linear fashion
from our head to the balls of our feet.
And actually a nice couple of cue's for you to take away
and use whilst you're out running,
is to think about running tall and the use of gravity,
and that's going to really help to get our momentum going
which I've been mentioning over and over again
during this video.
And it's not actually the world class athletes
that can only aspire to having perfect run form,
hopefully you guys out there can too.
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