One of the most important elements of your training program
is to have proper running form and biomechanics. Not matter
how hard you train or how talented you are, if you
dont have proper running form, you're
gonna be wasting a lot of energy.
So lets look at proper running form.
Julius is now going to show us how having
a slight forward lean of perhaps of about
2-3 degrees is necessary. You don't want
too much of a forward lean and you dont want a
backward lean. Julius show us what too much of a
forward lean looks like.
As you can see, Julius is leaning too far forward right now
and the problem with that is when you lean too far forward
you're basically going to be shoving your body
down into the ground. You're not going to be getting proper
trajectory in your stride to where
you'll get maximum stride length. You're basically pushing yourself
down into the ground. Julius go back to the correct
slight 2-3 degrees forward lean.
There he is again. You can see he is now much more fluid and continuous.
Now Julius, show us
what too much of a backward looks like.
As you can see, Julius is now leaning back a little bit
and one of the things that you'll notice right away is that it seems
to be jamming him into the ground. When you lean backward when you run
as a necessity, your heel will not hit
the ground too forcefully and you'll be
jamming yourself into the ground, sort of kill that
forward momentum. Julius, go back to a
slight forward lean. As you can see, when
Julius does that, once again, you see a fluidity and a
constant circular momentum going forward.
Julius, lean too far forward again.
Here we go again. As you can see, he's driving himself into
the ground.
Back to the slight forward lean of 2-degrees.
Go with the proper lean. Okay, again, that's what we're looking for.
The next thing we want to look at in proper running biomechanics
is his arm carriage. As you can see, Julius's arms
are very relaxed. His shoulders are sloped down.
Julius, show us what it look like when you clench up
your shoulders and run with your shoulders up too much.
As you can see, when Julius does that, it
throws his arms all over. It tightens up his upper body.
When you don't have
proper upper body biomechanics
you're not going to then be influencing your legs.
Your upper body and arms are what control
your legs. Alright Julius, go back to relaxing your shoulders,
letting your arms down. Again, see, we
wanna have the shoulders relaxed and a downward slope.
The other thing that you're looking for is in your hands. You want them
coming to the mid-point of your body.
As you can see with Julius, each hand comes
consecutively to the middle of his body. Julius, show us what it looks like
when the runner crosses their body with
their hands. As you can see, when Julius does that, it twerks his body
from one direction to the other. What happens now
is instead of all his momentum being forward in a straight line,
he's throwing his
body from one side to the other and not
having all his force and trajectory going forward.
Now Julius, go back to
the proper hand carriage. Once again
all his momentum is going forward. We've now
looked at having a slight forward lean and
having correct
upper body mechanics in terms of low and loose
shoulders and arm swing going to the center of the body.
The 3rd part of proper running form
are the feet! Its important to land on the balls of the your feet.
The balls of your feet is where all your power is.
That's where you always end up pushing off of. Contrary
to popular belief that you should be landing on your toes.
and pushing off on your toes. You really want
to land on the balls of your feet and push of from there. Now Julius, I
want to show us what it looks like when
you run too far back on heels.
As you can see, Julius is heels are landing
first. His toes are pointing up and whats
happening now is Julius is breaking all his forward momentum.
Its like he's braking all his action.
He's jamming is heels into the ground and as you an see his whole form
everything is jerking, not circular and fluid
and constantly flowing forward.
Again Julius, go back to the balls of your feet.
As you can see, the instant he gets on the balls of this feet
everything looks nice and relaxed and flowing.
Folks, that's proper running form.