- I thought tonight would be a great opportunity
to actually make a video,
that I've been meaning to make for so long,
which is a running technique analysis of Mo Farah.
Let's have a look at his running gait,
something I know that he and his coach, Alberto Salazar
have been working on for years
and let's see where he's got to with it,
he's clearly doing something right.
Okay, so let's have a look at this right leg,
as we're coming through to strike the ground,
round about here,
at this point, Mo's achieving something
that we talk about all the time
with the runners, that we work with,
getting to a point where, as we make initial contact,
the foot is underneath the flexing knee.
So at this point we draw a line straight down
roughly through the middle of the knee,
we can see that it's coming down pretty much, in fact
in this case just slightly ahead of the ankle,
so he's landing that foot well and truly
underneath that flexing knee.
Something that we see from so many of the runners,
that we work with, you know,
particularly recreational runners, beginner runners
is that as they come down to strike the ground,
they are far further ahead of themselves,
making that heavy, initial contact
way out in front of themselves, over striding,
slamming the brakes on stride by stride.
Mo's managing to land underneath the flexing knee,
which is absolutely ideal,
whether you're running at 11-minute miles
or whether you're running at, you know,
just over four-minute miles, which is what Mo's running
his 5k at at this particular pace,
so there's a bit of a constant there.
Now, what's important to remember
is that as he strikes the ground, being a distance runner,
if we looked very roughly
at managing to strike the ground underneath his hip,
which is so often a cue, which you hear bandied around,
of course he's way ahead of his hip,
way ahead of his center of mass,
if Mo was a sprinter, if Mo was sprinting,
he'd be getting a lot closer to underneath his hip.
If you look at Olympic sprinters,
you get this great slow mo footage,
they get very close to landing truly
underneath their center of mass, but any distance runner,
if we go through this level of analysis,
we'll see that they land
just that little bit further ahead of themselves.
A sprinter only has to work 100, 200 meters,
of course Mo here, running 5k,
he's got to find that middle ground
between effective, relaxed stride
and of course, efficient stride,
so finding this point where he's landing
just underneath that flexing knee is ideal.
We can see here as he gets to toe off,
so we get to that point,
where the toe just leaves the ground here,
we're looking at the trail leg here.
At this point, if there's a simple little rule of thumb,
that you can look at any given runner
to see if we're getting a good combination
of hip extension on the trail leg,
hip flexion on the lead leg,
it's at this point of toe off,
we want to see parallel lines, okay,
it's the parallel lines that we're starting to achieve here
and again, I've drawn very rough lines on here,
but you can see what I'm getting at,
it's these two parallel lines,
that allow Mo to get to a point,
where because he's created enough hip flexion
on the lead leg, he's created enough knee flexion,
picking the foot up underneath him,
but that's largely elastic recoil,
because of the pace he's moving at.
He can then come and strike the ground
again, underneath himself,
rather than landing excessively ahead of himself.
Okay, so again, for any given pace, we want to get an idea
for whether you're lifting your foot up high enough,
lifting the knee up high enough, it's those parallel lines,
so again, we're on a different stride here, same story,
okay, that's what we need to look for.
Now of course the height at which
Mo's picking his foot up underneath him
is again, largely a factor of the pace he's moving at,
he's running two minutes 36 per k, that's super fast,
that's four minutes 10 per mile, okay,
so very few of us are going to be running at this pace,
so very few of us are going to need to lift our heel
all the way up to our butt in the same manner as Mo is here,
okay, but it's the combination
of how high he's lifting his foot up underneath him
and how quickly he's turning his legs over,
so essentially how he's covering the ground
in flight phase by picking that foot up
and the number of times he's doing per minute,
which allows him to run at that pace
or particularly run at that pace without over striding.
Now, not just without over striding,
he's also managing to do so
without particularly expending too much energy up and down,
so if we drew a line in parallel with the track here,
so if we drew a line here
and we'll just let this run through,
there's very little unnecessary vertical displacement,
of course, Mo is going up and down and you need to
if you want to cover the ground stride by stride,
but actually if we look at how steady his head is,
as we go through this,
steady his head is, steady his hips are,
we don't see the same kind of uncontrolled bouncing
as we see from so many of our over striding,
plodding kind of recreational runners.
So again, that's a function of high cadence,
so Mo's running kind of low 180s here,
he's turning his legs over very quickly
and not over striding, not expending excessive energy
breaking with each stride,
he's landing efficiently underneath that flexing knee,
allowing him to maximize the propulsive force,
then pushing off, rather than dealing
in excessive breaking to begin with.
Of course, Mo's torso is very upright,
okay, there is a gentle forward lean,
but I would expect that forward lean
as a function of the pace that he's running at,
rather than something he's consciously trying to force, okay
and what we do see is the relaxed nature of the shoulders,
okay, short lever of the arms, so we can see that the arms
are maintaining this
sub-90 degree angle at the elbow,
the whole way through and he's managing to,
here we go, that's a better view,
and he's managing just to drive the elbow back,
back, back with each stride, relaxed from the shoulder,
creating this nice, efficient, gentle sway,
that is so characteristic of Mo's running style.
Okay, we'll see if we can get
a little bit more of a front on view in a moment,
in fact this is a nice example,
so we can see as we run this through,
that little bit of a side to side swagger,
but what we don't see
is too much of, there we go,
the hand starting to cross the midline,
hands come roughly near the midline,
but it's more so, just that nice little bit of rotation,
the good rotation that we're after through the torso
and the drive back of the elbow each time,
that allows Mo to sync up the motion of his top half
with the motion of what we're seeing with the legs.
Now what I mean by that,
if we come back to our side on view,
as Mo extends on this side,
the trail leg, extends this leg out behind him,
we also see him rotate his torso this way.
Okay, so he's starting to,
as you would expect from any runner
and any of us as we walk and as we run,
get that opposite rotation of the counter,
so it's the counter rotation of the pelvis
and the top half of the torso, which starts to allow Mo
to get that nice little bit of a stretch
from shoulder here to hip on the far side here.
Okay, now that stretch, as the shoulder comes back,
so his right shoulder's coming back,
'cause he's rotating his torso to the right
as his hip is coming back on the left-hand side,
so his torso, his pelvis is gonna be rotating
to the left somewhat,
it's that stretch across the front on the diagonal,
that's going to allow him
to then release that elastic energy
and help him bring the arm through
with the opposite leg onto the next stride.
Okay and obviously at this point, on the next stride,
it's opposite side, arms coming to extension here,
whilst this opposite hip's coming in to extension,
okay, so we're getting that nice, cross body effect
in a relaxed, nice, smooth,
not particularly forced manner,
okay, very smooth, very relaxed,
Mo looks very in control at this point.
Okay, so as I said,
I know this is something that Mo has worked on,
I know it's something he continues to work on,
I've listened to interviews, where he's talked about
particularly in the latter stage of the race,
focusing on maintaining form
and that should be able to be a mindset,
which trickles down way back to the likes of you and I,
who are focusing on running our 5ks,
let's say, you know, more like five minutes per k,
rather than thinking about running our 5ks
at two minutes 30 per k, that's crazy fast.
Anyway, I hope that's really helpful,
I hope that's interesting to you guys.
Let me know any thoughts you've got in the comments
and I'll speak to you soon, bye now.
(mellow upbeat music)
- [Commentator] Mo Farah
(cheering crowd)
wins the gold!