Did you know that your initial foot strike position and your upper body posture during
running can be strongly affected by where you hold your hands and that holding your
hands at your heart and keeping your hands very close to your chest when you run may
have a real role to play in helping put into motion mechanical outputs that are good for
economic sufficiency and injury prevention.
If you watch the best distance runners, men and women, in the world, these runners are
from East Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya, runners like Eluid Kipochoge, Tirunesh Dibaba, Vivian
Cheriyot, Tiki Gelena, Mary Kietany, just to name a few, you’ll undoubtedly notice
2 things about their hand carriage and arm swing.
You’ll notice that their hands are always held very close to the chest with the hands
usually being held either at the heart, like most East African men distance runners, namely
Kipochge, and most East African women distance runners tend to carry their hands even higher,
at their collar bone, or even at the neck, like Tirunesh Dibaba and Mary Kietany.
AND, these runners also punch the midline with their hands, so their forearm typically
crosses the torso as compared with many European and North American distance runners many of
which carry their hands much lower, like below the rib cage or even at the hips and they
swing their forearms down alongside the torso, punching out in front of the torso with their
hands, so their hands end up swinging out in front of the body which may be mechanically
ineffective for running longer distances, and I’ll explain the scientific backing
for that in just a moment.
In contrast, like I just stated, most East African distance runners swing their hands
and forearm across their torso; many also swing their hands pass the torso’s midline.
So, just to reiterate because this is very essential information regarding running form,
that those are the two major differences in how most East African distance runners carry
and swing their arms as compared to most non-East African distance runners; many East African
men distance runners tend to hold their hands close to the heart, same with the women, but
many more East African women distance runners tend to carry their hands above or at the
breast bone, but both men and women East African distance runners punch the midline with their
hands; they never punch out away from the torso.
What is the economical and mechanical relevance for this type of arm swing?
Why did Tirunesh Dibaba adjust her arm swing and hand carriage from low hands to high hands
when she made the transition from the 5,000m to the 10,000m and the marathon?
Why hold your hands close to your heart, close the torso and swing your hands toward the
torso’s midline, not down alongside your torso when you’re running long distances,10,000
to the marathon?
It’s not because ‘oh that’s just how East African Runners run and that’s not
how we run’; they’ve been told to carry their hands higher and closer to their chest
because there’s a strategic purpose in that it reduces whole body muscular work and that’s
because the hard truth is, is that where you carry your hands when you run has a proven
influence on determining the trajectory of your leg swing activity, your initial foot
strike position and your upper body’s postural sway, and Jae grew-ink owner of the BalanceRunner.com
(which is linked down below the video in the description box) does a wonderful job at helping
us understand this influence.
She wrote an incredibly informative piece entitled: Keep Your Hands Close to Your Heart.
In her article, she gives clear-eyed assessments using videos showing how East African distance
runners carry their hands and swing their arms compared to their non-East African competitors.
The main centerpiece of her article is that arm swing and hand carriage during running
strongly influences 2 very important mechanical outputs: initial foot strike position and
upper body posture such that where you carry your hands in relation to your torso and how
you swing your arms when you run, powerfully affects your initial footstrike position which
influences stride length, which influences cadence (which is the number of steps you
take per minute) which influences impact force production.
Secondly, where you carry your hands in relation to your torso strongly affects your ability
to lean forward with your upper body during running.
For a side note, I posted a link below the video, in the description box, to a video
I did about why it’s essential to lean forward as opposed to running upright with your upper
body posture during running.
In getting back to her article on arm swing and hand carriage, according to Jae, one natural,
effortless way to guide your center mass or upper body forward and keep that forward lean
sustained more easily during running is by keeping your hands close to your chest which
enables you to achieve a more perfect forward lean angle with greater ease which can advance
rapidly more seamless, effortless forward momentum.
Sadly, these are the overall core attributes about how arm swing and hand carriage affects
whole body mechanics during running that are not often emphasized or even told in the first
place.
In her post, Jae starts off by implying that all along, distance runners have been told
to swing their arms in a way that may work against us such that conventionally, we’ve
been told to bend our elbows to 90 degrees and swing our arms straight front-to-back
- kind of like a sprinter and is mechanically practical for sprinting, which Ill get to
why in a moment.
But in this capacity, in the context of long distance running, it doesn't sustain well
partly because the hands and forearm swing way out in front of the center mass.
By default, the landing foot naturally follows the line of action of this arm swing trajectory
in that the foot too, now will swing out in front of your center mass, resulting in your
stride opening up too far in front of your torso, so it increases your stride length,
potentially resulting in an over-stride which may create a longer brake force duration period
which may cause more stress on the foot and leg and is overall, an impact force variable
frequently linked to bone injuries.
In contrast, Jae Gruenke, states that if you’re trying to correct your over-stride while running,
a powerful remedy is to keep your hands as close as possible to your body with each step
because doing so keeps your feet landing consistently close to your center mass, which is going
to effectively and dramatically shave down the brake force duration period.
This is one reason that keeping your hands close to your torso sustains well for long
distance running, like the 10,000m to the marathon, but for much shorter distances,
Jae underscores that sprinters and middle distance runners use a different kind of arm-swing
in that they move their hands out in front of the body to help push the landing foot
far enough forward in efforts to accommodate the high speed of their center gravity.
So, the big takeaway here is that keeping your hands very close to your torso helps
you leverage a shorter stride during running; it gives you greater mechanical control to
help pull your landing foot in closer to your center mass and with my experience, it’s
remarkable how quickly you can feel the difference in where your foot wants to land closer to
your body when you keep your hands close to your torso.
Secondly, Jae explains that arm-swing and hand carriage strongly affects upper body
posture and postural sway during running, more specifically, your arm swing and hand
carriage affects your ability to lean forward while running by helping you concentrate your
center mass.
She outlines that during running, the body needs to be pushed forward and upward from
the ground and she underscored that this is easiest to do if your body is not too spread
out, which makes sense because according to Jae, when your hand is far from your chest
when running, your torso and head swifts backwards to compensate, and the push from your foot
in late stance goes somewhere between them to move you forward.
She went on to emphasize that quote -- if you try to force your arms to swing straight
front-to-back, like a sprinter (because the context of this video isn’t for sprinters,
the context is long distance running), if you try to force your arms to swing straight
front-to-back, you’ll interfere with the ability of your core to move properly and
your effort will be higher at any speed.
You’ll have to pull your shoulders back, forcing your chest upwards, making it nearly
impossible to lean forward -- unquote.
In other words, apply sprinting arm swing mechanics when you’re trying to run a marathon
may displace your upper body mechanics, pushing your upper body in the wrong direction, backwards,
which is not a way to help you seamlessly maintaining smooth forward momentum.
To make sure that you have what is needed for that optimal forward lean while running,
keeping your hands close to your chest may be one of the best ways to go because when
your hand is close to your chest when you run, your whole body is in a better position
to be pushed forward with greater ease with very minimal pushback.
So I just want to impress upon the important point that arm swing and hand carriage certainly
has a chain reaction on your biomechanics when running.
Everything that Jae has described about high hands, held very close to the body, punch
toward the midline is in clear accordance with how many of the best long distance runners,
who smash world records, or who win gold medals or who overall consistently win 10,000m, half
marathons, marathons on the world stage, again these runners are from East Africa, both men
and women, have the same common denomination in that their hands are always held close
to the chest, but the girls swing their hands up higher at the breast bone or at collar
bone or at the neck, whereas for most East African men distance runners, their hands
swing up lower, at the heart whereby this style of arm swing and hand carriage ultimately
shapes your stride and body posture in ways that effectively closes off high impact variables
that are damaging to the leg; so there are protective effects to swinging the hands close
to your chest and lastly it may be more cost-effective for running longer distances on the basis
that long distance runners who run with hands closer to their chest seem to be consistently
winning and braking records than most runners who run with dropped hands at the waist with
the hands and forearm held farther away from the upper body.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this video.
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Thank you so much for listening and watching.
Have fun out there on the roads and trails.
Bye for now!