Biomechanics and Running Form

Episode 12: Some food for thought, but you might be left wanting seconds.

Welcome back. It’s time to touch on biomechanics and gait. I hadn’t thought to write on this initially, but realised I’m semi-regularly posed questions like the following.

“Does my form look ok?”

“Where should my foot be striking?”

“What is cadence and should mine be higher?”

We’ll touch on this a bit here.

There’s no perfect way to run but there are better ways to run.

Your default, natural, most comfortable running form is your body moving in the way that is most efficient. It’s the method of locomotion that offers your body the most bang for buck using that energy currency, ATP. Your running gait is, essentially, chosen based on making the most of the oxygen you breathe in. Optimal muscle contraction for the amount of power you can generate, or the fastest muscle contraction sequencing for the amount of energy you have, depend on energy availability. What you have to offer might not be the perfect form, and its probably not the fastest, but it’s what’s most energy efficient for you. At the moment.

Could you have a better running gait that makes you faster? Of course. But it would leave you puffed out and fatigued quicker than how you naturally choose to run. It takes time to train changes, and make new running styles energy efficient.

As a physiotherapist, I’m aware that any running technique changes I suggest to someone are going to elicit sensations of inefficiency and clunkiness to begin with. That sits forefront in mind, so I’m reluctant to make any big changes unless:

Someone doesn’t pass the “vomit test” (which is when you look at someone run and go, “ooh, that doesn’t look good.”)

Or if they’re doing everything else possible in their training and are now looking for 1%er’s - perhaps we’re looking to improve top end sprint mechanics, or reduce wasted energy at a certain pace.

Or if we’re trying to offload an injury (or prevent one from reoccurring). This might be something that’s tried in the short term to keep someone running with less pain while their injury heals. It can also be implemented in the long term, if someone is getting repeated injuries in the same spot, I’m all for tweaking someone’s movement.

Cadence

Cadence is the amount of steps you run in a minute, or spm for short. For most of us, when we try to run faster, we’ll increase our cadence to help us cover the ground quicker. Once we can’t move our legs any quicker, then we’ll increase our step length. Step rate isn’t directly correlated to pace though. It’s possible to run the same pace with different step rates.

Sometimes people worry that their cadence is too low. Most of the time it’s unnecessary. As a general rule of thumb, your classic big fellas tend to have a larger stride with more leg mass to move along, so have a lower cadence. And the tiny runners have shorter strides with less mass, so generally are able to move their legs quicker to keep up. Yes, you can change cadence but it's rarely the first priority to focus on.

As we’ve touched on already, a natural cadence is chosen to optimise our current VO₂ Max. That is, for the most efficient use of oxygen on a run, our cadence is automatically chosen by our body to be energy efficient. If you find running at 150 spm is what feels most comfortable, that’s what will use energy most efficiently for you. Play around with it on your next run if you want. Run for a minute at what comes naturally, then run for another minute at the same pace, but adding 20 spm. See what gets you more puffed.

There are certainly some reasons to look at increasing your step-rate. Shorter strides mean that foot lands closer to directly under your body. This makes your leg a more powerful lever to propel you up and forward. But producing more power is fatiguing, so it’s worth keeping in mind that it takes time for this to feel efficient, sustainable and comfortable. A foot landing under your body also reduces shear force on your lower limb - which predisposes people to some types of injury. Shin splints, for example, can flare up with overstriding due to the extra braking and twisting torsional forces. ITB pain can flare up with lower cadences, as the extra time spent landing often puts the knee into more flexion and valgus and loads the lateral knee more. Cadence is just one piece of a very large puzzle though.

In the clinic, the only times I’ll attempt to make changes is if a runner’s slow cadence is contributing to an injury (like for ITB pain and shin splints), or if it’s so slow it doesn’t pass the vomit test. Otherwise, there’s more important things to focus on. So don’t stress if your cadence is on the lower side. You can certainly practice increasing your step rate on runs, listening to a metronome and focussing on changing your natural spm. But it takes weeks (in most cases months) for you to adapt, and in the meantime you’ll feel extra puffed and uber-focussed on a metronomic running pattern. My advice: just keep training and get fitter. As you get fitter, you’ll improve your energy efficiency, which will then allow naturally for an increased cadence.

If you’re already pretty fit and you still want to increase your cadence, finish a run with some faster but relaxed 100m strides where you focus on quicker leg turnover with some fatigue in your legs. Just keep in mind this adds to your overall training load, so factor it into overall progression.

Foot strike

Frequently, runners will stress about how their feet hit the ground too. I’m more interested in where they land rather than how they land, but there’s some interesting things to discuss regarding foot strike.

Foot strike refers to the area of the foot where someone makes contact with the ground, often separated into hindfoot (heel), midfoot (self explanatory) and forefoot (toes). I almost never make suggestions about changing it, unless it’s contributing to injury, or again, doesn’t pass the vomit test. Forefoot striking puts more load on the achilles, and hindfoot running puts more load on the knee. So it makes sense that if a forefoot striker has achilles pain and is keen to keep running, that they could focus on a temporary heel strike. There’s great studies showing that this offloads injuries and can keep someone running, but there’s a high likelihood that they end up sore in a different area! If you’ve never run with a forefoot strike, but all of a sudden decide to implement it, your achilles tendon won’t be amply prepared for the new, extra load that is suddenly placed on it.

Besides, there’s many more interesting things to think about than what your feet are doing on a run. And anyway, most of us change our footstrike depending on the pace we run anyway. It’s more energy efficient in slower, longer running to have a heel strike. It’s more powerful and springy in faster running to have a forefoot strike. Runners change their footstrike within a race, yours will probably change on your runs too.

Unless you’re getting sore, I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

General Technique

You’ve probably seen, or probably felt it yourself, when a runner reaches a point of fatigue and their form goes to shit. It looks ugly, and the way it plays out for all of us looks different. Shoulders might start to roll more, legs can begin to move slower, the head is thrown back, or perhaps the whole body looks slumped and less upright. Lots of changes can happen, and while these help to conserve energy, they don’t help you run faster.

It gets easier to hold a good technique the fitter you get. But you might find that there’s a certain part of your technique that begins to look a bit ugly before the rest of you does. These technique changes slow you down. Yes, it will assist in energy conservation, but it comes with the consequence of slower running. So it’s worth working on them to maintain a fast running form even when you get tired.

Working on them might involve strength work for the muscles in that area, or having someone provide feedback on your running form as you start to fatigue, and then trying to maintain form even as you tire. For example, my arms start to sway and my shoulders swivel as I get tired and begin to slow down. In my interval sessions, I pay attention to having a strong, symmetrical arm swing as they start to get heavier. Sometimes if I’m forced to do a jog on a treadmill, I’ll use the mirror to provide feedback to me and I can watch out for my form getting sloppy.

But! Let me pose a question to you. If I don’t get any fitter, and I’ve been working on my arm swing - will this help me maintain speed as I start to fatigue in a race? Or should I just focus on getting fitter and hope my arms get stronger as a by-product of my training?

Here I am beginning to lose my form late in a race as a 16 year old. Notice the head tilt, shoulder elevation and floppy wrists. Thomas Sellwood and Lachlan Burrows look much more controlled and efficient either side of me. I’m pretty sure they both beat me in this race, but was it to do with the fact I my arms went to shit, or did my arms go to shit because I was tired?

Energy efficiency matters. What helps you more? Better form, or better fitness?

A bit of column A, and a bit of column B. If you’re not injured, your primary focus should be on getting fitter, faster and stronger rather than playing around with running technique. You’ll likely find that has the largest effect on your running performance. Plenty of the best runners in the world have amazing techniques as they glide over the ground, but they also train an exorbitant amount. If you start training more (in a sustainable fashion), improve your fatigue resistance and your oxygen efficiency, and your running form will probably begin to improve too.

However, with that in mind, it doesn’t hurt to make easy changes that “hold together” your running form. If you notice that you look a little wobbly when you run, it’s easy to make small changes during a run. Things like holding your head still, or landing on the ground a little quieter, or swinging your arms more symmetrically can make a difference. These gains are smaller though, giving you less bang-for-buck, so it shouldn’t occupy too much of your brain space. And rather than making self-diagnosed, ad-hoc changes as you want and desire, have someone experienced look at your form and suggest changes to you. Keep it as objective and efficient as possible.

To summarise: everything is connected, but none of it really matters. Run more, or maybe run less. Make changes, or don’t. I don’t care. It’s just running.

Injury

Just a quick point on injury. There are many different factors that contribute to running injuries - it’s not all as simple as eating, sleeping and training sensibly. Biomechanics absolutely matter too. If you’re reading this and you think I am anti-biomechanics, I’ve failed you and written this poorly. For the injured runner, it’s absolutely worth looking at your running gait to see if it plays a role in your injury or not. If it has a significant role, set aside the time and energy to work on making the appropriate changes.

This is largely individual, and it would be remiss for me to give out advice around what changes different injuries require. Plenty of healthcare clinics with a running focus offer gait analysis assessments, which is brilliant information to be considered in conjunction with an injury history and running goals in mind. As the saying goes, what works for one person’s medial tibial stress will be different to another’s. I’ll repeat myself: have someone experienced look at your form, rather than guess about it yourself.

Andddd… just for fun

An interesting debate I’ve had with Lachlan Scott (2:25 marathon guy), is does someone’s form look better purely because they’re running faster? Scotty’s argument is that someone might have perfect technical, biomechanical form, but they can be made to look pretty slow and laboured when someone goes past them. Someone running faster will always look better.

My counter example is that Muktar Edris, 2017 World Champion in the 5000m, beat beautifully smooth runners Mo Farah and Paul Chelimo - and yes, he was faster, but his form still looked pretty rough. Even as he went speeding past, I wouldn’t say his running form looked better. Objectively? Faster. Subjectively? Not perfect.

However, credit to Scotty - as Mo Farah strained past his maximum to reach the finish line, you can see his shoulders really creep up towards his ears, and his arms swing a hell of a lot more. If he was winning, you can be sure he wouldn’t be pulling the same facial expressions too.

Give it a watch and see which side you sit on.

However, at the end of the day, it shows you can run at a world class level with your unique style - you just need to get the training in.