Technique – What is it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a follow on from my last post about technique here are a few more points about what technique isn’t and why these cannot be the objective for anyone trying to achieve efficient running.

Just as a reminder, here are the points I mentioned and which ones have been covered thus far…

I can tell you what it isn’t…

It isn’t trying to run on the balls of your feet
It isn’t trying to run “lightly” with quick steps
It isn’t trying to land on a bent knee
It isn’t trying to not step out in front
It isn’t trying to shorten your stride
It isn’t trying to increase your cadence
It isn’t running barefoot or in “minimalist” shoes

 

Trying to Run “Lightly”

I’m at a loss to explain this one to be honest because the only way I can think of running “lightly” is by using correct technique which significantly reduces impact forces.

I have seen people try to run “lightly” by sort of walking fast, rolling their feet from heel to toe. They just look a bit like Groucho Marx to me. This doesn’t lessen the impact forces either because as soon as you start moving faster like this then you will push too hard, leave the leg behind which means the other leg will hit the ground before your body has caught up with it. In other words you will still land in front of yourself with a straighter knee, putting the brakes on. Most people are really bad at defining how hard or soft they feel their landing to be – especially when they are used to hitting the ground bloody hard!

Basically, you might kid yourself that you are in fact running lighter on your feet while actually nothing has changed. The only way to ensure that you run with minimum impact forces is to train your body to run with correct posture and technique. There are no short cuts.

 

Trying to Land on a Bent Knee

Although there may be some merit in visualising more of a knee bend for some people, just trying to run with mor of a bend in your knees is likely to make you overdo it. Also, just bending the knees while not adopting good posture could possibly make things worse. You will certainly not be running more efficiently. That being said though, if you learn to keep a slight bend in the knees by looking at your overall posture will help you to reduce the chances of injury when you run. Notice though that I did say that the root of all this is to make sure you have a good posture. Good posture makes sure that you have just enough and not too much of a knee bend at appropriate stages of the running cycle.

 

Trying Not to Step in Front

Trying to do this actually results in “chopping” the stride which can result in leaving your legs too far behind you and yes, you guessed it, the running action is slowed down and you end up landing in front anyway. Another problem with this is that in “chopping” the stride, tension is introduced in the hips and thus you can injure yourself by landing with tense muscles. The legs should be allowed to move freely, the knees should be allowed to naturally come forwards (but not up) so that the lower leg then assumes its proper position beneath the knee. This guarantees a good landing with knee bent just enough to provide cushioning and store some energy within muscle and tendon to be released when your body travels over centre.

 

 

And to clarify…

I started out looking at Pose and Chi, both of which have their upsides and downsides. I still keep an open mind though and tend to believe more in what I see scientifically proven and what seems to work in practice too.

The bit about cadence – well apparently it has been bandied about that 180 steps per minute is the optimum frequency at which we can utilise the elastic return of muscle and tendon. One has to realise though that this is a basic average that seems to work best for most folk. If you run faster down hill, your cadence will go ballistic. I’m not sure how mechanically efficient it is to let the cadence go very high – I suspect that it has a much higher energy cost than most proponents of efficient running would advocate. That being said, it doesn’t mean that nobody should run at higher cadence. It is up to the individual, how they like to run and of course what their goals are and what level of runner they are. Personally I think running at lower cadence points to other issues within the runner’s form that probably should be looked at and maybe corrected.

The emphasis is simply not to try to force the cadence but let it happen as a result of getting the posture and motion right. You can only do this if you relax enough into the run and let the legs move freely. Tense up and the cadence will drop. I swear by leg speed drills down grassy slopes! As well as it being enormous fun charging down these slopes, I believe it helps us to understand the link between cadence, running speed, rate of fall etc. It also trains the muscles to accept that they can move the legs much faster than they (and you) previously thought. As always, it’s practice that helps you to find exactly what works for you.

Trying to Shorten Stride

Actively trying to shorten or “chop” your stride introduces tension which in turn slows your running action down and thus your whole running style will suffer as a result. It will probably feel very uncomfortable too. It’s just another version of trying not to step out in front of yourself. You will leave your trailing leg too far behind you and it will become difficult to retrieve. As you know by now landing with tense muscles id bad and trying to shorten the stride will lead to tension in the quads and possibly calves too. At the risk of repeating myself, no I will repeat myself in an effort to remind you! Read on from “trying not to step out in front”…

“The legs should be allowed to move freely, the knees should be allowed to naturally come forwards (but not up) so that the lower leg then assumes its proper position beneath the knee. This guarantees a good landing with knee bent just enough to provide cushioning and store some energy within muscle and tendon to be released when your body travels over centre.”

Running Barefoot or in “Minimalist” Shoes

Although this is intrinsically a great idea, it will not guarantee that you will start to run more efficiently and you may well injure yourself in doing so! Not so long ago I was at a local Saturday morning 5k race; it’s events like this where I can’t help but watch people and try to think what is going through their minds. There are so many examples of running style to look at, I always find it interesting to watch. Anyway, I noticed one person who stood out from the crowd a little – he looked very serious and determined to do well I thought. The kit he was wearing looked top notch stuff and when I looked at his feet, he was wearing some Vivo Barefoot Evos. Now he was the ONLY person there that I could see who was wearing them! I decided to keep an eye on him as he went to do a warm up lap or two of the cricket pitch. At first I thought his running would look quite good but then all of a sudden I could see his conscious effort kick in and he started prancing round on the tarmac path that circled the pitch. Obviously he was thinking that these new shoes would make him run great and he had to make it look good. Sadly he made it look very bad. If only he had just let himself run and not think about it then I think his style may well have been much better. I was a bit concerned that he would hurt himself as he was very powerfully springing up in the air with the full power of his calf muscles and was standing on his toes at all times – even when he started walking! Unfortunately this lad pulled out of the race with a torn calf after a mile or so. I wish I had said something BUT I decided not to because I thought he’d more than likely have taken great offense to a complete stranger trying to tell him how to run when he had spent so much on these shoes that would obviously make him run better! I felt rather sorry for him as he limped off looking very sorry for himself; he must have been wondering why on earth these new shoes didn’t work for him! Of course, it is because the shoes do not change how you run, you do and without the knowledge of how to run properly then people will continue to make mistakes.

Conclusion

So now you know what good technique isn’t. “But what is good technique then?” I hear you say. Well, it’s surprisingly simple really. Simple but not particularly easy to put into practice for a lot of people. All you have to do is stand with knees bent, upright posture, fall forwards and keep picking up our feet as your body goes over each one in turn as you change feet. That is basically all you need to do. Do anything else and it will slow the running action down. introduce more errors and then you will try to compensate buy introducing more extraneous effort. Before you know it, you are running with bad technique and getting injured!

When I describe what to do, you will notice that what I say never changes. It is never any different for running up hill, down hill, on the flat, in the wet, snow, ice, on road or off road. The basic technique is always the same.