Auditing Your Running Technique

Just like any good trainer or strength coach would say, posture should be the starting point and base of skill progression. Image: Thinkstock.

Running is just one of those things; if you ask 50 people about running technique the chances are that you would get such a wide variation of answers that you would be more confused than when you had started. Furthermore, many people don’t even begin to think of running as a ‘skill’ per sé, rather as a normal physiological and biomechanical function.

Running is most definitely a skill, however, and as such it requires proper technique and regular practice. Here we are going to look at the basics of running technique, and then build up from the base right through to the small technique modifications that make just those tiny differences. Proper running technique can not only improve your running times, but it can prevent injury and ensure you continue running for many years to come.

Posture
Just like any good trainer or strength coach would say, posture should be the starting point and base of skill progression. If there is poor posture present, all technique and development built on top will be of a sub-par standard, exacerbate the poor posture and ultimately leave you worse off than when you initially started out.

To start, for good posture we require a straight back, with the natural curvature of the spine. This straight back keeps your airway open, and makes sure breathing remains an easy and unrestricted practice whilst running. A straight back also requires ‘shoulders back’, making sure that your shoulder blades are held back in line with the spine and preventing your shoulders ‘rolling in’, which ultimately restricts breathing.

With a straight back, we now need to ‘lean forward’ into a position that allows us to start falling as we run. Running is commonly considered ‘controlled falling’ – that is to say that when running you are continually falling forward, due to gravity’s pull, and your legs are catching and propelling yourself with each step. Keeping an straight back with shoulder blades retracted, lean forward at the hips and allow yourself to start falling. When your each the point that you start falling and need to catch yourself, you’ve found the running position that works for you. It may take time to adjust to this technique, but ultimately it will improve running comfort and efficiency.

Foot Strike
If we’ve applied our correct running posture effectively, we should be ‘falling’ with each step and attempting to catch ourselves. This is where the importance of proper foot striking begins. The worst thing you can do for both your body and your running efficiency is striking with your heel. When landing on your heel, the ground reaction forces applied through the foot resound up through the knee, hips and lower back, and often contribute to long term pain, soreness and running difficulty. On top of this, striking with your heel decelerates you with each step, and makes you adopt a more upright position – decreasing running efficiency and contributing to long term injury.

Sprinting requires you to run up on your toes, striking solely with the forefoot. This utilises the natural spring of the Achilles tendon for fast propulsion and efficient foot strike. Forefoot striking also makes best use of our correct running posture, however, the pressure on both the Achilles and calf muscles make forefoot striking hard to maintain for longer durations of time.

Hence, mid-foot strike is the best strike to use for longer distance running. Mid-foot trike takes the best aspects of forefoot and heel strike, whilst also maintaining correct running posture.

Mid-foot strike requires us to strike the ground just behind the forefoot. After the initial contact we can slowly plant the mid-foot and heel into the ground, before propelling off. This eases pressure through the Achilles and calf muscles, and simultaneously decreases the ground reaction forces associated with heel striking.

Hip Drop
If you watch an assortment of social runners, you will no doubt see at least one running with excessive hip displacement. This means that with each stride their hip (of the striking foot) appears to drop, creating a mild lateral flexion of the spine and placing unwanted pressure on the spine, sacrum and pelvic bone.

To counteract hip drop, we require strong glutes that can maintain level hips with each running stride. Many single leg stability and strengthening exercises can be used to improve strength and keep the hips level during running.

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Hills
Hills are often the most horrific and hated aspects of running; but in reality they can be your friend, and help you run with better technique and more efficiency.
When running up hills it is important to utilise our proper running posture, with our straight back and forward lean. Running up hills makes it easier to maintain this posture, as we naturally lean forward when running up a hill. Many find running up hills to be far more tiring than running on the flat – which makes sense. However, when running up hills we can employ the help of our big hip extension muscles; our glutes. With our natural lean forward, we can really engage our glutes to get the most out of each stride and power through to the top of the hill. This makes hill running great for toning and strengthening the glutes.

Similar to running up hills, many runners appear to hate running down again on the other side. Downhills are a pretty much a free ride, once you know how to run them properly. Ensuring you land with your mid-foot strike when running down a hill, you can capitalise on the downward and forward momentum to increase your running speed while spending the same energy as running on the flat.
Landing heel or toe first will either decelerate or cause a loss of control (respectively), making hills dangerous with poor technique. Effective Hill running requires practice before you can confidently power up hills and enjoy a free ride down the other side.

Breathing
Breathing is the most important thing we do on a day to day basis. When you exercise, your heart rate increases in response to increased blood oxygen requirements, which in turn leads to an increase in the rate and importance of our breathing. Effective breathing while running is very individual decision, as everyone finds different breathing techniques or timings to be beneficial to them.

Some people breathe in for 2 strides and out for 2, some breathe in for 3 and out for 2, some people breathe completely independently of running stride and the list goes on. Finding your comfortable breathing timing comes down to practice, and what works for you. Furthermore, breathing may well need to be different early on in a run as opposed to later in a run, when your body is suffering the effects of fatigue.

When we add all these elements together in our running, we can ensure we are getting the most efficient and biomechanically sound running technique, conducive to safe long distance running and a long and prosperous running career.

Johann finished his bachelor of sport and exercise science at UTS in 2014 and is currently undertaking Honours by Research looking at injury prevention in professional AFL.