First up, I believe the whole over-striding mantra being bad is wrong. I know what is being attempted to convey by saying over-striding but it really is confusing the matter as it’s focus is wrong – it’s not specific enough. Your pictures demonstrate this perfectly.

Have a look at the female and male heel strikers vs ryan halls. In particular look at the angle between the foot and the heel and the vertical. The angle is about the same for female runner and Ryan Hall – they are landing pretty well the same distance in front of their hips. While the male heel striker is landing closer to his hips – yet we’d all likely to conclude that he’s “over-striding”.

For me the import factor is the position of the knee relative to the foot and landing not the actual distance in front of the hips. I know you and Steve have brought this topic up before, but I think it needs to be shouted out once more, the problem is angle of the lower leg to the vertical not the how far you land in front of your center of mass. This needs to be repeated over and again as it this point has been lost in many of the posts.

A second point I’d like to add, and it’s related to the first is that landing closer to your center of mass, without other compensating changes, will result in higher loads during the landing phase as this has to happen to keep your balance – this is basic Newtonian mechanics. Think about balancing a stick with two weight on either end, if you move on closer to the middle you have to add extra weight to it and remove weight from the other weight to keep balance. This is such a simple point that has been lost in the land closer to your center of mass mantra, with all other aspect kept the same landing closer to center of mass results in HIGHER landing loads, completely counter to what the proponents of this mantra claim.

The “other compensating” is what is really important. How can the cue “land closer to your center of mass” lead to lower landing loads when the physics tells us the exact opposite will happen? My guess it’s the higher cadence is probably the strongest factor, and when given this cue runners shorten their stride and increase their cadence. My second guess is that with due to the shorter stride runners are also landing with a more bent knee. Both of these are great outcomes if… the runner actual employs them as a response to the cue. The cue itself is a still wrong though, landing close to the center of mass is not a good thing it makes things worse – it’s the higher cadence and landing with a more bent knee are crucial elements which will help runners.

I realise that slamming the whole “land closer to your center” of mass mantra as being fundamentally wrong is going to raise a few eye browse but next time you go for a run try out a few experiments to convince yourself. Just run on the level at a constant speed and constant cadence, then start landing closer to your center of mass but keep that cadence and speed the same. What do you have to do to keep balance? You have to start slamming your foot down to keep balance, the closer you move your foot to your center of mass the more force you have to land with. Now if you take this to it’s end point and land directly below the center of mass then you’ll need to hit the ground infinitely hard for an infinitely short space of time to keep balance… jay way to go Chi Running!

So… why does it matter that the “land closer to/underneath center of mass” is contradictory? If the majority of runners when using this cue do the right thing? Well I believe it’s important as sometimes the this whole fad can lead so many people to understand the way the world works and runner incorrectly. Even the some of the “scientist” involved in sports science are trumpeting this mantra without even mentioning the contradictory nature of it… if the scientist can’t get it right how would expect the rest of running world? Also how are we to make progress if almost everyone is happily focusing on the wrong things?

I believe passionately that we should be taking a grip of the crucial elements of what is the problem and teaching how to remedy this. We won’t see the wood from the trees until we start clearly marking out what is based on solid foundations and what is contradictory or false.

The cues we should be teaching are landing with a bent knee, with the knee over the foot – you can easily look down your knee on landing, if you can see your shin then you are landing with too straight a leg.

Why is landing with a straight leg bad? It will result in high landing loads as the your body pushes down through the bones, and a result in double peak in your GRF as when you knee pops out you’ll loose precious GRF as the different muscles start taking the load, so to compensate you have to generate more force on other parts of the stance.

What about cadence? I find using your arms as means of setting cadence the most effective. I find that phone app with metronome good for setting cadence. However, perhaps even cadence isn’t that critical to running efficiently and injury free… my guess is getting the landing phase right will cure most of the damaging aspects or poor running form as is the critical cue to single out over all else. Upping cadence will help, and as a cue may even help with sorting out the landing phase as a side effect (a bit like “land close to your center of mass” but not in any contradictory ;-).

A final note on cadence, I’m surprised that the aspect of height and cadence is never brought up and discussed. I believe it’s the angles of the various parts of the legs and feet that are crucial, rather than the actual speed of turnover. Given two runners moving at same speed, a taller runner at slower cadence will can have the same legs angles as a shorter runner at the higher cadence. Given the same angles the relative external forces all likely to be similar. I see no reason why we should expect a taller runner to run at the same cadence as a shorter runner to remain injury free.

Hi BJ,

Thanks for the links, interesting watching. Save for a few occasional bouts of calf exercise I’m afraid I don’t do any strength exercises… Um.. perhaps I should be adding a few. Kinda just love uncomplicated running though.

With the exercises videos and the video of Ryan Halls stride I didn’t see anything that struck me as hip extension being the core mechanism that we should work on. The donky kicks were just one of many routines, and Ryan’s hip extension wasn’t particularly prominent, or his gait different than I’d expect a world class athlete running sub 5 min/miles.

From time to time I play around with various aspects of my gait during running and hip extension is one of the parameters I play with. Hip extension is something I’ve come to view as an integral part of the running gait rather something as uniquely deserving of attention.

I must add that I’ve only had injuries in my lower legs – my feet, Achilles and calves. I am probably quite lucky in that a efficient running gait has come easily, seemingly a default setting for my body. Injuries I’ve had have been down to footwear problems or ramping up the miles too quickly.

Great summary of what is known on this topic. As one who teaches this stuff to folks almost daily one big tip is to make sure runners do not force the cadence…but rather allow it to happen by optimizing the natural elastic recoil properties of muscle/tendon which is 175-185 in most folks. Hip extension is the key as is getting in flat footwear to allow the recoil of the Achilles to occur in this frequency. With the heel elevated the recoil is shut off and you must force the cadence and thus create more muscle activity.
With practice, good cues, and patience you will discover the magic of recoil and simply allow the motion of hip extension, foot placement, and leg return to happen. No active pawback; no forced lifting motion, hamstring activation, or foot placement; and a very gentle lean from the ankle (with caution not to bend at waste). Runners need to be strong in single leg stance to be able to do this and have the proper range of motion in hip extension and calf/great toe dorsiflexion. We do a pre-assessment on this “mostability”- joint mobility and stability for the efficient running motion.
Main inhibitors we see clinically….work on these areas if you have a deficit:
•Weak glut medius for hip stability
•Weak foot intrinsics
•A big toe that is bent in (hallax valgus)- cannot balance on one foot. This is caused by improper fitting shoes
•Lack of adequate calf flexibility
So get in perfect posture and balance, practice jumping rope, let you legs extend behind you and return by recoil, and let your foot land beneath you. This should occur in a really relaxed rhythm.
Mark Cucuzzella MD
Owner Two Rivers Treads Center for Natural Running and Walking http://www.trtreads.org

Literal truth is for pedants. What really matters is how thinking affects performance. I find the mental image of a waterfall to be both simple and useful, despite its lack of scientific rigor. The ‘truth’ that matters most to me is running well, with maximal comfort and minimal damage. Any image that helps me get my body to do that is ‘good’.

Thanks Mark!

I believe landing flat footed might be the worst type of landing for reducing loads on the legs and the rest of the body. Landing on the heel will actually reduce loads in comparison to this, as will landing on the forefoot and then lower the heel will also reduce loads compared to a flat foot landing.

To test this out yourself stand up straight and then let your body fall forwards and then put out one straight leg to arrest your fall, lock your need to make sure all the loads go directly into your hips. Do this test three times, first land on your heel as you’d do when walking and let your foot rotate over naturally as you would when walking. Next land flat footed. Next land on your forefoot and let you heel down smoothly. Note the impact forces that are pushed up into your hip on each type of landing.

So if you’re like me you’ll find the flat footed landing the most solid of all the landing types, landing on my heel is second best, while landing on my forefoot and letting my heel down is the most gentle and smooth. It’s the ability to rotate the foot when landing on the heel that affords us a little reduction in loads over the flat footed landing.

With this observation, we can look back at the pictures and see that heavily dorsiflexed is a natural mechanism for reducing loads that we’ve all learnt from walking. Perhaps heel strike is not a cause of problems but a symptom…

Just look higher up the leg and you find the unbent knee, the classic straight legged pose of heel striker. A straight leg is appalling at applying landing loads smoothly – you might have just done this test to prove it, so the body has no place to mitigate the loading other than introducing heel strike.

Go back and the do the test with a bent knee and try all the landing types out. I’ve found that all foot positions on landing now become comfortable, even the flat footed one! It has become far less critical how I land – as long as I land with flexed leg the forces are all introduced smoothly.

Perhaps this goes some way to Jay Dicharry’s recent blog entry “Loading Rate: Part 2: Forefoot, midfoot, rearfoot……..Who cares?”. Personally I do care about landing, and much prefer to land on gently of my forefoot with my knee over my foot, it just more efficient – elastic recoil is maximized with forefoot landing. But I can’t argue that it’s possible to land safely on your heel. Jay’s findings suggests that some runners are able to land on their heel with a smooth onset of loading, and my crude little landing experiment illustrates it too.

Interestingly Jay’s article picks out a runner who lands mid foot as one who contrary to usual expectations suffers from a high loading rate… but perhaps this finding shouldn’t be too surprising given my little experiment with landing flat footed suggests that off all landing types it’s the least forgiving to problems in the rest of your gait.

Good point Pete, imbalance in strength of the muscles connecting to the hips will lead to problems at the hips elsewhere.

I am becoming curious about the role of soft tissue and bone development in response to training and how poor gait at the beginning can lead to imbalances in strengthening of various parts of the body – with the imbalances leading to injury as weaker parts are overwhelmed or lead to over stress in other parts of the body. Even with a healthy gait imbalances seem to occur as well as different parts of the body seem to strengthen at different rates.

One of my experiences with getting back into running over the last two years is that I’ve had injuries that I was convinced were due to problems with my gait. In hindsight the gait wasn’t the problem – footwear and ramping up the miles/insufficient recovery was.

Recording slow motion video would have been useful, as would have testing my cadence earlier, both would have probably have told me earlier that my gait was fine, and not at all the place to look for the cause and cure of the injuries I’ve had. With all the different advice and many cues it’s hard to know you are doing things correctly, it’s all too easy to assume that you are still doing something wrong, even when you aren’t.

I recall two points last year when I separately had concerns about over-striding and cadence. The time when I put the over-striding demon to rest was when I ran perpendicular to a sun that was low on the horizon – finally I got to see my side profile as I was running, rather than my foot being too far into of my knee it was landing below or behind. At this time the trick of looking down ones knee as a visual cue for detecting over-striding occurred to me.

On the cadence front I was convinced by my niggling injuries were likely down to too slow a cadence, so I downloaded a metronome app for my phone to my surprise my cadence was just fine. Putting this one to rest meant that I could focus on the areas that were really causing problems.

For me kicking my injuries to touch has involved dumping heavily cushioned shoes, making sure shoes are wide enough to accommodate my wide mid foot and taking proper rest when parts of my body are showing signs of over-use. I’m now 6 months into an injury free period ;-)

At one point I was convinced

“Good discussion. I maintain that the hips and pelvic girdle are THE keys to creating an efficient, safe, repeating stride. Not foot strike in relation to COM, cadence, or shoe type. Get the hips, particularly the hip extension right, and an optimum foot strike and desired cadence will follow.”

I’m curious, what makes you believe this is might be the case?

Personally I can’t see a mechanism in which what you do with the hips as being critical to getting the overall gait efficient or lower impact. What we do with the hips will make a bit of difference to how will distribute forces, but this will be a secondary important to the parts of the body that generating all the big forces. The big forces all come from foot and leg placement through the stance.

What I would expect in order of importance would be knee angle on landing, then cadence, then lateral motion, then foot position, balance of the upper body and then hips. We might tweak the ordering depending upon what problem areas that a runner is particularly poor at , but I would expect this order to be a reasonable order to work on.

I would suggest the knee angle is most important as it’s the joint with greatest ability to tune the rate of loading. If you land with a straight leg then the forces can be introduced so rapidly that hips will be overwhealmed and collapse a little and rotate horizontal prematurely. Landing with bent knee will result in the loads raising slower and giving the hips greater time to handle the loads and be more square when the peak loads come in. Applying greater or less forces through the hips on landing won’t fix impact problem, bending the knee will.