Apparently the article has been spread around quite widely (sadly, the headline accomplished its goal), and this prompted the CBC to contact the lead author of the research study, Jason Dyck. I thought I’d share a link to the interview they conducted with him as it provides some interesting perspective, particularly about how a scientist feels about media misinterpretation/mangling of his hard work. On this topic he says:

“A lot of times when you work away in your lab you hope that people read your studies and that it makes an impact,” said Dyck.

“When you see all your hard work distilled down to one phrase that isn’t correct it’s a little disheartening.”

You can listen to the 8 minute interview here.

Now, I love a glass of red wine with dinner, and would love it if this headline were true. But, as a runner, I also know that drinking red wine isn’t going to substitute for exercise if I intend to get fit. Sounds too good to be true, and I hate articles that make it seem like there are easy ways to get exercise “in a pill” (or a wine glass….).

The claim made in the headline piqued my curiosity enough to make me hunt down the article in the Journal of Physiology on which it is based. Turns out the full text is available online, so I was able to scan through it. My conclusion is that this is an example of shoddy journalism and a sensationalistic, click-bait headline. Why? Let’s go through a few relevant details.

1. The study was on rats, not humans, and it did not look at the effects of red wine. Instead, they were supplementing rats with resveratrol, a compound found in red wine.

2. They were not comparing the benefits of resveratrol (or red wine) to the benefits of exercise, they were looking at the potential benefits of resveratrol supplementation to an endurance exercise regimen. Both groups of rats in the study exercised, and one group received the supplement. They resveratrol group did show performance gains beyond the control group, but the results say nothing about substituting resveratrol for regular exercise, only whether it enhances benefits accrued through regular exercise.

3. The dose of resveratrol given to the rats was very high: 146 mg per kg of body weight per day. Let’s think about this for a minute. I weigh about 80 kg, so to get an equivalent daily dose of resveratrol I’d need to ingest 11,680 mg (or almost 12 grams) of resveratrol per day. How much resveratrol is in a glass of wine? This page at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University indicates that red wine typically has anywhere between 0.3 to 1.07 mg of resveratrol per 5 oz glass. If we use 0.7 mg as a rough average, that would mean I’d need to drink over 16,000 glasses of red wine per day in order to get the equivalent amount of resveratrol that the rats in the study ingested. Good luck with that!

4. The journal article is not new, as suggested in the sub-title. It was published in June 2012. This more recent study was actually conducted on exercising humans, and used a more reasonable dose of 150 mg of reseveratrol (still would take a lot of wine to equal that!). It actually found the opposite, that resveratrol can inhibit the benefits of exercise. Says the lead author: "The easiest way to experience the benefits of physical activity is to be physically active," says Dr. Gurd, a professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies. "The efficacy of RSV at improving metabolic and cardiovascular functions is not as profound as was once thought." And this study found that resveratrol supplementation (75 mg per day, that’s still a ton of wine!) in healthy, middle-age women did not confer metabolic benefits. And this study correlated naturally occurring resveratrol levels in humans with various health markers, as summarized here (emphasis on last sentence is mine):

“…the researchers analyzed 24 hours of urine samples from 783 people over the age of 65 for metabolites of resveratrol. After accounting for such factors as age and gender, the people with the highest concentration of resveratrol metabolites were no less likely to have died of any cause than those with no resveratrol found in their urine. The concentration of resveratrol was not associated with inflammatory markers, cardiovascular disease or cancer rates.”

So what should we take from this? Skipping your next workout in favor of a glass of red wine might sound great, but it’s probably not going to substitute for the benefits of breaking a sweat. And perhaps even more importantly, be wary of anything you read on Facebook! If an article cites scientific research and makes outrageous claims, do a little digging and find the source. Twisting science to make clickable headlines is a popular pastime these days, and you have to take anything you read with a healthy dose of skepticism.

The study is being conducted by UNH Master’s student Corie Mae Callaluca and senior undergraduate Neil Baroody (they are looking for more participants – see bottom of post). Their goal is to compare economy between habitually barefoot (true barefoot, not minimalist) and shod runners, and to look at how economy changes if a shod runner is trained to run barefoot over a period of about 2 months (I’m in the shod group since my barefoot mileage is minimal, and not sure if I’ll do the barefoot training as I have two races coming up).

The study involves several visits to the UNH lab, and on my visit today they took baseline anthropometric measurements (height, weight, skinfold caliper measurements for body fat, etc.), and I did a VO2max test on an instrumented h/p/cosmos treadmill (see image at left, that’s not me though :) – no force data were collected today). For the treadmill test, I did a 5 minute warmup run, then was outfitted with a portable Cosmed respiratory gas analyzer. This involved having a facemask strapped to my head, and a small analyzer unit attached via a harness to my chest – pretty cool system (see below right, again not me in the photo!).

When the test started I ran for a bit at steady pace, then they increased the incline at one minute intervals while keeping the pace steady. At each incline increase I had to report my rate of perceived exertion, and all the while my respiratory gasses and heart rate were being recorded.

Initially I felt very comfortable with the mask on, but as the incline went up and my respiratory rate increased the mask started to make me feel a bit claustrophobic – felt as if I couldn’t get enough air through it. The hardest part was actually the fact that the mask made it hard for me to see the treadmill belt, which is a bit unnerving when you are maxing out. It’s amazing how quickly things got hard, and I made it 7-8 incline increases before I cut myself off – I was sucking hard through the mask and my heart was racing.

Once they stopped the treadmill I hopped off and tried to rip off the mask so I could get some air – don’t think I was supposed to do that! I took a few minutes to recover and got a printout of my data – my VO2max came out at 50.5 ml oxygen/min/Kg. Not particularly special, but not bad either. One thing that didn’t register for me until today is that VO2max is dependent on the body weight you record prior to the test (i.e., the Kg part of the ml O2/min/Kg), so small fluctuations in weight can slightly alter your specific VO2max value. I figure if I drop another 30 pounds of body fat so that I look the part of an elite marathoner my VO2 max will be something to talk about!

The next step is for me to return next week and run a 5K time trial on an indoor track with the gas analyzer mask attached – that ought to be interesting and rather difficult to say the least! I also get to run on the treadmill again and have force measurements taken, which I’m really looking forward to.

That’s the description of the test itself, so what exactly does VO2max mean? Basically, it’s a measure of how much oxygen you can deliver to your working muscles during maximal exercise. The higher your VO2max, the more oxygen you are able to deliver to fuel metabolism. This is influenced by many factors, from your lung size to your cardiac output to the capillarization of your muscles to the function of enzymes in your muscles. However, despite how often VO2max is mentioned, it’s not a perfect indicator of performance capability (other factors like economy and anaerobic threshold come into play here), but it can give some idea of your endurance potential (to view a list of some of the athletes with the highest recorded VO2max values, click here).

In addition to VO2max, my data spreadsheet contained a lot of additional information, including heart rate (looks like my max HR was 178bpm), and respiratory exchange ratio (RER). The latter is the ratio of carbon dioxide exhaled to oxygen inhaled and is an indicator the type of fuel the body is burning during exercise. Lower values (< 1) indicate greater fat burning, whereas values above 1 indicate greater use of carbs as fuel.

One last thing, the duo running this study are looking for additional participants. In particular, habitually barefoot runners, and shod females between 18-25 years old who can run a sub 22:00 5K are needed (the latter are what they need the most right now). If you are interested, contact Neil Baroody, or Corie May Callaluca – if you participate you get to do the VO2max test as well.

Finally, since I like numbers, I’ve included my raw data for a few variables below so you can see what it looks like. I’ve included values for time, V02 consumed/Kg, heart rate, and respiratory exchange ratio (R). Not sure what happened at 6:40-7:40 as everything dipped downward.

What Hamill and colleagues did was to take a group of ten runners who were heel strikers and have them run across a force plate 10 times in each of four footwear conditions. Three of these were 4mm drop shoes (i.e., 4mm heel lift relative to the forefoot) that varied only in the total thickness of the midsole cushioning (all had a thin outsole). In other words, the shoe conditions were as follows in terms of midsole cushion: 4mm heel, 0mm forefoot; 12mm heel, 8mm forefoot; 20mm heel, 16mm forefoot. The fourth condition was to have the runners go barefoot. None of these runners appear to have been habitual minimalist or barefoot runners, so the study is basically looking at how a runner used to running in a typical modern shoe changes when they go to a 4mm drop shoe (of varying midsole configuration) vs. barefoot. This is short term, immediate change as the runners did not run for an extended period of time to acclimate themselves in any of these shod or unshod conditions (acclimation was only 5-10 minutes prior to data collection).

What the authors found was that impact characteristics and knee/ankle stiffness did not vary among the 3 shod conditions. The runners all remained heel strikers in the 3 iterations of the 4mm drop shoes, though details of gait kinematics such as stride rate, length, etc. were not reported. However, when running barefoot, which presumably was a novel behavior for these runners, they adopted a midfoot/forefoot strike (I was a bit confused by how they define midfoot since they talk about the foot contacting on the midfoot after which the heel comes down – I tend to think of midfoot being simultaneous contact of heel and the base of the fifth metatarsal). Associated with this is the fact that impact peak and loading rate were significantly reduced, time to reach impact peak decreased, and ankle stiffness increased in the barefoot condition.

So what does all of this mean? Basically, if you have been running with a heel striking gait in traditional modern shoes, it is unlikely that going to a 4mm drop shoe will immediately cause you to lose your heel strike. However, going barefoot will cause you to adopt a very different running style whereby you lose the heel strike and adopt impact moderating behaviors (e.g., a different footstrike) that reduce peak impact force and the speed with which the foot collides with the ground. These are not entirely surprising results to anyone who has tried running barefoot on a hard surface, but do add to the growing literature showing that running barefoot is very different than running in a shoe with a cushioned heel lift. Whether or not these changes are linked to injury reduction is an open question, and it is possible that a midfoot/forefoot stride could simply shift primary injury locality away from the knee (minimalist runners often report that changing style helps with knee pain) and to the Achilles/calf, ankle, and foot, particularly among those not acclimated to running with barefoot mechanics.

What the study does not tell us is whether running in the shoes with the 4mm drop midsole would cause changes in gait over a longer period of time. Most runners who have gone to a more minimalist shoe report that gait change takes time, and that shoes with a lower heel facilitate a change in gait. It doesn’t happen immediately, as this study demonstrates, but it would be interesting to see if patterns changed if these runners were to run exclusively in a 4mm drop shoe for say 6 months. Many so-called minimalist shoes coming out have adopted a 4mm drop midsole or something close to that (e.g., NB Minimus, Saucony Kinvara, Mirage, Fastwitch, etc.), and thus information on potential changes with long term acclimation is much needed.

Perhaps the biggest take-home message from this paper is that if you want to get a handle on what more natural running feels like, simply take off you shoes and try running barefoot. Barefoot and minimalist runners often say that the best way to work on gait change, should that be your goal, is to start by running barefoot, and once you learn the barefoot stride it will be retained when you start running in shoes. I tend to agree with this given my own experience, though I did most of my form work in the Vibram Fivefingers. I can now run quite comfortably in 4-6mm lift shoes with a midfoot stride, but it was a long process to get to that point, and reprogramming stride can take quite a long time.

All in all, this was a cool little study with a simple hypothesis and fairly straightforward results. Like other studies have, it demonstrates that barefoot running is different than running in shoes, and that impact parameters change when shoes are removed. Does it mean we should all be running barefoot all the time? Of course not! That might work for some, but it’s impractical for others, including me when dealing with 3+ months of ice covered sidewalks and roads as I have this winter. I personally am not a regular barefoot runner, but have done so on a few occasions (up to 2 miles on asphalt) and can attest that it is very different than running in shoes. We still have a lot to learn, but it’s good to see scientists addressing these questions, and this paper was a nice contribution.

As is typical of just about any scientific paper, I’m left with more questions than answers after reading this one, but such is the nature of research. Among the things I’d like to know:

1. What would have happened if the runners ran in a typical shoe with a 12mm heel lift? Would this have differed than the 4mm drop shoes?

2. Extending the previous thought, I’d like to see shoes of varying heel lift tested so as to see if there is a threshold below which gait does change in a heel striking runner. Do you have to go all the way to barefoot? Other studies have shown that shoes like the Vibram Fivefingers do a reasonable job of simulating barefoot mechanics (Squadrone and Gallozzi, 2009), so it would be interesting to see at what point we lose that similarity as we modify midsole properties.

3. How would the results of this study vary if habitual minimalist/barefoot runners were tested?

4. As discussed above, how does acclimation affect the results? All too often studies like this are done by exposing heel striking runners a novel condition (low drop shoe, barefoot) and asking them to run without acclimating to the novel condition. The results of this study show that running barefoot results in almost immediate changes, but even the barefoot runners in this study produced an impact peak, which is typically not the case for habitual barefoot runners such as those examined by Lieberman et al., 2010. Clearly a motor learning process must be involved, and this needs to be studied in more detail.

In the video, note the dramatic contrast in stride and footstrike between runners 1 and 3 (flexed knee at contact, midfoot or very mild heel landings) and runners 2 and 4 (overstriding with extended leg, highly dorsiflexed foot, and pronounced heel strike). Runner 1 is wearing Newton shoes (2mm drop Distance Racers I think). Runner 2 appears to be in Mizuno Wave Creations, which have a large “shock absorber” in the heel. Can’t easily make out the shoes for runners 3 and 4, but they appear to be standard training shoes with a reasonably large heel lift.

A few points are worth mentioning here:

1. Overstriding is a very real occurrence in a race setting. Runners 2 and 4 both land on a highly dorsiflexed foot with a nearly straight leg that is extended well out in front of their center of mass (COM is located roughly near the hips). The thinking is that overstriding will result in the shoe and skeletal structures of the lower body absorbing much of the initial impact as shock travels through the heel and up the leg, and that this in turn might increase the likelihood of repetitive use injury in places like the tibia, knee joint, and hip joint. I would also suspect that the pronounced heel strike requires greater activity of the muscles on that anterior side of the lower leg (e.g., the tibialis anterior) to slow the foot slap that occurs after initial contact – this can be associated with things like the development of anterior shin splints.

2. In a midfoot landing with a flexed knee, and more or less vertical orientation of the lower leg at initial contact (runners 1 and 3), the soft tissues of the leg (muscles and springy tendons/ligaments) likely are doing more of the initial shock absorption, relieving some of the impact on the bones and joints of the leg (see below). It is possible, however, that increased muscle usage could also result in increased metabolic cost to the runner (see Derrick, 2004 for more on this).

3. As runner’s 1 and 3 show, it is possible to adopt a midfoot or very light heel landing in shoes that vary in their construction. My personal belief has grown to the point where I now view form as more important than shoes, and this video shows that you can adopt a potentially less impactful stride even in a more heavily cushioned, heel-lifted shoe. That being said, such shoes, in my opinion, make it much harder to get to that stride, and this is something I have experienced myself. Form and shoes are separate yet linked, and it is my belief that moving to less shoe with a smaller heel lift can help one to migrate away from and overstriding gait.

4. So, ultimately the question that arises is if you are an overstrider, what can you do? A few weeks ago I wrote a post discussing a paper published by Dr. Brian Heiderscheit and colleagues in the journal Medicine & Science in Sport and Exercise. Dr Heiderscheit’s paper showed that runners who adopt a quicker stride (increased step rate) reduced impact at both the knee and hip. The study showed that increasing stride rate by 10% increased the flexion angle of the knee at initial contact, shortened stride in terms of distance of the heel from the center of mass at contact, reduced vertical excursion of the center of mass (i.e., less bounce), reduced the inclination of the foot at impact (i.e., a less pronounced heel strike), and reduced braking impulses. Many of these changes were observed with even just a 5% increase in stride rate. There was a lot more to that study, and a limitation was that the results are not yet linked to reduced injury rates (a study is apparently underway), but the take home message was that adopting a shorter, quicker stride might be a good approach to overcoming an overstriding gait, potentially reducing injury risk in the long run (no pun intended!).

5. Finally, a personal note. I have been working very hard over the past several months on making these very changes (shorter, quicker) to my own stride. Why? Take a look at the video below of me from the same point in the Manchester race as the video posted above:

Runblogger Machester City Marathon from Runblogger on Vimeo.

Video of my footstrike/gait just after mile 6 of the Manchester City Marathon. Video shot at 300 frames/sec with a Casio Exilim EX-F1 camera. Courtesy of https://runblogger.com/.

This video was taken almost a year ago, and the pronounced heel strike is fairly apparent – I wanted to change my gait if for no other reason than to see if I could. After a long period of initial awkwardness, I now feel very comfortable running with a shorter, quicker stride, and most of the time now I seem to run on my midfoot or forefoot (depending in large part on shoe choice and fatigue). Will this make me a better or less injury prone runner? It’s hard to say, since I’ve never suffered an injury that has caused me to miss significant training time. The transition, however, has been amazingly interesting to experience, and I now feel like a switch-hitter in terms of running form. I can move between a heel and mid/forefoot strike easily, and I can tell almost instantly which is going to be more appropriate and comfortable in a given shoe. All of this is a continual learning process, and I suspect that my form will be a work in progress for many years to come – I look forward to it!

Running coach and exercise physiologist Steve Magness of the Science of Running blog recently put up a long, thorough post explaining his thoughts about “How to Run.” One of the things I found interesting about his post was his discussion of the use of “cues” to help one improve running form. Often, as Magness admits, the cues are an exaggeration of what happens in reality, the purpose there being to get a runner to change form in the direction wanted by thinking in terms of a cue that overshoots the actual goal. As an example, here’s what Magness has to say about cues used with the goal of getting a runner to shorten their stride (to avoid overstriding – more on this below) and adopt a more midfoot/forefoot footstrike:

“Sometimes when giving cues it helps to overemphasize the point, such as telling a runner to feel like they are putting their feet down behind them when correcting foot strike. Since “normal” is incorrect, such as reaching out and heel striking in this example, sometimes over-correcting is necessary initially.”

As indicated, the basic goal of the above cue is to help a runner to avoid overstriding (see Asics advertisement photo below for a demonstration of overstriding), which is when a runner reaches out ahead of the body with the lead foot and (typically) heel strikes with an extended leg (I should point out that overstriding and heel striking are not necessarily always linked). Overstriding can lead to the generation of braking forces and deceleration of the body upon footstrike, reducing efficiency and potentially increasing risk of injury due to impact shock transmitting up the leg. While there is debate about a lot of aspects of running form, avoidance of overstriding is one thing that most people seem to agree about (though some have questioned if we even have an accurate definition of overstriding). Returning to Steve’s cue, the reality is that the runner will never “put the foot down behind them,” but consciously thinking about this cue can help the runner to land closer to their center of gravity and avoid the dreaded overstride.

The reason I started this post by talking about cues and overstriding is because one of the pieces of advice I see most frequently in descriptions of “proper” or “optimal” running form is to land with the lead foot directly under the center of gravity of the body, thus avoiding an overstriding gait. If you’re not familiar with the “center of gravity” (COG) concept, it simply refers to the average location of the mass or weight of an object. For example, if you were to try to balance a pencil perpendicularly across your extended finger, the location where you could balance it evenly without it falling off would be the center of gravity of the pencil. In a human standing vertically, the center of gravity is located somewhere along the midline of the body extending from the head through the hips (closer to the hips). If you were to lean forward, the center of gravity would move forward as well.

Advice to land directly under the center of gravity is all over the place, and it is one of the principles of popular running styles like Chi, Pose, and Newton’s natural running. For an example, watch this video featuring Danny Dreyer, founder of Chi Running:

Let me start by saying that I agree with some of what Dreyer says in this video, and my goal here is not to criticize Chi Running – a lot of people swear by it, and if it works for you, by all means keep it up. My problems are more in the details and the fact that my observations don’t match up with some of what I am hearing. Dreyer’s demonstration and description of the problems associated with overstriding and dorsiflexion of the foot make sense (I’m intrigued by the relation of foot dorsiflexion to shin splints). I’m a bit less convinced on the forward lean issue as Robert Cheruiyot won the 2010 Boston Marathon with what looks like a pretty upright posture to me (Meb looks pretty upright as well…).

Where Dreyer completely loses me is when he says to “Remember one thing…don’t ever step past your hip” and then goes on to explain that whenever he lands his foot is either “directly underneath” or “sometimes even behind” his center of mass. “I don’t want my foot to land in front of my hips, ever…” says Dreyer. What he seems to be saying is that any landing in front of the hips will introduce braking forces into the stride and reduce efficiency. If this is indeed the case, one would expect that runners who rely on having an efficient gait in order to make a living (i.e., elite racers) should never land in front of their hips as the “braking forces” generated would surely put them at a competitive disadvantage.

In my previous post on running form variability I used still images captured from high speed footage (300 fps) of the top runners in the 2010 Boston Marathon to address variability in running form (see below). Following the logic outlined above regarding landing under the center of gravity, a runner with a vertically oriented torso (like Robert Cheruiyot or Meb Keflezighi in the images below – we’ll ignore that they’re “not supposed” to do this), the goal would be to have the foot land directly under the hips. In a runner with a forward lean (like Tekeste Kebede or Ryan Hall below), the foot would land just a bit further forward, but still under the torso. (note – the apparent downward grade in the images is likely due to a tilt in the camera position given that the segment of the course where the video was taken was relatively flat – Washington St., just before turn onto Commonwealth Ave.)

In looking at the above pictures, it is quite obvious that none of the four runners are striking directly underneath the center of gravity at the moment of initial contact of the foot with the ground – all four of them are landing well in front of the hips. In an attempt to look at this further, I pulled four additional images synchronized to the moment where the entire sole of the foot comes into ground contact to support the weight of the body. On these images I drew a line from the center of the ankle joint through the knee joint, and then extended the line vertically through space to see where it fell relative to the center of gravity (see below). In all four runners, it is clear that full foot plant occurs in front of the torso and hips, and thus none of these elite runners are landing with the lead foot directly under the center of gravity. I’m well aware that some elites can use their superior physiological traits to overcome technique flaws and still perform well, but when all of the top 5 finishers (I’ve confirmed it in Deriba Merga – 3rd place – as well) at the Boston Marathon are all doing the same thing, I, for one, stop and pay attention.

So all of these elite runners from Boston seem to be breaking a seeming “cardinal rule” of proper running form – or are they? Perhaps the reality is that they are doing what we should all do, which is to land slightly in front of the center of gravity, with the lower leg (below the knee) oriented approximately vertically, and a slight bend at the knee (Kebede does appear to have a bit more of an extended knee compared to the others in the pictures above – he finished second in the 2010 Boston Marathon). Maybe the advice to land under the center of gravity has little basis in reality, and we should view it as more of a cue than a description of what we should actually be doing while running.

When it comes to this whole topic of landing under the COG, I’ll add that I have long been doubtful that landing directly under or (even moreso) behind the center of gravity is even possible (unless perhaps you are a sprinter accelerating off the blocks). It seems to me that if you were to land directly under your hips (or, better yet, behind them) with a forward lean, all you would really accomplish would be to pitch yourself face-first into the ground. Indeed, exercise scientists Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas from the Science of Sport blog state the following in one of their posts on running form:

“It’s probably impossible to run with a landing directly beneath your centre of mass. That would require you to be leaning so far forward, you’d probably be able to to touch the ground with your hand! So the limit to balance also limits the ability to get that landing directly underneath the hips (or wherever the centre of mass is). Also, if you chop your stride too much, then you start to compromise on the benefit of having longer legs – you effectively shorten your ‘reach’.“

Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but I’m a very visual person and I value precision and clarity when I try to envision biomechanical principles. The idea that distance runners can actually run with a foot landing directly under the center of gravity seems more myth than reality to me, and if this is the case, advice to do this can lead to confusion in runners who don’t recognize it for what it is (i.e., a cue).

The problem here is that I have seen stick figure drawings depicting runners leaning way forward and landing with the foot under the COG (e.g., this one) – maybe I’m wrong, but this looks totally unnatural. I’ve also seen still photos purporting to show runners landing under the center of gravity that clearly seem to be captured well after the moment of foot contact with the ground. I’ve seen other stick figure diagrams and animations that purport to show runners landing directly under the COG when they are clearly not doing so (see below). If you know of a true slow motion video demonstrating someone actually landing directly under the COG, I’d love to see it.

After examining my slow-motion videos, I tend to agree with Tucker and Dugas that landing directly under the COG rarely if ever happens in practice and is in fact probably nearly impossible in a distance runner moving at a steady speed. Again, I’m not trying to criticize Chi Running, Pose, Newton or any particular coach or other advocate of a type of running form. I think that ultimately what they are all doing is trying to get people to avoid overstriding, which is a very good thing, and something I am constantly working on myself. I just think we need to be a bit clearer and more precise when describing running mechanics, because to not do so leads to confusion and a lack of clear understanding. The last thing I’d want to see is a runner go out and hurt themselves by doing something like actually trying to land behind their center of gravity.

In the end, what I take from this is that the advice to land “directly under” the center of gravity is better stated as “land slightly in front of the center of gravity,” or “slightly in front of the torso/hips” In this sense, this rule of running form is better viewed as a cue as advocated by Steve Magness to help a runner to shorten stride and avoid overstriding than it is a description of what your body is actually doing. The reality seems to be that our footstrike should occur somewhere between where it would while overstriding with an extended leg and the vertical plane defined by the COG. There will likely be variation from person to person in where and how this exactly occurs, but try thinking about it and playing with it next time you go for a run.

If, after reading this post, you are still unconvinced that runner should not try to land directly under the COG, I’ll leave you with a video and a few images for you to ponder.

First, below is a video from the work of Daniel Lieberman at Harvard University. It shows an adolescent Kenyan boy who has never worn shoes and who runs “a significant amount every day.” You’ll notice that he has a very upright torso, and lands with a forefoot strike well in front of his center of gravity (hips). Given his lack of experience with footwear, this adolescent might be a reasonable example of how the human body is meant to run in its default state.

Second, below are still images of Kenyan adolescents running in both unshod and shod conditions, again from Daniel Lieberman at Harvard University. Notice the position of the foot in front of the body just prior to landing in both cases. The unshod boy is demonstrating what appears will be a clear forefoot strike (photo appears to be just prior to the actual moment of contact).

Finally, below are two pictures showing my 6 year-old son running barefoot. He spends most of his time, by his own choice, running around and playing barefoot or in Crocs. It is virtually impossible to keep him in any form of regular shoe for any length of time. Notice his posture and foot position at landing in each of the images – relatively upright torso, foot slightly in front of the center of gravity and striking on the forefoot (at least in first picture, second is hard to tell), and lower leg perpendicular to the ground at contact. None of this was coached by me or anyone else – he’s just doing what a little boy does when he runs. I’m not a full-time barefoot running advocate (I’ve only run barefoot a handful of times myself), but I do feel that these images are instructive. I’d love to hear what you think.

Update 8/19/2010: Steve Magness from the Science of Running blog sent me an image compilation – see below – taken from high speed video captures of himself (top two images) and some of his former runners, all of whom now run in college at the Division 1 level (bottom images). Note once again the location of foot contact.

If there is one thing that I have learned in 15+ years of teaching and studying biology, it’s that variation is the norm rather than the exception. Variability is the reason why biology is sometimes called the “sloppy science,” and it’s the reason why undergraduate biology majors at my college are required to take a course in statistics. Statistical methods are the tools that we use to tease out pattern from often messy piles of data, and they allow us to come to not always very clear-cut conclusions. The upshot of this is that in any sample of data there is going to be variation, and there are going to be outliers who don’t follow the statistically supported pattern.

As an anatomist, variation is inherent in nearly everything that I teach and study, from the frogs that I wrote my dissertation on, to the cats, pigs, and sharks that my students dissect in the laboratory. Variation is the bane of my student’s existence in the anatomy lab, and it often comes as a surprise when I tell them that the exact pattern of branching blood vessels in one cat may not be exactly the same as that in the cat on the next bench over. Some cats are muscular brawlers, whereas others have muscles so wispy that it’s a wonder that they could support their own body weight. Anyone who has taken human gross anatomy in medical school has probably observed the exact same thing in the human cadavers that they dissected. Variation is normal. In fact, it’s essential – variation serves as the raw material upon which natural selection can act in the process of evolution, and it’s ultimately the reason why we can now run down the road on two legs instead of four.

So what does this discussion of variation have to do with running? I’ve been thinking a lot about running form lately, and have gone so far as to start experimenting with my own stride. It is therefore with a great deal of interest that I read the following quote by Alberto Salazar: “There has to be one best way of running. It’s got to be like a law of physics. And if you deviate too much from that–the way I did in my career–it can be a big handicap.” From a purely biomechanical perspective, I tend to agree that there is probably an optimal way for a human to run, but the biologist in me keeps coming back to the topic of variation. Humans are highly variable animals, probably much more-so now than when we were developing our distance running skills millions of years ago out on the African savannah. Take one glance at any gathering of humans and you will see short people and tall people, thin people and heavy people. You will see some with biomechanical abnormalities. If you could look beneath the skin, you’d also find variation in bone structure and muscle composition, as well as innumerable other anatomical and physiological differences. Getting back to Salazar, variation is why they had to develop a shoe insert for Dathan Ritzenhein’s unique metatarsal structure. Given this, I find it unlikely that there is a single “perfect” running form that will equally apply to every single human being who runs. I may not be an expert on running mechanics (not even close!), but I know a thing or two about variation, and the realist in me says that what works for a sub-5:00 miler may not work for those of us who run our miles at an average pace of 8:00 per mile or higher. Variation in all of its forms needs to be taken into account when talking about things like an ideal running form.

My goal in this post is to address the topic of variation in running form as it applies to a small sample of elite runners. This past April two of my students went down to Boston and filmed the first 1000 or so runners to pass the ~17.5 mile mark in Newton during the Boston Marathon (on Washington St. near the intersection with Commonwealth Ave. – see picture at right from Google Street View – it was a relatively flat stretch of the course). The film was recorded in slow motion at 300 frames/second (see below), which allows a high degree of accuracy and detail when examining aspects of the running stride. Despite this, it can still be hard to see exactly what is happening in a streaming video, so what I have done here is to extract still images from my videos for four runners at a standardized moment in the gait cycle (I will be doing more of this at different points in coming posts). The runners that you will see are four of the top five finishers in the 2010 Boston Marathon: Robert Cheruiyot (the eventual winner), Tekeste Kebede (2nd place), Meb Keflezighi (5th place), and Ryan Hall (4th place). In the yellow singlet behind Cheruiyot you can see Deriba Merga, who rounded out the top five by finishing 3rd – I have omitted him below since he is somewhat obscured by Cheruiyot in the video.

Elite Men in the 2010 Boston Marathon – Super Slow Motion from Runblogger on Vimeo.

What follows is not an exhaustive analysis of running stride in these runners (I’m hardly qualified to do that), but rather an attempt to point out that even at the highest level of competition, running form is highly variable. Why is this important? The main reason in my mind is that you can find innumerable published descriptions of how best to run, or what the optimal running form is. Often these descriptions share key points (e.g., avoid overstriding, avoid excess vertical and horizontal motion, etc.), but they also often differ greatly in the details and it’s hard to know just what you should be doing out on the road or trail. For this reason I’m going to take a look at three aspects of the running stride and discuss the variation seen among these four elite runners. We’ll start with one of the most hotly debated aspects of running form these days – footstrike.

Footstrike

If you want to start an argument among a group of runners nowadays, all you have to do is bring up the topic of footstrike (or how it relates to shoe choice, but we’ll avoid that equally controversial topic here). A lot of runners are interested right now in the idea of adopting a more “natural” midfoot or forefoot footstrike (I’m very admittedly guilty of this myself and have been playing with chaining my form for most of this summer). Others think this change unnecessary, and don’t buy the argument that moving away from the ubiquitous heel strike will improve efficiency or reduce injury risk. It’s not my goal to settle this argument here, and I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done before we can come to a clear conclusion on the issue. Nevertheless, I like to experiment, and the evolutionary biologist in me is a bit enamored with the idea of running as our ancestors did. Maybe I’m crazy, but I’m having fun.

Back to the point, the ultimate question is whether one style of footstrike is “optimal” or better than the others. Famed runner and Nike Team Coach Alberto Salazar clearly thinks that midfoot/forefoot is the way to go, and was recently quoted as saying the following about heel striking: “It’s like having a tire with a nail in it.” He has gone so far as to recently convert two of his elite runners, Alan Webb and Dathan Ritzenhein, from heel striking to midfoot striking, and it’s going to be very interesting to watch how these guys do going forward (Ritzenhein is running the NYC with his retooled stride this Fall). Barefoot and minimalist runners also advocate for a midfoot/forefoot footstrike, mainly due to the fact that scientists like Daniel Lieberman have shown that this is the way humans run when not raised in built up, high-tech shoes (not to mention that it’s very hard to heel strike while barefoot or in an un-cushioned shoe). Lieberman also showed that heel striking is associated with a greater initial impact force, though how that plays out in its potential relation to injury risk remains to be seen. On the other side of the issue, you have the running shoe companies, who have been producing shoes for nearly 40 years that are usually designed to absorb shock associated with a heel strike. The vast majority of runners out there run in these shoes and are heel strikers, and there is some risk to moving away from a shoe style that our body has adapted to. That’s not to say that it can’t be done, but it takes time and effort, and many don’t see conclusive evidence of a benefit big enough (or any benefit at all) to justify the effort needed to change (I have variously felt this way myself in the recent past).

One of the interesting notions that I have seen espoused in various places is the idea that elite runners never heel strike. I’m not sure where this belief comes from, but it’s out there. However, it takes merely a quick glance at the pictures below to see that this belief is untrue. Of the four runners pictured, all but one make initial contact on the heel (Ryan Hall is clearly landing on his midfoot). That being said, the degree of heel strike seen is highly variable. Robert Cheruiyot lands only very slightly on the heel, and it’s almost indiscernible when watching the streaming video (the pictures below depict the exact moment of foot contact with the ground). His weight almost certainly comes down on the midfoot, and his heel strike is about as mild as a heel strike can be. Tekeste Kebede has a more pronounced heel strike with a more extended leg, and Meb has by far the most pronounced heel strike of three (while apparently wearing the same shoe as Cheruiyot). Interestingly, both Cheruiyot and Kebede strike on the midfoot on the right side (not shown – I wanted to standardize the side shown on all runners), showing that there is variability even within individuals. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if there was also some degree of variability in the same foot from stride to stride. The point is that even among elite runners competing in one of the highest profile races in the world, there is a high degree of variability in form, and they clearly have not converged on a single “optimal” running form.

One can come to two conclusions from observations like this. First, perhaps these guys are using the footstrike that works best for their individual bodies. Maybe a midfoot strike is what works best for Hall, and a heel strike is what works best for Meb. Alternatively, it might be possible that some of these guys are doing things that are not optimal and could be improved through a bit of stride tweaking. Based upon recent events, I’d suspect that if Meb went out to the Nike Complex in Oregon to work with Salazar he would be weaned off his heel strike as the first order of business. Meb won the 2009 NYC Marathon, but has also suffered numerous injuries in his career, both running related (he fractured his hip in the 2007 Olympic Trials), and flukey (he injured himself trying to escape from a bulldog). It’s hard to say what such a change might accomplish, but it’s certainly interesting to think about, which is why Ritzenhein’s performance at NYC this Fall will be a must-watch.

What does all of this mean to everyday runners like me and you? Well, if this level of variation is apparent in 4 of the 5 fastest runners at Boston, you can be sure that it would be found among recreational runners as well. It also shows that you can run really fast using either a heel strike or a midfoot strike, but it doesn’t say anything about whether altering stride from one form to the other would result in improvement. Maybe Meb would be faster with a midfoot strike, maybe he wouldn’t – we’ll probably never know. Incidentally, this is actually the major reason that has pushed me to try to move away from my own heel strike – the experimenter in me is simply curious to see what will happen. Will it make me faster? – who knows. Will it reduce my lifetime risk of injury? – maybe, maybe not. The one sure thing is that I’d never get any kind of answer to either of these questions if I didn’t try it.

Arm Carriage

Though less controversial than the topic of footstrike, the way to carry the arms while running is also a form characteristic about which I have read differing advice. Is there one best way to carry your arms while running? Perhaps, but referring again to our elite pictures, you’ll see a great deal of variation in style. Cheruiyot and Meb both carry their arms high with a pronounced flexion at the elbow. Kebede carries his arms a bit lower, just above the waist, whereas Ryan Hall has a unique style in which he keeps his palms open and carries his hands quite low, below the waistline (for more on the origin of Hall’s unique arm carriage, read this – thanks to Rick for alerting me to this in the comments). On my run yesterday I tried to pay attention to what I do, and noticed that I utilize a high, flexed carry like Meb and Cheruiyot. When I tried using Hall’s style, it felt awkward and uncomfortable, but far be it from me to tell Ryan Hall to carry his arms while running. What Hall does seems to work well for him, and like Meb and his heel strike, it’s hard to know if tweaking of the arm carriage for any of these guys would provide any benefit. Ultimately the point once again is that there is variation – elite runners at the highest level of competition do things in very different ways.

Body Orientation

The final aspect of form that I’ll address here is body orientation. I have variously read that the torso should be oriented upright (near vertically) while running, or with some degree of forward lean. This is another case where I don’t really know what to believe, or if one method provides a benefit over the other. However, returning once again to our photos, we can see that Cheruiyot and Meb are fairly upright in their posture, whereas both Kebede and Hall seem to employ a slight forward lean. Once again, we see variability, with little ability to determine if each runner is doing what works best for them, or whether some of them are doing something less than optimal that could be tweaked to provide a performance boost.

Final Thoughts

The basic take-home message from this post is that even elite marathon runners exhibit variability in some of the most basic aspects of running form. If a “perfect” or “optimal” form exists for all runners, either only one of these guys is doing it, or none of them are. More likely, I suspect the answer is that each of us individually has a form that works best given our own anatomy and physiology. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t work on our running form – quite the contrary. The are likely ways that we can all improve, and experimentation, if done carefully, can’t hurt. Do some research and hit the track and try things out, record yourself on video and note your strengths and weaknesses, or maybe enlist the help of a coach – any of these things could potentially help you and your running.

I’ll finish with a few personal thoughts. I’ve spent the better part of the past year experimenting with my running form, particularly with a slow migration away from a pronounced heel strike. Will moving to a more midfoot or forefoot strike make me a better runner? – only time will tell. At least in my case I have some confidence in the path I have chosen. When one of the country’s leading anthropologists shows that humans evolved to run on the forefoot, I tend to listen (I am an evolutionary biologist after all!). When one of the country’s top coaches (Alberto Salazar) at what is probably one the most technologically advanced training centers in the world (Nike in Oregon) starts shifting some of the country’s leading runners from heel to midfoot, it’s not done without careful consideration and study. We have both our own evolutionary history and presumably cutting-edge modern research at Nike both apparently pointing in the same direction, and that is enough convincing for me to at least give it a try. I’ll never be able to run as fast as any of the elites that I’ve talked about in this post, but if my running form transition gets me a new 5K PR or a step closer to my much coveted BQ, the change will have been well worth the effort. If neither happens, at least I will have learned something and I’ll surely have fun in the process, and isn’t that what running is all about?

Update 8/10/2010: Amby Burfoot has added his thoughts on the issue of variability in running form on his Peak Performance blog: http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2010/08/aug-10-in-search-of-perfect-running-form-the-debate-continues.html 

Update 8/11/2010: For another interesting series of posts on running form, check out this series from Jonathan Dugas and Ross Tucker of the Science of Sport blog: http://www.sportsscientists.com/2007/09/running-technique-is-there-right-way-to.html

Update 8/17/10: Added a second post on running form – this one addresses the question of where the foot should land relative to the center of gravity of the body.

First, here are a series of maps showing obesity rates (BMI >30) by state from the years 1985-2008. This is not an encouraging trend (light blue = good, red = bad).

Obesity in the United States – CDC Maps from 1985-2008 from Runblogger on Vimeo.
CDC Maps Showing Obesity Trends in the United States from 1985-2008. For these maps, obesity was defined as a BMI of greater than or equal to 30. Maps are from http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html#State.

Next, here is a map showing CDC data on obesity rates in the United States by county in 2007 (click the image to view a larger version):

Next, here is a map showing CDC data on diabetes rates in the United States by county in 2007 – notice a trend here (click the image to view a larger version)?

Now lets take a look a CDC data on heart disease death rates by US county from 2000-2004 (click the image to view a larger version):

And we’ll finish up here with a CDC map showing the percentage of adults by state who meet minimum government recommendations for physical acitivity in the year 2007. These recommendations can be met by:

i. Participating in moderate-intensity activities for at least 30 minutes/day, at least 5 days/week.
-these activities include brisk walking, bicycling, vacuuming, gardening, or anything else that causes small increases in breathing or heart rate

ii. Participating in vigorous-intensity activities for at least 20 minutes/day, at least 3 days/week.
-these activities include running, aerobics, heavy yard work, or anything else that causes large increases in breathing or heart rate

Here’s the physical activity map (click the image to view a larger version):

As someone who teaches about the positive health benefits of exercise, but who also has seen firsthand these benefits to my own body, these maps concern me greatly. It seems pretty clear that the least physically active areas of the country are also the most obese, and most prone to diabetes and death from heart disease. There are certainly socioeconomic factors involved here that complicate things, but these data are still compelling. It is for this reason that I encourage anyone reading this to be an advocate for exercise. Set a positive example for your families, your neighbors, and your community by getting active – it will benefit you, and it will benefit them. Even if its as small a thing as lacing up a pair of shoes and heading out the door for a walk, all of us have the ability to be the positive examples that this country needs. Be that example.

To meet some people who have set amazing examples by getting active, check out this post: Losing Weight Through Exercise and a Healthier Lifestyle – Stories of Personal Transformation

A few weeks ago I posted a slow-motion video of Ryan Hall from the 2010 Boston Marathon that was taken by a pair of my undergraduate students (thanks Erin and Daniella!). They headed down to Newton on Marathon Monday to watch and film portions the race, and as it turns out, they managed to capture some amazing slow-motion video of approximately the first 1000 runners to pass by near the 17 mile marker of the marathon. Below is a clip showing slow-motion video of the first six men to pass by the point where they were stationed. The video was filmed at 300 frames-per-second with a Casio Exilim EX-F1 digital camera (you can read my overview of the Casio EX-F1 here if you’re interested in the technology), so this is true high-speed video.

Elite Male Runners in Slow Motion – 2010 Boston Marathon from Runblogger on Vimeo.
Video clip of elite males running near mile 17 of the 2010 Boston Marathon. Video courtesy of https://runblogger.com.

The runners in the clip are (in order)

1. Cheruiyot, Robert Kiprono (KEN, finishing time = 2:05:52, finish = 1st)
2. Merga, Deriba (ETH, finishing time = 2:08:39, finish = 3rd)
3. Kebede, Tekeste (ETH, finishing time = 2:07:23, finish = 2nd)
4. Kigen Kipkosgei, Moses (KEN, red/green shirt, finishing time: 2:12:04, finish = 8th)
5. Goumri, Abderrahim (Morocco, purple shirt closer to carmera, DNF)
6. Keflezighi, Mebrahtom (USA, finishing time = 2:09:26, finish = 5th)

And here’s a version that is slowed down even further:

Elite Men in the 2010 Boston Marathon – Super Slow Motion from Runblogger on Vimeo.
Video clip of elite males running near mile 17 of the 2010 Boston Marathon. Video courtesy of https://runblogger.com.

And here below again is the clip of Ryan Hall (USA, finish time = 2:08:41, finish = 4th).

Ryan Hall – Boston Marathon 2010 from Runblogger on Vimeo.
Video clip of Ryan Hall running near mile 17 in the 2010 Boston Marathon. Video courtesy of https://runblogger.com.

Now, I make no claims of being an expert on running biomechanics, however, I have spent countless hours over the past few months analyzing slow-motion video of footstrikes (over 1500 of them!) for a project I have been working on with some of my undergraduate students. As you can see with these videos, even at 300fps it can be hard at times to classify very borderline cases, and doing so with a regular camera at 30fps would be near impossible – this is why I’m hesitant to trust many of the videos of elites that I see posted on sites like YouTube. At 30fps, the gaps between image frames of a fast moving subject are so great that the accurate classification of a split-second event like where the foot meets the ground is extremely difficult. Furthermore, this video is a snapshot from only a single spot in a single race, and I have seen footstrike to vary even within a person due to factors like fatigue, suspected injury, etc. That being said, I think we can glean at least a small amount of insight from these Boston videos, and since the discussion of which type footstrike is most efficient and least likely to cause injury is all the rage right now, here is my footstrike analysis of these six runners based on this video clip:

1. Cheruiyot: left = midfoot, right = midfoot
2. Merga: left = midfoot, right = obscured
3. Kebede: left = heel, right = midfoot
4. Kigen: left = mifoot, right = midfoot
5. Goumri: left = heel, right = heel
6. Keflezighi: left = heel, right = heel
7. Hall: left = midfoot, right = midfoot

Rather than write up my thoughts in paragraph form, I thought instead I would just share a few random musings that have entered my head upon watching this, and let you comment and provide additional insight as you see fit – I consider my comments section to be an open forum, but let’s not let this devolve into a petty argument over barefoot/shod running as seems to so often happen when the topic of footstrike comes up these days.

1. Most of the elites shown here (and these are some of the absolute best in the world right now) are midfoot strikers, but this pattern is not universal. Both the 2009 (Merga) and 2010 (Cheruiyot) Boston winners are midfoot strikers here, but the 2009 NYC Marathon winner (Meb) is a clear heel striker. Furthermore, Goumri, who entered the 2010 Boston Marathon with the fastest marathon time of any of these guys (2:05:30 in the London Marathon in 2008), is also a clear heel striker. So it would seem, at least based upon this small sample (and I have a lot more video to look at in the coming months), that you can run really fast for a really long distance with either a midfoot or a heel strike.

2. These guys are running very, very fast. All of them are likely running at a sub 5-minute mile pace in this clip. For frame of reference, Cheruiyot’s average pace was 4:48 min/mile for the full 26.2 – to me this is hard to even comprehend! Thus, it’s hard to know for sure whether the footstrike patterns observed here are more a function of speed than anything else, but the presence of two heel strikers seems to go against this argument. Regardless, it would be interesting to get another video of each of these elite marathoners running at a more pedestrian 8:00 or 9:00 per mile pace. Maybe I’ll film myself running at a 4:48 pace and see what I look like (and believe me, that will take some serious effort on my part, and it won’t be nearly as pretty as what you see here!).

3. Both Cheruiyot and Meb appear to be wearing the same shoe – looks like the Nike Zoom Streak 3, It’s interesting to see how strikingly different (no pun intended!) their landing patterns are despite the similar speed and shoe type.

4. It would be easy for some to suggest that Meb or Goumri could be faster if they altered their stride to land on the midfoot, but it is equally possible that this would throw them off their naturally most efficient gait and make them slower. It is these types of questions that science needs to begin to address.

5. As far as what makes these men such impressively fast marathoners, my suspicion is that footstrike is probably fairly insignificant. I’m sure they all have VO2max values that are through the roof, they can sustain paces a at a percentage of VO2max that is far higher than the average person, they have amazingly high lactate thresholds, a preponderence of slow-twitch fibers in their relevant running muscles, and are amazingly economical in their running biomechanics (i.e., outstanding running economy). In other words, all of these men are physiologically gifted in ways that most of us could only dream about, and that, moreso than what their feet are doing when they contact the ground, is what makes them so fast. We have a tendency as humans to focus on what we can easily observe, measure, and control, and footstrike is one of those things. However, the relative importance of footstrike when compared to these other factors is in my opinion questionable.

6. I have a lot more video to analyze in the coming months, and I just wrapped up analysis on a big project from another marathon – I’m hoping to get this published soon, so stay tuned for that. There’s still a lot of science on running that needs to be done, and there are a lot of questions waiting to be answered, so my hope is that videos like this will stimulate discussion and testable hypotheses. If you have anything you’d like to add to the discussion, feel free to leave a comment and/or share this video on your own blog – my only request would be that you link back here if you do.

To listen or subscribe via RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RunbloggerRuncast

To download the .mp3 file directly, right click on the following link and save to your computer: RP#15: Running Science – VO2max, Running Economy, Lactate Threshold

To listen or subscribe via Itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?i=80594539&id=348528478

Alternatively, you can listen directly here:

Links related to Runblogger Podcast #15:

-If you’re interested in how I record these podcasts, check out my review of the 5th Generation Ipod Nano with audio recording capability (this episode was recorded with the Apple earbud microphone clipped to my jacket – hands free recording on the road!)

-In this episode I mention muscle fiber types (fast-twitch and slow-twitch) on several occasions. If this topic interests you, check out my podcast episode on “Muscle Fiber Types and Athletic Potential.”

-Fleet Foxes – The closing song, “White Winter Hymnal,” can be downloaded from Iron and Wine’s web page at Sub Pop Records.

You’ve probably heard of the phrases slow-twitch and fast-twitch – these terms refer to different types of fiber that we have in our muscles, The fiber makeup that each of us has in our muscles is somewhat variable, and is largely determined through genetic inheritance from our parents.  Perhaps most importantly for runners, fiber type makeup has the potential to influence your potential for success in races of different distance (e.g., 5K vs. marathon).  This episode discusses the topic of fiber types in muscles, how they differ physiologically, and how this relates to athletic potential and performance.

To listen or subscribe via RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RunbloggerRuncast

To listen or subscribe via Itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?i=80594539&id=348528478

Alternatively, you can listen directly here:

Links related to Runcast #11:

To see a picture of a muscle biopsy stained for the different fiber types: click here.

For now, this post is just a placeholder for things to come, so check back soon if you’re interested in this project – I’ll be sure to post updates as things get moving along.

In the meantime, feel free to check out my other podcast, the Runblogger Runcast (this link takes you to Itunes), which is a personal podcast/videocast dedicated to all things related to running. You can also hear an advance sample of a lecture from my class in this episode of the Runblogger Runcast.

About Me: I’m a biology professor at Saint Anselm College, a small, liberal-arts college in Manchester, NH. While my Ph.D. training and research expertise is largely in the area of evolutionary, comparative, functional, and developmental anatomy, my teaching responsibilities in Human Anatomy and Physiology and personal interests in human health and fitness have led me to develop a new course in the Biology of Sports and Exercise.  This podcast is a companion to that course.