I have a fairly long history of working with high-speed (i.e., slow-motion) video. As a graduate student, I did my dissertation research in a lab that specialized in locomotor and feeding biomechanics of animals, and to do these types of studies, the ability to film at very high frame rates (200 frames/second and up) was […]
Casio Exilim EX-F1 Camera Review: High-Quality, Affordable Slow-Motion Video for Athletic and Biomechanical Analysis
Ryan Hall in Slow Motion from the 2010 Boston Marathon
Two of my students went down to Boston on Monday and filmed a good chunk of the marathon for me in slow motion. Here’s a video to whet your appetite – Ryan Hall is most definitely a midfoot striker, and what a thing of beauty that stride is! This video was shot at 300 frames/second […]
Vibram Fivefingers and Barefoot Running: Does Removing Heel Cushion Change Footstrike?
In my previous post, I posed the following question to Ian Adamson, director of product development and education for the Newton Running Company: Me: Available data indicate that most people are heel-strikers. Is it your belief that the presence of extensive heel cushion (i.e., a heel wedge/lift) essentially forces a heel strike in most people? […]
Relationship Between Running Footstrike and Footwear: From Stability Shoes to Barefoot
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between footwear (or lack thereof) and how it affects my running footstrike. Over the past year I’ve been running in everything from full-blown, pronation-control stabilty shoes (Saucony Progrid Guides, Brooks Adrenaline GTS 8) down to Vibram Fivefingers KSO’s, which are about as minimalist as you can […]