Running Technique Tips

The great running shoe debate came and went without the anticipated fireworks and feisty exchanges of previous outings. The most surprising aspect of the debate was that there was little actual debate; it could have been the great running shoe agreement.  While I was happy enough not to witness pointless argument, I did leave the venue unsatisfied with where things are at in relation to discussions about running injuries, running technique and the issues facing the running shoe industry in general. As I wrote in my previous article that previewed this debate, it does seem we remain narrowly focused on a discussion about shoes, foot-strike and barefoot running.

But onto the debate at hand, the format went something like this: the panel posed each other questions and also answered some from those close to the shoe discussion that couldn’t be in attendance. I originally planned to write a complete summary, but there was too much ground covered, so I’ll stick to a small number of discussion points in this recap. I’m sure a video of the complete proceedings will appear at some stage if you’re interested in the entire 2+ hour discussion.

Why have injury rates among runners remained consistently high for several decades despite technological innovation in running shoe design? Associate Professor Peter Larson (Saint Anselm College)

I’m in furious agreement that highly cushioned; motion controlling running shoes do little, if anything to protect runners from injury and if anything can contribute to the development of poor running technique and then knock-on injuries. We’ve seen a number of runners in the coaching context that look like their shoes are getting in the way, but this has not always needed a radical minimalist transition to help start the improvement process. Often a move to a light-weight trainer makes a big difference to someone who has been running in a heavier, more structured running shoe for a long period of time.

So in my opinion, not every traditional running shoe should be thrown into the big bulky shoe category. A stripped back and flexible light-weight trainer may well be the best place for a runner adapted to heavier, more intractable shoes to start (and in some cases end) a minimalist transition. Combining this with an aspirational shoe build on a slightly lower heel-toe drop profile (used for a small volume of jogging) is a good mix. This allows the process of lengthening and strengthening the calves, Achilles tendons and deep compartment muscles (of the lower leg) to begin.

The fact that no one can agree (in a scientific debate) that there is evidence that wearing or removing shoes reduces injury risk supports the assertion that it’s not all about the shoes contributing to the running injury equation? I remain convinced that running shoes are only part of the picture, with western society being habitual sitters and wearers of raised heel shoes in everyday life. Looking at big bulky running shoes as the primary driver of injury seems an incomplete analysis of the situation.

When people take up running they are probably in worse shape than those in more active de-cluttered societies, you can observe many people walking about with poor hip strength and control. 

Which “form flaws” are most likely to increase injury risk for a runner?

There is a similar discussion with an expanded panel of experts planed in Newcastle this Friday, I won’t be attending, but I think it would be helpful for the experts to spend a little longer on this point. There is much more going on than just the usual suspects of heel-striking, over-striding and low stride rate.

I agree a passive heel strike that sees the foot landing well ahead of the knee with none of the buttocks, hamstrings and lower leg muscles active as the foot contacts the ground is likely to cause injury. However, heel striking in itself isn’t necessarily the devil we are perhaps led to believe.

Someone adapted to running in shoes that lightly touches down with the heel and has the previously mentioned muscles active during ground contact is likely to be able to run comfortably and injury free. Getting those bigger running muscles strong and firing is a higher priority in our coaching approach than rapidly transitioning people into minimalist shoes or altering their foot-strike posture.

I was disappointed that developing hip strength and stability was dismissed as being a trendy approach to preventing running injuries. I’d happily debate that all day long. Why? Because it is the most consistent theme we have seen when coaching runners suffering a range of injury concerns. So through practical observation of runners we know it’s something that is always in the mix as a potential contributor to an injury. It is also an area that researchers have begun to pay serious attention to, with weakness in the buttocks linked to many common knee and lower leg injuries. With a different group of academic experts in a debate this may have received more attention.

Foot type and shoe fit – a retailer’s perspective

Another item discussed was the sales model used by most big running shoe companies and retailers: choosing shoes by foot type and shape. There was agreement around the point that there is no scientific evidence to support this simplistic model, although there were valid questions about the veracity of a couple of the studies in this area.

As an aside, I’ve played around with a couple of decision support systems on shoe company websites and noticed that you can produce scenarios that confuse the system. For example telling the computer that you have high arches, but also pronate excessively will result in zero shoes being recommended to you – why? It does not fit the model, nor does the trend towards minimalism.

This is something Mark Gorksi (as a retailer) has been very close to, having taken the approach of fitting shoes based on what works best for the individual when observed running, rather than looking at their feet. Mark has hit the nail on the head with these comments in the last couple of days:

One of the biggest challenges facing shoe companies is the re-education of retail staff in regards to emergence of the minimalist running trend. This isn’t just limited to what it means technically and where certain shoes sit on the shelf, but how they relate to safely servicing runners of differing abilities, ages and backgrounds.

With increasing numbers of customers wanting to try the new minimalist shoes there’s a real risk for the industry because knowledge amongst retail staff about minimalist transition pathways is sketchy at best. Further, getting the message right about where the benefit of minimalism can most effectively be sort by runners is no easy task.

The wrong sell can easily lead to an injured runner who with a more patient approach to transition may well have got good benefits. The downside is that this runner may well be lost to minimalism forever as they lose confidence and receive conflicting advice as they recover from their injury – you may never get them back and you’ve added to the long list of cautionary tale fodder.

This in an environment where the continued use of foot-type fit needs rapid adjustment to keep up with what many runners now know from following the science and better running blogs i.e. that foot-type fit is not based on any science. These are huge challenges and a major back-pedal for many of the major shoe manufacturers, how they handle it will be interesting to say the least.

At what age should children start wearing cushioned running shoes? Blaise Dubois

Blaise’s pillow analogy was one of the highlights of the night, when children move from the cot to the bed they receive a pillow – but why? Same thought process applies to shoes, why do children need cushioned running shoes? Just as important is the question about regular shoes. I grew up, along with millions of others, wearing stiff leather school shoes with a heel.

I can distinctly recall shin-splints in the playground. Children run about, play, climb, sprint, run etc, why put them in something that is not conducive to doing these things? If you need to wear black shoes for school, look for flat flexible models with room for toe spread that are more or less minimalist running shoes in disguise.

If your child has already started adapting to traditional shoes, you’ll need to help them adapt out of it gradually, but this should be an easier path than for older runners. Keep your children out of shoes with raised heels for a long as humanly possible.

Can overweight individuals run safely barefoot or in minimal shoes? Peter Larson

Great question and I think the discussion was pretty helpful; there is no reason why an overweight runner couldn’t wear less shoe. In fact, the thinking behind being able to feel the ground and activate the correct muscles being more important for those runners that are a bit heavier makes a lot of sense.

After full adaptation has occurred, which of the following optimizes distance running performance? Dr Craig Richards

Running barefoot, Flat cushioned shoe, 5mm heel-toe cushioned shoe, 10mm heel-toe cushioned shoe.

This is a general but interesting question that depends on the race. On the track, a zero drop spike seems the right choice given all current world records belong to spike-shod runners.  Although I did have a discussion about that with world record breaking master’s runner and coach Keith Bateman a few months back on Twitter. As you can see he’s of the view that he’d be more efficient barefoot than in spikes. Could we see a return to the days of athletes like Zola Budd breaking records running barefoot?

At the marathon the argument for some heel lift seems valid and most recent fast times have been recorded in a shoe like the old Adizero Adios or similar. But equally some runners wear a flatter shoe, as did the winner of this year’s Melbourne Marathon Japhet Kipkorir (pictured above left wearing an Adizero Pro). Even experienced barefoot runner Dr Mark Cucuzzella (pictured above right) wears shoes to race the marathon. But in Mark’s case a shaved down, level Newton MV2 is likely to be roughly zero drop. He says: 

Conclusion

Science has a hard job explaining how running works. One of the biggest things I take away from this debate is that any expert you rely on (myself included) is going to be basing their philosophy on a combination of science, observation and some practical personal and hopefully hands on experience in helping runners enjoy and get the most out their running experience. I don’t think we’ll ever reach a position where there is a uniform or consistent approach to running and perhaps this is a good thing. It’d be nice to have one area of life where there is room for the art as much as the science to lead the way forwards.

Written by Brian Martin

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Earlier this month scientist, writer and Runblogger Pete Larson and colleagues published a study of runners completing the Manchester City Marathon in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA on 1 November 2009. The focus of the work by Larson and fellow researchers was to analyze the foot-strike patterns of runners passing through the 10km and 32km points during the race.

You can find Pete Larson’s post about the paper here. The study, amongst other things, showed that the running form of marathoners changed between the 10 and 32 km points. No surprise there you might think, we all start to fall apart when we get tired. But this study is interesting and worth writing about for a number of reasons, including:

• there is not much observational research about that looks at how runners move outside of the lab;
• this study is mostly concerned with the non-elite regular running community, an area that is crying out for this kind of in the field research;
• asymmetry (variability between left and right feet) in foot-strike was examined; and
• it specifically looked at changes in foot-strike patterns that occur as a consequence of fatigue.

When you have this kind of information available it allows you to learn something new, confirm or challenge things you thought you knew and importantly offer up some potential explanations of why certain observable phenomena may or may not be occurring. What I’ve done in this article is look at some of the observations and conclusions made by Larson et al and add some further thoughts for discussion.

Why do runners that start out forefoot/mid-foot convert to heel striking late in the marathon?

The researchers observed that a number of runners converted from forefoot or mid-foot striking to a heel-toe pattern late in the race. The explanation offered by the authors is reasonable and one I’ve read in other studies, which is this phenomenon is caused by plantaflexor fatigue. The calves, soleus and deep compartment muscles get tired from the eccentric loading caused by the load and stretch cycle associated with forefoot and mid-foot running.

I agree this is a factor, but a complementary explanation could be that hip extensor fatigue also plays a part. A key element I have discussed in my own writing and observed in coaching running technique is that recreational runners tend to over use the quadriceps and hip flexors. This can be reasonably explained by the muscles at the rear of the hips and legs (buttocks and hamstrings) not being strong enough or not being activated at the right time during the running gait cycle. Therefore the quads and hip flexors take over to drive the leg ahead of the body to create stride length.This is exactly the way I used to run – see image opposite.

These runners usually don’t have a powerful push off or get much air between strides, they also mostly heel-strike. In this study almost 90% of 800 runners were shown to be heel strikers and many of them might exhibit the muscle activation pattern I’ve described above.

My take on the reason why runners tend to end up heel striking late in the marathon is that they have exhausted all the strength, spring and pop in the buttocks and hamstrings, the stride starts to shorten. Inevitably to maintain pace, the runner starts using the quadriceps and hip flexors more than they did early in the race when they were fresh and bounding happily on their forefoot or mid-foot with plenty of drive from the haunches.

Photo by: Erica Sara Neuman

Did this happen to Tsegay Kebede in the closing miles of his 2:07.12 3rd place in the 2011 NYC marathon? I doubt he’d have looked like this early in the race. Did anyone catch some video of him or photos inside the first 10k to prove me right or wrong? I did read that Kebede was struggling with an injury in the lead up to NYC, so perhaps this played a part in why he looks so different than during this speedier 2.05.20 2nd place finish behind the late Sammy Wanjiru at the 2009 London Marathon.

Not all heel-striking is bad or the same

The authors quite rightly point out that there’s a big difference between heel-strikers and how hard they might hit the ground. They couldn’t measure loading and impact forces in this study because of the absence of equipment that you might have in a lab or in a controlled study on the track. But you don’t need a lab and a white coat to know some runners will be much heavier heel-strikers than others.

In my opinion this is because of variability in the ability to activate the buttocks and hamstrings around the moment of contact with the ground. So even if a runner like Kebede (an Olympic Bronze medalist) starts heel-striking late in the marathon, he’d still hit the ground far lighter than many other heel-strikers because of his ability to get good drive from the buttocks and hamstrings.

Shoe selection for marathon runners?

Most runners observed in this study were wearing traditional cushioned running shoes. The observations documented in this study indicate that many runners that started the race as forefoot or mid-foot strikers ended up heel-striking. Based on these results, it would be hard to make a case for wearing genuine racing flats in the marathon for the majority of regular runners.

Photo by: Pascal Terjan

Even among elite runners, there is a tendency to go for something with a bit of heel such as the Adizero Adios to perhaps ward off plantaflexor fatigue and offer some forgiveness if late race heel-striking occurs.

However, there must be a reasonable number of incidental heel-strikers included in this study who might otherwise have landed a bit more forward without a big chunky heel getting in the way. For these runners who are marginal or light heel strikers, then perhaps moving toward a marathon racing shoe (not a flat) such as the Adios or similar models might be worth considering. This would also seem a reasonable piece of insurance for the marathon distance even if you’re regular running is done in closer to zero drop shoes.

Unevenness more common that you might think

One of the curiosities of the coaching work I have been doing this year with Mark Gorski is the number of runners that exhibit variation between what the left and right side of their bodies is doing. This study confirms that there is a reasonable number of runners that heel-strike on one side and land forefoot or mid-foot on the other side. I’ll put this down as confirmation of something we’ve observed and thought we knew.

While we coach from a philosophy of looking at the hips down (alignment, activation and strength) we have also noticed that among many runners there is variability in foot-strike patterns. Often this is associated with the aforementioned buttock weakness and/or overuse of the quads and hip flexors. These major variations appear to contribute to running injuries, another area that needs further study amongst recreational runners.

Conclusion

I’m sure many readers of the Larson et al paper might have unanswered questions, or their own theories on what is behind the various observations made. Running is such a complex and variable physical activity that understanding what you can observe is extremely difficult and fiendishly hard to prove. I take my hat off to Pete and colleagues for putting together some fantastic observations and conclusions, many of which could form the basis of future research.

Written by Brian Martin

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