Technique – Page 6 – Progressive Running

Barefoot Running, good or bad?

On May 9, 2017

Recently happened to read this article on barefoot running here: https://www.jenreviews.com/barefoot-running-shoes . From its few first lines everyone can tell it is pro barefoot running. You might even also think I am so excited and am going to highlight every bits and pieces in it, but you are not quite correct this time.

Yes I advocate minimalist running as I think maximalism is unnecessary, if not hurtful. There are great benefits in going light however do not think mother nature will take care of you if you go barefoot.

Here am going to list the main headers from the article and comment on them.

1. Barefoot Running Promotes Recovery

Regular shoes may cause you to land on your heel, which is unnatural, may impair balance, and makes you at risk of getting ankle strains, among other leg and foot injuries

Striking rear foot is NOT unnatural. It is a valid technique for running. The problem is when heel-striking is used for long distance running. That is where it comes inefficient first, then it causes trouble due to those so-called over-striding and landing ahead of body issues.

2. Running Economy is Improved with Regular Use of Barefoot Running Shoes

Agree with this from this point of view that it has been proven by studies that running in barefoot/minimalist shoes strengthen lower legs and that can result in better running economy.

3. Oxygen Consumption, or VO2 max, is Heightened due to the Specific Motions that Simulated Barefoot Running Requires

That is not a bad News however what I know is VO2 max is less important than in the past to rank runners. Someone with lower VO2 max might still run better than the others at higher one. There are factors that more accurately can rank runners by very high accuracy. VO2 max although has a high correlation with performance, it is not that much accurate to tell, for instance, who runs faster.

4. Barefoot Running Shoes Strengthens Muscles, Tendons, and Ligaments of the Foot

Totally valid based on the study I shared previously in this post.

5. By Running with Barefoot Running Shoes, You Can Develop a More Natural Pace or Gait

I do not think there can be an exact definition for “natural pace or gait”. What does ‘natural’ really mean? how can it be defined accurately? You might find this term in my earlier blog posts but these days I use it more carefully. There are only two natural features in our legs that if used properly I can call that way of running “supportive of our nature!” but still not “natural running form” because the terms is a bit vague:

Our tendons are elastic
There is a great shock absorption mechanism in our legs

6. Running with Barefoot Shoes Can Improve Your Balance and Proprioception

This is true. Most of our nerves end at the soles of our feet. Wearing shoes do not help them get better. Going barefoot improves the sensation and along with strengthening ankles and other lower leg parts we should be able to manage better balance. Moreover the better sensation of where the ground is and how we are landing can help the proprioception.

7. You Feel More Encouraged to Run Outside, which is Better for Your Health then Running Inside

Objection, subjective!

8. Barefoot Running Shoes Allow You to be Connected with Yourself and the Earth or Natural Surfaces, which Can Improve Sleep

That matches what I know of that Chinese medicine on the relation of parts of soles and body parts. If that is true, this one is true too.

9. Running in Barefoot Shoes Can Improve Short-term or Working Memory

I skip this one :)

10. Barefoot running shoes help prevent Plantar Pain or Plantar Fasciitis

Plantar fasciitis happens for several reasons, two of them I know of are:

Going frocibly against the gravity
Running too fast, too soon, too much

Going against the gravity is in the technique and is when the runner [toe] pushes off the ground. You should allow your feet to peel off the ground with your momentum and let falling forward generate the propulsive force. Pushing off the ground causes too much stress to Achilles tendon and plantar fascia and if this stress is too much such soft tissues may get inflamed and cause trouble.

It goes on the same track as the three too’s: too fast, too soon, too much. Any time you rush into training after a relatively long period of rest and going lazy (!) you may fall into a benign to severe plantar fasciitis.

11. Using Barefoot Running Shoes Can Boost Blood Circulation

I find it plausible. Simply put your feet are not restricted by shoes so they can spread as much as needed. Those shoes claiming to be natural running shoes have wide toe pocket to allow feet move naturally. The meaning of natural here is letting feet move freely while observing how they go at landing.

12. Earthing, or Running on Natural Surfaces, has a Positive Effect on the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS)

Maybe it is a new sensation different from what we do most of the time at this modern life. Most of the time we sense our in-soles :) then the synthetic surfaces at home or at work if you work at a relax office as I do. Anyway, from my experience sensing the ground was great plus it massaged my feet, although beware of blisters. You have to gradually increase distance as your feet develop strength and skin thickness to handle it.

13. Exercising in Barefoot Running Shoes Can Improve Overall Health

No special comment on this.

14. Transitioning to Barefoot Running Shoes Can Reintroduce You to a More Natural State and Can Increase Your Chances of Survival

I know this one looks has gone a bit overboard but my comment on that is going barefoot develops a different type of agility that can come handy some time somewhere. At the end of the day those with better nervous system do better and going barefoot is aligned with this notion.

15. Using Barefoot Running Shoes More Often Gives You the Sense of Freedom, Healing, and Other Positive Emotions

Cannot disagree with the sense of freedom. It feels great, so true. The idea of not being dependent on shoe wear strikes me.

What is Late Pull at Running

By admin

On January 13, 2017

In Technique

taken from Fitmetrix.io

Running has three components: Fall, Pose and Pull. No matter how you run and what your running technique is, you go through these three at every stride of yours.

Each part has its own perfect form or way of being done correctly/efficiently. Regarding pull, there are a few issues in the recreational running community and one of them is late pull.

How to spot late pull in video analysis?

Simply, right after the moving foot passes the standing knee the back foot should be leaving the ground. If a video is taken from someone’s running, assuming each frame is around 30ms, in the next frame after the one in which the moving foot surpasses the standing knee the back foot should have left the ground, or the runner is making late-pull mistake.

Ok, got it but what problem does late pull cause?

First of all, note that even a simple tiny mistake at running can harm you over time. Because it repeats so many times, it wears you off until it clinically becomes an injury. Regarding late pull, it meddles with the perfect timing you can have in your stride if you just let the front foot [passively] fall under your body. What happens is due to the change in the dynamics of running caused by late pull, the front foot lands ahead of the body adding unnecessary pressure to the landing knee.

Other issue is, in most cases, those who have late pull, push their back foot off the ground. Perhaps because they keep a portion of their body weight behind (the back leg of course), they need to exert an extra force to take their foot off the ground. This push would be unnecessary if they removed that back foot just in time (as aforementioned: after the moving foot passes the standing knee).

How to identify and fix it?

In the same way that high temperature (fever) shows infection, cadence at running indicates inefficiency issues. If your cadence is below 180 strides per minute you are pushing off the ground and most likely you have late pull too (otherwise why you keep that foot behind if you are not aiming for an effective push off?!).

The other more accurate way of identifying it, is to have a video form analysis which I can do for free during special offer periods like now (Jan 2016). You can also ask someone to take a video of your running form and send it to me. That would be always free of charge. Best way is to flick me an email to get started: rez@progressiverunning.com .

To fix late pull, there is one way. You should gain your propulsive force from gravity only. Falling forward must become the only source of generating force to move ahead. That is what I teach at Progressive Running.

Vertical Oscillation

By admin

On November 14, 2016

In Technique

Summer is on the way in southern hemisphere and am replacing lunch time long runs by early morning and evening workouts. Speaking of training at late hours, am pleased with a free running group down in Manly organised by Karmea Fitness (www.karmeafitness.com) every Thursday at 7 pm. We do interval training and is different from a week to another. It fits my plans and is always good to work on speed beside slow-and-long runs. If you do not have a speed workout in your routine and you can commute to Manly I would recommend these sessions. Nice atmosphere by the usual participants and of course the beautiful scenery of Manly beach are in the package.

And now about Vertical Oscillation. For those who do not know what it is, it is the amount of going up and down at running. For those who are confused because they think running is on a horizontal direction, you should take a video of someone’s running and watch it in slow motion to see how much the top of the runner’s head goes up and down. Minimizing this travel would be hugely cost effective. A typical marathon runner would almost climb a few sky scrapers during the course of a marathon. Let’s do some math to see:

Number of strides per minute: 170 (180-200 is the best, but most of runners are below that)
Average time to finish a 42.2km marathon: 4hr
with only 5cm vertical oscillation at each stride there will be : 4 (hr) x 60 (min) x 170 (cadence) x 5cm = 2040 meters!

Although this vertical travel is inevitable, there are movements in runners techniques that increase it. One main culprit is the push-off the ground. As I must have said it a few million times at my blog posts, most of recreational runners push off the ground for propulsion (and that is my single goal I like to fix in the runners’ community).

Talking physics, this push (yellow arrow in the snapshot below) has two components:

Horizontal (green arrow)
Vertical (red arrow)

The horizontal component is the only part runners are after. The vertical part, which comes as a by-product of the push, throws the runner upwards (the so-called vertical oscillation). So the question is, how bad is it? Is there any benefit in doing that at all?

Those who have a relatively higher VO travel longer in the air because they go higher upwards so it takes longer to come down. It is a symmetrical two-way move meaning by the same amount of time it takes to go up it does to fall back down. During this time the runner travels horizontally. In fact by this technique runners buy more time to move horizontally so end up in longer stride length. The downfalls are:

Higher impact with the ground
Landing ahead of the body
Longer ground contact time

The last one is an interesting consequence. Although the airborne phase looks longer, the ground contact phase gets longer too for another effective push-off so the overall airborne time does not find a higher ratio to the total time. Landing ahead of the body is usually an outcome of pushing-off the ground, and in most cases comes with letting heels touch the ground first; if not taking words from me on how bad it is, speak with your physio. Lastly, the higher impact with the ground is simply because the runner falls from a higher height.

At the alternative technique, Pose method, the stride length is meant to be kept short. What increases is stride rate (cadence). In fact we have a short window to make a stride before we fall back down from a shorter height. Does it make sense? Let me explain it from a different angle. At this technique the source of propulsive force is from falling forward. That means there is a short amount of time before falling flat on our face to make a stride! If you try it you will see it happens so quickly until you feel the urge to put a foot forward to avoid it. If you are not quick enough you miss the window. As long as you feel the need to have longer time to make the stride you end up in pushing for a slight upward jump to lengthen the period of each stride. Once you mange making a stride within that window you end up in having higher cadence. This cadence falls automatically in 180-200 strides per minute. So interesting that this known right cadence of 180-200 is actually a by-product of running in pose.

Have a look here. Keep your focus on top of Dr Romanov’s head to see how far it goes up and down. The second focal point is to watch his feet, to see how passively they leave the ground after landing. Final point is the engagement of hamstring and how quickly they are utilized. Usually at leaving the ground knees push; they do not do it here. Constantly decreasing angle of knees frame by frame straight after leaving the ground is the indicator.

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Category: Technique (Page 6 of 9)