Fitness: The key to running with less effort is perfecting your form

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Do you envy runners who jog gracefully by with barely a bead of sweat on their brow? Meanwhile, you shuffle along feeling like you’re pulling a piano, with your effort on display for everyone to see.

The key to running with less effort is fixing your form. Form fixes don’t automatically turn you into the runner of your dreams, but it can make your runs feel more fluid and help you find a more comfortable flow. Every body is unique and most runners settle into a style and pace that suits them best. But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. Small changes can make a big difference, delaying fatigue and taking some of the pressure off your road-weary legs.

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The first step toward fixing your form is to have someone take a video of you while running (be sure to warm up first). Then take a look at how your current form varies from the tips listed below. Make one small change at a time and see how it feels before trying something else. And be patient.

What feels awkward at first will eventually become natural, making you feel one step closer to becoming a runner everyone looks at with envy.

Alignment

Good runners stand tall, chest proud, eyes looking forward, not down. Your torso should lean slightly forward to optimize your stride. The lean starts from the ankles, not the hips, with the rest of the body falling in line. Be sure to keep your head over your shoulders. A lot of runners lead from their head, which pulls the rest of the body out of alignment. Visualize your head floating on top of the shoulders as if being pulled from a string while remaining relatively still. Keep that stillness through the torso, directing all your energy forward.

Arms

Keep your arms close your sides at a 90-degree(ish) angle and swing from the shoulders with your thumbs travelling from your hips to no higher than shoulder height. This helps keep your arms from swinging across your body in a windshield wiper or rocking motion, both of which compromise your forward energy.

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If you notice your thumbs reaching closer to your chin, it’s a sign your shoulders are riding high, which creates tension in the upper body. Shake out your arms, lower your shoulders and reset your swing pattern.

Another source of upper body tension is clenched fists. Wrists should be aligned with the forearms and fists loosely closed.

Stride

Here’s where running can get technical, but the reality is everyone’s stride is somewhat different based on things like height, weight, flexibility and fitness. But one of the most common running errors is overstriding, which adds more up and down movement to every stride, putting extra stress on the knees, hips and ankles and taking away from your forward momentum.

How do you know if you need to shorten your stride? An easy visual is checking to see where your foot lands. Ideally, it should be directly under your body, so you shouldn’t see it touch down ahead of you.

Another way to evaluate stride length is to check your cadence — the number of steps you take per minute. Most running coaches recommend a cadence of 170-180 steps per minute. You can check yours by counting the number of times your right (or left) foot hits the ground for 30 seconds and double it to determine your total number of strides. Double that number to get your cadence over 60 seconds (most running apps and smart watches will automatically calculate your cadence).

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Once you know your cadence, try tightening your stride to get it closer to around the 170 mark, dropping a couple of steps every few weeks. You should feel like your stride is turning over faster, which takes some getting used to. There’s little to suggest that your ultimate goal is 180 strides per minute, but most of us will run more efficiently with a faster turnover.

Footstrike

Footstrike is defined by which part of your foot hits the ground first. It’s important because the impact stress from each footfall changes depending on which part of your foot is first to make contact with the ground. More than 80 per cent of runners strike with their heel first, which produces greater impact forces compared with landing with more of a midfoot strike.

For a while, this type of thinking produced a host of runners and coaches trying to change to a mid-foot strike. But it turns out the science behind footstrike isn’t so black and white. In most cases, tightening your stride will change your footstrike enough to reduce injuries thought to be related to an aggressive heel strike.

Runners should have “quiet feet,” which means the feet should hit the ground with a gentle squish versus a slap, gently rolling from your heel or mid-foot to the forefoot.

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