Happy Thursday all!
Recently I had the pleasure of helping out Craig a fellow Hairy Runner who has been part of the channel for a while. Craig asked me for some advice and help on his running gait as he had recently come back from injury and wanted to make sure that he back on track. He had been kind enough to attached several photos and a video making my life so much easier to look through and see if I could spot anything.
I have attached Craig’s photos below as they are a great example of some things I’d like to highlight and thank you for Craig for your permission to do so.
Firstly, I’d like to cover one of the main questions I get asked on gait and running analysis which is stride length. There is no real answer to what the perfect stride length should be as we are all different sizes, shapes and speeds however, there are certain signs if your either under or over striding. For a good stride length one of the best rules of thumb is to try and land underneath your body with your foot fall. This allows your gait cycle to flow much better and doesn’t act as a natural brake. If you over-stride, and your foot is landing in front of your body this acts almost as a brake as your body momentum is slowed by the foot landing too far away from your body. You will also find that your cadence is slowed down by this as well as you aren’t able to pick your leg cycle up as fast. By controlling your stride this also helps minimise injury and knee damage as well so definitely something to think about next time you are out.
In Craig’s photos you can see he is landing underneath the body which is fantastic and has a good turn over speed from this.
Secondly, I’d like to talk about posture and body position. This for me is a huge area of running form and the gait cycle as if this is correct everything else seems to fall into place. In an idea world starting from head to toe, your head should be looking forward and not down at your feet. This allows the rest of your body to straighten up naturally and creates a nicer posture. Shoulders should be relaxed and in a position to drive the arms at a 45 degrees angle in a forward motion (think of it as where your pockets would be on your top). The hips should stay fixed and not flex and wobble trying to over stride or over compensate and finally the body should float rather than bounce. If you look at great marathon runners, they don’t bounce along and you could almost balance a plate on their heads as they are so smooth and still in the upper body.
In Craig’s photos you can see that his upper body is nice and strong and still however, his right arm when driving forward does stray away from the body and therefore loses some of that power going forward. My advice for Craig here was to focus on his arm movements driving forward and look at keeping them close into the body to minimise the outwards movements.
Overall Craig looks like he has made a great come back after injury and only has one or two minor adjustments to make (as do we all) and looks like he’s striding forward to some great races.
If you have any questions or would like me to look over some photos about your running gait please drop me an email or comment below and I will be in touch.
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