Good Running Form

[RuneB]

Feb. 2: An Interview with Running Form Expert, Jay Dicharry

Given all the current interest in running form, including foot strike, I decided to interview running form expert Jay Dicharry. Dicharry is director of the SPEED Clinic at the Center for Endurance Sport, University of Virginia. He has a bachelor's degree in exercise physiology, and a masters in physical therapy. The SPEED clinic works with athletes and coaches across the country to improve their understanding of proper running form. The team has extensive experience in shoe research, from working with companies to validate and continue development of their product line, to educating local running shoe stores to fit the right shoes to the right runners. Dicharry was a co-author of the recent and highly-publicized journal article "The effect of running shoes on lower extremity joint torques" that found greater forces were produced when runners wore shoes than when running barefoot. I covered this in a blog post several weeks ago. I first "met" Dicharry when he added a helpful Comment to that post.

Question: Runners have always been interested in good running form, and that interest has increased in recent years with the various camps like Pose, Chi, and Barefoot running. There seem to be two big variables: Can a different lower-leg pattern decrease injuries? Can it increase performance? To get started, what's your experience in this arena, and what, briefly, have you learned through your work?

Answer: Running form is tremendously important. Recent media focus on different styles of running has gotten athletes to focus more on technique, and that is a good thing! However, I've never been a big fan of everyone should do everything the same, because it doesn't always work like that. From a biomechanic standpoint, your body is just a bunch of pulleys and levers (your muscles control movement of the joints) powered by an engine (heart and lungs). People come in all shapes and sizes, so the length of these pulleys and levers is different, based on their genetics and development.

I am a physical therapist who came into the world of biomechanics. My goal as a clinician is to keep folks healthy so they can continue running. Being able to quantify certain running measurements has opened my eyes to what we know, and don't know, about running. It's been interesting for me to work with this information on a daily basis, and see how much of an impact it can have on individuals.

Injury? Yes. Running form can be a cause of injury. Let's say that your best friend punches you in the shoulder. No problem the bruise will heal. Well, let's say that this friend is not so nice and punches you every day in the same spot; that injury is never going to get a chance to heal. Running works the same way. If a runner's gait loads certain tissues more than they can handle, the injury is never going to improve. Often an injured runner will take some time off, and feel better, and then start running again. But he or she still has the same issues, and the injury returns. I think this example will sound familiar to many people.

Performance? Yes again. We could hold entire college courses on this question, but we are able to quantify biomechanical efficiency. Changes can be small to very large it depends on the runner. In the elite folks we see, small changes may be all they need to increase their position on the podium. Recreational runners have more room to improve before reaching their ceiling. Using the correct cues matched to your body can be powerful.

Q: Now let's dig a little deeper into your thoughts on optimal running form. What does a runner look like when he/she is running with optimal form?

A: Great, but that's a loaded question. First let's talk about what causes us to run with the form we have. There are 3 primary things that affect the way we move: flexibility, strength, and muscle memory. A runner needs to have enough range of motion to complete a running stride. For example you need to be able to extend your hip as you run. I'd estimate that about 75% of the runners I see actually cannot extend their hip at all. Now these folks still run, but instead of extending the hip, they wind up with excessive motion at their low back. And people wonder why about 80% of runners experience low back pain at some point. It's simple: Lack of flexibility at one joint forces excessive motion at another. Now, this doesn't mean you need to stretch for an hour a day. I see just as many injuries among runners who are very flexible and can't control their body as I see from those who are too tight. So what's the take home message here? You need enough motion to complete a running stride correctly and maybe a slight bit extra. No one has ever proven that increasing flexibility beyond the range needed for a task has any value.

Okay, now onto strength. We run in one plane the sagittal plane. So every time you run, you are strengthening the tissues that move us forward. We walk in the sagittal plane. Many runners go to a gym and do squats, leg press, hamstring curls, calf raises, etc. They get stuck on strengthening these muscles that all operate in a singe plane. In all my years of working with runners, I have never encountered one who was weak in the quads, hamstrings, or calf. Think about how much volume of work you do with these muscles. A lot! Now think about how much you work the muscles that control lateral and rotational stability in your body. Is it the same? I doubt it. Running is a great exercise, but it doesn't work on global stability. Ignoring your stability needs is a bit like trying to graduate high school while only studying a single subject. We need to think of ourselves as well-rounded athletes instead of simply runners. There is a vast body of research showing that deficits in stability are responsible for the majority of running injuries.

The final and perhaps most important component of running form is muscle memory. You move the way you do because it feels normal. But what if the way you learned to move wasn't the best? Maybe you had some nagging soreness in your calf and you altered your stride a bit. This change then became permanent and now you've got chronic something-or-other that you just can't get rid of. One example is a runner I saw with chronic knee pain. Now, he had some strength issues he needed to work on for long-term health, but with just a few cues, he was running the next day and ever since then without symptoms. Tweaking your gait can also produce instant gains in efficiency. On those days when your running form feels off, you'll know what to do to pull your body back into alignment. You've heard it before: Perfect practice makes perfect.

Q: Does torso position matter?

A: A critical component of optimal running form is aligning forces through your body. I don't really have a trademark name for this, but it all begins with posture. Trunk alignment has a major effect on where your center of mass is. Having a trunk position that is too far back towards the heels, or leaning too far forward, affects basically everything. Mom always told us to get our shoulders back, and like most thing mom asked us to do, we screwed it up. One component of proper postural alignment involves sliding your shoulder blades down the back so they lie flat along the the rib cage. This opens up the front of the chest and broadens the shoulders. But instead of doing this, most of us learned we could cheat by increasing the extension, or curve, in the lower back. While this does get our shoulders to move back, it does so by over-arching the lower back. Why is this a bad strategy? First, it shifts our center of mass back toward the heels, which decreases our ability to use the foot effectively for balance in the stance phase. Shifting the center of mass back also tends to increase the braking forces acting on the body, while increasing the impact forces, and perhaps increasing the loading rate. Finally, it decreases activation of our core stabilizers. Even if you've been working on lots of core muscle training, you'll lose the muscle recruitment you want if you stand, walk, sit, and run with your back extended too much.

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Edited February 7, 2010 by RuneB

[ThomasNA]

Barefoot running ftw!