Running seems easy. It’s the act of putting one foot in front of the other quickly. One of your legs swings out in front of you and you move onto it. Then the other leg moves out in front of you and you do it again.
This much everybody agrees on.
Yet the mechanics of running aren’t taught at school, it’s something we pick up from watching others. Some people seem to intuitively understand what to do to run fast while others seem to lumber along.
If you start to think about it, or look for guidance from the internet, it quickly becomes a morass of information. Is running the same as falling with gravity, repositioning your legs quick enough to avoid landing on your face? Or are you almost jumping or hopping forwards with each step and lifting your knees high to extend the stride? Which muscles do you use when?
Consider that the only thing which moves you forward is pushing the ground away behind you. Powerful muscular contractions of the glutes and hip muscles ‘out the back’ allow you to skim forward over the ground. Then when the step is complete, you do the same with the other leg. You don’t waste muscular effort repositioning the foot in front of you, you let the body’s natural stretch mechanisms do it.
It’s just like using a slingshot or catapult. You use all your effort to pull the elastic back to its maximum stretch and then, when you let go, it fires forward. You can’t make a catapult go forwards faster by doing anything other than letting go.
Just like the elastic on the catapult fires past the Y-mechanism eventually it slows down as it runs out of energy. Likewise the leg and foot shoot past the body and end up in front. That’s when you, as a runner, go back to putting the effort in to getting the foot and leg moving backwards to power the next step.
These are the first principles:
- Use effort to drive the leg backwards with each step.
- Let elastic energy in the hip flexors pull the leg forwards.
- As the leg comes forward, muscular effort is only used to stabilise rather than power.
These simple principles will help you begin to sort through the advice you read. It won’t cover everything but it’s a good starting place.
Big Red Running 