Running Mechanics – Part 1
Having just signed up for the 2013 Toronto Waterfront Marathon I decided to spend the next month making blog posts on various running related topics. Subjects I’d like to discuss include run mechanics and form, effects of various shoe types on injury rates, stretching programs for runners, weight training and plyometrics for runners, program design and over/under training, training volume and duration, types of running drills, range of motion and mobility exercises for the runner, warming up, etc. If you have a specific request for a topic please send me an email through the contact form.
Like any professional athlete performing a skill that they have practiced over and over again a skilled runner can make it look effortless. But for some reason many of us don’t consider this athlete to be well practiced and skilled in their art. Perhaps it’s because many of us find that the cardiovascular demands of running tend to be the limiting factor in our performance that we don’t give enough credit to the “skill” involved in running quickly and efficiently. Why do we practice specific skills and drills in swimming, skiing, golf, basketball, and baseball yet consider running to be one of those things you just go out and do? Well, if we take a look at the running mechanics of a stride you will see that there are a lot of subtle movements going on at every joint in the body during the running motion and every one of those play a part in the efficiency and performance of our stride as well as the injury potential we may have after repeating the same motion over and over. There is a reason that most running injuries are repetitive strain injuries.
What differentiates running from walking is that we alternate having all of our weight on one foot at a time hopping between feet. There is a brief period in between where there is no contact with the ground. For a runner at a slower pace (6-8mph) this floatation time should be very short. If the floatation time is too long then we are likely expending too much energy in a vertical trajectory at toe off. In this case we may be wasting energy by directing our force in a vertical direction instead of in a linear (forward) direction.
The running stride itself is broken down in to the swing phase and the stance phase. The swing phase is the period when the leg is being swung through the air from take off until initial contact. The stance phase is the period from initial contact with the ground until take off. In my next post I will discuss the stance phase as well as the various parts of the stance phase.
