CHAPTER 5

PURSUING THE PERFECT STRIDE

In the sport of running, the stride is everything. That’s all there is to it: stride after stride after stride. In light of this fact, it’s truly amazing how little attention has traditionally been given to stride development in the training of distance runners. Most running coaches have few ideas about the characteristics that define good running form and do nothing to actively improve the stride of their runners other than prescribe a few technique drills that are justified by tradition more than by any sound biomechanical rationale.

Brain training takes a different approach to stride development. In fact, in the brain training system, stride development is actively pursued in every single step of every run, as well as in cross-training workouts (the topic of chapter 6) and, yes, technique drills. The reason stride development saturates the brain training system is that the new, brain-centered model of running performance that has emerged over the last decade more or less demands it. According to this model, there is simply no way to improve as a runner that is independent of direct or indirect changes to the running stride, which, of course, is completely governed by the brain.

Direct changes to the stride include improvements in the power-to-weight ratio, which enable the runner to take longer strides; reductions in coactivation (or tension in the muscles opposing the working muscles), which enhances stride efficiency by decreasing the amount of internal resistance in the stride; increases in preactivation, or stiffening of the leg prior to footstrike, which reduces ground contact time and increases elastic energy conservation; and enhancement of motor unit cycling, or the sequential resting of select motor units within the working muscles during prolonged running, which increases endurance.

Indirect changes to the stride are those that impact on fatigue. In chapter 3 I defined running as an effort to delay and resist fatigue. And how does fatigue affect performance? By changing the stride! Fatigue-related deceleration is almost always caused by a reduction in motor unit recruitment and loss of neuromuscular coordination that results in declining stride length and/or stride frequency and increased ground contact time. (The only other cause of fatigue-related slowing is voluntary speed reduction resulting from suffering and loss of motivation.) Simply put: to fatigue is to have your stride fall apart.

Studies have shown that individual muscles approach homeostatic limits, such as glycogen depletion, acidosis, and muscle cell depolarization, at different rates during running. To protect these muscles from catastrophic damage, the brain reduces motor output to them. If running were controlled by the muscles instead of the brain, the exhaustion of any single running muscle would result in a spastic and even grotesque distortion of the running stride as the first muscle to fatigue became totally unusable. But since the brain is in control, it responds to fatigue in one muscle by changing the entire stride pattern so that some semblance of a normal running stride can be maintained despite local muscle fatigue.

Nevertheless, there is a subtle loss of muscle coordination and timing that follows local muscle fatigue and has a major spoiling effect on stride efficiency and power. Efficient running requires very precise timing of muscle contractions and relaxations. As fatigue sets in, the muscle actions become less synchronized. As a result, the entire stride pattern changes. The stride loses stiffness, ground contact time increases, and the stride rate decreases. This loss of coordination is believed to be the reason middle distance runners sometimes hit the wall and slow down precipitously, instead of gradually losing momentum, in the final lap of a track race. This phenomenon is similar to the way a juggler’s loss of timing causes him to drop all five balls instead of just one or two.

Highly fit runners are able to delay stride deterioration because of superior local muscular endurance in the active muscles. They are also able to maintain a more consistent stride even at the point of exhaustion, most likely because of neuromuscular adaptations that have more to do with running experience than with running fitness per se. The photograph below illustrates this point. It pictures the American runner Dathan “Ritz” Ritzenhein in the last mile of the New York City Marathon, which he ran a full minute

slower than his average pace for the race. Despite feeling horribly fatigued and slowing down inexorably, Ritz maintains a stride pattern that looks relaxed, fluid, and powerful.

Recent years have brought numerous discoveries concerning the stride-related causes of particular running injuries. These discoveries have led to the development of a new physical therapy subdiscipline called gait retraining, which entails systematic efforts to reprogram the motor patterns governing the injured runner’s stride in a way that eliminates the stride flaw suspected of causing the injury. Among the experts who practice gait retraining, there is something of a consensus that runners should not try to change their stride until and unless they are injured, because ill-advised changes can cause injuries that might not happen otherwise. In other words, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Nearly every runner experiences at least one running-related injury sooner or later, however, so practicing this advice usually amounts to simply waiting for an injury to suggest the right stride correction to make.

Those who come at the issue of stride development from a physical therapy perspective also tend to believe that runners should not try to modify their gait on their own. They should leave it to an expert to determine what is wrong with their stride and oversee the process of correcting the flaws.

Injured runners certainly should seek the help of medical professionals with knowledge of running injuries and gait retraining techniques, if possible. But I believe the risks associated with meddling with one’s own stride are greatly overstated. There is evidence that regularly fiddling and playing around with one’s stride technique in sensible ways actually reduces injury risk by distributing the trauma of running more evenly across the bones, muscles, and joint tissues, so that no particular area suffers too much damage. (It’s sort of like rotating your car’s tires periodically for more even tread wear.) There are some simple means of improving stride form that any runner can implement without supervision and that are far more likely to prevent injuries than cause them, while also enhancing stride efficiency and power.

I began experimenting with gait retraining a few years ago while trying to overcome a frustrating series of injuries. Based on what I had learned from leading gait-retraining researchers in my work as a journalist, I concluded that stride flaws were probably contributing to my susceptibility to breakdowns. I knew of no qualified professionals in my area who practiced gait retraining in a clinical environment, however, nor did I have access to high-tech equipment such as force plates, accelerometers, and video cameras with high-resolution frame-by-frame replay capability. So I came up with my own method of gait retraining. This method not only helped me break free of the injury bug but also greatly improved my overall running performance. So, naturally, this method is now the brain training approach to stride development.

THE BRAIN TRAINING APPROACH TO STRIDE DEVELOPMENT

The brain training approach to stride development has three components: emulation, proprioceptive cues, and technique drills. The techniques of emulation and proprioceptive cues, while common in some sports, are almost totally unique to the brain training system in the sport of running. Additionally, most of the specific technique drills used in the brain training system are rare. Cross-training is also used for stride development in my system, but it has other benefits, too. Thus, it is addressed separately in the next chapter.

Emulation

Athletes in many sports work to improve their technique by emulating that of the very best athletes in that particular sport. For example, baseball players study the swings of great hitters and then try to copy them. There’s no reason runners can’t do the same thing. While differences in body structure limit the degree to which any runner can copy the form of another, there are certain universal characteristics of good running form that all runners can enhance in their own stride.

The first step I took in my efforts to better my own running form was to develop a vision of the perfect stride using resources that included studies by leading researchers in the field of gait retraining, such as Irene Davis, Ph.D., of the University of Delaware, and a wonderful book called Running: Biomechanics and Exercise Physiology Applied in Practice, by Frans Bosch and Ronald Klomp, who place a heavy emphasis on stride development in their training of elite European runners. I also began an ongoing practice of closely studying the stride form of elite runners at every opportunity. The result was a list of five key characteristics of good running form, which I will describe in detail momentarily.

My next challenge was to find a way to enhance the key characteristics of good running form in my own stride. This effort led to the second component of my stride development method.

Proprioceptive Cues

Proprioceptive cues are used to improve technique in a number of sports, including swimming, which I took up many years ago in branching out from running to triathlon. Proprioceptive cues are particular thoughts and sensations that athletes focus on while performing a sports movement to help them control that movement in a desired way. They worked very well for me in swimming, so I decided to give them a try in running. The only trouble was that I had to make them up, because the use of proprioceptive cues in running is almost unheard-of.

In the end I came up with a dozen cues that I found effective in improving my stride. I’ll describe them for you later in this chapter. I found the use of proprioceptive cues in general to be so effective that I now use them constantly throughout every run, and I will recommend that you do the same.

Technique Drills

The use of technique drills in run training is not nearly as radical as the constant use of proprioceptive cues, but even so, technique drills are under-utilized by most runners. The six drills I have settled on as my favorites are those that specifically enhance each of the five key characteristics of good running form. I will show you these drills in the final section of the chapter.

THE FIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD RUNNING TECHNIQUE

There is no single, unified standard that defines “correct” running technique. Individual runners achieve success in running with disparate strides, just as individual baseball players achieve success as batters with distinctive swings. But there is a core set of stride characteristics that are common to all of the best distance runners—that is, all of the fastest and least injury-prone runners. These characteristics are seen in tall elite runners, such as the marathon world record holder Paul Tergat; in short elite runners, such as Kenenisa Bekele (the world record holder at 5,000m and 10,000m); and in both male elites and female elites, such as Meseret Defar (the women’s world record holder at 5,000m). They represent one of the major factors that makes elite runners elite runners. And the absence of these characteristics (or an insufficiency thereof) is a major factor that makes the rest of us nonelite.

The five core characteristics of a world-class stride are stiffness, ballistic action, compactness, stability, and symmetry. Let’s take a closer look at each of the five characteristics of the world-class running stride, and at the common deviations from these characteristics that the rest of us need to work on.

Stiffness

When you watch world-class runners like Kenenisa Bekele and Meseret Defar in action, the last word you might think of using to describe their running style is “stiff.” These runners look smooth and fluid, not stiff. It’s the back-of-the-pack runners shuffling along in their lock-kneed manner who look stiff.

Nevertheless, a certain type of stiffness is actually a hallmark characteristic of the best runners’ strides. Elite runners have the most stiffness, while lesser runners like us could use a lot more of it. The type of stiffness I am referring to is the type that physicists talk about in relation to springs. The human body does in fact function as a sort of spring during running, and just as a spring with adequate stiffness will bounce more efficiently than a spring that’s too loose, a runner who exhibits sufficient muscular stiffness when his or her foot strikes the ground will run more efficiently than a runner whose muscles are too loose on impact.

A spring works by reusing energy. When it falls to the ground from a given height it compresses, which converts the “kinetic” energy of the fall into “potential” energy stored in the form of tension in the spring. As the spring returns to its natural length it converts this potential energy back into kinetic energy in the form of a vector force directed into the ground. As a result, the spring bounces back up into the air.

Something very similar happens when we run. The difference is that whereas a spring-powered device such as a pogo stick achieves movement with energy that is released when its spring is compressed on impact and then expands back to its natural length, a runner’s legs do the opposite. As the runner’s foot makes contact with the ground, tendons and elastic components of certain muscles stretch beyond their natural length, thereby capturing and storing energy from the impact. As these tissues return to their natural length, this energy is released. Precisely timed and intricately coordinated muscle actions direct the energy back into the ground, sending the runner’s body upward and forward.

Few runners realize just how much energy they are able to reuse thanks to this spring effect. Research has shown that runners consume oxygen at a rate that is sufficient to produce only about half of the energy needed to run at any given speed. The other half is provided by the spring effect.

A stiffer spring is able to reuse more energy than a looser spring because it returns energy to the ground faster. A looser spring stretches and compresses too slowly, allowing more stored energy to dissipate as heat or friction. Top runners spend less time with each foot on the ground than average runners, in part because their superior stride stiffness allows them to return more energy to the ground faster. Ironically, this is one reason why the elite runner’s stride looks smoother and more fluid. These runners spend more time “floating” in the air and get more of their energy for free, so they don’t have to produce as much energy through muscle contractions to propel forward movement.

What contributes to stride stiffness? Part of it comes from the actual elastic properties of the muscles and tendons themselves. These properties can be enhanced through proper training. The other part comes from running technique. A runner with excellent technique is able to coordinate his or her muscle actions in a way that increases the amount of energy that is reused for forward thrust. For example, top runners do a better job of prestretching and stiffening certain muscles (particularly the hamstrings) just before the foot makes contact with the ground, which enables the runner to capture more energy in the muscles and tendons, return it to the ground more quickly, and direct more energy backward, resulting in more forward thrust.

Compactness

There are two variables that determine running speed: stride length and stride rate. The longer your stride is at any given stride rate, or cadence, the faster you run. Likewise, the higher your cadence is at any given stride length, the faster you run. The best runners tend to make shorter strides (and hence have a higher stride rate) at any given speed than average runners. This style of running is often referred to as a “compact” stride.

The compactness of a stride is determined primarily by where the foot lands (or, more precisely, by the placement of the foot when the support leg becomes fully weighted). If the foot is directly underneath the hips, the stride is compact. If the foot is in front of the hips, the runner is overstriding.

When the foot lands in front of the body there is a lack of stability. To understand why, perform the following test. Stand normally, and then lift one foot off the ground. Is it difficult to balance in this position? Not terribly. Now stand in a split stance with one foot half a pace in front of the other. Lift your rear foot off the floor. Can you balance in this position? Impossible. Your point of support is not aligned with your center of gravity.

This is essentially the problem faced by runners whose feet land ahead of their hips. Due to the difficulty of balancing in this position, runners who overstride have to put a lot of energy into stabilizing the body against impact forces and gravity before they can begin to generate thrust. Consequently, the foot must remain in contact with the ground longer. The thrust phase will not really begin until the foot is behind the body’s center of gravity, which is bad, because in this position the support leg’s joint angles and muscle lengths are not optimal for generating power.

Overstriding also produces a braking effect that kills forward momentum and increases the amount of thrust energy that is required to sustain any given running speed. When your forward leg is reaching ahead on footstrike, the impact forces that travel up your leg move backward, against your direction of travel. By contrast, when your foot lands underneath your hips, the impact forces that travel up your leg move more or less straight up, neutral to your direction of travel. To minimize the braking effect of overstriding, runners who possess this particular stride flaw unconsciously try to land softly. Unfortunately, the softer you land, the more “free” elastic energy you waste, because it dissipates before you can reuse it. You transform yourself into a loose spring.

When your foot touches down beneath your body, you can begin to generate thrust immediately. In fact, the best runners begin to generate backward thrust before their foot even touches the ground. As a result, they are able to minimize the amount of energy they put into stabilization, use more free elastic energy provided by muscle and tendon prestretch and by ground impact forces, minimize ground impact time, and push off with more force. Because they begin to generate thrust when the foot is directly underneath the hips, they are able to create more power because their joints are at the optimal angles and their muscles are at the optimal lengths for power production. They are also able to push off sooner, with the foot not as far behind the body, thus enhancing the stride’s compactness.

It’s important to note that while compact runners tend to make shorter strides than overstriders at any given running speed, compact runners are generally able to run with much longer strides than overstriders. This is just another way of saying that compact runners are able to run faster. As runners increase their speed, their stride length changes much more than their stride rate. The stability and power of a compact stride enable a compact runner to cover huge distances in the air between footstrikes compared to overstriders.

Ballistic Action

Ballistic muscle actions are short and fast rather than sustained and gentle. Many distance runners believe that the ideal pattern of muscle action during running is sustained and gentle. The idea is to use energy evenly throughout the stride, landing softly, staying relaxed, and avoiding wasteful “peaks” and lazy “valleys” in muscle work. In reality, the best runners have a ballistic style of running. They contract their muscles extremely forcefully— much more forcefully than average runners do — during a small slice of the overall stride that begins in the moment of bracing for impact, continues through a very brief ground contact phase, and terminates at push-off. (This anticipatory tensing of the muscles is a major factor in creating the stiffness that enables particular leg muscles and tendons to capture more elastic energy when they are forced to stretch on footstrike.) They then relax their muscles as they float in the air between footstrikes—and they spend much more time floating between footstrikes than average runners do.

Ballistic runners use more energy during that sliver of the stride when their muscles are working the hardest, but they use less energy overall, because they get more free elastic energy and they spend more time floating and relaxing. If you closely watch elite runners in competition this ballistic pattern will be quite evident. You will see them stiffen their leg before footstrike and then drive their foot into the ground, almost seeming to bounce off it. A noticeable relaxation of the muscles follows as the runner floats airborne before stiffening once more in anticipation of the next footstrike.

Stability

Running subjects the joints of the body to tremendous downward-pulling forces. Half of the energy we use to run goes toward simply preventing our bodies from collapsing to the ground each time our feet make contact with it. The best runners are able to prevent joint collapse better than average runners. If you watch average runners in action you will see that they tend to bend the knee of their support leg more on impact and also that the hip of the unsupported (swing) leg dips toward the ground while the support foot is planted. And if you’re really observant, you’ll notice that the pelvis tips forward more on impact in average runners. These excessive joint movements waste a lot of energy and put extra strain on the joints that can lead to injuries.

Joint collapse is a type of stride flaw that tends to result from other stride flaws. Overstriding is the big one. When your foot lands out in front of your body, your muscles are not in a good position to absorb the impact forces that the ground sends shooting up your legs. By the time your body has caught up to your foot, these forces will have had time to pull you toward the ground at your most susceptible points: the knees, pelvis, and hips.

Symmetry

No runner runs with perfect left-right symmetry, but the best runners tend to run more symmetrically than others. All kinds of different asymmetries may crop up in a runner’s stride, from the shoulders all the way down to the feet. One foot usually lands harder than the other and one foot usually pronates more than the other. The angles of the knee and hip on impact are different in the right leg than they are in the left. One leg produces more thrust than the other and the same muscles are activated to different degrees on either side of the body to produce this thrust. As long as such discrepancies are small, they are nothing to worry about. But large asymmetries are always wasteful and also tend to increase injury risk.

One of the most problematic asymmetries is long axis rotation, or twisting of the spine. Long axis rotation tends to develop in runners who are not able to begin the thrusting phase of the stride until late in the stance phase, when the body has already passed ahead of the foot. To make up for the inability of the muscles to develop adequate force in this position, the runner must keep the foot in contact with the ground longer for an extra last-moment push-off. And to keep the foot on the ground longer, the runner must rotate the pelvis in the direction of the trailing leg, which in effect makes this leg longer. Finally, to compensate for this movement, the runner must throw the opposite shoulder forward. As a result the lower (lumbar) spine twists in one direction and the upper (thoracic) spine twists in the opposite direction.

These rotational movements are very wasteful. In most runners who exhibit them, they are more pronounced on one side of the body than on the other. Top runners typically run with their hips and shoulders more square to their direction of travel. They are able to keep their pelvis fairly neutral by generating thrust early, when the foot is still underneath the body.

As you have probably noticed, the five characteristics of good running form are interconnected. Any specific movement pattern that enhances one characteristic is likely to affect most if not all of them. On the other hand, any specific deviation from good form that affects one characteristic is likely to affect most if not all of them.

For example, suppose you change your stride by stiffening your leg more in the moment preceding impact. This one change will enhance the stability of your joints in absorbing impact, reducing energy waste and increasing the amount of free elastic energy you are able to reuse for thrust. Due to greater stiffness and stability, you will be able to generate thrust earlier, thus reducing ground contact time and increasing float. The ability to generate thrust more quickly will also reduce tendencies toward asymmetrical torso rotations and overstriding. Your stride is also now inherently more ballistic, because you are concentrating more muscle work within smaller slices of the overall stride.

Some experts in the biomechanics of running now view the stride as a complex dynamical system, much like climatic systems and market economies, where one small change can have system-wide effects. From our perspective as runners trying to improve our stride this is a good thing, because it means we can improve our entire stride by working on one aspect of it at a time.

PROPRIOCEPTIVE CUES

Proprioceptive cues are images and other sensory cues that enable you to modify your stride for the better as you think about them while running. For example, by thinking about actively driving your feet into the ground instead of passively allowing them to drop to the ground while running, you can increase your leg stiffness on impact and your ability to generate thrust quickly and efficiently with minimal ground contact time. I have used proprioceptive cues in my training for the past four years and have found that they really work.

Using proprioceptive cues effectively requires concentration and discipline. Our natural tendency is to let our thoughts wander aimlessly while we run. If you’re serious about improving your stride you must fight this tendency by forcing yourself to concentrate on and execute a particular proprioceptive cue for hundreds, even thousands, of consecutive strides. The stride improvements that proprioceptive cues facilitate do not happen overnight, because the motor patterns that underlie your current stride habits are deeply ingrained, to the point of being almost completely automatic.

You’ll get the best results from proprioceptive cues if you use one at a time throughout the entire length of every run you do. At first you might find it difficult to keep your mind on your stride from start to finish in your runs, but eventually you will develop the ability to divide your awareness, so that one part of your attentional focus is always on the feel of your stride even as your thoughts wander.

It’s not necessary to “master” the stride change associated with any given cue before moving on to other cues. In fact, no matter how perfect your stride becomes, you can still benefit from using each cue regularly as a reminder to keep your form sharp, especially when you’re fatigued. Therefore, I recommend that you cycle through the following cues in an endless rotation, never neglecting any of them for long. The brain training plans in Part II will give you a single cue to focus on each week.

The twelve cues described below are my personal favorites, which I’ve created and retained over the past four years of working to run more and more like Kenenisa Bekele.

Falling Forward

Tilt your whole body slightly forward as you run. Don’t bend at the waist! Tilt your entire body from the ankles. When you’re first getting a feel for this proprioceptive cue, feel free to exaggerate your lean to the point where you feel you’re about to fall on your face. Then ease back to a point where you feel comfortable and in control, but where gravity still seems to be pulling you forward. This cue will help you correct overstriding, because when you’re running with a slight forward tilt in your body, your feet will naturally land close to your center of gravity.

Navel to Spine

Concentrate on pulling your belly button inward toward your spine while running. Using this cue will activate the deep abdominal muscles that serve as important stabilizers of the pelvis and lower spine during running. In runners who do not properly contract the deep abdominals during running, the pelvis tilts forward excessively as the thigh pulls backward during the thrust phase. When the deep abs are kept tight, most of the force generated by the buttocks and hamstrings is transferred to the ground, hence into forward movement. But when the deep abs are not kept tight, some of the force generated by the buttocks and hamstrings is wasted in stretching the deep abs, causing the pelvis to tip forward, and consequently never reaches the ground.

Note that this proprioceptive cue requires an especially high degree of focus to sustain throughout a run. According to Michael Frederickson, Ph.D., a running biomechanics expert at Stanford University, more than nine in ten runners fail to engage their deep abdominal muscles properly during running. We’re simply not accustomed to using these muscles, so if you let your thoughts wander away from them for even a moment, you will unconsciously relax them. The core muscle training exercises described in the next chapter are a good complement to this proprioceptive cue. They will teach you to “find” and engage these muscles in simpler movements, making it easier to do the same when running.

Running on Water

Imagine you’re running on water, and your goal is to not fall through the surface. To do this, you must overcome the squishiness of your running surface by applying maximum force to the water in minimum contact time, like a skipping stone. Try to make your feet skip across your running surface in a similar way: quickly, lightly, yet forcefully. This proprioceptive cue will teach you to stiffen your stride, minimize ground contact time, and begin the thrust phase earlier.

Pulling the Road

Imagine that your running route is like a giant nonmotorized treadmill. On a nonmotorized treadmill, you are able to run in place by pulling the treadmill belt backward with your feet. Envision yourself doing the same thing with the road as you run outdoors. You’re not actually moving forward—you’re simulating forward movement by pulling the road behind you with each foot. This proprioceptive cue will teach you to begin generating thrust earlier, stiffen your stride, and minimize ground contact time.

Scooting

Run in a “scooting” manner by actively minimizing vertical oscillation. Don’t exaggerate this action to the point where you are reducing your stride rate or increasing ground contact time. Just think about thrusting your body forward instead of upward while running. If it helps, imagine you’re running beneath a ceiling just two inches above your head that will leave you with a terrible headache if you smack into it repeatedly throughout a run. This proprioceptive cue will enable you to run with greater stability by reducing vertical impact forces.

Pounding the Ground

Most runners are taught to run as softly as possible. In fact, running speed is almost entirely a function of how forcefully you hit the ground with your feet. The typical runner— especially the typical overstriding runner—allows his or her foot to fall passively to the ground with each stride. Instead, practice actively driving your foot into the ground. Be sure to give a somewhat backward pull to this driving movement rather than a completely vertical movement. Also, if you are currently a heel striker (overstrider), work on shortening your stride and landing flat-footed before using this proprioceptive cue, which teaches you to stiffen your stride, thrust earlier, and minimize ground contact time.

Driving the Thigh

Concentrate on driving the thigh of your swing leg forward a little more forcefully than you normally do. A more forceful forward-upward movement of this leg will create a counterbalancing downward-backward action in your opposite leg as it comes into contact with the ground. (Think of the way your free arm moves in opposition to your throwing arm when you throw a ball hard.) This cue will enhance your stride symmetry and stiffness.

Floppy Feet

The human foot contains twenty-seven bones and dozens of muscles and ligaments. This complex structure enables the foot to deform in an intricate, wavelike pattern while it is in contact with the ground during running. Unfortunately, shoes greatly restrict this natural movement. You can get a lot of it back by wearing a running shoe that allows greater freedom of foot movement, such as the Nike Free. You can get even more back by concentrating on running with relaxed, “floppy” feet while running. When practicing this cue, continue to strike the ground forcefully with your feet, but use the muscles of your upper leg to generate this force while keeping your foot relaxed, enabling it to absorb and transfer impact forces in a way that will minimize stress on specific tissues and increase the amount of free elastic energy you are able to store and reuse.

Butt Squeeze

In the instant before your foot makes contact with the ground, contract the muscles in the hip and buttock on that side of your body and keep them engaged throughout the ground contact phase of the stride. This proprioceptive cue will enable you to maintain greater stability in the hips, pelvis, lower spine, and perhaps even the knees as you run, and will minimize wasteful (asymmetrical) long axis rotations.

Feeling Symmetry

Focus your attention on a specific part of your body, or stride, on both the left side and the right side. Concentrate on the feel of your arm swing, the forward movement of your swing leg, the moment of footstrike, push-off, or something else. Compare the feeling on the left side of your body to that on your right side. If there is a discrepancy, adjust your stride in a way that eliminates the discrepancy, if possible, or at least reduces it. Specifically, alter your stride on the side that feels less comfortable, natural, or “right” to make it feel more like the side that feels better. Obviously, this proprioceptive cue helps you reduce asymmetries in your stride.

Axle Between the Knees

Imagine there is an axle, dowel, post, or something else of the sort that is positioned between your knees and pushes your knees half an inch farther apart than they would normally be while you run. This proprioceptive cue helps you engage the hip flexors and hip external rotators and prevent internal rotation of the thigh—a common cause of injuries.

Running Against a Wall

Imagine there’s a wall right in front of your nose that moves forward with you as you run. Your knees or feet will repeatedly knock into this wall unless you shorten your stride and place your feet underneath your hips instead of out ahead of your body. Leaning slightly forward at the ankles will also create a little more room to drive your thighs forward without banging your knees. This proprioceptive cue facilitates a more compact stride by correcting overstriding.

TECHNIQUE DRILLS

Technique drills enable you to work on improving a particular facet of your stride outside the context of normal running. An easy and effective way to integrate technique drills into your training is to do two or three of them immediately after a base or recovery run once a week.

Running No Arms

Lace the fingers of your two hands together and make a big circle with your arms at shoulder level, as though you’re making a simulated basketball hoop for someone else to toss a ball through. Run 100 yards at a moderately fast tempo with your arms in this position. Jog slowly and normally back to your starting point and repeat the drill. This drill will force you to activate your deep abdominal muscles to maintain an upright posture and thereby teach you how to activate these muscles while running. It will also help eliminate rotational asymmetries by taking away your ability to compensate for these rotations with shoulder movements.

Steep Hill Sprints

Find the steepest hill that’s available to you and sprint up it for 20 seconds. Walk back down the hill and repeat the drill. This drill will develop your ability to run ballistically, applying great force to the ground on footstrike and driving your swing leg forward to assist in this effort.

One-Leg Hop

Run (or hop) as fast as you can on one leg for 20 seconds. Jog back to your starting point and repeat the drill. In addition to increasing your push-off power, this drill enhances the stability of the hips, pelvis, lower spine, and knees on impact by challenging the muscles that stabilize these joints with extreme impact forces for a short period of time.

High Knees

Run with a fast cadence and highly exaggerated knee lift, bringing your thighs up parallel to the ground with each stride. Continue for 30 seconds. Jog back to your starting point and repeat the drill. This drill teaches you to drive your swing leg and couple the movement of your thighs to strike the ground with greater force.

Bounding

Run with long, leaping strides (like the first two jumps in a track and field triple jump). Continue for 30 seconds. Jog back to your starting point and repeat the drill. This drill enhances push-off power and stability on impact. It also helps teach you to begin retracting your leading leg before impact, because the braking effect of overstriding is greatly exaggerated when you’re bounding.

Stiff-Legged Running

Run briskly for 20 seconds with your knees locked as much as possible. This drill greatly increases reliance on the buttock muscles and decreases use of the hamstrings for forward propulsion. It will help you increase the stiffness of your stride and also boost its compactness by teaching you to begin thrusting earlier.