For a guy like me where every iota of fitness has been hard won through many many Km’s the idea of losing that is equally painful as the time spent gaining it. But after 3 weeks in to training plan to take me from being 50Km race ready to 100Km+ I started to run in to issues – these included shin and hip pain, oh dear I thought….
Diagnosing the issue and a strategy
I am a firm believer that any pain / niggle / issue / weakness when it come to running can be solved one way or another through biomechanics. After transitioning from being an avid cyclist, both mountain and road to a runner I suffered a lot with painful knees. After a few visits to a excellent physio (Donna Sanderson-Hull at BlueSkySportsPhysio in Bristol) she worked out I had weak Glutes, big wooden Quad muscles and I was basically as unbalanced as an elephant on a beach ball, this was leading to my legs being uncontrolled then my knees when out of alignment, rubbed and caused immense pain. Stretching the right things and strengthening the others lead to this being a thing of the past and my belief you can train your way out of pain.
So back to now, after reading a lot about shin and hip pain I got my wife to take a slow-mo video of my running style, oh boy was I shocked. I am not the UK version of Kipchoge gliding along?! Nope more like a telletubby being electrocuted. But most importantly I had a strong heel strike and this leads to the foot “slapping” the floor on each step which puts all kinds of stresses on the legs muscles – we will leave the details of that for another post but for many reasons I want to get out of this habit and move to a more mid / fore foot strike to help.
What are the benefits to changing?
Without getting all deep and meaningful about “the way nature intended”… the way nature intended us to run did not involve hitting on the heel, it is boney, hard and unpleasant to run on – go on take your shoes of and trying running your normal heel strike and see how it feels! We are designed to land on our mid / forefoot where the arch flexes along with our calves to cushion the impact then we skate along lightly dragging the floor under us rather than a smash and roll approach caused by the heel strike.
Most of us in the Western world have grown up with cushioned shoes which has allowed us to run in this “new” style and like everything unused they become weak, our arches fall, our shins hurt etc etc. Now before I go on, the debate about which is the best foot strike is the best will rage on and there are pros and cons on both sides, stats to show each is ok, worse, better, natural, unnatural so just remember this:
"We are all an experiment of one"
What works for you might not work for someone else and vice versa – but what I know is this isn’t working for me any longer and I want to change.
But why?
I have traditionally run heavy, I can feel the impacts, it is not smooth, I smash through running. I want to be more efficient, strengthen my legs so they can add to the cushioning as I move, especially for trail running when the demands on the legs are very high. I also want options, heel striking with some cushioned shoes feels nice, it is lazier and I mean that it in a good way – it is nice to mix up the running style. Just like you can’t sit still all the time it is good to change positions so the body doesn’t get too complacent. I guess it is a bit like being ambidextrous but with foot strike!
How do you change?
After 35 years on the planet and running for several of those the muscles are pretty entrenched in their pattern by now so this will take time, serious time. Ask anyone trying to change and you will find someone who tried to keep their weekly distance and change instantly only to be left a crippled mess in no time.
The normal way, well I say normal it is pretty uncommon for people to change, is to stop dead your training and relearn to run from scratch, then when relearnt to work back up from there. If you read Adharanand Finn’s book Running with the Kenyans where the author wants to transition to forefoot he takes on a gruelling period of barefoot running to relearn the techniques and dropping from 1-2hr runs back to 10mins for many months.
I get it, but I don’t want to lose the banked cardio fitness I have, I want a new plan to do both, at the same time.
Ambitious – Check
Lengthy – Check
Difficult – Check
Knowing exactly how to achieve this goal – blank, for now
So how will I try to continue distance training and changing foot strike?
I want to develop a “natural” mid / fore foot style, I am not worried about being absolutely perfect in technique but let my body find it’s own sweet spot. This is partly because trail running and ultras often don’t allow for every step being regular so the body needs to be strong in all scenarios.
My plan for developing my natural foot strike is going to entail interlacing the following elements in to my distance training plan:
- Barefoot running and Barefoot running style.
- Stretch and condition the muscles to allow my foot strike to move backwards more naturally.
- Gradually increase running cadence.
- Reduce reliance on cushioning and move to lower heel drop shoes.
Let’s go through each of those elements to explore why and what I will do to help:
1. Barefoot running and Barefoot running style
Basically, you can’t get an especially bad foot strike when you run barefoot, you are forced on to your forefoot and toes, off your heels and make your calves / arch give you the suspension that your shoes used to give you.
It is liberating, invigorating, natural, in touch with the ground and painful!
Like everyone I went out and did a Km barefoot, I was instantly addicted and thought this would be easy, then woke up the next day with Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) in my calves the likes of which I usually feel after a mountain marathon! A Kilometer, oh dear, this is going to take a long time 🙁
But so be it – my plan is to treat this like the basics of my ultra training plan and I am going to measure and gradually increase my “Total Barefoot Volume” per week but spread over multiple short runs, usually at the beginning of my Tuesday and Thursday mid distance runs.
2. Stretch and condition the muscles to allow my foot strike to move backwards more naturally.
In forefoot strike patterns you land with your centre of gravity (CoG) directly over your foot rather than heel strike where your CoG being behind your foot. Then through the stride your leg gets pulled backwards until the characteristic “flick” you see at the back of elite runners strides.
What this means is I need my muscles of my legs to tend backwards rather than forwards. With everything in the body it is about balance, each muscle has an opposite and the same is true here, the primary ones we are interested in are the hip flexor and the Glute muscles.
We want the hip flexor to be nice and long to allow the leg to go back easily and the Glute to be strong to be able to pull the leg backwards cleanly each time. There are others elements like core stability etc but this is the essential one I will work on to help get a good form.
3 . Gradually increase running cadence.
Many runners never think about cadence, the number of steps you make per minute, it just whatever it is. Your speed is a product of the length of stride multiplied by the number of steps you take in a given time.
It is commonly accepted elite runners usually operate in the 180-190 Steps Per Minute (SPM). Using a Garmin HRM-Run sensor which has intricate cadence and ground contact time I found I was sitting at about 162SPM average.
Who cares? Well a couple of reasons you should care:
- a faster cadence is more efficient with a slightly shorter stride.
- Slower cadences mean larger forces / shocks in to your legs for each step so higher chance of injury.
But most importantly for this exercise is that having a fast cadence makes it very hard to actually heel strike because of the speed your legs move therefore naturally tending you towards a forefoot strike.
This one isn’t tricky to work on but boring, staring at my watch monitoring the cadence as I run (when I can) and using a metronome beep to work on increasing the cadence each week until it is comfortable. How long this will take? No idea but we will find out!
4. Reduce reliance on cushioning and move to lower heel drop shoes
Last but not least…
If it is cushioned shoes with big heel drops that leads us towards the heel strike then moving away (slowly) from that is needed to get the legs strong and supple.
As a trail runner I mostly use Sauncony Peregrine shoes for training and racing which have a fairly low 4mm heel drop combine with Saucony Ride ISO 2 for road which have an 8mm drop. So already not using crazy high amounts and already on neutral stride patterns.
Having a large heel drop will make it difficult to get a nice natural foot step because the foot will actually need to tend downwards to compensate so a low or zero drop will be longer term aim.
First step will be in interject a pair of zero drop trail shoes in the form of Inov-8 TerraUltra. Not too much too soon and the plan is to use them after my mini barefoot sessions to carry on the natural foot strike pattern for a bit longer off road.
How to measure success?
I am an engineer with a science type brain – I need to see proof that a plan is working!
The ideal tool would be a foot strike analysis sensor pad in my shoes whilst running which will show exactly how it is changing, or not, over time. Something like the Nurvv Run, at £250 a pair this isn’t in the budget right now.
So I will use the tools I already have to get some metrics and these include:
- My bare feet and Inov-8 TerraUltra 260 zero drop shoes for forcing the foot strike pattern.
- Garmin Fenix 6 and HRM-Run monitor for all my cadence and ground contact time analyse needs.
- my iPhone with slow mo camera to get footage every now and again.
A lot of these people have or equivelants can be found at reasonable prices, my aim will be to gather data as I progress combined with my perception of my foot strike to work out a simple method for others to follow without the need of expensive sensor analysis tools.
Look out for more articles where I will document my progress along this lengthy journey to better running.
Now go on, just f’ing run!
