August 2017 Running Challenge

@PastorVincent All I read was blah blah I'm right blah blah blah

PastorVincent wrote: »

PastorVincent wrote: »

Running form question... this article claims that swinging your legs HIGHER during running (100 degree angle is mentioned) is more efficient and gets you more speed:

http://www.milestonepod.com/blog/want-to-run-faster-with-less-effort-kick-your-butt/

Has anyone heard anything about this? Is this legit? Seems counter-intuitive at a glance as you are wasting energy and time getting your leg up instead of getting it back to the ground to push again.

So I emailed the author and asked for more information and he replied right away:

The higher leg is better because there is a lot of energy needed by smaller muscles for swinging your leg forward when the leg is extended. You have to use your hip flexors (small muscles) to swing your leg, in addition to the momentum you gain during pushoff (coming from the calves and thighs). If you can reduce the moment cost (moment = force x distance) you can reduce the load on those muscles. If you are taking very small steps or running slower, a low leg swing is not a bad thing. It is at faster paces that leg swing becomes more efficient. We do not know when that change occurs.

BTW: The "distance" in that equation is the distance from your muscle action at the hip to the center of mass of the leg. If you have a flexed knee, the center of mass moves closer to your hips.

Any of you experts have any thought on this?

@PastorVincent - There's some technical explanation here that I haven't seen before, but it is true that butt kicks have been used as drills to improve form for a long time. Further, focusing on the follow through (lift leg high) is part of running strides or running at rep pace in the system my club uses. Coach tells me that this is an exaggeration of good form, and the fast pace forces the runner to find good running economy. The feel, if not the absolute height of the heel raise, is supposed to carry through to other parts of the marathon training program and, by extension, to race day.

Having said that, what the milestone pod folks are saying sounds a lot like focusing on cadence. They've looked at what good runners do, found something that they think they can measure, and told beginning runners to concentrate on that. I think that may be a misplaced emphasis. In the case of cadence, the important thing is landing with your foot under your body, and increased cadence is supposed to force the newbie into better form. In the case of butt kicks, the point is good running economy and the high kick is supposed to force you into better form and better running economy. But I think focusing on the precise angle is misguided. Some runners will kick higher than others, and most will kick higher while running faster than while running slower.

So . . . saying faster marathon runners have faster cadence and a higher leg swing than slower marathon runners may just be observing the *results* of running faster, not actually finding a cause. You watch any good runner in a race that's 5K or longer, and I would expect that his leg swing will be higher in the last 200 meters when he puts on the finishing line kick. It's natural, and he isn't concentrating on the angle his leg makes when it rises.