Proper running form helps to prevent injuries by evenly distributing impact across your joints, making it easier (and more enjoyable!) to run faster and farther.
Team Injinji Athlete and fitness trainer Dexter Moore breaks down the essentials of running form to help you feel better while running and stay injury-free.
Why Does Running Form Matter?
By improving your running form, you can become more efficient so that every stride costs less energy, allowing you to increase pace and distance. Running with better technique also causes less strain on your body, getting you to the starting line or trailhead healthy and strong.
Breaking Down Proper Form
There are three movements that all runners share. Understanding these provides a standard for improvement.
- Every runner will pass through the “runner’s pose”. This is the moment in our stride where our hips are directly over our support foot, and the foot swinging through is in line under the hip. Head over shoulders, shoulders over hips, and hips over feet alignment is the goal.
- As our hips pass over our support foot, we begin falling forward. The higher the angle we allow, the more speed we gain from gravity. Do not confuse this with bending forward at the waist. We want to maintain shoulders-over-hips alignment as our whole body falls forward from right around the navel.
- To prevent ourselves from falling on our faces, we change support legs by pulling our rear leg back into the runner’s pose supported on the opposite leg, resetting the cycle.
Tips for Improving Running Form
From the runner's pose, we fall forward and then pull our rear foot in back to pose: Pose, fall, pull. By focusing on these 3 elements, we can reduce a major cause of injury and lack of performance: overstriding.
Overstriding is when a runner actively reaches their leg forward and makes contact with the ground too far ahead of their hips. Most running injuries occur because of contact with the ground. Overstriding creates a braking force, increasing ground contact time (GCT) and risk of injury.
We decrease ground contact time by landing closer to under our hips and getting to our runner’s pose more quickly. Make that your goal. Stride after stride, rather than reaching your front foot forward and away from your runner’s pose, focus on pulling your rear foot into that shape while allowing your support foot to drop naturally. The foot that is landing will land on its own. It is your job to get your rear leg back under your body.
Another key element in increasing our running efficiency is using the elastic properties of our muscles and tendons. While you can certainly run without optimizing muscle-tendon elasticity, a cadence of about 180 steps per minute is the minimum ideal for maximizing this natural force.
Working to increase to that minimum can help reduce overstriding while having you feeling quicker and lighter on your feet. A common mistake in increasing cadence is actively trying to shorten our stride by putting our foot down earlier. This leads to short, choppy strides that still land too far ahead of our hips. Your goal is to change support 180 times per minute, accomplished by pulling in your rear foot to recover your runner’s pose. Focus on 180 pulls per minute, not landings.
Here are some of my favorite drills and exercises to reinforce the concepts of Pose, Fall, Pull, and muscle-tendon elasticity.
- Foot Tapping: Set a metronome to 180 bpm and hop to the beat. Every other hop, pull one foot up into your runner’s pose. Feel the timing of your feet springing from the ground and pulling your foot into your pose. 30-60 seconds per set.
- Timber: Establish your runner’s pose. Allow yourself to tip and fall forward. Before you feel the urge to reach out for the ground, pull your rear foot up to establish your runner’s pose supported on the opposite leg. Feel that falling sensation and use it to initiate changing legs. Repeat for 10-12 reps.
- Running in Place: Set a metronome to 180bpm. Alternate rhythmically pulling your feet up into your runner’s pose. Think only about pulling your foot up and allowing the other to drop naturally. Avoid high knee or butt kick deviations. 30-60 seconds per set.
After each set, go into a 10–20-meter run, looking to feel the intent of the drill. These exercises can be done alone or as part of a pre-run warm-up routine.
Checking Your Form
Use video analysis to check your progress by leaning your phone on a water bottle and running across the frame. Most phone cameras will allow you to record in slow motion or give you a slider to move through your video frame by frame.
- Are you actively reaching your leg forward?
- How close is your foot to under your hip at initial contact?
- How is your postural alignment?
- How quickly are you getting your rear foot back under your body?
These are the metrics that you want to see improve through your practice.
These changes can be made and felt now! The challenge is being able to maintain focus on good technique as you start to add distance or challenge yourself with faster paces.
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Improving running form takes practice, but it’s worth it to feel stronger and more comfortable on every run! Speaking of comfort – Injinji running socks are the perfect choice for staying blister-free on any run.
