How To Fix Your Running Form To Run Faster
In today’s blog we’re going to be looking at how to improve your running form so that you can run faster with less effort.
To run faster, you need to have good running form. We’re going to show you some of the common problems runners have with running form. We're going to start starting at the top of the body and work our way down.
Top tip: whenever you do a running drill to improve your running form, the best thing you can do after is run. It simple but super effective.
Tip 1 - Head alignment
If when you run, you’re looking down, or you’re looking up at the sky, we need to look at how your head sits on your shoulders. Looking down completely changes the way you run. You’re more likely to be hunched over and your knee lift will decrease.
This means you'll decrease your stride length, which is one key factor for increasing the speed you run at. With poor head alignment, you’ll be using more energy trying to run at the same pace. That means you could be making running harder than it needs to be, and no one wants that! Not to mention, if you’re not looking where you’re going you could crash into things and get injured.
So if this is you, here’s what you need to be doing to make sure you’re head is sitting in the right position when you run.
Imagine a straight line going through the whole of your body from top to toe when you run
Your head should sit at the top in line with your shoulders at all times
To have perfect head alignment when you run, you should be looking about 20-30 meters ahead of you. This will take practice, but the more you do it the easier it will get. Keep reminding yourself to bring your head up looking 20-30 metres into the distance.
Tip 2 - Your shoulders
Running is all about running fast while looking relaxed. Your shoulders play a huge role in making this happen.
When your shoulders aren’t relaxed, you can’t move your arms as freely. Your arms help your legs to move fast in the right direction so you can run faster. If you run with tight shoulders your arms, you’re going to be using more energy to maintain a slower speed. This can also be a recipe for a pulled neck or back.
You can see from the image when my shoulders are tense, my head rises up, my running posture changes and there’s less range of motion in my arms. This means I'm not going to be able to run as fast and I'm likely to injure my neck or back if I carry on this way.
If your shoulders feel tense when you’re running, try smiling when you run. It’s really difficult to run with tense shoulders when you smile. Give it a go! As you can see in this image my shoulders are way more relaxed and my head is properly aligned. You can see in this image I’m better able to move my arms. Try this yourself to see the difference.
Tip 3 - Your arms
In order to run faster you need your arms. Slow arms mean slow running! Try running with your hands by your side, it’s not easy and it certainly won’t be as fast! To improve the way your arms move when you run...
Keep your hands relaxed with your thumbs pointing slightly upwards. You want to imagine you’re pulling on a rope
Your arms should maintain a slight bend throughout, roughly between 70-110 degrees
Drive the elbow down and back maintaining a slight bend in the arm
Let your arms come slightly past the waist.
Then you want to bring the arms back up to just above your shoulder still maintaining a slight bend
What a lot of people do is bring their arms slightly past their waist, and extend their arms fully outwards… don’t!
You want to maintain a slight bend in the arm because you’re creating a shorter lever. A shorter lever in the arm will help you to run faster. It will take less time to pump your arms back and forward with a shorter lever. That means you can get back up to your shoulder quicker, generate more power, and run faster.
Try running with your arms straight and then try with them bent. Which one felt faster and which one felt easier the latter right?
Looking at the arms from the front, you want your arms to be working forwards and backwards. Your arms shouldn't cross the midline point of your body.
If you're a runner and your arms move sideways, this is something to work on. If your arms swing across your body you’ll slow yourself down. This creates and wastes energy sideways. This will also cause your body to rotate which increases stress on certain joints.
We're sprinters and we used to have terrible arm swing, but it's much better now. One of the ways we fixed this was standing in front of the mirror and practicing pumping the arms back and forward with the correct technique. Keep at it until you imprint the correct technique in your mind. If you've been running for 5 years and you've always run this way, it's going to take a bit of time to correct your form!
Tip 4 - Running posture
If you spend a lot of your day sat down at work, you may have bad posture. You may find when you run your shoulders roll forward, your hips feel tight, and you get lower back and hamstring pain. These factors contribute to poor running posture. It can look like you’re hunched over when you run.
The first way to improve your running posture is to stand up more at work. The second way is you want to imagine someone is pulling a piece of string from your head to keep you running nice and tall. This will stop your shoulders rolling forward and make sure your head is sitting in the right position when you run.
The third way to improve your running posture is to strengthen your glutes. If you’re getting lower back and hamstring pain, the chances are it’s because your glutes aren’t firing properly.
The glutes are the powerhouse of running. By strengthening your glutes, you'll activate them more. With more activated glute you'll haver better running posture, and will be running faster!
Tip 5 - Run with a slight forward lean
As well as running with good posture, running with a slight forward lean will propel you forward faster. Too much lean and you’ll fall over, too little lean and you’ll overstride, increase your risk of injury, and run slower.
Think of running with a forward lean as the position you're putting your force into the ground. When you put the force into the ground you’re going to experience an equal amount of force in the opposite direction. This is also known as Newton’s 3rd law.
If you're a heel striker, the position of your foot is going to be forward on landing. That means you're going to experience force in the opposite direction, which in this case will be backwards. Which is less than ideal when you want to run faster. If you foot is landing too far back when you run, you're going to experience a lot of force forward, and you may fall over.
This is why you need a slight forward lean. The foot should land, a little bit behind the hips. There’s a really good drill we use to practice getting this forward lean into your runs naturally.
Stand tall on the balls of your feet and lean forward with a falling motion
Maintain good upright posture
And then stride off to practice getting a slight forward lean when you run.
Make this part of every pre running warm up you do. The more you practice doing this the more you will improve your running form.
Tip 6 -Footstrike
How your foot strikes the ground determines how fast you can run. If you’re a long-distance runner, the part of the foot that should be striking the ground is the balls of your feet. This is known as the midfoot.
If you find you’re striking the ground with your heel first when you run, you’ll over-stride and place more stress on your lower body. This will place a lot of stress on the hamstring and increase the risk of pulling them.
It will also place a lot of stress on your whole lower body, increasing your risk of other common running injuries. Like we mentioned in the above point, this will also slow you down as you're experiencing force in a backwards direction.
If you’re a heel striker, here’s what to do to move towards a mid-foot strike to improve your running form.
The drill you need to do is a moving high knees drill. A moving high knees drill teaches you to apply force behind you. This drill will help you to move to a mid-foot strike, which will propel you forward faster. We recommend doing 2-3 sets of 10-15 meters.
Here's how you do it…
Stand nice and tall
Move your arms with a slight bend
Bring your knees towards your chest, lean slightly forward while you’re doing this
When you’re moving from point A to point B, think about feeling the contact with the ground on the balls of your feet
If you’ve always been a heel striker, it’s going to take some time to adjust to this new style of running. However, if you want to improve your running form, run faster, and make it look easy, this is what you need to do.
You can see by doing this drill how hard it would be to heel strike and overstride. When you focus on doing your running drills, like high knees before you run, you’re telling your body and mind -
"This is the form I’m going to run with."
Tip 7 - Hips
To run faster with good form, you need to be able to powerfully extend your hips. To do this you must have strong and powerful back, glute, and hamstring muscles. These muscles make up your posterior chain.
A strong and powerful posterior chain will give you a longer stride length. This will also give you the strength to maintain good running posture throughout your whole run without getting tired.
Apart from running, the best way to improve the strength and power of your posterior chain, is by resistance training. Three exercises we recommend are: Deadlifts, Romanian Deadlifts (RDLS) and Hip Thrusts.
Tip 8 - Cadence
In order to run faster, we need to take more steps per minute when we run, which is known as cadence. Faster runners take more steps per minute and have a longer stride length. The more times you contact the ground per minute, the more opportunities you have to produce force.
To increase your cadence, a drill we like to do here is fast feet over a 5-10m stretch. As this is a really intense drill, we recommend doing this 2-3 times, so take plenty of rest between each one.
To start with, see how many steps you can do in 10m
Then look to increase the number of steps you take in the same distance
This drill is really similar to high knees but as you can see there’s less of a knee lift involved in this one.
Once you’ve done this drill, do a few running strides and practice bringing your faster feet into your strides. If you haven’t done running strides before, this is where you run close to your race pace.
This will get your body and mind prepared to run a race or a training session. We recommend doing running strides 2-3 times for 60 meters. Anymore and you could start to get tired, which could detract from your session or race!
Like we've been saying at each tip... it’s going to take time to increase your cadence. But stick with it and make it part of every single pre running warm up you do.
Tip 9 breathing
If you’ve ever found that you’re getting tired early on into your run, it could be because you’re not breathing properly. If you’re not breathing properly you’re potentially running with less oxygen. As a long distance runner oxygen is so important for you.
This is what allows you to keep running fast without tiring too quick. This stops lactic acid build up which can feel like your legs have just filled up with concrete. If you're not getting enough oxgyen into your working muscles when you run, you're at a huge disadvantage.
Here’s a great test to see how you’re breathing:
Place one hand on your stomach and one hand on your chest
Start breathing as you normally would
Where are you feeling the rise the most?
If it’s in your stomach, good job! If it’s in your chest, you need to practice breathing more through your stomach and taking deeper breaths. Consciously focussing on taking deeper breaths when you run will help to start doing this automatically.
Summary
In this blog post we’ve looked at:
How we can optimise your foot strike to run faster
How you can improve the strength and power of your posterior chain so you can produce more power when you run
What you need to be doing to increase your cadence to accelerate up to your race pace quicker
Plus, how to breathe better when you run so you don’t get too tired early on
If you found this blog post useful, please share this with your running friends (or not if you want to be better than them).
