1. Its All in the Hips Foot strike, the darling of minimalism, is overrated. Good form starts with the pelvis and the glutes. By Jonathan Beverly Illustrated by Peter Crowther and Charlie Layton Watch a video of Kenenisa Bekele winning a 5,000m or 10,000m, and it is quickly apparent that he and the rest of the world-class pack with him are doing something different from what most of us do every day. They float around the track, hardly seeming to touch it. They accelerate smoothly and effortlessly. Their legs seem to spin beneath weightless bodies. We want to run like them, but too often we feel like were muscling our bodies along, pounding the ground and working for each forward push. What element of their stride creates the difference? Where should we look? For the past several years, weve been told to focus on their feet. Elite runners are different, form experts have said, because they land on their midfoot or forefoot, and we should do the same to run more smoothly, faster and with less injury. Where your foot makes contact with the ground became a litmus test of running prowess. Among some runners, the label heel-striker attained the stigma of learning impaired. And yet, many of those who adopted a forefoot strike and the minimalist shoes that accompanied the movement didnt see an improvement in times and continued to get injured. So much so that the movement has all but disappeared. A wide range of expertsfrom kinesiologists to physical therapists, orthopedists to coachesagree that the extreme emphasis the running world has put on foot strike is misplaced. Daniel Lieberman, the Harvard scientist who gave scientific credence to minimalism with his seminal 2010 article in Nature, says, Frankly, when we published that paper, I never expected everyone to obsess about it as much as they did. Had I realized that, I would have added a sentence to the effect that while foot strike is important, there are many other important aspects of form as well. I have learned over the years that the worst thing to tell anyone is to forefoot strike. Grant Robison, an elite runner and coach whose Good Form Running program was adopted by New Balance to educate runners on how to move into the companys Minimus line, says that while teaching runners to land on the midfoot was an emphasis a few years ago, he now considers it the least important of the four points he teaches: Posture, Mid-Foot, Cadence and Lean. I draw peoples attention to it, showing that if you can use more of your foot, things dont get stressed as much, but then I kind of let that be, Robison says. But the minimalist movement wasnt wrong in suggesting that most of us need to improve our form if we are to run like Bekele. Trying to change how we land, however, didnt address the big goals of shifting our balance forward and moving our stride more behind than in front of usessential elements of those effortless elite movement patterns we desire.

2. Pelvic Proprioception It all starts with proper posture, the experts say. Proper posture is what makes some athletes look graceful and light on their feet, balanced and agile. McGee calls it getting connected. GP Pearlberg, an author and online coach, calls it running tall. Whatever we call it, learning it takes more than trying not to slouch or sucking in our guts. Good posture is not the stilted, rigid position we adopted when our mothers yelled, Sit up straight! We cannot imagine maintaining this pose for long while sitting or standing, let alone running, so too often we dismiss calls for better posture. To get away from old ideas of posture, it might help to think of it as hip proprioception, a fancy term that Trent Nessler, a physical therapist and the CEO of Accelerated Conditioning and Learning, uses to mean our awareness of what is going on with our hips, both the position of the bones and the muscles that are firing around them. Dicharrys book Anatomy for Runners centers around this concept. It comes down to awareness and feel, Dicharry says, noting that people who have habitually poor posture dont respond to cues like run tall and keep your spine in neutral. They pretty much have no idea they have a spine, or a hip, or any muscles that control them at all. How do runners learn pelvic proprioception? The first test is vertical compression. Try the test below now. Hip Test 1 Vertical Compressions While standing, have someone behind you put their hands on your shoulders and push straight down. If your body buckles at the back and hips, you know your hips and balance are off. You can correct this buckling by changing your balance and posture. To find this new balance, one method is to reach up as high as you can as if trying to get something off a high shelf, then lower your arms without changing hip and back position. This tightness contributes to the pelvis spilling forward, throws off the balance and prevents the leg from driving backward. Our hours of sittingat our desks, driving, relaxingshorten and tighten our hip flexors on the front of the pelvis and turn off our glutes on the backside. When we stand up, we never fully open up, retaining some of a sitting posture in our hips. Running optimally, however, like elite track stars, involves driving the leg back from the hip, requiring a full hip extension. The faster we want to run, the more important this is. In adjusting your posture to achieve a balanced state, you likely noted your pelvis position rotated. A second test can help you feel this rotation better. Another method is to place one hand on your belly button and one on your sternum, then, without moving the belly-button hand, bring your sternum forward until your weight is balanced over your hips and equally distributed between your forefoot and heel. Now have someone push down on your shoulders again: You should be able to withstand considerable force comfortably. Add more versatility to your studio Non Motorized Performance Treadmill We STARTED with Military! Your single source in Sports & Fitness Chris.Beckman@wilkinssolutions.com

3. The emphasis on foot strike missed the mark by putting the attention on the end of the chain, rather than the beginning. We need to shift our focus upward to our hips and glutes, where the stride begins. More often than not, I see foot strike as simply being the end result of so many other things that are happening farther up the kinetic chain, says David McHenry, physical therapist and strength coach for Alberto Salazars Nike Oregon Project. The foot is really just the end of a big kinetic whipthe leg. Core and hips Faulty Fulcrums What is it we want our hips to do? The key elements are balance and drive. Our torsos balance on our hips, and the hips are the fulcrums of the leg levers driving our bodies forward. If they are not working properly, the legs are unable to provide optimal power and speed. And many of us have trouble using them properly, resulting in all sorts of inefficiencies. The most common is over striding: reaching forward and landing in front of the torso. We dont over stride, however, simply because we wear overbuilt shoes and have learned poor running habits. We do it because our lifestyles outside of running create inflexibilities, weaknesses and poor balance. These are reinforced while running, such that now many of us are physically incapable of striding out naturally, with our legs behind our center of gravity. We are not living the lives our bodies were designed for, says Irene Davis, a professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Spaulding National Running Center. Bobby McGee, a Boulder, Colo.-based running coach who led Josia Thugwane to gold in the 1996 Olympic marathon, says the goal is to get back to how we moved as 9- or 10-year-olds, before environmental circumstances changed our patterns. In adjusting your posture to achieve a balanced state, you likely noted your pelvis position rotated. A second test can help you feel this rotation better. HIP Test 2 Hip Extension Hip extension Stand in front of a doorway with your back against the right side of a doorjamb and your left leg in the doorway opening. Kneel with your left knee on the floor inside of the doorjamb and your right knee above your right foot in front of you. Your left thigh should be vertical beside the doorjamb, with your back resting against the front of the doorjamb. In this position, youll naturally have a bit of space between your lower back and the wall. Tilt your pelvis backward so the hollow between your lower back and the doorjamb disappears. Your pelvis should rotate up in front and down in back. Pelvic Proprioception It all starts with proper posture, the experts say. Proper posture is what makes some athletes look graceful and light on their feet, balanced and agile. McGee calls it getting connected. GP Pearlberg, an author and online coach, calls it running tall. Whatever we call it, learning it takes more than trying not to slouch or sucking in our guts. Good posture is not the stilted, rigid position we adopted when our mothers yelled, Sit up straight! We cannot imagine maintaining this pose for long while sitting or standing, let alone running, so too often we dismiss calls for better posture. To get away from old ideas of posture, it might help to think of it as hip proprioception, a fancy term that Trent Nessler, a physical therapist and the CEO of Accelerated Conditioning and Learning, uses to mean our awareness of what is going on with our hips, both the position of the bones and the muscles that are firing around them. Dicharrys book Anatomy for Runners centers around this concept. It comes down to awareness and feel, Dicharry says, noting that people who have habitually poor posture dont respond to cues like run tall and keep your spine in neutral. They pretty much have no idea they have a spine, or a hip, or any muscles that control them at all. How do runners learn pelvic proprioception? The first test is vertical compression. Try the test above now.

4. The Tipping Point If you think of your pelvis as a bowl, hinged at the hip bones and controlled by the muscles in front and in back, your goal is to keep the bowl neutral and not spill either way. (Most of us spill out the front.) The image helps keep the pelvis aligned so you can ride better above it with the hips more stacked under the torso, McHenry says, describing the goal of his recent work with high school Phenom Mary Cain. When you are able to keep the bowl from spilling even while working hard on a runyou begin to feel the connected power as your leg drive pushes your body forward, rather than twisting your hips forward, arching your back and losing energy in the torqueing. If you have trouble completing the rotation in the hip extension test (above right) or feel tightness in the front of your hip and down the front of the thigh, your hip flexors are too tight. You are not alone. Dicharry says 85 percent of runners have tight hip flexors. McGee names it as the first issue to address in improving form. Heading to the gym to attack these weaknesses often doesnt correct them, however. Strengthening exercises will do little good without changing how we move and recruit our muscles. Research has shown that strengthening alonewithout retraining movement patterns does not alter mechanics, Davis says. The individual must own the new pattern, or it will not be durable. Before we can own it, we need to feel it. To have a hip drive like the elites requires not only mobility, but also strong, active glutes. Experts agree that glutes are the most powerful, efficient movers for running, and failing to use them creates serious problems. A strong butt is the key to a happy life, says Jordan Metzl, a sports medicine physician at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.. Runners with weak glutes fall into the toilet bowl of doom a beautifully engineered screw-up of epic proportions, Dicharry says. Posture falls apart, the stride has to move in front of the torso, and other muscles compensate until they fail. Like balance and hip position, however, the first thing we need to do is to learn to feel the glutes and know that they are firing R E A R ngine Glutes Tests Glutes Test 1 The bridge Lie on your back with your knees up and your feet flat on the ground. Hold your arms straight out above you. Lift your hips up to make a straight bridge from shoulders to knees. Where do you feel it? If you feel stress anywhere but your butt, you arent activating your glutes. Rock your hip angle and change your back arch so that you dont feel the effort in your back or your hamstrings but in the center of your butt. One way to ensure this is to have someone push down hard or place a weight on the front of your pelvis. You wont be able to hold it if you arent using your glutes. If you have trouble isolating the glutes, try first pulling one knee to your chest, which locks out the backs ability to arch, then do a single-leg bridge. Glutes Test 2 Pigeon hip extension Get on your hands and knees. Reach one leg straight back, then lower that knee to the ground while dropping your upper body to your elbows over the other leg tucked beneath you. Clench your butt cheeks together, then raise the back knee to straighten the leg without lifting your toes. Feel the glute on your back leg. Your single source in Chris.Beckman@wilkinssolutions.com Sports & Fitness

5. Glute Test 3 Standing hip extension Stand on one leg with the other held so the calf is parallel to the ground. Hold your hands on your hips, wrapping around the front. Drive the lifted foot backward into an imaginary wall, without allowing your pelvis to rotate forward or your spine to tip. Feel your glute activate and your hip flexor stretch as it extends Glute Goose After learning what it feels like for your glutes to contract, start noticing if they are working when youre running. Tom Miller, an exercise scientist and author of Programmed to Run, calls the feeling when you get it right a glute goose or a hip flick with every stride. Others call it running from the butt. When it clicks, you can feel the glute pulling your thigh and knee back while your hips remain stable and connected, channeling the energy of the leg drive into forward motion. You can strengthen your glutes with numerous exercises like the bridge (or advanced options like one leg bridges and marching bridges), donkey kicks, single-leg dead lifts, and squats. But you should only advance in doing these when you are confident that you are using your glutes, to ensure that they are the muscles working and not the muscles around them. If you are feeling the stress in your back, hamstrings or quads instead of your butt, you are likely reinforcing the imbalances you hope to correct. Habit -Forming McGee says that while duration creates strength, frequency makes skill. To improve your skill, you must work at it often. The good news is that you can work on many of these skills all day, every day. You can play with your balance and hip proprioception while standing in line at the coffee shop, cue glute activation when walking, and do hip extension stretches, glute strengthening exercises or one leg balancing while reading email, on a conference call or watching TV. Dicharry has seen many runners learn to use their hips in exercises but then instantly revert to old patterns as soon as they start running or when they speed up. It requires focus and frequency to instill new patterns. You may have to back away from hard training and racing while specifically working on form improvements (as Mary Cain recently did). After these habits and motions have become ingrained, however, every run works to improve your skill, flexibility, strength and ability to maintain a more effective stride longer. But even after the new skills have become habit, the environmental factors that predispose us to a perpetual sitting position are still all around. We all need to keep improving flexibility and strength. There is really no magic in any one hip flexor stretch or one collection of glute-strengthening exercises versus another, McHenry says about his work with Mo Farah and others in the Oregon Project. The magic is simply in the consistency in doing those things. You cant stretch your hip flexors every once in a while and do some glute-strengthening stuff on occasion and really expect any significant change to occur. Many other elements combine to make a runner smooth and efficient. But, given their importance in the stride and the lifestyle factors that weaken how we use them, the hips are a great place to start. When we start to run taller, become more balanced and feel the float of an efficient hip drive, we are one step closer to running like the elites. If you can keep your posture in check and your hip drive up, youre going to run really, really well. Boot Camp Bundle

6. Who should work on form? Think of your running style like your voice. Every person has a distinct sound based on their physical characteristics, their habits and their upbringing. As long as were communicating, each voice works. But if your speech pattern varies so far from the norm that it cant be understood, you need to change it. And if you want to excel with your voice, such as using it to be a professional singer or broadcaster, you will likely work to make it more effective. Similarly, every runner has a stride signature suited to his or her unique characteristics. There is no ideal stride every runner should strive to emulate. Human movement patterns are so unique and so personal, you cant really make blanket statements about what is bad running form or good running form for any person, says Paul Langer, president of the American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine and a clinical adviser for the American Running Association. Research on trained distance runners in Australia, published in the 2004 Journal of Sports Medicine, shows that runners tend to be most efficient using their preferred patternthe style they naturally choose, which they have developed based on their bodies and their histories. Every one of us has some deficiency somewhere, says Lee Troop, three-time Olympic marathoner and coach of the Boulder Track Club. As we grow and morph, our bodies become accustomed to it. If you look at the Olympic start, you see 100 different runners that all have different form, different styles. But, as with a voice that doesnt communicate, runners need to change their stride if it doesnt function properly. Runners who are chronically injured need to figure out why. Given the complexity of possible issues, runners with significant injury history should get a professional assessment, rather than trying to modify their Stride on their own. Gait retraining is something that should be done under the supervision of a trained clinician, such as a physical therapist, says Irene Davis, director of the Spaulding National Running Center. Alternatively, runners who want to be their best leave no stone unturned, including their form, even if they function fairly well now. I think every runner should be concerned with form, says Scott Simmons, coach of the American Distance Project. He clarifies, though, that it is not about changing to match a certain ideal, but about paying attention to biomechanics, trying to identify an individuals inefficiencies with mobility, range of motion, specific strength and symmetry. Before embarking on form improvements, however, note that any change will make running harder at first. Anything that deviates from a runners preferred pattern increases metabolic energy costs, Langer says. Youll feel like youre running slower and working harder. Change also requires a commitment to constant mindfulness. Form isnt something you modify by doing one workout a week. Until it becomes a new habit, it will take over your running and be the focus of every step. Its a bit of a journey, elite athlete Grant Robison says. No matter how many studies you read or whatever somebody says to you, if youre not in a place where you really want to change your form, I dont think it would be good to change it. Flooring We got ya covered!

7. We run for many reasons, including to find the time to escape and meditate. You dont want to spend all of that time obsessing over posture and glute engagement. You have to arrive at that place on your own, Robison says. If youre not ready to embrace the focus to get dialed in, it just becomes a headache. Other Form Fixes Besides changing how your hips move, experts agree on these two areas for improving form. Cadence A fast turnover is an essential element of an effective stride for every runner. Grant Robison, an elite runner, coach and the founder of Good Form Running, says cadence is often the easiest element to think about, because you dont need a lot of body awareness, making it a great place to start. If you can find a way to improve your cadence, he says, your foot strike and a lot of the efficiency stuff will come along on its own. How fast should your cadence be? The best runners take between 180 to 200 or more steps per minute. A turnover less than 160 is inefficient. Bobby McGee, an elite coach and educator in Boulder, Colo., says if your cadence is less than 160, youre not really running youre doing some kind of plyometric hop. To improve your cadence, match your steps to the ticks of a metronome you can find free apps, or you can buy clip-on beepers. Robison says to be careful that you dont just run harder with the same long over stride. Start by jogging in place at a higher than- normal cadence, then speed up while maintaining the same cadence. Increasing your cadence works best in conjunction with improving your balance and hip drive, because it is difficult to turn over fast and comfortably when you are reaching and pulling through each stride. Check your stride rate later in a run when you become fatigued, to ensure you dont fall back into a slower cadence. Arms Coaches have long yelled from the side of the track, Use your arms! But what should your arms be doing? Arms and hands are one place that often show a runners unique stride signature, and physical therapists and podiatrists warn about trying to change too much, because arm movement can compensate for deficiencies elsewhere. But a few elements are universal. A powerful arm drive is 100 percent backward, Robison says. If your arms reach out in front of you, your feet will follow in front of you. You want to open your shoulders and move your arms back to shift your center of gravity forward and stride backward. If you can see your hands during the full stroke of your stride, or if they cross your center line while you run, you need to practice driving backward with your elbows. McGee teaches a Velcro drill, in which you imagine the inside of your wrist is stuck to your shirt at the side of your torso as you start to run, then relax and let your arms swing comfortably and efficiently in that position. Tom Miller, an exercise scientist, masters coach and author of Programmed to Run, recommends carrying a 2-foot-long, half-inch- thick PVC pipe across your back, held in the crook of each elbow, to keep your shoulders back and your arms from driving too far forward. He suggests using the pipe for the first half-mile of an out-and-back run, leaving it in a secure place, then picking it up for the last half-mile to reinforce the posture when you are fatigued. You may need more than the retraining of habits to get your arm swing behind you. As with hip position, our lifestyles tend to make us hunch forwardover a computer or mobile phone. Getting your elbows back is often inhibited by tight chest and shoulder muscles, says Laura Bergmann, a physical therapist, national-class duathlete and the owner of Core Connections Coaching.

8. If, when standing in front of a mirror with arms relaxed at your sides, you can see the back of your hands, your shoulders are internally rotated. To correct this, you need to stretch the muscles in your chest and shoulders and strengthen the muscles in the mid-back. One way you can work on opening up your chest is to lie on a foam roller aligned with your spine, with your arms out to your sides, palms up. Your head and tailbone should be on the roller, with your legs bent and your feet on the floor. Stay in this position for 10 minutes (or have a partner push gently on your shoulders for two to three minutes), then slowly stand up and do a set of rows, focusing on bringing the shoulder blades back and together, as if cracking a nut between your shoulder blades. Do this two times a week and before a run when you can. Training Tools Some of the tools throughout this article can help you run more efficiently are simple and cheap, such as a metronome. Also, are a few high-tech options you may want to try like the Helix Lateral Trainer and the Samsara TruFormRunner. For more information on these and all your training needs contact us at 615-669-3481 for more information or a quote! Chris.Beckman@wilkinssolutions.com Static Stretch for Dynamic Mobility If you find that you lack mobility in your hip flexors and the majority of runners dothe solution is to do something weve been told not to do anymore: a long, static stretch. While studies have proven static stretching is not appropriate before exercise, it is one of the best ways to lengthen too-tight tissue after a run or at other times during the day. A simple hip extension stretch is similar to the test for hip mobility: Kneel in a lunge position with one thigh vertical over the kneeling knee and the other leg making a 90-degree angle over your front foot. Rotate your pelvis backward so that the arch in your back flattens and you are stretching the muscles at the front of your hip over your kneeling leg. Hold for three to five minutes. Do the stretch four to six days a week for 10 to 12 weeks. Yes, it takes that long to lengthen tissue. Your single source in Sports & Fitness