This week’s travelling is playing havoc with my training.
I have just spent a week in Asia, and never really got over the jet lag. I did all the usual tricks, drinking lots of water and moving my watch straight onto the new time zone, but I think the killer was doing the East China Half Marathon last weekend, only 6 hours after landing in Hong Kong. It took more out of me than I was expecting. Since then I have not managed to find the time to get in a pool all week, and apart from one spinning session I managed to squeeze in at a hotel in Hong Kong, I have not been near the bike. Running has been out of the question as, running on very stiff and sore legs is a short cut to injury. However, although this is a setback on route to the Windsor triathlon, I am keeping a positive mind, and treating it as a recovery week!
This past weekend, I have had to give two running workshops in Tokyo. They were both sponsored by Newton Running, (http://www.newtonrunning.co.uk) which is hugely popular running shoe in Asia, and learning how to run correctly is also in vogue.
In my opinion, I consider correct running form to be landing on the forefoot or mid foot. Flat foot landing is also OK, so long as your centre of gravity of is over the landing foot. “No heal striking, please”. I am passionate about this natural way of running and so always keen to give workshops and conduct training sessions to help teach the concepts.
As a side, I was forced to start forefoot running over 25 years ago, when I developed knee pains, from too much high mileage running on the roads, and most of it was heel striking, back then running guru, Arthur Lydiard was promoting heel striking. Even he changed to forefoot running before his death. The trouble is that when you land on the heels of your feet your knee is locked and all the shock is transferred to the knee joint, which for me wore out after running over 100 miles a week for about a year!
It took me two years to get over this injury. But with time, a good weight training programme and after many running drills, I was able to run pain free again. To this day, 25 years on, my knees are still pain free, thanks to forefoot running.
The reason for this is because landing on the forefoot, with my centre of gravity over the front of my shoes, my knees are always bent when my foot lands. The shock is not transferred to the knees anymore, but absorbed in the muscles. As a muscle is living tissue and continually repairing and rebuilding itself, I remain pretty much injury free to this day.
One other big point that will help you stay injury free is by not running every day. As a runner I ran every day, now I swim and bike regularly. The body cannot recover from the stress it is put under on a daily basis and so over time it will slowly breakdown, however it seems that the legs can recover from a running session if they are given at least 36 hours between sessions. This translates to about 3 or 4 runs a week. Which is plenty if you are a triathlete also wanting to improve your swimming and cycling. If not, I would still recommend putting some swimming and cycling into your programme to allow your legs a chance to recover from the pounding they get while you are running.
Cheers for the advise Mike, only the other day when i was training i tried to run on my front foot – but then thought better of it. I am a natural mid to front foot runner and i have always been told front foot is best, but never the reason why. You have now made the reasons clear in this post.
I thought better of forcing myself to run on my front foot because it felt strange and i did not want to create a new type of injury because i was forcing a new style of running upon myself.
Do you think that over time a runner should be able to make himself gradually rotate his foot fall towards the front rather than forcing the process – or is it better to run how nature naturally intended you to run? ie, back foot, mid foot, or front foot. Some people are natural front foot runners, especially bare foot runners.
Hi Mike-I have been looking at forefoot running a lot recently-reason being that over the last couple of years I have developed patella tendonopathy on both knees and have been wondering whether this has been caused by heel stiking -I have looked at Newton and Vibram five fingers and even this week I asked my physio what he thought-I put forward the usual reasons for forefoot running similar to the points made in your blog-his response which also made sense was that it too has its own problems causing achilles issues,tight calves over stressing the foot itself-I wondered what thoughts you had and more importantly what tips you had for determining whether forefoot running is for me? KInd regards Simon Jones
I would only wear vibram five fingers if i was paddling down the beach.
I perceive it as a more forefoot rolling, than what i often see with people wearing newton – a forefoot stab / bounding on the forefoot.