Natalie Cook Form

You're probably thinking of Priscah Jeptoo.

This, here, above...

There is not difference in her "form." I even hesitate to call if "form." To me form means the way that someone leans their body, where their arm carriage is, stride length, etc. Cook's legs splay out from the knee down because of her knee valgus. Surgery would not even be worth doing and it may even hinder her. That is how she has been her entire life.

If Cook played soccer, basketball, lacrosse, field hockey, or any sport that requires a lot of change of direction, she would need to be very diligent with her PEP exercises because females with knee valgus have an extremely high rate of ACL injuries. PEP is an acronym for Prevent Injury and Enhance Performance. ACL injuries are very rare for athletes that participate in sports like XC or track that do not involve a change of direction. But because Cook's knee valgus is so extreme, she should probably do some PEP exercises. Stranger things have happened to athletes and if she is like most active people that are her age she probably likes other recreational activites whatever they may be - water skiing, snow skiing, basketball, intramural sports if her coach allows that, or just goofing around. She needs to be careful to protect her knees. My guess is that the OSU staff are well aware of everything about her biomechanics and trainers work with her.

you're very weird.

I also don't see any change in how her running looks. Agree that it doesn't look nice but aesthetics and appearing "smooth" ≠ running economy. Coaches are known to be very bad at visually identifying good running economy (as determined by lab data) just by looking at stride:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Visual classification of running economy by distance running coaches - PubMed

AbstractObjectives: This study assessed the ability of coaches to rank-order distance runners on running economy (RE) through visual assessment. Methods: Running economy was measured in five trained recreational distance runn...

Open link

So this might be the most efficient way for Cook to run. I can't think of examples of runners with similar knock-kneed to Cook, but Nijel Amos, John Korir, Conner Mantz, Haile Gebrselassie, Emil Zatopek, and many others have/had strides that didn't really look good, but still were able to have success.

Also Cook (and hopefully her coach too) is probably aware of this and any injury risks it brings to some degree. Recall that when she won everything in XC last fall it was on 10-20 miles a week and cross training! She is a mega talent and has found a system that works for her (perhaps low impact is key in preventing the injuries she might get with her mechanics). Hopefully none of her coaches, or any all-knowing letsrunners with that signature high mileage/low intensity bias, come along and think "wow, she is so underdeveloped, if we just gradually got her to a lot more mileage she would be unstoppable!"

Journals can be kinda hard to read so here is a link to an Outside Online article summarizing that study I mentioned above. I believe this was actually posted on Letsrun a while ago when it came out:

outsideonline.com

Don’t Judge a Runner’s Efficiency by Their Stride

mmirhashem

A new study asked coaches to rank the most economical runners after watching video footage. It didn't go well.

Open link

Yeah agree. You can get mega aerobic work cross training on the elliptical. there are a bunch of threads on letsrun where people come back from injury setting PRs after cross training during injuries because you can push harder for longer than running alone. I don't think she is undertrained. It looks to me like her coaches just found the right balance to work with her form and keep her miles lower than typical but quality workouts and tons of elliptical time. I honestly hope this approach can change some of the thinking in the sport for injury prone runners.

Look up Priscah Jeptoo on YouTube .

Her form is an extreme version of Cook’s form.

Of course it doesn't but people can't deal with a bad formed person winning. Happens in literally every sport.

A lot of you are still talking about form and again, as I mentioned in my post above, this is not about "form." Form is stride length, arm carriage, turnover, body lean, and all of that. Cook's knee valgus is just how she is built. There is nothing for her to compensate for or correct. It is what it is and if she or her coaches would try to do something about her valgus, even though they really can't, it would hinder her.

This is a case of it "isn't broke, don't fix it." The OP of this thread has no clue what they're talking about.

Silver in the Olympic marathon:

Tibial valgum?

Looks more like external tibial torsion + femoral antetorsion. Maybe 3 standard deviations higher Q angle?

Ok - maybe a bit of a valgus femur too - but tibia looks normal in non-rotational terms

Knees aside she actually has quite good technique - very quick off her feet, efficient push-off, light and fast turnover, etc.

I was thinking the same thing, from the knees up, all is good. You can’t really correct from rest with form if that’s her shape.

It didn’t seem to bother her too much with that result.

Yea, maybe. But you cant tell that looking at her. Its easier to say knock kneed to lay audience.