Lets just end the heel strike debate right now.

Mr. heel strike wrote:

To your list of successful elite heel strikers i think you can safely add the following:

Herb Elliot

El G

Abubaker Kaki

Lasse Viren

Miruts Yifter

Vebjorn Rodahl

Joachim Cruz

I would not incude Lasse Viren into the club, but Brendan Foster would be. I never thought of El Guerrouj as a heel striker, but, alas, he is!

So now we have:

Noureddine Morceli

John Treacy

Rod Dixon

George Malley

Paul Tergat

Alberto Salazar

Mark Nenow

Thom Hunt

Dan Dillon

Jan Merrill

Greg Meyer

Dathan Ritzenhein (being fixed or being f***ed depending upon your reality)

Mebrahtom Keflezighi

Abderrahim Goumri

Abebe Bekila

Abdi Abdirahman

El G

Abubaker Kaki

Miruts Yifter

Vebjorn Rodahl

Joachim Cruz

Cut and paste

in front of each of the links

watch?v=tTO7tFiyBlw&feature=related

user/Vafareunculo#p/c/823732165E0A1C6C/68/gz0GtjmUD04

watch?v=5D56ZAvcxN0

watch?v=OPIqF_QPKWI

user/Vafareunculo#p/c/823732165E0A1C6C/34/Ax7DQ_wwH7U

watch?v=nKtRH1097AE

watch?v=YB8hEc3yIwE

2010/09/how-worlds-best-runners-strike-ground.html

Out of 15 runners in the 5th avenue mile, 11 were forefoot or midfoot 4 were heel strikers.

I completely agree with .......'s post. Look, obviously everyone is different and is going to have slightly different mechanics. But the bottom line is that improving the efficiency of your running form does improve your performance.

For all those arguing that Ritz is hurt more since changing his form and that changing your form reduces running economy, keep in mind that this may be the case only INITIALLY. Like anything else the body has to adjust, and a lot of times people go about the process incorrectly. You can't change to perfect form overnight and in the learning process sometimes you do risk injury. A common injury that most struggle with when switching from a heelstrike to forefoot is achilles tendonitis. This happened to me as well. This is because I focused on how I was landing and continued to overstride and overloaded my achilles. I also was not allowing my calf muscle to relax and absorb the shock eccentrically, as it should, which also overloaded it. I then realized that thinking about the landing is the LEAST important part of optimal running form. If you don't dorsiflex and land under your center of gravity you should land midfoot/forefoot.

Secondly, I believe HHH asked why heelstriking is detrimental to running efficiently. I think the New Yorker article does a good job of explaining this:

"They (Bekele, other top Africans, etc.) also slapped the ground so quickly with their forefoot that the contact seemed almost incidental. According to Walker, the short slap transfers force more efficiently, shooting it from the ground forward into the pelvis, rather than allowing it to dissipate in the flex of the foot. The effect, Walker says, is like “a pogo stick with a stiff spring.” He explained, “You want the chain of force to travel from the ground through the body with minimal energy loss. That’s what it means to run efficiently.”

Lastly, it is true that some elites heelstrike but the fact is the majority of world class elites DON'T. For every world class (ranked top 10 in their respective event) runner that heelstrikes I guarantee you that I could find twice as many that don't. Economy is not the only factor in running performance, so elites with higher VO2 max, Anaerobic and Aerobic Threshold, etc. will also succeed. And once again, it is possible to run with good form while heelstriking, but in my opinion it is possible to run more efficiently if you don't.

Paul Tergat isn't a heel striker. Do you define the defination Heel striking as your heel touching the ground? In that case, I'm a heel striker. It's where you land first, not if your heel touches the ground. Jesus people go figure out what heel striking is.

shoe guy wrote:

Lastly, it is true that some elites heelstrike but the fact is the majority of world class elites DON'T. For every world class (ranked top 10 in their respective event) runner that heelstrikes I guarantee you that I could find twice as many that don't. Economy is not the only factor in running performance, so elites with higher VO2 max, Anaerobic and Aerobic Threshold, etc. will also succeed. And once again, it is possible to run with good form while heelstriking, but in my opinion it is possible to run more efficiently if you don't.

The fact that most world class runners have dark hair doesn't mean that dark hair makes you faster.

The facts have proven your thesis wrong over and over.

Why??? wrote:

Paul Tergat isn't a heel striker. Do you define the defination Heel striking as your heel touching the ground? In that case, I'm a heel striker. It's where you land first, not if your heel touches the ground. Jesus people go figure out what heel striking is.

Tergat's heel touches first.

malmo wrote:

[quote]Why??? wrote:

Paul Tergat isn't a heel striker. Do you define the defination Heel striking as your heel touching the ground? In that case, I'm a heel striker. It's where you land first, not if your heel touches the ground. Jesus people go figure out what heel striking is.

How else would you define 'heel striker'? Where you touch first IS where you land dummy. You are a heel striker.

I dont land on my heel first but my heel does hit the ground when I run...

So much for ending the debate "right now"...

I'm a mid-foot striker (flat foot striker?), and now my left knee is on strike.

I tried springing on my toes once, and ended up with PF.

Why??? wrote:

I dont land on my heel first but my heel does hit the ground when I run...

I misread your post.

I have no problem with that. The problem here is that you are speculating what is efficient and what is not.

Ritz has been injured more under Salazar by a scale of 2-3 times. That COULD be coincidental, but I'd strongly lead to the obvious conclusion on this one.

Again, completely irrelevant. Elite runners have different heelstrikes. Hold the presses, alert the media. So what?

coach d wrote:

Here is evidence that Steve Magness knows substantially more about the sport than you do:

http://www.scienceofrunning.com/2010/02/new-studies-on-footstrike-do-faster.html

One of the most intriguing posts on this thread was this one. Not because of the laughable endorsement that Steve Magness knows substantially more about running than I do, but because the link finally offered some data that was very predictable, yet had absolutely NOTHING to do with the conclusions that were being drawn.

Citing, perhaps one of the most inept runners ever as an expert was an added bonus, though. Magness, the Wile E. Coyote of the running world, was one guy that, unless you were a cruel human-being, you had to be rooting for him; but no matter what, he was going to trip himself up and fail.

But lets get to the Britsih studies of "semi-elite" 1500m and 800m runners. In a previous post I proposed the hypothesis (step one of the scientific method) that "I'd be willing to bet that the lenght of time that the forefoot touches the ground for heel runners is exactly the same time as those forefoot runners." So let's see if can deduce something from the data that was provided.

For 1500 meter runners (average 3:55), the avg time of ground contact was for (F)forefoot, (M) midfoot, and (H) heel:

(F) 0.161s

(M) 0.169s

(H) 0.192s

Since the difference between the forefoot and heel strikers is 0.031 seconds, and the velocity of a runner at 3:55 pace is 635.59322 centimeters per second (14.2178mph), then that means that the forefoot is striking the ground 11.3333cm (or 4.56 inches) after the heel strikers touch.

So that means that a heels striker touched the ground 0.031 seconds earlier than the forefoot strike, which is 11.3333cm (or 4.56in), about the distance from heel to forefoot. What a coincidence? Isn't that what I hypothesized? Convenient. We can deduce that the forefoot always occupies a space in time ahead of the heel. Now, if you look at your feet, or get 'scientific' and look at an anatomy book instead, you'll notice that the forefoot is always occupies a space in front of the heel. Another purely coincidental observation, of course.

Oh, BTW, fun factoid of the day: 31 milliseconds (0.031s), the difference between the time that the heelstrikers foot has ground contact and the time that forefoot strikers have contact, is only 1/10 to 1/13 of the time it takes to blink an eye.

For 800 meter runners (average 1:55), the avg time of ground contact was for (F)forefoot, (M) midfoot, and (H) heel:

(F) 0.156s

(M) 0.161s

(H) 0.177s

Since the difference between the forefoot and heel strikers is 0.021 seconds, and the velocity of a runner at 1:55 pace is 695.652172 cm per second (15.56mph), then that means that the forefoot is striking the ground at 14.60cm (or 5.74 inches) after the heel strikers touch.

So that means that a heels striker touched the ground 0.021 seconds earlier than the forefoot strike, which is 14.60cm (or 5.74 in), about the distance from heel to forefoot. Again, what a coincidence.

So imagine that. For the heel strikes, when their forefoot finally touches (after a long wait of 31 milliseconds), it remains in contact with the ground almost exactly as long as the time that the ground contact of those forefoot strikers. The heel touch just happens a few milliseconds before the touch of the forefoot in both forefoot strikers and heel-strikers. One tenth of the time it takes to blink your eye earlier. Fun facts to know.

What's more, have you ever noticed that those who have chronic Achilles problems are always forefoot strikers? SHZAAAAAM! Imagine that? Could it be that the deflection of a little bit of the impact forces by the heel-touch is taking away the unnecessary overloading of the achilles? No way. That's way too coincidental.

Now which page on what physics book says that gravity pulls you forward?

So, you're saying 800 meter runners have larger feet than 1500 meter runners? Just as I hypothesized!!!

Aghast wrote:

2) The exercise physiology and biomechanics are very, very weak scientific fields. It is to the state that one cannot rely on any of their findings. This is because there is zero money provided in grants to study these kinds of questions and because of a lack of methodology. I doubt there was ever a high quality paper on exercise physiology published in a top general scientific journal with a high impact factor.

Actually, they used to be very weak fields but now they are starting to shed their nascent skins. The problem isn't the science, it's those (non-scientists) who are trying to apply smaller scientific ideas and expand them to cover larger more complex questions.

Being a physicist or sound engineer will never make you qualified to teach, coach, or make music.

Here is a link to a discussion of the footstrike issue on The Science of Sport, a website developed and maintained by Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas, two Ph.D sport scientists.

http://www.sportsscientists.com/search/label/running%20technique

Scroll down to the "Heel vs. Midfoot vs. Forefoot: How do elite runners land?" entry. There is a nice review of some research available up to that date (April 2008) and the author's own take which is:

"It's important at this point to ask the very pertinent, but infrequently asked question: "What does 'better' mean?". In other words, when people are advocating that it's 'better' to land on the forefoot, what do they mean? Is it faster? More efficient? Less injury-prone? The fact is, the word "better" is used without studies specifically looking at any single one of these aspects. And the 'prudence concept', as applied to science, says that you cannot say something is "better" unless it's been studied and compared to the alternatives. Unfortunately, the science lags behind in this regard.

So for example, above you have the quote that you are supposed to land elastically on the forefoot. That implies performance and efficiency, which might be true for short exercise, lasting a minute or two. But in an event like the marathon, are we sure it remains the "better" option? If you went out and ran 2 hours today, landing on your forefoot instead of landing as you've always done, what would be the likely outcome? Chances are, you'd be hurting for a few days, with calf muscles that you had perhaps forgotten you had! Worst case scenario, you'd be injured for months with an Achilles tendon injury. That is certainly not a desirable outcome. So there are problems with making sweeping statements about landing patterns.

But more than this, these kinds of statements are never grounded in proof. So for example, when it's written that you land "elastically", has anyone ever done the study of elastic energy return in different types of running? They haven't, but there is theory about it, and that's where these recommendations come from. So the approach in the discussion that follows is for me to adopt the role of "questioner", playing Devil's Advocate, with the humble admission that science simply does not know the right answer, only the possibilities..."

And later in the post:

" And more important, what is the point? There is no evidence that heel-strikers are injured more, no evidence that mid-foot runners are faster and perform better than heel-strikers, and so the ultimate question is:

Why would you want to change your foot landing to begin with? Science has little to offer you in support of this. And so my advice, having read this far (well done!), is to forget about the possibility that you're landing "wrongly", and just let your feet land where, and how they land, and worry about all the other things you can when you run!

If there is one thing you change in your running, don't focus on your footstrike, but rather on WHERE your feet land relative to your body. Because if you are over-reaching and throwing your foot out in front of you, that's a problem, but what happens when the rubber meets the road is less relevant!

I'm sure there's more to this topic, based on your questions and comments. As usual, fire away! And remember the humble admission from earlier - science, believe it or not, does not know the answer definitively! (just as we can't tell you why Bekele is so dominant in World X-Country!)"

As Malmo was saying there is no evidence of one type of footstrike being better than another. The anectodal evidence is that we self-select the form that suits us best. Training by running irons out the kinks.

Run!

Test Tube Baby wrote:

So, you're saying 800 meter runners have larger feet than 1500 meter runners? Just as I hypothesized!!!

That's probably true, but i think you are reading too much into it. And I don't think that the difference is lenght from heel to forefoot is exactly those differences. That is a deduction based on those time measurements. But, the deduction does reinforce the hypothesis that heel strikers spend the same amount of time on the ground as forefoot strikers if you time it from the point that their forefoot strikes. Which says that the time spent touching the ground is a moot point, AND exactly what you would expect. One runners foot hits the ground with his toe an inch above the horizontal plane, the other touches the ground with his toe below the horizontal plane. One type of runner has more chronic achilles problems, the other type rarely has achilles problems at all. Both types of runners run equally fast.

Fhmd wrote:

2) Gravity - the debate here is not over physics it is over semantics. When you lean forward you will either fall down or take a step. We all know this. So gravity helps us move forward by causing us to automatically take steps forward. Gravity is pulling down, we are stepping forward to remain upright. This is a way a slight forward lean is typically more efficient than running upright. It is easier to lift the leg than to push the body forward from a standstill.

A slight forward lean is not just more efficient than running upright, it is the ONLY way to move forward.

Imagine balancing a pole vertically in your palm and trying to walk with it. As long as the pole stays perfectly vertical, any horizontal push with the hand will cause the pole to fall backward and not go anywhere. In order for it move without rotating, it has to lean in that direction to reflect the force of gravity into forward force.

Again, the horizontal force created by an unstable object on a surface is a function of gravity:

Horizontal Force = Object's Mass * Gravity Constant * sine (angle from vertical)

There are other ways of creating a horizontal force with the feet on the ground but that force only creates a torque around the body's center of mass. Another force has to be created to counteract that torque and only leave a resultant forward movement.

And now, Malmo and others, what part of this is ridiculous and why?

MY GOD, YOU JUST CAN'T STOP.

Here, go back to your website and stay there.

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html

malmo wrote:

MY GOD, YOU JUST CAN'T STOP.

Here, go back to your website and stay there.

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html

Well, there you have it.

Malmo, Brendan Foster is not a heel striker based on this video....and this was years after his 1973 WR 2 mile.

He might be a slight heel toucher, though. Fairly similar from behind to Viren.

Looks can be deceptive re heel striking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bewAs7liEoA