if you think running form matters, who would say stands to benefit most?

video quality is trash, but watching at .25x speed i personally wouldn't consider kipchoge to be heel-striking. maybe landing a little further back than bekele or el g in this video, but still striking that knife-edge outer portion of the midfoot first

If running form matters, Quincy Wilson.

Yes, this was my point in bringing up German. He had visually "ideal form" but I think that contributed to his injury issues. Unfortunately for him, that was just one a many problems he had. And that seems to be the real cost-benefit analysis of changing form. Is the form a big enough problem to actually be worth changing?

I'm also interested in how it changes for different events. I noticed that no one has mentioned a 100-200 runner as having bad form because those events are so optimized that my guess is there is no relevant sprinter who deviates from standard "good form." But then people have mentioned several 400 and 800 runners. I guess once the events get long enough, you can "get away" with more unconventional form as long as you're fit. Then I wonder if there's an event break point again as it gets longer where, at a certain point, running for so long with wonky form causes issues.

kinda strange to say his "ideal form" contributed to his injuries, rather than viewing it as other parts/systems of his body simply not being able to recover, but maybe we are thinking/saying the same thing actually

anyway, i think when it comes to changing form, while a potentially noble pursuit for anyone when it comes to self-realization, from the standpoint of running performance i'd say the biggest determinant is whether or not one needs to increase their basic speed (like a flying 200)

as for sprinters, what i see a lot of in the "poorly taught mechanics" arena, especially so with women for some reason, is teaching them to essentially lock their elbow angle in to be 90 degrees or less. one of the strangest most backwards things i regularly see. works great for the first 10-20 meters when the legs aren't going through their full range of motion, but then it has a way of shortening stride length and reducing top speed.

that's not uncommon to see with distance runners either, they don't quite know how to transition from a steady-state pace to an all-out sprinter where the elbow angle should open during the backswing. yuguse is a good example of someone who naturally keeps his arms pretty tight effectively when running below top-speed, but then struggles to relax and let the arms open up naturally usually only doing so during his last stride or two of a close race.

Exactly what I was thinking. She ran sideways. EeePou Ambassador

To The Gills ! 🍸

Solid topic.

One of my favorite things to do is when I see the fastest runners in the world and they have videos online and read the comments. I love the sideline coaches talking about how they should fix this or that "imagine how fast they would be if they fixed X". Just straight ignorance.

Zátopek