see-eye-hey wrote:
Can you demonstrate that gazoo, who as far as I can remember, is the only one who made the statement you uppercase - is not a troll?
Gazoo did acknowledge on page 6 of this thread to be "half trolling", whatever that means. Does that also mean they are semi-sincere?
Well, Gazoo is gone now and it looks like for good. Thank goodness. I don't think we'll ever know what he meant.
You already created another thread and it was roundly ridiculed because those 'runners' weren't runners at all. Almost all of them ran that race over 12:00 per mile.
malmo wrote:
Clit on bush haytit fund wrote: This requires a great deal of money. Ideally the study would be double blind, but in the case of footstrike that would be very difficult..BTW, what on earth do you mean by "double blind"? You're not making any sense. Are you sure you're not meaning double secret probation?
That is hilarious. After your last post to me I was going to remark that your posts remind me of Dean Wormer visiting the Delta House.
I can just imagine you and the Dean showing up at a track and yelling, "You and your sick minimalist buddies are finished on this track, expelled, finished I tell you."
Marshall Applewhite wrote:Why does it matter that some elite runners are heel-strikers? Just because they are gifted with ridiculous talent and are fast does that mean they necessarily are doing everything right?
The list of elite runners who heel-strike could be a thosand strong, that still doesn't make it optimal. Maybe after having run most of their lives like that, those runners would be unwise to try to switch. But if someone is just starting out and does not have all that muscle memory it would be best to start as a forefoot-striker.
Heel-toe is for walking. Forefoot striking is for running. What would you advise to a talented kid who is just starting out? Run until you find your best form? Or do these drills and focus on these techniques to gain the best form?
Forefoot striking is for running? You say it with such conviction as though it must be true. Do you have some proof to back this up?
Anand wrote:755 replies and still counting, no conclusion. Just stop discussing and start running, barefoot, like these 306 runners did near Bombay on 12 December 2011. Many of them discarded their shoes for the first time and completed the entire half marathon with the winner clocking 1:10:03. No one suffered injuries. Next day, they were back for training.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBXbFUUWx_g&feature=player_embeddedOnly when you run barefoot, you realise how heavenly it is to make direct contact with Mother Earth. Like how Pheidippedes had done it in the original run.
I'll agree that running barefoot is quite nice from time to time but to say it's the only way to realize how heavenly it is to make direct contact with mother earth? That's weird.
Anand wrote:
Only when you run barefoot, you realise how heavenly it is to make direct contact with Mother Earth. Like how Pheidippedes had done it in the original run.
What original run was that?
New readers tuning in right now, you can follow the historic debate greek history subtheme on
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3858412&page=
I agree that midfoot strike is better than heel striking and that the elites do it, but it isn't something you can just "change" or "switch." Elites also kick their butt with every stride, bring their arms back to 90 degrees, have very large stride angles etc. It isn't something you just switch too, it's a sign of strength.
Switching to midfoot from heel striking is like switching from two armed pushups to one armed pushups. You don't just do it, you have to work really really hard to get it. You probably won't find many 38 minute 10K runners midfoot striking, but 30 minute 10K runners most likely they are.
I think it's just a sign of you getting faster that your strike changes. When you get faster, your stride length and cadence obviously increase, and I think it is the same for your foot strike. People already sprint on their midfoot/toes, so it's just like them being able to hold that sprint speed longer and longer.
Thanks -- some of us more than others.
J.O. wrote:
Very good rekrunner. We is all diffrent.
The Waterboy wrote:
I agree that midfoot strike is better than heel striking and that the elites do it, but it isn't something you can just "change" or "switch." Elites also kick their butt with every stride, bring their arms back to 90 degrees, have very large stride angles etc. It isn't something you just switch too, it's a sign of strength.
Switching to midfoot from heel striking is like switching from two armed pushups to one armed pushups. You don't just do it, you have to work really really hard to get it. You probably won't find many 38 minute 10K runners midfoot striking, but 30 minute 10K runners most likely they are.
I think it's just a sign of you getting faster that your strike changes. When you get faster, your stride length and cadence obviously increase, and I think it is the same for your foot strike. People already sprint on their midfoot/toes, so it's just like them being able to hold that sprint speed longer and longer.
WIN
gazoo wrote:
The Waterboy wrote:I agree that midfoot strike is better than heel striking and that the elites do it, but it isn't something you can just "change" or "switch." Elites also kick their butt with every stride, bring their arms back to 90 degrees, have very large stride angles etc. It isn't something you just switch too, it's a sign of strength.
Switching to midfoot from heel striking is like switching from two armed pushups to one armed pushups. You don't just do it, you have to work really really hard to get it. You probably won't find many 38 minute 10K runners midfoot striking, but 30 minute 10K runners most likely they are.
I think it's just a sign of you getting faster that your strike changes. When you get faster, your stride length and cadence obviously increase, and I think it is the same for your foot strike. People already sprint on their midfoot/toes, so it's just like them being able to hold that sprint speed longer and longer.
WIN
The gazoo returneth only to declare "win" on a post that has already been falsified. He really is the Black Knight (only a flesh wound.)
The Waterboy wrote:I agree that midfoot strike is better than heel striking and that the elites do it, but it isn't something you can just "change" or "switch." Elites also kick their butt with every stride, bring their arms back to 90 degrees, have very large stride angles etc. It isn't something you just switch too, it's a sign of strength.
Do you have some proof that it's better?
gazoo wrote:
The Waterboy wrote:I agree that midfoot strike is better than heel striking and that the elites do it, but it isn't something you can just "change" or "switch." Elites also kick their butt with every stride, bring their arms back to 90 degrees, have very large stride angles etc. It isn't something you just switch too, it's a sign of strength.
Switching to midfoot from heel striking is like switching from two armed pushups to one armed pushups. You don't just do it, you have to work really really hard to get it. You probably won't find many 38 minute 10K runners midfoot striking, but 30 minute 10K runners most likely they are.
I think it's just a sign of you getting faster that your strike changes. When you get faster, your stride length and cadence obviously increase, and I think it is the same for your foot strike. People already sprint on their midfoot/toes, so it's just like them being able to hold that sprint speed longer and longer.
WIN
No where near a win...
WIN for who?Besides declaring his faith that midfoot striking is superior to heel striking, and then some statistical guessing about good versus top 10K runners, "The Waterboy" asserts it's not possible to change or switch your foot strike, but that any changes, if they come at all, will come naturally, as you get faster.That's not at all what you said.
The Waterboy wrote:
I agree that midfoot strike is better than heel striking and that the elites do it, but it isn't something you can just "change" or "switch." Elites also kick their butt with every stride, bring their arms back to 90 degrees, have very large stride angles etc. It isn't something you just switch too, it's a sign of strength.
Switching to midfoot from heel striking is like switching from two armed pushups to one armed pushups. You don't just do it, you have to work really really hard to get it. You probably won't find many 38 minute 10K runners midfoot striking, but 30 minute 10K runners most likely they are.
I think it's just a sign of you getting faster that your strike changes. When you get faster, your stride length and cadence obviously increase, and I think it is the same for your foot strike. People already sprint on their midfoot/toes, so it's just like them being able to hold that sprint speed longer and longer.
gazoo wrote:
WIN
gazoo,
the debate participants should not decide autonomously they won.
The audience or a panel of judges need to do that.
The irony is, that even if others declare you victorious,, that does not always mean you have been truthful or righteous.
It just means you won the debate.
Apparently the most effective way to ensure that a debate will not end is to propose ending it, as this thread shows.
That's why a competive debate has rules, including when it ends, (as in duration, and number of statements), from the outset, it has speakers and moderators, clearly defined sides.
A social debate, kinda like a civil conversation, carries the idea of expanding knowledge and awareness. There are no rules as such except those of peaceful coexistance. Otherwise it would be a scuffle.
This was really neither of the two.
OK, one last post.
Although I've been siding with malmo, et al, this entire debate, it's not because I don't think that you could very well be right about the whole forefoot thing. There may be a 1-2% advantage, but to aver it as so, at this juncture is just hypothesizing. Go out and do tests, show it; that's what science is about. There are so many 1-2% effects in running that to look at this one very mild correlation that exists among the tip of the top of the current crop of elite runners that is also so heavily correlated with many other aspects of humanity on Earth (read East Africans) is just making a meritless observation.
I have not found any well-grounded physics justification to one of the common assertions that forefoot striking is better because it returns more energy for locomotion. For example, a guy I know at Wisconsin looked at a toy model to determine if there was an optimal amount of bounce in a running stride. Here's a link:
http://uw.physics.wisc.edu/~reardon/Central_Force_Motion.pdf
Lotta math to wade through, I know, but the upshot seems that optimum leg stiffness and "bobble" could not be determined from a simple physics point of view.
A more realistic attempt that I have seen to answer the question objectively relies on a more body-realistic computer simulation rather than physics/mathematical toy model. Their objective is to be able to answer biomechanical questions with simulated locomotion, thereby removing all those pesky time-variant variables that can plague real human testing. One thing they've tried to answer is the question of whether it makes sense to try to get hobby-joggers to forefoot strike. It's not published in a refereed journal, I know, but they concluded that heel-striking is actually more energy efficient for the pace (about 6:40/mile) at which they ran their simulated runner; not sure it's what they expected. Here's the link:
http://www.asbweb.org/conferences/2009/922.pdf
I don't claim to know how well this research is conducted, or where they plan to go with it. But it seems like a reasonable approach and I would be curious to know if others have knowledge of their work. It does suggest that the body can find many viable solutions to the running effort minimization problem, which probably also doesn't surprise me.
So this'll be my last comment on this thread (unless someone posts something academically interesting that's worthy of engagement):
Do what you think is right, believe what you want to believe, but just don't try to pass off speculation as fact.
Cheers