best way to shorten stride length

Have her start counting her steps per minute. She will be forced to shorten her stride in order to maintain a quicker turnover. 180 Steps per minute (90 Touchdowns for one leg) seems to be the ideal, but she may have to work up to that gradually. It will take some time to adjust, but it will pay off.

Have her run barefoot. She will naturally develop a shorter stride.

I agree with the counting method. Have her start at 160 and work up to 180 steps/minute.

Another thing to have her do while running is visualize having a metal rod sticking out of the medial side of each ankle, parallel to the ground. Then while she runs she should think about having to step over each of the rods so she does not trip. This should help her bring her feet up (almost like a mini-butt kick) and shorten her stride.

I overstrided all through high school with no correction. When I entered college, my coach told me to get my feet to land underneath me. If the athlete can concentrate on this during easy runs, it will eventually become second nature.

I feel that longer strides are more efficient, but if she is overstriding and reaching like I was, focusing on getting the feet to land under the body rather than in front worked for me.

Agree with the barefoot comment, and I have kids doing warmups (but not plyometrics) barefoot.

Have her concentrate on a shorter stride and higher cadence (>180) during warmups and easy runs.

So-called relaxation strides, which can be 50-200 meters and not fast, where you concentrate on running with perfect form.

Certain drills, such as high knees and quick feet, which encourage forefoot striking if done correctly, thus not overstriding. Also stepping over the knee with the opposite foot/ankle.

When she is used to the higher cadence, do strengthening in the gym like squats (high weights, low reps) and step ups, and plyometrics like horizontal standing long jumps (5-6 jumps in succession with 10+ meters of total length) to increase stride length at the improved cadence.

Another vote for barefoot running to regulate an overstrider.

I've been experiementing with "shortening" my stride. I didn't want to do drills for it because I'd get tired of them and would never do them. So, the easiest way I found to "shorten" my stride was to count everytime my right leg landed per minute. At first this was kind of difficult to do (especially the counting to myself part). I started out counting 79 to 80. Then after focusing on "shortening" my stride more i got to 82-83. But then I figured out that I was landing on my heel and tried running more on my toes/midfoot (with my foot landing underneath my body) and I got up to 89-90. When I got up to around 90 is when it felt so much easier to run. My legs, hips, and hamstrings don't hurt all the time anymore, and I'm actually excited to go for my runs now.

But let me clarify something. I compared my stride length from then and now and I found out that my stride is actually longer now than what it was before. When I was down to 80, my stride was about 5 of my feet long. But when I checked the other day with 90, my stride was 6 of my feet long. I was running the same effort but I'm more efficient now that I can take more steps, have a longer stride, and thus run faster.

We like to lay down a 20ft speed ladder and then do several "quick hands-quick feet" walks in the ladder. No jogging, more of a race walk style, you've got to get a foot in each square. Then we move to "quick hands-quick feet" run in the ladder a few times, same thing; a foot in each square. Then we do a few more "quick hands-quick feet" runs that include an acceleration out of the speed ladder for 50 meters concentrating on landing on the mid to fore foot, No Heel landings! The heel landing is the breaking action that slows and injures.

1. Best way to shorten stride length is to run higher mileage. Unconcious form adapation/economy follows.

2. Faster turnover will likely shorten stride. As a drill, increasing cadence by working on relaxed "arm turnover". Where the arms go, the feet follow. Important to "run tall".

3. For MTSS (anterior shin splints) use shin-strengthening excercises. Raise each foot, write alphabet in the air with big toe. Stand straight and alternately raise your forefoot 20-30 times per foot, while keeping the heel grounded.

Have her do skipping drills. You can't overstride when you skip.

have her cover less ground every time she steps...works every time

I worked with a guy a few years ago who kept getting muscle pulls in his legs from over-striding.

We reckoned any adaption needed to stand up to full race pace in his main events of 400 and 800. To get that adaption we believed that it would have to be developed in sessions at and above 400/800 race pace.

We went the simple route of just making a conscious effort to shorten his stride during his track reps. Instead of trying to reach with the toes of the leading leg, he concentrated on getting the foot down and bringing it through to the next stride, thereby increasing the cadence. With the increase in cadence he didn't lose any speed with the shorter leg stride.

It worked. His stride shortened sufficiently and his leg muscle pulls were mucg reduced.

Rather than focus on the feet and legs, I'd have the runner focus on the core/hips/pelvis. When driving forward with your pelvis, you reduce use of the hip flexors, but have the added benefit of cutting down stride lenght. This is because while the legs operate fairly independently, as one side of the pelvis drives up and forward following toe off, the opposite hip is brough down and back. This cuts down the stride length naturally. It's easier to work on a quicker turnover when focusing on hip movement than foot turnover, and moves the power output to the core where it belongs.

At least that's the way I think about it.

bump

Yes, there are drills to help her land with her foot under her body, rather than in front of it. These are very basic drills. Barefoot would also be good.

1 word, 1 philosophy, 1 lifestyle will solve it all.

------minimalism------

I used to be an over-striding heroin addict with bad complexion, then I went minimalist and my life has turned around 180 degrees. Believe the hype.

I used a metronome

http://www.samedaymusic.com/product--KORMM1

just set it to half the strides/min you want and land one foot on the beat.

Worked great for me, I started @ 160 spm and now I run with 196-199 spm. My efficiency went up considerably as I record heart rate, speed, distance, temp, altitude on every run and my heart rate dropped about 5 bpm (in a back to back test of 160 vs 180 spm).

When I was a kid I used to overstride badly as I thought that was more efficient and I had shin splints all the time.

Bottom line, if she doesn't shorten her arm swing, the rest of the stuff listed won't matter. Long arm swing means long stride.

But you can still overstride with a short arm swing.