Form improvement. Is it worth it?

when it comes to form, most metrics are not very useful and form is something u really work together with a coach on. but i think most importantly if ure not doing some running specific strengthwork right now u can supplement that into your training and doing stuff like drills and strides PROPERLY also helps w your form.

Lydiard and others have running "form" exercises. I did them once a week. Look those up and think about form while running.

i would not f*ck with my form whatsoever, run naturally

however i did find that it helped to reduce tension and be more relaxed

if you want to work on "turnover," do some pure sprinter work trying to explode, that'll get your feet moving faster and maybe that follows you back to distance work

Just run baby

Form isn't really that important if you're not getting injured. Air resistance is minimal at any speed you're doing. Put it this way, if it wasn't sprinters would be a bald and not wear necklaces and baggy singlets.

Even with pro swimmers where form/technique matters 100% in the water, hand movement above water is largely irrelevant.

This is not your typical reply when it comes to discussions around running form, but what helped my form tremendously was 1) watching a lot of professional races (track, cross country, road) and 2) 3-5 minutes worth of resistance band glute/hip activation exercises before EVERY (and I mean every) run.

Every other sport and discipline: constantly work on your technique over time to become as efficient as possible.

Running: forget about technique.

I get that tweaking technique can cause the impact load to be redistributed differently in the short term and that might cause issues, which won't make you hit your short term goals.

However, anything you can do to become more efficient is a good thing. When has anyone ever said that becoming more efficient is a bad thing. Oh wait, that's the social herd mentality of the running community because nobody wants to give up a year of running to relearn how to move.

You probably need to work on mobility, flexibility, and strength while doing form work, especially after a run. People always leave that part out, which is like going to a chiropractor only to have your lousy muscle tension pull your joints back into place. Do the work and keep the long term goal in mind, which is to run faster for as long and as healthy as possible.

I don't know the answer, and perhaps there is new research since what I read. Please point us to newer research if you know of it, but I recall that running economy, which is genuinely important, is not closely tied to what we think of as "beautiful" or "efficient-looking" form as one would expect; and that correlation is convincing (top distance runners at 90+ cadence) but not causation - is there any well designed study of runners working to raise their cadences that showed that this caused them to run more economically? Also striking in this discussion is that it is my understanding that all or nearly all top sprinters spend a *lot* of time working on form -- so, unless all their coaches are wrong (I guess that is possible...), it is only with distance runners where the value of working on form improvement is questioned. To provide a good answer to your question, I think we would need to know 1) can form be improved to a) improve economy and b) decrease rate of injuries; and 2) if the answer to #1 is "yes," can an individual's attempts to improve metrics as shown, for example, on a garmin forerunner, lead to these form improvements, or are other kinds of drills needed to make these improvements?

Running is not a jury sport.

If you have bad form due to specific muscle weakness, that should be fixed. But if not, just let it be.

There was this study where coaches tried to estimate athletes’ running economy based on form. They couldn’t.

Heavy weights

Hill sprints

Flat sprints

Plyometrics

Add in hip and spine mobility and help develop postural awareness, balance and joint stability and that's it. Drill can help with coordination but don't necessarily translate to better running technique.

And let's not forget that this will take a long time.

This.

However, most of the runners on this forum are above average and probably have decent form already so it's easy for detractors to say forget about form and just run.

Instead of looking at metrics like vertical oscillation, etc, here is what I would suggest.

Video tape yourself front, side and behind running at race pace, tempo pace, intervals, etc in slow motion on a track (treadmills have a bounce to them.) Just have someone video you or put your phone on a stand and run by it.

Look for obvious issues that might need attention. Search for online advice and ask AI how to correct that problem or even if you should try to correct it. One of the problems with form adjustment is that changing one movement changes other movements up and down the chain so you need to be cautious about form changes. What works for most other runners *might* not work for you.

One tip: When you find something that needs correcting, work on it for only a few seconds at a time. Recovery runs are a good time to do 20-second "drills" of running with a form change. Run with the new form for 20 seconds and then run normally to fully recover and then repeat a few times. Over time, you can add to the time and make it your new form.

Sudden form changes can result in injuries, even when the form change is to reduce an injury someplace else.

You sounded like you knew what you were talking about until you unironically brought up chiropractors lol. No thanks.

After several years of watching high school XC races, I've come to conclusion that working on form is a waste of time. A good number of the fastest kids had terrible form to the point where you are wondering, how in the hell can that kid run at all? Bobble doll heads, pigeon toed, knock kneed, massive pronation, arms flailing, etc. Doesn't freaking matter.

Your body dictates the most efficient way to run, not the other way around. Of course you can work on imbalances like mentioned above, but in the end you need to free your mind and just let your body take over.

This coming from a guy who had taken 30+ pages of notes on running form over the years only to learn it was all futile.

Running form and technique are important, but in my opinion form drills do very little to show improvement.

everyones individual form is unique because of BALANCE and strength/weaknesses.

Getting stronger improves form more quickly. Also running fast helps technique.

So, get strong and flexible, do some fast eunning

Tommy Hughes (Ireland) chose cadence for his priority metric to improve as he aged, and became an age group world record holder:

I'm fight off aging the same way, without music for aid I tend to land at around 158-160 steps per minute, with music I can hold 168-170-172 for an hour on a good day.

Here's my list: http://k1chyd.adress.eksjo.com/steps-per-minute.htm

I have not done a dive into the literature on this in a while (say 10 years), but when I did look 10ish years ago I could find nothing that looked well done to support the idea that "form" improved performance or reduce injury.

Back in the late 90s, I was part of a group that collected data on runners who were taught the Pose Method of running. The "posers" (if you will) contended that it would improve running economy. We ran a series of tests on them for VO2max, running economy and lactate threshold. The runners were all similar (we had recruited male runners with a verifiable 5 or 10K time (cannot remember exactly but maybe sub 45 for the 10 and something comparable for the 5).

The group was randomly assigned to receive training in Pose and given drills to do for 6 weeks. The other group was told to just do what they had been doing.

The gist was that after 6 weeks no changes were seen between groups (even looking at individuals the few changes were so small as to be with the error of measurement of the equipment or normal variation one would expect).

Now maybe 6 weeks is not long enough (a valid criticism).

As a note: the person who had led the push for the study was a big Pose guy and well known in the triathlon world at the time. When the results came back, he did not submit the paper. I think he did not want a paper in the literature that was critical of his "baby". Lost a lot of respect for him on that one (he was a professor and not just a Pose guy).

Years ago at Eastern Michigan (which has a run of some very good distance runners) one of the profs and the HC came together for a project. As part of it, the prof measured the athletes' running economies (REs). But for "fun" he asked the coach (who had been a long time coach) to rank the runners from best to worst in form.

There was no correlation between the runners whose form the coach ranked high with a high running economy. In essence one can "look" like a beautiful runner and be uneconomical or one can look ugly as a runner and be economical.

Also, if a person has been running for a while, I fear messing around with anything from the hips down to run a big risk of injury. (Arm carriage is something I would work on as I see many people running with their arms crossing the mid line or women who clutch their boobs and that seems detrimental as it reduces the lift that the arms provide while running).