Is heel striking really that horrible?

I had this problem only I had been only running for about a year when I stopped heel striking. Just try as hard as you can to land flat or forefoot. Your calves will be very sore for a few days or even a week. Maybe bring your mileage down a bit when you make the transition so you calves can handle it. Anyways, this worked for me and I hope it works for you. It took me about a week and a half but it might take you longer considering you have been heel striking for longer than I had. Good luck.

Different things work for different people. Some people are simply built to land more on their heels. I had a very good (Ivy League champion) sprinter who ran on her heels! It's perfectly possible to land *lightly* on the heel, then have most of your weight landing on the midfoot or forefoot.

BUT--if you're landing *hard* on your heels, there may be a problem. Think: if you were running barefoot (not that I'm necessarily advocating that), would you really land hard on your heels? Ouch!

The "cure" for this--not necessarily moving off the heels completely, but landing lightly on them instead of heavily--can come from two things: strength work for the legs and abdominal conditioning.

1) A lot of heel-strikers tend to land with an almost-straight leg, which contacts the ground noticeably in *front* of their center of gravity. Regardless of heel striking, you want to avoid this in-front-of-CofG landing because it's a braking force--slows you down. (Everything that moves you forward happens under/behind your CofG.)

You want the foot to land more nearly under the CofG--that'll slow you down less (and also tend to move you off the heel some). But to do that, you have to land with your knee a bit more bent; and to do *that* you have to have some quad strength. Leg press and squats help here; so do short sprints (5-10secs) up a kinda-steep hill.

2) If your pelvis is level--rather than tilted forward--you'll tend to "lead with the knee" when you take each step, rather than leading with your foot. I'm not saying that you should run distance with *high* knees!--but your knee and not your foot should be what you feel like you're taking steps with. Again, leading with the knee means your foot is less likely to land well in front of your CofG--the foot will land more nearly under the CofG (and ideally will be moving backward as it does).

Abdominal strength makes it easier to maintain that level pelvis. You can find plenty of advice about abs exercises online (try YouTube), but ideally you want to build up *gradually* to more intense exercises (things like basket hangs, etc.), rather than doing hundreds of low-intensity reps. If you can do more than 20-30 reps in a set of abdominal work, it's probably too easy for what you want--add resistance or move to a more challenging variant.

It depends on what you call heel striking. If you watch videos of Morceli, Ryan Hall, and a bunch more people running >60 mpw, you will see many doing what is generally called midfoot: The foot is dorsiflexed and the midfoot and heel strike at the same time. You will also see some of the fastest sprinters like Okagbare doing this at max velocity.

True forefoot striking works for people running low mileage, but doing this at higher mileages runs into problems with calves and ankles in training, so many top people do midfoot most of the time, then switch to forefoot when they start to go faster.

True heel striking, where you strike the outside of the heel and pronate too far inward is still a braking force on your motion, but the injury risk is now known to be not what "experts" (actually know-it-alls that had it wrong) used to believe. The best way to avoid this problem (if it even is a problem) is to run faster: faster strides during warmups, maybe sprints in spikes once or twice a week.

Thanks everyone, I'll use that advice, thank you

You got some surprisingly good advice and no troll. LetsRun, good job!

The initial point where the foot touches the ground is used merely as a proxy for whether or not the structures of the feet and legs are being loaded in the manner in which they were designed; and it's a far from perfect proxy at that.

When you actually look at stills of high speed video footage from studies on foot strike you'll find strikes classed as forefoot, midfoot and heel strike that are practically indistinguishable. The classifications are often somewhat arbitrary in that respect.

Take the observation from Dan Lieberman's paper about barefoot runners in Iten where he notes "80% of unshod runners forefoot strike", which has the implication that 20% of them don't i.e. 20% of barefoot runners are heelstriking (or possibly midfoot if you go in for that term).

The contact point of the foot isn't critical. It's how everything is loaded in the time that follows. Improper loading causes injury, hence you'll know if it's happening.

It is hard to change your foot strike by thinking about it. It's much easier to focus on turnover - try and run loose and easy, while maintaining 180+ strides per minute. If you are relaxed and smooth, and turning over your legs quickly, you will likely end up with an efficient, low-impact foot strike - whatever that looks like for you.

In still photos, I appear to heel-strike. My foot, just before impact, is toe-up. But I smoothly "roll over" my foot, and after watching slow-motion video decided I was worrying about nothing. I don't get hurt, and my shoes have fresh-looking heel rubber after 400+ miles, indicating I'm not skidding or braking. So, I just focus on smooth, relaxed, and 180+ turnover. I actually trend towards 190+, even at easy pace ( about 5k pace + 2minutes).

Good advice so far. Here's a couple more tips that will help.

A couple times a week, jog barefoot on the grass in the infield. Avoid going very far... 4 to 6 reps of 40 meter strides at your mile race pace... you don't want to get injured from the unaccustomed lack of cushioning. Once you get a feel for what it's like to run reasonably fast without shoes, put on your shoes and immediately try to run the same way on the track. You'll find that the barefoot stride has all the things others have told you to try to do, but you'll do it automatically on the grass when running barefoot. All you have to do is remember what it felt like and do it on the track with shoes on.

You won't be able to hold the new form very long... maybe 20-30 seconds... until you get tired and revert to heel striking. That's okay. Gradually build up the time you can maintain the forefoot form to a minute, then to two minutes. You should be able to do that over a couple of months.

The next time you buy shoes, look for a low heel to toe drop... not a zero drop... but less than the 10mm that's typical on traditional running shoes. I find that 4 to 8mm works best for me as a forefoot striker.

If it's that demanding to get up on your forefoot it can't be very efficient if it tires you out after 30 seconds.

Just run the way that feels natural.

It's pretty unlikely that you heel strike. I've yet to see a true heel striker even among the slowest runners. I've looked. You're probably over thinking it. I'd just run naturally and remember that if you want to go faster, get up on the toes more.

Hey man, over here.

A lot of this advice is bunk. Most people don't know how to improve form. Forget about changing your form. Your form is dependent on your body. Focus on changing your body.

What do I mean? Posture, strength and flexibility. Improving pelvic posture and flexibility will fix the heel strike. Yoga and maybe see a PT or chiropractor (?) who will tell you how to get your alignment right and improve strength and flexibility. Once you get that right, just relax and run!

If you want to run like Haile, you gotta have posture like Haile.

Fat Boy wrote:

It's pretty unlikely that you heel strike. I've yet to see a true heel striker even among the slowest runners. I've looked. You're probably over thinking it. I'd just run naturally and remember that if you want to go faster, get up on the toes more.

The half Marathon WR holder is a heel striker.

I recommend you go try this: Go one lap around a track in your BAREFEET. I think you will find that you form will change immediately. This is what proper form feels like. Your now using your achilles and calve muscles the way the were designed to be used. This is the most efficient form in the LONG TERM.

Some people here saying that some are genetically more drawn to a heelstrike. This is h****s**t. If everyone in the world were to do this test on the track/field in their bare feet, no one would be able to run on their heels. Everyone would be running generally the same way. Of course you see a lot of different styles of true forefoot/midfoot runners, eg. mo and rupp. but thats a different argument.

foot strike is often velocity dependent. slower = more on heels.

shoes with big heels exaggerate the problem.

posture that tends to have the upper body, "leaning back" exaggerates the issue, try to lean forward from the ankles not the hips by 1 inch, "get you nose over your shoe laces"

not controlling the lower leg on touchdown and running by flicking from the knee instead of pushing down from the thigh is an issue a technical issue.

conceptually, running is not fast walking, you don't "extend your stride" by putting your foot further in front of you, this is slowing you down, like driving with the emergency brake on. try to run with efficient strides with foot landing underneath you. this will feel shorter, it will feet quicker, it will feel weird because you have taken millions of steps "wrong."

lots of good advice above as well, it requires you re-writing your ingrained motor pattern, that takes time, patience, purposefulness, and awareness.

landing on your heels causes colapse at ankle knee and hip and you actually sink into the ground. landing more full foot, flat foot on a stable ankle knee and hip will have you bounce off the ground.

form guy wrote:

I recommend you go try this: Go one lap around a track in your BAREFEET. I think you will find that you form will change immediately. This is what proper form feels like. Your now using your achilles and calve muscles the way the were designed to be used. This is the most efficient form in the LONG TERM.

Some people here saying that some are genetically more drawn to a heelstrike. This is h****s**t. If everyone in the world were to do this test on the track/field in their bare feet, no one would be able to run on their heels. Everyone would be running generally the same way. Of course you see a lot of different styles of true forefoot/midfoot runners, eg. mo and rupp. but thats a different argument.

The King of barefoot runners was a heel striker.

Because the last step across the finish line as you bring your arms up is representative of how you've run the entire race.

I can't believe he also ran like he was leaning back and celebrating!

I was a subpar collegiate xc runner, mainly because anytime I hit high mileage I got horrible posterior tibial shin splints. I tried every shoe, stretch, compression, orthotic, ice etc with no luck, even posted on this forum looking for help. I saw about 5 different orthopedic surgeons and 5 podiatrist over 10 years to no avail. So I switched to triathlon. Well now I do ironman distance and the shin problem is recurring. I met with a physical therapist that does gait evals. We spent an hour together he helped me adjust my stride to be more mid/forefoot, and increased the cadence from 150s to 180, and so far 2 months later I am running high mileage and feeling great. He talked a lot about how the midfoot strike changed the loading and prevented braking. Still trying to get used to the stride there are definitely growing pains; blisters, sore calves etc. but I wish I would have done this about 10 years ago.

Good luck.

Shoes change your running form. Whether those changes are "good" or "bad" are debatable. Some people adapt to shoes better than others. Heel striking isn't necessarily bad, it's just different from how you would probably run without shoes on a similar surface. Check out these studies in PLarson's article:

http://runblogger.com/2015/04/foot-strike-patterns-during-barefoot-running-on-hard-and-soft-surfaces.html

Also, "heel striking" is much different than "heel touching." Some runners do land heel first in shoes but don't apply force to the ground until their legs are under their center of mass. In these cases they are probs much less likely to experience injury.

If you do heavily heal strike and are experiencing injury, you could learn to not heel strike by running barefoot on a hard surface, or you could throw on some super cush shoes like the hoka which will probably absorb way more impact than a medium cushioned shoe.

asdfasd wrote:

Bikila in shoes wrote:

The King of barefoot runners was a heel striker.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Abebe+Bikila&view=detailv2&&&id=A6AFB88241EA15011A9A1E1221A038B9D7DBD6B3&selectedIndex=64&ccid=4V%2bFdfUR&simid=608007901802269522&thid=JN.fz%2fRZLScZq0LdHRXuumdiw&ajaxhist=0

Because the last step across the finish line as you bring your arms up is representative of how you've run the entire race.

I can't believe he also ran like he was leaning back and celebrating!

He even landed on his heels barefoot. Look at a video. So did Zola Budd.