How did you change your running form?

Oddgs wrote:

Or more precise: did you have a weird foot strike pattern of some sort, and/ or something that made your foot go unevenly in mid-air.

Practice, practice, and more practice.

A few pointers:

Run in adequate shoes. Look for a heal to toe drop that is less than 6mm and avoid high cushioning shoes. You will be surprised how many shoes do not meet this requirement.

Place your back against a wall and run in place. Do this for about 5-10 min a day. It will be impossible for you to heel strike while doing this. This will help with your leg stance, foot strength, and neuromuscular control.

A variation on the above. While running in place start moving forward focusing on that forefoot strike. This should look like shuffle (maybe a meter per second) with very short strides. To this shuffle for every 5th stride add an explosive stride in which you bring that knee up high and fast. The goal here is to not have that explosive stride mess with your stride rate. It takes practice.

Jump rope running.

At first, running with a metronome on a treadmill. This helped me a lot in relearning pacing. Before my "stride intervention" I could nail any prescribed pace. After the intervention, I had two modes 7'30"s and 4'50"s. The treadmill helped a lot with that.

Slowly what felt like a really awkward motion with lots of bouncing became more fluid. Eventually, all my movement was horizontal and no hip drop. The intervention worked.

Did ~2 barefoot runs a week, maybe 20-30 mins, and started doing like triple the amount of strides. I already had pretty good form while sprinting but now I have good form all the time whether on recovery runs, warm ups, tempos, intervals, etc.

Also started using a shoe with lower rise (4mm drop to 0mm drop or something like that). Killed my calves at first but then the pain magically disappeared and my forms now great. Probably a combination of everything mentioned above.

form guy wrote:

You can't change foot strike by changing your feet? What kind of BS is this. If your a heel striker you run on your heels. Everything else will follow THIS strike. Your stride turnover will be slower, your arms will chicken wing and you will overstride. This is the CONSEQUENCE of running on your heels. If you start running on the balls of your feet(or mid foot or forefoot) then stride rate will increase, your ams will fall by your side(most of the time. Depends of on you carry your arms- Wilson Kipsang) and your feet will land under your body. This is the CONSEQUENCE of running on the balls of your feet. Anyone who says its not about foot strike is ignorant. STOP OVERCOMPLICATING THINGS PEOPLE!

You are wrong. Foot strike is a symptom. Foot strike is the result of where your foot is in relation to your center of gravity when it makes contact with the ground. The earlier Rupp quote is all you need to know: "it's important to try and land your foot right underneath your body".

If you make contact with the ground under your center of gravity (or close to it) then you will be a mid-foot striker. This is the most efficient way to run fast and remain injury free.

If you make contact with the ground far in front of your center of gravity (think ahead of the knee) then you will be a heel-striker. This is called over-striding.

I happened to read 'Born to Run' during a 3 week time off after outdoor season one year. The part about the most efficient steps per minute stuck with me and when I started my summer base, I made an effort to increase my cadence. Since I was a bit out of shape, nothing felt good anyway. And since my runs were pretty short to start it wasn't too hard to stay focused on it. After a few weeks, it felt like the correct way to run.

So I'd recommend changing form when you start after some downtime.

Almost every elite lands in front of their body and heel first too.

dude.... just do hours of b skips and read born to run by chris macdougall.... you could be a bonafide kenayn by september

I appreciate all the replies and all. If you read my question more thoroughly, you will see that I did not mean general form (probably little specific on my part though). I can say that I run both barefoot and in shoes with low drop on all my runs (altra the one, asics gel lyte 33 2 and nike zoom streak lt 2). I have also read Born to Run, and I land closely to my center of gravity with my forefoot/midfoot. What I really was wondering was if you have changed how your foot moves in the air, from one step to another. My right foot tend to move to the side and kind of twist in mid-air. So my stride is quite uneven. I'm currently stretching my hips (glute med, glute min, glute max and piriformis) as well as strengthening these muscles as well. I hope this helps.

Anywho, appreciate the replies :D

Orthotics works for everything! I promise you orthotics will fix all your problems whatsoever

All throughout high school I had a massive heel strike which was mostly caused by over striding, I had a couple of injuries that were most likely caused by this.

This past winter I had another injury, it was very minor and only kept me off running for about 2.5 weeks, during that time I did a lot of aqua jogging and focused on my form for every moment I was aqua jogging, when I was back running I did not over stride or heel strike.