anyone was able to switch from running on heel to toe?

fisky wrote:

Could someone describe the difference between forefoot and midfoot strike?

It seems to me that the terms are used differently on the internet.

The red/yellow point is midfoot. Forefoot is between the vertical line and toes.

I never ran in "overly cushioned shoes with raised heels." Heels striking is just as natural as midfoot or toe striking is for some people.

thoughts..., I think your information here has been pure gold. I think your information about hip flexor and glutes as where it starts and foot strike is more of an effect has already helped me a ton. My question is, is there anything I should be thinking to activate my flute? Or, is that more natural with letting my hip flexor have full range of motion?

Once your foot makes contact with the ground, do you consciously push off the ground or do you just think of getting your foot off the ground as fast as possible?

Also, what are your thoughts on shoes? I'm a shoe geek so I like to rotate bunch of neutral trainers, light neutral trainers and occasionally wear flats outside of racing. Is there anytime I should wear my minimalist shoes? I have few pairs of those but I don't wear them much.

You should not push on the ground to help you lift off and neither try to recover the foot faster.

Instead, try to hit the ground faster after your foot goes in front of the other.

The rest will come naturally.

fisky wrote:

Could someone describe the difference between forefoot and midfoot strike?

It seems to me that the terms are used differently on the internet.

The forefoot strike is what is often called "running on your toes" although that's a nisnomer since you shouldn't actually be landing on your toes. Initially weight is born on the front pad of the foot. This is as opposed to heel striking where the weight is initially born on the heel. Midfoot just means something in between. From the perspective of running barefoot "midfoot" is an odd term because there isn't really a middle part of the foot to strike on. If the foot has a well developed arch the part of the foot under the arch doesn't ordinarily bare much weight.

When I say midfoot strike what I really mean is that the foot is pretty flat (but slightly tilted down and supinated) right before when it touches the ground. This means that on a flat surface the outside of the front pad will touch first follwed rapidly by the ball, the toes and the heel. On even a slightly uneven surface which part of the foot touches the ground first will be pretty random. The important point is that however contact is initially made, you want to quickly transition to having your weight balanced between the front and heel of the foot.

thoughts... wrote:

Most posting here who are injured switching to a midfoot/forefoot strike might be doing it wrong.

You can't simply start landing on your forefoot/midfoot and continue to overstride (what most heel strikers do). That will result in sore calves, metatarsal stress fractures, etc. You need to move your foot strike closer to your center of gravity.

This. When I went from heel to midfoot, I started by plantar flexing my foot more while still overstriding pretty bad. Don't do that. I ended up with sore calves and hips most of the time. It might have also slowed me down because I wasn't dorsiflexing my foot enough to preload my calf for the push off the ground.

My advice would be to focus on quickening your cadence and landing under your center of gravity. If you do that, the forward foot strike will come naturally. The above posters who said to run barefoot are also right imo. That will force you to run with better mechanics.

HRE wrote:

I never ran in "overly cushioned shoes with raised heels." Heels striking is just as natural as midfoot or toe striking is for some people.

I somehow highly doubt that. The last decades almost ALL running shoes on the market have had raised heels and generous cushioning. Only since the aftermath of Born to Run have there been popular/mainstream runningshoes without all that.

Yes, spikes and racing flats are the exeption, but not many people run on those most of the time. Did you?

I spent an entire summer with the focus of running completely on my toes for every run, with hill workouts often. This was in between my junior and senior year in high school. It was painful, but it worked and fixed my heel strike issue. Now i land on the fore front. Make the dedication in the off season, and it will work.

Bump

sredlums wrote:

HRE wrote:

I never ran in "overly cushioned shoes with raised heels." Heels striking is just as natural as midfoot or toe striking is for some people.

I somehow highly doubt that. The last decades almost ALL running shoes on the market have had raised heels and generous cushioning. Only since the aftermath of Born to Run have there been popular/mainstream runningshoes without all that.

Yes, spikes and racing flats are the exeption, but not many people run on those most of the time. Did you?

Yes. Pretty much always.

Agree with this. I went to a forefoot strike years ago for a year but its too much stress on the calves and seems to use way more energy running longer distances. Now I'm back to midfoot or slight heel touch first striker. I keep my cadence average 180 or great (higher with faster paces) and foot landing under center of mass. Landing first with the outside of the foot and rolling inwards is a nice natural movement and makes the stride very smooth.

get a metronome on your phone and set it to 180 bpm. make it so your feet it the ground at each beat. this will naturally shorten your stride and make it impossible to land on hour heel.

After listening to a podcast with Frans Bosch, I have found that concentrating on keeping the foot in a neutral position (neither plantar- nor dorsiflexed), and then letting it strike however that position dictates, creates the most relaxed and efficient gait.