How much faster could one person get by correcting their form?

ElGuerroujFan wrote:

***Another Question from the OP***

Would it be better if I looked at the person from my specific event? For instance, I want to run faster in the mile, so it would be better to look at El Guerrouj's form than Usain Bolt's, right?

-EGF

Personally, I'd say spend the most time watching Bolt run. El G and Bolt have many similarities on a foundational level, but Bolt will be more exaggerated due to higher speeds and thus it's easier to see how to do things correctly.

SB wrote:

running bubble wrote:

It’s only in the sport of distance running that how you do a thing, even in the long term, has no impact on the overall outcome.

And no one is suggesting that preparation ("how you do a thing") isn't as important in running as in other sports; it's a question of where you focus your attention and effort. And there is no scientific support for the value of self-monitored running form "correction". No coach really knows what he/she is looking at, bio-mechanics-wise, when they watch an athlete move. They are just guessing-- and probably messing with the athlete's own CNS when the offer suggestions for "improvement".

Meaning no coach . . . can coach.

You're still saying form can't be improved, at least not directly by self-monitoring, a view I have some sympathy with, but even so my initial point stands. How you run makes no odds, apparently.

I guess you just gotta run.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Bill Rodgers stirring cake wrote:

Nope. When people breakthrough they look the same.

I'm not talking about 50 minute 10k runners getting to 35 minutes. I'm talking 6 minute milers getting to 4:30. That does not look the same at all.

Running form changes depending on pace, same as horses trotting, cantering and galloping.

Yes they do. They are just moving faster.

Your horse analogy is moronic. Those are actual different gaits.

Bad Wigins wrote:

I'm not talking about 50 minute 10k runners getting to 35 minutes. I'm talking 6 minute milers getting to 4:30. That does not look the same at all.

.

Huh?

That's not true. My form is vastly different (better) today than it was decades ago. I still work on it as well.

You think the coaches at Arkansas, BYU, NAU, and Iowa State are coaching form? Nobody that I know at any of those schools has told me that they spend any time on that. Yet the coach is coaching them 2 hours every day.

Predictor wrote:

You think the coaches at Arkansas, BYU, NAU, and Iowa State are coaching form? Nobody that I know at any of those schools has told me that they spend any time on that. Yet the coach is coaching them 2 hours every day.

Do those teams do drills and strides regularly? Do they do core work? Pretty sure they do a significant amount of those things. They may not call it "Form Work" but that is what those things are.

The only thing that improves form is aerobic miles and push-ups. Miles make you tireless and push-ups give you arm strength. Next

You ran a 3:46??? What is your name?

I agree it can help. In my teens/20s/30s, I didn't focus on form. It was all effort/training. Not focusing made sense and keeping my HS weight I ran everything from 5Ks to marathons. In my late 30s, I gained 80 pounds and stopped running as career/family became a bigger priority. As I slowly returned to running (in both pace/miles) in my 40s, I made great strides and lost weight, but I eventually hit a roadblock where trying to run "naturally" meant many stop-starts with the same recurring injury (hamstring). So, I eventually got a running analysis, where the prescription was a modest increase in cadence (from 160 to 170 ), focus on some form drills, along with additional core/hamstring strength training. Of those, what I was most able to incorporate in my routine was the higher cadence. These changes, over the past 12 months, have helped, allowing me to train more and continue to improve. What was most surprising was the higher cadence led to lower heart rates and faster paces. What I don't know, though, is what my cadence/heart rates were during my prime. I didn't have the tech we have today or the curiosity, so maybe all that has happened is I've re-adopted some of my original form. I'm also still slower than then (about 2:30 in my 5K and 30 minutes in the marathon) and also 20 pounds heavier. So, all-in-all, I think focusing on form can help, especially as we age or face injury, since our body's tend to evolve and whatever may work previously (natural or otherwise) may no longer apply.

346bway wrote:

The only thing that improves form is aerobic miles and push-ups. Miles make you tireless and push-ups give you arm strength. Next

That is still saying form is important, albeit with a caveat about how it is best achieved.

Did you run 3.46 over a mile or 1500? Quite a diff. If it was the former you are in the company of a heady few - notably Cram and Webb. Which one are you?

Bad Wigins wrote:

WAY faster. But you have to do it right, and that means listen to a sprint coach. If there are any reading this, they're laughing heartily at the previous poster.

If you're bouncing too high, you are setting a natural limit to your speed by restricting your cadence from ever getting high enough to run a good 800m or less.

a good running form is a product of a good working machine.

when i came from soccer i ran with a gait to dribble he ball.

if you sit at a desk all your life, you need work.

if your muscles are imbalanced, you need work.

really you only need proper yoga intense and good all round muscle work and running itself to cure most.

but at the end of the day, it is best to look at some tape and see some flaws, and it ain't a bit of flailing around with the arms.

you want to especially work the feet and ankles, the western lifestyle produces very weak feet and ankles and running does not shore up those weaknesses very well.

if you do a lot of jogging, your form is going to be bad.

there is a lot to be done with your form.

tons.

but the bad form is a combo of many weaknesses, that have to be corrected, flexibility issues, back issues, abdominal issues, and finally the ingrained habits, which is the brain has figured out a way to bet by and run somewhat efficiently with all these issues.

duh.

SPR wrote:

Now how it works2 wrote:

What's completely deranged is to think you can draw inferences out of thin air as to what constitutes proper running form and improve it by providing arbitrary cues that are not in any way anchored to known scientific facts.

Identifying perfect form is impossible. That' s not to say that you cannot pick out some bits which are not beneficial e.g. foot strike a long way in front of COM - well that's clearly applying a breaking force so not good. Physics plays a major part in biomechanics. The challenge we have is in the fact we are living organisms - through repeated practice people can get very economical at a fundamentally inefficient movement, so is the end output going to be worth making the change.

I had a girls team with some of the worst form I had seen. They were also not very fast. One had awful leg swings that made her feet go in horizontal circles. Three or four had the tightest shoulders, which made sprinting impossible. Another had midline swings. Yeah, if I could fix their form, I could have improved them greatly.

How much faster could a runner get if JS is the coach?

Predictor wrote:

https://images.app.goo.gl/b93UZqKyPAzgoMXp8

Schweizer ran the fastest 5k in the country last year. I could find a million women with so-called better form than her. She overstrides and heel strikes. If you watched her jog and did not know her, you would never think she could run faster than 17 minutes, yet she ran 14:45. You guys keep trying to improve the form of your 17 minute girls and I will continue to train mine to run faster.

Schweizer likely has worked on her form. When running fast her heel rises up towards her butt and then remains bent as the thigh moves forward. That's not a natural stride for her or Bekele. She does overstride and that itself is an adaptation to being slow but there may be better less injury prone strides. If she can't turnover faster maybe she can raise the knees higher. She lands on her heel and she probably has worked on this but doesn't have the physical strength to change it or maybe there's something going on with her feet.

She was born into a running family where her grandfather coached her since birth. No way she had worked on form because she has been coached to run this way forever. I used to overanalyze form but have more recently just trained runners to run fast and let the form be what it is. Schweizer ran the fastest time by an American last year and she has never been injured.

To sum up the thread: form matters in every sport except distance running, which coincidentally attracts some of the least athletic people doing a sport. So people who are generally lacking in athleticism have found athleticism is totally irrelevant. Brilliant. ?

speaking of form, al salazar, with his 115 IQ mentally, and 180 IQ in stubborn application, has figured out the flaws in form as it applies especially to speeds of 52 to 70 seconds per 400m.

salazar in his earlier career, had pretty nice form, and as he got fitter and over trained his form got worse and worse, till he got this fast shuffle, which is super efficient for like 50 miles, and since he had 1310 5k track speed he got the 208 marathons.

salazar recognized these deficiencies, and applied his experience and leanings to rupp. et.al.

centro flat out in the final 400m, that is pretty fine form - for a westerner.

it is good that salazar has to pay for his arrogant and arseholeish ways, but as a great an aholehe is, he's a great man, and the guy should write a book, not a confession to say why he's such of a misunderstood guy, just pass on the goods, the findings medically and the training methods,

When did Salazar have nice form? I saw him run in person when he was a freshman at Oregon and it was the same stride he had when he later ran marathons. Here is a description of his stride in HS from an article in the New Yorker:

"When Salazar began running competitively, in the late seventies, he was known as a “sitter”: he kept his hips so low that at times it looked as if he were straddling a desk chair. At six feet one, Salazar was also tall for a distance runner, with a gangly stride that initially led some competitors to discount him. Kirk Pfrangle, a racer with the Greater Boston Track Club, who first observed Salazar at a high-school track meet, recalls being baffled by his awkward mechanics. “It was like all the body parts were working in opposition to each other,” Pfrangle remembered. “And yet he was running incredibly fast.”