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

i saw salazar and chappa doing something like a couple of mile repeats in 77-78

in one vid you can see rudy chappa, he is the guy with the best form of them all, and somehow did not get to the next level, though he won pac 10 800m and set the 3000m AR, where al sal was flying also.

cant find much early salazar.- but there is interesting 5k footage from europe, the salazar of 77=78 had as i recall smaller legs and a much free-er flow, but more a baby in terms of maturity.

the side profile of salazar gives you some idea of what was possible with his form...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EwxhxwwuTU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrhtZ99Ocxs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTbo3KkdxVc

and then you have the forms of rono and ovett, which are a total contrast, but are both all time great, which is to say, ,your limbs and body dictate your optimal style. in other words, perfect style is not one thing, ..... obviously... vid below

and what are the key features?

free flow, relaxation

rhythm

hips - abs- back participation in the stride

foot strike timing, ankle and feet that are right

last is the legs where the push off has full follow through

and the landing does not break.

salazar has some of the components, of the good stride, but is WAY TOO TIGHT, and imbalanced in muscle, very much so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JZTzLne2A8

Obviously focusing on form is going to do less for you than mileage and workouts... up to a point. But at some point you have more to gain from improving your efficiency* than from increasing volume or intensity in training.

When it comes down to it I think good form is the form that best does two things:

(1) efficiently transfers the energy produced by aerobic and anaerobic systems to move the runner forward

(2) reduces likelihood of injury

I don't think a runner can consciously change their form very easily (especially during a race)...

First, I think runners need drills and strengthening to fix their form defects with an eye towards what event they run (filming strides and doing a form analysis can help--- lots of distance runners could benefit from stronger glutes, for example). This combined with doing some actual sprint workouts and short hills helped get a lot faster (think 56 to 51 over 400 over a couple years) and, although this is hard to quantify, a lot more efficient.

Second, I've noticed that a proper warmup, that activates my muscles (especially glutes) and my brain (lots of A skips, B skips, C skips, in increasing complicated patterns, backwards runs and laterals, as well as some wackier stuff-- dancing around, rubbing your tummy and patting your head) helped me feel much smoother in workouts and races than I ever did after a 20 min jog and stretch.

Third, I've been helped by having a coach (or someone yell cues at main important parts of a race). For example: "10 STEP!" meant to increase my cadence or surge for the next 10 steps when I was fading (often helped me refocus, return to an efficient cadence, and feel better) (I would also pick important corners and downhills on a cross country course to surge around) or "ARMS!" at the end of a race was meant to help me kick by using my arm swing to get an increase in cadence.

As far as how much it helps: like any training, the principle of diminishing returns is at play. I would say I never had bad form, just some weaknesses and sub optimal coordination, both of which can be addressed. I was able to gain a lot of speed and some degree of better efficiency when I switched from ignoring the problem to addressing it. Over the first few months I perceived a gain of ~10-15 seconds per mile and since then I have continued to work on and think about it, but I can't really say separate any improvements in form from general fitness.

*Obviously there are other factors contributing to the efficiency of a runner

Please ignore typos/poor grammar and punctuation

Practicalness wrote:

Bad news: I think that you could have a hard time deciding who, exactly, could tell what (and how), exactly, to improve your form. Perhaps a little surprising, given that it's 2020 and folks have been running for eons, but.....I think it's the case.

Good news: You can certainly make massive improvements in your performances without worrying about it. The number of elite runners at all levels - up to and including WR holders - with unappealing-looking form appears to prove this.

Question for the "form is very important" smarty pants: Why are there any sponsored, professional runners - especially those at the highest levels with the most available resources - with non-optimal form? There are plenty, it would appear. How could they have gotten near to or to the pinnacle without addressing this?

For some, the argument is about what form is optimal. However, for the rational posters, the issue is if improving awful form can improve performance. We know that crossing the midline is inefficient, so we remedy it. We know that tight hips and shoulders impairs performance, so we try to loosen them up. There are other form issues that can be corrected and lead to improved performance.

Sorry, whatever you or anyone else thinks they're seeing when they look at people's running form is almost certainly wrong. You can't tell what's efficient and you can't tell what's safe, even if you happen to be an AI bot with an unblinking eye, capable of discerning even the most minuscule variations in movement patterns.

Gait/form analysis, from the track-side coach with his form cues to the so-called experts with their cameras and biomechanics degrees, needs to take its place on the sh*t-pile of exercise of failed exercise innovations, right on top of minimalist footwear and static stretching.

I know there are people too financially and otherwise invested in this nonsense for it to ever go away (there are, after all, still tons of naturopaths and chiropractors out there), but we should be rejecting it on sight.

what to do? wrote:

ElGuerroujFan wrote:

I was the one who was asking. I wanted to know because someone I knew said that I bounced too much when I ran, and I was wondering how much effort I should put in to tweak my form... also I was wondering if it would help much to breaking 5 in the mile. Thank you guys for the responses

If you are bouncing too much on distance runs, then yes you need to work on this. I don't know the answer other than thousands of miles of running to make your power go into producing a longer stride rather than a bouncy stride.

However, you will notice that when you sprint, you don't bounce like this. Go on try it and you will see it's true.

What is the difference between a bouncy stride and a long stride? When I watch guys like Rudisha in slow motion, it appears that they are almost leaping into the air with every push off.

Mid D Guy wrote:

Your running form is mostly dictated by your body shape, the relative length of your bones and the relative power and flexibility of your muscle groups. If you run long enough, your body will naturally find the most efficient way to run, given your body shape.

That makes sense, but why doesn't the argument that 'the CNS knows best' hold for everyday life, for equally natural motions like walking? Why do you see office workers walking with hunched up shoulders or with ugly forward leaning heads....like they've been sitting at a desk for hours?

Does the body find the most 'efficient' way of moving, or simply the most comfortable (which can be determined by bad habits such as leaning forward at a desk for 5 days a week)?

Coevett wrote:

what to do? wrote:

If you are bouncing too much on distance runs, then yes you need to work on this. I don't know the answer other than thousands of miles of running to make your power go into producing a longer stride rather than a bouncy stride.

However, you will notice that when you sprint, you don't bounce like this. Go on try it and you will see it's true.

What is the difference between a bouncy stride and a long stride? When I watch guys like Rudisha in slow motion, it appears that they are almost leaping into the air with every push off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1uFifts3vs

There has to be some bounce but slow motion exaggerates it. Rudisha at actual speed has little bounce, though not as flat as freight train like sprinters.

In slow motion Coe and all the other runners look like they appear to be bouncing (at 24 seconds in) too.

At the finish the runners can be seen bouncing, see Ovett, in order to slow down suddenly and without falling.

Coe in the 1980 Olypic

Coevett wrote:

Mid D Guy wrote:

Your running form is mostly dictated by your body shape, the relative length of your bones and the relative power and flexibility of your muscle groups. If you run long enough, your body will naturally find the most efficient way to run, given your body shape.

That makes sense, but why doesn't the argument that 'the CNS knows best' hold for everyday life, for equally natural motions like walking? Why do you see office workers walking with hunched up shoulders or with ugly forward leaning heads....like they've been sitting at a desk for hours?

Does the body find the most 'efficient' way of moving, or simply the most comfortable (which can be determined by bad habits such as leaning forward at a desk for 5 days a week)?

"Comfortable" is likely also the best guide to "efficient" for a given human body, especially when running to exhaustion.

But more the to point, why not just look at the available evidence, all of which shows that we don't actually know a thing about what is most efficient or safe for any given runner, and that the human brain tends to find the line of least resistance when receiving the basic command "run", and that it probably gets better at this from simple repetition?

To summarize the article linked above: You don't have a clue what you're looking at when you watch human bodies run, no matter what you imagine. Not even AI bots know more than simply how to catagorize different bits of biomechanics.

Coevett wrote:

what to do? wrote:

If you are bouncing too much on distance runs, then yes you need to work on this. I don't know the answer other than thousands of miles of running to make your power go into producing a longer stride rather than a bouncy stride.

However, you will notice that when you sprint, you don't bounce like this. Go on try it and you will see it's true.

What is the difference between a bouncy stride and a long stride? When I watch guys like Rudisha in slow motion, it appears that they are almost leaping into the air with every push off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1uFifts3vs

I don’t see much bouncing but maybe that’s because I’m watching his head.

Hi! This is a very interesting topic here. I find it very useful specially that I am just starting to like doing some runs.

Take another completely natural body movement for which human beings are perfectly well adapted and usually learn on their own: talking. Usually no intervention is required. Kids figure out the most efficient way to move their muscles to produce various sounds, and everything just works.

Sometimes it doesn't. Kids pick an approach to making an /r/ sound that results in maybe a decent approximation, but the approach they've chosen won't ever get them to the correct sound, no matter how often they practice it. The same thing happens when you learn a foreign language and have to acquire some new pronunciation. Some sounds you'll pick up right away. For others, you'll manage a decent approximation that gets better and better over time. But in some cases, you won't ever get there without a teacher telling you, "No, don't move your mouth like THAT, move it like THIS," and you practicing that repetitive movement over and over.

So with running, I suspect that most people do generally find the most efficient form for their bodies, but that doesn't rule out cases where their improvement in efficiency gets stuck at a cul-de-sac somewhere, and with a little practice could possibly get much more efficient if they took a different approach to some part of it.