Great stuff!!! I love these discussions. A few things - it is important to understand the purpose of any exercise before doing it. I ran track in college and for years did drills and didn't understand why. The strides are included as part of our run skills training, and should be use to reinforce proper form. In the past strides were included at the end of a drill session, for example high knees butt kicks, crossovers, backward runs, bounding, and then strides to reinforce the drills. Many of the items discussed above, driving the hips forward, quick feet can all come with practicing strides but only if all the other drills are done. This started coming to me two years ago after taking a POSE running class. I finally understood the reason for all the drill we were doing years ago on the track team.
Re cadence, I am over 200 pounds with no cartilage in my left knee, after taking the POSE class, it was suggested that I increased my cadence to reduce the load/force on my joints. It took me almost a year to get comfortable doing this and I found it easier to do it with a metronome than the foot pod. The metronome gave constant feedback, must better than looking down at the watch. Keeping your cadence constant you run faster by increasing your stride length. This came together for me last year while doing the get faster plan. The plan includes uphill bounding into sprints. It helped in opening up my hips and gave that feeling of driving forward, I carried that feeling into my next track workout and was flying. Well for a fat guy...... All that to says, it is very important what you are
Great stuff!!! I love these discussions. A few things - it is important to understand the purpose of any exercise before doing it. I ran track in college and for years did drills and didn't understand why. The strides are included as part of our run skills training, and should be use to reinforce proper form. In the past strides were included at the end of a drill session, for example high knees butt kicks, crossovers, backward runs, bounding, and then strides to reinforce the drills. Many of the items discussed above, driving the hips forward, quick feet can all come with practicing strides but only if all the other drills are done. This started coming to me two years ago after taking a POSE running class. I finally understood the reason for all the drill we were doing years ago on the track team.
Re cadence, I am over 200 pounds with no cartilage in my left knee, after taking the POSE class, it was suggested that I increased my cadence to reduce the load/force on my joints. It took me almost a year to get comfortable doing this and I found it easier to do it with a metronome than the foot pod. The metronome gave constant feedback, must better than looking down at the watch. Keeping your cadence constant you run faster by increasing your stride length. This came together for me last year while doing the get faster plan. The plan includes uphill bounding into sprints. It helped in opening up my hips and gave that feeling of driving forward, I carried that feeling into my next track workout and was flying. Well for a fat guy......
@ John - you should ease into things. And 105 is way high and may be the cause of your issues, rather than muscling it. I try to do my stores at 90, but work on being relaxed and focussing on my form at nothing more than my zone 5 pace. Also as you increase your cadence your foot strike should change a bit and too much too soon will hurt. It did hurt me......
@ Matt - if you have not done so, you should check out the Daniels' Running Formula........
@ Jess - my understanding of the POSE is that your heels do touch for a split second as it the only way to fully support your body weight.
Just my thoughts - this took me forever to write. Damn IPad.....
One additional thought, John, based on your 105 cadence comment. Understanding that strides are about neuromuscular connection and firing patterns, you should not be accelerating to 15bpm faster than your upper end cadence. Think about running faster by picking up your feet "harder/quicker" off the ground. I find this better than thinking about hitting the ground harder, which can cause some bad habits to kick in. However, to run faster, you do need to create more ground reaction force, which means hitting the ground harder. So, if you think about shorter ground contact time (lift the feet up quickly), but don't allow the cadence to get so high, you will naturally lengthen your stride behind you (which is what all the hip flexor stretching is really about). Key point, don't overdo it.
I like how Mike G phrased it.....I also think about the force of pushing the ground away behind me, similar to Sukhi's skateboard analogy. I find that when I think this way, I instinctively lean more forward, land more mid/fore-foot, and turn over my feet a little quicker.
One additional thought, John, based on your 105 cadence comment. Understanding that strides are about neuromuscular connection and firing patterns, you should not be accelerating to 15bpm faster than your upper end cadence. Think about running faster by picking up your feet "harder/quicker" off the ground. I find this better than thinking about hitting the ground harder, which can cause some bad habits to kick in. However, to run faster, you do need to create more ground reaction force, which means hitting the ground harder. So, if you think about shorter ground contact time (lift the feet up quickly), but don't allow the cadence to get so high, you will naturally lengthen your stride behind you (which is what all the hip flexor stretching is really about). Key point, don't overdo it.
I toyed with this a bit on my final TP interval yesterday - instead of consciously trying to bring my foot, after pushoff, back to the front with as much muscle/hip flexor power for the sake of maintaining ~90 cadence, I let it recoil more naturally. I felt like it allowed my foot to rebound off the ground a bit higher, with the end result of it seeming to track in a circular motion more than an ellipse (as viewed from the side). Cadence certainly dropped a bit, but mechanically, things felt more natural and less forced. Also seemed to elongate the stride behind me, which actually ended up increasing speed. It'll take some work to get the body used to, and efficient with, those mechanics. As much as trying to get my cadence up has helped in various ways, I think the time spent trying to hit that cadence has somewhat distracted me from benefitting from other mechanical improvements.
Comments
Mind = blown. Will never neglect my strides again. Thanks all for the input here. One of MANY great things about this sport - ALWAYS learning!
Re cadence, I am over 200 pounds with no cartilage in my left knee, after taking the POSE class, it was suggested that I increased my cadence to reduce the load/force on my joints. It took me almost a year to get comfortable doing this and I found it easier to do it with a metronome than the foot pod. The metronome gave constant feedback, must better than looking down at the watch. Keeping your cadence constant you run faster by increasing your stride length. This came together for me last year while doing the get faster plan. The plan includes uphill bounding into sprints. It helped in opening up my hips and gave that feeling of driving forward, I carried that feeling into my next track workout and was flying. Well for a fat guy...... All that to says, it is very important what you are
Re cadence, I am over 200 pounds with no cartilage in my left knee, after taking the POSE class, it was suggested that I increased my cadence to reduce the load/force on my joints. It took me almost a year to get comfortable doing this and I found it easier to do it with a metronome than the
foot pod. The metronome gave constant feedback, must better than looking down at the watch. Keeping your cadence constant you run faster by
increasing your stride length. This came together for me last year while doing the get faster plan. The plan includes uphill bounding into sprints. It
helped in opening up my hips and gave that feeling of driving forward, I carried that feeling into my next track workout and was flying. Well for a fat
guy......
@ John - you should ease into things. And 105 is way high and may be the cause of your issues, rather than muscling it. I try to do my stores at 90, but work on being relaxed and focussing on my form at nothing more than my zone 5 pace. Also as you increase your cadence your foot strike should change a bit and too much too soon will hurt. It did hurt me......
@ Matt - if you have not done so, you should check out the Daniels' Running Formula........
@ Jess - my understanding of the POSE is that your heels do touch for a split second as it the only way to fully support your body weight.
Just my thoughts - this took me forever to write. Damn IPad.....
Also, I think I'm getting better at them...
Great thread - thanks for starting it, John!
I toyed with this a bit on my final TP interval yesterday - instead of consciously trying to bring my foot, after pushoff, back to the front with as much muscle/hip flexor power for the sake of maintaining ~90 cadence, I let it recoil more naturally. I felt like it allowed my foot to rebound off the ground a bit higher, with the end result of it seeming to track in a circular motion more than an ellipse (as viewed from the side). Cadence certainly dropped a bit, but mechanically, things felt more natural and less forced. Also seemed to elongate the stride behind me, which actually ended up increasing speed. It'll take some work to get the body used to, and efficient with, those mechanics. As much as trying to get my cadence up has helped in various ways, I think the time spent trying to hit that cadence has somewhat distracted me from benefitting from other mechanical improvements.