8 running tips that will help you run like a real human, or a real caveman, i.e. how we were designed to run:
- no noise
- analyze and look beyond
- understand
- pay attention
- patience
- break it down
- minimalist or no shoes
- alignment
1) No Noise
If you’re making noise while running, you’re running incorrectly. A good stride can be made with no noise whatsoever. If there is noise, it’s probably due to landing flat-footed.
2) Analyze and Look Beyond
Just because the right side might be playing up doesn’t mean the issue lies there, the cause could be on the left. Once you analyze and see where the issue lies you can start investigating where the cause could be. It could be a lack of strength, lack of activation i.e. actually not properly connecting with the muscles, etc.
3) Understand
Before running, understand how to run. No, you don’t just know how to run, not efficiently and properly anyway.
4) Pay Attention
While running, make sure you are running like you understand how you should be. Even when you do understand how to run, it doesn’t mean you don’t resort back to old ingrained habits. Keep spending time on correcting.
5) Patience
Don’t push through, stop, reset, rest, try again. If it keeps going wrong don’t keep pushing through, take a moment to reset and try again. Most of all, if it hurts, don’t keep pushing through, stop, and try again next time, but keep trying.
6) Break it Down
Stride far, land softly on the ball of the foot (plantarflexion), connect, pull it in while pushing into the ground, full connection, push yourself away, heel disconnection, and come into as close to full knee extension as possible while the other foot lands and you repeat.
7) Minimalist or No Shoes
If you can’t run without or in minimalist shoes then you really don’t know how to run like a real human. We were designed to run without shoes and the correct technique is the one you can do without external aid.
8) Alignment
Alignment is important, hip, knee, ankle, ball of foot all in one line. Sure, people are different, and there are cases where the difference is not an issue nor fixable. But there are also cases where what might seem like something unfixable actually is with the correct understanding and focus on correction during strides.
Running is great for cardio and so are kettlebells, but we all need strength training as well, so make sure to include some kettlebell training into your program.
