Are you under-striding?
This is what understriding looks like:
- Limited stride length:
From afar, it looks like you are covering good ground. But on closer look, you are simply bouncing more. Notice also that her knee straightens a little too much too early in the stride. Whereas, in a more ideal form, the knee doesn’t straighten that much and doesn’t achieve peak extension that early in mid air. In this lady’s running form, it’s almost as if her knee has straightened too much too early that her foot has to step in to try to reach towards the ground - resulting in a forefoot strike.
- Forefoot strike:
Lots of force absorption through the metatarsals, joints. Moreover, in this runner’s form, her foot barely goes flat on the ground for sufficient time to load before the heel comes off again. This shifts the load primarily upon the lower and deeper calves as well as the smaller intrinsics within the foot. If your foot muscles or your arch isn’t well conditioned for this, don’t be surprised if you find yourself with recurring plantar fascia issues, foot pains, stiffness, lower calves tightness.
- Ineffective posterior chain lengthening:
If you’re not having enough hip movement in your running, you’re gonna be limited in horizontal ground coverage but with lots of veritcal bounce instead since most of the propulsion forces are coming from the calves and distal hamstrings (oh yes distal hamstrings issues..ouch)
- Lots of impact through the knees:
This doesnt look like knee hyperextension yet but such a running form often progresses to knee hyperextension when the runner fatigues at the hamstrings and calves. Major disaster for the knee ligaments and knee cap and everything around the knee
HOWEVER, KEEP RUNNING!
But keep your muscular weaknesses in check. Because our body compensates and calibrates for short term energy savings, it is almost always in some form of compensation as long as you are pushing past comfort. Just remember to reflect, be aware and work on your weaknesses.
Happy running folks (and reading!)