I knew nothing about running other than put one foot forward in front of the other... and fast. Then I signed up for his course. Mind blowing!... and too cheap if you ask me. Totally recommend it.
Which flaws in technique can you observe in runners struggling with lateral knee pain/'it band syndrome'? Could be worth a video I think it's a pretty common issue
What do you think about running shoes with "toe freedom" like the JoeNimble Utreya in comparison to barefoot shoes with little cushion and classic running shoes with proper cushion and support? I think on hard concrete you need some cushion to pretend running on soft ground like in a forest. Also I like the idea of toe freedom.
Good afternoon, mister Fredrik Zillén. Your videos are very useful. But I have a question. I have a cadence of 196 at light running, and 204 at competitions (my personal record is 5K-17:30, 21K-1.19). To increase the speed, I need to increase the step length, since the cadence is already high. What do you recommend to increase the step length?
That is excactly the problem of high cadence running. It's good if You just want run (jog) for Your health and the spped is not important. If You want to run fast, You have to work on Your stride, because everyone at some speed reaches max possible cadence and than what? Training the stride length is harder than cadence (which comes more naturally).
@@SikoraR Hi, I think it is very important to use correct "elevation angle" at takeoff especially during longer strides because it can easilly become very bouncy run if this angle is too high. And there is another question - how to balance stride length and cadence? Should I use more power, longer steps or shorter steps and (slightly) higher cadence? Even if in both types of running my technique will be good there is one that will be more efficient for me, but how to measure it? Maybe that today I am better in the high cadence runs but after some traing it will be opposite (or vice verse).
Increase your power. The more powerful your push off, the longer your stride will be naturally. Add strength by dynamic exercises like box jumps, stairs, uphill sprints:striders.
There is no way around increasing both your maximal strength and aerobic power (strength*speed near but below your VO2max) if you want a longer stride, especially if you also want to keep a high cadence or even (God forbid) increase it. So: - VO2max intervals (at least once a week for 6 weeks max, on top of your usual fast sessions) - then move on to sprint repetitions to get as fast as possible near VO2max. Those sessions will always make you breathe like a dog but they should never feel like a race effort. If you accumulate too much lactate too quickly and don't recover enough between the sets, you won't be able to stimulate that system for long enough. Basically, remember that VO2max sessions should not feel much like threshold sessions. Your muscles shouldn't stew in lactate for too long ! - strength training. Not only do you want to be able to push off the ground with as much force as necessary, you want the elastic return to be as high as possible (you want your structure to be stiff and elastic). Alternate between strength training and plyometrics as you progress through the season. More strength during base training so that your form breaks down less during these long runs and you get injured less. More plyo as you get closer to the peaking phase and need to increase that "pop" in your step. The relationship between strength and power will parallel the one between the base running phase and the peaking phase Take a page out of this pro 800m runner's book: ua-cam.com/video/Bi7qQP09DSQ/v-deo.html - Kick your recovery regimen up a notch. Things get real once you start lifting seriously on top of running seriously. Sleep will be your friend. Also, take your recovery runs extra easy (bottom-end of your zone 2) and don't be distracted by the few ego runners you'll meet on the road. Good luck. You got this 👍🏾
I've been learning a lot from your course FZ. But I still haven't figured out how to minimize the deep pains in my old cranky hips at faster paces. Not sure if it is from the vertical pounding or the shearing forces of over-striding that can aggravate the hip labrum (which I try to avoid, but as you say, over-striding is difficult to feel sometimes).
Not an expert but have you heard of PRI? It's possible that the hips are not rotating fully on one side, so the body oscillate slightly from side to side. To put it simply, it appears that if one supinate a little, the hips won't "unlock". The body - that's linked to the diaphragms (yes, two), needs to feel your left heel touching the ground, your foot rolling in on your big toe. That's the first step, After that, it's a bit different for the right side. You allow the right heel to touch the ground but it's more important for your body to feel the right arch touching the ground via your shoe insole. When the body feels the inside of your arch touching the ground, it relaxes, allowing for the left hip to roll back on moving your weight from right to left. It seems complex and there are many subtleties about it, so do your own research, but this is the basic theory which could also help the host of this channel in his tests. It goes like this, Most people have always one hip slightly forward then the other, we were made like this perhaps because the right diaphragm is bigger than the left one. If one supinate even slightly, the body interprets it as instability and stays stuck in this "left pattern". When this happens, little air enter the right diaphragm. And even if you think you are moving the weight on the left leg, your body still leans to the right. That keeps the left hip less flexible. One way to see if that's the case for you is to insert a folded tissue in your shoe under your right arch to feel more the ground. Also another tissue under your left heel. Of course you could see a specialist of PRI and but insoles. I'm still studying the concept, is it true, is it not? It seems legit. People have fixed many issues. Therefore, the right pair of runners are key. One think that might cause this "fear" of the body to fall, which keeps the hips locked is eye sight. If one wears glasses, they might limit the peripheral vision which allows the body to relax when walking or running. I hope this help. Maybe for you the issue is something else ... who knows but I went through hours of videos to grasp the concept, if it's worth looking into it, I've saved you some time. You're welcome.
Hi, really interesting. I am a little bit experimenting if creating on purpose more groundforce Will effect faster running? Or should I never create extra groundforce by pushing ground and leave it up to the Gravity and elasticity while almost falling with every step?
More vertical force will result in a faster pace. You can only increase speed in two ways - take more steps per minute with the same stride length, or increase stride length while maintaining cadence. Or, as most people do, a combination of the two. This means that if you want to run faster, you will probably also need to use more vertical force, which largely determines stride length. Unfortunately, however, it's rarely a good idea to try to drive your feet harder into the ground. Instead, you should mostly use your torso and hips as a source of power. I talk a bit about how to do this in my video about not having tension in your core muscles.
This makes little sense to me, if you increase stride length, as in marathon running vs sprinting, velocity is increased and vertical force goes up, in your case vertical GRF went down with overstride, how???
Stride length and where you put your foot in relation to the centre of mass are not the same thing. Just because you overstride, you don't take longer steps than if you land more under your body. If two people run exactly the same speed and have exactly the same cadence, they will take exactly the same stride length in centimetres/inches. Everything else is impossible. But they can still land in very different places in relation to the centre of mass. So overstride does not automatically mean longer strides. As for the vertical force, a lot of it is about getting the body weight on the foot. I don't know if you've been cross-country skiing, but if you put the poles down a bit in front of your body, you won't get the same force as if you put the poles down more under your body/centre of mass. Or if we think of a bicycle. If you have the pedals far in front of you, you don't get the same power as if they are more below you. Same thing here. The vertical force is less in ski poles/bike pedals/feet that are too far forward. Hope that answers your question.
How would apply Your hypothesis to the running style which is not only based on metabolic work (land and the active push), but rather on the movement based on the tensegrity model, in which the entire chain of muscles, tendons and, above all, fascia is loaded at the moment of landing, and at the moment of detachment give back the accumulated energy and drive the movement in a non-metabolic way? Think about the running technique of the Eliud Kipchoge, he is perfect example of that.
I think every type of run costs some energy - or we would invent perpetum mobile runners. :-) But good runners use less energy to make faster and/or bigger steps.
@@honza1859 Ofc it costs some energy. Even the most effective spring loses some energy. But even if it 10% of energy which is given back, it is still FREE 10% of energy which can be used to move forward aditionaly to energy created in metablic way. I hop this is a bit clearer now (I am not native english speaker).
The software (Motion Metrix) and therefore Fredrik take the elastic system into account fully, Fredrik talks about it in this very video (play it again to listen for it). Otherwise, there would be no useful measure of energy efficiency.
The real challenge is to increase/optimize the ratio of horizontal (propulsive) to vertical forces. Ideally we want to increase horizontal impulse as much as possible and maintain just enough vertical impulse. To much vertical impulse is inefficient (bouncing). To little results in braking the following stride.
Isn't it time to just put on a pair of running shoes and get out there and go for a run and enjoy it. 20''000 UA-cam channels telling people HOW they think they should run is taking so much away from the great sport. Just run, enjoy it, look at your surroundings, forget about time, heart rate and all the other rubbish data, your body will tell you to slow down, rest or when its injured. Your body is the greatest thing that you will ever own.
Sometimes you wanna increase your braking forces like when you’re going down a steep hill and don’t want your knees to explode because you’re running too fast. 😂
While in general, the breaking forces will be greater running downhill, there are other ways to maintain control. He’s a quicker, shorter stride, like running on hot coals. Focus on keeping as much of your stride out the back rather than in front.
Great video! Why don’t you simply tell the truth? An amazing way to decrease vertical force and be more efficient while running is to loose fat. It is okay and healthy to have some fat but too much is not good. Many years ago I was running in a club and we had in the club an older runner extremely thin and fast. Each time a women asked me how can I be a faster pain free runner I would refer the women to that runner that is rolling in gold in his running success. Then I would listen and watch what happen. Always the same scenario the women runner would come back to see me and I would ask her so what did he say? He told me to loose weight as I was too fat. She would then say lucky for him that he is so old as I would kill him. 🤣🤣🤣 In short loosing weight is an amazing way to reduce vertical force. Imagine by loosing one pound you are loosing two pounds of vertical force while running. This is enormous no? No technical change in the way you run would give you such a return for your change.
I knew nothing about running other than put one foot forward in front of the other... and fast. Then I signed up for his course. Mind blowing!... and too cheap if you ask me. Totally recommend it.
Which flaws in technique can you observe in runners struggling with lateral knee pain/'it band syndrome'? Could be worth a video I think it's a pretty common issue
Great info. I hadn't considered the relationship of the different forces.
Excellent.
What do you think about running shoes with "toe freedom" like the JoeNimble Utreya in comparison to barefoot shoes with little cushion and classic running shoes with proper cushion and support?
I think on hard concrete you need some cushion to pretend running on soft ground like in a forest. Also I like the idea of toe freedom.
What about low vertical force. How do you fix that?
Good afternoon, mister Fredrik Zillén. Your videos are very useful. But I have a question. I have a cadence of 196 at light running, and 204 at competitions (my personal record is 5K-17:30, 21K-1.19). To increase the speed, I need to increase the step length, since the cadence is already high. What do you recommend to increase the step length?
That is excactly the problem of high cadence running. It's good if You just want run (jog) for Your health and the spped is not important. If You want to run fast, You have to work on Your stride, because everyone at some speed reaches max possible cadence and than what? Training the stride length is harder than cadence (which comes more naturally).
@@SikoraR Hi, I think it is very important to use correct "elevation angle" at takeoff especially during longer strides because it can easilly become very bouncy run if this angle is too high.
And there is another question - how to balance stride length and cadence? Should I use more power, longer steps or shorter steps and (slightly) higher cadence? Even if in both types of running my technique will be good there is one that will be more efficient for me, but how to measure it? Maybe that today I am better in the high cadence runs but after some traing it will be opposite (or vice verse).
Increase your power. The more powerful your push off, the longer your stride will be naturally. Add strength by dynamic exercises like box jumps, stairs, uphill sprints:striders.
There is no way around increasing both your maximal strength and aerobic power (strength*speed near but below your VO2max) if you want a longer stride, especially if you also want to keep a high cadence or even (God forbid) increase it. So:
- VO2max intervals (at least once a week for 6 weeks max, on top of your usual fast sessions) - then move on to sprint repetitions to get as fast as possible near VO2max. Those sessions will always make you breathe like a dog but they should never feel like a race effort. If you accumulate too much lactate too quickly and don't recover enough between the sets, you won't be able to stimulate that system for long enough. Basically, remember that VO2max sessions should not feel much like threshold sessions. Your muscles shouldn't stew in lactate for too long !
- strength training. Not only do you want to be able to push off the ground with as much force as necessary, you want the elastic return to be as high as possible (you want your structure to be stiff and elastic). Alternate between strength training and plyometrics as you progress through the season. More strength during base training so that your form breaks down less during these long runs and you get injured less. More plyo as you get closer to the peaking phase and need to increase that "pop" in your step. The relationship between strength and power will parallel the one between the base running phase and the peaking phase
Take a page out of this pro 800m runner's book: ua-cam.com/video/Bi7qQP09DSQ/v-deo.html
- Kick your recovery regimen up a notch. Things get real once you start lifting seriously on top of running seriously. Sleep will be your friend. Also, take your recovery runs extra easy (bottom-end of your zone 2) and don't be distracted by the few ego runners you'll meet on the road.
Good luck. You got this 👍🏾
I've been learning a lot from your course FZ. But I still haven't figured out how to minimize the deep pains in my old cranky hips at faster paces. Not sure if it is from the vertical pounding or the shearing forces of over-striding that can aggravate the hip labrum (which I try to avoid, but as you say, over-striding is difficult to feel sometimes).
Not an expert but have you heard of PRI? It's possible that the hips are not rotating fully on one side, so the body oscillate slightly from side to side. To put it simply, it appears that if one supinate a little, the hips won't "unlock". The body - that's linked to the diaphragms (yes, two), needs to feel your left heel touching the ground, your foot rolling in on your big toe.
That's the first step,
After that, it's a bit different for the right side. You allow the right heel to touch the ground but it's more important for your body to feel the right arch touching the ground via your shoe insole. When the body feels the inside of your arch touching the ground, it relaxes, allowing for the left hip to roll back on moving your weight from right to left. It seems complex and there are many subtleties about it, so do your own research, but this is the basic theory which could also help the host of this channel in his tests. It goes like this,
Most people have always one hip slightly forward then the other, we were made like this perhaps because the right diaphragm is bigger than the left one. If one supinate even slightly, the body interprets it as instability and stays stuck in this "left pattern". When this happens, little air enter the right diaphragm. And even if you think you are moving the weight on the left leg, your body still leans to the right. That keeps the left hip less flexible.
One way to see if that's the case for you is to insert a folded tissue in your shoe under your right arch to feel more the ground. Also another tissue under your left heel. Of course you could see a specialist of PRI and but insoles. I'm still studying the concept, is it true, is it not? It seems legit. People have fixed many issues. Therefore, the right pair of runners are key.
One think that might cause this "fear" of the body to fall, which keeps the hips locked is eye sight. If one wears glasses, they might limit the peripheral vision which allows the body to relax when walking or running. I hope this help. Maybe for you the issue is something else ... who knows but I went through hours of videos to grasp the concept, if it's worth looking into it, I've saved you some time. You're welcome.
Good evening Fredrik, what software/device do you use to measure elastic exchange, economy, etc? Thank you in advance.
MotionMetrix. Mor info at: www.motionmetrix.se
Hi, really interesting. I am a little bit experimenting if creating on purpose more groundforce Will effect faster running? Or should I never create extra groundforce by pushing ground and leave it up to the Gravity and elasticity while almost falling with every step?
More vertical force will result in a faster pace. You can only increase speed in two ways - take more steps per minute with the same stride length, or increase stride length while maintaining cadence. Or, as most people do, a combination of the two. This means that if you want to run faster, you will probably also need to use more vertical force, which largely determines stride length. Unfortunately, however, it's rarely a good idea to try to drive your feet harder into the ground. Instead, you should mostly use your torso and hips as a source of power. I talk a bit about how to do this in my video about not having tension in your core muscles.
This makes little sense to me, if you increase stride length, as in marathon running vs sprinting, velocity is increased and vertical force goes up, in your case vertical GRF went down with overstride, how???
Stride length and where you put your foot in relation to the centre of mass are not the same thing. Just because you overstride, you don't take longer steps than if you land more under your body. If two people run exactly the same speed and have exactly the same cadence, they will take exactly the same stride length in centimetres/inches. Everything else is impossible. But they can still land in very different places in relation to the centre of mass. So overstride does not automatically mean longer strides. As for the vertical force, a lot of it is about getting the body weight on the foot. I don't know if you've been cross-country skiing, but if you put the poles down a bit in front of your body, you won't get the same force as if you put the poles down more under your body/centre of mass. Or if we think of a bicycle. If you have the pedals far in front of you, you don't get the same power as if they are more below you. Same thing here. The vertical force is less in ski poles/bike pedals/feet that are too far forward. Hope that answers your question.
How would apply Your hypothesis to the running style which is not only based on metabolic work (land and the active push), but rather on the movement based on the tensegrity model, in which the entire chain of muscles, tendons and, above all, fascia is loaded at the moment of landing, and at the moment of detachment give back the accumulated energy and drive the movement in a non-metabolic way? Think about the running technique of the Eliud Kipchoge, he is perfect example of that.
I think every type of run costs some energy - or we would invent perpetum mobile runners. :-) But good runners use less energy to make faster and/or bigger steps.
@@honza1859 Ofc it costs some energy. Even the most effective spring loses some energy. But even if it 10% of energy which is given back, it is still FREE 10% of energy which can be used to move forward aditionaly to energy created in metablic way. I hop this is a bit clearer now (I am not native english speaker).
The software (Motion Metrix) and therefore Fredrik take the elastic system into account fully, Fredrik talks about it in this very video (play it again to listen for it). Otherwise, there would be no useful measure of energy efficiency.
The real challenge is to increase/optimize the ratio of horizontal (propulsive) to vertical forces.
Ideally we want to increase horizontal impulse as much as possible and maintain just enough vertical impulse.
To much vertical impulse is inefficient (bouncing). To little results in braking the following stride.
Yes, something like that is in my text higher...
Isn't it time to just put on a pair of running shoes and get out there and go for a run and enjoy it. 20''000 UA-cam channels telling people HOW they think they should run is taking so much away from the great sport. Just run, enjoy it, look at your surroundings, forget about time, heart rate and all the other rubbish data, your body will tell you to slow down, rest or when its injured. Your body is the greatest thing that you will ever own.
👍
Sometimes you wanna increase your braking forces like when you’re going down a steep hill and don’t want your knees to explode because you’re running too fast. 😂
While in general, the breaking forces will be greater running downhill, there are other ways to maintain control. He’s a quicker, shorter stride, like running on hot coals. Focus on keeping as much of your stride out the back rather than in front.
Great video! Why don’t you simply tell the truth? An amazing way to decrease vertical force and be more efficient while running is to loose fat. It is okay and healthy to have some fat but too much is not good. Many years ago I was running in a club and we had in the club an older runner extremely thin and fast. Each time a women asked me how can I be a faster pain free runner I would refer the women to that runner that is rolling in gold in his running success. Then I would listen and watch what happen. Always the same scenario the women runner would come back to see me and I would ask her so what did he say? He told me to loose weight as I was too fat. She would then say lucky for him that he is so old as I would kill him. 🤣🤣🤣
In short loosing weight is an amazing way to reduce vertical force. Imagine by loosing one pound you are loosing two pounds of vertical force while running. This is enormous no? No technical change in the way you run would give you such a return for your change.