If you do not run and especially if you do, what I have to say today will be a game-changer for you. Even though you need not run to be fit, you have an opportunity to start and do it better than your friends who currently run. If you run and even if you have been faster than most of your friends, with the game-changing advice today you will reap additional benefits over many years.
Today, the 3½ game-changers are implementable without a coach. I have finalized these after observing recreational runners in many locations over many years and understanding how all of us, recreational or elite, ought to run.
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Contents
MOTIVATION
1234for Me Writing this
1234for Non-Runners
1234for Runners
The 3½
12341.12Foot Strike
12342.12Arm Action
12343.12Nose Breathing
12343¼.12Shoulders
12343½.12Head Angle
TRACKING
Parting Message
MOTIVATION [top]
Motivation for Me Writing This [top]
To satisfy my desire to see more recreational runners doing it beautifully regardless of their relative speeds.
To empower every runner to implement powerful changes without an in-person coach.
Motivation for Non-Runners [top]
It is easier to learn things properly from scratch than erase current knowledge and start afresh. If you have not run for many years, rather than “just wear your shoes and run” as many might encourage you to do, this is a golden opportunity for you to learn to run even more beautifully than incredibly fast Olympic athletes.
Motivation for Runners [top]
If there is something we do often, and if it is good that we do it, it is best that we do it properly. Rather than just running without paying attention to the perfection of running form, a lifetime of safe and satisfying running can be ours if we pay due attention to doing it beautifully. Your genetic potential places an upper limit on your speed relative to your friends, so it is literally pointless to compare your speed with theirs. It is only essential that you improve relative to yourself.
What is not genetically driven and totally under your control is the style in which you run. So, pay attention to the 3½ game-changers today and run beautifully. A significant fraction of recreational runners will benefit from all the game-changers. A tiny fraction already has all 3½ in place. There are other possible improvements but I do not see them as being game-changers in the same way that these 3½ are.
The 3½ [top]
I have listed 5 but have called the 4th and 5th just ¼ tweaks for good reasons.
1 + 1 + 1 + ¼ + ¼ = 3½
Let us have a peek at the 3½ game-changers.
1. Foot Strike [top]
A staggering one-quarter of your body’s bones are in your feet. When you wrap a foot up in a sock and a shoe it visually becomes one single object at the bottom of your body. You can view it as something that just happens to contact the ground because you are not able to float like a bubble. However, it is best to carefully think of how to do it in a way that reduces risk and increases return. Thanks to gravity you are brought back down to the earth’s surface with a traumatic force. A disturbingly large fraction of runners in India (a much lower fraction in London) have their first contact point with the ground being their heels – called a “heel strike” landing.
When asked to run barefoot around their hard floor kitchen, the same runner with a heel strike landing will do a perfect “front foot strike” landing. Doing a “heel strike” barefoot on the kitchen’s hard floor will lead to “ouch, that hurts!”
Action Point: Run with a front foot strike not landing with a heel strike.
Reduced Risk and Increased Return: The front foot strike absorbs your landing shock (risk reduction) into the network of muscles and tendons from your toes up to your knee and releases that energy back into your forward propulsion (return enhancement).
Mindset Switch: If you heel strike with shoes, try to run exactly that way barefoot on a hard surface and you will never want to heel strike again even when you wear those expensive running shoes that you were con-ned-vinced into buying.
Difficulty: Changing your foot strike is not easy but it is also not impossible. Remembering that you could do it barefoot in your kitchen should keep you motivated. So, with the correct drills, including when indoors, when not running, or when just out for walks – all that is needed is patience to rewire your thought and action pattern when you wear shoes and run.
Injury Risk: If you do not currently run, there is zero risk in starting off with a front foot strike if you build up your daily and weekly mileage very gradually. If you have been running regularly, there is a moderate but temporary risk of tight calf muscles because the calves and Achilles tendon are now suddenly being fully used for what they are meant to be used, to store energy for a fraction of a second and release it again with each toe-off. Mitigate the risk by reducing daily and weekly mileage significantly and building it back up again very gradually.
2. Arm Action [top]
Like counterbalancing pendulums, your arms contribute to the dynamic stability needed as you power ahead. The more that you do that is not connected to powering ahead, the more inefficiency you will build into your running. Do not drop your arms as you run, and do not swing them around you.
Action Point: Arms moving back and forth by your side and not rotating around you; keep them close to the vertical level of your nipples by having an elbow angle that is smaller than 90 degrees.
Difficulty: Easy
3. Nose Breathing [top]
In a more extensive conversation earlier I presented the importance of breathing through your nose and using your mouth for other functions and not for breathing. Through the summer in London, I saw hundreds of runners with beautiful postures and foot strike actions but almost all of them had their mouths open – ruins a pretty sight!
Action Point: lips together – use your mouth to eat, not to breathe. Use your nose to breathe both in and out.
Difficulty: Easy, if you are patient. Frustrating, if you are not!
Extra Tip: If you think you need to breathe through your mouth because you are going too fast or running uphill – simply slow down. Use your mouth to hydrate and refuel later, not to breathe!
3¼. Shoulders [top]
Your shoulders should be relaxed and pulled back naturally as you might ideally stand when relaxed. Most of us with desk jobs and poor postures from school age continue to run with our shoulders quite rounded.
Difficulty: is high because of how deeply ingrained it is in your basic posture through the working day and because you cannot see that part of you when you run. I think I still struggle with this one when I am very tired.
Extra Tip 1: Run on a treadmill with a mirror in front of you to practice what it feels like around your upper body when you do this correctly. When running with friends, get them to point it out, each time you slouch.
Extra Tip 2: Strengthen the muscles of your upper back with seated rows or bent-over rows like I explain in pushups for the ladies!
3½. Head Angle [top]
Just as you would keep your head relaxed when sitting or standing such that your spine is in what would be considered a “neutral position” it is important to keep it that way also when running.
Difficulty: Easy, but you must remind yourself every few minutes to do a check on yourself. The error tends to be a head tilted downward, so even if you need to pay close attention to the ground closer to you, try to do so without the head tilted down.
TRACKING [top]
For each of the changes you want to make in life, if you maintain a daily journal, you will find that you do get to your end goals and you will do so in a more fun manner. When it comes to high-impact sports like running, introspection nourishes an internal mental environment which keeps physical risks lower by keeping a check on the ego and eliminating dangerously aggressive progression in mileage.
Parting Message [top]
You need not run to be fit, just like you can have a 6-pack without ab workouts. However, anything you do is worth doing well. And, so it is with running. There are no magic pills, but you have 3½ game-changers now.
If everything you do is consistent with your core beliefs and desires, then a long and healthy life of joy is pretty much guaranteed to be yours. If you want to be guided in detail, you know how to reach me, and if you found this useful, please do share it with others.
Puru
Dr Purnendu Nath spends his waking hours focusing on helping individuals and organizations reach their goals, to make the world a better place. He speaks, writes and advises on topics such as finance, investment management, discipline, education, self-improvement, exercise, nutrition, health and fitness, leadership and parenting.
Puru The Guru 
Succinct and explanatory article. I, for one, am guilty of rounded shoulders, and will follow your tip of seated rows.
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