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| Old faithful trainers |
You can see in the photo above just how sorry my old pair had become: the tread is completely worn away, the structure is splitting apart in places, the cushioning has collapsed and you can see to the left of the upside shoe that the sole has completely worn away! That's because I changed from heel striking to mid-foot striking about 18 months ago.
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| Heel Strike versus Mid Foot Strike |
Above I've doodled a picture of the mechanical differences between heel-strike (how I used to run) and mid-foot strike. The key thing with a heel-strike is the straightness of the leg - all the forces are transferred directly from the heel up the leg and through the knee joint ... I used to get a lot of knee pains when I first started running.
Over the years I strengthened pretty much every muscle in my body, but particularly in my legs and core; this enabled my muscles to take more of the impact and about 18 months ago I shifted from heel-striking.
Initially, I went full on toe-strike - this works for some people, but not for me - it was just too unnatural.
The I compromised and started landing more middle of the foot. The effects were quite surprising. My speed increased slightly (don't get me wrong: I am still just a plodder, I just plod slightly faster), and my injuries went down (until very recently - and that was nothing to do with how I was running, just a big increase in distance in a short time).
Mid-foot (and forefoot) running requires much stronger legs - you can see from my amazing artwork above that more joints are flexed so that muscle, rather than bone and cartilage, is taking the strain: and muscle repairs much faster than bone.
So off I go to Easy Runner. A small shop just off St Michael's Hill in Bristol - it's the place I've bought three of my last four running shoes. The one pair I didn't have specially fitted were a real mistake: injuries in next to no time and I had to go back to Easy Runner to be fitted properly.
There was as bit of a wait, but I knew it was going to be worth it: they spend a lot of time assessing how you run and trying different shoes on you. I lost count of how many pairs I tried on, but the chap knew his stuff: he could see that I no longer needed shoes that compensated for a large amount of pronation (an foreseen benefit of mid-foot strikes are that my feet no longer collapse inwards as I move from heel to toe - and that lack of collapse had transferred itself all up the kinetic chain so that my knees stopped hurting from impact and twisting inwards).
The assistant-chap was really knowledgeable and with some careful observation and gait analysis using a treadmill and a slow-motion camera was able to reveal a few things about my running that I could never know on my own. I need to do some more glut, hamstring and abductor strengthening work.
Gradually, this chap edged me towards what he described as "transitional" shoes - something half way between the heavily padded types that I'd worn previously and the "bare foot" types that were the vogue a few years ago.
These new pair are even lighter than my last pair and are way more flexible so that they don't fight against the mid-foot striking that I've been doing, but still offer some stability.
So I'll be off for a run soon (when the rain stops) to trial out my new shoes. Easy Runner are so confident that they'll get the fitting right for me that they'll replace them if they don't work out (as long as I've not been wading through mud).
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| Shiny New Shoes! |
I am envious of your proximity to such expert facilities! And those Old Faithful Trainers - don't they just tell a tale. You will hang them in honour from a shelf, won't you ?
ReplyDeleteI am really interested in the change from heel to mid strike - how did you do it ? I am so uncoordinated with my body I have no idea how to even attempt to change. Now I am upping the kilometres more I am getting more knee pain - not suprising really.
Karin
Thanks Karin! Those old trainers certainly do tell a tell! but we've only a small house, and I have the medals and memories, so I think they won't hang around for long.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a while to move from heel strike to mid-foot strike - and I didn't manage it all in one go: for a while I'd start mid-foot strike and transfer to heel striking when my calves got tired.
With the mid-foot strike, imagine that you are elegantly placing your foot for some prince (or princess) to shoe - the ball of your foot and toes at flat to the ground and there's a light arch to the foot, hip and knee lightly flexed. With all the joints slightly flexed, its the muscles that take the strain - they are more easily repaired by the body.
Place the foot on the ground in that position so that the ball of the foot, toes and about half the arch are in contact with the ground and slowly lower the heel so that it almost touches the ground - it never actually touches the ground. At the same time, push off with your back foot. You can see why the calves will probably burn a bit until you're quite used to it!
The distance between front and back foot will be less than for a heel strike. There should also be less rise and fall between foot placements.
Without transferring weight from heel to toe as in the kind of running I used to do, the fact that my arches are a little collapsed and I pronated stopped being such a worry. Without the pronation, my knees didn't collapse inwards in the same way, so that kind of problem was erased.
I do think that a lot of work strengthening my legs, core and upper back helped. My leg muscles take the impact, my core better transfers forces from the top to the bottom and my back work means that my arms don't swing in front of me as much - there a lot less rotation going on , so greater stability and the forces work more in the directions that they are supposed to (ie forwards rather than round and round!)
Once I kind of got the hang of that movement, I then had to deal with the cadence - I could run much faster, but I couldn't run for as long to start with - I had to slow down back to something nearer my old pace.
It required a *lot* of thinking about to begin with, but it did mean that I managed to increase my distance and decrease my time.
I hope that's not too much of an answer (behaves I'll do a proper blog entry on it with more doodlegrams!)
Andy, this is brilliant. Thank you so much! My running buddy and I were talking about it earlier. I over-pronate and tend to lean forward when I run, and I hope this will help me. And I read what you ay about doing it gradually. Many thanks.
ReplyDeleteBe patient and kind to yourself and you'll cope just fine, Andy
ReplyDeleteThanks - I am now trying this a little and can feel it makes a difference but it will take time. I guess I do not want to get into bad habits too soon. I mentioned it at work and the Cinderella image made a few colleagues laugh :)
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