midfoot striking

If it's natural for you, roll with it.  Otherwise, stick with whatever is natural for you.  The only thing you should concern yourself with is making sure your foot lands under your center of gravity (not stretching out in front).  Which part of your foot contacts the ground first is FAR less important.

It works for me...feels natural.

I've been a heel striker for a number of years, and I've been wondering for a long time why the heck I can't run faster. I'm no athletic machine, but I'm 6'2 with a 34" inseam and can average 21-23mph for the bike split on an average day, and I can't seem to get my run below 9:30 or so. It's ridiculous. Had a buddy take a look at my gait and he commented on the heel striking thing as well. Like driving with the parking brake on, he said.

Conveniently, my tri club is also sponsored by Newton, so I just ordered my first pair of their shoes, which are designed to promote mid/forefoot strike. I'll be giving them a shot and easing into the forefoot-striking thing to see how it works. A couple preliminary super-short runs with the new forefoot strike are promising--I'll follow Newton's recommendations and keep easing into it once my new shoes get here...

Johnny, sorry, but I think you might have the definition wrong.

Here's my understanding of a heel strike:

"Heel striking is when your heel strikes the ground in front of your body. At least 75% of all runners run with a heel strike"

But other than that, you're right:

"The midfoot strike works for most runners…the forefoot strike works for some runners…but, the heel strike doesn’t seem to work well for anybody."

The info from this link.  The whole thing might be worth a read.

http://chirunning.com/blogs/danny/2008/07/25/midfoot-strike-forefoot-strike-or-heel-strike%E2%80%A6which-one-is-best/

I'm a mid- to heel-striker and, trust me, it has basically no bearing at all on running performance or injury (only significant overuse injury I've ever had was when I experimented with changing my footstrike, i.e, moving it forward...never doing that again).  Mostly this is a lot of hype from shoe manufacturers and authors trying to sell books and not backed up by the biomechanics of the majority of elite marathoners (who have been shown to be heel strikers far more often than otherwise).  As has already been said in this thread, where your foot lands relative to the vertical axis through your center of gravity matters; where on your foot you actually strike the ground doesn't nearly as much (although it isn't completely irrelevant).

See the following, which puts heel strike at 73% of almost 300 runners analyzed in an HM, with still 62% of the top 50 runners being heel strikers.  There is more midfoot strike among the elite tier (and the study discusses the reasons), but still a minority vs. heel strike (with the sort of forefoot strike being marketed by Newton et al being almost nonexistant at all levels of performance):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17685722

No.  Your heel can contact the ground first even without overstriding.  In fact, it does even for many elite runners. 

Overstriding is a problem.  And probably all overstriders are heel-strikers.  But not all heel-strikers are overstriders.

JK is correct, the majority of runners including elite athletes tend to heel strike 1st, that is the 1st part of their foot that touches the ground. It is NOT a bad thing unless you are landing in front of your hips (center of gravity), in that case you are over striding and it will be a breaking motion placing a lot of stress on your legs.

Runners shouldn't try to change their natural running gait unless there are mechanical issues causing injuries; that said most people experience injuries due to inadequate training load rather than mechanics unless you are forcing something is not natural for you or inadquate for your fitness level (speed). As runners run more, their natural gaits adapats to the load and it is a natural progression to become more of a heel to mid-foot strike the faster you run. Fore-foot striking is a rare gait, not many runners exhibit a true fore-foot gait; many believers in shoes like newtons on techniques like pose/chi method spend hours trying to develop a unatural gait which hardly ever 100% achieve; this can be shown on a gait analysis in a lab with high speed camera and in most cases what many feel as fore-foot striking is nothing more than mid to heel strike.

It is rather optimistic to believe anyone can tell you anything about your running gait by looking at you and giving you feedback only based on that. Our bodies are not like machines that should be performing in similar ways, each person is different and what might seem unorthodox running gait for some might in fact be the most economical and natural gait their bodies have achieved over years of training (i.e. Paula Radcliffe), while others might exhibit a seemingly "good form" but is a unatural gait forced into the athlete which doesn't match his/her style, fitness, speed, etc.

In any case, athletes are free to experiment whatever they believe is the best approach for them; just be very cautious than any change on your gait should be done gradually (months), the change will take a long time to take place (years) and unless you allow this time of adaptation you will be risking injuries. Still at the end it is not guaranteed the new gait will the most economical way for your body to run.

Edited by JorgeM 2009-08-11 8:05 AM

Thanks for posting this. Too often training advice is based on anecdote and weird biases and people pushing their "system" (I see this in swimming too, even more actually).

Very useful data, great to see a pubmed result at BT!!!

Due to injuries I worked with a running coach for 6 months on changing my form.

I basically had to stop running (mostly because of my injuries- but it would have been hard running my old way and trying to learn the new way). We did a lot of drills (that I did 2-3 times a week) and then he slowly got me running again. That was back in 2006.

I was glad I was able to learn how to run again and to get the form down. I can say that I wouldn't have been able to do it on my own. Making your body relearn something is has done for years and years... can be a challenge.