If you are an experienced runner, you might know that there are various components that affect your performance. While you remain focused on the form, your running significantly depends on how you actually place your foot. Foot strike has reaped lots of attention lately. In this guide, know all need-to-knows about foot strike like different placements and ways for optimizing your own running foot strike.
Your foot strike could have a huge impact on your performance and comfort while running. Here, learn what your foot strike tells about your running style. The ‘foot strike’ term refers to how runners land on their feet every time they take a step. For decades, the community of running has contested intensely on which the best strike pattern is.
The foot strike affects your energy consumption, speed, and risk of injury significantly every time you lace up your sneakers. That’s why athletes always remain on the lookout for the maximum impact. However, it could be difficult to tell which foot strike remains the best. Here, biomechanics come into play as science is there for delivering hard truths regarding the impacts of exercise on the body. So, know everything about running foot strike here!
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What Are the Different Styles of Foot Strike?
Before we move further, beginners or all who have not heard the word ‘foot strike’ before, it is not a boxing term. It is a major component of your run. Foot strike is used for foot placement, which means the way in which the foot strikes the ground while running. Every stride features a blend of the foot rolling and landing.
It is important to mention here that every runner will have a distinctive strike pattern depending on their bone structure, height, and weight. Even the strike styles of pro athletes vary over the board. That’s the reason you need to examine the strike pattern of yours. In this way, you get to know whether your foot strike pattern is putting you at the risk of injury while running.
So, there are three diverse foot strikes – rearfoot, midfoot, and forefoot strikes.
Forefoot
The forefoot strike pattern places your weight of impact on the foot’s ball and toes. Also, the heels rarely touch the floor between steps. In this strike position, your upper body bends forward and you may experience recurrent cramps around the Achilles tend on and in the calves. However, the forefoot strike pattern could be perfect to power you over steep hills or give a leg up during a sprint on the competition.
Advantages:
- Easy for implementing at high tempos like sprint runs or sprints, while running uphill or doing jumps
- There’s no risk of having overpronation
- Short ground contact period, which enables maximum speeds
- Allows runners to attain a higher step frequency
Disadvantages:
- A very common reason for Achilles tendon problems
- Needs well-trained calf and core muscles
- There’s a high probability of overloading calf muscles
- Could only be employed for short distances
Midfoot
In the midfoot strike, the foot’s center lands on the ground for distributing the shock of impact evenly. Runners with this strike pattern feel like their weight is balanced over ankles, knees, and hips. Also, they will notice that they can maintain consistent, high speeds and feature a higher running pace than others.
Advantages:
- Perfect ratio for the load on lower leg muscles
- There’s a less chance of developing overpronation as it stabilizes ankle muscles
Disadvantages:
- Needs practicing as you have to build up the foot and calf muscles
- It is not a cure for problems or to improve performance but a nice compromise
Rearfoot
It is the most common strike pattern among runners. The heel or rearfoot strike lets you hit the ground with your foot’s back. Your stride holds out in the body’s front when you run instead of remaining squarely underneath the hips.
This running foot strike pattern is great for grounding yourself across a sharp turn. It even acts as a braking mechanism for the body.
Advantages:
- Simple to implement throughout downhill runs, long exertion periods
- Nice running form with a higher step frequency and great body posture
Disadvantages:
- A braking effect happens with every foot strike if your foot doesn’t land near to the center of gravity of the body
- Increases the chances of a sitting running posture with little tension in your core muscles
- With a slow step frequency and excessive heel striking, runners run the chance of overloading the knee joints or shin muscles as the forefoot is even pulled upwards actively
- There’s a chance of having overpronation that means your feet roll heavily inwards throughout the stance phase if you have badly trained foot muscles
- Could cause discomfort in the rear part if your foot strikes far in the body’s front and your shoe does not provide enough cushioning
Which is the Most Efficient Foot Strike?
Whether you jog around your block or prepare for the Olympics, it is always better to reassess your stride’s efficiency .However, which the efficient running foot strike is, it depends. The way that researchers use for measuring foot strike efficiency is through determining the metabolic cost for every strike pattern. Here, the metabolic cost is the amount of energy that a runner uses to finish an action.
An article from Podiatry Today in 2014 gathered all the studies performed on energy efficiency for testing the well-known hypothesis that the best foot strike pattern is the forefoot running. However, the actual results were different than the expected. The rearfoot strike pattern turned out to be more efficient on the metabolic level. It’s great news for us as the majority of runners employ this strike pattern. The rearfoot strike pattern is also the least taxing on our body, in terms of oxygen uptake and energy output. So, this research debunked the well-known running belief about the most efficient foot strike.
However, it does not mean that you will switch your foot strike to the rearfoot one. Just because biomechanics state that the rearfoot strike is great for most runners on the metabolic level but it does not mean every runner should try retaining their stride. Also, science believes that the foot strike pattern you fall into automatically is always the most efficient. If you are looking for the proper foot strike pattern, it is time you need to stop as you have had it all along. Watch this video to know more about proper foot strike!
How Does a Strike Pattern Affect the Probability of Getting Injured?
When we talk about injury prevention, there are different findings regarding strike patterns. This is something important for runners having chronic pain. In 2017, research published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science stated that modifying your strike pattern could lead to more injuries.
At present, many studies show that there’s no difference in the number of injuries among runners with diverse strike patterns. However, the probability increases if runners try to change their foot strike. This is because it functions against the natural mechanisms of your body. So, shifting the strike pattern place further stress on the muscle tissue, which might have not dealt with your running regimen’s rigors.
Also, physicians explain that different foot strike patterns absorb shock in diverse body areas. Runners who have the rearfoot strike pattern feel the force of repeated impact mainly on the knees and not the ankles. On the other hand, forefoot and midfoot strikers are opposite as they absorb shock prominently in the ankles, not the knees.
So, switching to other strike patterns does not help runners to prevent injuries or absorb shock. It merely transfers the impact force on different joints. So, the question remains, should you change foot strike for preventing injury. Podiatrists suggest moving from a rearfoot strike to the midfoot one only if you are suffering from intense knee pain or injuries pertaining to running.
How to Optimize the Running Foot Strike?
Here, you are going to find out how you can optimize your own running foot strike. When we talk about conditioning the foot and producing more power, it is advisable to follow ground pulling exercises and plyometrics or conditioning and agility movements. Plyometrics help in creating power and improving mid-foot strike. Also, motions like you pull from the floor, such as deadlifts, assist in creating powerful triple extension; hip, knee, and ankle flexion. It makes your foot strides more efficient and powerful.
Remember that improving the foot strike is not just about the lower body. Training upper and core body even helps in keeping the spine in line while you run and also, in landing under your hips. For runners, upper body strength turns out to be great as it assists in improving posture and the entire form. Another way to have a cleaner strike is by increasing the knee drive. So, bringing the legs higher off the ground while running could create a more efficient angle.
Runners can even record a video of themselves running. Slow the video down and look closely at how the foot lands on your treadmill belt or the ground. The most effective way to enhance your performance is to know where you should start and where you have to adjust.
3 Exercises for Better Foot Strike
So, what the best method for training your glutes for improved foot strike is. Teach your glutes to remain strong while landing on just a single leg at one time. Learn three exercises, which exactly help you do that.
Single-Leg Band Hip Stability
Here, the first thing that you can do for the improved one-leg landing stage is to keep practicing to stand on a single leg. The exercise of single-leg hip stability teaches your glutes to contact, while keeping your hip steady in the same position as when the feet land during every stride.
Bowler Squats
Now, another thing is to test your glutes stabilizing the hip when you go through different motions. Remember that if you are not careful, the ankle could roll into pronation and supination. This is what you try to control when running.
Single-Leg Hop to Stick Landing
Lastly, you should train your glutes to engross the landing shock on a single leg at one time. Take a single running foot stride as mini-jumps as the hips regulate the foot landing. Also, it is important to experience every rep in the hamstrings and glutes, not the knees or ankles.
Conclusion
Everyone needs to know which foot strike best suits them. Crafty runners could master all forms depending on the terrain. Or they could adapt the strike as per their speed, distance, constitution, talent, and their tiredness level. This turns out to be a great way of protecting against overloading problems. However, remember that every foot strike features an upward effect on the whole motion sequence. Contrariwise, your arm movements affect your legs directly. The arms offer the basis and momentum for higher frequency and improve your running style. Therefore, particular arm training is highly recommended from time to time.
Comprehensive training even includes technique exercise like barefoot running or ABC running drills, rope jumping, or also step frequency training that is to run at a specific frequency for a minute and then, change this frequency. This training will help you in achieving a short ground contact period and push-off. Hence, all this makes you fast in turn. So, playing around with all this and applying different running styles could help you in becoming a better runner. However, a constant and complete change in the running style only makes sense when you need exposure to new stimuli and have amass complaints. If you found this information helpful, share it with other runners. Also, post your query related to the running foot strike if still struggling in the comment section below!
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