More efficient running style

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larkim Jun 2019 2:50pm, 17 Jun 2019 7,826 posts	0 larkim I bet she didn't really run like a donkey though. I bet her true efficiency was actually very high, it's just that she had some immediately visual aspects which gave a misleading impression of her overall biomechanical efficiency (i.e. the head bobbing).
larkim Jun 2019 2:52pm, 17 Jun 2019 7,827 posts	0 larkim Just lolling at the first article which appeared when I googled "how efficient was Paula Radcliffe's running style" canute1.wordpress.com
HappyG(rrr) Jun 2019 3:09pm, 17 Jun 2019 31,791 posts	0 HappyG(rrr) Canute, yes, I made a couple of changes early in my running career. It resulted in less heel strike (but without thinking "must not heel strike", cos that doesn't work!) and one was higher cadence. Another one was lead with the pelvis, piece of string in my head lifting my pate to the sky, and the last one was "pitter patter feet". That one came from Born to Run (the Tarahumara quote was - "when you wonder should I take 2 steps or 1 to cross this mud / stream etc. take 3!") G
SPR Jun 2019 3:10pm, 17 Jun 2019 28,055 posts	0 SPR Exactly Larkim. Watch Radcliffe from below the neck and her form was pretty good. Just easy to knock it cos of the obvious head movement.
SSLHP (Shoes smell like horse piss) Jun 2019 3:16pm, 17 Jun 2019 439 posts	0 SSLHP (Shoes smell like horse piss) my favourite saying is 'jumping out of an aeroplane doesn't cause you damage, it's the landing that does that!' As with running, injuries happen when you're weight bearing, so reducing your ground time by reducing your overstride is going to reduce your injury risk (and speed you up in the process). But the idea that good running form means NO injuries is not true, or that bad running form means you can't run fast is also not true. Without gravity, human locomotion would not be possible, so in the end, it's about how we interact with it -some work with more than they work against it and vica-versa
Canute Jun 2019 3:43pm, 17 Jun 2019 1,948 posts	0 Canute Unfortunately Paula did suffer from a lot of injuries that seriously limited her achievements. I consider her injury rate was partly due to intrinsic musculo-skeletal weaknesses and partly due to too much intense training. The major unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable, question is whether she could have been more successful if she had included a greater proportion of low intensity training in her program. The nearest we are likely to get to an answer will not be available until another female exceeds her marathon performances.
paul0 Jun 2019 8:57pm, 17 Jun 2019 251 posts	0 paul0 Good to see lots of post - most of the thoughts here seem sound. Certainly I ascribe to the school of thought, that I'm not suffering injuries and I'm a recreational runner (despite any fantasy ambitions I may have!) so overall I'm not going to worry too much. Going back a few pages - to answer a question, yes I suspect my hamstring strength and flexibility is quite poor - albeit symmetric. That's certainly something to work on. My average cadence for my most recent training run was 165 and stride length 1.24m (bear in mind I'm 190cm tall, so longish legs).
FenlandRunner Jun 2019 9:02pm, 17 Jun 2019 2,028 posts	0 FenlandRunner I've never got near the holy grail of 180, but my excuse is being relatively tall and long limbed. Perhaps the scientist's amongst us can confirm or deny that cadence can be proportional to limb length?
jda Jun 2019 9:09pm, 17 Jun 2019 4,649 posts	0 jda I used to have a fairly low cadence, being 196cm it might not be unreasonable, but consciously raising it has helped me a lot (at least, I attribute a lot of my improvement to this). I can now jog along at 186 quite easily on steady runs. I did this by using a metronome which I still sometimes take along to keep me ticking over. Just a cheap 3 quid eBay thingy that bleeps quietly (every 4th pace). It would seem logical that taller people might tend to have slightly lower cadence, but you're always going to get smaller impact forces etc by raising it. i certainly wouldn't expect it to be directly proportional to limb length.
simbil Jun 2019 9:10pm, 17 Jun 2019 8,066 posts	0 simbil That Bolt fella is quite tall