Conscious & effortless running is composed of 4 principles or 4 A’s: Action, Awareness, Amusement and Apapacho. Today I will write about Action, specifically the importance of running form.

Imagine you are traveling in traffic behind a car and its frontal tire is clearly missing air. You see the car is not moving in a straight line. Meanwhile, the driver is distracted. He or she is unaware that every time he or she accelerates, a course correction takes place. The car now turns right and it is moving away from you.

In this example, my initial intention is to point at the distracted driver and then at the car with a flat tire. I do not know if you have noticed your distractedness. I have lived a distracted life. I have been lost in thought while driving, reading a book, in class, at work, while looking at my laptop, traveling in the subway, and of course, while running. The autopilot turns on and minutes later I am someplace else. How often are you distracted or lost in thought while running? In your next run notice what is your running form. How often do you notice it? How is distraction affecting your running form?

If I compare the car with the flat tire with a runner with an unbalanced running form, I can easily find that the flat tire is unbalancing the ride. With humans, it is a bit different, as we are an interconnected process and system composed of bones, tissues, organs, water, muscles, organic matter, emotions, thoughts, habits and life-long patterns that are ingrained in us. We are deeply habituated to our patterns. Have you tried and changed the way you brush your teeth? For example, by using your non dominant hand. It can be quite challenging!

So, why is running form important? If your aim is to reduce repetitive stress injuries, prevent injuries and run effortlessly, then looking at running form becomes important. Daniel Lieberman, in his book Exercised, says “When I ask runners from different cultures if there is a best way to run, they invariably tell me they consider running a learned skill. As anthropologist Joseph Hendrich has shown, humans in every culture master critical skills by imitating people who are good at them. Tarahumara runners tell me they learn to run properly by following champions of the ball-game races. Kenyan runners do the same, often honing their skills in groups” (218, Exercised)

And how can we actually change our habitual running form?

1. Learn the running form theory. You can read more about Running Form here.

2. Practice. 

Here are a couple of ways to practice running form:

• Ask someone to record you while you run. Use the video recording to understand your running form, identify areas of improvement and do gradual changes. For example if you are overstriding, start by reducing your stride length. Focus one week (eg. 1-3 training sessions) on this aspect, then move to the next aspect on week 2 and so on.
• Find a running coach or join my training programme to improve your running form.

Both methods rely on feedback mechanisms, which are important to detect our blind spots. Whatever method you select, remember to be mindful and bring awareness to your run.

Additionally, you can also add warm up exercises that focus on running form (eg. Jump in place, 100 Up, Run Lunge). You can check a full warm up routine here. Lastly, I can also recommend “Born to Run 2: The Ultimate Training Guide” which has a useful and lengthy programme to improve running form.

I sometimes imagine body-mind as a musical instrument. If we learn to fine-tune our movements, we can learn to play a joyful symphony.

May you have an effortless run!