Three Biggest Secrets To Improving Your Running Technique With Paul Laslett

In this episode of the Loving Every Stride podcast, host Paul Laslett reveals three of the biggest secrets to improving your running technique, as well as helping to prevent injuries.

We are never taught how to run with exemplary technique, but there are various ways to drastically improve the way in which you run. It enables you to get more out of running, prevent injury and make it much more fun in the process. It's one of the most crucial lessons you'll ever learn.

So tune in and get inspired! 

Paul Laslett can be found here:
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Marie Droniou-Bordry can be found here:
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Download your running pace calculator here:
https://www.brightsidept.com/running-faster-formula

Transcript

Paul Laslett  0:02  
Welcome to loving every stride the podcast that will help make your running easier brought to you by ex national athlete and UK record holder all of laslett powered by the bright side pte community. For more information and access to your very own running faster formula which will make your running easier. Click on the link in the show notes, enjoy the show

Paul Laslett  0:25  
and see you on the bright side Welcome to another episode of loving every stride the podcast that is here to make your running easier that I'm absolutely loving delivering these podcasts I get to chat to you guys about running. And I really hope he is inspiring you to get out, try some of the things that we've talked about. And enjoy your running because that is what it should be all a bow and today's episode really excited about it's about your running form and technique. Because if you want to get faster, or if you want to increase your distances, or if you just want to start running, then you've got to get your form, right. Because if you don't, you'll be wasting energy, you will be hitting the ground harder potentially than you need to be, which will put more stress and strain on your joints, you could be wasting energy instead of using your energy in a more efficient way. And it makes running feel harder if your form is in gray and your arms are all over the place or you're not striking quite in the right place or your hips are moving about too much or Yeah, whatever's going on some funky kind of stuff can be going on with your running form. That is all wasting energy. And we want to make running fill ins equally. So in today's episode, we're going to go over your running form from head to toe. So if you're listening to this, and you're out running, then as I talk you through the different kind of teaching points, think about them. Think about changing what I'm going to talk to you about because I can guarantee that if you start making some simple, small changes, you will feel epic and awesome when you're running, you'll feel Tula you will feel lighter on your feet, your stride length will naturally increase your range of movement will increase. That means you will love your running even more. And obviously, we want to help you reduce the risk of injury. If you're anything like mean if you're injured or you're unwell you can't run, you notice every other runner in the world is running up and down your street. And you can't get away from seeing runners. So we want to keep you off of the sidelines and on the roads or on the grass or on the trails wherever you're running. And one of the things that will massively help that is improving your running form. Sometimes what I found when I've done running assessments and running analyses, when I've watched people running, given them feedback, I've noticed that a small change can make a massive difference. So one small tweak can make a big difference. Now, I'm going to take away some key points from this podcast today. I guess a lot of runners don't know, maybe you're listening to thinking I don't know how I should be running like we know. And when we swim, we go to a swimming lesson. And we're taught how to swim, you know, you're taught how to breathe and you're taught how to kick your legs, you're taught how to move your arms and why no one is ever taught how to run, you just told to run. And then off you go and walk and happen you can get into bad habits, you can get into an efficient ways of moving your body. What I want to do is try and reprogram that a little bit for you get you thinking of things in a different way so that you understand why moving your arms in a certain way is good and why moving your arms in a certain way is bad for example. So most of us don't know the key points of running a good form and we are going to cover them all to date for you. And just to add on that as well like bad for that. I don't think there's anything bad for him. I don't like the word bad is a negative word, isn't it? So can I think of a more positive way of putting that form that can be improved is usually a symptom of weakness somewhere in the body. Okay, so working, you're working on your form and your technique and working on specific exercises that will improve your form and technique will dramatically transform your running now, a lot of the time you hear about people wanting to increase their stride length, okay, or to basically cover more ground. Now, when your form is good, you're much more likely to naturally increase your stride length and in fact some of the people that we With coaching at the moment, they see they can look on their garments and their Garmin will give them a rough idea on their average stride length that they're reading 20 centimeters, a stride just from making some changes and getting stronger in a specific way to their reading. Now, if you think if you take other than 10,000 steps, for example, on a run, and you've added 20 centimeters to every stride, you're going to cover more distance than that 10,000 steps, right. So actually, you'll find k That say that's covering the 10,000 steps to cover 5k. And I'm actually taking enough 1000 steps, what's that going to do, that's going to mean that you're not using as much energy or you're not having to take as many steps to cover the same difference, I think it was Hussein bolt, who took I think it was something like 38 strides to run 100 meters, that man is covering some serious grant. anyone do that, with bad, I shouldn't say bad with inefficient form. So just to recap a little bit, guys, I want you to understand the importance of form, and what it can do how better form can make running easier, so you use your energy better, and you don't waste any energy. With good form, injury is less likely to happen. When we're injured, we're sad when we're running, we aren't happy. So we need to make sure that you're running as efficiently as possible. And sometimes one small tweak can make a huge difference to your running form. So I'm going to start with your head, okay, your head. So a lot of the time when you're running, maybe you're looking down at your feet, okay, or your heads move inside to side. Now, if you're looking down slightly, your chin drops slightly, as well, your shoulders naturally will hunch forwards a little bit as well. So as your chin drops, your head comes down, you start leaning forward slightly, as you lean forwards, you will be shutting off the angle from your bottom of your ribcage to the top of your hip, that's where you need us we Your lungs are may need to grow in that space. So if you're shutting that area off, it's going to make it harder to get oxygen. So you need to bring your chin up and look ahead, don't look up look straight ahead of you. That will keep you up nice and tall, it will help with your posture, you want to feel tall, you want to feel like someone's holding on to the top of your head with a piece of string and I'm pulling you up to grow a little bit and you're looking straight on and forward. Don't worry, your feet are still there, you don't need to look down to check and see if they are there or not. So that's the first point your head look ahead. Okay, don't look down for the reasons that we have talked about. Now, the next thing I want to look at is your arms. Now, with your arms, you got to think your arms are pointing the direction to which you are going. So if your arms are coming across your body, let's say your right arm is coming across your body and over to left, that's gonna rotate your chest and your shoulders over to your left. So you've got a full of momentum taking you forward from your running. But you've also got this momentum from your arm that is going left. So you got two forces that go back and meet each other. So they're working against each other rather than with each other. So if you are rotating across your body slightly, and with your right arm, for example, then your left leg hits the floor, what's your left leg having to do what is having to work against that resistance and that momentum that is going across it now, if everything is pointing and going forwards, then you're not going to get that okay, everything your arms, your hand is going to point the direction to which you're going to think of your hand as an arrow pointing you in the right direction. So you want to keep with the arm as well. You want to keep a right angle between your elbow to hand shoulder to elbow, so your hand doesn't drop down below your hip and all you're doing is literally getting your hand to your hip, then back up to shoulder height, hand to hit and then back up the shoulder hearts. It's just going forwards and backwards. Anything out of that range of movement is a waste of your time and energy. And like I said, if your arms are coming across your body, your shoulders are going to rotate and that will be then mean that you are going side to side as you're going forwards whereas if you're on just going forwards and backwards, your shoulders will stop rotating. You won't get that movement come in through your shoulders as much. And that will drive everything forward staff. So we want to make you more efficient, we want to push you Bodyboards if you're listening to this now and you're out running, or you're just pottering about, then just have a little practice of moving the arm back to front. So the angle from your shoulder to your elbow stays the same, elbow to hand stays the same, and your hand comes up to shoulder height, and then back down to the hip, Bush, Bush back and forth not coming across your body that, to be honest, that is one of the biggest things you can do to improve your running form is so your arms suit your arms out, they will, like I said, you got to think your arms are showing you the direction you want to go. And if they come in across your body, then your bodies, your momentum is going to be going in a few different ways, get your arm going back to front, and that will drive you forward, I can guarantee you making if you do nothing else of the back of this podcast, and change and suit your arm movement out, you will notice a huge difference in how you are feeling. And if you have done that, please comment in the show notes to let us know that you've done that and how it felt for you did you feel a difference, because you know, I want to know this is helping you. Okay, so I want some feedback from you guys listening into this. So that's the arms, we're going to move down the body now to your chest. So if you are up nice and tall, then you're going to keep your chest open, you want to facilitate your breathing not obstructing it by leaning forwards. Now, if you're leaning forward slightly, so if you stand up, or if you're running, keep running, don't stop. But if you're sat down, listen to this, just stand up for a second, okay, and I want you to just lean forward slightly, when you lean forward slightly more weight is coming into your quads, okay? Now if you imagine it, you're leaning forward slightly when you're running or leaning forward a lot, when you run it, you have even more weight coming into your quads. Now. Couple that with hitting the floor, okay, so you've got more weight, from gravity coming down to the floor, and then you've got the extra momentum and what you're putting into your quads from that lean forward. So getting up nice and tall. When you're up nice and tall, that lifts your hips up. And when your hips are lifted up, you can increase your knee drive so that when you're running in an event or a race, and you get that photo opportunity, and everyone wants to have those flying feet right on that fence of opportunity, when you're doing an event, you have much more opportunity to get that if you are increasing the range of movements for your hips. Now, if you're leaning forwards, you are shutting the angle off of your hips. So it makes it much harder to drive your hips, your leg up, which ultimately increases your stride length and your range of movement. So making sure you're not leaning forward, one of the first things that happens when people start to get tired is their arms start going across their body, and they start leaning forwards. Okay, so if you can just think when you're starting to get tired today, I want to I want to get the oxygen into my body stay up tool. Okay, so that's something to think about in terms of being up nice, my son, my son tool, believe it or not. So the other thing to think about working our way down through the body is your hips. Now, your hips when you land needs to be nice and stable. A lot of the time when we do our running analysis, we see that hips are dropping. So that means that when one leg hits the floor, the other hip goes up. So your hips are constantly moving up and down. So drop on one side drop on the other, or they might just be dropping on one side, or they might be moving forwards and backwards slightly. Think about how hard your back is having to work. If that's happening. If your hips are moving up and down your back and your core and your hips. Everything's working really good. Everything's working really hard to stabilize yourself. So those muscles are working hard to stabilize your your hips, and that's where you can get a lot of back pain, view issues, tight hamstrings, because everything is being really over over work. Now. A lot of the time there's a hip drop, because someone's striking in the wrong place. When you land, you want to land right under your center of mass right under your hips. That is the most stable place for you to land. Now, you might think well, I'm landing on the way here all the time. I'm just gonna be shuffling forwards. What you won't be shuffling forwards because if you increase your knee lips slightly, and you're pushing your leg back behind you, that's where you get your range of movement from. That's where you spend the time in the air. Then you want to strike in the most stable place possible because you want to balance you try and balance on one leg when it's out in front of you really hard As you try and balance when your leg is straight underneath you much easier. So if you're more stable when you land, there's less chance of your hips dropping, you don't lose any forward momentum. And you can just spend minimal contact time on the floor. Bosh, and off, you go again, the floor is lava on and off it as quickly as you can in the most stable place that you can land and the most stable place you can man is right under your hips, you want to avoid overstraining. So when we see people saying I want to increase my steroid length, right, whenever I want to increase my strike, you think about reach forwards more No, to time in the air, we want to increase, okay, I talked about our clients who add centimeters and centimeters onto every single stride that they take. That's because they strike in a more stable place, they're able to generate more floor some more power to propel themselves forwards without using as much energy. Okay, so if you can do that you increase your stride length, you will increase your range of movement in the air, so you're not over striding a lot, the time when someone's noisy on the floor, is because they're over striding. And that is like hitting the floor hard. You're almost putting the brakes on to then have to power and go again, rather than just gliding through the floor underneath you. Okay, so that is the other key thing to think about is where you are landing, avoiding, over striding and you want to roll through your foot, especially when you're moving a controlled speed. You don't need to be on your forefoot, you know, if you can use your heel toe as a pivot. So that roll you roll through your foot that will help control momentum, it will help glide you through and forwards so that again, you're not losing any momentum. And it should feel really pleasant, basically. So I hope that those key points give you something to think about your head back to front, they are pointing the way that you are going chess, they tools, facilitate your breathing and keep your hips up. Hips, you want them to be stable and square so they do not drop. If you land in the most stable place, you will generate more force and power and the chance of you getting injured decrease and you will sound a lot lighter on your feet. Be quiet as you land like a stealth like run up to and to overstride making sure you're striking that right place. And always, most importantly, smile, running should be a joy, it should be a privilege that we're able to get out and do it. So enjoy the fact that you can get out and run. So it's going to tell you a little story about one of our one of our clients who she kept getting pain in hamstrings and glutes and it was cute, maybe have about four to six weeks where she was able to train and run consistently for that period of time. But then she always broke down, always got in this was before she she got help. And she was getting really bummed out so frustrated. I'm sure you know what that's like to get injured every kind of four to eight weeks, then it's down to how you're training but probably how you're moving. So we get a running analysis for her and her one side was over striding quite a lot. And there was she had some stuff going on with her arms and she was dropping on one side. So we were able to give us some really, really personal personal feedback on this. And we helped work through some efficiency exercises and drills, which basically meant that she was able to then work on her form before she then started increasing the mileage again, because you think about it. If you're making mistakes with your running form, and you keep going out and running. You just read practicing those bad habits and instead of practicing the good ones, okay, so you're gonna spend a bit of time working you form and technique so that you can become more efficient. Then she went from not being able to run for longer than four to six weeks to having she worked with us for a year and she was injury free for 12 months for the first time in her life. She had PBS in folate K half marathon, ran her first marathon as well. And she would not have been able to do that if she hadn't have suited her injury issues out and having been more efficient and sorted her form out. With that said guys, in the show notes today there's an extra link for you where you can get a personal running analysis from me all you need to do is click on the link the spotlight Running the analysis link on it. And because you're listening to my podcast usually running analysis is is 50 pounds, it's 19 pound 50 for you guys. Alright, and all you need to do is record yourself running and send me the video. And then I will give you a detailed personal video reply so that you know exactly for you what you need to do what you can improve on for your running because like I said, we want your running to feel easier. We want your running, you want to enjoy your running, I want to keep you injury free. So in your format is one of the best ways you can do that. I really, really hope you've taken something from this podcast today. And you're going to be able to implement some of the the tips that I've gone over with you. And I really look forward to seeing how you all get on with what we have talked about. See you on the next one guys. Thanks for listening.

Paul Laslett  20:57  
Thank you for listening to loving every stride. If like us you absolutely love running. We'd love to have you in our community and help make your running faster. You can join our Facebook group and get your very own running faster formula by visiting the link in the show notes and there will be happy days ahead. Please also remember to subscribe and review so we can spread our love for running. Thank you for listening and we will see you on the bright side.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai