Below is a marvelous piece of rec.running collegiality. It is not about answering questions, it is about questioning answers and on going dialogue.
It is a wonderful exploration into the physical, scientific, observational, and experiential look at what leaning forward means during a run. Below is the thread shared by all those who partook.
I am interested in the ways to best describe in several different ways what this means to good running form and style. My hope is that in talking about good running form and style, the reader/thinker/runner can experience it and realize that midfoot or ball/heel is what it is about.
For me, this dialogue is about going for the "grace" in communication, in running, and most of all in understanding and educating ourselves.
Ozzie Gontang
Maintainer-rec.running
Quoted message said:Thanks very much for the info. Just so I'm clear....:
I guess when I think of running, I think of it as the motion of striding
your legs forward, etc., like sprinters would do. But you are saying that
it is more about lifting your legs straight up (marching) and letting your
body weight/angle control your forward movement?
Are you also saying that, basically, my foot should be hitting the ground
flat, as opposed to having the heel hit first and rolling the foot forward
through the step?Thanks again,
Kevin
Kevin,
I'd first picture a broom or a 5 foot piece of 1" PVC balanced in the palm of your hand. If the broom or piece of PVC is perfectly balanced it stands there stationary in the palm. If it starts to fall away from your body even a millionth of a degree it will start to fall.
As it starts to fall and you move forward so as to keep that same degree of lean, gravity is carrying the broom or pice of PVC forward and you by moving at the same speed to keep the angle consistent are using gravity to carry it forward.
So for me it's more an image of the Roadrunner/meep-meep. His legs are moving to keep up with his body out there in front.
Or if you were on a unicycle, you'd lean forward and pedal to keep you falling forward without falling down. Now if you attached/tied shoes on the circumference of the tire, you'd get maybe 6 or 8 shoes tied on depending on your shoe size. The shoes would would go heel/ball but since the heel was exactly under or really slightly behind your center of gravity, you'd just keep rolling on.
Now since we have only two of those shoes on our two feet, we have to supply all of those shoes that would keep the unicycle rolling along on the horizontal surface. So depending on my speed, I need to bring the leg through as quickly as needed to continually keep me rolling along with no deceleration and always using gravity to my best advantage.
Ozzie
SwStudio <[email hidden] wrote:
Try to lean your entire body forward from the feet,
and your strike instantly becomes softer and less energy-sapping,
not to mention that you'll speed up.
"Dave" <[email hidden]> wrote
"Lean forward" is the opposite of everything I have ever read or heard
(unless you are talking about sprinting and not distance running).
Won't you have to use more energy to keep your body up at an angle?
SwStudio <[email hidden] replied to Dave Begley
Sorry for the confusion. I mean to lean forward almost
imperceptively, but definitely a little.... IMO this helps
soften the impact of the strike and improve the location
of the strike, both in terms of where the body is at that
exact moment in relation to the foot; as well as a better
overall strike placement, as in where on the foot you make
contact with first. If you arch you back a tiny bit, your
upper body won't be at an angle.
It's hard to explain, and I think I'm doing a poor job! I
guess I'm trying to say that it's better to try and shape your
body almost like a banana or boomerang (obviously not
quite as much angle), rather than straight from toe to head.
Ozzie responded to SwStudio <[email hidden]
David in your response to Dave I'm with you about the almost
imperceptible forward lean....and I follow and agree with the location
of the foot strike.
As soon as you mentioned "arch your back a tiny bit" we are in
disagreement.
That tiny arch, back banana or boomerang like, is the cause of back of
the shoe heel striking. It is in my mind's eye the flaw that continues
to be missed in teaching people to run.
If you lean back with that little bit of an arch, you'll see that when
I pull down and back on your shoulders, you'll bend in the lower back,
a la boomerang shape. Now if I have you look straight ahead and bend
your upper torso from the base of the sternum to the top of the head a
quarter to three-quarters of an inch...keeping the upper torso erect
and not allowing you to do the leaning with your head; when I pull down
and back on the shoulders,you'll find that the lower back doesn't bend
back but the weight is driven into the souls of the feet.
That's what it means to be running erect with a forward lean. The
balanced pole with a half degree lean and me moving along keeping the
same degree of lean so that I am using gravity to get me to where I
want to go with the least amount of effort.
As Brian says, someone from the side will not notice the difference.
But when I lean a half degree more and while maintaining the same
cadence, I can increase my speed by 30 seconds to 2 minutes a mile
faster, no one can figure what I'm doing. So that when a heel striker
tries to keep up with me with bigger strides, I just lean a little more
from the ankle (unseen by the naked eye) and say, "It's hard work
isn't it," and slowly pull away keeping the same cadence as they are.
So I use the same cadence for a 10 minute mile or a 7 minute mile.
It's the lean from the ankle that gives the increase in stride length.
The effort comes from having to bring the foot/leg through a greater
range of motion to maintain the cadence. Hopefully more and more of
rec.runners are getting the verbal picture and the experience.
Great dialogue, and am pleased that we continue to reach for
comprehension and understanding. It is enjoyable to see your thinking
and thought and perspectiv sharing here at rec.running. I appreciate
all that you bring in your queries and observations.
As said over and over again, rec.running for me is a place to have our
answered questioned more than giving answers and opinions without
understanding of the running body as a complete system.
Harry Shanley <[email hidden]> replied to David SwStudio
Actually, if the broomstick is leaning at an angle, the only way to keep it
from falling is to accelerate in the direction of lean. If you are moving
at a constant speed, the broomstick (or your body) would be perfectly
upright.
The sensation I get when running the "right" way (per Ozzie's postings) is
that I am reaching out front much less than I used to, and having my feet
strike the ground more under my center of gravity as opposed to in front of
it. After years of heel striking (and braking myself on every step), that
feels like a forward lean.
Ozzie responded to Harry:
By Jove, I think he's got it. Well almost.
Harry, I am moving at a constant speed in order to maintain the angle
that the broomstick is leaning. So my constant speed doesn't bring my
body to a perfectly upright position. Otherwise my constant speed
would put me out in front of the broom/body and would lead to the broom
or body falling behind my constant speed.
Then"Tim Downie" <[email hidden]> shined the light of science on Ozzie's observations:
Quoted message said:
Umm, actually Ozzie, with the greatest respect I would suggest that your
knowledge of physics is letting you down here. I'm pretty certain that
Harry had it spot on with his comment that you can only balance a leaning
broomstick by *accelerating*. Constant speed won't do it. This is, of
course only true in a vacuum. ;-)
Wind resistance *will* result in a slight lean with a broomstick (Imagine
leaning into a strong wind, you can do this with a constant wind force but
only by virtue of applying a constant counterforce against the ground to
resist the wind).
I suspect for most of us, unless we're actually running hard into a wind,
this effect is going to be minimal.
All this doesn't mean that you can't adjust your centre of gravity though.
In the same way that one can lean a chair back so far before it falls over,
one can make adjustments to ones centre of gravity within limits before your
position becomes critically unstable. You can certainly maintain a "forward"
C of G by altering your stride and body/leg angle. The point is, it's not
really your speed that's helping you maintain it (wind resistance aside).
Does any of this make sense?
"Greg" <[email hidden]> reflected on the physics and added:
This is a very interesting thread. As an engineer and a beginning runner,
I've been following this discussion closely. This seems like a small point
because the body does this very automatically...at least it seems that way
to me. Here is my take on this broomstick business.
If I am a broomstick, standing perfectly upright and motionless, I'll call
that 0 degrees, 0 velocity, and 0 acceleration. Now, if I start pivot on my
axis (the point where I meet the ground) so that my 'top' moves between 0
and 1 degree, my 'top' is accelerating. Left unchecked, I would continue to
accelerate until I hit the ground and was laying down (+90 degrees).
However, if once my 'top' reaches 1 degree, and my pivot point begins to
accelerate at the same rate as my 'top', the accelerations cancel. If my
pivot point continues to accelerate, my 'top' would move back toward 0
degrees, and if this continued, I would fall down backward (-90 degrees).
But, if at the point that I'm leaning forward at 1 degree, and have canceled
the acceleration of the 'top' with the acceleration of the axis, then I can
maintain this 1 degree lean by keeping my axis at this constant velocity.
So, my 'top' is try to accelerate toward the ground due to gravity, but my
constant velocity forward cancels gravity's downward force, leaving only a
forward force...hence, constant forward velocity.
The next step then is to repeat the process by increasing my angle to 2
degrees. My axis must accelerate a little more to cancel the acceleration
of my 'top' from 1 to 2 degrees, then maintain a higher, but constant
velocity to keep me from falling forward.
Boy, I love this geeky stuff. Sorry if this seemed long winded and dull,
but it is very interesting to me.
Tim adds further observations to Greg's comments:
First to Greg's comment:
However, if once my 'top' reaches 1 degree, and my pivot point begins to
Quoted message said:accelerate at the same rate as my 'top', the accelerations cancel. If my
pivot point continues to accelerate, my 'top' would move back toward 0
degrees, and if this continued, I would fall down backward (-90 degrees).
Tim replies:
No. Only if your pivot point was accelerating faster than the top.
Then to Greg's observation
But, if at the point that I'm leaning forward at 1 degree, and have
canceled the acceleration of the 'top' with the acceleration of the axis,
then Ican maintain this 1 degree lean by keeping my axis at this constant velocity.
Time responds and goes on to the give an example using a moving train:
You can only maintain the lean by constant acceleration, not velocity.
Imagine you're on a train standing at the station. You lean forward towards
the engine and (if unchecked) you fall over. Imagine now that you lean
forward just at the same time as the train starts. Now you can maintain
your lean as long as the train continues to accelerate.
Imagine now that the train has reached cruising speed. Now you are back to
the same situation as when the train was stationary. i.e. lean forward and
fall over. If this wasn't the case, all trains would be full of people
leaning heavily towards the engine!
Now whether the forward motion is produced external to your body (by a train
for instance) or by your body (eg running) is irrelevant to the physics.
You cannot counteract a constant lean by constant velocity. You need a
constant force which will (barring resiting forces like wind resistance etc)
produce a constant *acceleration*.
Hope this clears things up.
Greg responds
From: "Greg" <[email hidden]> continues the dialogue with his observations and queries:
Tim...great post!
Very interesting. You obviously put a lot of thought and reason into this.
I have two comments/questions. First comment, I think the train analogy
unnecessarily complicates the issue by adding a second body and set of
forces to be considered.
Second comment/question, if what you say is correct in that, "You can only
maintain the lean by constant acceleration, not velocity", then wouldn't the
result be that your speed would increase over time to keep the angle
constant? What I'm asking is, if I'm constantly accelerating to keep a lean
of 1 degree, won't I be going faster and faster over time?
If the answer is yes, it seems contradictory to experience. If I lean
forward 1 degree, I run at a speed with a certain stride per minute. If I
lean forward another degree, total of 2 degrees, I run at a higher speed
with the same stride per minute. In both cases I had brief acceleration to
either begin or go to the higher speed, but in both cases I run at a
constant speed, with the same stride per minute at a specific angle.
Thanks for this opportunity to exercise my brain! Being out of work has
made me soft. Of course, if I am wrong on this, maybe I deserve to be out
of work! I almost feel like breaking out the old Physics and Dynamics
books, drawing the diagrams and doing the math just to be 100% that I'm on
track with this.
Dave <[email hidden]> comes back seeking to understand and uses his recent experiences of playing with some of the ideas:
Well, there is my big question with this "lean forward" theory. If
you lean in a train, once you start going a constant speed, you fall
over. So apply that to running. Once you reach a constant speed with
the lean, you are going to fall over, but since you don't, you end up
with your center of gravity being out in front of you and you
constantly have to expend energy to catch yourself from falling.