Natural Running Technique : Analysis

After attending Tina Dubois’ session, getting my posture analyzed and spending some time discussing with the Canadian coach about the technique, its applications and her vision as a trainer in barefoot / minimalist running, I gave a great deal of thought to the topic of running form.

Above and beyond everything, I have grown convinced that the act of running is somehow imprinted in our genes because it has played such an extensive role in our evolution. In our modern days, our lack of the need for running, coupled with an increased sedentarity and the use of padded shoes, has blurred that memory, so much so that we “forgot” how to do it.

But more than everything, I think the reason why we forgot it so extensively, with great consequences on our bodies, is our separation from the true source of healthy running: pure, unbridled, genuine fun.

Any kid under 5 or 6 years old stands as a living proof of what I’m saying. Cut them loose in a park on a nice day and watch them go; they’ll start running instinctively, naturally and without giving it a second thought. They’ll chase pigeons, race each other to see who’s fastest or drive the dog crazy. Look at them, too. They take short, rapid steps, close to their center of gravity, it’s true. But most of all, they smile and laugh and cheer and spin themselves silly. And then, they do it again.

Have you ever seen a kid, under such circumstances, turn around and ask: “Mommy, am I running right?” or “How’s my cadence?” or “Is this a good pace?”. Of course, you and I are not five-year-olds. But I have grown convinced that, maybe, we should be a little more like them.

In my small experience as a holistic runner, many people have come to see me and asked for my opinion on their form, their results or their training plans. That typical runner is anxious, self-doubting and immersed in numbers, from their training speeds to the amount of calories they ingest. Could it be that their greatest problem is the absence of fun? Why does running have to be so complicated? Why are we so obsessed about training, performance, plans and strategies?

With that perspective in mind, this brings me to what I liked about Lee Saxby’s Natural Running Technique: the natural bit. Take your shoes off. Jump in place a little bit. See how that feels? That’s how running should feel on your feet, too. Play a song at 180 beats per minute, or listen to a metronome and skip or jump from one foot to the other, following the beat. See how that feels? That’s about how quickly your legs should move, too, when you’re running. Add a little back kick to that last exercise and alternate legs while doing it. That movement? It’s what your back leg should do when you run.

Repeat each exercise a couple of times, and make sure to come back to these exercises every once in a while. They “teach” your body, by way of feedback, on how running should feel. So is rope-skipping, skateboarding (can’t push a skateboard from your heel, now, can you?), walking with stuff balancing on your head and climbing stairs, by the way.

The rest? Act like a five-year-old. Don’t run when you’re sore. Play other games. Develop an aversion for always doing the same thing. Get your friends to join you. Make new ones, too, when you go out to play. Drive a dog crazy. Smile. Breathe. Enjoy.

In my humble opinion, running doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. If you have all of the above basics right and still get injured, I bet my ugliest red Hawaiian shirt that it has to do less about running 178 BPM instead of 180 and more with one of the following:

• You ran too much, too soon, wanting fast results
• You overtrained because you had “lagged back” the past couple days
• You blindly followed a “training plan”
• You ran when you were sore or despite some pains, hoping to gain from your extra effort
• You didn’t allow yourself to rest because you thought you’d “lose your fitness”
• You never take it easy, always running hard
• You steadily run every day or every other day, no matter what

This is where I beg to differ from Lee Saxby’s technique. I am convinced no two bodies are the same and that any movement has to be somewhat adapted to “how we’re built” individually. The best judge for doing that adaptation is YOU. This applies from yoga to guitar-playing and, in my opinion, includes running. No matter what, if you apply a technique and don’t include your own body feedback in the balance, and eventually the adjustments that come with it, you’ll get injured.

I’m not sure calling some aspects of the running form “injurious” or “incorrect”, without looking at the runner, talking with them about their background, goals and injury history, is the right way to go. It only increases the feeling of inadequacy in the runner and takes away their responsibility in interpreting their body feedback and learning from their own experience.

With that said, I think there’s a lot to learn from the Lee Saxby method. The easy exercises, their natural simplicity and the use of the bio-feedback are very powerful learning tools and cleverly presented so the runner becomes quickly autonomous in their evolution. Coming back to those exercises is also the best advice anyone can get, because it teaches your body over and over again the proper way to move and feel while running.

In my opinion, any runner can benefit from exploring the Natural Running Technique. Watching themselves run on video, meeting other runners and talking about their technique, practicing simple, effective exercises to get or increase bio-feedback and body memory, these are all sound things for anyone wanting to improve their running, stay healthy and injury-free.

Coach Tina has helped me analyze the way I run and she showed me very simple ways of teaching myself and others the basics of natural running. She reminded me that it’s important to get back to these simple things every once in a while, just to make sure I don’t stray too far from the feedback of good body habits.

For the rest, I apply my own simple rule: run like a five-year-old. Smile. Breathe. Enjoy.

The Natural Running Technique

In this second article of the series, we introduce you to Lee Saxby’s barefoot running technique, or Natural Running. The following explanations and graphics come from the coaching material and a live session with Canadian coach Tina Dubois.


What is Natural Running?
According to the method, “Running” is one of the three biomechanical forms of human locomotion, along with walking and sprinting. As you can see, “Jogging” is not a part of the picture here, and is described as an incorrect – an injurious – movement, only made possible because of standard shoes and their lack of proprioceptive feedback.


What’s the technique?
According to Saxby, there is an ideal way for running, and it applies to everyone. It’s composed of three parts; posture, rhythm and relax.

• Posture means an upright torso with a straight, aligned head. Legs fall under the body, on the ball of the foot… nothing exotic here, except when you look in closer detail. The upright posture doesn’t include the usual “forward slant”, or bend at the ankles, that other methods (such as “Chi Running”) recommend. The foot fall has to be very precise, too, as landing on the side of your forefoot is deemed incorrect. The logic behind this is that your strongest metatarsal bone is, by far, the one leading to your big toe.
• Rhythm means your cadence is precisely 180 beats per minute. Each of your feet will lift from the ground 90 times each minute, which leads to a very fast cadence. Add in the upright position and the first couple minutes will make you feel like running in place.
• Relax means no tension in the upper or lower body. Movement is controlled, but not stiff. There is no bobbing of the head or rotation in the shoulders, but nothing has to be held too tight.

Real-Life Example
While at Tina Dubois’ coaching session, she took videos of my running, before and after applying Saxby’s method. For the sake of context, I am a self-taught barefoot runner with a 3-year base, who enjoys mostly injury-free running over all sorts of terrains and distances.


Video 1 : Before




Verdict : Head-Chasing, Forefoot Striking Overstrider
My standard posture, it turns out, is not quite perfect according to this method. Admittedly, the head-chasing part is mostly due to my watching the treadmill console, so we won’t pay much attention to that one and blame it on environmental factors. The overstriding, however, is the money shot. I tend to land on the side of my forefoot, a slight bit in front of my center of gravity. This causes an unbalance and makes me stretch my back leg (called “trail leg”) further behind me.

In Tina’s words :

• Posture – Pretty good, only slightly bent at the waist (probably because your overstride is also quite slight). I can tell that your head is bent forward mostly because you're looking at the treadmill console)
• Trail Leg – A little long (indicated by the orange line between your knees)
• Foot Posture - Lateral forefoot with both feet (more lateral on your left than your right)
• Overstride – Short overstride (indicated by blue arrow between heel and green line)
• Rhymth – VERY close to 180 BPM
• Contact time – 16 frames for both feet (filmed at 60 frames/second) for a contact time of just over 250 ms.

Corrective measures
Where Lee Saxby’s method really shines, in my opinion, is in the corrective exercises it proposes. Nothing complicated here, only a couple routines you can do anywhere, with minimal equipment. here’s a quick rundown :

• Barefoot jumping
  Jump in place with both feet to a 180BPM rhythm. This will force very quick cadence and instil the feeling of the right footfall, as it is biomechanically impossible to land anywhere else than the ball of your foot. “Remember” the feeling in your feet and reapply to your running.
  
  
• Barefoot walking
  While holding a bar overhead (a broom stick or, ideally, something a tad heavier like a weightlifting bar), walk around barefoot without pressing the bar forward or pulling it back. This forces the upright posture recommended in the method.
  
  
• The "1-2-Pull"
  Same idea as the barefoot jump, this one is practiced on alternating legs, while in place or moving. To a 180 BPM rhythm, fold each knee back once, then “kick” once, higher. Repeat, while staying in the beat.
  
  
• Squatting
  With a straight back, squat down with your whole foot touching the ground. Don’t lift your heels and concentrate your weight on the ball of the foot. You can ensure you have a straight posture by doing this exercise while extending out your arms and balancing a weighed bar on your collarbone.

Corrective measures applied to my… case
Since I have a tendency to slant forward slightly, Tina recommends the barefoot walking exercise. She also insists on my increasing my cadence to 180BPM, using the barefoot jumping exercise and a “metronome” MP3 that I can listen to while training. Last but not least, to take care of my lagging trail leg, she recommends I run stretches while performing the 1-2-Pull exercise. The second video below illustrates both my modified running technique and the 1-2-Pull exercise (notice the “kicking” leg).


Video 2 : After

Verdict : Natural Runner (!!!)
Although my second posture assessment was made easier by having a metronome beat to run to, I have to admit I didn’t put much effort into “trying” to look the part. I think this is largely due to the pertinence of the exercises, which are both simple to master and easy to practice.

In Tina's words :

• Posture - Perfectly upright (indicated by the back of your ear being on the green line above your centre of gravity and no exaggerated curve in your low back)
  
• Trail Leg - Close, which is perfect!
• Foot Posture - Medial forefoot on the right and a little lateral on the left
• Overstride – No overstride at all!
• Rhythm – Right on 180 BPM (determined by listening to the metronome on the original movie file)
• Contact time – 15 frames, which is perfect!

So in less than 3 hours, under the supervision of Tina, I was able to go from my "standard" posture to a "natural running" form. It required only a couple focused exercises and getting used to a 180 BPM rythm, which felt too fast for comfort but turned out to be close to what I was doing already.


Video 3 : Before + After, a side-by-side analysis

For a somewhat experienced barefoot / minimal runner like myself, adjusting to the Natural Running method was quite a breeze. It seemed like the technique was more difficult to apply for some other "shod" runners attending the session. However, they were probably lacking strength in the stabilizer muscles and had no prior experience of the "barefoot feel", which made listening to their body likely harder. My guess is most of them probably needed only to perform the exercises a couple more times for the posture and the technique to feel more natural.


The next article in the series will be my analysis of the method and what I took away from it, both in theory and practice. As mentioned earlier, I’m inviting you to take part in the conversation in the comments section below. Tina will be there to answer your questions and discuss your feedback.


For a complete run-down of the Natural Running technique, you can visit Tina's official website.

Interview : Tina Dubois, Natural Running Coach

In this first article of the series, we introduce you to Tina Dubois, first Canadian coach for Lee Saxby's Natural Running method. I had the opportunity to meet her recently, while on her first national tour to promote the "mastery of the barefoot running skill".


Before we go into a detailed description of the method and an analysis of my running posture (anything for the sake of science!), let's get to meet the woman, a Western-Canada runner and blogger who decided to leave her old running ways - and injuries - behind and focus on technique.


FL - What brought you to natural running? What’s your running background?
TD - I started running in 2000 and was a perpetually injured runner. In my first 8 years of running, I suffered from occasional shin splints, patellar-femoral pain (AKA runner's knee), IT-band strain, as well as sore hips and SI joints. I chronically suffered from low back pain and plantar fasciitis. I always ran through the pain and ran several trail races including the Canadian Death Race relay and 5 Peaks Trail Running Series, as well as a few road races and a couple sprint-distance triathlons.

In 2008, I read "You Walk Wrong" by Adam Sternbergh where I was introduced to the idea of wearing minimal shoes as a way to strengthen your feet and improve your posture and walking gait. I bought my first pair of minimal shoes in May and the chronic pain in my low back that I endured with every step was gone and I was a minimal shoe convert. From a full-time orthotic wearer, I slowly transitioned to walking, and eventually running, solely in minimal shoes. I started reviewing minimal footwear in 2009.

In 2011, VIVOBAREFOOT offered the Certified Coaching Program and I was lucky enough to attend the first Training Clinic in New York City. I learned how to run naturally from Lee Saxby at the Coaching Program and how to teach it to others. Now I run injury-free and hope to teach this form of running to as many runners as possible.


FL - Why choose Lee Saxby’s method? How did you find out about it?
TD - I found out about the Coaching Program from my friend, Barefoot Angie Bee's website, as she was invited to the same Training Clinic.

Lee Saxby's method identifies three forms of running: heel-striking overstriding (or jogging), forefoot-striking overstriding (or unskilled barefoot form), and what I call Natural Running (what he calls skilled barefoot form). As a coach, we are taught how to identify the three forms in our clients and how to change their form into natural running using specific exercises and functional coaching cues. Although there are many running coaching methods available (POSE, ChiRunning, Good Form Running, etc.), Lee's method breaks down the skill of running into microskills (posture, rhythm, and relaxation) that the runner can focus on individually and uses coaching cues that improve these skills, by feeling what good form is rather than thinking about what good form is, making the transformation to natural runner extremely quick and maintained through practice.


FL - Did your running form need a lot of improvement?
TD - Before the Coaching Program, I ran with unskilled barefoot form or a forefoot-striking overstriding form. This form is extremely common in runners who ran with a heel-strike and switched to running in minimal shoes or barefoot. When your body receives sufficient proprioceptive feedback (ie, sensory information about how you're hitting the ground), people will usually switch from landing on their heel to landing on their forefoot but all other aspects of your form remain the same. I learned to run with a faster cadence and land under my centre of gravity (rather than ahead of it) with a medial forefoot landing (between the first and second toe on the ball of the foot).

Tina Dubois

FL - How long – and how smooth – was your transition to the natural running form?
TD - It took half a day to relearn how to run (in a group of 10 people). If you're wondering how long it took me to regain my mileage using the new form compared to the old form, I'd say about 4 weeks. How long a person takes to transition and reach their previous mileage depends on A LOT of factors including what their previous form was, what their mileage was, what level of strength a person has in their legs, what their injury history is, etc.


FL - Did you benefit from your transition? How so?
TD - Absolutely! Before the transition to natural running, I ran extremely slowly and found running to be a lot of work, even after I switched to running in minimal shoes. If I ran any faster than my somewhat-faster-than-walking pace, some part of my body would hurt, so I never ran fast and was content with my level of pain-free running. Now I can run MUCH faster with MUCH less energy and have no pain.


FL - In your opinion, what’s the strongest point(s) in Lee Saxby’s method?
TD - Lee's Coaching Program teaches what injuries are caused by which forms of running and why based on human physiology and biomechanics. His method teaches the most biomechanically efficient and safe form of running that humans can achieve in a way that achieves this form in around an hour. Then all you have to do as a runner is practice a few exercises and remember certain aspects of those exercises while running. The strongest points of Lee's method are its biomechanical basis, ease of learning, and simplicity in practice.


FL - What are your goals as a natural running coach?
TD - I want to share the benefits of Natural Running to all runners so that they can experience the most efficient and safest form of running we can achieve. Basically, I want to help all runners learn to run pain-free.


FL - Do you think there’s a single right way to run, or are there natural variations between individuals?
TD - The principles of Natural Running are based in basic human anatomy and biomechanics. I think there is an 'optimum' way to run that maximizes efficiency and minimizes injury based on these principles. Variation between individuals is caused by different levels of skill.


FL - Do you consider yourself a barefoot advocate? What’s your take on the whole shoe debate?
TD - I advocate being barefoot as a tool to gain strength in your feet and use barefoot running as a tool to increase proprioceptive feedback (ie, awareness of how your feet hit the ground) while learning the skills of running. When I run, I wear a minimal shoe that is appropriate for the terrain I'm running on and type of running that I am doing. My position on shoes is that I choose to wear footwear that allows my feet to move naturally with as much proprioceptive feedback as possible for the terrain and temperature conditions whether I'm walking or running.


Our next article will present the Natural Running method and include a hands-on example using my own, self-taught running barefoot running form. Tina has recorded a video of my posture on the treadmill, then advised on a series of exercises and body awareness. We recorded a second video to try to see if the exercises and advice had any impact on my posture.


I invite you to participate to this series by sending feedback and asking questions to Tina, who is following the conversation on my blog (in case you're reading this from somewhere else). Make this your chance to have a conversation directly with a certified coach :)