Strange title you may be thinking right now, but I assure you its not as strange as it may seem. Over the last few weeks, I have been dishing out some information on this quite a bit, whether that be through being asked about pain in joints, running speed or just comfort while running.
Are you a heel striker? A forefoot striker? Do you do a bit of both or you don’t know?
The way I have been talking about this recently is using different treadmills. So at http://leveltenfitness.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/crossfit-crossfit-training-energy-1552242.jpg we have both a self propelled treadmill and a normal electric treadmill. On the self propelled version it is fairly easy to demonstrate that when heel striking, you are essentially putting on the breaks. The belt is being pushed back by your forefoot striking when you run forwards, and when you jam the heel down it is putting the energy and force into the opposite direction before the transition to the forefoot is made to continue the run. This makes the treadmill pretty difficult to run on. By changing to a forefoot striking method, keeping the torso nice and straight and the chest lifted we get a great running posture and the treadmill becomes easy to run on without falling forward as is often seen on this version of the treadmill.
Am I saying that heel striking is totally wrong and you shouldn’t do it ever? No…I am not!
What I am saying is that you should try it. Running on the forefoot causes less impact on the body which can be seen to be as much as 7 times lower impact force than can be seen in heel striking. This causes a high impact transient which can lead to anywhere from 1.5 to 3 times your bodyweight being felt within 50 milliseconds of hitting the ground, compared to forefoot striking where there is basically no impact transient and a relatively slow rise in force in comparison to the sharp spike seen in the heel strike.
So if you have pain in the joints, you may find that it could be from that impact that is consistently repeated when we run, especially over a long distance. So try out the forefoot strike and see how you get on.
Let me know how it goes!