Let me be the first to say I don’t know much about barefoot running, but there certainly was a buzz about it for the past 2 seasons. Some of that buzz was created by a local athlete, Yoshi, during his graduate thesis. I was a little intrigued by this at first, since Yoshi’s graduate thesis tried to prove that running barefoot could increase one’s VO2 max. Although I never followed up on the actual results, it was an interesting topic, and he received a lot of feedback on it.

During the course of my Ironman training, I did a lot of research on injury prevention, specifically around running since it has a high impact on the body. One thing I learned in my research, and what Paul would always talk about, is heel strike, which, unfortunately, most of you probably do. Basically, when you run, your heel is probably the first thing that hits the ground. This, in turn, causes unnatural impact throughout your leg, and potentially into your back. Not to mention that heel striking literally slows you down with every step.

Why do we do that? 2 reasons:

1. Most people were never taught how to run. Running is not just running.
2. Our shoes have cushion, which allows us to land in a comfortable, but not natural position, on our heels. Since there is no negative feedback mechanism, our body simply stays with the current form of heel striking.

If you stop and think about it, our natural walking/running gait evolved for thousands of years without the aid of .5-1 inch of rubber to cushion our impact! If we want to run any kind of distance, we should leverage the ways our feet, legs and body were designed, or evolved, to run!

I am hardly the guru of proper running form, but it all starts with running with more of a mid-foot strike. When you run, you should land directly over your center of gravity. I realize that it is easier said than done, but to do this, you will have to shorten up your stride a little bit. Ideally, you should have a cadence of around 90 (strikes/minute). It might even help to lean forward a little bit as well since running is really a controlled fall more than anything.

Written by Ryan Denner