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Health & Fitness

Easy on the Joints

Last time, I wrote about why running with good form is a good idea. How about if we talk about one of the elements of good form in more detail?

I mentioned that landing on your heel is not such a good idea - let's think about that. When you walk, what part of your foot touches the ground first? Your heel. You've probably seen race-walking before (or at least know what it is) - how about that kind of walking (which, by the way, is often faster than most people run)? Same thing, only landing on your heel is actually required by the rules in race-walking.

When most of us take up running, what part of our foot touches the ground first? That's right: our heel. We usually treat it as walking, only faster. But here is the problem: in running, we are literally flying through the air between each step. Indeed, this is the definition of running, so to speak. When we fly through the air, whether we're running fast or slow, that landing is imparting a lot of force to our bodies. Multiply that force by the thousands of running steps we take, even on a short run, and we have a real issue.

When we land on our heel, that force is directed straight up through the bones at our ankle. What's worse is that most heel-strikers' knees are locked at the instant of impact so that there is a (mostly) straight line from that heel all the way up to the hip. Our bones and joints can take some of that kind of force, but they're really not designed for that direct, linear pounding. There are some thin little pads called cartilage to help absorb some of the shock, but those are really intended more to smooth the rotation of bone ends inside the joint. 

So we're out of luck, right? Wrong. Remember that there is - sorry if my technical terminology is over your head here - a whole bunch of stretchy stuff around each of these key joints (ankle, knee, hip). That stuff includes muscle, ligaments, and tendons. Certainly, if we were to rely on just a few of those "stretchy things" to absorb the shock of running, those few things would probably get sore. But if we could spread out that force among as many of them as possible, they can share the load, with no one or two or three pieces having to do too much. Think of it as the difference between jumping up and down on a wood floor versus a trampoline.

When you are able to transition from being a heel-striker to landing on the middle or the front half of your foot, you end up landing with these key joints slightly bent. When they're bent slightly, you use all of that stretchy stuff to share the load of the impact, and - voila! - running is suddently much easier on your body.

Take a look at the photo of myself from the 1980s - even from the front, you can tell how the force of landing is going to go straight up through my ankle, knee, and hip. Ouch. 

The other photo with this article shows a series of video screen captures. In the bottom row, the first two photos are where the runner is actually landing. You can see that he's landing in the middle of his foot, and his ankle and knee are slightly bent, efficiently absorbing the shock.

When running is easier on your body, you don't get nearly as fatigued during any given run, so you can run faster with the same effort, farther, or just feel much less tired when you finish that run. Most importantly, you reduce the chance of experiencing joint pain - not completely, unfortunately, but you give those joints a fighting chance to be happy.

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