Comment by zknill | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zknill | Hacker News Reader

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Two things:

1. You want to land on the mid-foot. Heel-striking puts a lot of pressure up you leg and joints as you are basically braking with every step. Forefoot strike puts a lot of pressure on your calf and achilles as you have to 'bounce' on every foot-strike to support your body weight. A mid-foot strike is the most efficient transition of energy into and back out of the ground for forward motion. Small steps help you to find a mid-foot strike, large steps (over-striding) will create a heel-strike.

2. For lots of people taking up 'running' they (naturally) believe that they should run. But for many, running continuously will be beyond their zone-2 cardio. It's much easier to start with a jog/walk and build up. In the UK we have a brilliant app called 'couch-to-5k' which is a progressive build from essentially no fitness (walking some distance) up to being able to continuously jog for 5k.

I’ve never understood what a mid-foot strike is. My foot has an arch. My heel touches the ground, ball of foot and toes touch the ground. Mid-foot doesn’t.

To me its more like you should strike with the forefoot but with the foot almost flat (as opposed to running like on tiptoes) so it feels as if you are instantly rolling onto the mid part of the shoe. Or put slightly differently- the middle of the shoe is what catches the groud first as it moves backwards relative to your overall direction of travel. There was a whole huge thing about barefoot running but doing miles of it on grass really did help me retrain as a former heel striker.

Heel strike - heel lands first

Midfoot strike - heel and ball land same time

Forefoot strike - ball of foot lands first

I've never understood striking guidance either. It seems that over long enough distances everyone is a heel striker too, it's just more efficient. So I'd assume that any advice you hear is more pace-dependent than it appears.

Just behind the ball of your foot so as to load your arch in a downward motion. Your heel will almost definitely touch the ground. This, as opposed to a forefoot strike, where you're landing just behind your toes and loading in a rearward motion (think sprinting). Your heel probably will not touch the ground.

Both of these are hard to do in typical "running shoes" which build a significant amount of rubber into the heel, while also being fairly thin up front.

+1 for Couch to 5k. I’ve successfully used it a couple times.

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