People who have longer lower leg lengths (the distance from knee to ankle) will usually have greater endurance during running or walking than those with shorter lower leg lengths.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin showed that people with longer lower legs use less energy when they run (Journal of Human Evolution, August 2007).
In a previous paper in the same journal, these authors showed that people with longer lower legs are better able to prevent heat build-up, which slows you down and makes you tired. When you exercise, almost 80 percent of the energy that you use to power your muscles is lost as heat.
Read the rest of this entry »
For many runners, scoring a faster running time can be a point of frustration. Though you train regularly and your technique may seem impeccable, sometimes your efforts seem to add up to nothing when it comes to improving your speed. In fact, how fast or slow you run often has a great deal to do with your economy of motion.
Economy of motion is a simple enough concept. It refers to the relationship between how much energy you expend when you run and how fast you go. Typically, the less energy it take you to run a given distance the faster - or more “economical” - you will run. Unfortunately, as the New York Times reports, improving your running economy is one task that’s particularly difficult to accomplish, if possible at all.
Read the rest of this entry at our partner site: HesFit.com
Jim Fortner is a weekly, guest contributor to TFS. Also check out his own personal running and advice site: “Jim2’s Running Page”.
Running strength isn’t quite as definitive as VO2max or LT. It’s a bit ambiguous. However, as I view it, it has two components … physiological and psychological.
The physiological component is related to running economy, but it is also different. I think of both running strength and running economy as sub-elements of a broader subject that I call running efficiency.
Running economy is a measure of how efficiently you use oxygen while running at a specific pace. Improving running economy means that you can physiologically sustain a faster pace at a given percentage of VO2max, or a given pace at a lower percentage of VO2max, for a longer distance.
Read the rest of this entry »
Jim Fortner is a weekly, guest contributor to TFS. Also check out his own personal running and advice site: “Jim2’s Running Page”.
Although both stride rate and stride length increase as runners become faster, greater gain is realized by more runners through the increase of stride length, not stride rate. And stride length is the ultimate limiter of how fast we will eventually become because it is the primary bio-mechanical determinant of running economy.
Certainly, a runner who has a very slow stride rate, such as 150 or fewer strides/minute, can realize a lot of pace gain through increased leg turnover as his/her cardio-respiratory systems develop to enable faster paces.
Read the rest of this entry »
Jim Fortner is a weekly, guest contributor to TFS. Also check out his own personal running and advice site: “Jim2’s Running Page”.
Running strength isn’t quite as definitive as VO2Max or lactate threshold. It’s a bit ambiguous. However, as I view it, it has two components: physiological and psychological.
The physiological component is related to running economy, but it is also different. I think of both running strength and running economy as sub-elements of a broader subject that I call running efficiency.
Running economy is a measure of how efficiently you use oxygen while running at a specific pace. Improving running economy means that you can physiologically sustain a faster pace at a given percentage of VO2max, or a given pace at a lower percentage of VO2max, for a longer distance.
Read the rest of this entry »
Many people look terribly uncoordinated when they run. Telling them to change their form will just make them more uncoordinated. If a coach criticizes a team member for poor running form and doesn’t correct the underlying causes, the person is likely to become self-conscious about how he or she looks, and run even more slowly. Coordination usually improves just with repeated practice in the chosen sport.
Running form can improve markedly if you can correct muscle imbalances and structural abnormalities with appropriate exercises and perhaps mechanical devices. A coach can videotape the athletes while they run, then review the tape in slow motion to analyze the mechanical defects. For example, leaning forward during running is often caused by weak back muscles, which can be treated with exercises to strengthen the back. Pointing the toes out is often caused by weak lower leg muscles and can be corrected by doing exercises to strengthen the shin muscles. Leaning back on the heels after foot plant can be caused by excessive rolling-in motion of the feet or weak calf muscles. Read the rest of this entry »
Jim Fortner is a weekly, guest contributor to TFS. Make sure to also check out his own personal running and advice site: “Jim2’s Running Page”.
[Some people believe] that taller runners inherently have a longer stride length. And, as a result, if two runners have the same stride rate, the taller one should be faster because of this naturally longer stride length. Neither premise is true. The determination of stride length simply is not that simple.
Although leg length, which is largely determined by height, is a factor that does affect stride length, it is a relatively minor one. Stride length is primarily determined by rear leg drive and range of motion. The former (drive) is completely independent of leg length (height) and the latter (range) is only very slightly influenced by leg length….do the geometrical math.
© 2006-2008 The Final Sprint, LLC | Privacy Policy | Design by The Blog Studio
The Final Sprint, LLC is owned and operated by Adam Jacobs
The Final Sprint