Video Analysis: A Fun Little Game

It's beautiful to watch children run. I love to watch my children run. They are so care free and flawless. They haven't been contaminated by footwear for many years like we adults have.
 
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Now it works Gidds. I had the same problem a while back when I uploaded some running gait videos, so I figured I should let you know before a coach did.
 
cool idea with the exception one big flaw. these videos are real time so it's like trying to catch all the issues of someone just running in front of you. it's actually more difficult with videos because of angles, frame rates, and distance from the lens messing with the view. I do this for a living and I use cameras running 210 frames per second that are monochromatic so I can see each individual muscle flex as each toe is set on the ground. Still looking at the videos you posted Abide I would say you could benefit from a little more knee lift. At the current drive height of your knees you have a tendency to point the toes and slightly reach out with them. If you lifted the knees more you could eliminate some of the toe pointing while incorporating your quads a little more for impact acceptance while also allowing the foot to approach the ground a little flatter. It could also yield a little more speed.
 
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Still looking at the videos you posted Abide I would say you could benefit from a little more knee lift. At the current drive height of your knees you have a tendency to point the toes and slightly reach out with them. If you lifted the knees more you could eliminate some of the toe pointing while incorporating your quads a little more for impact acceptance while also allowing the foot to approach the ground a little flatter. It could also yield a little more speed.

Thanks Jimmy I have been working on this a bit. I have a recent video I'll try to stick up soon. Does it matter how I lift or just try to get my feet off more?
 
Hey guys, I've been doing a 1km run for a week now, this is what my form currently looks like.


I am still experiencing mild, but very bearable pain (2/10 or 3/10) in the arch / achilles / ankle / shin (location/s varies from run to run) as I approach the end of my runs. Should I be waiting until I have zero pain until I increase my distance, or is a 10% increase fine at this level of pain? If so, can't imagine having zero pain in a run, but as I said, I have only been running a week or two now.
 
Hey guys, I've been doing a 1km run for a week now, .

That's gotta be some kinda record!

J/K Quin, I'll check back in later when I have more time and I assume you'll get a few serious and useful replies before then :)
 
Hey guys, I've been doing a 1km run for a week now, this is what my form currently looks like.


I am still experiencing mild, but very bearable pain (2/10 or 3/10) in the arch / achilles / ankle / shin (location/s varies from run to run) as I approach the end of my runs. Should I be waiting until I have zero pain until I increase my distance, or is a 10% increase fine at this level of pain? If so, can't imagine having zero pain in a run, but as I said, I have only been running a week or two now.
Keep your head up. Several passes looked good but many times you were looking straight down. You can pretty much bet that if you are looking 7-10 meters ahead, the road will not change by the time you get there and you can easily avoid hazards.

I am not sure how you define bearable, for me, if it is something that goes away once I loosen up, then I don't worry about it. Since you say at the end of your runs, I would be more cautious.
 
On my last run for the week I only had achilles pain in one foot. It's that type of pain that starts with tightness and irritation, and will get worse the longer you keep running (if you know what I am talking about). I hear your achillies gets shorted by years of wearing high heeled running shoes. Logic tells me I should just take it easy as my achillies stretches and adapts in time, since it is a ligament I'm not gonna be a hero and run through pain. I'm just gonna go up to 1050m on monday and see how it goes then.

Any beginner tips will be appreciated guys/gals and I will post another form vid soon, since I feel like my style has changed alot, even though it has only been a single week.
 
Hey guys, I've been doing a 1km run for a week now, this is what my form currently looks like..

Finally had a look. You framed the video perfectly. Look at how your head scrapes the 'ceiling' and then drops way down again with each stride, that's a lot of vertical motion and is being caused by the ghost shoes you're still wearing on your feet. Your forward leg is coming up just short of overstriding (landing outstretched with locked knee), also a remnant of your time in orthopedic boots (puffy shoes).

It's kind of a can of worms but I'm gonna suggest you immediately raise your turnover rate and shorten your stride, the two easiest, safest techniques you can apply in order to get your feet to land under your center of gravity. If you're intersted in trying this, just say so and you'll get get some tips on how to go about it.

The next thing you might want to try is lifting your elbows up behind you, make 'chicken wings' with your arms (you can also call the 'T-Rex arms' if you like that image better, lol). Basically, as an exercise, just to give yourself a feel of the direction you want to go with this, lock your thumbs into your armpits and point your elbows to the rear, as high up as you can, and run for a minute. Then let your arms relax just a little to where they feel more normal. That'll help with your posture.

Watch out with the Achilles tendons, they really are being asked to do a lot of work that was denied them while in the shoes. They shorten and weaken, like you said. And when you're barefoot, they have a huge task to perform. Foam rolling and lower leg massage will help keep you from getting injured, but can only take you so far. It takes time to repair the damage caused by Asics, Nike, Brooks and the rest of the running shoe mafia. But once the Achilles (and the feet in general) are beefed up and strong, you'll find it generally easier to run than ever before.
 
I'm going to disagree with willie a bit. I don't see any signs of over striding at all. You're foot is landing just in front of your center of mass with nearly every foot fall and for most of those you landed on a well bent knee which is what you want. If I were to choose one issue as the biggest I would say it's the bouncing that willie pointed out. You are bouncing because you're not bending the knee once you put the foot down which is probably what willie saw as the over striding and straight leg. Not bending the knee when your weight is accepted on the leg causes all the down forces to be handled by the calves and thusly the Achilles. It's hard to say what your cadence is based on the video being slow motion but making those changes might not have an effect on how you are accepting the load. The first thing I would tell you to do is try relaxing that knee a bit when you put the foot down. That should automatically give you a quicker cadence and a little more lift on the trail leg.

I also agree with getting your head up and lifting the chest a bit. You arm carry is fine as far as I'm concerned except for the fact that they move inward across your body as you swing them forward. Keep them more at the sides of your torso so you don't cause lateral swing and twist at the core level. This will keep you in a straighter line, use less energy, and make you more efficient.

I would also really like to know how you got the video to play in slow motion?
 
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I'm going to disagree with willie a bit. I don't see any signs of over striding at all. You're foot is landing just in front of your center of mass with nearly every foot fall and for most of those you landed on a well bent knee which is what you want. If I were to choose one issue as the biggest I would say it's the bouncing that willie pointed out. You are bouncing because you're not bending the knee once you put the foot down

Hi Jimmy! I can see where you're not seeing any classic, heavy overstriding, but he's close to it, and landing either directly on the heels or flat-footed, with almost straight legs. He's throwing his feet out in front of himself, pulling the toes up (dorsiflexing) and then sort of tucking the feet in at the last moment. And his strides look overly long to me.

I also still think he's got to work on his arms, to help his posture. The side swinging is there, like you said, and if he gets the elbows up behind him and bent, hands somewhere around the middle of the ribcage ... I think he'd feel better. Forward arm swing - isn't that a source of a lot of biomechanical/form issues?

But then, he hasn't checked back in since posting the video ....
 
I do agree that he can gain a lot from working on his arm swing but looking at his shape I am trying to give the advice I think would be most comfortable to him. When I work with people I don't try and shift their form too far outside of their natural realm unless their natural form is causing problems like injuries. I'm also still not seeing what you're seeing with the over striding and I've tried. He has a couple of strides that look like they're close to heel landing and a couple that actually do but they do so on a bent knee. I also still don't see over striding because his knee is always bent at impact. He seems to land with his left leg straighter than his right but some of that could be due to the camera angle and the length of his shorts so I measure the amount of bounce he has and it's about even on each leg. Back to the extending the leg out I think it's a good thing to reach out a little with your leg because it can help you run faster as long as it's done properly. In his case he needs more knee lift and nearly all of those potential over stride issues you're talking about would disappear completely because he would gain the milliseconds required to allow the foot to shift a little more forward right before impact. I also think you and I have some philosophical differences as I see nothing wrong with landing flat footed. The most recent studies I've seen, combined with what's already published, show little difference in initial foot impact ratings between fore foot and heel landing when either of them are within 15 degrees of parallel to the ground. Given that data when looking at his form I put more emphasis on the bouncing and springing off at the toes as his problem than his foot being flat or slightly dorsiflexed (the dorsiflexion being a bigger issue and potential cause of the shin pains) when it makes contact.

Like you said though he hasn't commented again so who knows where he's at with it.
 
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I also think you and I have some philosophical differences as I see nothing wrong with landing flat footed. ..... Given that data when looking at his form I put more emphasis on the bouncing and springing off at the toes as his problem

I think we actually agree on that and maybe I'm just not expressing myself correctly - When I wrote 'flat footed' I was trying to make a distinction between the good 'midfoot' landing and slamming the foot into the ground, which it what it looks like to me in his case. And now that you point it out, it does seem inconstent, different on each leg and even from stride to stride.

I'm also, like you, dead against using footstrike as anything other than an analytical tool, if that. It being the result of the form and not the starting point (been saying that for many years, even in the shoe forum at rwol whenever someone posts the question 'Best shoe for developing a forefoot strike', lol... gah!).

I'm curious about the relatively recent talk of heel landing under the COG. I've tried it and I have to force it to happen, feels horrible and really doesn't make sense to me. Ok, if we're talking nanoseconds, maybe some people with touch down with the heel first but I'd suspect some kind of anomoly in their biomechanics - or really heavy dorsiflexing(?).

What about his stride length? It would be good to know how fast he's running, but it looks like a slow pace with much too-long, loping strides, which is what I would see as the main cause for the vertical bounce (and view as a remnant of running in shoes).

Also, note that I've only said he's on the verge of overstriding. I don't think we're that far apart at all but you have the experience and the better trained eye for the details so if you think he's well within the safety zone, I default to you :)

To me, it's easy to envision the Kyanos on his feet, do you see what I mean? And I really do think the old standard 'shorten the stride, increase turnover' could be the best jumping off point for him. I like that because it can iron out a lot of problems with no risk. Either it works or not and if not, then just leave it, no harm done. Other things like 'bend at the knees', 'pull the feet up, don't push off', 'more knee lift', 'engage the hamstrings', 'lean from the ankles' etc., are really hard to put into practice and people can mess themselves up if they don't have someone there to assist them.

Something just occurred to me: (I think) you tend to view runners from a competetive standpoint ie getting faster/more efficient, and I'm thinking much more casually ie generally slower paces and basic injury avoidance.
 
Your last point I think has a ton of merit. I do assess everyone with the mindset of achieving more efficiency, maybe not speed, but I have always felt that the easier I can make running; the more people will enjoy it. I also feel that when someone runs efficiently they run smoothly and thus avoid injury. I have actually found over the years that sometimes when you slow people down you put them at an injury risk because they just aren't used to it so I don't always look at going slower being the first or best option for everyone.

Now that you've noticed, sorry I didn't realize it, that we were on the same path but just not seeing it I do see where you were coming from with your points. His stride length doesn't look all that long to me and you can tell he's not going at any high rate of speed by looking at how high his trail leg kicks up. This is a jog at best based on what I see in his knee lift and trail leg kick. Think of how high a Kenyan or most any other elite runner's trail leg goes. Sometimes they kick themselves in the butt as they run. He is purposely trying to put his feet down in a specific way and that is limiting his range, which is why I mentioned knee lift as a correction. In terms of center of gravity I don't really prescribe to it most times as something to worry about. It's very nearly impossible to over stride with a fore foot landing so it's not an issue for those people and in heel strikers my goal is to soften the initial impact force. Once you've gotten their foot fall softer they usually land somewhere around center anyways. If I prefer anything it's that they land just in front of center so that their legs can really accept the full body weight through the stride transition and give them lots of forward power at toe off.

Also I appreciate the respect you show me based on my experience but I always enjoy a good debate or just good theoretical conversation so I've enjoyed this a lot. I don't know everything and I find that I can always learn from just about anyone.
 
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