Should You Change Your Running Form?

A question many runners have is: “Can I actually change my running form?”

The short answer is yes!

You can change your running form.

But, before googling how to do so, let's stop for a moment and look at what the research says.

Because there’s a common thought process that if you want to change the way you run, you simply need to strengthen the “right” muscles with three exercises to "wake up your glutes!"

However, that might not be the case.

Running is much more complicated than simply having strong or weak muscles.

Running is a coordinated skill. Because of that, research from our running research guru, Richard Willy, shows us that changing your running form requires activity-specific retraining, rather than simply increasing strength.

This mean using drills, visual feedback, verbal cues, and changes in cadence to to retrain your brain and nervous system and therefore the mechanics of how you run.

In other words:

Strength can give you the capacity to move differently. It doesn't automatically teach you how to move differently.

So yes! You absolutely can change your running form.

But that brings us to the more interesting question.

Should you change your running form?

For the recreational long-distance runner, in general, I don't think we should change running form just for the sake of changing it.

One reason why is because there is no single "perfect" running form. 

When you run, your body is constantly making tiny adjustments based on your anatomy, strength, mobility, previous experiences, speed, terrain, fatigue, and other factors.

Because your body is incredibly good at finding a way to get you from point A to point B.

So if you're running pain-free and enjoying running, I don't want you watching videos of yourself and deciding that your knees, feet, hips, or arms don't look “right” and then trying to force your body into someone else's version of perfect running form.

Different doesn't necessarily mean wrong.

However, if you have pain with running, changing how you run can help.

Changing running mechanics can be one lever we can pull to temporarily reduce the load on a painful or irritated area.

For example, a runner with knee pain may benefit from a small change in cadence or another gait modification that reduces the load being placed on the knee.

Remember, the goal isn't necessarily to recreate a perfect ideal of running form. There is no perfect! 

The goal is to find a way to redistribute the forces so the irritated area has an opportunity to calm down.

That's very different from telling someone: “Your running form is bad. Let's fix it.”

Instead, I think of it as:

“You're having pain. Is there a way we can temporarily change how you're loading this area so you can continue training?”

Because yes, running form can be changed!  But that doesn't mean it needs to be changed.

If you're a recreational runner who is running consistently, feeling good, and enjoying your training, I generally don't want you worrying about whether your running form looks “perfect" because your body is smart! Trust it to find the pattern that works best for you. 

But if you're experiencing pain, then changing running mechanics may be one useful tool to reduce pain while continuing to stay active.

In fact, if you're a newer runner or just getting back into running, there are more important, research-backed factors that I'd look at first before addressing your running form. 

Reducing injuries and becoming a consistent runners comes more from how your train, how you strengthen, and how you recover.

If you're a newer or returning runner and you're trying to figure out where to look first before changing your running form, I wrote out all of my top advice for runners stuck in the start-stop cycle of running in a 40-page guide: Run Ready Roadmap.

It walks you through the things I want runners to understand about building strength, managing pain, returning to running, and knowing what to work on next so you can reevalute what you might need to tweak to start moving forward with a plan.

Questions about running form? Hit reply to this email to ask me your question.

—
Dr. Erin Kennedy Dalisay, PT, DPT, OCS
Doctor of Physical Therapy & Run Coach