Though each individual runner has his or her own unique way of running, there are several elements of the running form that can help with both performance and injury risk reduction.

Many of the running drills we do as part of our warm-up help us improve aspects of our running form. To understand how, let’s first take a look at the phases of the running stride. Here they are, illustrated by drawings from Puleo and Milroy’s Running Anatomy:

1. Initial ground contact: As the label suggests, this phase of the running stride happens when our foot initially lands on the ground. The right leg in the picture illustrates this. The left leg illustrates the very end of the gait cycle, the follow through after “toe-off” (see below).

2. Stance: This is the part of the running stride when all or most of our weight is on the foot and leg in contact with the ground. The right leg is in stance phase.

3. Toe-off: Here, the stance (ground contact) leg is pushing off, propelling us forward and upward. In the picture below, the right leg is in toe off.

4. Swing: After pushing off from toe-off, the leg “swings” forward, preparing for the next cycle of landing. In the picture above, the left leg is in swing.

Think about our running drills. You can now see how drills like the A-skip and B-skip might help with the swing phase. Buttkicks allow you to practice the follow through part of the stride. High skips, long skips and bounding help with toe-off.

Let’s now discuss some terminology. Step length describes the distance you cover when you move from one foot to the other. Stride length is the distance between when one foot takes off and the same foot lands. This is illustrated by this diagram from Aggarwal et al, 2018:

Many people think stride length is how much your front leg reaches ahead of your back leg while you are running, but this is not the case. In fact, thinking about lengthening your stride by reaching more can lead to an unwanted effect called overstriding. I will tell you in a little while why overstriding is problematic.

The reason you would want to increase your stride length is because your velocity, or pace, is determined by two factors: your stride length and your stride rate. So, improving one or both factors is the way to run faster. The best way to improve your stride length is to put more power into each stride – either by increasing your effort or by doing things away from running to make you more powerful, like strength training.

Improve your stride rate by teaching yourself to step more quickly, even when you are running at a slow pace. The optimal stride rate, or cadence, for most runners is between 170 and 180 strides per minute.

Foot strike is another component of running form that gets talked about a lot. There are 3 main ways to foot strike (meaning the way your foot lands when you hit the ground): heel strike, midfoot strike, and forefoot strike. This illustration from the Road Runner Sports website shows the three different foot strike patterns:

All these foot strike patterns are fine! However, problems may arise if you’re landing with your foot out ahead of your body (the overstriding I referred to above). You want to keep your foot strike beneath your center of mass because this is the best way to manage the impact forces of landing on the ground. Landing with your foot ahead of your center of mass generates higher ground forces and can lead to injuries.

Let’s turn now to your upper body, and specifically your arm swing. I often see arm swing asymmetry when I look at the form of the runners I coach. This can reflect the position of the arms themselves but can also be due to imbalances in core strength or muscle firing.

I like to cue “elbows back” to help people find an effective arm swing. I also tell runners to pretend they are squeezing a clementine orange in the crook of their arm (the inside of the arm where the upper arm meets the forearm), and to imagine they are squeezing a pencil between their shoulder blades.

Notice the first runner in the photo below – his arms are in an excellent position. As he draws back his right arm, a well-defined triangle is formed by the crook of his arm and his torso. That’s what we want! You can check your own arm swing form by checking your shadow for that lovely arm triangle.

Here is a series of photos from a blog post on the website “The Balanced Runner.” In the post, the author compares the running form of three legendary runners, Kenenisa Bekele, Haile Gebrselassie, and Mo Farah, during the 2013 Great North Run (a famous half marathon in England). Though there are subtle differences, all 3 runners illustrate the exemplary body alignment we should all strive for:

1. Foot strike beneath the center of mass

2. Forward lean from the ankles

3. Upper body counterrotation

Running Form Essentials