If you spend even one second on social media, you’ll see about a billion posts from experts telling you to change your running form. If you incorporated even 10% of this advice, you’d be tweaking your stride every day and probably going insane. Despite all the noise on Facebook, there is some solid science about what aspects of form do and do not reduce injury risk. So, can changing your running form reduce injury risk?
Today we’ll organize the science and clarify what does and does not matter to the un-injured runner. Runners with specific pain and injury can often benefit from technique changes, but we’ll address those in subsequent articles.
Does changing your footstrike reduce injury risk?
No. The idea that a forefoot strike is “more natural” and “better for your body” has been around in some form or another for over a decade now. A few extremely small and extremely specific studies on extremely elite runners done in the early 2000s made it look slightly promising, but further investigation evaporated those claims.
The British Journal of Sports Medicine says it loud and proud: “transitioning to a non-rearfoot strike to reduce injury risk or improve running economy is not supported by the evidence” (summary of research). 75% of the runners who competed in the 2017 World Championships Marathon were heelstrikers anyway (study).
If you’re a non-injured runner, changing your footstrike will confer no health or performance benefit. That’s the fact, jack.
Does increasing your running cadence reduce injury risk?
Maybe slightly, but cadence is not a cure-all. Obsession over cadence started when the celebrated running coach Jack Daniels (great name) went to the 1996 Olympics. He measured – then casually noted in his best selling training book – that most of the Olympic runners jogged at around 180 strides per minute and increased only slightly at race paces. Since that day, “180 strides per minute” has spent many miles on many runners’ minds.
Note: if you’re running at a fixed pace, say 9:00 per mile, your speed = your strides per minute multiplied by your stride length. If you take more steps but stay at the same pace, your stride length will necessarily decrease. So, stride length and cadence are two halves of the same coin.
But what does the evidence say about cadence / stride length and injury? Biomechanical analysis definitively shows reduced force through most muscles, tendons, and bones when running at a higher cadence (review). And if you increase your cadence slightly, you’ll experience an outsized reduction in force through your legs (study). Higher step rate has also been shown to reduce bone stress injury risk in elite college runners (study). The evidence points towards some protective benefit for increased cadence.
Main point: if your cadence is on the low low end (sub 160), you might find it easier and more pleasurable to take shorter and more frequent steps at the same and could theoretically experience some protective benefit. But if you’re chugging along without injury and your watch says you average about 166, 172, or 184 strides per minute instead of that “magical” 180, there is NO evidence to suggest that’s a problem in any way.
Do other things like lower leg or hip position matter for healthy runners?
In short, we don’t know but probably not much. It’s easy for a scientist to address things like heelstriking or cadence in a lab because these metrics are objective. Slow motion cameras show which part of your foot hits the ground first and strides per minute is easily calculated. Other technique related stuff like like “hip drop”, inward knee rotation, or leg position in the swing phase are less clear cut and harder to adjust between athletes in a controlled setting.
For injured runners, adjusting technique may move load to healthy structures and provide immense benefit. Here researchers found that adjusting hip position can help female runners with knee pain (study). Healthy athletes on the other hand should follow my grandfather’s golden rule:
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
It’s totally natural for form-related running content to make you second guess your running form. I write the science blogs for a healthy running company, and sometimes even I have intrusive thoughts that I may be running incorrectly! But I’m here to tell you that you should love your stride even if it doesn’t look exactly like Eliud Kipchoge’s. The science says that if you don’t have pain, your stride is almost certainly perfectly fine.
If you do have pain, technique changes might help, but resistance training is probably more important! You can try a resistance training routine customized for your body in the Recover Athletics app. This app helps runners fix aches and pains and prevent injury. A year’s subscription costs less than one trip to physical therapist and we have an unlimited free trial. Give the app a try today!
If you don’t know us, we’re so glad you stopped by our page. Recover athletics is a team of runners, doctors, physical therapists, and entrepreneurs. We’ve made it our mission to help runners around the world prevent injury. Meet our team.