Is there a preference when it comes to foot strike? Should one be fore foot or heel striking? On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, Lindsey gives his verdict. It may seem like it is a simple answer, but it never is when it comes to the human body.

Transcript

Welcome onto another edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, I’m Brad Brown and we’ve got a question that was submitted by Morgan Ross. Morgan wanted to know Lindsey, the impact or the difference between a fore foot strike versus heel striking particularly over longer distances.

She’s been running quite a bit, she is getting faster, she’s going for her second Comrades Marathon this year. She missed the cut-off a couple of years ago, but she’s in great nick and she’s wondering about the difference. Should you be aiming for a fore foot strike or a heel strike, particularly if you’re running long like Comrades or Two Oceans?

Foot strike – what most research suggests

Lindsey Parry: Look, this is something that’s discussed at length in like scientific literature, there’s always debate amongst different coaches and there are, from time to time someone releases a book and it creates a lot of discussion, controversy is not really the right word.

So, what we know from all the research and the discussions and studying of human movement patterns is that there is a reduction in impact forces when we run mid to fore foot and that in a theoretical model, that allows for a much better shock absorption system for the whole leg.

The problem is that the actual impact force on the road, so us slamming into the road when we run, it’s just a different mechanism of how our body absorbs it. If you’ve been in a really cushioned 12-16ml heel drop shoe and been running like that for a number of years. You have developed a heel strike in running stride and that works very well for you; by moving to more of a fore foot or mid to fore foot, you shift the stresses onto your Achilles and to your soleus. That is because of the, over the last 50 years more and more people had gone around walking in shoes, running in shoes, the Achilles and the soleus isn’t always right, or isn’t always as strong as it should be for performing that task.

Your body will find it's most economical running stride

I’m a big believer in that if we run enough and we run at the appropriate intensities and we build up over a period of time, that your body will find the most economical running stride for your body. The other thing that I’ve noticed through the years of coaching. About 4-5 years ago I spent an enormous amount of energy in changing the way my athletes were running.

Moving more to a fore foot forward lean, so-called economical way of running and what I noticed time and time and time again is that as soon as the athletes were under stress, they would just revert, very much to what their normal running pattern was.

I still encourage people and I still, in my coaching, incorporate drills, coordination drills that would, again in theory, stimulate the muscles required for better running form, for better running coordination. But I no longer stress the importance of concentrating on running fore foot because you can do that when you’re running easy. When you’re concentrating on it every step.

But as soon as you stop concentrating on it and you’re having a chat with somebody, I just watch people, they just go to the running stride which is most comfortable for their levers. For their body, for the speed that they’re running at.

I don’t place a major emphasis on which one is better than the other. I think some are better, hill striking is better for some and then you need to get shoes which support that and fore foot striking is better in others and then the same principle applies. You would get slightly different shoes that would complement that running style.

BB: Brilliant, Morgan, I hope that helps, Lindsey, thank you very much for that. We didn’t have the greatest of lines today, unfortunately, it seems like the interwebs in South Africa are struggling with us making this call, but we will continue nonetheless.

Don’t forget, if you’d like to join the Coach Parry online community, there’s a fantastic online community with a very active Facebook group as well. All you need to do is head over to coachparry.com/join, we’re running a great special there at the moment. If you sign up for a year, you get just over 25% discount, so go check that out, coachparry.com/join. Until next time, from the two of us, it’s cheers.