Running-Form Breakthrough! How To Improve Your Running Economy
Running economy is arguably the most important physiological measure for runners. Yes, you need a sky high vo2 max to win the Olympic 1500-meter race. But once you move into the longer distances, RE often proves more important.
Also, it’s something that you can improve by years of consistent training, as has been shown in several famous papers. This isn’t necessarily the case for vo2 max.
Because RE is so important, it has been studied in hundreds of scientific papers. Beyond that, countless coaches and Internet gurus are happy to dispense workouts and running-form changes that they claim will improve your RE--a measure of how much oxygen you use at a given speed. When your RE improves, your oxygen consumption goes down.
This is important turf. It’s an arena where you’d like to know as much as possible both for your own running and for advising others.
Now we’ve got more answers than ever. They come from a new systematic review and meta-analysis by several well known running experts. The review, titled “The Relationship Between Running Biomechanics and Running Economy,” looked into 51 studies with a total of 1115 runners. The paper is available in free, full text, and I strongly encourage you to take a look
The review contains more information than I have space for. But here’s a quick summary of what seems most important (and not so important) when it comes to the biomechanics of RE.
1--How/where your foot first contacts the ground--ie, forefoot vs rearfoot, a favorite topic of many coaches and Internet gurus--had no effect on RE.
2--Many other measures also had no effect on RE. These included: contact time, stride length, and various ankle/knee/hip angles.
3--A smaller bounce (vertical oscillation) “showed significant moderate associations” with better RE.
4--A higher leg stiffness also showed “significant moderate associations” with better RE. Leg stiffness is the quality of the legs that resists deformation or compression as the leg supports your body weight. A stiff leg is like a strong, tightly coiled spring rather than a weaker, less tightly coiled spring.
5--A higher stride rate “showed a small significant association” with better RE.
In general, Running Economy improves when you use as little muscle as possible, and as much elastic recoil as possible. That’s because the muscles require oxygen, while the elastic elements like tendons and ligaments don’t. (Of course, muscle is still important.) Every change in running form also changes the contributions from muscle and elastic recoil, and they usually move in the opposite direction.
The authors believe it may be possible to find running form changes that are additive in terms of improved RE. But we don’t know enough yet to suggest what these changes might be.
More at Sports Medicine with free full text. And here, on this thread at Twitter/X, where one of the authors (Bas Van Hooren) discusses the paper, and provides a key infographic.
Exercise Like Your Life Depends On It
Why? Because your life does depend on it.
According to cardiologist Paddy Barrett, those individuals with a vo2 max in the highest 2.5% of the population have only one-fifth the likelihood of dying in the next 10 years vs those in the lowest 25%. And you don’t have to be an elite athlete to hit that upper 2.5%. You just have to exercise regularly and at times vigorously.
The payoff: “There is practically NOTHING in medicine that results in this magnitude of survival advantage,” says Barrett.
If you want to feel and perform above average when you’re 90-years-old, you can’t get there by beginning at 89. You have to build the foundation in your midlife years that will support you for the rest of your days. More at Twitter/X Paddy Barrett.
How To Build A Training Program For Guaranteed Success
For the last 50 years, a key training strategy to increase endurance has been the periodized system. In its most basic form, it couldn’t be simpler.
You start with easy, slow training to build an aerobic base. Next, increase intensity with harder workouts like hill repeats, tempo runs, and sometimes challenging long runs. Lastly, in the month or two or so before your big race, introduce faster training at or around race pace. During this peaking phase, decrease total training mileage so that you can stay fresh and strong even while doing the tough speed work.
I would give much credit for this process to Arthur Lydiard, the pioneering New Zealand coach behind both “jogging” for the masses, and his country’s great Olympic successes in the early 1960s. The article below looks elsewhere, and gives credit to several Eastern European coaches.
Regardless, I like the article’s attention to Block Periodization, a lesser-known form of periodized training. Block Periodization phases are shorter than more traditional phases, and always followed by a 3-7 day recovery period. In marathon training programs, these are often called “cutback” weeks. I think they are one of the most essential ingredients in smart training.
“Block Periodization allows you to build in periods of big stress, followed by recovery, to start increasing the load an athlete can adapt to,” says Stephanie Howe. a coach with Carmichael Training Systems who uses block periodization with some of her athletes. More at Run Outside Online.
Over at I Run Far, Ian Torrence adds his notes on training periodization, with a special caution about the Peaking (or Specific) Phase. He notes that runners should be careful not to do too much, as it “can lead to burnout, overtraining, and injury.”
Also, he introduces a good thought that I have never considered before. “Be sure to sprinkle in workouts that you’re good at to build confidence as race day approaches.” I like the 2 pronged approach: Run race-pace workouts to be physiologically ready, but also continue with your favorite workouts to keep your mental state high. More at I Run Far.
Mind Over Matter? The Truth About Mental Strategies
A decade ago, when Alex Hutchinson was researching and writing his now classic book, Endure, he figured one of its sexy selling points would be an emphasis on the athlete’s mind. That’s what he kept reading in new studies and hearing from experts in the field. It seemed an exciting new territory to explore.
Things didn’t turn out as he expected. Because Hutchinson is a scientist himself and an evidence-based journalist to the core, he dug deep into the new frontier. And the deeper he went, the thinner the findings looked.
Eventually, Endure had less mind material than Hutchinson had planned. But he filled in the gap with fascinating studies and stories from other corners of the endurance world.
These days, in his Sweat Science column at Outside Online, Hutchinson continues to follow updates from the world of sports psychology. And he remains skeptical.
Here he reports on a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of “psychological interventions” that might improve athletic performance. The paper gave him “a jolt of severe cognitive dissonance”--hey, even a serious journalist has to have a little fun with his word choice.
Some of his favorite approaches, “like motivational self talk,” didn’t even have enough evidence to warrant inclusion in the new report.
The Sports Medicine paper (with free full text) underlying Hutchinson’s column found that several mind approaches actually did appear to produce good results at first glance. These were: 1) psychological skills training; 2) mindfulness-acceptance strategies; and 3) imagery. “However, when non-randomized trials and subjective performance outcomes were removed, all three of these approaches were no longer significant.”
In other words, when the researchers looked only at the highest-quality research, the 3 mental approaches no longer had an effect.
Still, Hutchinson hasn’t given up on the mind. None of us have. It’s too big and intriguing a subject to toss overboard completely.
Maybe we just don’t have good measurement tools to assess the mind. After all, there’s nothing like a simple blood-pressure cuff. We can expect more, and hopefully better, mind research to come. More at Outside Online.
Does Sodium Bicarbonate Enhance Endurance Performance?
Sodium bicarbonate has been much in the performance news recently, including here at RLRH. In particular, it appears that Maurten has produced a new hydrogel that can deliver sodium bicarbonate without the stomach distress observed in many sodium bicarb papers.
That’s nice, of course. Particularly if you believe that sodium bicarbonate improves endurance performance.
But there’s the rub. Most studies of sodium bicarbonate for performance enhancement have shown benefits in hard efforts lasting from 30 seconds to 12 minutes. For endurance exercise, the evidence shrinks substantially.
In fact, sodium bicarbonate has often had negative effects as it “can potentially lead to GI symptoms, which in turn may impair endurance performance.”
This last phrase comes from the most recent trial to investigate sodium bicarbonate for endurance. Researchers used a randomized, double-blind, crossover design to test 12 recreational cyclists. The design included 4 days of low-dose bicarb before an endurance test vs just one acute dose prior to the endurance test vs placebo.
The bicarb conditions definitely increased buffering-bicarb blood levels. But there was no significant difference in the endurance results. (There was a small trend toward improved endurance after multiple-day bicarb use. It also increased GI issues.)
Conclusion: “Neither intervention demonstrates sufficient efficacy in enhancing high-intensity endurance performance.” The researchers still think the 4-day protocol has potential, writing: “A novel SB supplementation protocol involving the administration of 0.1 g·kg−1 SB twice daily for four consecutive days has shown promise improving buffering capacity while minimizing GI symptoms.” More at European J of Applied Physiology with free full text.
Trail Runners Need Better Fueling Habits
Trail runners and ultra runners represent a small percent of all runners. But they hold great interest in the science community, because they might practice more extreme training, nutrition, and other practices than typical runners. And who doesn’t want to study an extreme subset?
Here, a team surveyed nearly 2000 trail runners with a 45-question survey designed to uncover low energy availability (LEA), disordered eating (DE), and exercise dependence (EXD).
Result: Roughly half of all female runners exhibited LEA and DE. This was double the rate for males. “Some examples of DE include skipping meals, restricting calories, and excessive exercise.”
Both males and females attended well to their pre-race carb needs. But they fell short when it came to in-race fueling for distances that required more than 2.5 hours. In those longer events, almost 48% of racers reported consuming fewer carbs than the recommended amount.
Conclusion: “This study suggests that a high percentage of trail runners are at risk for LEA and DE.” Also: “Female athletes were more likely to be at risk for DE and LEA compared to male athletes and menstrual dysfunction was correlated with risk of LEA.” Lastly, younger runners fared poorer in good-nutrition-habits than older runners.
Nonetheless, the clinical risk for exercise dependence appeared low among this study group, even though a high percent of subjects exhibited symptoms of EXD. More at International J of Exercise Science with free full text.
Everything You Need To Know About Atrial Fibrillation In Runners
Here’s the best summary of the important link between endurance exercise and atrial fibrillation that you’re likely to find. As usual, Dr. Gabe Mirkin brings together the latest studies, the historical medical perspective, and his own 60-year observations of atrial fibrillation in athletes.
What you want to know: First, atrial fibrillation (AF) is an irregular, usually fast heartbeat. In the normal population, it’s linked with increased risk of stroke. It’s more common among Caucasians than African heritage individuals, and it strikes older individuals more than the younger.
Now, how about runners? There are several important points to consider: 1) Regular, moderate exercisers have a lower risk of AF than non-exercisers; and 2) Serious competitive marathon and ultra-marathon runners, including females, have a higher risk of AF than non-exercisers.
However, there is little to no evidence that AF in competitive runners leads to increased stroke risk--the major health concern in cases of AF. The existing studies have looked almost exclusively at the AF-stroke connection in non athletes. Indeed, Mirkin says: “I believe that athletes with atrial fibrillation are far less likely to suffer clots that cause strokes than non-athletes with atrial fibrillation, but I have not seen any studies to support my belief.”
You can reduce your risk of atrial fibrillation through all the usual healthy-lifestyle modifications including low alcohol consumption. More at Dr. Mirkin.
By chance, the same week that Dr. Mirkin wrote
his summary article, a cardiology journal published a review of 4 AF case studies in athletes, along with recommendations concerning several different medical approaches to AF (ie, drugs vs surgery).
The authors concluded: “AF treatment decisions should be individualized for those engaging in vigorous physical activity, while considering the potential risks, the urgency of returning to training, and the will and expectations of the patient.” More at Clinical Cardiology with free full text.
Get This: Exercise Before Bedtime Could Help With A New Language
Some studies grab you with the first line. Like this one: “The capacity to form and retain memories is one of the most fundamental features of the human brain and a prerequisite for lifelong development and adaptation.”
Okay, count me in. I’m interested. What’s going on here?
Turns out there was previous evidence that exercise before a nap improves “declarative memory,” which is just a fancy name for recollection of key facts. Researchers next wanted to know if this memory enhancement also applied to exercise before nighttime sleep. So they conducted a cross-over study in which subjects performed high intensity evening exercise immediately after “encoding two memory tasks.”
Result: High intensity exercise pre-sleep changed nighttime “sleep architecture” and led to “increased declarative memory retention.”
Conclusion: “The present findings suggest an exercise-induced enhancement of declarative memory.” I’m not sure this means you can improve your Spanish vocabulary retention by studying in the evening, and then exercising before sleep. But it sounds promising. More at J of Sleep Research with free full text.
Camille Herron Chases Ultra Records In 6-Day Race
I spent much of the past week checking in on Camille Herron and her attempt to rewrite the endurance running records in Lululemon’s “Further” event (a 6-day race) in California. You don’t find a lot of 6-day races (or runners), but for some reason it has become a classic distance. This may be partly because the mythic Greek ultrarunner, Yiannis Kouros, tackled the event a few times, and in 2005 set a nearly untouchable record of 644 miles.
Herron was secretly hoping to eclipse Kouros’s record, or at least the American male record of 606 miles by Joe Fejes in 2015. And she had good reason to be confident, based on her amazing 48-hour race last year. In that event, she covered 270 miles to set a female world record. That put her less than 9 percent behind Kouros’s world record for the distance, 293 miles. The standard differential between males and females is 10 to 11 percent in all running events.
Herron hoped that she would get relatively stronger as the distance increased, and perhaps show that women have more endurance than men, as has long been argued in various places. If she could actually run more miles than Kouros, she would become the first female to hold an outright world record in a standardized running race.
As it turned out, Herron started strong, amassing an impressive 132 miles in her first 24 hours, and 247 miles at 48 hours. From there she tailed off with daily totals of: 94, 89, 72, and 58 miles. (These are rounded, approximate totals, as full results weren’t yet available as I typed this.)
Herron set numerous female world records en route, and finished the 6 days in a female world record of 560 miles. The former record of 549 miles was set in 1990 by New Zealand’s Sandra Barwick.
Of course, she fell15 percent short of Kouros’s magical 644 miles, which doesn’t do much for the female endurance hypothesis. Happily, Herron seems to have an unbreakable spirit, and I imagine she will be back chasing many other endurance records. She may even want a second crack at 6-days in the next year or two.
For reasons I can’t fathom, Lululemon did little to promote this event, in which they invested heavily. There wasn’t even a simple Twitter stream with updates. Here’s the webpage with the best results and splits.
SHORT STUFF you don’t want to miss
>>> Find a doc who exercises: He or she will give better exercise-health advice than a non-active doctor
GREAT QUOTES make great running partners
“The obsession with running is really an obsession with the potential for more and more life.”
--George Sheehan
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading. RLRH will not be published next week. The next edition will be on March 28.