Natural Running: A Beginner’s Guide
November 07, 2011, By Jason Avant 0 comments
Last year, we gave up our beach lifestyle and moved inland, to a house that sits on the edge of a trail-looped canyon. As a longtime beach runner, used to running barefoot in soft sand, I found myself struggling. Even on hard-packed dirt, I could feel my teeth rattling, and my knees and back ached in protest at the end of every run. The idea that I was doing it wrong was counterintuitive—I mean, it’s running, putting one foot in front of the other in rapid succession. I knew about pronating and heel-striking, but hey, that’s why you pay a lot of money for expensive shoes, right? The shoes are supposed to fix all that.
As it turns out, everything you’ve been told about running shoes may be wrong. More and more athletes, coaches, and sports doctors are rallying behind the so-called natural running movement. Natural running centers on the concept that the way most of us run—landing on the heel and rolling the foot forward—goes against the way we as bipeds evolved. Just look at your foot—the wide part, where impact is spread, thus lessening its effects, is the front. Proponents of natural running argue that the best way to run—in other words, the way to prevent a good many running injuries—is by running on the balls of your feet.
I’d done this on the beach but had never consciously thought to adjust my stride on pavement or hard-packed trail. So over the past few months, I’ve made that change. At first, it was agony—switching to a natural running gait means that the calves do a lot more work, acting as shock absorbers and providing additional power through the stride.
But as my muscles became used to the movement, I found that my knees were feeling less creaky, and my core and spine were getting a bit stronger as well. My stride has shortened, which took some getting used to. On the flip side, I live in a very hilly area, and having that shorter stride seems to have helped me tackle the inclines more efficiently.
Making those adjustments is part of adapting to this new style. Footwear does play a part, and there are a few varieties of shoes made for natural running. These fall into two categories, and one brand that combines elements of both.
