Researchers found that both experienced and beginning runners tend to settle into the stride that is most efficient for them. Tinkering with how you run is unlikely to be beneficial for performance and could make running more difficult, the study found.
As a species, humans are innately capable of running. Unless we are disabled, most of us start running as toddlers and continue, sporadically, throughout our lives, racing through airports or after the fast-receding bus we just missed. But because we can run, does this mean that we naturally run well?
Many experts, including running coaches and exercise physiologists, have debated that question in recent years, pondering whether there is a platonic ideal running form that everyone should adopt.
In particular, they have argued about stride length and cadence, or the number of steps runners take per minute. Stride length and cadence are intimately connected, and experts and runners have wondered whether altering these variables might make someone a better, faster runner. Many of us who run have been told at various times that we should shorten our strides in order to run faster, or maybe lengthen them, and perhaps aim for a cadence above 160 steps per minute.
But there has been surprisingly little scientific evidence that either reinforces or refutes the idea that modifying how we run is advisable, especially if we are newcomers to the sport.
So for the new study, which was published in May in the International Journal of Exercise Sciencescientists at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, set out to closely examine the strides of both expert and inexperienced runners and see would happen if they tweaked them.
They began by recruiting 19 skilled, competitive runners, including 10 members of the university’s Division I women’s cross-country team. The researchers also gathered an additional 14 active people from other sports, including cycling and swimming, all of whom were fit but none of whom had done much if any running in the past two years.
They then had each volunteer run on a treadmill in the university’s human performance lab at whatever speed they felt to be most comfortable. For the experienced runners, this was their typical training speed. For the novice runners, it was the fastest pace that they felt they could maintain for at least 20 minutes.
The researchers manually counted each volunteer’s steps, a number that they verified with videotape, and then arithmetically determined the length of each person’s stride when they ran at their favorite speed.
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