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akern
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Joined: 31 May 2002
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 Posted: 04/22/03 - 11:32 Post subject: Lets talk about stride.
As I run sometimes I do alot of stride changing to try and get more out of each step. How far do you open up your stride? I think my natural step is a bit short but can't figure out if I should try and take smaller faster steps or fewer longer strides. Where's the experts?
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jrjo
Gone Fishin
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Posted: 04/22/03 - 11:46 Post subject:
My experience has been, the better thing to focus on is turnover. Elite runners have shorter strides than average, and largely this comes from pushing the turnover so much. Striding out seems like the logical thing to do, but if I had a nickel for every injury story I heard from runners trying that...
Personally, I focus on turnover, and the side effect is the feel of a shorter stride. But I've had comments that my stride looks long, so in the end, I'm not shortening it much, but speedwise I find it faster to have the feel of a shorter stride than stretching out a long one.
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robp
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Posted: 04/22/03 - 11:47 Post subject: Re: Lets talk about stride.
| akern wrote: | | As I run sometimes I do alot of stride changing to try and get more out of each step. How far do you open up your stride? I think my natural step is a bit short but can't figure out if I should try and take smaller faster steps or fewer longer strides. Where's the experts? |
I try to use the longest stride that feels comfortable and it seems to work for me. I think it's got to be something you don't focus on - has to feel totally natural. There's enough other crap to focus on when running than worrying about your stride length.
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robp
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Posted: 04/22/03 - 11:52 Post subject:
Well now you have two opposite answers and should be thoroughly confused. 
jrjo's is based on more on fact, mine is based on personal experience.
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shelee
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Posted: 04/22/03 - 22:51 Post subject:
| jrjo wrote: | My experience has been, the better thing to focus on is turnover. Elite runners have shorter strides than average, and largely this comes from pushing the turnover so much. Striding out seems like the logical thing to do, but if I had a nickel for every injury story I heard from runners trying that...
Personally, I focus on turnover, and the side effect is the feel of a shorter stride. But I've had comments that my stride looks long, so in the end, I'm not shortening it much, but speedwise I find it faster to have the feel of a shorter stride than stretching out a long one. |
I thought it was really interesting to watch the different strides of the elite runners racing Boston. Anyway, did you see Denisova? Her stride is so long. Then again, others seemed really short. I think you just have to go with what works for you.
I've been paying more attention to my stride and am trying to open it up a bit too. I haven't run long enough to even know what kind of impact a longer stride would have on my running performance, but I guess it's never too soon to start to concentrate on it. 
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spongebob
Former FFL Champion
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Posted: 04/22/03 - 23:05 Post subject:
All of the famous runner people I saw recently all said that higher turnover aka shorter, faster steps were the key and that forcing too long of a stride for what is natural to you is what causes most injuries.
In particular, Lisa Rainsberger went into a lot of detail about it. She is the last US female to win Boston and has also won Chicago twice.... so I think she knows what she is talking about.
The beauty of it is that it is something you can learn to do. You should be able to find links to drills that you can do to improve your turnover. Bunches of the Kick studs and studettes have posted about this, too.
However, they all said that in the last 400 meters of a race - the person with the longest stride will likely out kick everyone else to the finish. But then they reiterated that higher turnover was more important for the other 99% of the race.
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