What Can YOU Learn From The World's BEST Marathon Runners?
What makes a great long distance runner and how are they running such quick
times? Is there something about that technique that we can learn from?
What we're going to do is we're going to analyze the running of two of the world
record holders over the marathon distance and give you some tips for your
running at home.
But before we do that, if you haven't already,
please do make sure that you hit subscribe to support us in what we're trying to
do at The Running Channel, which is create free videos
all about running for you every week. When I think of marathons,
I think of Eliud Kipchoge with his world record for the men's marathon of
2:01:39, and of course his unofficial sub two hour clocking in the Ineos
1:59 Challenge. He has changed history for the marathon,
but what makes him so great? Maybe we should take a look. I mean,
I love watching Kipchoge run. Um,
we all know about the prototypes and the different types of shoes.
We all know about the, the attempts and the supported, you know, from,
from Nike or Ineos, but just watching him, you know,
this is a long time ago, um, back in Athens in 2004, um,
and to see him be able to take his technique from the track onto the road has
been incredible. I
Think Kipchoge has the optimum foot strike.
I have, you know,
you watch people run all the time and his foot strike always seems to be.
In the perfect position underneath his h- his hips. Um,
and it's just always like this feather touch,
which I find really interesting.
Yeah, and I think what's really important about that is that you don't magically make
a foot contact perfectly underneath your hips.
You're actively pulling your leg back with your hamstrings and glutes rather
than using your calves to push off the ground.
You're pulling your leg back before it makes contact with the ground to actively
make contact with the ground and push you forwards.
And I think if you can see from, from side on,
if you look at Kipchoge's mechanics, you know, his heel lift behind him,
then that's a really big deal for, for his mechanics. And
that has come from his track days. And if you look at the track, uh, footage,
and you can see that
his technique has changed
ever so slightly, but it's basically been transferred from the track.
Yeah. And something else that I've noticed, and that I've noticed a lot with,
with runners, if you, if you do go down to a parkrun or watch, um,
runners that haven't competed at Kipchoge's level is the dorsiflexion of his
feet. And I think that comes from running on the track, you know,
picking your feet up and having that really active foot contact when you're in
spikes. But he has his toes pulled up to his shins during that phase when it's,
when it's just before his foot hits the ground,
which a lot of people will actually do the opposite.
And they think they need to be pointing their toes.
But actually that stops you from making that really active drive into the
ground, which he does so perfectly. He's
quite upright. It's, it's very minimal lean,
which is unique for Kipchoge. Um,
and I think that's something we can all take and think about is having a
nice tall, upright posture, uh, with a nice tall chin. Um,
I find quite a lot of the time when I do analyze runners that
they, they tend to look down.
Yeah. And I think if you, if you look down, you close off your chest,
you round your shoulders,
you do all of the bad behaviors that runners do when they get tired.
And I think focusing on staying tall,
picturing Kipchoge is a really good lesson in keeping your lungs open,
giving you every opportunity to not sink at the hips as well.
So it's not just shoulders and breathing. It's the more you look down,
the more likely you are to sink at the hips,
and then it's impossible to make foot contact in the right place under your body.
I think one,
one other thing I would say is having a nice strong arm
drive, which you can see from Kipchoge. Not too strong that it rotates your,
your body left to right. Um, in the transverse plane,
but nice and strong, keeping your elbow
stiff is crucial. So
try not to have floppy hands.
And if you have a good strong arm drive that will help with your,
with your cadence of your legs.
Yeah. And I think arms is something that you forget about as a runner.
So being strong through your core helps your drive from your arms to give you
the impact that you need on your legs, and things like hill training
were always what I found most effective to allow me to practice that real backwards
drive with my elbow that helps obviously the opposite leg drive forwards,
which you need to exaggerate to get up a hill. And I've seen his arm drive.
It's pretty good. My knee lift, not so much. So I think,
would it be fair to summarise by saying,
we're talking about the following things that people could take away from Kipchoge.
So that's an active foot contact with the ground and then thinking about where you
make contact with the ground. So ideally it shouldn't be in front of you.
It should be underneath you and then focusing on staying nice and tall through
your whole body. So keeping your shoulders back and
head up and they can impact the whole of the lower chain of your body as well.
And then finally thinking about- that foot contact comes about through actively
using your glutes and hamstrings.
And then that will also give you that nice heel flick behind you.
Well said, couldn't agree more.
Next, we want to take a look at the current women's world record holder for the
marathon, Brigid Kosgei, whose time of 2:14:04 broke Paula
Radcliffe's long standing women's world record for the marathon fairly recently.
So let's take a look at her running form.
I think we should start off with looking at her foot strike.
If we look at her foot strike,
she does have an increase in this rotational force,
which means that actually her foot strikes slightly into the
center of her body and you don't have something called a knee window or knee
gap. And that's quite evident when we're watching the videos.
And you can see in the slow motions.
You're saying that she brings her foot into kind of a center line underneath her
body when you're looking front-on? Yes, exactly.
And with her foot strike,
we know that not everybody needs to strike with a forefoot strike, mid-foot
strike, or heel strike. Your foot strike will be unique to you.
We can see from the videos that Brigid actually has a way of striking
her foot that her heel does hit the floor.
She doesn't heel strike per se,
but her heel is touching the floor and she's not forefoot striking. Um,
we would describe this as a,
as a late mid foot strike or mid foot strike.
Would you agree?
Yeah. From looking at the side on, in particular and,
and perhaps it's even exaggerated by having a higher stack height on your shoes
and particular shoes obviously have an extended heel, you know,
we're all familiar with the Vaporflies and so on. And actually,
I suppose that's one thing to talk about is have the new shoes caused an issue
of, of stability potentially, maybe for Brigid, but for other people too.
If we can I think about it, I think so.
If you have a shoe that's taller that will challenge your balance and
stability. I think Brigid's technique is efficient for her.
And we've seen that obviously she's broken
the world record, and we have
to be aware that efficiency may not be textbook.
It may not be perfect. Brigid
broke Paula Radcliffe's world record,
and we know what Paula Radcliffe runs.
I think from a certain point on her body down, Paula was very still, very
you know, close to perfect in her mechanics,
but there was a lot of other stuff that people would often criticise.
So. Michael Johnson in the 400 metres held the
world record and he had a very upright form. So like you've said,
it's, it's unique to that individual person.
I think one thing that is very clear from watching Brigid side-on is the,
the length of her stride.
Like you can't cover a marathon distance and be a runner at this length without
a- it's proportional to your body size,
but she does have a flowing stride and a nice long straight line.
And I think she utilises, uh, a lean to even-
to create more propulsion in her stride.
And it feels like she's utilising gravity to give her that push.
So by leaning forward, when you're pushing through the ground,
it's allowing her to feel that, that push is more effective and almost
just using gravity as an aid,
it looks like side-on, which is really interesting.
Yeah. And, and I suppose as a, as a finishing note on Brigid,
the interesting thing that we've really touched on is that Kipchoge
arguably does have very close to textbook running form in terms of what you
would consider you might want to run, like if you,
if you had control over that and, and Brigid's is very different,
but these are both the world record holders,
they're both the best marathons in the world. So, um,
what works for one person definitely doesn't work for
everybody. That's true.
And in addition to what we can learn from the world's best marathon runners,
at The Running Channel
we've also got an amazing selection of home workout videos led by our very own
Manni, of course,
and taking on those workouts can help you to strengthen areas of your body
which will all have an impact on improving your running form.
We've included two of running's greats. Did we miss somebody,
please let us know in the comments below, and we will see you here next time
at The Running Channel.
