Which Running Gadgets ACTUALLY Make You Faster?
Running in its purest form is simple.
Just keep putting one foot in front of the other
until you hit a target, finish a race, or just get bored.
- But in recent years, the goalposts have shifted.
And for many runners, the best way
to get those marginal gains is by using running gadgets.
- Today Ana and I are going to be taking a look
at all of the technology that says
it can help you to improve your running
by measuring all sorts of different running dynamics.
- Whether you're totally new to running,
or you've been clocking up the miles for years.
We guarantee there is something for everyone in this video.
So make sure you keep watching
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All the G's. Let's check out these gadgets.
- First, let's talk about running dynamics
and what that actually means
and what each of the individual metrics is talking about.
Now, the term gait analysis actually
often used as an umbrella term to cover everything
to do with the sort of things
that we're going to talk about today.
We're going to look at a few of them
in a little bit more detail now
in case you might never have heard of them.
So we're gonna explain what they are,
and why they might be important to you.
- Cadence is the number of steps that you take per minute
or SPM.
So, for most runners it will sit somewhere around 150
to 200 SPM.
For the elites, they're more likely to be pushing
180 and above.
Now, your cadence can be affected by a number of things.
For example, your stride length, your height,
and the terrain that you're running on.
- Stride length is the distance along the ground
between successive foot contacts.
So you might see runners increase their cadence
as they try to shift towards a sprint
at the end of a longer race.
But that might also result in a change
to your stride length.
Stride length is important because ultimately,
it can help you to avoid injury.
You might think that forcing yourself
to have a longer stride length
will make you run faster and further.
But if you overreach and make contact with the ground
in front of you, then that can result in injuries in itself.
So you have to be careful.
- Foot strike and pronation considers
whether your foot comes into contact with the ground evenly.
So for pronation, some runners may pronate,
which means to roll inwards or to supinate,
which means rolling outwards.
A level of pronation is absolutely fine,
but anything excessive may cause some issues.
Foot strike, on the other hand, is about which parts
of your foot touches the ground first.
And then in which order the rest of your foot follows.
- There are also even more technical elements,
not all of which are measured
by all the devices on test today,
but do show you just how complex and advanced
some running consumer technology can be.
Things like hip angle, air time, toe-off angle, power,
body bounce, leg stiffness, and impact acceleration
can all be measured and assessed
to see just how efficient your running form is.
- Now, if you've got any questions
about any of the stuff that we've just covered,
then please do drop them in the comments below.
We know that there is a lot of information to take in,
but hopefully a simpler question is how do all these metrics
make a difference to your running?
- The simplest answer is that these products claim
to be able to help you to maximize your performance
whilst reducing the risk of injury.
That might be through helping you to
identify imbalances that can ultimately lead to injury
or to make quick adaptations that could help you
to lead to better performance.
They also claim, some of them that is to be able to help you
to choose the right pair of shoes.
Now there's no quick fix, but the idea here is
that these things might be able to give you
some extra guidance to help with your running.
- We've broken the tech down into three main categories
based on where on your body they go.
So there's on your feet, around your waist
and anywhere else.
And we're going to be assessing each of the gadgets
using four main criteria, price, ease of use,
what it measures, and usefulness.
Now as ever with our gear roundups here
on The Running Channel,
we haven't been paid by the brands to say nice things
about their products.
So you can guarantee that everything you're about to see
are mine and Andy's genuine opinions.
- First up is Mymo, which is a small sensor
that sits inside a little sock that you wear on your ankle.
Now, this means that this is one of the few devices
that we're looking at, where you actually are encouraged
to run barefoot in order to go through the testing.
And what the device aims to do is
show you your foot strike types.
So whether that's forefoot, mid-foot, or rear foot,
as well as the degree of pronation,
which are mainly the things that specialty running stores
will look at when they're choosing your running shoes.
And that's the selling point here.
Ultimately, Mymo is aimed at helping you to choose
the right pair of running shoes for you.
So once you've gone through the testing,
which takes only a couple of minutes, really
of running barefoot,
it will recommend shoes for you based on your running style.
There's also a subscription package available within Mymo
called Mymo Plus which gives you access to information
from expert physios, and so on.
Overall, a clever piece of tech,
which aims potentially to help you to make a better choice
when you might be buying running shoes online,
and also to allow you to analyze your gait over time.
But for me, it was a little bit hit and miss.
The Mymo device is really cheap, which is great,
very easy to set up,
but I would say it's quite limited in what it measures
and the fact that you have to wear it barefoot
does limit its use for your normal running.
I'd also say in terms of usefulness,
I'm actually not sure how many times I would return
to use it once I've used it for the very first time.
So that's how I would sum it up.
- So you might be thinking that some of the gadgets and tech
that we're including in this video,
just do the same as things like your smart watch,
your smartphone or a heart rate monitor,
but actually a lot of these do so much more than that.
Take STRYD, for example.
So STRYD is a little pod that fits
on the shoelaces of your shoe,
and it can give you real time information direct
to your watch and then loads of data
that you can analyze in the app afterwards as well.
So the way that STRYD works is a little bit like how
cyclists would use a bike computer,
because it transmits your running power data
direct to your watch.
So you can see in real time that metric.
Then it also looks at various different
performance indicators after your run.
So things like the terrain that you're running on,
the weather conditions.
It takes all of those into consideration.
And there's also a premium option where you can pay
for a subscription and get tailored training plans
based on the data that you're feeding it
from your current runs.
So my ratings for STRYD in each of the categories,
well price, looking at the rest of the gadgets on test,
I would say it's really reasonable.
Then for ease of use,
I did have that issue where I could not pair it
with my phone, which made things a little tricky.
So I would say ease of use three out of five,
then for the level of metrics,
I would say four out of five for that.
And then finally usefulness.
Well, I think it is quite a useful device.
It's really good to have that extra data as you would
with any other sort of additional gadget
that you're attaching to having your smart watch data too.
- Nurvv are a pair of smart insoles aimed to
not only integrate with the apps and hardware
that you might already have,
like your watches and your smartphone,
measuring things like pace, GPS and distance traveled.
Also more importantly our smart insoles,
they measure things like pronation,
the type of foot contact that you make,
stride length, cadence
and all of these more advanced running metrics.
And then give you feedback based on what it finds.
The insoles themselves measure using 32 different sensors
under the sole of your foot.
So you actually slipped these
underneath the existing insoles in your trainers.
And then there's a little tab that hangs over the side,
which the sensors attached to,
and those sensors communicate with your phone
or your watch as required.
When you're out on a run, you can choose to receive feedback
either through haptic feedback,
so that's essentially vibrations
through the sensors themselves or via your phone
through audio cues that can help you
to improve particular things
that you're looking to work on.
Nurvv is one of the more expensive items on test
so probably get scored down a little bit on value for money,
but actually there's a lot of technology here.
So if you're gonna make an investment
in something that measures quite a lot of things,
which Nurvv does, is relatively easy to use,
although did take a little bit of extra time
on the initial setup and potentially has long-term value
to help you make adaptations over time.
And this could be it.
- Okay. So how about a smart shoe? Yes, really.
So Under Armour have a number of different shoes
in their range that contain Bluetooth chips
that can feed data back to you, such as the HOVR Machina.
So the HOVR Machina gives you real time cadence information,
so it can hook up to your headphones,
if you're wearing headphones on your run
and tell you what your cadence is,
you can set goals for the cadence
that you want to be trying to hit.
And if you drop below that,
then it'll give you a little warning message.
So you can access all of the data that you get
from the Under Armour shoes, within the map my run app.
So after your run, you can go back through,
have a look and see your cadence details.
So my verdict on the Under Armour HOVR Machina shoes,
the price of them is pretty much the same or a bit less than
any premium pair of running shoes at the moment.
So I think price wise, it's really reasonable.
Ease of use,
I found that it really easily connected to my phone,
that I had no problems accessing the data that was stored
in the map my run app.
As for what it measures, well you've got stride length,
you've got pace, and you've got your cadence.
So they're pretty basic range of metrics for you to look at.
And then it comes down to usefulness. Well, actually,
I'm going to give these a slightly higher score
than the range of metrics,
because I really found it useful as a sort of nudge
on my form to get the instant feedback.
- Next up, Ana and I are going to take a look
at two different Garmin devices,
which give you similar things,
but in slightly different use cases.
