In an August, I posted a thread on the Whisper Blog titled Rhythm Running, describing efforts to improve foot-strike and stacking of the forefoot, hips, and shoulders. The drill included runners running the first 100m corner stretch of the a track while within earshot of a speaker playing a metronome beat varying from 170 beats per minute, to nearly 200. The idea is to work on listening to the body’s rhythms, feeling postural stacking, and sustaining a mantra of simple, quiet cues.

“Work hard from the ground up, relax from the head down” is often said at practice and means letting the legs do the work, while the mind focuses on cues stoking efficiency and quietness. These cues aim to suppress the mental and emotional (and physical) rigors of running by focusing on breathing, relaxing the body, and mechanical efficiency.

Drills or actions we perform to promote effective running posture includes:

Drawing the shoulders away from the ears, while gently retracting the scapula (the two triangular bones in your upper back) toward the spine, rotates the shoulders back, lifting the chest, and expanding intercostal muscles and the diaphragm to allow optimal inhalation and expiration.
I often ask runners to be as tall as they can while running. For example, if a runner is 5’2, I will ask that manipulate their body posture to run like they are 5’4”. How? By seeking height (traction) from the spine, from the sacrum to the top of the head. Doing so stacks the spine into proper curvature, and in tandem with scapula retraction, one has a nice posture to work from.
In a perfect world, the chin is parallel with the ground, with the eyes gazing ahead.
Venturing to the hands, I ask runners to pretend they are holding a potato chip that they cannot break, or a hollow egg they cannot crack. Palms facing one another with thumbs resting on the index finger, the hands should remain on the inside of the elbows throughout the entire swing while never crossing midline. Additionally, smaller angles at the elbow (75°-85°), with hands riding along the false (lower) ribs.

We spend a lot of time performing various activities where runners can learn more about their body, and their body’s proprioception. Activities include resistance training (click here to see our training page and here to access our resistance training plan), standard drills, hill drills, cross-training, mobility training, balancing on stability balls and Bosu Balls, and once every great while, juggling!