NaturalRunningCenter
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2014–2026
8:26 · 1.7M views · Mar 6, 2012
Dr. Mark Cucuzzella of the Natural Running Center gives a short instructional video on natural running form. It describes the principles of good technique, including barefoot-style mechanics.
HN commenters call it the best video on natural running form and link it in running technique threads.
4 comments from Hacker News
This is the best video I have seen on natura running form: this video Also, The creator of the pose running method recently released a new book that details proper running form step by step with specific exercises and instruction: The Running Revolution: How to Run Faster, Farther, and Injury-Free--for Life [LINK]
Not OP, but I am a nationally qualified running coach (in my spare time outside of my day job). I have run all sorts of distances from 5k park runs to 100 mile and above ultra marathons. I have made every mistake in the book and helped quite a few people avoid the same mistakes. To keep things simple with two easy to follow steps: 1. Tall posture, imagine a balloon is tied to the top of your head and is pulling you upwards. 2. Download a metronome app to your phone and set it around 170 and in time climb up to 175 180 if it feels ok. You then want to time each foot strike to a beep. This will cause your stride to narrow and discourage an overstride. When you overstride the foot extends forwards and the force of landing gets absorbed by your knee / hips, which is inefficient (its almost like applying a break) and it can cause injury. Running at a high cadence tends to make you ligter on your feet and encourages a good foot strike (under the cartridge of the hips), landing in this way benefits from the elasticity we have in our tendons and you get a certain amount of energy return from this. This video describes it very well and the runner has beautiful form. Just don't try to take it all in, focus on the cadence 170-175-180 rhythm and get that right first this video
Not the person you asked, and I have paid attention to this. I found "Run for Your Life" [1][2] to have useful insights and tips. The biggest one for me was starting with foot landing, where the outside of the foot near the little toe hits first, it spreads out nicely to start taking body weight. Then letting the rest of the outside of the foot land until the heel touches, and then somewhat relax the calf muscle and pull the heel back and slightly roll the ankle in, so the big toe is loaded for the push back and lift off. I play around with variations and sometimes, it becomes almost effortless, almost floating along, even on hard surface. [1] [LINK] [2] this video
Running barefoot forces you to improve your technique in line with this description. [0] There's also a sizeable market of "barefoot shoes" that's between being barefoot and the regular running shoes, with the manufacturers trying to convince us buying such shoes is the solution. The gait issue become more obvious (and painful) in barefoot shoes, but you can adjust your technique in mass-market running shoes as well. [0] this video