How You Should Swing Your Arms When Running | The Balanced Runner Keys Series

These runners are a great example of how you should swing your arms when running.

How you should swing your arms tends to be an afterthought when running. You probably think of things like footstrike, core, posture, cadence, and so forth instead. That’s a mistake, since your running form is a whole-body cycle of events driven by your relationship to gravity. And in gravity, the higher up in your body … Read more

What’s the Best Running Form for a Fast Marathon?

Hellen Obiri winning the 2023 RAK Half

I found an email in my inbox on Wednesday from Robert Johnson, one of the founders of Letsrun.com, the top running news site on the internet. He wanted to know whether I thought Hellen Obiri has the best running form for a marathon–or even workable form for that distance. It had just been announced that …

Running Speed Hack

a runner can get an instant boost of speed by using this trick

Here’s a simple trick you can do to pick up the pace, especially when you want to run faster but your body just somehow isn’t responding. I’m not a big fan of tricks and hacks. I want you to learn deeply and be transformed. But tricks do have their place, especially for a runner committed … Read more

How to Use Wearable Tech to Improve Your Gait

runner using wearable tech to improve her gait

Data on your running has become easy to get. But it remains hard to act on, especially when it comes to using wearable tech (such as sports watches) to improve your gait. Alex Hutchinson recently wrote about a 4-stage framework for using the training data from wearable tech. The stages are: descriptive–what happened diagnostic–why did … Read more

I Tried Everything to Run Better

Down deep every runner has The Dream, the fantasy in which they run almost without effort, just flowing or flying over the earth. But if you google “running quotes,” most of what you’ll find them talking about is hard work and suffering. That is the painful predicament many runners know all too well. Running doesn’t feel … Read more

“Just” Run Faster

Learn to run faster

The other day I was outside with a client, watching him run and asking him to notice certain things he was doing. A man I didn’t know walked past my client as he ran to the far end of the block, then offered the opinion, “He looks absolutely fine, he just needs to run faster.”  … Read more

Run Faster with this Upper Body Strength Program

a good upper body strength program for runners activates the entire kinetic chain, as in this version of a lat row with leg lift

Conventional wisdom says an upper body strength program helps runners hold their posture and have a better arm carriage. But if you do it right, the benefits go way beyond that. There’s a way to do an upper body workout that actually makes your legs work better, giving you a distinct pop of energy from … Read more

Strength Training for Running–Avoid These Pitfalls!

good strength training for runners should include functional, full-body activities such as kettlebells

The idea that distance runners should regularly do strength work to avoid injury has become pretty popular in recent years. It can indeed be very helpful for performing your best, and as a human being your fitness needs include other things besides running. But there are some significant potential pitfalls to be aware of if … Read more