I’m going to ask you an important question you may have never been asked before. Are you ready for it? Here it comes… Do you know how to run? You may think you do, but have you ever really taken the time to study, practice and refine your most basic movement skill: running? If you haven’t, that’s okay. Most people haven’t. Due to the elementary nature of running, most people simply assume they know how to run and proceed to slowly grind their bodies into the ground–becoming confused and frustrated when they get injured. In this article, I hope to replace this confusion with clarity and lay out a complete guide to mastering your barefoot running technique and eliminating injury. Sound good? Let’s get started.

The Barefoot Running Movement

Barefoot running has exploded in popularity over the past few years. Christopher McDougall’s “Born to Run” ignited a firestorm of minimalist runners and Vibram is having trouble producing enough of their “lizard shoes” to keep up with the demand. While this is great and I wholeheartedly approve of the barefoot movement for many reasons, with this upsurge of shoeless enthusiasm we have also seen an increasingly large number of injuries among people just getting started with barefoot running. In an article I read over at Competitor.com, they refer to this trend as the Barefoot Running Injury Epidemic citing numerous doctors who report increased numbers of patients complaining of heel and other foot injuries as a direct result of running barefoot. A shame, but not surprising.

With this substantial threat of injury in mind, how can YOU safely make the shift to barefoot running? How can you get all the benefits of barefoot running while avoiding this plague of injury that is sweeping the barefoot running community? The answer can be condensed into two words: technique and transition. In this article I will be covering barefoot running technique. Read on.

Barefoot Running Injuries: What Causes Them?

The first and most obvious question to ask is why do people who start running barefoot get injured in the first place? If we truly are “born to run,” shouldn’t we be able to just kick our shoes to the side and take off running like a Tarahumara Indian? While there is solid evidence to suggest that running played a role in shaping our evolutionary success, we must take into account that most people, especially those in the western world, have been wearing cushioned shoes their whole lives. This is relevant because wearing shoes for extended periods of time weakens our arches, engages different muscles and weakens those muscles activated when barefoot. In short, because we have pampered our feet with years and years of being wrapped tight and kept in the dark, we have lost our natural ability to safely run (and move) barefoot.

The second reason why injuries have become more and more prevalent is because people never learn how to run! As Steve Kamb of Nerd Fitness wrote in a recent post, “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that a huge majority of the running population kinda sucks at running.” When most people get started with running, they don’t take the time to learn proper a foot-strike, upper body technique, or how to run in the first place. They just run out the door with an optimistic grin and hope for the best. As a consequence, recent data now suggests that between 60-85 percent of all runners become injured EVERY year!

This is especially apparent when it comes to barefoot running. People who have run in shoes their whole lives one day decide they no longer need them and proceed to put incredible strain on their unaccustomed bodies (specifically their calves and arches.)

So, before you get started with barefoot running you must be aware of two, very important factors:

1) Unless you’re an experienced runner or grew up running barefoot and learned proper form through experience, you probably don’t know how to run properly. Before you get started with any kind of running, barefoot or in shoes, it is important to learn proper technique.

2) If you have spent the majority of your life wearing cushioned shoes, your feet are most definitely weak. Because of this, when you first bring them out into the light of day, it’s important that you do so gently and slowly.

In this post I am going to cover the first aspect: proper running technique. Let’s move on.

Relearning Your Most Basic Movement Skill

Your crash course to running starts now. If you’ve never taken the time to learn how to run properly, this is your chance to learn (or re-learn) a skill that will allow you to drastically reduce your injury rate, move more efficiently and serve you for the rest of your life. Learning proper running form needn’t take long, however it will some time and dedication. But don’t worry, just like all movement I promote here on wild movement, the learning process can be explorative, exuberant, and enjoyable.

I’ve broken sound running down into two main categories: Foot-strike and posture. Let’s “run” through each category and get you started down the path of strong, injury free running. Read on.

Foot Strike

Ultimately, proper running technique comes down to just two things.

1) Landing on the correct part of the foot.

2) Maintaing proper posture over that technically sound foot-strike.

Master these two components and you WILL improve your efficiency and drastically reduce injury rate. Let’s tackle the foot-strike now.

For those of you who are very new to running/natural movement, your foot-strike is how your foot meets the ground when you are running. It includes the landing, compression and take off. While most people pay little attention to their feet while running, there IS a proper and an improper way to “strike” the ground. Let’s teach you how to do it right.

The first step is to differentiate between the two main types of foot-strikes. The first type is the most common and is seen in nearly all shoe-clad runners: the heel strike. People who heel-strike land on the heel, roll across the mid-foot, and push off the toes. Running in shoes also often causes runners to land with the knees locked and the foot in front of the body, causing a braking action that increases the overall impact and reduces the runners efficiency and speed.

For a clearer visual of a heel strike, check out this video.

The second kind of foot-strike is called a forefoot or mid-foot strike and is exhibited by all barefoot runners. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to run with a heel-strike while barefoot. Try it, after a few steps the jolting pain of landing on your heel will naturally cause you to adopt a lighter, more gentle landing.

People who forefoot strike:

- Land on the forefoot or mid-foot, let the heel gently touch the ground, and push off the toes.

- Land with the foot directly under the hips and the knees bent at all times.

- Land lightly, quickly and quietly.

By landing quietly on the forefoot or mid-foot you reduce the jarring impact on your joints by spreading the impact over a longer time period. Instead of repeatedly slamming your legs into the pavement, you gently touch down, allowing your foot’s natural arch to compress and absorb the shock of each foot-strike.

Check out this video for a better visual representation of a forefoot strike.

To recap:

A proper running foot-strike consists of…

- Landing on the forefoot or mid-foot, letting the heel gently touch the ground, and pushing off the toes.

- Landing with the foot directly under the hips and the knees bent at all times.

- Landing lightly, quickly and quietly.

Note: While it is possible to adopt this kind of a foot-strike while still wearing cushioned running shoes, you will most likely have to “force” yourself run this way. While running in shoes, it feels more “natural” to land on the heel of the foot, especially if you’ve been running this way for a long time. The best way to naturally adopt this kind of forefoot strike is to run barefoot or in minimalist footwear.

Posture

So you understand the foot-strike, but what do you do with the rest of the body? What does proper running posture look like? First, it is important to be aware that all aspects of posture are interrelated and affect each other. Improper form in one part of the body can throw all other parts out of synch and lead to injury. But don’t let that scare you. With enough practice, proper alignment will start to become your natural state and you will begin to kiss your running related pains goodbye. To give you a clear picture of how technically sound runners move, I’ve broken posture into two respective categories: Legs and hips (lower body), and torso, arms, shoulders and head (upper body). Let’s look at each of these aspects now.

Aspect #1: Lower Body Posture

When it comes to your lower body, there are two key guidelines that you want to remember:

1) Lean slightly forward

It’s hard to notice it, but all elite runners share a common trait: the forward lean. In short, instead of working against gravity by leaning backwards or running straight up and down…elite runners let gravity work FOR THEM by leaning forward slightly and “falling” into each successive foot-strike.

NOTE: When employing the forward lean, be sure not to overdo it. You don’t want to lean so far forward that you’re on the verge of falling. Instead, picture a straight line running through your body from your head to your toes. Then, simply tilt that line imperceptibly forward. That’s how you want to run–in complete alignment but tilted slightly forward.

To view the forward lean in action, check out this video.

2) Maintain a light, quick and efficient stride

Good distance runners, unlike sprinters, run with short, light and springy strides. Again, shoes are the most common hinderance to this kind of running because they disrupt our natural cadence and cause us to over-stride, lean backwards and (of course) land on the wrong part of the foot. This kind of running increases strain on the joints, halts your momentum, and unsurprisingly increases your risk of injury.

When running, it is important to focus on maintaing a short stride, a slight knee lift and a quick leg turnover. Also, pay attention to the sound of your foot-strike and work on running as quietly as possible.

NOTE: Again, this often happens naturally when one starts to run barefoot because of the increased sensitivity and feel for the surface beneath your feet. However, the following (upper body) tweaks aren’t innate in all barefoot runners and can often be the difference between smooth injury free running and constant pain.

Aspect #2: Upper Body Posture

Because all aspects of running form directly affect one another, let’s start from top (the head) and work our way down.

1) Head

Not many people are aware of this, but how you hold your head is key to your overall posture. Try it. Tilt your head forward and watch how your back arches, your butt sticks out, and your alignment is immediately thrown off. When running, focus on keeping your head centered over your shoulders and look straight ahead, not down at your feet. This naturally creates a ripple affect that straightens your spine and promotes proper alignment in all other parts of the body. How you position your head is important. Don’t neglect it.

2) Shoulders

The key word when it comes to your shoulders? Relaxation. I see runners all the time who run with their shoulders tightly clenched up beside their ears. Keep your shoulders low, loose and parallel to the ground and try to avoid the unconscious clenching that often occurs as you begin to tire.

3) Arms

While running, your arms serve two primary purposes: propulsion and balance. Utilized correctly and they can increase your efficiency and speed… disregarded and they can create unnecessary torque that often leads to hip, knee and ankle injuries. Here’s what to do with your arms when you run:

1) Keep your arms bent at a 90 degree angle.

2) Don’t swing your hands below your waist. This creates torque and rotation in the hips, knees and ankles.

3) Don’t cross your body with you hands. Imagine a plane running down the middle of your chest that you don’t want to cross.

4) Relax! Keep your forearms loose and your hands lightly closed. If you start to feel your arms or hands clenching during a run, shake them out to eliminate the tension.

4) Torso

Your core/torso stabilizes your body when you run. Again, this part of the body is just one section in a sequence of interrelated parts. With this in mind, if you fail to keep your head centered and looking forward, your shoulders loose and your arms swinging correctly, your torso will consequently be off center. However, get all these aspects rights and your torso will be exactly where it needs to be: back straight, chest up and core strong.

Final Thoughts and a Checklist

If you’re interested in learning more about barefoot running technique, I recommend you check out this article on Foot Strikes & Applications to Running Barefoot as well as my friend David’s blog Naturally Engineered.

Finally, I want to reinforce the idea that if you want to see results and make the transition to a healthier, more efficient style of running. You must be willing to TAKE ACTION. Don’t just think about how barefoot running would improve your health. Instead, study the checklist below until you have each aspect engrained in your mind and then get outside and start practicing! Watch more videos of proper form, video tape yourself running, continually remind yourself of what proper form looks like. Make this a ritual and before you know it, you will have regained your natural, wild running ability.

Here’s your proper barefoot running form checklist:

Thanks for taking the time to read this post, I hope you found it helpful. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments below.

Stay strong and barefoot,

Logan