Physics on the run

It’s been seven years since Christopher McDougall published his book “Born to Run”. The book that began it all for the minimalistic running movement. Not wearing shoes seemed to be the way, the secret to unlocking the burden of running injuries. We didn’t know how to run, we didn’t know how to distribute weight properly, we needed help and it came from something so simple that it was right before our eyes…..take off your shoes.

And why might this be? Well as explained by Daniel Lieberman and his Skeletal Biology and Biomechanics Lab, it came down to how we controlled forces.

A breakdown of Vertical and anterior-posterior ground reaction forces- retrieved from: https://peerj.com/articles/4489/

If you have read the book, you may recall this graph. When we contact the ground the ground contacts us with a similar force, essentially Newton’s Third Law of motion. Looking at the graph above you will see two important points, labelled 1 and 2. These are points of force that we create when we run barefoot. The rate and total force that pushes back at us as our feet contact the ground. There are a few ways to reduce the forces encountered when running, a simple method is to run softer, not to load as much by limiting footwear. But is there another way to reduce force? One that requires timing and control, could there be a way to strengthen your body’s ability to tolerate these loads? To train the body to prevent overloading?

Do you remember my previous post on periodization?