Your Best Stride: How To Optimize Your Natural Running Form

Most books on running form revolve around the premise that there is an ideal form all runners should try to achieve. These books explain how that form should look and how runners can work to emulate it as closely as possible. Research and experience show, however, that people can run effectively in a wide variety of patterns with some key universal elements. Unfortunately, the constraints of our modern lifestyles change how we move, limiting our range of motion and weakening key muscle groups. Runner's World Your Best Stride is designed to help runners counteract those forces and regain their own unique, powerful and effective stride that will carry them through endless, injury free miles. Building off of his viral Running Times article from April 2014, "It's All in the Hips," author Jonathan Beverly details his search for common ground among physical therapists, podiatrists and coaches on which elements of running form are universal and how to improve them. For instance, he explores how footstrike is actually a by-product of the movement in your knees, torso and arms. Specific exercises show readers how to counteract tight muscles from excessive sitting, howto improve limited arm mobility from hunching over electronic devices, and ways to improve speed by lengthening your stride. All of this culminates in an approachable guide to human movement, and a practical tool for improvement.