From Footstrike 101: How Should Your Foot Hit The Ground?

Photo: Scott Draper/Competitor

Just received’s email newsletter “The RunDown,” linking to this topic on many minds:  Footstrike 101: How Should Your Foot Hit The Ground?

The article speaks for itself and I hope you’ll read it if you haven’t already.

Some preliminary observations of my own subjective experience on this topic:

1. Based on the article’s takeaways, maybe terminology should change from “Footstrike” to “Foot Roll” or “Foot Fall” with the sense of the contact staying under the main body mass.

2. I’ve found myself paying attention to what my feet do in different running situations. I want to see what my body does to adapt while running on different terrains, inclines, declines, surfaces and at different speeds etc.. I also want to know what I have made into habit, whether good or bad. Are such habits lacking in one type of running versus another? This might help figure out how to break a bad habit by recruiting insights from another situation.

3. Variety is the spice of life, and there are a variety of running purposes that the body’s design equips us for carrying out. What do those purposes require of our bodies, and, are we all hitting all of the purposes for running with our running? Are we diversifying?