5 Cues to Remember During Your Long Runs

As the season progresses, runners gradually increase the distance of their long runs.

Our running and joint mechanics change over the course of a long run due to fatigue. Some changes include a decrease in cadence, increase in ground contact time, increase in stride length, and decreases in knee flexion and hip extension angles. These changes affect running efficiency, and compensations could lead to increased injury risk.

Here are five cues to use during your next long run to help you run efficiently and reduce injury risk. Stay Light As a runner’s stride rate or cadence decreases and ground contact time increases, they may start feeling heavy in their legs. Fatigue makes it harder to cycle the legs as quickly, and each step can start to feel like you’re hitting the ground harder.

“Stay light” is a simple cue that aims to reverse these sensations. Imagine skipping across a surface of water and needing to be weightless with each step to prevent breaking the surface tension. This can help you maintain a more upbeat tempo and spend less time on the ground with each step. Pick Up Your Feet A decreased cadence and increased ground contact time may also lead runners to adopt more of a “shuffle” during the swing phase of their running gait. The “shuffle” refers to when the feet stay relatively close to the ground as they swing towards each next step.

“Pick up your feet” prompts you to think about how you use your knees and ankles after you push off the ground. They need to be an active component in finishing the take-off and resetting for the next step. Strike Underneath Yourself An increase in stride length occurs as a result of a slower cadence and increased ground contact time. We reach further with each step to try and make up for the slower steps that we are taking. Overstriding works against our own forward momentum and causes a braking force.

To overcome this issue, try thinking of “striking underneath yourself.” Aim to replace the position of where your feet already are, rather than grabbing ahead of you with your heel. Remember that running requires propulsion instead of pulling. Get Tall Our ability to Absorb is challenged as fatigue accumulates in longer runs. It becomes harder to maintain control in joints that require more active stability, like the hip and ankle. This leads to the knee having to bear more weight.

Try to “get tall” the next time you notice your foundation is collapsing. Imagine a string attached to the top of your head that’s pulling you up. This cues your body to use every segment as an active participant in supporting your own weight during each landing. Push from the Hips The most underrated driver of running gait is the hip extensors, like the glutes. To propel forward and Bounce, we need to achieve triple extension, which means straightening at the hips, knees, and ankles.

Hip extension decreases later in long runs as runners default to primarily using their knees and ankles. “Push from the hips” aims to help you engage your hip extensors during each take-off. Imagine that the force of each push-off is coming from propulsion in the back pockets. This can help support commonly overused structures like the calf muscles and Achilles tendon. Before Your Next Long Run Just because long runs are generally longer and slower does not mean they need to be sloppy.

Consider how many repetitions of the running cycle are completed during a single long run, and how much of our weekly mileage the long run makes up. The majority of steps we take in training happen during these long runs, so we should take advantage of every stride to practice good habits.