Improved technique

Remember when you were in primary school, and a prank was to tie
someone’s shoelaces together? It turns out that this method
actually improves your running performance; you just need a little
more bandwidth. 

Engineers^[1]
from the University of California at Santa Barbara led by Elliot
Hawkes^[2], a Visiting Assistant
Professor from Stanford University, have discovered that attaching
a light resistance band between your feet is the answer to better
running. 

RELATED: SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED AN
EXOSUIT THAT HELPS YOU WALK AND RUN
SIMULTANEOUSLY^[3]

Improved technique

By the simple act of tying your shoes together, you may improve
your running efficiency by 6.4%^[4]. 

“In running, the energy is mostly wasted,” said Hawkes,
whose paper is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology^[5].

Dr. Elliot Hawkes. Source: Stanford
University^[6]

What does Hawkes mean by his comment? 

The way most of us run is, in fact, extremely inefficient
as far as the human body moves. This is one of the reasons why we
burn so many calories while running — up to you if you’d prefer to
keep burning those calories, or if you’d like to improve your
running^[7]
technique. 

Essentially, for every 10
calories^[8] burned, less than one is
actually needed to move our body forward. The remaining nine
calories are used to keep you standing upright, and to move your
legs.

Hawkes noticed runners on the running track and realized
that by adding a spring mechanism to people’s legs while they
swing^[9]
them back and forth — the running movement — their running
efficiency could improve. 

Most of the time, when you’re told to improve your running
style, the focus remains on the strike of the foot, not the swing
of the legs. 

What did the research team do?

“We started at the knees, but in the end, we clipped the
band onto the shoes,” Hawkes
said^[10]. “It’s easier to get it
onto the shoes, and it’s more comfortable — with the knees, the
band rubs on you in funny ways.”

It might seem strange to attach a band between your feet
as you head out for a run, but what the team discovered was that
most runners naturally, and almost instantaneously, fell into this
new running style. Amazingly, no
one tripped. 

What Hawkes and his team saw was that the band created
efficiencies with the swinging of the legs, increasing shorter
strides, and lowering the amount of energy required for the
movement. 

“It actually reduces the effort to ‘bounce’ during
stance,” Hawkes
explained.^[11] “Naturally, people run
at the 90 steps per minute. If you could take
shorter, quicker steps, it would reduce the energy required to
bounce, but it takes much more energy to swing your legs that fast,
so you don’t naturally do it.”

Attention runners: The next time you go out
for a jog, you might want to strap a light resistance band between
your feet. This rather quirky but oddly effective hack, according
to UC Santa Barbara mechanical engineer Elliot Hawkes, could make
you a more https://t.co/BO1xZ3y0dZ pic.twitter.com/nwnKk47zak^[12][13]

Hawkes continued, “However, the band removes this cost for
leg swing, meaning you can easily take 100 steps a minute, reducing
the energy required to bounce.”

Watch out, though; this experiment focused on
long-distance runners on flat surfaces. For you trail runners,
sprinters, or hurdlers, don’t try this at home.