Hi, this is Debbie Boyle's coach at Mojo for Running. The topic of this podcast is

running form. This podcast is for all runners, new, experienced, and veteran. Yes, even veteran

runners should always be ready to tweak their form because if there is room for improvement,

doing so may lessen the likelihood of injury and will often result in a PR.

Form is absolutely critical to beginning runners.

Often, I find myself working with people who have struggled to become runners for years,

but always gave up before being able to even run a single mile.

Sometimes, learning the correct form is the one thing I can teach them that enables them

finally to do it, to succeed, to run that first mile and then to run many more.

That's because correct form is much more comfortable, because it's more efficient.

Less energy is expended to achieve the same forward

movement, which means it's easier. Sometimes people tell me, I can't run because it bothers my knees.

Well, I'm not a doctor. I'm sure there are some cases when a person's knees do prevent them

from running, but I will share this. I've worked with people to improve their

form, specifically helping them stop heel striking and found that once they make that correction,

it puts an end to all of their knee pain. Of course that won't work for everybody. It depends

on what's causing the pain. But I've seen it happen in many, many cases,

because when you switch from being a heel striker to being a midfoot striker, it takes all the

stress off the knees. In another case, sometimes I work with veteran runners who have become

discouraged because they're on a running plateau or worse their times are getting

slower.

In such cases, I tell them they need an intervention.

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