Running on the balls of your feet (Read 4555 times)

This is an honest question (not trying to be snide): Why did you do that?

Running on the balls of your feet is for sprinting, 200m or less, 400m if you're a really strong sprinter. I had a friend who ran on the balls of his feet all the time, just barely letting his heel touch the ground, but that's the way he usually ran. He had giant calves and always had shins splints. Don't mess around with the way that your foot hits the ground. Just buy appropriate shoes.

I'm impressed that you could do that for such a long distance!

Haile Gebrselassie is a forefoot striker. I heard he tried to change to midfoot. I think Pose Method is forefoot and ChiRunning midfoot. Some people do better changing footstrike and others get injured. I tend to be a forefoot striker because of heels but I do better using midfoot for longer distances.

Thanks for asking though - someone at work today told me everyone was SUPPOSED to run this way. He couldn't believe I was coming down on my heel. I'm easily confused so this didn't help!

As Blue skies mentioned Haile Gebrselassie is a forefoot striker he was the best long distance runner in the world in the 90's. Certainly at the 10k distance. So it is possible. However much like the responses you got in your thread about changing shoes and the way your foot strikes the ground. The fitness level I have achieved running one way, really caused me to stress the calf muscle much more than I could of if I just started running as a forefoot striker. I could have done alot of damage and I'm lucky I didn't do anything other than cause alot of soreness. However if I take it more slowly and start off with much shorter distances I may well be able to change. The foot lands much more quietly as a forefoot striker. I think there would be less pounding. It would be a long process to change but the news about Gebrselassie makes it intriguing. MTA So I just told Carolyn (My Daughter) about my experiment- to my surprise she said, that's the way I run.

Running "ON" the balls of your foot is actually a bit misleading. There ARE people who actually do run on the ball of their feet. I know of this woman here locally who really does run on her balls; I mean, if you check the sole of her shoes, heel part of her shoes are not even dirty! Most people, however, actually land outside of the ball of the foot (I know that you know...) then the entire foot would touch the ground and take the weight. I run that way. It put quite a bit of stress on your Achilles and, yes, I have had Achilles problems. Now technically, calf problem, and I know you now DO have a calf soreness from running your your toes (another misleading term...) but calf soreness actually comes MORE from stretch of your calves rather than simply landing on the ball of your foot. If you wear thin sole shoes and your calves are stretched further; or if you run faster than usual so the angle of your lower leg as the heel leaves the ground (as your Center of Gravity moves ahead of your landing foot). If you haven't checked, there's a new running shoe commpany called Newton and their website (www.newtonrunning.com) has a story about what they call "mid-foot langing" technique. In Japan, they call it "flat-foot" landing and gaining fast popularity among ordinary joggers. Once again, your heel actually comes down and touches the ground; but you land more or less mid-foot, or whole foot, as opposed to heel striking. This, I believe, is more natural way for running; not heel-to-toe. We've worked with Newton Running and they claim that their shoes actually reinforce mid-foot landing. I can't say because Im mid-foot landing guy to begin with! ;o) But I've talked to a lot of people who actually swear by it. So if you're actually really interested in, try them on. Now bear in mind, like everything else, it may take some time to get used to it. You can't simply jump out one day and run 25k on your balls and feel fine. Seriously, go out and run barefoot on grass for 10 minutes to begin with. I'll ask you; would you land on your heel? Now, I was just watching "Chariots of Fire" a couple of nights ago; remember that scene where all of the guys were running barefoot on the beach? Now, it looks like they're landing on their heel but note how their knees are not straight but bent slightly and, as their Center of Gravity moves, it rolls very quickly to "flat-foot". Reiko Tosa, and I've seen it slow-motion, lands on her heel but her stride frequency is so quick that she rolls onto the whoe foot so fast that it does not create any braking action at all. Her shoes, specifically hand-built at ASICS, has a heel plug because she does land on her heels. On the other hand, Noguchi, lands "flat-footed" more "mid-foot landing" that you can see the dirty spot right around the ball of her foot more so than heel (I have a picture of her kissing her shoes after Athens victory). It is in fact a more natural way to run; I've observed my daughter several years ago when she was running around the field barefoot with her friends, ALL of them were landing mid-foot, or flat-footed. Then at the time she was playing basketball and as she put heavy bulky basketball shoes which I had a hard time bending, all of a sudden she started to land hard on her heel. I have a beartuful picture of Frank Shorter winning Fukuoka marathon in 1971. The photo was taken somewhere around 30k point. His left foot is just about to land. Yes, you've guessed it; he's landing outside the ball, the base of his pinky toe. Pretty much the same way, incidentally, as the other "one of the greatest marathon runners of all time", Bill Rodgers.

You can do it but the technique has to be right. Most of us tend to reach a bit when we run, partly because we're not that fast. Really good runners tend to have a strong 'pawback' where they pull their foreleg back quickly and contact the ground nearly underneath them. They can run closer to their forefoot because it's more natural to strike the forefoot rather than heel when the contact point is below you instead of slightly ahead. I think the better method towards this is work on footstrike and pawback rather than intentionally trying to land on the forefoot. In other words, rather than trying to bend your foot downward and force contact at the forefoot, work on having your contact point closer to your center of gravity and the forefoot strike should come naturally. I can do it on shorter intervals but can't do it on slower paced runs.

Jim: A good point but I don't necessarily agree. On my morning jog, I probably go at 10-minute pace or slower and I still land the way I do--on my forefoot. Last year, I gave my girl 2~6 weeks of break during the summer after track season. My Achilles was very sore so I thought, okay, this is a good chance to not run at all and rest. Well, it turned out, rest actually made it worse! So I thought, the hell with it, I'll run. Naturally, I was moving very slowly. Now because my Achilles hurt, I was "sitting in a bucket" and bringing my foot more forward than my natural landing. I was landing on my heel but, like I said, I was "sitting in a bucket" and the emphasis was more like "brinigng my foot forward". Interestingly, I got tired more and more quickly. So I brought my C of G up higher (not sit in a buckett) and very slightly lean forward; trying to, as I put it, "draw a circle with my legs". Sure, Achilles hurt like hell; but I started to move much more smoothly, naturally, and with less effort. On the side note; interestingly, initially Achilles hurt very much running like that; but it got much better by running this way. I've had this Achilles problem for over 7 years and I think I learnt a lot about it. I actually swear by minimalist shoes, XC running, and eccentric exercise more than anything else.