Balance!

Since I got my Running Dynamics Pod I’ve been focusing really hard on trying to get my left/right balance to centre. I think I’ve probably always had a strong right bias because I remember years ago noticing that the heel wears down on my right trainer much faster than the left. I think I probably overstride on my right leg, but not on the left. I became a bit more focused on this lately because my right hip keeps getting tight (which happens every so often) and then it progressed into knee pain too.

The good news is that my balance is improving! Not only that, but my overall contact time has reduced a little bit and my flight time (i.e. time off the ground) has increased quite a lot, which are proxies for good/efficient form.

But the trend still has me at only about 51.5%, so there’s still a way to go.

It’s actually quite difficult to work on this, because there isn’t much information online about left/right imbalances. Mostly advice is pretty generic and either not really actionable or not useful, so I’ve had to experiment quite a lot.

I’ve found generally that it helps to foam roll my quads and hips before I run, but some days the balance is way off and there’s not much I can do about it. I find that it’s worse on faster runs and tends to go downhill as I fatigue. However, it is improving. The outlier dot on the 11th is Two Castles, which was a 10k I ran at roughly tempo pace, which had me at about 54.7%. The last most dot is a 9k I ran yesterday at roughly the same tempo pace, and I was on 52.8%, which is still way off centre but a huge improvement.

I think I’m having most success with thinking about pushing off from the ground behind me. There are two competing schools of thought on this. One is to think about pulling your feet off the ground quickly, the other is to think about pushing behind you. I’ve tried both and I seem to get along better with the pushing idea.

I find that when I think about pushing, the weight in my feet shifts a bit more underneath and maybe behind me and my body seems to lean forward to compensate. The slight lean is important, I think the pushing idea doesn’t really make sense without it.

The second cue is to think about keeping my hips level and forward, which seems to help a lot with balance. It also kind of creates a pull through my abdomen and feels like (although I’m sure it doesn’t look like) the kind of classic elite runner pose with the strong hip extension that you see often in very fast runners, like Eluid Kipchoge here (who has the most graceful and effortless form I’ve seen):

For exercises to support this, I’m mostly focusing on:

1. Stretching and foam rolling my quads and hip flexors, because I sit down too much and tightness here interferes with proper hip extension
2. Core/abdominal exercises like bicycles and dead bugs
3. Hamstring/glute strength like exercise ball curls (I bought such a ball for Monty, so I might as well use it!) and extensions against a resistance band.

You can spend a lot of time doing general hip strength exercises like fire hydrants and bridges and even squats, and I used to, but I’ve become a bit sceptical that they realy apply to running.