Many runners focus primarily on weekly mileage, shoes, and training intensity. Running technique often just tags along — and in fact, it develops largely on its own. At the same time, it’s worth taking a conscious look at a few movement patterns: they tend to stay stable over years and can cost a little energy with every stride. Here are seven details worth examining more closely — with some scientific background so you understand why.
Does technique actually matter?
The key concept is running economy: the amount of oxygen you consume to maintain a given pace. With the same aerobic capacity, a more economical runner goes faster for the same effort. Barnes and Kilding (Sports Medicine Open, 2015) showed that even well-trained runners with a similar VO₂max — maximal oxygen uptake — can differ in running economy by up to 30 percent.
1. Step rate — how many steps do you take per minute?
Step rate (cadence) is the number of steps you take in one minute. Most recreational runners fall between 150 and 170 steps per minute; elite runners often exceed 180. The idea that 180 is the ideal value for everyone is an oversimplification. On one point, however, the research is clear: increasing your step rate above your habitual value reduces the load on your joints.
In a study by Heiderscheit et al. (Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2011), 45 participants ran on a treadmill. When they increased their step rate by 10 percent above their habitual value, energy absorption at the knee dropped by 34 percent. The mechanism is straightforward: the stride shortens, the foot lands closer to the body’s centre of mass, and the forces acting on the joints decrease.
The opposite is called overstriding: the foot lands too far in front, the knee is nearly straight at contact, and every stride creates a braking force. If your style feels long and “bouncy”, working on step rate is one of the best-supported measures you can take.
Read our article on step rate and stride length here.
2. Foot strike — heel, midfoot, or forefoot?
Where the foot makes first contact affects how forces are distributed across the knee, ankle, and Achilles tendon. Whether that happens at the heel, through the middle of the foot, or at the forefoot makes a real difference. There is no universally correct style: forefoot striking favours speed and elastic efficiency, midfoot striking distributes load more evenly and suits longer distances well, and heel striking is the most common pattern among recreational runners and places less demand on the calf muscles. Changing your strike pattern needs to be done gradually — moving too quickly is one of the most common causes of tendon problems.
Explore the pros and cons of each style in our dedicated article.
3. Leg recovery — what happens after push-off?
Once the foot leaves the ground, the leg needs to swing forward again for the next stride. How this happens affects the overall efficiency of the movement. More economical runners bring the heel up compactly towards the glutes — known as high heel recovery — before swinging the leg forward. Runners who carry the leg low, with the foot nearly skimming the ground during the recovery phase, cover a longer path and use more energy.
An inefficient leg recovery shows up as a running style that looks heavy and “flat”, with little lightness in the flight phase. This is exactly where targeted running drills come in — above all the heel flick: they teach the body to recover the leg automatically and compactly, so that energy goes into forward propulsion rather than unnecessary movement.
4. Hips and glutes — are you using the right muscles to move forward?
Running primarily engages the quadriceps and calves. Hip extension sometimes takes a back seat, even though it is one of the most important drivers of forward propulsion. The gluteus maximus and the posterior thigh muscles (hamstrings) make a significant contribution to push-off, and that contribution grows with speed.
Dorn, Schache, and Pandy (Journal of Experimental Biology, 2012) showed that the gluteus maximus becomes one of the most active muscles at higher speeds, accelerating the hip and knee more forcefully during the swing phase and thereby contributing to propulsion. For recreational runners, this raises a practical question: do you barely feel your glutes after a run, while your quadriceps are noticeably fatigued? That may suggest that muscle load distribution could be better balanced.
Sometimes it is enough to simply direct your attention there while running: consciously focusing on pushing off through the glutes often activates them more strongly, without changing anything else about your training. For more structured work, glute activation exercises and hip extension drills — both in the gym and as running drills — can help reinforce this pattern over time.
5. Posture — upright or leaning forward?
An overall upright posture with a slight forward lean originating from the ankles — not the hips — allows gravity to contribute to forward propulsion. An excessive forward lean of the upper body, on the other hand, alters muscle activation patterns and increases the workload at the hip.
Teng and Powers (Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2015) compared runners with high and low trunk inclination: those running with a pronounced lean of around 11° showed 140 percent greater positive hip work than those running more upright. This is not inherently “wrong” — at higher speeds it can even reduce knee load. But it confirms that posture has real effects on muscular economy.
A practical starting point is head position. Keep your gaze directed straight ahead, roughly 10 to 20 metres in front of you, not downward. Looking at your feet builds tension in the neck and shoulders, which costs extra energy over time.
6. Arms — what are they actually doing when you run?
The arms do not drive you forward — they counterbalance the rotational momentum of the legs: when the right leg swings forward, the left arm swings forward. This balance reduces unwanted rotation of the upper body and allows the legs to work with less energy loss. Arellano and Kram (Journal of Experimental Biology, 2014) measured the metabolic cost of running with fixed arms: depending on arm position, oxygen consumption increased by 3 to 13 percent compared to normal arm swing — most strongly when hands were held on top of the head.
In practice:
- Elbows at roughly 90°, neither too wide nor too tight
- Movement parallel to the direction of travel — the arms should not cross in front of the chest, as this disperses energy sideways
- Relaxed hands, as if you were holding a raw egg
- Low, loose shoulders — tension in the shoulders means energy wasted in the wrong place
- Swing your arms faster to speed up your stride: it is nearly impossible to move your arms faster than your legs — which makes consciously increasing arm tempo one of the most immediate ways to raise your step rate
Explore the topic further in our article on arm technique.
7. Vertical movement — are you bouncing too much?
With every stride, the body’s centre of mass undergoes a small vertical movement. Some of this is physiological and relates to the mechanism that stores and releases elastic energy in the tendons. It only becomes a problem when the bounce is excessive, because energy then dissipates upward instead of contributing to forward motion.
If your watch measures this parameter, the average range for runners is between 8 and 10 centimetres per stride. The figure needs context, though: pace, body height, and gradient all influence it, which is why it is more useful to track it over time than to fixate on a single number.
If you want to work on it, start by shifting your centre of mass forward and moving your foot strike towards the midfoot. A running style that is more “forward-directed” naturally reduces vertical oscillation and makes better use of elastic energy. A higher step rate also helps, since more frequent steps mean less time in the air and less up-and-down movement. And as always: gradually.
How do you work on technique?
Working on technique makes sense when you do it gradually: movement patterns change slowly, and tendons and fascia adapt even more slowly. Trying to change too many things at once, or switching foot strike pattern from one day to the next, increases the risk of overuse injuries.
It is best to focus on one element at a time, in short segments during training. As a rule, 5 to 10 minutes of technical focus at the end of the warm-up is sufficient. Running drills are the classic tool for developing neuromuscular control of individual movement elements. On the running.COACH YouTube channel you will find the most important technique drills in video format, embedded in the training programme. You can also explore the topic further in our article on the importance of coordination for runners.
Sources
Barnes, K. R., & Kilding, A. E. (2015). Running economy: measurement, norms, and determining factors. Sports Medicine Open, 1(8).
Heiderscheit, B. C., Chumanov, E. S., Michalski, M. P., Wille, C. M., & Ryan, M. B. (2011). Effects of step rate manipulation on joint mechanics during running. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 43(2), 296–302.
Dorn, T. S., Schache, A. G., & Pandy, M. G. (2012). Muscular strategy shift in human running: dependence of running speed on hip and ankle muscle performance. Journal of Experimental Biology, 215(11), 1944–1956.
Teng, H. L., & Powers, C. M. (2015). Influence of trunk posture on lower extremity energetics during running. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 47(3), 625–630.
Arellano, C. J., & Kram, R. (2014). The metabolic cost of human running: is swinging the arms worth it? Journal of Experimental Biology, 217(14), 2456–2461.