Gait Retraining 101: Optimizing Your Arm Swing for Better Form

Injuries are unfortunately a common part of the running and triathlon world, with up to 92% of runners experiencing an injury at some point. The causes of these injuries are varied and depend on factors like training history, work, diet, sleep, and much more. While we’ve discussed topics like overtraining, bike fit, and running gait in previous posts, some of the most powerful tools for improving performance and reducing injury risk are often overlooked: strength training, yoga, and mindfulness meditation. Sometimes, adding these components to your training routine, instead of just piling on more miles or hours, can be the key to achieving better results and staying injury-free.

Strength Training

Strength training is a game-changer when it comes to improving performance and reducing injury risk. As Zach Bettis highlighted in a previous blog, strength training can improve running economy, power, and aerobic capacity. This means your heart works more efficiently, you can run faster with fewer steps, and you can cover the same distance with less effort. You don’t need to spend hours in the gym; just two 30-45 minute strength training sessions per week are enough to reap these benefits.

From an injury perspective, strength training helps correct muscle imbalances and functional movement deficits that contribute to common running injuries. Issues like knee valgus, femoral adduction, and over-pronation are often linked to these imbalances, and strength training can address them, improving your form and reducing the risk of injury.

Yoga

Yoga is an excellent addition to any endurance athlete’s training program because it promotes strength, flexibility, and a strong mind-body connection. The practice integrates breathing with movement, stimulating both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

In endurance sports, we tend to over-rely on the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the fight-or-flight response, raising heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure. However, tapping into the parasympathetic nervous system can help lower heart rate, relax muscles, and prepare the body for rest. Since many endurance athletes operate in a constant state of high-stress activity, yoga helps to counterbalance that stress, improving recovery and reducing the risk of injury.

Taking a yoga class once a week—especially one focused on runners or athletes—can significantly enhance your training. You may even want to try our Yoga for Runners class, which starts in June!

Mindfulness Meditation

Spending just 3-5 minutes in quiet reflection each day can do wonders for reducing stress, improving performance, and lowering injury risk. Several studies show that mindfulness meditation can boost motivation, focus, and overall satisfaction in athletes. It also helps reduce stress and the risk of burnout, and it plays a role in improving recovery times.

In one study, athletes who practiced mindfulness meditation were found to be less likely to get injured, as self-regulating thoughts and emotions contributes to better physical resilience. By training your mind to stay calm and focused, you can avoid the mental and physical strain that leads to injuries.

Making It Work for You

We all have reasons to skip out on strength training, yoga, or meditation—busy schedules, lack of time, or simply not seeing the immediate benefits. However, by replacing just one or two hours of your weekly training routine with these practices, you can significantly boost your resilience to injury. Whether you choose yoga, strength training, or meditation—or a combination of all three—you’ll be improving both your physical and mental strength.

Changing habits is always a challenge, but isn’t it more rewarding to keep training and racing than to watch from the sidelines due to injury? Stay consistent, and your body will thank you.

In recent years, strength training has become an essential part of many runners’ routines. More and more runners are realizing the benefits of hitting the gym to build strength, and for good reason. Strength training not only boosts power, speed, and overall performance, but it also enhances tissue resilience and the body’s ability to handle increasing loads. When muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones are conditioned to manage these loads, runners experience fewer injuries and less pain.

The stronger we are, the more force we generate with each stride. More force means running faster. However, strength alone isn’t enough. If we can’t control the force we produce or use it efficiently, we’ll tire more quickly, our running economy will decline, and we become more prone to injury. This is where stability training plays a crucial role.

What is Stability?

USA Track & Field defines stability as the degree of resistance to toppling over. When running, every time our foot strikes the ground, we transfer force into the earth, and the ground pushes back with an equal amount of force, traveling up our leg. Stability is our ability to manage these “ground reaction forces” and maintain balance as we continue moving forward.

Our “ship” can be strong and fast, but we must be able to captain it—control the strength and power we generate—to prevent injury and improve our overall energy efficiency.

The Role of Stability Training

When it comes to running, stability training is primarily focused on managing forces in the rotational and frontal planes. These forces need to be controlled at various points in the body: at the foot (pronation and supination), lower leg (rotation in or out), knee (collapsing towards the midline), upper leg (thigh rotation), hip (hip drop), and core (excessive trunk rotation or side-to-side movement).

The first point of contact with the ground is the foot, so if we can’t control these forces here, the impact is felt higher up the chain—affecting the knee, hip, and lower back. Poor stability often leads to altered mechanics, which can overload tissues and eventually cause injury.

Why Stability Gets Lost

Injuries, particularly in the lower leg, can impair stability. Pain often causes muscles in the affected area to underperform or fail to engage properly. This inhibition commonly affects stability muscles, which are critical for maintaining good posture and form. For example, people with low back pain often struggle to activate their glutes, leading to problems like the dreaded hip drop. This causes the knee to collapse inward, and the foot to pronate, all of which are common culprits in lower extremity injuries.

Another sneaky culprit is the ankle sprain. While it might seem like a minor injury at the time, it can set the stage for long-term dysfunction. Ankle sprains interfere with our balance system (proprioception), which is crucial for stability. Research has shown that even an ankle sprain can inhibit the gluteus medius—the hip muscle vital for stability. If this muscle isn’t firing properly, it can cause a cascade of issues up the kinetic chain, eventually leading to more significant problems.

Regaining Control of Your Stability

Improving stability and regaining control of your “ship” is key to preventing further injury. Stay tuned for the next blog in this series, where we’ll dive into specific exercises to help runners enhance their stability and strengthen their foundation.