Are You A Swinger? An Arm Swinger That Is.

There are so many questions I had early on in regards to my running form.  I had no idea of what I was doing.  I met with a running coach and he helped me with my form.  He talked about the importance of running efficiency.  There were three items that he discussed as being the most important part of running efficiency.  They were having a running cadence of 180 steps per minute, good arm swing,   I talked about running cadence in my July 2^nd blog post, “The Need For Cadence Speed.” Today I will discuss the proper way to swing your arms while running and a slight forward lean (with proper head alignment).

The most efficient way to swing your arms can be different depending on whether you are running or sprinting.  Either way you want to swing your opposite arms and legs in sync.  You should have your elbows bent at roughly a 90 degree angle.  When you are running, you will mainly pump your arms back and recover when your arm comes forward.  you want to keep your elbows behind your waist.   When you are sprinting, you will still keep your arms at 90 degrees and pump your arms forward.  For both types of arm swing, you do not want your arms to cross in front of your body.  When your arms cross in front of you, the result is that you tend to rotate your body and your posture goes backwards (which is not good).  You should have short, compact arm movements (close to your body) while keeping your arms and hands relaxed.

It will take a little practice, but it is easy to implement and will make a huge difference that you will be able to feel.