Run tall, land under yourself, relax your hands. Ignore almost everything else.
There is more nonsense written about running form than about anything else in the sport. Most of it is a coach describing one elite runner’s habit as though it were a law.
The honest position: your natural form is mostly efficient for your body, big deliberate changes often make things worse, and there are about three things worth attending to.
1. Run tall
Lean very slightly forward from the ankles, not from the waist. Bending at the waist shuts down your hips, which are your engine.
The cue that works: imagine a string pulling you up from the crown of your head. Chest open, eyes about twenty metres ahead rather than at your feet.
2. Land under yourself
The single biggest one, covered properly in stride length. Foot down under your hips, knee soft, not reaching out in front. Fix it by raising your cadence rather than by thinking about your feet.
3. Relax everything above the waist
Tension costs oxygen and buys nothing.
- Hands loose, as though holding a crisp you don’t want to break
- Shoulders down and away from your ears — check every few kilometres, they creep up when you get tired
- Arms swinging front to back, not across your chest; elbows around 90°
- Jaw and face slack. Sounds silly, works.
What not to worry about
Whether you land on your heel or your midfoot. Where your foot lands relative to your hips matters. What part of it touches first mostly does not, and deliberately switching has injured a lot of people who were fine before.
Arm carriage, hip rotation, and the rest. If you are not in pain and not falling over, leave it.
How to change form at all
Never mid-run for long, and never more than one thing. Pick a cue, hold it for thirty seconds at a time a few times during an easy run, then let it go. It is learning, not enforcing — and it takes weeks, not sessions.
Uphill running is the cheapest form coach there is: you cannot overstride going up, so two minutes of any Yerevan hill does more than an hour of thinking about it.