Overstriding is taking longer steps in front of your body in an attempt to increase speed. This is potentially harmful and is inefficient.
The stick walker on the left is overstriding, on the right is better.
Have someone observe you from the side. Which figure above do you resemble? Work first on eliminating the overstriding.
- Keep your natural stride length, but learn to use it powerfully.
- Your stride should be longer behind your body, where your toe is pushing off, rather than out in front of your body.
- Think of keeping your rear foot on the ground the maximum amount of time, to really roll through the step and give a good push off with the toes.
- The rear foot then passes under your body, knee flexing and driving forward but not up.
- After the foot passes by the other leg, the ankle then flexes and knee straightens (still think of driving forward, not up with the knee) to present the heel to the ground.
- The heel should strike the ground close to the front of the body, as it strikes the rear leg is rolling through the step and preparing to toe off powerfully and come forward.
- Take more, smaller steps. Fast walkers train themselves to increase the number of steps they take per second and to get full use out of the back part of the stride.
- Open up your stride behind your body by concentrating on getting a full roll through the rear foot and good push off with the rear toes.
- If you find your feet slapping the ground in front, you likely have too stiff of shoes and/or weak shins. The shins will build with practice. But you will want to look into getting some more flexible shoes.
- Hips: Your hips should rotate with each stride front to back, not side-to-side. Do not concentrate on adding hip motion at first, it should come naturally as part of a good stride and push off.
Next Page: Warming Up and Cooling Down
How to Walk Faster
Intro
Shoes
Baseline
Technique
Head and Torso
Arm Motion
Foot Motion
Leg Motion
Warm-up
Stretching
Drills & Workouts
