HOW TO RUN -For barefoot and huarache runners

SUMMARY

• Running Efficiency Mechanics: Just by leaning our hips slightly forward, we can trigger our legs’ fascia to act like springs, coiling and uncoiling, as our body moves forward.
• General and Detailed Mechanics: Maintaining a forward center of gravity by aligning the hip with the big toe while landing our feet, increases cadence, the key to running efficiency.
• Plantar Fascitis Cure: Walking barefoot and using toe separators can restore the tendon and nerves connecting the big toe to the heel, after decades of wearing shoes has atrophied them.

RUNNING EFFICIENCY MECHANICS

Leaning our hips slightly forward while running, inevitably forces our legs to step below our center of gravity. Below is a step-by-step description of how to aim those initially “forced” steps, in a way that achieves higher running efficiency.

GENERAL MECHANICS

While keeping your center of gravity (your hips) slightly forward as you run, facing your shoulders forward, and swinging your elbows back and forth -as if planting ski poles- focus on the following:

1. As the foot hits the ground, the hip should align with the heel, which barely touches the floor as your forefoot absorbes the shock by springing forward, while pivoting inward to generate torsion.
2. The more your toes are leaning outward as the heel touches the ground, the higher the kinetic energy generated from the forefoot pivoting from outer to inside edge, while springs forward.
3. Purposely aligning your landings near an imaginary mid-line traced on the ground below you, makes it easier to repeat the cycle for each leg, than aligning your landings near a shoulder-width line.
4. Mid-line landings radically increase your running speed, as they maximize higher cadence (the number of cycle-repeats), while requiring drastically less aerobic exertion from your lungs.

MECHANICS IN DETAIL

Aim to hit the mid-line below you, barely touching it with your heel’s outer edge, and consciously involving your hip and buttock, as you press the forefoot into the ground, while pivoting inwards.

2. As the forefoot (ball of the foot and toes) squarely strikes the ground, you start pivoting it from its outer edge towards its inside edge, as if squeezing the ground to propel you forward even higher.

3. “Squeezing” Detail: While transferring your body weight from outer edge to inside edge, aim to grip the ground under your foot by pressing down your toes as if pulling the ground towards you, as soon as your forefoot hits the surface. Then, use that leverage, to spring from your toe-tips as they lift off from the ground, while swinging your arm from that side backwards, as if pressing on a ski pole.

4. As your toe-tips lift off and your other foot is about to land near the mid-line -on the other heels’ outer edge- use that leg and arm to once again pivot your body over its center of gravity.

PLANTAR FASCITIS (REALLY FASCIOSIS)

Long story short, if you wear shoes from the time you are a toddler until after adolescence you are now saddled with an atrophy of the tendon that connects your big toe with the heel. Getting that tendon fully functioning again may take months of walking barefoot and using toe separators, such as these. Using them for a couple of hours a day until you can walk all day with them, requires wearing them performing daily toe-spreading exercises until you can begin running again (2-3 months in total). For further details and daily running inspiration, you’re welcome to join us Huarache Runners club.