Stop Wasting Energy When You Run (Fix This First)

[00:00:00] That runner with the ugly arm swing just passed you at mile eight looking perfectly fresh. Meanwhile, your picture perfect form has you feeling tight, twisted, and tired. Why is that? In this episode, I’ll answer that and cover why arm swing matters for energy and balance with science to back it all up.

[00:00:17] Four simple fixes and four drills that you can use today to help you improve and a free trending plan and cheat sheet so that you can use all these drills and tips, et cetera right now and get 1% better. And most people skip this one step because it looks fine, but they’re wrong. I’m Daren D Lake, run coach, and distance running nerd.

[00:00:35] I’ve spent the last 30 years figuring out all of this by testing it on myself to again, get 1% better at small overlook things like running form and in particular arm swing. Doing that helped me run a sub three hour marathon and it could help you too. Alright, the six levers of running form. There are six things that you could focus on to run with better form.

[00:00:55] Running with better form doesn’t mean you will look good. Sometimes it does. It’s about running economy. A fancy run science word for running efficiency. It’s basically how far or fast you can go with the least amount of energy. So the six levers to help improve your running form. One foot strike. So this is where four foot midfoot and heel striking terms.

[00:01:15] You might hear about them. Spoiler. They don’t matter as much as you think. But midfoot is best if you can get there. I did a whole episode on this. See above description below, uh, or show notes to get all of that. And number two, posture. Be somewhat straight with your, your back and your obviously your spine.

[00:01:32] And you wanna have a slight lean forward ’cause you’re moving that way from your torso though. So above your waist and not your neck. You don’t wanna lean forward like this. People get tired or they have bad habits. Think hanging from a Christmas tree like an ornament is. Tied to the back of your shirt so you’re hanging down.

[00:01:50] Uh, number three is breathing. Yes, breathing is part of running form and you wanna focus on nose breathing for easy runs if you can. And mouth breathing on hard runs. If you can stay relaxed though, and guess what? I did a whole episode on that. If you wanna go deeper up here or see episode description or show notes.

[00:02:08] Below for that link. Number four, cadence. This is how many steps you take per minute, like your heart rate, but obviously for your feet less is usually not as efficient. There is a magical number of 180 steps per minute that a lot of professionals and experts talk about, but it doesn’t apply to some. I also did a deep dive on cadence.

[00:02:27] Check that out at the link below. And while cadence is important, it isn’t as important as this next lever. Number five, stride length. So this is the over versus underriding issue that most new runners have you heard about and tired runners end up doing, myself included. I get tired. I. I overstride, things get sloppy, I heal, strike, et cetera.

[00:02:48] So when people hear about stride length, ’cause you want optimally a longer stride length, you stretch out so you reach further. Again, that’s not fully correct ’cause you might overstride and you also might lower your cadence and. And you’ll spend too much time on the ground. So ground contact time, you don’t want those things.

[00:03:05] Those are all bad for running efficiently. I did a whole episode on that. I do episodes of all this stuff if you wanna check that out up here or link below. And last thing is arm swing. So this is what we are actually gonna focus on in this episode. Most new runners don’t think about it, but it can unlock some serious gains.

[00:03:21] So is arm swing actually worth worrying about or is it just cosmetic? And just for looks so. Enter what is arm swing? Arm swing is the coordinated back and forth motion of your upper body, obviously that very simple, shoulders, elbows, and hands. It cancels leg torque and keeps your torso stable. I didn’t care about any of this until I learned to swim.

[00:03:43] So for my Ironman that I did, I needed to learn how to swim properly for 3.8 kilometers. That’s about 2.5 miles in O. Open water, the ocean in the water. You can’t. Effort. You know, hard effort. I’m gonna try really hard to fast times like you can in running. So in running, you could try really hard and you’ll probably run faster.

[00:03:59] Walking, even cycling, you could try really hard and you go faster. Instead, you actually have to slow down, which allows you to move smoothly and suddenly be fast with less effort. Same rule applies to running. So if you slow things down and you tighten the mechanics and you get your arm swinging and you focus on drills, you can run.

[00:04:16] Cleaner and hopefully better. So a 2014 study in the Journal of Experimental Biology tested runners with different arm positions behind the back, across the chest, and on top of the head. Yes, it’s silly, but uh, this is actually some good stuff. The worst, the arm position, the worst the energy cost running with your hands on your head.

[00:04:36] That’s brutal. 13% increase in metabolic cost compared to normal arm swing. So when the researchers, they stop people from swinging their arms in all those different ways, runners automatically increased their torso rotation to make up for it. Like the physics, you can’t negate the physics your body knows it needs.

[00:04:52] That counterbalance, so give it what it wants. Torque is like driving with the steering wheel slightly turned to the left in relation to running with your arms in arm form, you waste fuel and after a 20 mile drive, 20 kilometers or whatever, you’ll end up in the wrong place. If your steering wheel’s.

[00:05:07] Tilted like that, you’re gonna go that way and you’ll probably crash into the side or another car or something, or golf a cliff. And from an energy view, it’s like leaving a window open at highway speed. Tiny losses, they add up to wasted fuel. Speaking of tiny losses, if you want to be fuel efficient with your arm swing and use this now, I created a free cheat sheet checklist and drills built into the training plan.

[00:05:28] I’m gonna go over those drills very shortly, but this is, you jump on them right now. So again, I got you covered. Get it for free at the QR code. Appear link below on the show notes, but back to science. Alright, here’s the first simplest thing to check. Number one, shoulder drop, not shrug. Drop your shoulders.

[00:05:43] That’s it. Super simple. I’m always carrying tension. Always have high shoulders. I have big, broad shoulders. Ah, don’t carry tension in your traps. When you run. The traps are back here. It’s the big muscles, obviously, of your back and your shoulders. But why should you do this? Because Ray’s shoulders create.

[00:05:57] Constant tension and waste energy holding that position. Think of flexing your bicep for 30 minutes straight. It’s exhausting, right? The drill to practice it. Shoulder drops. Do shoulder shrugs like you’re in the gym, both no weights and then release. So you wanna go up and then drop 10 times before you run up and then drop.

[00:06:16] Super easy. Do that before you get out the door or in front of a mirror or reflective surface so you can train your brain and body. To know what feels and looks like it’s supposed to, uh, the right way. During your warmup, every two minutes, if your warm ups, 10 minutes, every two, three minutes, do a body scan, check if your shoulder’s crept up and exhale hard and let them drop down.

[00:06:37] Again, a common mistake with this whole shoulder thing, collapsing the chest when trying to relax. So relax. Shoulders without slumping. You don’t wanna do that. Needs a strong enough core. So if you have a weak core, no problem. Just strength, train more and do some planks. I got you covered. Go get that episode up there, link below.

[00:06:53] I got episodes about everything onto fix number two and drill elbow angle 90 degrees, but soft aim for a soft 90 degree. So we want this, but back here at mid stride of your elbow, perfectly bent in the middle, not locked, not straight. Not here. You don’t want that. You don’t want that. Just nice, nice and loose.

[00:07:13] Why the elbow hinge gives leverage without wasting rotation. Imagine rowing with a broomstick versus a proper. Or in the water, the drill to practice it. Elbow angle, standing in place. Pump your arms for 20 reps and looking in the mirror or filming yourself. Watch that for 90 degree. Bend at mid swing. So you wanna keep it loose.

[00:07:32] Always be loose. Always be loose. I’ll get to hands in a second, then run easy for 400 meters. Focusing only on keeping that elbow hinge. So this is on your warmup. You can do that. A common mistake with this whole elbow thing, straight arm windmills that send rotation into torso. So you don’t wanna be doing this, you also don’t wanna be doing that.

[00:07:49] I’ll get into crossing over in a second. But before you bend your elbows, you want to help out another self-Coach runner dope. Do this easy thing. Just watch this until the end. Help put it at two x speed. If you can’t wait, the signals to the algorithms that this content is for the types of runners. Thank you for doing it.

[00:08:05] If you haven’t, and if you’re feeling spicy, you can like this, subscribe, share out a link or comment below if you’re actively trying to fix your arm swing or not. Or if you don’t care, would love to know. Let’s get into tip number three. Drive back. So this is fix and drill number three. You don’t wanna cross.

[00:08:21] You wanna drive back, drive the hands back, finish behind the hips. So I don’t know if you can see me finish behind the hips. Don’t cross the midline. Why crossing the body causes counter rotation and fights the legs. Think piston motion in a car or engine, not a windshield wiper sweep. We don’t want that.

[00:08:39] The drill to practice it, drive back. This is really easy. During your next easy run, focus on one arm for one minute, drive your hand back until it passes your hip pocket and then switch arms. So you wanna do that one minute? You just focusing on that. Focusing on it. Do not over exaggerate it. We’re not over it.

[00:08:54] We’re just making sure it passes alternate after those one minute on, one minute off until it feels natural on both sides. A common mistake, thinking longer arc across the body equals more power. Again, we are not pushing like this, so how does arm pattern actually help the legs enter? Run science nerd Break.

[00:09:11] Arms and legs are neurologically linked, like literally wired together in your spinal cord. A 2001 study in the European Journal of Neuroscience used walking to prove this. When researchers distributed one leg during walking arm muscles responded in just 65 to 80 milliseconds. That’s faster than conscious thought.

[00:09:30] The study found flexible. We’re gonna get a big scientific neuronal coupling between your limbs. A task dependent connection that coordinates. Upper and lower body movement while this was tested in walking the same neural pathways fire during running. When your arm motion is consistent, your nervous system uses these connections to sink timing and the result smoother, less effortful steps like pedaling a bike in proper rhythm.

[00:09:53] When your legs and body work together in a smooth, nice fashion, you coast easier, fight the rhythm, and every pedal stroke feels harder. And onto the last tip. Hands and grip matter more than you probably think. So fix and drill. Number four, hands low. Loose grip, as I talked about earlier, hands should sit around the belt line.

[00:10:11] Fingers are relaxed. Why? Because when shoulders creep up, usually with fatigue or tension, your hands, they drift high, which waste energy. So the hands actually go against the shoulders in a good way, like they’ll, uh, counterbalance and check the shoulders and all this waste energy. You’re basically carrying your arms instead of letting them swing.

[00:10:29] So we don’t wanna carry them high guard. Is for boxing. I’m not a boxer and it’s not efficient for running. So the drill to practice this all hands low and loose. This is actually a sprinter’s drill. I love this drill. Run 30 seconds. Imagining you’re holding a potato chip between each thumb and finger right here.

[00:10:45] Got a little potato chip firm enough not to drop them light enough not to crush it. You wanna check your hand position? They should hover around your waistband or shorts. So we’re doing that down here and you wanna make sure she’s doing that. And you wanna put your thumbs up also. So thumbs up. Or facing as close to up as you can with that potato chip.

[00:11:03] So it’s like the potato chip’s in between here. So a common mistake, clench fist or holding phone or water during normal runs should not be holding anything that messes up so much. Even your phone, you might think it’s light, uh, water, like you actually will like mess the rotation for miles on end and many, many runs day in, day out.

[00:11:20] We don’t do that. So. These are your four drills. Pick one per run this week, rotate them through. By the end of week, you’ll have done all four. Or you know what? Get that training plan and it’ll help you do all this. So what happens when you put all this together? Remember that runner that beat you and was looking great with the ugly swing from the intro?

[00:11:39] Turns out that run form probably wasn’t ugly at all. It just looked different. What matters is this Super easy to remember. Sequence drop shoulders, 90 degree elbow drive back, loose hands with. Thumbs pointed up, potato chip, nail. Those four things your way, we’re all different. And you’ll be the one looking fresh at mile eight, kilometer 14, whatever race you’re doing, and you’ll have reduced torso rotation, less wasted vertical motion and cleaner cadence.

[00:12:03] A small 1% better focus that stacks with everything else. And if you haven’t already. Go and get that free training plan and cheat sheet. You also get signed up for my newsletter that’s five minutes or less per week in your inbox to help you with even more stuff like run form in general. Those six things that I talked about, cadence VO two max, and mental toughness.

[00:12:22] It’s at the QR code here. Link below or in the show notes. Arm swing is one of many things that makes your run form better. You probably have heard about a cadence thing and you might wanna increase it because you think it’s low. So go and check out 18 tips to better Run Cadence up here or link below or in the show notes.

[00:12:40] Peace.