3 Magic Tips to Better Run Form in 15 Minutes (Form Drills)

[00:00:00] Alright, so you want better running form. You’ve watched all the videos, you tried to fix your posture. You film yourself running and you’re still breaking down halfway through races. There are three drills that fix this, and most runners either skip them or they might even do them wrong. In this episode, you’ll learn why fixing your form is so hard when you’re tired.

[00:00:19] The three drills pros do before runs, how to do them properly, and one of these three. You’ve probably been doing them wrong. What you’ll feel in the middle of your next race when you do these consistently and a free training plan to make this a habit before every run. I’m Daren D Lake certified run coach, and I’ve spent the last 30 years researching, talking to experts and testing this stuff on myself to get 1% better at small things like running form.

[00:00:44] Doing that helped me run a sub three hour marathon and slide into sub 17 for the 5K. Now I want to show you and a hundred thousand other self-coach runners how to do the. At two. Let’s go. Alright, so the problem with fixing your running form, some runners think that good form is about technique, so they’ll watch all the videos.

[00:01:03] You’re probably watching this one. And then they try to land differently. They don’t wanna over stride, which is fine. They want a midfoot strike, et cetera. They focus on the core and making sure that they don’t lean too far forward or too far back. And it works for like the first, I don’t know, five, 10 minutes, right?

[00:01:17] Then you get a little tired and everything starts to slowly fall apart. Your shoulders start to creep up. Your foot lands further out from your body. Again, overstriding, it just starts happening. Your cadence goes lower. You start doing that shuffle. Meanwhile, someone passes you halfway through looking completely smooth.

[00:01:35] Same fatigue, but different results. What do you think the difference is? Those runners aren’t just trying to hold good form. Their body has been trained to default to good form. Even when they’re tired and even when it hurts. And that training doesn’t come from thinking about your form while you run. It comes from practicing the movements before you run and baking into your neuromuscular.

[00:01:54] So how do you actually put this into practice before your next run? Watch any elite or pro runner warmup before a workout or race. You’ll see them doing dynamic running movements and drills. Before their runs, races, et cetera. They’re not doing this because their form is broken. Their form is already the best it can be.

[00:02:11] They’re doing it because these drills prime their nervous system to move efficiently before they start running. It’s like muscle memory, but for movement patterns, studies show that elite runners have better neuromuscular control than amateur runners. The nervous system. Coordinates muscles more efficiently.

[00:02:26] It’s like prepping ingredients before you cook. By the time the pan gets hot, everything’s already chopped, measured and good to go. So when things get hectic, you’re not scrambling in the fridge, in the cupboard. Oh, I didn’t go shopping for the thing. You just execute the good news. This isn’t genetic. It’s learned.

[00:02:41] Practice the right patterns enough times, and your body defaults to them automatically, especially when you start getting tired. Here’s your action step for you to do. Next time you go out for a run. So watch yourself for the first 10 minutes. Like you can either film yourself for 10 minutes, is pretty long, but it’s best to just like think and be aware, like zoom out, notice how your form feels.

[00:03:01] Do cues like, where’s my posture? Where’s my legs? Et cetera. Then at 20 minutes in, check in again, are your shoulders creeping up? Is your cadence slowing down? Then at, you know, 30, 40 minutes if you want to go that far, 60 minutes, check in. Again, the gap between fresh and fatigue, that’s what we are about to fix.

[00:03:19] This is. Running actually works. So running is just a progression. You bounce vertically, you lean forward to move, you drive your knees to go faster, and then your arms naturally counterbalance. So I’ve got the video up here. If you’re watching, if you’re not watching, you’re on the podcast, please just go Spotify.

[00:03:37] Just go watch the YouTube video. The link is in the show notes description, but again, you just want to bounce forward. You’re going up and down. You lean forward to move. Once you get that up and down movement, then your knees, you just pick them up just a tiny bit and you start going faster. That would be more of your like easy to moderate pace, zone two between marathon, half marathon pace, and then if you want to get to like 5K pace or even faster, you just throw your arms in.

[00:04:01] That’s it. Just those four basic phases of the running create the movement of running, and you get slow, medium, and fast. These three drills that I’m about to show you in less than 20 seconds will isolate each phase, so your nervous system learns the patterns. By the time you start running, your body already knows what to do.

[00:04:19] There’s one problem though. Most runners do these once and forget, but here’s how to actually make it stick. If you want these three drills programmed into an actual base training plan with the drills just like nicely baked into there. And a cheat sheet so you can practice them before every run with links to how to do these drills.

[00:04:35] I made that for free for you. You just get that right up here at the QR code or below at the link in a description of show notes. Go and get that now. And you know what? Comment? I love to hear what people talk about. What’s the hardest part of doing these drills? Like why? Why don’t you do ’em if you don’t do them?

[00:04:52] And if you do do them. Why did you stick with them? I love to know, ’cause I came from the track background and some people don’t. They come from just being a normal human and not, not doing any running. So I wanna know like, why don’t you stick with drills and why do you so I can put things together and kind of figure it all out.

[00:05:07] And it helps the algorithm, it helps another runner. Learn how to do drills so they can get better form. Alright, here’s the three drills, anchoring butt kicks and high knees. Let’s go over the first one. Alright, drill number one, anchoring. What is it? Fast, choppy steps like running over hot coals or sprinting like a cartoon character.

[00:05:24] You’re training your ankles, achilles, and calves to be stiff and reactive. The foundation of all running, think of anchoring like baby high knees. Same basic movement. But you’re barely lifting your knees. The focus is all in your ankles doing the work. So here’s why it matters. This is phase one of running.

[00:05:41] If your ankles aren’t stiff or mostly stiff, you’re leaking energy into the ground instead of bouncing forward and slightly up. And. Anchoring teaches your nervous system to keep that bounce efficient. We don’t wanna leak energy by spending too much time on the ground. So here’s the pro connection. Most elites, they do some form of an anchoring drill.

[00:06:01] Watch warmups at a track meet, or even before you know, a local 5K race or a marathon or something, and you’ll see them bouncing in place with rapid, choppy steps, barely getting off the ground, but moving forward, the priming their ankles and their Achilles and that lower posterior chain to be reactive before they even start to run.

[00:06:19] Here’s how to do it. Quick ground contact, minimal knee bend, slight forward, lean your ankles, do the work. Think bouncing on hot coals. Let your feet pop off the ground fast and you want dorsal flexion. All that is, is a fancy term for you. Want your toes to point to your shins as much as possible. You don’t want your toes to drop down.

[00:06:39] So if few common mistakes that people make when inkling and they first start doing this, you got too much knee bend. Uh, you’re, again, you’re. Foot is planter flexion, so it’s actually pointing to the ground. We want it to point up as much as you can. Too much time on the ground. You also lean too far forward and you try to move forward too fast, so you should actually be trying to move forward slowly.

[00:07:00] Here’s a quick reality check for people that are new to this and even some intermediates and myself included. Look, everyone’s going to look differently doing this. Shari Hawkins, who I’ve got on the screen here, she’s a pro track athlete, Olympic athlete. She looks amazing. Me, I struggle a little bit with angling, but a lot more with high knees, and it’s because my hip flexors, and we’ll get to high knees in a second, it’s because my hip flexors are kind of weak.

[00:07:27] I’m working on that and they’re tight, so my form isn’t as clean and I don’t have that pretty bounce. I’ve literally like been right next to people with much more hip mobility and I’m like, why can’t I get my hips like that? Why doesn’t it look like that? But that’s fine. Work on your weaknesses if you can lean into your strengths.

[00:07:43] That’s my saying. Amateur distance runners. We’re not track stars, so you don’t gotta just do it. Here’s the thing about these drills. You don’t need perfect form to get the benefits you need intent do these drills at 90 to 95% effort with focus, and it’s very short. You can do these in like two or three minutes before runs or after runs.

[00:08:01] Your nervous system remembers that pattern. Even if execution isn’t flawless, your brain is learning the movements. Now that you’ve got your ankle stiffness patterns down. Let’s talk about the second drill that actually goes between the second and third phase, which is moving forward and lifting up your heels and how that isolates your hamstring.

[00:08:18] Pull butt kicks with a twist ’cause you’ve probably been doing it wrong. Alright, so what is it? Turn over practice. You’re training your hamstrings to pull your heel up fast, which keeps your cadence quick. We went pop, pop, pop. This is usually done incorrectly by most new and intermediate runners, myself included.

[00:08:36] I was doing it incorrectly for years. And why it matters. This is phase two and a bit of phase three of running the forward propulsion with quick turnover and getting your heels off the ground and your knees off the ground. The faster your heel comes up, after you push off, the less time you spend on the ground that’s running economy, which is running efficiently, which means you’re running with less energy and you’re going faster, butt kicks.

[00:08:57] They drill that pattern. Alright, so let’s just get right into the common mistake. You end up leaning forward. Doing slow lazy pulls and then kicking your hands close to your butt. It’s like too much vertical balance instead of quick reactive pulls. So you actually doing that lean forward thing. I will have a video on the screen.

[00:09:15] Again, if you’re not watching this, please jump on Spotify or use the YouTube link at the bottom, but you need to be a bit up, bit more up. Straight as you can be and you’re lifting your legs up. So the pro connection butt kicks. Teach your nervous system to pull your heel up fast and your knees, your lower legs automatically, and create a bit of that like straight line that we want, which will turn into the circle of the run form, how to do it heel to glute.

[00:09:41] Quick pulls. Stay upright. Try not to lean too far forward. A little bit of forward lean is okay, but we still want good form, good posture, getting our hips to really be mobile and up. So if butt kicks, get the pull phase of your run form. Here’s the movement that separates hobby joggers from real distance runners.

[00:09:59] Drill number three, high knees. What is it? Knee drive practice. You’re training your hip flexes to drive your knees up, which is what gives you speed and power. This matters because now we’re getting into more phase three and even phase four of how we run in running movements. As I talked about earlier, faster speeds.

[00:10:16] We want higher knee drive, and the higher knee drive comes from the more ground you cover with each strides. So your stride length gets longer, which is what we want. And you should have a higher cadence, and we’ll talk about cadence in a second. But if you wanna learn about how to do higher cadence, I’ve done a whole toolkit masterclass.

[00:10:32] Get that up here or below, uh, in the show notes description, high knees teacher, your nervous system to engage your hip flexors automatically. So watch pro distance runners. At the end of even marathons, they sprint down that home stretch with their knees driving high. That’s not something they think about in the moment.

[00:10:48] That’s something that they’ve drilled. Thousands of times. 10,000 hours rule is so applicable to drills and running form. High knees, build all that motor pattern. Here’s how to do it. You wanna drive your knee up. So it’s very similar to butt kicks, the new butt kicks the way we’re doing it. But instead of actually getting your.

[00:11:08] Foot, your heel to hit your butt and your glutes. We’re actually bringing our heels out forward in front of us and our knees are a bit more up and kind of parallel with the ground. So you wanna stay tall and you wanna have quick feet. Again, we don’t wanna lean back. We wanna let our hip flexors do the work and we need to strengthen those hip flexors and have them mobile.

[00:11:27] Uh, flexibility is not really something that you want too much with running. We want strong and mobile ones and mobility is being strong. When your muscle or tendon is being stretched out. I talked about stretching and mobility and all that in another episode that you can check out up here or below in the description.

[00:11:45] So here’s like just real talk reality. Check. My hip flexors, as I said, I’m gonna say this a lot. They’re tight and they’re weak. So my high knees, they’re not as high as I would like them to be. I’m working on it, and you might have the same issue a lot of new runners do, and some people, they’re just built like that.

[00:12:00] They were just born like that, and that’s why we do these drills to get better at the movements. We struggle at some common mistakes and traps to avoid leaning too far back, slow knee drive, not driving your knees high enough. Um, acting like it’s some like middle ground between a buck kick and a high knee and shuffling instead of driving.

[00:12:19] So again, you really need to have intent during these. I’ll get into how to actually put it together in an actual drills, literally in the next section. So just stay with me. And the last section is arm swing phase. So we’ve got vertical balance, turnover, knee drive, but what about your arms? Here’s the thing, your arms will naturally start counterbalancing your legs as you run faster.

[00:12:39] The best way to practice that strides, and I did a whole episode on strides, you can get that up here or below. They force you to use your arms correctly because at that speed, your body has no choice or you will just not run properly. It won’t feel good. Your legs follow your arms, so when you pump them straightforward.

[00:12:56] Out faster. Your legs have to go. It’s all connected. But if you’re like, Hey, you know, I really wanna sort out my arm stringing when I’m running a bit slower at more of the easy runs and the moderate runs, I actually did another deep dive. I do so many deep dives on arm swing. Go up there, uh, get that on YouTube or below if you’re not on YouTube, right in the, just open up the episode and you’ll see that link in there.

[00:13:14] So here is the, I’m gonna call it the two minute pre-run ritual. It takes me three minutes, but you can do two even 90 seconds if you want, but it’s intent, intent, intent. Here’s what it looks like in practice before your next run. Obviously you’re gonna go out, warm up and do your five, 10 minute warmup.

[00:13:30] You should be warming up if you don’t warm up. We’ve got bigger problems than that before your next run. You can start with the first drill ling for 15 seconds, then walk 30 seconds. Please do the walk. Butt kicks in 15 seconds. Drill number two. Walk 30 seconds and then high knees, drill number three for 15 seconds, and then walk for 30 seconds.

[00:13:47] That’s less than 2.5 minutes total. Then do that twice if you really wanna warm it up. That was five minutes. Either way, you prime your nervous system to move efficiently before you even started running. I’d say to do twice before long runs and. For workouts, hard, faster runs, temple runs and VO two max sessions.

[00:14:05] So if you haven’t already, go get that free training plan that’s got the three drills programmed in with that cheat sheet. So there’s no thinking you can just go out and do them. And I got cues in there. You can obviously watch the video. It’s all there. It’s got the three drills programmed in here into a base training plan.

[00:14:21] So you get 30 days on how to do base training. ’cause base training’s super important. Tied in with these drills. You don’t gotta think about it. And I’ve got links to the videos so that you can watch this. So it’s really simple. Get out the QR code here or the link below. So all three drills, anchoring plus butt kicks, plus high knees equal a skips.

[00:14:39] When you stack them all up, it’s the one drill that combines all three movements into one fluid motion, and it’s kind of badass to do it. I did a whole breakdown on a skips because they’re the gold standard for form drills. If you can get there and if you can nail a skips. You basically mastered the mechanics of running and really having proper hip mobility and that knee drive that you need to run with.

[00:14:59] Better run form the whole point of this episode. Go and watch that below if you’re on YouTube or in the description if you are watching or listening on another app piece.