The importance of the arm swing when running

Posted In: ChiRunning October 30th, 2013 divider 2 Comments »

I did a session this week with some high school at the request of their PE teacher. It was both eye-opening and frightening at the same time. A lot of these girls were decent runners but most had no body awareness and it really came through in their arm swing.

Al lot of people think they swing their arms a lot when they run but analyzing runners on a daily basis (whether they know it or not), I can tell you it’s not often the case.

I know body awareness is not easy and it doesn’t come unless you work on it. That’s where video analysis really helps accelerate the process because what you think you’re doing and what you’re actually doing is sometimes two different things.

The arm swing should be relaxed and compact so you’re not wasting any energy. I can usually tell a lot about the efficiency of a runner just by looking at their arm swing.

The arm swing is important, even more so in ChiRunning since you’re not using your legs to propel yourself forward. In power running, it’s about 75% legs and 25% arms, while efficient running is closer to 50/50. There’s more emphasis on the arm swing also to set the cadence and relax the legs.

The arm swing keeps everything in balance. If you have your shoulder back as in power running, your arms power going forward to stay in balance.

If you’re trying to be efficient, you should have the focus on bringing the elbows low and back and to relax the shoulders and counter-act the slight forward lean. Maybe that should be the focus of your next run. What are your arms up to?

As you probably know, I love giving back when I can. If my tips helped even one girl get turned on to running, then it was worth my time. I just wish kids would run all day everyday like they were born to do. Isn’t what we used to do?