Most marathon runners at the 2017 IAAF World Championships were rearfoot strikers, and most did not change footstrike pattern

Abstract

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From barefoot hunter gathering to shod pavement pounding. Where to from here? A narrative review

“…In fact, most world championship marathon runners use a RFS. 24 Even habitually barefoot modern hunter-gatherers who farm more than hunt and therefore, do not require running as part of activities of daily living, predominately use a RFS up to speeds of ~5.0 m/s. 25 A tendency to RFS is also seen in habitually barefoot children, 26 perhaps due to lower body mass; women who do not run 27 and in runners running on soft surfaces.…”

Men's and Women's World Championship Marathon Performances and Changes With Fatigue Are Not Explained by Kinematic Differences Between Footstrike Patterns

“…Footstrike patterns were defined using the foot position at initial contact with the ground using the methods of Hasegawa et al (2007) as either: RFS (the heel contacted the ground first without simultaneous contact by the midfoot or forefoot), midfoot striking (the heel and midfoot, or occasionally the entire sole, contacted the ground together) or forefoot striking (the forefoot/front half of the sole contacted the ground first with a clear absence of heel contact). As there were very few forefoot strikers in either race (Hanley et al, 2019), midfoot and forefoot strikers have been combined as NRFS. Half of the athletes analyzed on lap 3 in each race were RFS, and the other half were NRFS (i.e., N = 14 of each footstrike pattern).…”

“…The procedures used to collect data for the analysis of footstrike patterns have been described previously (Hanley et al, 2019). In brief, two Casio Exilim high-speed cameras (Casio, Tokyo, Japan) were positioned approximately 0.30 m above the running surface on tripods with their optical axes perpendicular to the running direction.…”

“…However, its lower incidence amongst elite-standard marathon runners might occur because running economy during RFS is similar to NRFS (Ardigò et al, 1995;Gruber et al, 2013), and because carbohydrate oxidation rates were indeed found to be higher during forefoot striking than RFS (Gruber et al, 2013). Additionally, many marathon runners who are NRFS during the first half of the race change to RFS in the second half (Larson et al, 2011;Hanley et al, 2019), possibly because continuous NRFS requires increased ankle plantarflexor work and can lead to considerable fatigue in the contractile properties of those key leg muscles (Peltonen et al, 2012;Baggaley et al, 2017).…”

“…Adopting a particular footstrike pattern is one aspect of technique that could possibly lead to better long-distance running performances. Marathon runners are predominantly rearfoot strikers (RFS) at both world-class (Hanley et al, 2019) and recreational standards (Larson et al, 2011), although the proportion of midfoot strikers and forefoot strikers in a world-class sample was higher than amongst recreational runners (Hanley et al, 2019). Non-rearfoot striking (NRFS), which encompasses both midfoot and forefoot striking, arises from an anterior footstrike position that theoretically stores and releases greater elastic energy in the Achilles tendon and foot arches than RFS (Perl et al, 2012), and is practiced by most athletes competing in the shorter middle-distance events over 800 and 1500 m (Hayes and Caplan, 2012).…”