Good Form Won’t Make You Faster (This Will)

[00:00:00] This runner spent six months perfecting their form, and this runner ignored form completely and focused on the right explosive workouts. Guess who’s faster? After you apply these three specific things to your training, your stride will feel lighter, snappier, and faster starting. Today in this episode, I’ll be going over why fixing your form won’t make you feel lighter or faster, but what will make you feel lighter and faster?

[00:00:24] The three plyometric exercises every pro does, but us hobby, amateur joggers usually skip how these make running. Feel easier and a free training plan to make this a habit before every single run. I am Daren D Lake certified run coach, and I’ve spent the last 30 years researching, talking to experts and testing all this stuff to get myself 1% better at small things like running form and in particular as many plyometric exercises that I can do.

[00:00:52] Doing that helped me run a sub throughout Marathon 1 22, half marathon sub 17 minutes in the. 5K and I have proof that I’m making my body injury resistant as I get well into my forties and fifties by doing these specific key workouts. And now I wanna show you and a hundred thousand other runners how to do just that.

[00:01:08] Let’s get into the problem. Alright. Here’s what’s happening. You can have perfect technique and still feel heavy, slow, and sluggish, because running isn’t just about how you move, it’s about how bouncy you are, how much spring you have in every step. And that’s not something you fix by changing your form.

[00:01:24] That’s something you build through plyometrics. Plyometrics are exercises where you jump and land quickly to train your muscles to be more powerful and bouncy, like turning your legs into springs, plyometrics, or PIOs for short, as I’ll say. And some people say, started in Eastern Europe and Russia in the 1960s as explosive jump training, and then in American coach gave it the name plyometrics in the 1970s.

[00:01:48] Watch any elite runner warm up before a race, you’ll see them doing these exaggerated. Skipping drills, and you’ll see them doing long, powerful bounds down the track. Like gelles and deer, they’re priming their tendons and muscles to be elastic, so when they run, they bounce instead of thud, it’s like muscle memory, but for explosiveness.

[00:02:07] By the time they start their run, their body already knows ankles are stiff springs. Legs are loaded with power and every step. Has lift a 2009 study in sports medicine found that elite runners have more refined neuromuscular control than recreational runners. Their nervous systems coordinate muscles more efficiently.

[00:02:23] This isn’t genetic. It’s learn practice the right patterns enough and your body defaults to them automatically, even when you’re tired. Here’s your action step for your next run. You could do it today, tomorrow, next week. Notice how you feel at mile three, kilometer five versus mile eight, kilometer 13 of a long run or even a race.

[00:02:41] Do you feel heavy, flat? Like you’re sinking into the ground. Great awareness of that feeling is the first step, but that feeling is exactly what we’re gonna fix. But there’s one problem though. Most runners do these plyometric workouts once, maybe twice, and then they forget. Here’s how to actually make it stick.

[00:02:56] I’ve built a free training plan that programs. The three plyometric workouts into your weekly runs, plus a cheat sheet, so you can save it to your phone or wherever you wanna save it. Print it out if you’re old school and never forget the technique. The link is here at the QR code or below in the description or the show notes.

[00:03:14] Grab it now. Then come back and I’ll walk you through each exercise. Quick thing, before I show you how running works, you might have heard of form drills, inkling, butt kicks, and high knees. These look similar to what I’m about to show you. I did a whole episode on that. You can get up there or there’ll be a link below in a description.

[00:03:31] But think of it like this. All trees of plants, but not all plants or trees, form drills teach your body the pattern. The shape of the movement and how to move correctly. But p PIOs build power behind that pattern. Explosiveness, spring related. Yeah, same thing. Not really. Today, again, we’re doing PIOs. We’re building the spring, and if you want go get that link below for form drills because they do go hand in hand.

[00:03:55] Alright, let’s get into the first drill. Pogo, what is it? Vertical bounce practice you’re building. Ankle stiffness, calf strength, achilles explosiveness, and that all important elastic recoil, which is a fancy run science term for free speed from how bouncy you are when you run it’s physics. You just propel yourself forward automatically without really any effort.

[00:04:16] Why pogo matter. This is phase one of running, and I’ll talk about the phases of running in the next section, but every time your foot hits the ground, your Achilles tendon stores energy, then it releases it Pogo train that tendon to act like a stiff spring. So instead of sinking into the ground, you bounce off of it.

[00:04:32] That’s free speed. It’s pop, pop, pop. How to do it. You want minimal knee bend here. Most people can jump up and down in place with both legs, but. Again, specificity is key. We want quick ground contact time. Think of your body becoming a pogo stick and landing on the balls of your feet. Immediately bouncing.

[00:04:49] We’re getting into a rhythm. We’re popping, popping, popping. We’re not getting in the ground. They’re jumping up, getting in the ground, loading up, jumping up. It’s just pop, pop, pop. Some common mistakes. Too much knee bend. Again, people loading up slow ground contact time with too much time on the ground. We don’t wanna load up and trying to jump high instead of quick and reactive.

[00:05:06] I did that so much early on doing pogo until a high end pro level strength and conditioning run. Coach told me, Hey man, we don’t want height. We actually want as much force into the ground to go up. So it’s boom, boom. And I was like, oh wow. And he’s like, try not to bend your knees. You’re gonna bend them automatically, but try not to bend them.

[00:05:26] Keep them as straight as possible. So here’s something to remember. Uh, moving forward with all this stuff, plyometrics might feel weird at first. You might feel like you’re not jumping high enough, you’re not moving fast enough. You don’t look like me, or the pros especially. I don’t even look as good as the pros.

[00:05:40] And that’s fine. The goal isn’t big jumps, it’s reactive jumps, and that’s fine because. Plyo. They come from the sprinting world and elites and pro distance runners who started as usually sprinters. They started on the track at least. Kipchoge was a 1500 meter racer, couple Ks, four to seven Ks cross country.

[00:05:58] He started on the track. He learned really good form, and these athletes and these. Pros. They have insane hip mobility and explosive power, and they can generate force like a coiled spring, especially sprinters, a hundred, 200, 400 meters, 800 guys. And these are the people that you see doing these drills looking amazing.

[00:06:15] And most recreational distance runners like us, we’ll never actually move like that. And that’s fine too. You don’t need to do these plows perfect. You need intent. So you wanna do them at 90 to 95%. Effort just in your brain, you’re like, I’m gonna do them as best as I can with the best amount of form and explosive with purpose.

[00:06:32] Because what happens is your nervous system remembers the quality of the movement, and then when you’re running that spring shows up and your feet feel lighter, your stride feels er, and all of that transfers from not being perfect. You still get better. But if you practice lazy, you have low energy pogo, you’re just bouncing your, I’m just gonna get through it, whatever.

[00:06:50] Then your nervous system. Remember’s. Lazy. It learns lazy, and that’s what will show up in your running. Let’s jump into the second phase of the run, and again, I’m gonna talk about phases in the, in the next section and why we run and how we run. It’s actually pretty cool, but I want to give you these drills first and we’re gonna talk more about rhythm and to work on this second phase, we’ll be doing skips.

[00:07:09] Yes, like we’re five years old on the playground. We’re working with rhythms. So what are skips? They’re single leg coordination. They’re rhythm rhythm’s. Huge. And they’re spring transfer. So you’re actually moving forward. You’re going from POGO to now. Moving forward, you’re building the ability to be bouncy through your entire kinetic chain.

[00:07:26] Again, elastic, recoil or building the strength of your ankles, knees, hips, they’re all working together. Obviously Achilles calves and plantar fascia, the whole from the foot all the way up to the lower back and hips. Why this matters. This is a combination of all the phases of running the coordination and rhythm with explosive power.

[00:07:45] Skipping forces your body to coordinate everything in one fluid motion. I liken it to the baby brother of strides and sprinting, but with more time in the air so you can actually feel the spring working and you can be expressive. You’re like a kid. So when you get the skips right, you’re actually like getting into this really nice groove and rhythm, and this is where it all comes together.

[00:08:04] So how to do it. Skip like a kid, but with intent. Kids usually skip kind of like Loll la, but we’re actually skipping to get the bounce. We’re driving the knee up and we’re popping off the ground hard again. I’m gonna say this a million times. We’re going pop, pop, pop, pop. That’s what we want. We want the pop feeling and the sound.

[00:08:18] Even let the opposite arm swing naturally and feel the rhythm. So instead of running where we’re like this, we’re actually like. Getting into this like Gallup sort of thing, like deers and gazelle’s. Well, a lot of deers and gazelle is here. Some common mistakes. Low energy skips, just going through the motions, not driving the knee up high enough, not letting your body bounce off the ground.

[00:08:38] That’s a huge one. And no arm movement or expression. I’m gonna say this also a million times. We want rhythm because running is rhythmic in these drills. They are. Teaching rhythm. So if you can obviously get the rhythm and the drills, you will have the rhythm when you’re running, especially when you get tired versus like pounding the ground.

[00:08:55] I’m pounding, I’m just no running. Should be ta ta ta. Look at kipchoge, look at all the pros. They look phenomenal for a reason. We can get close to that. Alright, so skips get the coordination in vertical spring, but the third drill. The third plyometric is where the movement builds forward power and acts more like running.

[00:09:14] But before we get to that third skip drill, lemme break down how running works and how these drills are specific to the different phases of running. This is so, so important. Once you see this and you actually like hear it and you watch, you’re gonna be like. Oh, I get it. And then you’re gonna be able to connect the dots from the drills to why you run and how you run.

[00:09:32] And then hopefully you’ll be running faster, easier, farther better, et cetera. Alright, so running works in four phases. We got phase one, you balance vertically, your ankles, do all the work like a pogo stick, barely moving forward. Phase two, you lean forward and push off your ankles. Now you’re moving your body’s momentum carries you.

[00:09:49] Phase three, you drive your knees up to go faster, your hips engage. You’re covering more ground with each step. And then phase four, your arms swing naturally to counterbalance at speed. This just happens. You don’t think about it, but you’re really pumping your arms, you’re driving your knee up, and then you go faster.

[00:10:06] These three plyometric drills that I’ve shown you in the episode build a spring behind each phase, and by the time you start running, your body is already. Had that explosiveness loaded in. It’s like it’s downloaded into your central nervous system, and it’s like, I know what I’m doing. Let’s finish up with the last plyo drill.

[00:10:20] Bounders, the hardest one in the trio, but probably one of the most important. What are bounders? They’re horizontal power practice. You’re building that forward propulsion and elastic recoil through your whole leg. Why it matters. This is phase three and four of running. Taking the extremes, explosive, forward drive.

[00:10:39] Running isn’t just about going up and down, it’s about, obviously going forward we wanna have the least amount of time in the air and move ourselves forward because we’re not going up the, the race isn’t up. The race is that way. It’s many miles and kilometers that way. Bounders train your glutes and hamstrings and calves and achilles to generate force.

[00:10:57] Horizontally that translates directly into longer stride length and feeling like you’re gliding instead of grinding. Uh, side note about stride length. So when you increase your stride length, you also wanna increase your cadence, and when you do both, you go faster, but. You need to do both. At separate times, you need to work on them because when you go faster, you’ll get tired and your heart will be up.

[00:11:18] So if you do them in drills, you’ll then naturally do them when you run. Alright, how to do boundaries, exaggerated strides, push hard off the back leg and then drive forward. Not. Up. Think long, powerful leaps. Let yourself hang in the air for a split second. Yes, we are actually doing jumps here. We’re exaggerating our running form.

[00:11:36] A common mistake, jumping up instead of forward. You can do that if you’re early. I’ll talk about that in a second. Short, choppy strides, we don’t want that and not fully loading. From the back leg. Bounders are tough. You need to have very strong hip flexors, just basically the whole posterior chain. Your whole body needs to be strong.

[00:11:54] So if you struggle with this, here’s the regressions. Start with drill number two and make them like big high skips. Or you can do a vertical version of this and jump. Up instead of forward. So you’re doing jumping more up instead of forwards. Because when you jump forward, it takes so much strength for each side and you can injure yourself if you’re not used to it.

[00:12:12] So after a few sessions though, you can propel forward a bit more each time. Here’s what it looks like in practice A 92nd. Ritual that you can do before every run. Microdosed them. I love microdosing. After a five minute easy jog pogo for 30 seconds, then walk for 30 seconds. That’s drill number one. Drill number two skips for 30 seconds.

[00:12:32] Then walk for 30 seconds. Then do bounders for 30 seconds and then walk. That’s it. 90 seconds of work. Three minutes total. You primed your ankles, you primed your legs. The full kinetic posterior chain to be bouncy. Go run. Feel the difference. But here’s why. 90 seconds. Microdosing works and why I love microdosing.

[00:12:50] Habits don’t form by doing something big once a week and then after four weeks you’re done. They form by doing something small, the 1% every single time. 90 seconds is so short you can’t talk yourself out of it. Do it before every run for a few weeks. Then it becomes. Automatic, it becomes part of your identity.

[00:13:07] If you haven’t already, go and get that free plyometric training plan and cheat sheet up here at the QR code or below in the show notes or episode description. It’s got the three plyometrics that I’ve talked about, and they’re programmed into a actual training plan, so it’s actually like how to incorporate this into your running.

[00:13:24] And I’ll give you a bonus of three form drills because now you know how to build spring with pogo skips and bounders. But if you stack them with the three easiest and best form drills for distance runners, they complete your whole warmup, go watch that deep dive video on those three form drills. And more.

[00:13:42] It’s similar to POGO S, but I actually think it’s the step before Pogo S. If you’re on YouTube, you can watch those three form drills below in a full video episode, or if you’re on Spotify or somewhere else, just click the link in the show notes or description. Go out there, keep jumping peace.