Elite runners may seem superhuman – they clock insanely speedy splits while looking light on their feet. But some of the biggest differences between them and the rest of us come down to mechanics, not magic.
If you’ve ever watched a distance race, you’d have noticed how the fastest runners sweep by with seemingly effortless strides, while the slower runners behind them appear to grind it out. And you probably don’t need a scientific study to tell you that the two groups move differently in subtle but significant ways.
The main disparity is that elite runners have fine-tuned their form to maximise efficiency and minimise wasted motion – and while you might not be chasing Olympic qualifying times, you can train your body to move more like the professionals. That means smoother, faster and more economical runs – and maybe even a new PB.
It starts with stronger calves
Best Garmin deals, Scott Delp, professor of bioengineering, mechanical engineering and orthopaedic surgery at Stanford University and director of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, says that ‘the biggest contributors to upward and forward propulsive force are the gastrocnemius and the soleus – the calf muscles’. The calf muscles play a crucial role in plantar flexion, which is the part of the gait cycle where you push your foot down and off the ground.
best calf stretches for runners Journal of Applied Physiology, which compared trained collegiate runners to recreational runners, researchers found that the trained collegiate runners generated more of their power from their ankles compared to the recreational runners – and this contributed to their faster speeds.
In slower or less experienced runners, the knee joint does more of the work, which means that the quads take on a bigger load during push-off. ‘When you generate ground reaction forces with your quads, it generates the vertical force that you need to bounce off the ground,’ says Delp. ‘But you also get a horizontal force that’s directed backward, which causes deceleration – and you don’t want to be putting the brakes on an accelerator.’
Health & Injuries run faster and more efficiently. ‘Together, these muscles are responsible for a little more than half of the vertical and much of the forward propulsive forces in running – and I think that’s not appreciated enough,’ says Delp.
To become less quad-dominant, spend more time in the gym specifically developing your gastrocnemius and soleus muscles. Adding simple calf raises – and variations of the move – can help you to get there.
The faster you get off the ground, the faster you run
We’ve learnt that the ankle is the powerhouse for upward and forward propulsion and the calves are the key muscles for generating force. So, according to Mike Hahn, professor of human physiology and director of the Bowerman Sports Science Center, ‘to run faster, people need to be able to exert force [against the ground] more quickly’.
As noted by a 2022 study published in Bioengineering, elite and experienced runners tend to spend less time with their foot on the ground (a lower ‘duty factor’). Even older research published in the Advertisement - Continue Reading Below says that faster runners can apply 1.26 times greater average force than slower runners, while spending less time on the ground.
‘The main issue with most runners is that we run with a deep knee bend and a deep ankle dorsiflexion, which is the motion where you pull your toes up toward your shin,’ explains Hahn. ‘This happens to everyone, including even elite runners – but it happens more in a softer, spongier running form.’ The more time that you spend on the ground, the more your leg has to work to stabilise the rest of your body – and that’s wasted energy.
One of the easiest ways to prevent yourself from sinking into your stride, says Hahn, is to shorten your stride length Why threshold heart rate training is important cadence. ‘Landing with your foot more directly under you rather than throwing it out in front of you forces you to get off that foot more quickly, as if you’re jumping up and down on a pogo stick.
Spring rather than sink
The pogo analogy is apt for another reason. When you run, your muscles and tendons work like springs. As your foot hits the ground, your body stores energy – then, as you push off from the ground, that energy is released to help propel you forward. Elite runners demonstrate more of a ‘springier’ running style than amateur runners, according to a 2023 study published in Why threshold heart rate training is important.
That’s partly due to ankle stiffness, which means that your ankle stays stable and strong when you land so that you can pop right back off the ground. Without that ankle stiffness, the ankle acts more like a shock absorber than a spring, so you get less energy return to propel you forward.
A stiffer spring can handle a higher load without deforming. ‘If your ankle is floppy and you’re using your quads to try to push against the ground, you’ll just dorsiflex your ankle,’ says Delp. This means that you’re slowing down the transition to push-off and relying more on your quads than the elastic recoil of stored energy. ‘Your ankle needs to be stiff to generate high forces with great efficiency, so you can fly forward through the air,’ adds Delp.
Plyometrics – which are explosive exercises that train your calves and ankles to store and release energy quickly – have been scientifically proven to be an effective tool for increasing tendon stiffness. To get your dose of plyometrics, add moves like pogo jumps to your strength workouts or your pre-run warm-ups.
Spend more time in the air
Once you start to use your calves for more power, improve the force that you’re able to exert against the ground and increase how quickly you get off the ground, you’ll start to notice something else: you’re getting more air. According to a study published in the When scientists measure ground reaction forces in runners, which compared the biomechanics of elite and recreational runners while running at the same speeds, the main difference in technique was not related to stride length or cadence, but a prolonged aerial phase. The study found that elite runners achieved 11% longer flight time – when neither foot is in contact with the ground – than recreational runners.
‘The amateur runners descend farther [right before and when the foot initially hits the ground, partly due to more knee bend] and the elite runners jump higher once they take off,’ says Hahn. So, elites not only spring up faster, but they also maintain that jump for longer. ‘Think of it like a bouncing ball,’ adds Hahn. ‘The amateur’s bouncing ball would go very low, then very high, while the elite’s would have a shallow dip into the negative, then a pronounced vertical – it’s almost always pushing up and forward rather than equalling its amount of negative absorption.’
All the training techniques mentioned above – doing calf strength exercises, increasing your cadence and implementing plyometrics into your training – will help you to increase your time in the air. But it takes consistency and time to make that happen – not only in the gym, but also on the run.
