Keep Your Head Up

Your head position when you run is crucial, but people don’t think about it enough, and it’s often something that can hold you back that you don’t realise. How you hold your head is key to overall posture, which determines how efficiently you run. Lets look at how your head position affects your entire body.

Head Position

Your head position ultimately determines the shape of your spine and position of your stomach while running. Let your gaze guide you. Look ahead naturally, not down at your feet, and scan the horizon. This will straighten your neck and back, and bring them into alignment. Don’t allow your chin to jut out.

The mistakes that people often make are looking at their feet, and letting their head sink into their shoulders. Looking down and consequently flexing through the chest and neck causes various effects. It causes the spine to lose alignment, it causes potential impingement and consequent tightness in your shoulders/arms, it can effect movement of the arms which is crucial for rhythm and tempo and it also causes greater weight to be placed on the lower body and your movement lever to be reduced. Altogether this makes you less efficient and heavier as a runner.

Posture

All this has a positive effect on overall posture. By keeping your head up and eyes forward, it allows you to engage your core better. This in turn will allow your feet to land under your hips better, stronger and more stably. The more you can keep a good strong posture, the more relaxed you can be. The upshot of all this is that you should have more energy to run faster or harder!

Send us a message or leave a comment and let us know if you have any questions! We all have our own thoughts on the matter, and we all have something different that suits us.

See what’s up next week for our #RunFormFriday tip! For more in depth understanding on how to put this into practise, get in touch and we’ll see how we can help!