By Keith Bateman and Heidi Jones
Runners are often told that they ‘pronate’ but everyone does!
As we describe in Chapter 3, ‘The inward-rolling motion (pronation) starts as the foot touches the ground in a slightly supinated position (foot tipped outward). This enables you to absorb the impact of landing and adapt to uneven surfaces.’
Commonly, shop staff or medical professionals will watch or video you from the back and tell you that you ‘over-pronate’, a statement that makes the assumption that you have a physical disability which needs correcting with supportive shoes or orthotics – neither of which will address the cause and can, and regularly do, lead to injury further up the body. But why is this not the answer and what injury might it cause?
For almost every runner, the cause of over-pronation is poor technique and weakness, both promoted by today’s shoes which put the whole body out of alignment because they have a so-called ‘drop’, usually of more than 1cm. If you are constantly standing on a downward slope (the drop), you tend to crouch, and your core muscles switch off. Then your glutes are weak through lack of use and cannot prevent your thigh collapsing inward upon landing and causing your feet to also fall inward (over-pronation). The more you over-stride the more you will both supinate and pronate and your weak feet, which have likely suffered from decades of supportive shoes, will make the problem worse.
Using supportive shoes or orthotics will weaken the feet further, will not allow you to stand or run upright and will not engage the body’s postural muscles so you’ll start getting pain in the knees, hips and back.
In summary, over-pronation is a product of lack of strength and poor technique, not a permanent disability! Older Yet Faster fixes both at the same time and presents you with the prospect of a life of enjoyable running!
Also see
OYF Rule#2 – Stand and land aligned and
OYF Rule #3 – Over-pronation is a symptom of over-striding
which are in the free download of the first chapters here: