to actually make a video,

that I've been meaning to make for so long,

which is a running technique analysis of Mo Farah.

Let's have a look at his running gait,

something I know that he and his coach, Alberto Salazar

have been working on for years

and let's see where he's got to with it,

he's clearly doing something right.

Okay, so let's have a look at this right leg,

as we're coming through to strike the ground,

round about here,

at this point, Mo's achieving something

that we talk about all the time

with the runners, that we work with,

getting to a point where, as we make initial contact,

the foot is underneath the flexing knee.

So at this point we draw a line straight down

roughly through the middle of the knee,

we can see that it's coming down pretty much, in fact

in this case just slightly ahead of the ankle,

so he's landing that foot well and truly

underneath that flexing knee.

Something that we see from so many of the runners,

that we work with, you know,

particularly recreational runners, beginner runners

is that as they come down to strike the ground,

they are far further ahead of themselves,

making that heavy, initial contact

way out in front of themselves, over striding,

slamming the brakes on stride by stride.

Mo's managing to land underneath the flexing knee,

which is absolutely ideal,

whether you're running at 11-minute miles

or whether you're running at, you know,

just over four-minute miles, which is what Mo's running

his 5k at at this particular pace,

so there's a bit of a constant there.

Now, what's important to remember

is that as he strikes the ground, being a distance runner,

if we looked very roughly

at managing to strike the ground underneath his hip,

which is so often a cue, which you hear bandied around,

of course he's way ahead of his hip,

way ahead of his center of mass,

if Mo was a sprinter, if Mo was sprinting,

he'd be getting a lot closer to underneath his hip.

If you look at Olympic sprinters,

you get this great slow mo footage,

they get very close to landing truly

underneath their center of mass, but any distance runner,

if we go through this level of analysis,

we'll see that they land

just that little bit further ahead of themselves.

A sprinter only has to work 100, 200 meters,

of course Mo here, running 5k,

he's got to find that middle ground

between effective, relaxed stride

and of course, efficient stride,

so finding this point where he's landing

just underneath that flexing knee is ideal.

We can see here as he gets to toe off,

so we get to that point,

where the toe just leaves the ground here,

we're looking at the trail leg here.

At this point, if there's a simple little rule of thumb,

that you can look at any given runner

to see if we're getting a good combination

of hip extension on the trail leg,

hip flexion on the lead leg,

it's at this point of toe off,

we want to see parallel lines, okay,

it's the parallel lines that we're starting to achieve here

and again, I've drawn very rough lines on here,

but you can see what I'm getting at,

it's these two parallel lines,

that allow Mo to get to a point,

where because he's created enough hip flexion

on the lead leg, he's created enough knee flexion,

picking the foot up underneath him,

but that's largely elastic recoil,

because of the pace he's moving at.

He can then come and strike the ground

again, underneath himself,

rather than landing excessively ahead of himself.

Okay, so again, for any given pace, we want to get an idea

for whether you're lifting your foot up high enough,

lifting the knee up high enough, it's those parallel lines,

so again, we're on a different stride here, same story,

okay, that's what we need to look for.

Now of course the height at which

Mo's picking his foot up underneath him

is again, largely a factor of the pace he's moving at,

he's running two minutes 36 per k, that's super fast,

that's four minutes 10 per mile, okay,

so very few of us are going to be running at this pace,

so very few of us are going to need to lift our heel

all the way up to our butt in the same manner as Mo is here,

okay, but it's the combination

of how high he's lifting his foot up underneath him

and how quickly he's turning his legs over,

so essentially how he's covering the ground

in flight phase by picking that foot up

and the number of times he's doing per minute,

which allows him to run at that pace

or particularly run at that pace without over striding.

Now, not just without over striding,

he's also managing to do so

without particularly expending too much energy up and down,

so if we drew a line in parallel with the track here,

so if we drew a line here

and we'll just let this run through,

there's very little unnecessary vertical displacement,

of course, Mo is going up and down and you need to

if you want to cover the ground stride by stride,

but actually if we look at how steady his head is,

as we go through this,

steady his head is, steady his hips are,

we don't see the same kind of uncontrolled bouncing

as we see from so many of our over striding,

plodding kind of recreational runners.

So again, that's a function of high cadence,

so Mo's running kind of low 180s here,

he's turning his legs over very quickly

and not over striding, not expending excessive energy

breaking with each stride,

he's landing efficiently underneath that flexing knee,

allowing him to maximize the propulsive force,

then pushing off, rather than dealing

in excessive breaking to begin with.

Of course, Mo's torso is very upright,

okay, there is a gentle forward lean,

but I would expect that forward lean

as a function of the pace that he's running at,

rather than something he's consciously trying to force, okay

and what we do see is the relaxed nature of the shoulders,

okay, short lever of the arms, so we can see that the arms

are maintaining this

sub-90 degree angle at the elbow,

the whole way through and he's managing to,

here we go, that's a better view,

and he's managing just to drive the elbow back,

back, back with each stride, relaxed from the shoulder,

creating this nice, efficient, gentle sway,

that is so characteristic of Mo's running style.

Okay, we'll see if we can get

a little bit more of a front on view in a moment,

in fact this is a nice example,

so we can see as we run this through,

that little bit of a side to side swagger,

but what we don't see

is too much of, there we go,

the hand starting to cross the midline,

hands come roughly near the midline,

but it's more so, just that nice little bit of rotation,

the good rotation that we're after through the torso

and the drive back of the elbow each time,

that allows Mo to sync up the motion of his top half

with the motion of what we're seeing with the legs.

Now what I mean by that,

if we come back to our side on view,

as Mo extends on this side,

the trail leg, extends this leg out behind him,

we also see him rotate his torso this way.

Okay, so he's starting to,

as you would expect from any runner

and any of us as we walk and as we run,

get that opposite rotation of the counter,

so it's the counter rotation of the pelvis

and the top half of the torso, which starts to allow Mo

to get that nice little bit of a stretch

from shoulder here to hip on the far side here.

Okay, now that stretch, as the shoulder comes back,

so his right shoulder's coming back,

'cause he's rotating his torso to the right

as his hip is coming back on the left-hand side,

so his torso, his pelvis is gonna be rotating

to the left somewhat,

it's that stretch across the front on the diagonal,

that's going to allow him

to then release that elastic energy

and help him bring the arm through

with the opposite leg onto the next stride.

Okay and obviously at this point, on the next stride,

it's opposite side, arms coming to extension here,

whilst this opposite hip's coming in to extension,

okay, so we're getting that nice, cross body effect

in a relaxed, nice, smooth,

not particularly forced manner,

okay, very smooth, very relaxed,

Mo looks very in control at this point.

Okay, so as I said,

I know this is something that Mo has worked on,

I know it's something he continues to work on,

I've listened to interviews, where he's talked about

particularly in the latter stage of the race,

focusing on maintaining form

and that should be able to be a mindset,

which trickles down way back to the likes of you and I,

who are focusing on running our 5ks,

let's say, you know, more like five minutes per k,

rather than thinking about running our 5ks

at two minutes 30 per k, that's crazy fast.

Anyway, I hope that's really helpful,

I hope that's interesting to you guys.

Let me know any thoughts you've got in the comments

and I'll speak to you soon, bye now.

(mellow upbeat music)

- [Commentator] Mo Farah

(cheering crowd)

wins the gold!