I'm sure many of you will be aware of the work the company does Vivobarefoot - specialist in barefoot footwear - to spread good habits in career technique. This work goes beyond a simple marketing operation of their products, going several steps ahead of other brands that simply sell shoes without caring about the health of their customers.

Lee Saxby

One of the visible heads of this "re-educator" movement for runners is Lee Saxby, trainer, instructor and scholar of biomechanics applied to running. He has written numerous articles on barefoot / minimalism and career technique, collaborated on a number of specific publications and has spent more than ten years helping runners perfect their career technique. He is currently part of the research team of Vivobarefoot and in charge of the section that the brand has called Training Clinic. These two words encompass an ambitious and very interesting project which through talks, colloquiums, publications and teachings, aims to train coaches interested in minimalism as a teaching tool and also improve the technical and biomechanical aspects in particular corridors.

While there are several videos and publications about Lee Saxby in which you can understand his work well, a video summary of one of the last talks he has taught has been especially relevant online. In it, it explains with absolute and indisputable clarity the principles of barefoot running from a biomechanical / scientific point of view. For better compression, I have taken the liberty (and work) of subtitling the video in Spanish and putting it back on the net for the enjoyment of those interested; I hope you know how to apologize for any translation errors. In addition, I would like to comment on some points of the talk, based on the images used by Lee Saxby himself, which are extracted from the ebook published by Vivobarefoot.

In the early stages of the video reference is made to a research paper by Daniel Lieberman, which assumes what Lee Saxby describes as the "second part" of that first and famous study published a few years ago by the doctor of Harvard University. In this new study (year 2012), Lieberman demonstrates the benefits he has to land with the antepie in front of the retropie when it comes to running. I leave you the link here just in case you are curious.

Returning to the video, the words "kinetic" and "kinematics" are used several times when commenting on the projected graphics in the room; To facilitate their understanding, I also write here a simple and good explanatory explanation about them: in biomechanical terms, it could be said that kinetics concerns the forces involved in movements (muscular, reaction, friction, etc.) and that The kinematics focuses more on describing this movement but based on parameters of space or time (speed, acceleration, etc.).

Once these terms are explained, we can advance to the next "hot spot" of the video: the different ways that animals have to develop their movements. The example of the horse is very good, and after seeing it, it is easy to understand what Lee Saxby wants to say when it refers to the three "ways" available to the human being to move or move forward.

It is also very illustrative the image that shows the amount of information that the brain needs to process during the movement as well as the different ways of coming from it. It is absolutely clear that the feedback that transmits the foot is essential to develop a good proprioception, a key element in the technique when running.

Finally, I would like to highlight another illustration that compares the kinetics / kinematics of the "standard" runner, that of the "bad" runner barefoot, and that of the "good" runner barefoot; The curves say it all ...

It is clear from listening to Lee Saxby that it is not enough to take off and start running. You can not expect to acquire a good technique in a few weeks, even for expert brokers; It is more, according to Saxby (and logic), is more complex for an experienced rider (who has spent his whole life with shoes cushioned and impacting with the heel) get a good technique and a correct execution in a short time, that for a person Which has never run.

In short, an interesting video-summary to enjoy, which can be learned a lot, and which reveals the major flaws of most popular runners. Well by Vivobarefoot and well by Lee Saxby.

References: https://ahcuah.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/how-barefoot-running-works/