“When you run up a hill, most of the cross over gait disappears. Runners will tend toward beautifully stacked lower limb joints.”- Dr. Allen

Are people running up a hill more likely to tend towards a cross over gait style, in other words tend toward a more narrow gait step or a wider gait step ?

Watch people run up hill closely. Even if they are cross over (narrow foot fall) runners, when running up hills a few things will negate much of the narrow foot fall.

1- Running up hill requires more gluteals, more power is needed for all that extra required hip extension to power up the hill. More gluteal max use can, and will, spill over into the posterior fibers of the gluteus medius and this will tend to abduct the leg/hip and reduce some of the cross over tendency.

2- When one runs up a hill, there is a forward pitch of the upper torso, often with a some degree of forward pitch occurring at the hips. More importantly, because one is running up hill, they are stepping up and so more than normal hip flexion is necessary than in normal running. The forward pitch of the body and the greater degree of hip flexion is the culprit here. If the hip/leg is adducted in a cross over style, adding this to a more than normal flexing hip, it will create a scenario for anterior hip impingement and risk of femoral acetabular impingement (FAI) syndromes. Go ahead, test it for yourself. Lie on your back and flex your hip, drawing your knee straight up towards your shoulder.  Pretty good range correct ?  Now, flex the hip drawing your knee towards your navel, adducting it a little across your body. Feel the abrupt range of motion loss and possible pinch in the front of the hip ?  FAI.  This is what would happen if you utilized a cross over gait, narrow foot strike gait. The goes for mountain/sleep hill hikers as well. 

This is why, if you are a narrow foot striker, a near-cross over type of runner, you will see it disappear when you run up hills.  

If you get anterior hip pain running up hills, force a wider step width and reduce the possible impingement at the anterior hip joint. Just make sure you have enough ankle dorsiflexion to tackle the hill in the first place. If not, you may welcome some foot and ankle stuff to the table along with the hip.  

Likely obvious stuff to most of the readers here, but sometimes it is nice to point out the obvious.  Hills, just because they are there, doesn’t mean you have the parts to run them safely.

Dr. Shawn Allen

Ankle Dorsiflexion: Even in sprinters who land on the forefoot often heel strike, a retrograde strike if you will.

Many people think of heel strike followed by midfoot/tripod contact phase followed by ankle dorsiflexion, aka ankle rocker.  Heel strike is normal in the walking gait cycle. In some runners, depending on foot type, strength, flexibilty and several other factors, heel strike may be considered normal and may be essential for normal injury free mechanics. However, in recent years we tend to see the media and research investigate a midfoot or forefoot strike pattern. If you have been here with us on TGG for a year or 2-3 you will know we are big advocates of a midfoot strike pattern for several reasons which we will not go into again in this article. (Feel free to SEARCH our blog for MIDFOOT strike articles).  

However, one rarely sees anyone or any source talking about the retrograde heel contact when forefoot strike patterns are used.  Here, in this video, you can see several of these top level athletes who are trying to go forward at top end speed, but who are tapping the heel down on many loading responses. This can be thought of as a retrograde movement and could in a biomechanical way of thinking be considered non-productive. In other words, they are trying to move forward and yet the heel is touching down which is a backwards movement. This point can be argued but that is not the point of this article. The point that we are trying to make is that in order to drop the heel down, and especially if the heel touches, that the runner had better have sufficient ankle rocker/dorsifleixon otherwise the arch may be asked to collapse via excessive pronation (to perform the heel tap) which will drive an internal spin movement when the leg is supposed to be externally rotating to a rigid supinated foot for propulsive toe off. This negative scenario is a huge power leak for a sprinter, or any runner for that matter when they are ramping up speed.  

So, why does this happen ?  Well, for some it can help to load the posterior mechanism, the gastrocsoleus-achilles complex for conservation and power conversion.  It also enables more hip extension and thus more gluteal function. Longer stride means more efficient and greater arm swing which is a huge accessory power source for a sprinter. This also lengthens the stride, they feed off of each other. There are many benefits, if you have sufficient ankle rocker range in the ankle to begin with.  In some runners who do not have the requisite ankle rocker range, you may often see the increased foot progression angle and external limb spin and/or the dreaded adductor twist of the heel (aka  abductory twist of the foot).  These are strategies to get more hip extension and more gluteal function without finding it via the ankle dorsiflexion, where you want to see it.  Remember, the body is a brilliant compensatory and substituter. If the body cannot find a range at one joint it will find it at the next proximal or distal joint. And when that loss is at the ankle, motor patterns options dictate you either find it at foot pronation or hip extension.

Maybe, just maybe we should have called this blog article “Can you hold the foot tripod all the way through the stance phase, even through retrograde heel touch down ? If you cannot, trouble could be on the horizon. ”  But that is a really dumb title.  

Shawn and Ivo

the gait guys