Running Backwards is Better!

Scratch every­thing you’ve heard from me about bare­foot run­ning. I had it all wrong. I have just found infal­li­ble proof that – this is huge, folks – run­ning back­wards is better!

Run­ning back­wards has been some­thing peo­ple have been doing for thou­sands of years. Monks in China report­edly prac­ticed run­ning back­wards over long dis­tances. More recently, a small but increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple have been run­ning “retro”. Based on what I’ve just come across, the num­ber of back­wards run­ners is going to go dra­mat­i­cally up.

Recent stud­ies have shown that you can save more energy and run faster with less injuries if you run back­wards. Yes, com­pletely back­wards, with your back fac­ing the direc­tion you want to go in. Before you toss this idea to the side like a seven-year old fruit­cake, hear me out.

A grow­ing body of sci­en­tific evi­dence from the fields of phys­i­ol­ogy, psy­chol­ogy, and podi­a­try explains why run­ning back­wards is bet­ter than for­wards. I will lay the case out for you here. I have no doubt that you will be swayed upon read­ing the find­ings. I know, it’s almost too hard to believe, but hang in there.

Firstly, let me explain the phys­i­o­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of run­ning back­wards. As you may not be aware, research has shown that our legs are able to pro­vide 3 times the amount of spring when jump­ing back­wards rather than forwards.

Sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­sity of Cardiff got the idea to test back­wards jump­ing when they found ancient cave draw­ings in Egypt depict­ing grown men in what must have been a jump­ing con­test, jump­ing back­wards. After test­ing this the­ory on mice, weasels, and then chim­panzees, a study was con­ducted in 2008 with col­lege ath­letes from three British Universities.

The results, to be pub­lished in the upcom­ing Win­ter issue of the Jour­nal of Nat­ural Phys­i­ol­ogy of the Human Species, explains the star­tling find­ings. With more spring, run­ning back­wards the sci­en­tists explain would result in longer strides, more effi­cient use of energy, and faster speeds.

It’s actu­ally not that sur­pris­ing of a find­ing, when you real­ize men and women have been jump­ing back­wards in the high jump for years now. It’s surely just a mat­ter of time before sprint­ers and marathon­ers turn around and face the facts.

Mean­while, sci­en­tists in Aus­tralia are keen on using these find­ings with kan­ga­roos across their coun­try to see if the 54 meter jump­ing record cur­rently held by Ten-Foot Timmy can be bro­ken. The world awaits the outcome.

Sec­ondly, there are psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits to run­ning back­wards. When we run for­wards, we are forced to focus on where we are going. This visual fix­a­tion on the future robs us of the ben­e­fits of being in the present. With­out the dis­trac­tion of where we are going in front of us, we can enter a Zen-like state. This results in a much more relaxed pos­ture and sharper mind.

Run­ning back­wards also enables us to learn from our recent past from time to time. If we run back­wards, we are clearly able to see what we just did. We can observe our stride. We are able to take note of our foot­prints, ana­lyz­ing them in the moment and mak­ing real-time stride adjustments.

Thirdly, run­ning back­wards is much bet­ter from a podi­atric per­spec­tive. When run­ning back­wards, we are much more likely to land with our fore­foot first. While land­ing on the fore­foot does not con­flict with the pro­claimed ben­e­fits of bare­foot run­ning, it turns out that our feet do so bet­ter when mov­ing backwards.

When we swing our legs and feet back­wards, our toes are already point­ing down, below our cen­ter of grav­ity. If you have tried run­ning for­wards and land­ing on your forefeet, you have no doubt found it to be rather dif­fi­cult at first. This is because it’s not nat­ural for us to do so. When run­ning forward.

When run­ning for­ward, our heels are more inclined to kick out. Podi­a­trists explain that the achilles heel is to blame for this. How­ever, when we run back­wards, we can turn this dis­ad­van­tage into an advan­tage. We nat­u­rally land on our fore­foot beneath our body when swing­ing our leg back­wards. It’s actu­ally dif­fi­cult to over-stride when you go back­wards. Go ahead, try it for your­self. You’ll be amazed at how nat­ural the fore­foot strike becomes when your foot is swung backwards.

Our bod­ies are sim­ply designed to run back­wards. And every­one ben­e­fits! In addi­tion to being phys­i­o­log­i­cally, psy­cho­log­i­cally, and podi­atri­cally bet­ter for our­selves, it’s also bet­ter for the planet and the econ­omy. So what are you wait­ing for?

I’ll see you on the trails. Well, after I pass you, that is.

Author’s Note: I’m ter­ri­bly sorry about mis­lead­ing you with the whole bare­foot run­ning thing. It would appear that I was so focused on bare­foot run­ning that I didn’t stop to real­ize that I had assumed run­ning for­ward was bet­ter! That will serve me for not ques­tion­ing the fun­da­men­tals of run­ning. I am just glad I can share this recent sci­en­tific break­through with you so you can also ben­e­fit from the won­ders of run­ning backwards.

UPDATE

Due to mount­ing law­suits, strained rela­tion­ships, and even death threats I am forced to admit that this post wasn’t entirely true.

The thing is, I sud­denly real­ized that if I con­tinue to pro­mote the ben­e­fits of run­ning bare­foot or at least in min­i­mal shoes, I am spread­ing the ben­e­fits of bare­foot run­ning to many! And since one of my goals is to run ultra races and not come in last, shar­ing my learn­ings on how to run bet­ter runs directly counter to this goal! The bet­ter the run­ning field gets, the less of a chance I have of plac­ing any­where in the mid­dle of the pack! How could I have made such a mistake?

I guess you weren’t going to buy the whole run­ning back­wards thing any way. Right?

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