If you or one of your clients wants to improve their run in a HYROX or a running race, this article is for you. Joanne Groves shows you how to improve your running efficiency using ViPR.
My client Lisa was struggling with the running component of the HYROX. This blog will share the process used to help her and my hope is that it could help you or your clients too.
Stay with me to find out why I have selected each drill for you, or you can skip to the end and go straight to 10 running drills using ViPR to improve your running.
Using two short video clips of Lisa running, I set about looking at what changed. The first video was when she was fresh. She looked comfortable, upright and her feet were quick off the ground. The second was taken when she was tired, under fatigue. Here she looked pale, slower and each stride looked heavy. She struggled to stay upright and her eyeline was dropping lower and lower.
I can't stand exercises without a specific purpose but I love designing bespoke drills to help with specific movement outcome goals. Here’s how to build 10 drills to help get a new running PB – and that cheesy grin!
Discover our best run
To improve our running, we need to define what ‘our’ best run looks like. Then we can make a plan to make it more efficient. In the early video of Lisa, her running looked like it was effortless. She was tall and able to land and get back off the ground quickly on each stride.
This introduces what ‘her’ efficient run looks like. Running efficiently means wasting less energy at a chosen pace. It’s having the ability to hold that pace while keeping the energy cost as low as possible. The less you waste, the longer you can hold your pace for a given time. This is also often called “running economy”. This can be estimated, according to some research studies, by using oxygen cost at a steady, submaximal speed 1 . However, you can spot efficient running without any fancy gadgets, especially if you are good at seeing and predicting movement.
You stay taller, your eyes remain on the horizon, and your foot contacts the ground and leaves again at pace. You have one leg that is firm without much fold at the knee. Plus, you can see the opposite knee drive through at pace, which helps fast turnover of the feet. This knee drive works with the opposite extensor reflex, which can be trained through drills like hopping, if you don't see it in your runner.
What you see when fatigue kicks in
In the later video, Lisa had lost her efficient running. She appeared to fold further at the hip and knee, her eye line darted about and each stride looked laboured. Not only was she slowing down but each step was requiring more energy. Fatigue, here, is referring to the point where it becomes harder to maintain your efficient pace. This is not a blog about sleep, nutrition or training volume. Although they are important when managing fatigue, our aim is to stay focused on how you see its influence on running. Look for what happens to your running when it feels harder and then build specific drills to help keep your running efficient for longer. When fatigue kicks in, runners often spend longer on the ground, moving through a deeper fold at the hip and knee 2 . This requires more energy in each stride, due to an increased range of motion to manage before the next step. It can look like your middle is struggling to stay tall, as your legs are trying to keep going.
This brings us to two specific components to challenge that will help delay fatigue: the core and deceleration.
The core component of running
Core training is often trained in isolation, with sit-ups, bird dogs and planks. These exercises can be useful in some scenarios but they are not specific to how the core shows up in running. To keep me happy, this blog needs to design core drills for maximum carry over that transfer to our movement goal. We need drills to help us get upright, get off the floor at pace and ensure it still looks like running.
When I refer to the core, I mean the co-ordination of all the muscles from the landing side glute and hamstring, through the pelvis and spine, all the way to the shoulders. Our aim is to train and challenge the right muscles, in the right sequence, with the right power output to maintain tension through the middle in a way that looks like running.
The deceleration component to running
A run would not be a run without deceleration. In Lisa’s initial video, her landing was quick and light. In the second, it was heavy and slow. Every stride has a braking phase – the force that slows you down upon contact. Deceleration is the ability to manage that braking through eccentric control, where muscles lengthen under tension to ‘catch’ your weight. Without this control, you sink into an increased range of motion at the hip and knee. This extra muscle length creates more range to manage, wasting energy and increasing ground contact time 4 . We need to train to stay tall and control the landing while moving.
Choosing the right tool for the job
Now that we know what is needed, we can build the drills. I use a top-down approach. I start with my client’s goal, assess what their efficient running looks like and look at where fatigue shows up. I can then match the right movement task to these needs.
Before we touch a tool, we must set up the movement task. With your comfortable run filmed, follow with these five key positions while maintaining running:
- Arms fixed overhead (Shoulder Flexion)
- Arms leaning left (Lateral Flexion)
- Arms leaning right (Lateral Flexion)
- Arms rotated left (Spinal Rotation)
- Arms rotated right (Spinal Rotation)
To increase the demand further, we repeat the above with the arms moving from those fixed positions.
Time to add load.
These movements test your ability to co-ordinate the right muscles, in the right sequence, with the right power output for running. However, we want to create an adaptation at pace, without our client having to run the full distance of their race. It's time to add load.
By adding load to the above tasks, you can challenge your body further and improve your efficiency for longer, delaying the point where fatigue causes your running form to break down. We aren't just making it harder. We are teaching the body to co- ordinate efficiently to handle the extra demand, in a way that is specific to running.
The tool we are using today is ViPR.
While other tools can add load, the cylinder tube of ViPR makes it easy to hold and move into different positions. The length of ViPR shifts the centre of gravity away from your body. By holding the load overhead or to the side, you increase the lever arm. This gives the weight more leverage to pull you into the fold we are trying to prevent. You must work hard against this shift, by co-ordinating internal tension through the core just to maintain your normal running height.
Adding movement
When we move ViPR from the fixed positions, we introduce momentum. A moving mass here can drag your centre of gravity with it at pace. In these moving drills, your body has to work even harder against this shift to decelerate the mass. This increases the demand on your braking phase, the deceleration, forcing your legs to work harder eccentrically to catch the load without sinking. Your body has to decelerate the momentum of the swinging ViPR while maintaining co-ordination and sequence.
If you start to see the height drop or the movement quality suffer, choose a lighter ViPR or remove the load. The goal is to load the co-ordination, not break it. These drills challenge the required biomechanics for running, rather than just making muscles burn. We can use ViPR because it allows us to load the exact biomechanics we need to improve.
Running drills with ViPR
Start 20 metres back. After each drill, walk or jog back to the starting position. Spend 45 seconds on each of the five drills.
Set 1: Static held positions while running
ViPR stays held while the client runs, so the demand increases without the extra challenge of moving ViPR.
1. Running with overhead hold in shoulder flexion: Hold ViPR overhead and stay tall.
2. Running with left laterally flexed: Hold ViPR to the left, challenging side bend.
3. Running with right laterally flexed: Hold ViPR to the right, challenging side bend.
4. Running with left rotated spine: Hold ViPR around to the left and resist spinning out.
5. Running with right rotated spine: Hold ViPR around to the right and resist spinning out.
Bonus 1: Running with left lateral flexion and right rotation
Bonus 2: Running with right lateral flexion and left rotated
Set 2: Moving drills while running
The running remains as the task and ViPR movement adds another layer of demand on your eccentric control.
Start 20 metres back. After each drill, walk or jog back to the starting position. Spend 45 seconds on each of the five drills.
6. Running driving overhead shoulder flexing: Keep ViPR overhead and stay tall.
7. Running with left laterally flexing: Keep ViPR driving to the left.
8. Running with right laterally flexing: Keep ViPR driving to the right.
9. Running with left rotating: Hold ViPR driving to the left and resist spinning out.
10. Running with right rotating: Hold ViPR driving to the right and resist spinning out.
Bonus 3: Running with right laterally flexing and left rotating.
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Bonus 4: Running with left laterally flexing and right rotating.
After doing these drills, run without ViPR. Notice how you stay more upright for longer, with less vertical drop and better control of the landing. If you film it, tag me on Instagram so I can reshare it!
Running without ViPR after drills
To recap, we started with the client’s movement outcome goal: Lisa wants to improve her running. We defined what her efficiency looks like and analysed the influence of fatigue. To delay that fatigue, we identified two components to train:
- The core: co-ordination from the landing glute/hamstring through the spine and shoulders.
- The deceleration phase: Managing the braking part of each stride through eccentric control.
Instead of a tool-first approach, we matched the right drills to her specific needs and used ViPR to resist those movements. You now have 10 ViPR running drills, each with a clear purpose. In the next blog, we will address using ViPR to assist with acceleration.
Thank you for reading and thank you to my client Lisa, who inspired me to do my first HYROX and I loved it.
Joanne Groves is a personal trainer, and course director and educator at Faster Health and Fitness.
If you enjoyed this blog, struggle to build innovative exercises and wish you had a solution that covered all training tools, check out her Kinetic Specialist Loading Course – use code: Fitpro to get 15% of any course.
Alternatively, you can message her on 07515 813171 or at https://wa.me/message/EGYSN4GHLCVJE1 for a complimentary one-to-one call. https://www.fasterfunction.com/
References
1. Saunders, P.U., Pyne, D.B., Telford, R.D. and Hawley, J.A. (2004) ‘Factors affecting running economy in trained distance runners’, Sports Medicine, 34(7), pp. 465–485. https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200434070-00005
2. Winter, S.C., Gordon, S., Brice, S.M., Lindsay, D. and Barrs, S. (2016) ‘Effects of fatigue on kinematics and kinetics during overground running: a systematic review’, Journal of Sports Sciences, 34(12), pp. 1175–1183. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2015.1095947
3. Lieberman, D.E., Raichlen, D.A., Pontzer, H., Bramble, D.M. and Cutright Smith, E. (2006) ‘The human gluteus maximus and its role in running’, The Journal of Experimental Biology, 209(11), pp. 2143–2155. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.02255
4. Zandbergen, M.A., Vanrenterghem, J. and Pepping, G.J. (2023) ‘Effects of level running induced fatigue on running kinematics: a systematic review and meta-analysis’, Gait & Posture, 99, pp. 60–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaitpost.2022.09.089
Further reading
- Arellano, C.J. and Kram, R. (2014) ‘The metabolic cost of human running: is swinging the arms worth it?’, The Journal of Experimental Biology, 217(14), pp. 2456–2461. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.100420
- Blagrove, R.C., Howatson, G. and Hayes, P.R. (2018) ‘Effects of strength training on the physiological determinants of middle- and long-distance running performance: a systematic review’, Sports Medicine, 48(5), pp. 1117–1149. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-017-0835-7
- Llanos Lagos, C., et al. (2024) ‘Effect of strength training programmes in middle- and long-distance runners on running economy: a systematic review with meta-analysis’, Sports Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-023-01978-y
- Morgan, D.W., Martin, P.E. and Krahenbuhl, G.S. (1989) ‘Factors affecting running economy’, Sports Medicine, 7(5), pp. 310–330. https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-198907050-00003
- Støren, O., Helgerud, J., Støa, E.M. and Hoff, J. (2008) ‘Maximal strength training improves running economy in distance runners’, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 40(6), pp. 1087–1092. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0b013e318168da2f
- Thelen, D.G., Chumanov, E.S., Hoerth, D.M., Best, T.M., Swanson, S.C., Li, L. and Heiderscheit, B.C. (2005) ‘Hamstring muscle kinematics during treadmill sprinting’, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 37(1), pp. 108–114. https://doi.org/10.1249/01.mss.0000150078.79120.c8
