Natural Running is the middle ground runners have been looking for, explaining how runners can enjoy running as nature intended while protecting themselves from unnatural surfaces. By learning to run the barefoot way – but with shoes – runners will become more efficient, stronger, and healthier runners. Backed by studies at MIT and Harvard, running form and injury expert Danny Abshire presents the natural running technique, form drills, and an 8-week transition plan that will put runners on the path to faster, more efficient, and healthier running. Natural Running is now available in bookstores, running and triathlon shops, and online. A preview of the book is available at velopress.com/running.
In Natural Running, Abshire explains how modern running shoes distort the efficient running technique that humans evolved over thousands of years. He reviews the history of running shoes and how changing technologies have influenced running form and the incidence of overuse injuries. Abshire makes the case for the barefoot running style but warns that barefoot running comes with its own dangers. By learning the natural running technique, runners can enjoy both worlds-comfortable feet, knees, and legs and an efficient running form that reduces impact and injuries.
Natural Running teaches runners to think about injuries as symptoms of poor running form. Abshire specifies the overuse injuries that are most commonly associated with particular body alignment problems, foot types, and form flaws. Runners will learn how to analyze and identify their own characteristics so they can start down the path to natural running.
Abshire explains the natural running technique, describing the posture, arm carriage, cadence, and land-lever-lift foot positioning that mimic the barefoot running style. Runners transition from heel striking to a midfoot or forefoot strike, which studies show is how the body evolved to run. So that runners can relearn this more natural running gait, Abshire offers an 8-week transition plan, complete with a tool kit of strength and form drills that build and maintain the musculature required for natural running.
Natural Running is the newest way to run and also the oldest. By discovering how they were meant to run, runners will become more efficient, stronger, and healthier runners.
“Abshire is one of the leading voices in the current natural running revolution.” – Danny Dreyer, author of ChiRunning
“Danny brings a simple, sensible approach to transforming your running. His knowledge of running form and biomechanics can help all runners become more efficient.” – Mark Allen, six-time Ironman® World Champion, and co-author of Fit Soul, Fit Body: 9 Keys to a Healthier, Happier You
Natural Running: The Simple Path to Stronger, Healthier Running by Danny Abshire with Brian Metzler Paperback, 6″ x 9″, 200 pp., $18.95, 978-1-934030-65-3
Danny Abshire is a passionate lifelong runner and cofounder of Newton Running, where he has spent 10 years designing and refining Newton Running shoes. As a longtime running form coach and injury expert, he has worked closely with thousands of athletes, from beginners to Olympic elites, helping them improve their running form and technique. Brian Metzler is Senior Editor for Running Times and has written about endurance sports for Runner’s World, Triathlete, Inside Triathlon, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, and Outside.
VeloPress is an endurance sports and fitness publisher with books on cycling, triathlon, running, nutrition and diet, and the histories and personalities of our sports. VeloPress is the book-publishing division of Competitor Group, Inc., which publishes Triathlete, Inside Triathlon, and Competitor magazines and produces the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon and Half-Marathon series.
One Comment
I made the rookie mistake of doing way too much, way too soon. I ended up with really sore calves and a few blisters on my right foot (it was really interesting to me that they were only on my right foot. obviously i did something wrong with that leg). It was no big deal, really, but I was having so much fun that I didn’t pay attention to my feet. And, the joke, of course, is the whole reason for being barefoot is to pay attention. I dialed it back a notch and no problems now. I also like that I can walk around and be basically barefoot in Invisible Shoes. I think my feet are getting stronger and, more wild, I think I\’m building up arches for the first time in my life.