No more “creeping”

After writing the last post about my poor racewalking technique, I decided to hit the bridge and start tackling the problem head on. If you remember, I was having a problem with my leading knee bending prematurely during the landing phase…aka “creeping”.

Well , after capturing and analyzing a half dozen or so 50 yard racewalking intervals on video, I discovered that it was when I tried to walk at faster paces that I would start to creep. I think it was Dave who was telling me that racewalking on a treadmill too much could also lead to bad habits such as these.

In this slo-mo video clip that I shot yesterday, I’m racewalking at very casually pace (appx 12 min/mile). You’ll notice that my forward knee stays locked from the time it hits the ground until it’s passes completely under me. This is pretty close to the way it should be (though I just noticed that my forward foot is flattening out a little too early.) What you don’t see however, are my arms pulling all the way back or my hips opening up as much as they should, but those aren’t considered violations, just lazy technique. I’ll start working on that stuff next week.

If you want a higher a higher quality image, view the clip directly from Youtube and click “better quality”
BTW.. I really like the zoom-in effect in you can add to your video clips in the latest version of Windows Movie Maker.