There are a lot of different ways to improve as a runner — with by far the best and most obvious one being to do more running — but it’s true to say that your running form has an impact as well. While there is no perfect way to run, there are things you can do to make your form a little more efficient and potentially reduce the risk of injury.
Your running form can also influence your taste in running shoes, which is why running stores have long offered gait analysis, which looks at the way you run to make basic recommendations on what shoes might work for you, mainly with a focus on stability.
Nike’s in-store form analysis goes well beyond this, using marker-less motion capture technology to track 1.6 million data points on your biomechanics. This is all done in just two minutes, and a report is instantly generated for an expert to talk you through to give you information on your form and what you might consider working on, and how.
This whole report is wrapped up with shoe recommendations, which might make you skeptical about the whole endeavor — gait analysis has long been used as a method to sell running shoes.
However, having tried Nike’s NSRL Form test at the brand’s Oxford Circus store in London, I can say it was impressive and the focus is on your form, rather than the best Nike running shoes.
What does the NSRL Form Test involve?
To take the test you have to book into a store where it’s available. Currently this is only in Oxford Street, London, along with Shanghai and Tokyo, with U.S. availability yet to be confirmed.
The test itself involves just two minutes of running on a treadmill, which is surrounded by iPhones filming you to capture your running form. You select the pace yourself, and if you’re building towards a target event the advice is to run at your goal pace for that.
After your brief run, you are taken through your analysis and given some recommendations about what you might want to work on with your running form, and the type of running shoes that might be best for you, including some Nike options that fit that type.
The whole experience takes around 15 minutes, and you might have to wait for five to 10 minutes before you go in for your appointment.
What data do you get from the test?
The test focuses on six areas of your running form — slide, roll, cross, bounce, lean and reach.
Slide, roll and cross are classed as ‘control’ metrics, measuring how well you direct your body on the run without superfluous movement.
- Slide is how much your body sways from side to side on the run.
- Roll is how much your hips drop when you land.
- Cross looks at whether your feet are in line when you land.
Lean, bounce and reach are ‘force’ metrics, which look at the impact on your body of running and how well you propel yourself forward.
- Lean is how far your body leans forward as you run.
- Bounce is how much you move up and down as you run.
- Reach looks at how far in front of your body your foot lands.
These are plotted on a hexagonal graph to see if you’re in the ‘right’ area for each, so you can see on my graph five of the six areas are in the right zone, but not reach, because I was landing too far in front of my body as I ran.
Along with these six bits of data the analysis also gives your cadence — the amount of steps you take per minute — and your footstrike, which tells you which part of the foot you land on.
How can you improve your running form?
My analysis suggested working on my reach, with the potential benefits of landing more beneath my body being reduced stress on my lower legs, feet and ankles, and improved performance, because I’d lose less momentum with each stride.
Improved performance is always something I’m chasing as a keen marathoner, so it’s something I will work on in the future. My recommendation was to do running drills for five minutes, three times a week, focusing on pushing back with my foot and landing more underneath my body.
Drills are a great way to make gradual changes to your form, rather than trying to do too much at once. I was also advised the best time to do this is just after a race at the start of your next training block, rather than in the last couple of weeks before your main event.
The report also recommended doing strength workouts for my lower body, giving some options from the free Nike Training Club app.
Finally, the shoe recommendations come at the end of the report and suggest how much responsiveness and cushioning you might want, as well as advising on if you might need any stability. I was recommended the Nike Vomero 18 and Nike Vomero Plus to add more cushion underfoot, for example.
Is it worth trying?
I enjoyed the experience and even as someone who’s not particularly worried about their running form, there were some interesting insights to take from the NSRL Form test.
As it was a very short run on a treadmill, where I feel I run a little differently compared with on the road, it’s not as extensive and detailed an analysis as you’d get from longer testing, but I do think it can be useful for runners and more so than traditional gait analysis, because it looks at the whole body.
Just remember that any recommendations are just that, recommendations, so you don’t have to rush out and try and change everything about your running because of a two-minute test.
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