 Alright, so today I'd like to talk a little bit about arm swing and how it relates to running performance. Obviously running is done with the legs, but the arms are actually an important part of the whole movement pattern. You know, when it comes to form, efficiency and performance. So it's an interesting topic. Let's talk about it. Alright, so first of all, there are different ways in which the arms come into play when it comes to running performance. If you look at someone like a sprinter, they're pumping their arms. You know, you see in the 100 meter sprinter, they're just like... And that's an important sort of strategy to keep moving forward. So they actually do need to work on that upper body strength and to throw their arms forward. And that's part of their, you know, generating that forward momentum. When it comes to long distance runners like marathon runners and even 10K and 5K, the pump is not as important. But nevertheless, the arms are there for a reason. When you're running and you're putting your left foot forward, for example, your body naturally, if you didn't have your arms, if you try running with your arms behind your back, you'll find that you'll just, you know, you'll sort of throw your upper body in that direction if you're putting your left foot forward and sort of lose balance. So the arms are there as a counterweight, right? Opposite foot, opposite arm goes forward when you're running. And that's part of sort of balancing your stride to keep it steady going forward. In fact, you should probably try it. Just try running with their hands behind your back one day and you'll find that it's pretty difficult. You'll have to sort of try and overcompensate by using your shoulders, which is just, you know, you're just trying to do what the arms do anyway. When it comes to how to use your arms while running or how the running form should be, we can get into proper running form in another video, but with regards to the arms, we're really talking about sort of around a 90 degree angle, maybe a little bit less even. You don't want to have too large of an angle because then you're going to swing your arms too much like that and that's going to be a waste of energy. So you're going to keep your arms sort of 90 degrees or a little bit less and then relaxed at the side of your body and then, you know what, when I said that the sprinters, they actually pump their arms forward to move forward. Well, when you're running, you know, long distance, you're actually more pumping more back. You're actually not doing that much of a forward movement. It's actually more of a back movement. So you're pumping your arm, your elbow back like that and then relaxing coming forward, relaxing coming forward. So if you're thinking about when you're at running and you're thinking about, you know, should you move your arms purposely? Well, maybe a little bit, but then it's only backwards really, you move them backwards. Trying to get it up, not like excessively obviously, but just getting them up back there and then, you know, rather than being like that with your elbows in front of you, you want to keep your elbows behind you more or less all the time. There's a lot of individual variation, of course. I mean, if you look at someone like Tirunas De Baba, which is one of the greatest runners in history, she has a very small angle in her elbows and she's running like this. So not only does she have a very small angle, but she does something that is also generally frowned upon that is to move your arms past your center line. Generally speaking, you want to avoid this. Imagine there's a line going down your center and you don't want to cross that line with your arms because obviously that would mean that you're putting energy that direction when you're trying to move forward. It's a pretty bad idea. So try and keep, you know, those arms going forward more or less directly forward by pumping your elbows back and keeping your arms relaxed going forward like that. So as I said, De Baba, she runs like that. Mo Farah, I mean, he has like some kind of strange movement with one of his arms kind of sometimes. So there's a lot of, you know, exceptions. But I would argue that they're probably running well despite their sort of somewhat poor arm swing. So there's no reason why you should not try to optimize your arm swing. But then again, because of differences in dimensions of the bones, shoulders and general just body type, you might find that you're doing better with, you know, a little bit of a different arm swing than someone else might prefer. And so there's got to be room for that individual variations. And sometimes when you try to force your form too much, you can actually end up getting less efficient. Let's talk about that efficiency or running economy, which is the amount of energy that you use to run. That's another issue. Well, if you imagine now standing here and you start doing this, your heart rate is going to go up, right? You're actually using energy, you're burning fuel, oxygen is being consumed at a higher rate than at rest. And so that's going to play a part also when you're running, right? So imagine that could you save energy by just not using your arms at all, just using your legs? Well, that brings us back to the first point again. And the answer is no, you can't actually, because you're going to end up so out of balance that you have to compensate with your core so much, etc. So your arms are actually there to, if you're able to stay relaxed and just have them, you know, natural good swing in your arms, that's actually beneficial for your running economy. Now, if you're carrying water in your hands, then your running economy tends to go down because you don't want to have weight far away from your body. So if you're carrying something, you want to carry it in your belt or in your backpack. So you see people running with handhelds, there are pros and cons to that. One of the cons is that it sort of costs a little bit more in terms of economy, in terms of oxygen, essentially. And if you're doing too much of a movement, like, let's say you're just, you know, running like that, then you're actually wasting movement, wasting energy every time you do that and you can end up having a little bit of a higher heart rate for that pace. Whereas if you're able to just bring your arms in, relax and not waste energy with your arms, you're actually able to run a little bit faster at that same heart rate or run the same pace but at a lower heart rate, which is essentially what running economy is all about. Now I want to give you a quick tip here on the end and that is use your arms to balance. Don't forget that you have the arms. Sometimes, especially in trail running, when you're heading down a difficult technical section or over some rocks and trails, you know, it can be difficult to stay balanced and that's when you actually want to think about your arms as, well, I don't know, like counterweights. So what I do is that if I'm really, you know, if it's a difficult trail, I'm going fast, I'll just put my arms out a little bit and I'll be able to just quickly adjust my balance by using, by putting my arms out, pulling them in, pulling them out and that sort of thing. So don't neglect your arms in these situations, use them for what they're worth, just get your arms out there and move. And sometimes if I'm sort of having to go on the left side of a trail, for example, there's a big puddle or something and I want to run there and it's, you know, I could fall into it like that. I just put my arm out like that and maybe that one as well. That way I'm like able to just go past it without falling in. So use your arms in situations like that. But again, do remember that that does waste energy. So if you don't have to do it, don't do it. When it comes to road running and stuff like that, you just want to have that monotonous, simple arm movement, pushing, pumping your elbows back, keeping them going straight in the direction that you want to go. And when it comes to your hands, you just want to close them gently. And as Durin Ryder says, imagine holding butterflies. Imagine there's butterflies in your hands and you don't want to crush them, right? But you don't want to let them out either. So you want to hold them like that. That's how you want to relax, sort of have your hands when you're running. A lot of people can get tense in their shoulders when they're running and they end up running like this. That's not a good idea. Relax. Keep your shoulders relaxed. Keep your back sort of shoulder blades. You know, you want to keep your back sort of up like that. You want to hunch over while we're getting into running form now. But generally speaking, you want to keep that running tall like that, chest forward and then, you know, relaxed arms along the side. That's what it's all about, being relaxed. What I like to do sometimes is that if I'm noticing that I'm tensing up during my run, I'll just let my arms down while I'm running, just relax. As an exercise to just get relaxed, I'll just throw them down and run for like 2, 3, 4 seconds with my arms hanging on the side just being like, no, no tension at all. And then I'll bring them back up and keep running. So bringing attention to that relaxation. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe to this channel if you haven't done so already. Let me know in the comments what your thoughts are about Arm Swing. If you have any questions, feel free to post them as well. Hope you're having a great day. Hope your running is going well. Stay tuned for more videos. Thanks. Bye.