Coach's Eye - An Amazing Tool to Improve Your Running Form

Technology today enables us to utilize video in a very simple way to assess and improve running mechanics. Sure, you could go to a very sophisticated running lab with ping-pong balls on your ankles, knees, hips, etc, and have force plates on the ground to measure your impact and lots of other data.

However, by simply taking a 3-5 second video of you running from the side, then another one from the front and/or back, you can get a TON of information on what you’re doing well and what could be improved with your running form.

The tool I use in my physical therapy clinic and with Chi-Running clients is Coach’s Eye, an app that I have on the iPad and iPhone that allows you to import the video off your device and allow for frame-by-frame analysis. This is a great teaching tool that I can go over right away with a runner, and I can draw on the screen what I see that should be areas of focus. I also love the ability to record my spoken analysis as I draw on the screen, then be able to send these comments in an email for my clients.

This is so crazy good for your progression as an effortless runner!! It’s so important to have the feedback immediately to learn the ChiRunning form correctly, but also the ability to have the memory of it any time to open in an email. Once you have the focus on what you’re trying to improve, then you can easily have a friend video you running and compare how you look before and after.

I will use Coach’s Eye on every running client, and also from time to time to see what I’m doing with my form: It does a lot to clean up some old bad habits that I may slip into.

Some of you may have NEVER seen yourself run—I get that response on well over 75% of my runners when I do this. Please look at it today using the Coach’s Eye app—it won’t take more than a few minutes to make some profound changes to your running to last a lifetime.