Strengthen Your Run with Tips from Coach Eric Orton 💪

New guest blog post from the Born to Run Coach

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May 15, 2026 8:27am EDT

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RUNNING STRONGER & FURTHER, FOREVER

Want to run stronger and further forever? Start with the foundations!
The following is taken from a guest blog from legendary trail running coach Eric Orton, best known for his work with writer Chris McDougall, author of Born to Run.

We as runners and athletes need a foundation to call upon to guide us. Whether you are a beginner, winner, or anywhere in between, it is this foundation that points us downstream with confidence to ride the monster wave to big running goals.

READ THE FULL BLOG HERE

MORE ABOUT ERIC ORTON

STRONG RUNNING FOUNDATIONS

Most chronic run injuries, or what I call dysfunction, takes place when RUNNING EASY. Yes, when running easy. If we can’t run “well” easily, we have no foundation to rely on or call upon to keep our rubber bands nice and snappy and healthy.

If we are not efficient when running easy, which is what we do most of our running time, we spend more time on each leg, with each step, increasing our ground contact time.

You may even have a ground contact data point on your smart watch. To remain healthy and improve performance, it is crucial for you to decrease your ground contact time and this is done through foot strength, cadence, and leg stiffness training.

FOOT CORE

As runners, it is impossible to separate foot strength from leg strength and stability. Utilizing the foot properly helps you activate and fire muscles all the way up your body that helps create muscle equilibrium and takes away the tug and pull of dominant and weaker muscles that cause tightness and dysfunction that lead to a parade of problems that most runners deal with.

CADENCE

Simply put, if we strive to improve our cadence and reduce ground contact time, we are eliminating the chance for the above biomechanical dysfunction to occur. And when do we typically have our slowest cadence, when running easy.

Here are some training tactics to help you on a path to better cadence.

Running In Place Practice: At home before a run, take your shoes and socks off and run in place barefoot. This is a very simple way to understand foot strike placement and to practice the muscle memory and strength for good cadence. While running in place, put the song Rock Lobster by the B-52s on your playlist and run in place to the beat of the music. The beat will help you to “feel” quick cadence.

Nose Breathing: One challenge new runners have when starting to run is running too fast or speeding up to get their cadence. We need to keep it easy and to help with this do nose breathing intervals where you breath only through your nose with a focus on a higher cadence. This will keep your effort honest and help you improve through time. Practice running as long as you can while nose breathing and then taking a walking break to recover, breathing normally. Practice this frequently and overtime you will be able to run easily, longer and longer.

Not All of the Time: Don't focus on running with higher cadence all of the time. Pick specific days where you work on this. If you focus on it every run, your brain will get overwhelmed and you will get frustrated. Pick and choose your spots weekly and within a run.

Avoid this Mistake: Many runners make the mistake of lifting their knees and legs too high or too fast to get better cadence. Switch this up and think about providing quicker force into the ground, as if you were squishing a tiny bug on the ground.

LEG STIFFNESS

Good leg stiffness allows our body to land and get off our feet quickly and efficiently. Our feet and calves work like springs and rubber bands and every time we land when running, these rubber bands are stretched and then released as our foot leaves the ground, propelling us forward. This helps quicken our cadence, reduces ground contact time, and avoids the biomechanical malfunction we have been discussing.