It’s easy to assume we run the way we were born to run. In practice, that’s rarely true. Most of us pick up a long list of reasons we’ve drifted from an efficient stride. Years at a desk or in school, old injuries, stress, and breathing dysfunction can all play a part. Some people have a shorter list. A teenager who just went through a growth spurt is one example, but almost everyone has some list.

Once a movement pattern is learned, even a flawed one, it takes real, deliberate work to change it. You can strengthen and stretch all you want, but that alone usually won’t change the pattern you default to while running. Changing your gait takes a concentrated effort aimed specifically at the movement pattern itself.

Done well, that effort can mean faster running and a lower risk of injury.

How We Help You Fix It

To change a movement pattern, we prescribe a series of drills. These progress from slow, deliberate movements to faster, running-specific ones. We pair them with one simple cue for you to focus on while you run. Both the drills and the cue are based entirely on your individual 3D gait analysis results — not a generic template.

When runners try to fix their stride on their own, they usually land on one of two approaches. The first is a cookie-cutter method, like the Pose Method, applied the same way to everyone. That’s not necessarily wrong, but it may not be the specific change your gait actually needs. You have to know whether you’re the runner that approach is built for. The second mistake is grabbing bits of advice from different sources and trying to apply all of them at once mid-run. That might mean landing on your midfoot, leaning forward, driving your knees, and relaxing your arms, all in the same stride. That’s simply too much for your brain to process while performing a fast, complex movement like running.

How We Use RunDNA 3D Gait Analysis

The technology we use, RunDNA, is different from a traditional 3D gait lab in a few important ways. Traditional labs require a lot of space and technical processing, which tends to make the experience slower and more expensive. Typically, whoever runs the analysis collects a large amount of raw data that has to be processed afterward into meaningful numbers. And even once you have those numbers, the next question is usually: now what? You know what you’re doing while you run, but not necessarily how to meaningfully change it.

With RunDNA, we get results immediately — real numbers and angles compared directly against the norm, right there in the session. From that, we can place you into a gait dysfunction category. There are five main categories, each with subcategories: overstrider, collapser, bouncer, weaver, and glute amnesiac. Because we have the data instantly, we can have you try different cues on the spot. We get real-time feedback right away on whether that cue is actually changing your running in a way that reduces your pain or improves your performance.

From there, we typically land on one simple cue that will make the biggest impact for you specifically. That might be something like “drive your knees forward” or following a metronome for cadence, and we prescribe the drills that reinforce it. Your results and a personalized training calendar are then available to you in the RunDNA app, so you can keep working the changes between sessions.

The 5 Main Categories of Gait Dysfunction

Which one do you think you fall into? Maybe you’ve noticed it in photos of yourself running, or maybe it lines up with the injuries that keep coming back. A 3D gait analysis is the most reliable way to actually find out, rather than guess, and to put you on a more efficient, injury-resistant path.

Curious which category fits you, or whether a full analysis or a shorter gait screen makes more sense for where you’re at? Our FAQ page covers the difference, and you can read more about the assessment itself on our 3D Gait Assessment page.