How to Do Soft Sand Running

Video Transcript

TIM BORLAND: Hi, my name is Tim Borland. Today we're going to talk about soft sand trail running. Now when I say soft sand trail running, I'm really referring to beaches, sand dunes, often times trails will have much deeper sand than what you'll be used to on a fire road. When you find deep sand--soft sand like this, what you're going to end up doing is you're going to shift your body forward. This is going to require you to get up on the balls of your feet to take a shorter stride, you're really going to be digging in with your toes, you're not going to find that you're on your heels much and you're leaning back. You're really going to be leaning forward, pushing on your toes, this is going to be a really good calf workout as you'll come to find because again, as you're on your toes, that's really all--it's all--you're engaging your calf mostly. Just even on a side note, soft sand is really good, barefoot is really good, actually strengthen your arches and with so much plantar fasciitis out there, soft sand running in barefoot is actually good to even help prevent plantar fasciitis as well. So just remember if you hit some soft sand, make that shift, start leaning forward, get on the balls of your feet, shorten your stride and just focus on driving forward. And if your calves really hurt at the end of the day, you'll know why. And also, in soft sand, you're going to find that you don't get the balance that you get when you're on a harder ground. When you hit that soft sand, you're going to sink into the ground so you're really going to have to pick up those knees and drive. All of these is will slow down your pace some but it's going to be a good--it's just a good shift and what you're doing is going to change your muscle--your muscle build and your focus which you'll just find as you change things out, you're going to have to think about your knees and picking up your legs, you're going to work more of an effort there as well because when you're on the regular trails, you find that you don't have to turn over--you don't have to work the turn over as much as you do in the soft sand.