This is simply a compilation of the hip-drop discussion, no new material
is added.

JM



Steve Patat:

I am still trying to understand hip drop. When I make my stride I do get
a
feel that I am getting hip rotation(back and forward movement). I am not
sure my stride is longer in the rear. I get no feel for the hips moving
up
and down.(Sometimes I get a feeling they move out. I try to keep that at
a
minimum.) So I do not think I have any hip drop. I am reading Jeff's new
book which has a very detailed description of how the hips should move.
I am
just not sure why the hip drops. Could someone take a shot and explain
why
the hip should drop? Should it be a noticeable movement and is it
something
that should come as a natural movement or should I try to create the
drop?
Also, is it something I should be concerned about? Again, I thank all
for
your help.



Tom Eastler:

Don't create a hip drop!!!! It takes us years to retrain those who have
exaggerated hip drop to minimize it. There is no advantage to having hip
drop...since the hip that "drops" in single support phase (standing on
just one leg) is the unsupported hip which is supposed to be rotating
forward and bringing the unsupported leg with it, and the more that hip
drops the higher one has to lift the unsupported leg to get the foot to
swing through with the leg. Hence more drop equals more knee bend and
less rotation of hip girdle around the spine (so called "hip
rotation"). It is the "hip rotation" that allows us to gain inches per
stride over having no rotation at all (like so many, many racewalkers).
Hip drop is anathema (highly accursed). The sway that Jeff mentions
occurs when in the single support phase ever so slightly with or without
hip drop....when it occurs with hip drop id is often exaggerated and is
doubly cursed...it serves no useful purpose in that case and tends to
direct muscular energy in the wrong direction (sideways).



Michael Roth:

To further what Tom said, any excess hip movement (up, down, in, out) is
the
result of poor mechanics caused by weak glute, hip & core muscles and
accentuated by poor coaching.



Brent Bohlen:

I've been thinking about this some. Here are my thoughts on the purpose
of the hip drop: The hip drop is on the side opposite the straightened
leg, but first let's think about the hip on the side of the body where
the leg is straightened at the time of heel strike. As the body moves
over the straightened leg, the hip on that side of the body necessarily
rises. Imagine that the straightened leg is a board. Visualize placing
one end of the board on the ground and holding the board so it is not
quite vertical (just as your leg is not quite vertical at heel strike).
Then visualize moving the board into a vertical position (just as your
leg moves to vertical as your body moves forward over the leg). As you
move the board into a vertical position, the top end of the board will
move farther from the ground until the board is vertical, and then will
move closer to the ground as the board moves past vertical. This is
exactly what the hip does on the straightened leg side of the body.

Now let's think about the other side of the body, where the leg is
advancing from behind the body. Let's assume that you don't have any hip
drop and that side of the hip stays parallel with the hip on
straightened-leg side of the body. If you do that, then your whole body
will rise as your straightened-leg hip rises. You will be spending
energy moving your center of gravity up. This is wasted energy.

But, if you allow your hip to drop on the advancing-leg side of the body
by exactly the same amount that your hip rises on the straightened-leg
side of the body, the point in the middle of your body between the two
hips will not rise. Consequently, your center of gravity will remain the
same distance from the ground all through the stride. You won't waste
energy moving your center of gravity up and down (and your head will
move parallel to the ground, not bounce up and down like a runner or
jogger), and you can focus your energy on moving your body forward. Thus
the proper hip drop makes you a more efficient racewalker.



Dave McGovern:



From The Complete Guide to Racewalking (1998)

A hip drop should occur naturally after push-off: As the rear leg comes
forward,

and the foot loses contact with the ground, the hip is no longer
supported so it

drops slightly. This natural effect does not need to be learned,
exaggerated,

or fretted over. I don't know why so many coaches bother confusing
their

athletes by talking about it.


I'll probably have more to say on the subject in my forthcoming book,
The
Complete Guide to Competive Walking (2009, I hope!) The only thing I
would add
now is that not only is the advancing hip not supported by that leg,
that leg
also weighs about 30-35 lbs. and is hanging from that side of the hip so
it
causes it to drop down. If you have a lot of lower back flexibility and
relatively loose pelvic ligaments, the hip will drop a lot, if you
don't, it
won't End of story. Put your effort into pelvic rotation, not drop.



Tim Seaman:

The section that you are referring to is on page 19-21 in Race Walk
Clinic - in
a Book, and while the diagrams might make it seem that there is a lot of
"drop",
in fact, the goal is to limit the drop as much as possible. We are just
showing
you what the hip does, and although it is a big diagram, it is actually
a very
small "drop".

It is impossible to limit all of the drop because as the swing leg comes
forward
the hip is more relaxed and it does drop slightly. The more side to side
or up
and down movement you have, the less eficient you will become. You want
to
think about the hips moving forward and you want to work on the
flexibility of
the hip flexors so that the rear foot will be able to stay on the ground
longer.
If the hips have excessive hip "drop" we do give you some exercises to
correct
this and other hip issues in Chapter 6.

If you look at the picture of Denis Nizhegorodov on page 19, you will
see superb
hip flexor flexibility. The reason that we chose that picture was
because you
can see the rear foot on the ground very far behind the body and you can
see the
opposite hip is still coming forward.

You should not think about the hip dropping at all, only moving forward.
The
hip will drop slightly naturally.



Ray Sharp:

I'm, going to have to agree with Mr. Bohlen and disagree with all the
other
esteemed commentators, successful athletes, coaches and learned racewalk
scholars all. I accept their verdict and would not recommend that anyone
follow my advice when the preponderance of opinion is in the other
direction. My ideas are outdated, as I formed them while training with
the
Mexican team in 1980 - eons ago!

But!!! The reason I think hip drop is something important to think about
is
this - the straight, supporting leg, when at vertical, is longer than
the
bent leg swinging forward. It is desirable to bend the advancing leg
quite a
bit, not as much as a runner does, but enough to shorten the lever and
make
the foot get forward quicker. If the hips are level, the foot will come
through too high, which is inefficient because the center of gravity is
raised, and also because it gives the appearance of lifting. The best
walkers, at least the ones who appear legal, have flexible hips that
include
some vertical motion along with the front to back motion and the
rotation at
the spine the causes the feet to land in line. To repeat, the purpose of
the
hip drop as the leg swings forward, and the shoulder drop on the other
side
that happens naturally for balance, is to allow foot of the swinging leg
to
stay low, skimming just above the ground, and then the leg flicks
straight
at the instant of contact and the hip begins to rise. A point on the hip
joint moves in all three planes - front to back, up and down, and across
the
body like a sine curve seen from above. Ignoring the last of these for a
second, think about it in 2 dimensions: The hip will move in a curve
like
the sine curve or more accurately like one of those cycloid things. But
let's simplify further, by fixing the walker on a treadmill so we can
just
look at the motion in 2 dimensions relative to the walker's center. OK,
it's
an ellipse (oval), with both a front to back and an up and down motion.

Now, to the place we can all agree on - if you increase your front to
back
motion, the ellipse will be longer than it is tall, and your stride
length
will increase.



Dave McGovern:

I don't think anyone is disagreeing that hip-drop exists or has its
place.
The point is that it shouldn't be forced or overemphasized. Your
analysis of
the bent knee driving forward and the need to keep the foot low to the
ground are correct. But you're missing the action of the foot itself.
When
the feet are used properly (when the athlete pushes all the way to the
toes
and the rear foot leaves the ground oriented vertically/perpendicular to
the
ground) the foot will come through and under the body toes pointed down.
This allows for a great deal of knee bend (about 90 degrees) with the
toes
coming through only millimeters above the surface of the road or track.
Athletes who have a lot of natural hip-drop (Philip Dunn) can bring the
foot
through with the foot in a less-than toes-down orientation (Philip
brings
his foot through parallel to the ground when it's under his body.) But
this
comes back to Ray's statement that knee drive is important for speed.
Philip
has a very smooth style, and his amazing amount of hip mobility is a big
part of it. But his legs drive through much straighter than those of
most of
his competitors, so he's throwing a longer lever with more apparent
mass.
Lack of sufficient knee bend (related to foot orientation under the
body)
could explain why Philip's mile/3k/5k/10k and even 20k times never
matched
the level of his great 50k success.

Ray Sharp:

With the proper foot action at push off, the hip, thigh and knee will
begin
driving forward in the last instants before the toe rolls to the end and
leaves the ground. I don't mean that the knee will bend early, because
driving the hip and knee back are the key to power and stride length.
But
just at the end, the hip and knee will snap forward just a few
milliseconds
perhaps before the toe leaves the ground. In a simplified version, the
leg
is like a pendulum, but the truth is much more complex, and the impulse
of
the forward motion begins with the core muscles to the hip flexors and
so on
down the chain in a crack the whip type motion, with the hip and knee
moving
forward slightly sooner than the toe. That means the toe will "drag"
forward
pointing down, a bit behind or out of phase. Just before heel impact,
the
toe will be pulled up by the muscles on the front of the shin, ankle and
foot, while (guess what) the hip and knee have begun their backwards
path,
still slightly ahead of the foot, which is moving forward. This means
the
knee will have moved back (relative to the walker, not relative to the
ground) enough to straighten the leg as the heel strikes.

These are complicated motions. We simplify them so we can explain them
to
other people, and also so we can focus on a few key points when we walk.
When I have too much hip drop, like when I am tiring and my body is
"sagging" and sinking too much into the hyper-extended knee by rolling
too
much along the outside of the foot, it makes the shoulder of my forward
swinging arm drop too much and pulls my head to that side, giving me a
side
to side motion that the coaches and judges (Dave, Tom, Jeff, Tim,
Michael)
want us to avoid. If thinking about hip drop causes excessive side to
side
motion, it should be discouraged or dampened a little bit. Obviously,
forward motion is the goal.

If you think back to Ernesto Canto, he had a very quick and efficient
motion
with the knee bent quite a lot on the recovering leg, but his head went
side
to side. I think Jefferson Perez and the current women's Olympic
champion
(afraid I'll spell her name wrong) are better models, because they
achieve
the desired hip motion without much head motion.



Dave McGovern: Hip Drop - how to tell if you have it

Put on a shirt that is a very different color than your walking shorts.
Tuck the shirt in. This creates a roughly horizontal line between your
shorts and your shirts that is easy to see. If you wear the waist band
at or above the top edge of the hip bones (pelvic girdle), pull the
shorts down a little so the waist band goes across the top edge of the
hip bones. The goal is to have the line between you shorts and your
shirt to be on the top portion of your hips. Have a friend/spouse/coach
observe you from behind while you are race walking away from them. If
you have any hip drop, the observer should see the up/down motion of the
line between your shorts and your shirt. As a side benefit, you can
detect the dreaded hip sway (side to side movement) from these
observations too - just concentrate on the outside edge of either hip.

Hip rotation is easy to see too especially if you have access to a
treadmill. If you have a pair of shorts or warmup pants with a vertical
stripe down each side, wear those. Otherwise paperclip a small white
square to the waist band on each side of your shorts. Tuck your shirt
in, and position the waist band as described above for detecting hip
drop. Have a friend/spouse/coach observe you from the side while race
walking. Because your body stays in the same place while walking on the
treadmill, any forward and back movement of the vertical stripe or white
square is easy to see. You can still see it from a race walker going by,
but it will take a few times for a novice observer to see it, because
the race walkers body is moving too, and the hip rotation motion is
relative to the race walkers body. If the amount of forward motion looks
different than the amount of backwards motion, have the observer move to
the other side. This difference could be real, or it could be an
illusion. As a side benefit, you can see the relative sizes of the "in
front of the body" portion of the stride and the "behind the body"
portion of the stride.

If you do either of these on a treadmill, it makes it easier for the
observer, because the body of the race walker is not moving away from
the observer and the background objects are not changing. This gives the
observer a longer time to detect what is going on -- very useful for a
novice observer.

If the observer records what they see with a video camera, you'll be
able to see it too.





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