15 hours a week. Zero progress.

Joshua came to me last week running 20-25 miles a week, dealing with medial glute pain and Achilles irritation that wouldn't go away. Every time he tried to build volume, something would break down.

His goal was simple: run more and stop getting hurt.

He assumed his form was the issue.

So we broke it all down. Foot strike, pronation, cadence, hip extension, stance-to-flight ratio — the full picture.

On the surface, everything looked fine. Midfoot strike on both sides. Neutral mid stance, no overpronation. Good hip flexion and extension. Cadence around 171. No obvious red flags.

His hips were level with no adduction. Good gap between the knees. Hip extension looked good on both sides — the right extended just a bit further than the left but nothing concerning. Heel recovery was level. Upper body posture was relaxed in the shoulders. The only thing that stood out was his closed arm swing. He carried his arms a bit like a boxer, swinging from the torso rather than the shoulder, which creates extra tension in the lower back.

His shoe rotation was almost entirely zero-drop. Altra Provision 6 and Altra Torin 6 — with a Topo Specter 2 as the only shoe with some drop at 5mm.

Still very low across the board. Zero and low-drop shoes load the Achilles significantly more than standard drop shoes, so I recommended switching to shoes with a higher drop for running and keeping the low-drop shoes for daily wear.

But when we started talking about his training, that's where some issues rose up.

Joshua had been putting in 15 hours a week for 2 months straight and yet his running speed hadn't improved at all.

His Strava told the whole story. 6:30 one day. 6:15 the next. 5:55 another.

No structure.
No polarization.

Just medium effort, every single day. His easy runs were sitting right at the edge of his aerobic threshold.

Not easy enough to build his base, not hard enough to push adaptation. Just stacking fatigue with nothing to show for it.

Using his marathon data and his max heart rate of around 188, I estimated his LT2 at roughly 165-168 bpm and his LT1 around 145-150. That means his easy runs should be at 130-140 bpm. Way slower than where he'd been running. And the hard days needed to be actually hard — structured intervals with real purpose, not another moderate effort that feels kind of tough but doesn't drive adaptation.

On top of that, he wasn't doing any strength training. So his body had no extra capacity to handle the load he was asking it to carry.

I've been in this exact spot. I trained 70-80K a week for a full year and got 5 seconds faster on my 10K. Same pattern.

Everything in the middle, never recovering, never adapting.

The gait analysis was the starting point that revealed all of this. That's what makes it more than just a form check.

Sometimes it shows you need a different shoe, easy fix.
Sometimes it shows a weakness in your hips or ankles, that's targeted strength work. Sometimes your mechanics look solid and the real issue is hiding in your training.

It's an initial assessment that tells you where the problem actually lives, so you know what to work on next without asking ChatGPT for help.

Here's what Joshua had to say after our session:

Want to find out where your running is breaking down?

Reply "gait" to this email and I'll tell you how to get started.

Thank you for reading,

Tim 👟