It’s possible to run fast without clenching every muscle in your body. Just look at some of the pros who seem to clock seriously fast times while making it look like an easy walk (er, run) in the park.

These pros and many others have mastered running with slack shoulders, fluid arms, and a powerful stride, all while seeming light on their feet. It’s the art of running relaxed — and it can actually help your performance.

Experts encourage you to run relaxed on easy and long run days — those workouts where you’re meant to go at an easy effort. But running relaxed is a tool you can use to your benefit for any type of run.

“It is important to remain relaxed in terms of not recruiting muscles that don’t need to be recruited, because that can increase the energy that you’re using for the run,” Heather Milton, exercise physiologist at NYU Langone Health’s Sports Performance Center tells Runner’s World. This can cause you to fatigue and slow down more quickly, she explains.

For example, lifting your shoulders up toward your ears or tensing up your face while you run requires more energy than letting your upper body and jaw hang a little looser. This could also affect form: If you’re running tensely upright, without a forward lean, you’re less able to activate the glutes, and your knees take on more force, potentially leading to knee pain, Milton explains.

To help you perfect the art of running relaxed and get the most out of your workouts, we tapped experts for their best tips.

Quick Forms Tips to Help You Relax on the Run
When it comes to running relaxed, maintaining the proper running form is key and will help improve your efficiency. Although not everyone’s stride is the same, keep these cues in mind while you’re out clocking miles:

Keep Your Upper Half Loose
Run with a relaxed face, jaw, hands, and upper body, says Randy Accetta, director of education for the Road Runner’s Club of America. “Eyes are not scrunched, your hands are not bunched in a fist. Your arms are low, crossing the top of your shorts, not up high, fighting like you’re punching something,” he says.

Lean Forward
“What we want to see is that there is a slight angle of your running, so from your ankle through your hips, through your shoulders, you’re progressively closer to your target, looking forward,” Milton says. You can imagine your body in a slight diagonal line as you run forward. This will enable a greater amount of lower leg activation, better push-off, and better hip extension. It can also reduce your risk for injury and improve your performance, she explains.

Make Your Centre Stable
“The core should be a stable column on which we run and can have more effective push off,” says Milton. This is why it’s important to build core strength, she adds.

Drive Forward With Your Feet
In terms of your feet, Milton recommends you focus on swiping the ground behind you while you run.

8 Tips to Help You Stay Relaxed on the Run
Beyond fixing your form, here are a few things you can try leading up to race day and during your run to help you maintain that relaxed run posture. Rather than implementing all of these tips at once, try out a few of them to see which ones work best for you so you stay calm, cool, and collected on the road.

1. Work on Your Mobility
Limited range of motion can hinder your ability to run more relaxed.

“It really takes access to every joint movement in the body,”John Goldthorp, a certified personal trainer and run coach tells Runner’s World. If you can’t freely move your joints, then you can’t make the necessary movements that you need to help you run really well, he explains.

This is why he recommends working through different planes of motion (front to back, side to side, and rotational) before you run and even on non-running days.

To do that, practice moves like standing cat cow, side bends, and rib cage and pelvic rotations, all of which work the spine and upper body through the different movement patterns. Also, work on pronation and supination of the lower body:

1. Stand parallel to a wall or chair for balance.
2. Shift weight to right leg, and make sure the pressure in right foot is evenly distributed between the heel, big toe, and little toe of the foot. Cross left leg behind right so big toe is touching the ground.
3. In a slow and controlled motion, bend right knee while turning body to the left but resist turning right leg. Keep a tall, upright posture.
4. Rotate back to the front, straighten right leg, and rise up onto toes.
5. Bring left leg forward so left thigh is parallel to the ground and knee is bent. Use the wall or chair for balance.
6. Repeat. Do 5-6 reps on each side.

Also, “if you have a limited range of motion in your hips or your ankles, then that’s going to limit the efficiency of your mechanics. It can lead to other tension in your muscles due to compensatory pathways to do that same run, too” says Milton.

To address tight hips, add high knees, butt kicks, skipping, and running backwards to your warm-up. On strength training days, practice single-leg exercises that will target your glutes, like lunge and deadlift variations and single-leg glute bridges.

For ankle mobility issues focus on flexing your foot in different directions particularly dorsiflexion (toes to shin), plantar flexion (toes down to floor), inversion (toes toward centre of body), and eversion (toes away from centre of body). Single-leg exercises can also help, particularly calf raises.

Working with a physical therapist or functional mobility specialist can also help you address these areas so you can improve your range of motion and run more fluidly.

5. Complete a Quick Self Scan
Before you head out for a run, Goldthorp recommends you take note of where you typically hold tension in your body. For example, do you clench your jaw or shrug your shoulders?

“Scan your body. If you notice tension, see if you can let it go, see if you can soften that area,” he says. You can also visualise that area of your body flowing like water.

Then, on the run, check for specific body cues, says Milton. For example, make sure you’re bringing your arms back directly behind you and then letting them swing by your hips, she says, rather than keeping your shoulders stiff, causing your arms to swing across your torso.

6. Take a Deep Breath
Taking a few deep breaths is a great way to help you transition from work, school, or other activities into a workout. If you don’t allow for a transition period in between activities then you can bring heightened levels of tension and stress to the run, says Goldtrop. This is why he recommends taking at least 90 seconds to focus on your breathing before you start running. Try to inhale for three seconds and exhale for six.

If you’ve experienced a past injury or are afraid of being injured then you might start guarding, which is when you tense up in fear of being injured or re-injured, says Milton. To avoid this, she also recommends you shift your attention to breathing, specifically taking equal deep breaths in and out, to help you relax.

You can do this during your run, too, when you start to feel tension build. Bring your focus back to your inhales and exhales to help you find calm.

7. Remember Your Training
Race day nerves have a unique way of sneaking up on you, especially when you want to perform your best. And those nerves can easily lead to more tension in the body.

This is why it’s important to consult with your race-day checklist before you head to the starting line to make sure you have all of your essentials. This can help you stay mentally relaxed before you start running, says Accetta.

It’s also why Milton recommends focusing on all of the things you learned throughout your training, including positive self-talk and maintaining a strong (yet relaxed!) running form.

If you’re running with a watch on race day “check in and check your splits and make sure that you’re not running too fast, which can create a lot of undue tension,” Milton adds. If you are going too fast, she recommends coming back to your breathing and making sure it feels appropriate for your target pace.

8. Don’t Be Afraid to Give It Your All
There might be times, especially at the end of a workout or race, where we’re willing to get ugly and push past our comfort zone to hit your goal time or beat an opponent, says Accetta. In these moments, it’s acceptable to push yourself even if that means tensing up a bit.

The key is recognising when to kick it into high gear, like when you’re sprinting to the finish. You don’t want to waste all your energy too soon, Accetta explains. Even when you do pick it up, remember some of those form tips of keeping your upper body loose and your jaw slack so your legs have the energy they need to turn over fast.

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