Stiffness in running

Everybody is saying that I look and move so stiff. I’ve been getting complaints on this constantly lately:

“you looked a little tight there.”
“your worse than a damn Bodybuilder”
“GO STRETCH!”
“Man, you need to work on your flexibility”
“Just relax man…”
“Stop moving like a damn robot”

Most of these complaints come from doing some upperbody stuff, then during the conditioning is when they start saying this crap. So I’m sure most of this results from fatigue. They’ve never actually seen me run at full-speed while fresh. I know most of it has to deal with my lower back problems I’ve had lately. I’ve gotten some good therapy on it(ART, Myofascial, etc.). For about a month, I wasn’t able to touch my knee’s from a standing hamstring stretch. After I got the therapy I can now touch my shins almost pain free. I’ve been flexible before, but I’m sure that the hamstring and back injuries I’ve had probably caused all of this.

As far as what I’m doing to improve it, I’ve been doing some: Massage, ART, Myofascial, EMS, ICE, Epsom Salt, Static and Dynamic stretching. I don’t know what else to do to help this problem. Any recommendations?

Post a video of yourself running from side and front so we can see what the problem is.

What does a typical warm up look like for you?

Not sure if I’ll have the time for that since football starts Monday. But my warmup routine usually is about 30min long.

5min Jog on Treadmill
Static Stretch
Dynamic Stretch routine(high knee’s, etc)
More static stretch

Looks like the majority of your warm up is in the form of static stretching… Spend more time on your mobility/dynamic flexibility work. The static stretch portion of your warm up can still be included but keep it minimal, something like 10-15 seconds per hold, then move on.

Hard to help any more than that though with what’s going on without someway of seeing you run, otherwise it’s just shooting in the dark know what I mean?