Can I do a gait analysis at home?
Yes, you can do a gait analysis at home by propping your phone at hip height, filming 10 to 20 seconds of running from the side, and reviewing the clip frame by frame or letting an app measure it.
What you need
A phone, something to lean it on, and 20 metres of flat ground or a treadmill. That is the whole kit.
Put the phone at hip height, sideways on, about four metres from where you will run past. A bench, a bin or a friend all work. Film at the highest frame rate your phone offers. Slow motion at 120 or 240 frames per second makes foot strike far easier to see.
Run past at your normal easy pace. Do not try to run well. The point is to see what you do when you are not thinking about it. Full setup notes are in how to film yourself running.
How to read the video yourself
Scrub to the frame where the front foot first touches the ground. Then look at four things.
Where the foot lands. Draw a line straight down from the hip. If the foot lands well ahead of that line with a straight knee, you overstride. That is the most common fault and the one most worth fixing. What is overstriding shows what it looks like.
The torso. A slight lean from the ankles is fine. A fold at the waist is not.
The arms. Elbows should sit around 90 degrees and swing forward and back. Hands crossing the middle of the body waste effort.
Cadence. Count foot strikes for 30 seconds and double it. Below 160 at easy pace is worth a look.
That is a self gait analysis. It takes ten minutes and you will spot the big things.
Where it gets hard on your own
Two problems come up.
The first is measuring. Eyeballing lean or knee bend is fine for a big fault. It is useless for a small change. If you want to know whether four weeks of drills moved your landing by a few centimetres, you need a number, and you need the same frame picked the same way each time.
The second is knowing what to do next. Seeing the fault and fixing it are different jobs. A frozen frame does not give you a drill.
An app fixes both. It finds foot strike, midstance and toe-off for you, measures the angles, and turns the lowest one into a cue and a plan. See what app can I use to check my running form.
What a home check cannot do
It cannot see force, pronation or rotation. It cannot tell you why something hurts. If pain is the reason you are filming, a home check can show you what your stride looks like, but a professional should look at the cause. For a healthy runner who is curious, home is enough.
How to do it in Caden
- Tap Run a new analysis, set up a side-on shot, and prop the phone at hip height.
- Film 10 to 20 seconds. Caden rejects clips that are too dark, too far or too short, so you know the numbers are real.
- Open Breakpoints and tap Foot strike. The skeleton overlay shows where the foot landed against the hip.
- Read the coach's tip for one cue per metric, then open the Exercises tab for the plan.
FAQ
Can I analyse my own gait with a mirror?
A mirror shows you from the front while you run on the spot or on a treadmill. It is fine for arms and head. It cannot show landing reach or lean, which need a side view.
Do I need a treadmill for a home gait analysis?
No. A flat path and a propped phone work. A treadmill makes framing easier because you stay in shot, but stride on a treadmill is often a little shorter than outdoors.
How often should I re-check at home?
Every two weeks during a form block, at the same pace and camera setup. Once things look stable, once every couple of months is plenty.