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Hills – Mountaineers are better runners.
“Going to the mountains is going home” – John Muir
This is a read ahead module for those who have inquired about, or already running hills - you know who you are (grin) you need not be running hills yet, but in the next few weeks you'll want to try this to get ready for your Forest Festival 10k, which has a few hills.
Runners from Ohio complain about them and the Boston Marathon has the notorious “Heartbreak Hill” as part of it's mythology but runners who know the benefits of running up and down hill know something – they have both the performance and mental advantage on their competition.
This part of your running can easily comprise 35% of you total mileage & will develop your stride and physical capacity to run more easily. You’ll also never fear a racecourse - something flatlanders get chills about regularly. Again, Danny Dryer’s book CHI Running is a great resource here in dealing with hills because technique can help your newly acquired powers to get up any hill efficiently.
Flow and glide – is the earth flat? Easy question - but think about the last time you enjoyed a roller coaster, surfed a wave, rode a mountain bike or snowboard over that very non-flat planet of ours. That slowing and accelerating feeling you enjoyed can be learned and integrated into your running and while it will not be easy, you already have many of the tools to do this well. Concentrate on an easy and efficient pace going up and learn to love that fast gliding down and you’ll start to reap the physical advantage of hill running.
Physical developments – no matter how fast (or slow) you go uphill you’ll be working at a higher PE than you typically do on a training run. You will be gently adjusting your workload and this gives you better cardio capacity while building powerful hip flexors, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves. Towards the end of a race as fatigue sets in runners may shorten their stride and lack muscle endurance to raise their knees and ankles into the next stride. Hill running builds stamina in these key areas and prevents fatigue. You’ll have more power to keep running.
Hill repeats – In the same way that we are able to start running or do speed work in small doses – you can also run uphill in short bursts so as to not tire of it completely and still get most of the benefits. Folks who do not enjoy hills or feel intimidated by a hilly course will find a hill that takes one minute to run and run it at a “regular pace” (PE 4) multiple times. At the top you turn around and gently glide back down, resting as needed at the base before heading up again.
Proper form – we have discussed before that if your form suffers while doing this running then you’re not doing yourself any favors and need to slow down. You get much of the benefits from walking the hills too – find a pace you can handle – progress gradually.
Uphill - You will use your upper body more when traveling uphill. A slight lean forward would come from leaning at the ankle. Your focused breathing to power your body upward, and your arm swing – all play an important role. Think about the little engine that could. Small lean and small strides as well as a relaxed state governed by our breathing rate. You do not want to overwork your hamstrings and calves with long strides and pulling yourself up the hill. Small strides, never stepping past your hips, shoulders slightly ahead of your hips, keeps you pushing yourself up the hill in a controlled way. Take it easy and let your breathing determine your pace. Relax your legs and make sure feet are flat on the ground, heels down, and you’re not asking smaller muscles to do bigger jobs. Conserve energy and know that going uphill is always a bit slower. Pump your arms, thinking about elbows moving back, coordinated with your stride to give you extra momentum moving uphill. Your eyes look up – to the top of the hill and your long straight spine allows more air into the runner for hard work. Think about a positive mental image and know that every up, has a downhill too.
Downhill – Done poorly, you’ll pound your legs, feet and lower back with 6-10x your body weight with each footfall, hammering your legs and possibly your ability to run later in the week! While not all hills are runnable, many are and you’ll get better at the “glide” skills with practice & enjoy the down without the pounding. Relaxing both physically and mentally allows you to loosen up your knees and quadriceps, give in to the speed a bit and enjoy the movement which can be much faster than you ever run on the flats. Stride, cadence, and orientation to the ground help smooth out the ride you’ve earned.
Think about your hips, shoulders and upper body. You want your hips and pelvis level while you run. Your shoulders and upper body should stay centered over your hips. Leaning away from the hill and bracing will shift your legs forward and as they act like the brakes - you’ll transfer impact to heels, quadriceps, and your lower back. This is a time that you want to stay light and footfalls/strides will be much faster than usual.
Your cadence (number of strides per minute) will increase and those smaller steps will keep your feet under your hips and landing quickly and lightly on the ground. If you need to take longer strides as your speed increases, think about the stride getting longer in the back, or behind you, so your feet do not come past your hips and you are recruiting muscles from the posterior of the body. One item to focus on is peeling your feet off the ground from the heel. This tends to make the mid-foot land first for your next step and keeps your footsteps closer to the pelvis – reducing impact forces to your body. Another way to look at it is to lead with the toe – plantar flex the foot – toes point down as you descend and your mid-foot will hit first and quickly transition to the next step.
Safety – while accidents a few, if you start running 35% of your mileage as hills you may want to take an hour one afternoon (on a grassy slope) to think about falling properly. Cyclists do this annually and skiers do too as their falling season starts. If you practice a tuck and roll, drop a shoulder style of falling you are much more likely to avoid road rash and to stop sooner, post contact with the ground. You want to tuck things in and not splay them out – do not make tender and breakable appendages responsible for stopping your trajectory. If this practice drill sounds scary, remember to walk the steepest descents so that you are in control.
Showing posts with label Danny Dryer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Danny Dryer. Show all posts
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
Pelvic and abdominal power
Why talk about all of these drills that seem to build supporting muscles without actually running? Well, awhile back I spoke about the idea that we are making running a habit and a Practice and this means that we are trying to shape it into a process oriented thing rather than a goal oriented thing. Further you have heard my bias that we are all made to run and yet when we enter into something new, it will often show us an asymmetry, an imbalance or weakness somewhere in our body as we develop into the new activity – be it gardening or golf. This is why we train the supporting musculature.
Why talk about all of this now? Recall that I said that we could easily overwhelm you with good information that could seem insurmountable to a newcomer. Some people will not need to do core work as they come to a program with developed anatomy from another sport or genetic gifts. Others will find that seven to ten weeks into their program they are coming into a few minor glitches and wondering how to hop over them. That is why we take the time now to talk about posture and core strength and balance – because for some it will be the next key and you have to present information as folks are ready to absorb it. The pelvis is an area that we are talking with many folks about when looking at gait and best running form as well.
So in a potpourri of topics related to core strength I will begin with a summary of a great article by Dimity McDowell, Runnersworld 3/09 titled Never Get Hurt.
Many common injuries are associated with pelvic instability or lack of strength in this region according to the Center for Endurance Sport at the University of Virginia.
Injuries such as shinsplints, iliotibial (IT) band syndrome, and lower back pain are some injuries that can be addressed at the cause and possibly “pre-habilitated” by doing an abdominal and pelvic workout.
If you develop a stable pelvis that supports the legs below and the torso above; the legs will spin almost effortlessly beneath you while the upper body remains quiet and solid. Think about the Roadrunner in the cartoons as he buzzes away from his attacker.
Many of these exercises will positively affect posture and ease the chance of injury from the road. The core work that some folks may already doing for strength training nicely augments this routine.
Drills are about 20 minutes three times a week and can be done before a run
Video of each exercise is available at
http://www.runnersworld.com/video/0,8052,s6-1-0-5,00.html
Besides your abs many muscles help make up the runners core
Transverse Abdominals – cough or laugh and you’ll feel these muscles which stabilize the spine and pelvis, right above your pelvic bones.
Gluteus medius – this muscle on the side of your glutes minimizes side to side rotation.
Your lower back also plays a key role and you need to think about being as strong as is practical – all the way around your core as a protective cumber-bund and to build posture that promotes more structural running.
Some of my favorite stability drills come from Danny Dryer: in one example he ask you to lean forward against a table edge so that the table touches your leg at mid-thigh and you maintain a slight – whole body- lean forward as if you are a 2x4 from ankle to head. Hold this position for as long as you can and slowly increase your time. This is working the lower abdominals in a way that is similar to the way they support you going down the road.
Working these muscles is done with body weight resistance and can be done w/o equipment. Clean form is a must and you only do what you can muster comfortably, and slowly you increase the repetitions or interval weekly.
Some posture guidelines for thinking about a stable pelvis.
Heavy heel strikers typically see lower back pain down the road. Do not overstride and seek to have feet fall nearly beneath you while maintaining a long and neutral spine. Practice good posture daily and translate this to your running. While it may be hard to think about your stride all the time – you take five minutes to think about it, twice during each run, and from there we build muscle memory for best form that will follow you later in your runs.
Danny Dryer in his book ChiRunning, takes this a step further and talks about where we generate power from. “Efficient movement comes from your core muscles, not the muscles in your legs. We are so used to being told that strong legs are the answer to efficient running that when we are told to relax our legs, it is a huge mind body shift away from how we normally move.” So you ask, “Relax my what?” and my simple answer is that you are asking a very big question – but I know that this is not a sufficient answer. You generate the most power from your core and if you have ever hit a baseball, drove a golf ball, skied bumps in spring, practiced martial arts or rowed a boat then you know what I am talking about. These are core sports and activities that require what the literature calls “upper/lower body separation”. In short that means that sometimes your entire body is moving together and other times you isolate the motion of one half from the other half or top from bottom. So while you do need legs to best achieve maximum performance in these sports you will often isolate the movement of the legs from the core and have each doing different tasks or workloads. The core is where a great deal of Danny’s award winning speed and grace comes from and this allows him to not power through on his legs which are not as efficient.
He goes on to say later in the book that the true test of mastery is in how long you can maintain correct technique – quality reigns supreme over quantity. This should sound familiar to you as well. By working these core muscles we allow you to support yourself structurally for longer stretches of time and this will not just benefit your running but your daily posture, air exchange, and daily well being.
On page 72 of ChiRunning, Dryer presents an example of a great drill that you can do anytime to tune into your own posture habits and work on better form. He calls it the vertical crunch and we practiced the idea of this in running seminar in June. If you place your hands at your own waist line (one on your navel and one on your lower back, each just above the bony prominence, or iliac crest) you should get a sense of their relationship to each other. If you are seeking to use your hands to reference the top of your pelvis; is one hand higher than the other? Are they at the same elevation, front and back? Dryer states that this relationship will offer insight into whether you are using more of your lower back, and compressing discs in the process or bowed forward and tipping your pelvis to the rear. If there is an imbalance here - between your two hands “elevations” there may be less room in between vertebrae and a chance of low back stress. You may struggle to breathe from the diaphragm as we have discussed earlier. He points out that when you bring these hands into alignment, front to rear, that you should only be using abdominal muscles to do this and these are lower abdominals that seldom get used so it may take some time and focus to make it all come together.
Other posture tidbits that I find help runners. Another one from Danny Dryer: to begin each step, think about lifting your feet off the ground from the heel – this helps recruit muscles from the back of the body in your running stride.
More training guidelines to prevent injury
Your longest run should not be more than half of your weekly total mileage.
The “10% rule” states that total mileage does not increase by more than 10% each week.
If you are limping you have no business running. If the pain is sufficient to cause a limp your stride will create alignment issues that will tear something else loose before the end of your run. You would not drive with one wheel rubbing the wheel-well because you know that the misalignment of the car would throw you into the ditch or give you a flat. In the same way that you would not drive the car with the rubbing tire, do not run when you have pain to the point that you are compensating somewhere, even subtly.
Here is another great running drill that gives you the strong feel of what solid running posture would be like and points to any current weakness you can work on. This comes from the Chi running instructors.
Leveling Your Pelvis
A Killer Exercise to Develop Coordination and Strength
By Scott Smith, ChiRunning Certified Instructor of the Month
(articles about Chi techniques, and a subscription to the newsletter can be found at chirunning.com)
As a ChiRunning Instructor, one of the most important services I can provide is educating a student on coordinating and strengthening the muscles that that are used to level the pelvis. This movement is essential for optimal posture and efficient movement. Whether I am skiing, cycling, running or kayaking, I always draw my strength, balance, and endurance from my pelvic floor/lower abdominal region. Low back pain and tightness can be reduced greatly by recruiting the muscles that level the pelvis, thus signaling the opposing back muscles to release (reciprocal inhibition).
The following rope exercise teaches you how to level your pelvis while moving your legs (engaging your hip flexors), simulating walking or running.
Step 1: Lay on your back with knees bent, heels close to buttocks, toes up and slide a 3/8" to 1/2" rope underneath your low back where the largest gap exists.
Step 2: Flatten your lower back against the rope by pulling your navel to your spine, pinching the rope against the ground. Try to pull the rope out with one hand. Make sure your head, shoulders and tailbone all stay on the floor.
Step 3: Test your starting point: If the rope slips, then do 3 x 30-second holds, 4-5 days per week. When this is mastered with no rope slippage, add movement of the knees up and down while slowly walking your heels away, half an inch at a time until the rope begins slipping. Now back up half an inch and use this as your starting point, doing 3 x 30 knee lifts for 4-5 days per week. Keep advancing heels away from the butt over the next couple months until you can do straight leg raises, with your core engaged, back flat, and no rope slippage.
With practice, this is an excellent way to engage and strengthen your lower abdominals. Notice that we are not doing crunches but trying to build core strength in a balanced way Good Luck!
Why talk about all of this now? Recall that I said that we could easily overwhelm you with good information that could seem insurmountable to a newcomer. Some people will not need to do core work as they come to a program with developed anatomy from another sport or genetic gifts. Others will find that seven to ten weeks into their program they are coming into a few minor glitches and wondering how to hop over them. That is why we take the time now to talk about posture and core strength and balance – because for some it will be the next key and you have to present information as folks are ready to absorb it. The pelvis is an area that we are talking with many folks about when looking at gait and best running form as well.
So in a potpourri of topics related to core strength I will begin with a summary of a great article by Dimity McDowell, Runnersworld 3/09 titled Never Get Hurt.
Many common injuries are associated with pelvic instability or lack of strength in this region according to the Center for Endurance Sport at the University of Virginia.
Injuries such as shinsplints, iliotibial (IT) band syndrome, and lower back pain are some injuries that can be addressed at the cause and possibly “pre-habilitated” by doing an abdominal and pelvic workout.
If you develop a stable pelvis that supports the legs below and the torso above; the legs will spin almost effortlessly beneath you while the upper body remains quiet and solid. Think about the Roadrunner in the cartoons as he buzzes away from his attacker.
Many of these exercises will positively affect posture and ease the chance of injury from the road. The core work that some folks may already doing for strength training nicely augments this routine.
Drills are about 20 minutes three times a week and can be done before a run
Video of each exercise is available at
http://www.runnersworld.com/video/0,8052,s6-1-0-5,00.html
Besides your abs many muscles help make up the runners core
Transverse Abdominals – cough or laugh and you’ll feel these muscles which stabilize the spine and pelvis, right above your pelvic bones.
Gluteus medius – this muscle on the side of your glutes minimizes side to side rotation.
Your lower back also plays a key role and you need to think about being as strong as is practical – all the way around your core as a protective cumber-bund and to build posture that promotes more structural running.
Some of my favorite stability drills come from Danny Dryer: in one example he ask you to lean forward against a table edge so that the table touches your leg at mid-thigh and you maintain a slight – whole body- lean forward as if you are a 2x4 from ankle to head. Hold this position for as long as you can and slowly increase your time. This is working the lower abdominals in a way that is similar to the way they support you going down the road.
Working these muscles is done with body weight resistance and can be done w/o equipment. Clean form is a must and you only do what you can muster comfortably, and slowly you increase the repetitions or interval weekly.
Some posture guidelines for thinking about a stable pelvis.
Heavy heel strikers typically see lower back pain down the road. Do not overstride and seek to have feet fall nearly beneath you while maintaining a long and neutral spine. Practice good posture daily and translate this to your running. While it may be hard to think about your stride all the time – you take five minutes to think about it, twice during each run, and from there we build muscle memory for best form that will follow you later in your runs.
Danny Dryer in his book ChiRunning, takes this a step further and talks about where we generate power from. “Efficient movement comes from your core muscles, not the muscles in your legs. We are so used to being told that strong legs are the answer to efficient running that when we are told to relax our legs, it is a huge mind body shift away from how we normally move.” So you ask, “Relax my what?” and my simple answer is that you are asking a very big question – but I know that this is not a sufficient answer. You generate the most power from your core and if you have ever hit a baseball, drove a golf ball, skied bumps in spring, practiced martial arts or rowed a boat then you know what I am talking about. These are core sports and activities that require what the literature calls “upper/lower body separation”. In short that means that sometimes your entire body is moving together and other times you isolate the motion of one half from the other half or top from bottom. So while you do need legs to best achieve maximum performance in these sports you will often isolate the movement of the legs from the core and have each doing different tasks or workloads. The core is where a great deal of Danny’s award winning speed and grace comes from and this allows him to not power through on his legs which are not as efficient.
He goes on to say later in the book that the true test of mastery is in how long you can maintain correct technique – quality reigns supreme over quantity. This should sound familiar to you as well. By working these core muscles we allow you to support yourself structurally for longer stretches of time and this will not just benefit your running but your daily posture, air exchange, and daily well being.
On page 72 of ChiRunning, Dryer presents an example of a great drill that you can do anytime to tune into your own posture habits and work on better form. He calls it the vertical crunch and we practiced the idea of this in running seminar in June. If you place your hands at your own waist line (one on your navel and one on your lower back, each just above the bony prominence, or iliac crest) you should get a sense of their relationship to each other. If you are seeking to use your hands to reference the top of your pelvis; is one hand higher than the other? Are they at the same elevation, front and back? Dryer states that this relationship will offer insight into whether you are using more of your lower back, and compressing discs in the process or bowed forward and tipping your pelvis to the rear. If there is an imbalance here - between your two hands “elevations” there may be less room in between vertebrae and a chance of low back stress. You may struggle to breathe from the diaphragm as we have discussed earlier. He points out that when you bring these hands into alignment, front to rear, that you should only be using abdominal muscles to do this and these are lower abdominals that seldom get used so it may take some time and focus to make it all come together.
Other posture tidbits that I find help runners. Another one from Danny Dryer: to begin each step, think about lifting your feet off the ground from the heel – this helps recruit muscles from the back of the body in your running stride.
More training guidelines to prevent injury
Your longest run should not be more than half of your weekly total mileage.
The “10% rule” states that total mileage does not increase by more than 10% each week.
If you are limping you have no business running. If the pain is sufficient to cause a limp your stride will create alignment issues that will tear something else loose before the end of your run. You would not drive with one wheel rubbing the wheel-well because you know that the misalignment of the car would throw you into the ditch or give you a flat. In the same way that you would not drive the car with the rubbing tire, do not run when you have pain to the point that you are compensating somewhere, even subtly.
Here is another great running drill that gives you the strong feel of what solid running posture would be like and points to any current weakness you can work on. This comes from the Chi running instructors.
Leveling Your Pelvis
A Killer Exercise to Develop Coordination and Strength
By Scott Smith, ChiRunning Certified Instructor of the Month
(articles about Chi techniques, and a subscription to the newsletter can be found at chirunning.com)
As a ChiRunning Instructor, one of the most important services I can provide is educating a student on coordinating and strengthening the muscles that that are used to level the pelvis. This movement is essential for optimal posture and efficient movement. Whether I am skiing, cycling, running or kayaking, I always draw my strength, balance, and endurance from my pelvic floor/lower abdominal region. Low back pain and tightness can be reduced greatly by recruiting the muscles that level the pelvis, thus signaling the opposing back muscles to release (reciprocal inhibition).
The following rope exercise teaches you how to level your pelvis while moving your legs (engaging your hip flexors), simulating walking or running.
Step 1: Lay on your back with knees bent, heels close to buttocks, toes up and slide a 3/8" to 1/2" rope underneath your low back where the largest gap exists.
Step 2: Flatten your lower back against the rope by pulling your navel to your spine, pinching the rope against the ground. Try to pull the rope out with one hand. Make sure your head, shoulders and tailbone all stay on the floor.
Step 3: Test your starting point: If the rope slips, then do 3 x 30-second holds, 4-5 days per week. When this is mastered with no rope slippage, add movement of the knees up and down while slowly walking your heels away, half an inch at a time until the rope begins slipping. Now back up half an inch and use this as your starting point, doing 3 x 30 knee lifts for 4-5 days per week. Keep advancing heels away from the butt over the next couple months until you can do straight leg raises, with your core engaged, back flat, and no rope slippage.
With practice, this is an excellent way to engage and strengthen your lower abdominals. Notice that we are not doing crunches but trying to build core strength in a balanced way Good Luck!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Pace and Running Form
Pace and running form is a big conversation that we'll approach in parts - so sit down with tea and a biscuit and take this in - but realize that there will not be a test after wards. We'll revisit this as we go and emphasize various parts along the way. If you can take two of thee concepts out of each run and seek to instill them into your running - you will run longer and more easily.
Train your self, not by yourself. You deserve company and the shared effort makes the time pass, as well as enriching your run. But your training has no competitors, it’s your training. Besides, you’ll quickly discover that we all respond differently to this type of training and each person needs their own pace/space to do that. While we are striving to run a race at the end of this training cycle, you should remember that it is a training cycle. What do I mean by that? I mean that you should set up your training so that you love training for training’s sake or running for running sake (I know you do not love racing yet, and maybe you will or will not love racing). We are going to make running a practice for you and to define this I quote Danny Dryer, “If you see running as only as sport, you’re limiting yourself to getting only the physical benefits. Making an activity a practice is a process of self mastery. You are no longer simply practicing that activity; you use it to learn about, understand, and master yourself as well as the activity.” That idea will make you better at nearly anything and it is the way people benefit from meditation, learn a new vocation, or tackle the largest of personal goals. While learning to run will be far from the largest accomplishment you ever achieve – I’d argue along with Mr. Dryer that you stand to lean more than how to keep yourself fit and get ready for a race - if you make your running a practice.
So if we are going to tackle some understanding of pacing and running technique we need to begin with what adapts first in our bodies to running.
Cardio system – in charge of keeping you going it is very versatile and will keep rising to the challenge if you apply changes at an appropriate pace so that it can keep up.
What next? Muscle systems: all of those supporting and accessory muscles will be adapting and with your strengthening and stretching program this happens even faster - just lift two days a week and stretch at least as many days as you run.
What next? Tendons, ligaments and connective tissue adapt the slowest. Keep in mind that this tissue does not get the same blood supply as other parts of your body and while tendons and ligaments are very strong, some of us have firsthand knowledge of how long they take to heal. These tissues need the longest to adapt to any sport, including running, so take your time.
Pace is relative from one runner to the next but pace can tell us a lot about your individual achievements and adaptations as time goes by. It can also tell us a lot about over training, fatigue, or where and when that injury began. Hey, sometimes we learn via hindsight but I hope that you and I can use your training notes to put together a picture of how you are progressing rather than looking back to identify your injury. We want to be proactive.
For all the work you are doing you deserve good notes.
· Writing down a few things about what went well and what didn’t allows you to learn over time what works best for you.
· This same record is a confidence building tool that verifies you are in fact improving and putting in the work.
· Keeping your times and distances as you progress in your training allows you to evaluate progress quantitatively and keeps you from going too fast or over training.
· If you can justify the cost (they are now in the range of $70-$200) a heart monitor is also a great gift/tool for self evaluation that will keep you from running yourself too hard.
If you vary your routes from a list of good ones you can avoid boredom and see new places. Varying routes makes you a stronger runner by varying terrain also. Over time this will make you faster too. You may always ask runners for new routes and good ones to add to your list. Some of our class has already started using a map program online to chart and share routes; allowing you to find new places to run. I am adding additional routes to a website called walkjogrun which is listed on the site as a smartphone compatible product but it also works on your desktop or other device and you can make routes without using your car (the old school method is to drive or bike the route, just to get the distance.) New routes can be motivating and will help you vary your training and pace over time.
Warm up – even if it is only a minute you need to allow the joints and muscles to get moving slowly. Walk 3-5 minutes before your workout or if you cannot do this at least run very slowly for the first 3-5 minutes of you workout and get the groove going. I like my route to start a few blocks from the house and this makes me walk a few minutes before I start running. You also can begin thinking about the pace, goal, technique you’ll use to get it all accomplished.
Your pace should be at a rate which allows you to relax. If you are not relaxed it will be difficult to run with clean, efficient form. Exercise is tough enough, right? So make sure that you travel slowly enough that you can think about technique and begin to relax into that technique. People often think that they need to travel at a particular speed in order to call it running and you will see that we are more concerned about your heart rate and level of perceived effort than your actual ground speed. Of course, heart rate and level of perceived effort are very personalized and that is where you come into the training plan process to really make it work. I can help you plan workouts but you are the speedometer for them and the final say (refer to – “you are an experiment of one”.)
Here are a few things to think about that save energy for each run.
You are headed in a particular direction and we want as many of your body parts as possible headed in that same direction you are traveling. Sounds simple but many of us have varying alignments. So from the top:
Your head should be upright and you can easily see out to the horizon. Think about a long spine and the back of your neck being long as well so that when you take a breath, it goes straight into your lungs. Relax your neck and shoulders by breathing rhymic-ly & deeply.
Please take not of this rhythm and tune into it because over time you will notice that it changes and this breathing rhythm will alter as soon as your pace does. Every engine needs air. Keep your eyes on the horizon and imagine the back of your neck being long and straight. This relaxes shoulders and opens the airway giving all the air a straight route to where it is needed.
Arms should swing naturally and swing straight ahead and back. Do not cross your body with your arms. Smile occasionally to relax neck and shoulders (folks will wonder what you’re up to.) Hands are loose and relaxed, form “O’s” if you need to.
When we get to your hips, think about your pelvis being level and parallel with the ground. What I mean by this is that your standing posture may show a tendency to tilt your hips either forward or back but if you stand up straight and tall you can align the pelvis so that the top of its “bowl” is not tipped fore or aft. In order for this to happen your knees will be very slightly bent and your ankles will be very slightly flexed. You want to ease any strain on your back and allow for easy breathing, again – relax.
Stand up for a minute and while standing straight and tall, close your eyes, now jump up in the air with a little hop and as you land on the ground – freeze. This frozen posture that you land in, is a balanced position (if you fell over just now, you were not balanced and will need to repeat the experiment, sorry) this is a very good basic stance for running.
Another thought on posture. If you are standing still in a balance way as we have discussed above, can you see the tops of your feet? If not you may have your hips too far forward, or ankles flexed too much. Try to have that body all centered over your feet and yet a little flexed. We will demonstrate some of this posture in seminar.
Seek to not land on a straightened leg when you travel down to road, have this flexed knee that you experienced a minute ago. Flex the ankles as well so that you are flowing a bit.
Are you using all of your energy to move forward? Look at the horizon and see if it bounces – it should not. Keep feet low and smoothly moving forward to stop upward travel or change it to forward travel. Arms, feet, knees and other body parts should all be moving forward as best as you are able, so practice this and have a friend look at your running form. Moving economically is all about technique, moving slowly enough to practice and to stay relaxed and it gets easier the more you try it.
We use our lower legs to catch us from falling forward. DO NOT push off the ground with calves and toes while running as this will cause injuries to shins, calves, Achilles tendons and possibly elsewhere. No running on your tip-toes – even when going uphill keep feet are landing smoothly and flat. Think about picking up your heels, peeling them up from off the road starting at the back and finishing towards the toe.
Most of us land on our heels and knees should be bent. Do not take a large or unnaturally big step but think about your feet landing right underneath you or just slightly in front of you. Stand up straight or with a very slight forward lean. Your feet should land on the ground quietly and as you listen for your breathing see if you can hear you feet as well. The elite runners run faster because their “turn-over” is 2-3x what ours is. They do not have a longer stride necessarily but their feet strike the ground 3x more often in a minute than ours. When you hear them go by at that pace it sounds like typing, pitter pat, pitter pat, very quiet.
Now for the effort part – we want to get you a workout and start the cardio system on adapting but we balance that with moving slowly enough to practice technique and to stay relaxed.
Heart rate: You can take your pulse in the morning before getting out of bed to determine your resting heart rate in beats per minute. Use the artery in your wrist or neck (just beside your windpipe) and quietly count for 30 seconds and multiply by 2.
The traditional formula from your book: Your maximum heart rate (MHR) will be 220 minus your age = MHR seeks to never exceed this number.
Your MHR X .60 gives you your training level for 60% effort.
Your MHR x .95 gives you the 95% effort number; the highest heart rate you would reach in race conditions.
Most of our training builds endurance to get us to race distance and so we train at 65-85% of our MHR. This is aerobic training and is the type that offers infinite improvement physiologically.
Your text refers to another way to calculate your heart rate that is slightly different than the old standard which will give you a little higher overall allowable rate see page 112 for the Karvonen formula – there are many ways to calculate but what if you do not have a monitor to track your heart rate? Believe it or not – most pro athletes start the season with a monitor and once the tune into where they are at for the season they leave it at home because they are so good at sensing “perceived effort”.
Perceived effort (PE) is the feeling of “how much of my total energy is being spent running right now?” or how close is this to the fastest I can go (100% effort)
Easy pace= 65-70% PE you can have a complete conversation, feels like a 3-4 on a 10 scale of effort, you may run 3 strides per inhale, 3 strides per exhale
Aerobic pace=75-85% PE you can still speak in sentences, feels like a 5-6 effort on a 10 scale, 2 inhale or 2 inhale-1 exhale per 3 strides. Some call this tempo pace.
Threshold pace= 88-92% PE you - speak a –few-words-at a- time, feels like a 7-8 hard effort, breathing in & out on every stride. Some call this interval pace – you cannot hold this one for very long.
If you feel the need to run faster during a workout save it for the second half of your run. Running the second 50% slightly faster is know as a negative split or a progression run and trains the body for race day by building endurance. If you start out faster in the first half of your run and then tire…you teach the body to slow down instead. Better still, for 90% of your workouts (we’ll talk about speed workouts in a few months) start at the pace you plan to finish at, which means keep a slow steady rhythm that reflects that PE 3-4 or 65-70% or your target heart rate. You’ll not only enjoy the run more but you’ll feel more like you could run the next day.
Most programs wait 8 weeks before adding any hill repeats or speed work on the track – it is better and OK to seek to run negative splits during runs as an easy endurance builder. First you develop a running form that feels natural to you – speed work will later cause your body to subtly improve upon that form.
Aerobic training – the athlete can infinitely develop their potential in this area – it is not yet known what a human’s maximum oxygen handling capacity is… and a number of coaching experts agree that this is the zone where you should spend the majority of your time. The only trouble is that is can be easy to creep out of this zone and into the anaerobic zone without knowing it. Pay attention to your pace, your breathing rhythm and what it “feels like” in terms of perceived effort so that you do not wear yourself down prematurely.
Anaerobic training – the ability to perform work under oxygen deficit - this ability is finite and can only be developed to a point. Training at your near maximum heart rate, at or above threshold pace is anaerobic training. “running—so fast—that—you can—hardly—speak—might—vomit…” is an anaerobic pace and will leave you feeling wasted for your next run.
Here is another great tool that you should consider as a conservative means to keep yourself in the aerobic zone & you’ll need to be A) serious enough to really want to improve – as it requires restraint B) you’ll need a heart monitor and the ability to use grade school math.
from philmaffetone.com
The 180 Formula
To find your maximum aerobic heart rate:
1. Subtract your age from 180 (180 - age).
2. Modify this number by selecting one of the following categories:
1. If you have or are recovering from a major illness (heart disease, any operation, any hospital stay) or on any regular medication, subtract 10.
2. If you have not exercised before, you have exercised but have been injured or are regressing in your running, subtract 5.
3. If you have been exercising for up to two years with no real problems and have not had colds or flu more than once or twice a year, subtract 0.
4. If you have been exercising for more than two years without any problems, making progress in competition without injury, add 5.
For example, if you are 30 years old and reasonably fit you would fall into category 2c: 180 - 30 = 150.This is your maximum aerobic heart rate for base training. For efficient base building, you should train at or below this level throughout your base period. [In this example 150 would be the runners 3-4 pace and the bulk of all their running.]
Why does Dr. Maffetone say this, and why is his number so low - even lower than the traditional method? Less is more. You need to feel motivated to run on the day that you do and over training by going too far, too fast, running somebody else’s pace, running too many days can really leave you unprepared for a good effort on your training day. Dr. Maffetone argues that many of us inadvertently train some in the anaerobic zone, feel stronger or faster than we really are and then fade due to aerobic deficiency syndrome. Dr. Maffetone gives a great analogy for steady progress in your cardio development in his book The Maffetone Method. [If you are] “jogging one mile at a heart rate of 140 bpm, initially in 12 minutes…a month later the same one mile jog at the same rate takes 11.5 minutes; two months later, 10.5 minutes; and three months later, 10 minutes. This would indicate good progress and also implies increased fat burning.” This allows development of your aerobic system and avoids the tendency to go out and try to overdevelop the anaerobic system. Many great coaches have suggested similar strategies but Dr. Maffetone has a great formula to keep you honest and measure the results. I like that for a lot of reasons, our culture thinks that if you’re not out dusting the competition you’re not running fast enough. This is slow, steady, phenomenal progress in cardiac capability and efficiency and will make your daily running seem effortless in the long run.
From another great coach – sometime called the father of jogging, and guide to more Olympic athletes than any other in history, “A distance runner employing a moderate work rate, can get enough oxygen to economically burn fat & glycogen. This enables ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to be rebuilt as fast as it is being used and the trained runner, working aerobically, can continue for several hours – in the case of the elite ultra runner, for day after day of steady aerobic output.
What happens when the runner sprints or shifts his work-rate into the anaerobic phase is that oxygen is no longer absorbed fast enough for the fat & glycogen breakdown. The body will then cheat & break down glycogen without oxygen.” Arthur Lydiard
By using a reasonable pace to develop aerobic capacity and refine good running form you will see gains faster. It is not a fast process, but it is faster in the sense that you will remain uninjured and have the capacity to maintain steady progress. Your running economy is as important as good fitness toward making you a faster more effortless runner. That said, we try to go farther before faster and the father of running states “why” best.
“Most people never realize what their potential is or understand the simple truth that it is based upon their ability to assimilate, transport and use oxygen. If we can appreciate that and then improve that ability, we lay a better foundation on which to build the technical skills and reach a tireless physical & mental state in which we can employ those skills & techniques much better and much longer” Arthur Lydiard
"Try to run each day in such a way that you would want to run again the next day…"
Train your self, not by yourself. You deserve company and the shared effort makes the time pass, as well as enriching your run. But your training has no competitors, it’s your training. Besides, you’ll quickly discover that we all respond differently to this type of training and each person needs their own pace/space to do that. While we are striving to run a race at the end of this training cycle, you should remember that it is a training cycle. What do I mean by that? I mean that you should set up your training so that you love training for training’s sake or running for running sake (I know you do not love racing yet, and maybe you will or will not love racing). We are going to make running a practice for you and to define this I quote Danny Dryer, “If you see running as only as sport, you’re limiting yourself to getting only the physical benefits. Making an activity a practice is a process of self mastery. You are no longer simply practicing that activity; you use it to learn about, understand, and master yourself as well as the activity.” That idea will make you better at nearly anything and it is the way people benefit from meditation, learn a new vocation, or tackle the largest of personal goals. While learning to run will be far from the largest accomplishment you ever achieve – I’d argue along with Mr. Dryer that you stand to lean more than how to keep yourself fit and get ready for a race - if you make your running a practice.
So if we are going to tackle some understanding of pacing and running technique we need to begin with what adapts first in our bodies to running.
Cardio system – in charge of keeping you going it is very versatile and will keep rising to the challenge if you apply changes at an appropriate pace so that it can keep up.
What next? Muscle systems: all of those supporting and accessory muscles will be adapting and with your strengthening and stretching program this happens even faster - just lift two days a week and stretch at least as many days as you run.
What next? Tendons, ligaments and connective tissue adapt the slowest. Keep in mind that this tissue does not get the same blood supply as other parts of your body and while tendons and ligaments are very strong, some of us have firsthand knowledge of how long they take to heal. These tissues need the longest to adapt to any sport, including running, so take your time.
Pace is relative from one runner to the next but pace can tell us a lot about your individual achievements and adaptations as time goes by. It can also tell us a lot about over training, fatigue, or where and when that injury began. Hey, sometimes we learn via hindsight but I hope that you and I can use your training notes to put together a picture of how you are progressing rather than looking back to identify your injury. We want to be proactive.
For all the work you are doing you deserve good notes.
· Writing down a few things about what went well and what didn’t allows you to learn over time what works best for you.
· This same record is a confidence building tool that verifies you are in fact improving and putting in the work.
· Keeping your times and distances as you progress in your training allows you to evaluate progress quantitatively and keeps you from going too fast or over training.
· If you can justify the cost (they are now in the range of $70-$200) a heart monitor is also a great gift/tool for self evaluation that will keep you from running yourself too hard.
If you vary your routes from a list of good ones you can avoid boredom and see new places. Varying routes makes you a stronger runner by varying terrain also. Over time this will make you faster too. You may always ask runners for new routes and good ones to add to your list. Some of our class has already started using a map program online to chart and share routes; allowing you to find new places to run. I am adding additional routes to a website called walkjogrun which is listed on the site as a smartphone compatible product but it also works on your desktop or other device and you can make routes without using your car (the old school method is to drive or bike the route, just to get the distance.) New routes can be motivating and will help you vary your training and pace over time.
Warm up – even if it is only a minute you need to allow the joints and muscles to get moving slowly. Walk 3-5 minutes before your workout or if you cannot do this at least run very slowly for the first 3-5 minutes of you workout and get the groove going. I like my route to start a few blocks from the house and this makes me walk a few minutes before I start running. You also can begin thinking about the pace, goal, technique you’ll use to get it all accomplished.
Your pace should be at a rate which allows you to relax. If you are not relaxed it will be difficult to run with clean, efficient form. Exercise is tough enough, right? So make sure that you travel slowly enough that you can think about technique and begin to relax into that technique. People often think that they need to travel at a particular speed in order to call it running and you will see that we are more concerned about your heart rate and level of perceived effort than your actual ground speed. Of course, heart rate and level of perceived effort are very personalized and that is where you come into the training plan process to really make it work. I can help you plan workouts but you are the speedometer for them and the final say (refer to – “you are an experiment of one”.)
Here are a few things to think about that save energy for each run.
You are headed in a particular direction and we want as many of your body parts as possible headed in that same direction you are traveling. Sounds simple but many of us have varying alignments. So from the top:
Your head should be upright and you can easily see out to the horizon. Think about a long spine and the back of your neck being long as well so that when you take a breath, it goes straight into your lungs. Relax your neck and shoulders by breathing rhymic-ly & deeply.
Please take not of this rhythm and tune into it because over time you will notice that it changes and this breathing rhythm will alter as soon as your pace does. Every engine needs air. Keep your eyes on the horizon and imagine the back of your neck being long and straight. This relaxes shoulders and opens the airway giving all the air a straight route to where it is needed.
Arms should swing naturally and swing straight ahead and back. Do not cross your body with your arms. Smile occasionally to relax neck and shoulders (folks will wonder what you’re up to.) Hands are loose and relaxed, form “O’s” if you need to.
When we get to your hips, think about your pelvis being level and parallel with the ground. What I mean by this is that your standing posture may show a tendency to tilt your hips either forward or back but if you stand up straight and tall you can align the pelvis so that the top of its “bowl” is not tipped fore or aft. In order for this to happen your knees will be very slightly bent and your ankles will be very slightly flexed. You want to ease any strain on your back and allow for easy breathing, again – relax.
Stand up for a minute and while standing straight and tall, close your eyes, now jump up in the air with a little hop and as you land on the ground – freeze. This frozen posture that you land in, is a balanced position (if you fell over just now, you were not balanced and will need to repeat the experiment, sorry) this is a very good basic stance for running.
Another thought on posture. If you are standing still in a balance way as we have discussed above, can you see the tops of your feet? If not you may have your hips too far forward, or ankles flexed too much. Try to have that body all centered over your feet and yet a little flexed. We will demonstrate some of this posture in seminar.
Seek to not land on a straightened leg when you travel down to road, have this flexed knee that you experienced a minute ago. Flex the ankles as well so that you are flowing a bit.
Are you using all of your energy to move forward? Look at the horizon and see if it bounces – it should not. Keep feet low and smoothly moving forward to stop upward travel or change it to forward travel. Arms, feet, knees and other body parts should all be moving forward as best as you are able, so practice this and have a friend look at your running form. Moving economically is all about technique, moving slowly enough to practice and to stay relaxed and it gets easier the more you try it.
We use our lower legs to catch us from falling forward. DO NOT push off the ground with calves and toes while running as this will cause injuries to shins, calves, Achilles tendons and possibly elsewhere. No running on your tip-toes – even when going uphill keep feet are landing smoothly and flat. Think about picking up your heels, peeling them up from off the road starting at the back and finishing towards the toe.
Most of us land on our heels and knees should be bent. Do not take a large or unnaturally big step but think about your feet landing right underneath you or just slightly in front of you. Stand up straight or with a very slight forward lean. Your feet should land on the ground quietly and as you listen for your breathing see if you can hear you feet as well. The elite runners run faster because their “turn-over” is 2-3x what ours is. They do not have a longer stride necessarily but their feet strike the ground 3x more often in a minute than ours. When you hear them go by at that pace it sounds like typing, pitter pat, pitter pat, very quiet.
Now for the effort part – we want to get you a workout and start the cardio system on adapting but we balance that with moving slowly enough to practice technique and to stay relaxed.
Heart rate: You can take your pulse in the morning before getting out of bed to determine your resting heart rate in beats per minute. Use the artery in your wrist or neck (just beside your windpipe) and quietly count for 30 seconds and multiply by 2.
The traditional formula from your book: Your maximum heart rate (MHR) will be 220 minus your age = MHR seeks to never exceed this number.
Your MHR X .60 gives you your training level for 60% effort.
Your MHR x .95 gives you the 95% effort number; the highest heart rate you would reach in race conditions.
Most of our training builds endurance to get us to race distance and so we train at 65-85% of our MHR. This is aerobic training and is the type that offers infinite improvement physiologically.
Your text refers to another way to calculate your heart rate that is slightly different than the old standard which will give you a little higher overall allowable rate see page 112 for the Karvonen formula – there are many ways to calculate but what if you do not have a monitor to track your heart rate? Believe it or not – most pro athletes start the season with a monitor and once the tune into where they are at for the season they leave it at home because they are so good at sensing “perceived effort”.
Perceived effort (PE) is the feeling of “how much of my total energy is being spent running right now?” or how close is this to the fastest I can go (100% effort)
Easy pace= 65-70% PE you can have a complete conversation, feels like a 3-4 on a 10 scale of effort, you may run 3 strides per inhale, 3 strides per exhale
Aerobic pace=75-85% PE you can still speak in sentences, feels like a 5-6 effort on a 10 scale, 2 inhale or 2 inhale-1 exhale per 3 strides. Some call this tempo pace.
Threshold pace= 88-92% PE you - speak a –few-words-at a- time, feels like a 7-8 hard effort, breathing in & out on every stride. Some call this interval pace – you cannot hold this one for very long.
If you feel the need to run faster during a workout save it for the second half of your run. Running the second 50% slightly faster is know as a negative split or a progression run and trains the body for race day by building endurance. If you start out faster in the first half of your run and then tire…you teach the body to slow down instead. Better still, for 90% of your workouts (we’ll talk about speed workouts in a few months) start at the pace you plan to finish at, which means keep a slow steady rhythm that reflects that PE 3-4 or 65-70% or your target heart rate. You’ll not only enjoy the run more but you’ll feel more like you could run the next day.
Most programs wait 8 weeks before adding any hill repeats or speed work on the track – it is better and OK to seek to run negative splits during runs as an easy endurance builder. First you develop a running form that feels natural to you – speed work will later cause your body to subtly improve upon that form.
Aerobic training – the athlete can infinitely develop their potential in this area – it is not yet known what a human’s maximum oxygen handling capacity is… and a number of coaching experts agree that this is the zone where you should spend the majority of your time. The only trouble is that is can be easy to creep out of this zone and into the anaerobic zone without knowing it. Pay attention to your pace, your breathing rhythm and what it “feels like” in terms of perceived effort so that you do not wear yourself down prematurely.
Anaerobic training – the ability to perform work under oxygen deficit - this ability is finite and can only be developed to a point. Training at your near maximum heart rate, at or above threshold pace is anaerobic training. “running—so fast—that—you can—hardly—speak—might—vomit…” is an anaerobic pace and will leave you feeling wasted for your next run.
Here is another great tool that you should consider as a conservative means to keep yourself in the aerobic zone & you’ll need to be A) serious enough to really want to improve – as it requires restraint B) you’ll need a heart monitor and the ability to use grade school math.
from philmaffetone.com
The 180 Formula
To find your maximum aerobic heart rate:
1. Subtract your age from 180 (180 - age).
2. Modify this number by selecting one of the following categories:
1. If you have or are recovering from a major illness (heart disease, any operation, any hospital stay) or on any regular medication, subtract 10.
2. If you have not exercised before, you have exercised but have been injured or are regressing in your running, subtract 5.
3. If you have been exercising for up to two years with no real problems and have not had colds or flu more than once or twice a year, subtract 0.
4. If you have been exercising for more than two years without any problems, making progress in competition without injury, add 5.
For example, if you are 30 years old and reasonably fit you would fall into category 2c: 180 - 30 = 150.This is your maximum aerobic heart rate for base training. For efficient base building, you should train at or below this level throughout your base period. [In this example 150 would be the runners 3-4 pace and the bulk of all their running.]
Why does Dr. Maffetone say this, and why is his number so low - even lower than the traditional method? Less is more. You need to feel motivated to run on the day that you do and over training by going too far, too fast, running somebody else’s pace, running too many days can really leave you unprepared for a good effort on your training day. Dr. Maffetone argues that many of us inadvertently train some in the anaerobic zone, feel stronger or faster than we really are and then fade due to aerobic deficiency syndrome. Dr. Maffetone gives a great analogy for steady progress in your cardio development in his book The Maffetone Method. [If you are] “jogging one mile at a heart rate of 140 bpm, initially in 12 minutes…a month later the same one mile jog at the same rate takes 11.5 minutes; two months later, 10.5 minutes; and three months later, 10 minutes. This would indicate good progress and also implies increased fat burning.” This allows development of your aerobic system and avoids the tendency to go out and try to overdevelop the anaerobic system. Many great coaches have suggested similar strategies but Dr. Maffetone has a great formula to keep you honest and measure the results. I like that for a lot of reasons, our culture thinks that if you’re not out dusting the competition you’re not running fast enough. This is slow, steady, phenomenal progress in cardiac capability and efficiency and will make your daily running seem effortless in the long run.
From another great coach – sometime called the father of jogging, and guide to more Olympic athletes than any other in history, “A distance runner employing a moderate work rate, can get enough oxygen to economically burn fat & glycogen. This enables ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to be rebuilt as fast as it is being used and the trained runner, working aerobically, can continue for several hours – in the case of the elite ultra runner, for day after day of steady aerobic output.
What happens when the runner sprints or shifts his work-rate into the anaerobic phase is that oxygen is no longer absorbed fast enough for the fat & glycogen breakdown. The body will then cheat & break down glycogen without oxygen.” Arthur Lydiard
By using a reasonable pace to develop aerobic capacity and refine good running form you will see gains faster. It is not a fast process, but it is faster in the sense that you will remain uninjured and have the capacity to maintain steady progress. Your running economy is as important as good fitness toward making you a faster more effortless runner. That said, we try to go farther before faster and the father of running states “why” best.
“Most people never realize what their potential is or understand the simple truth that it is based upon their ability to assimilate, transport and use oxygen. If we can appreciate that and then improve that ability, we lay a better foundation on which to build the technical skills and reach a tireless physical & mental state in which we can employ those skills & techniques much better and much longer” Arthur Lydiard
"Try to run each day in such a way that you would want to run again the next day…"
Friday, September 17, 2010
Barefooting – what and why?
This installment comes with a handout you can pick up at the YMCA desk until Oct 1st...
While the book Born To Run and the recently published research of Dr. Dan Leiberman seems to have energized the term barefooting and made it into almost a household word – running barefoot did not start in 2009 or even in this century. While I would encourage you to read the work of both of these guys – I’ll take a minute to point out some highlights of how we got to running shoes in the 20th century. I hope to also spark a bit of thought about what things looked like before shoes and how that factors into where we are at today. I will refer you to a great article in Ultrarunning magazine as well, which is a great summary of why you should or should not dump the nice running shoes I asked you to buy in the first place. I kept my shoes but I think that every runner should look at the history of our sport and can take a lesson from what shoeless or minimal shoes can do for your running.
26 bones, 33 joints, 12 tendons, 18 muscles; each foot is an amazing piece of machinery and while it has many things it does not have others – so why it is made this way and what was it for in the first place?
Science has made a great case for a theory that the current form of humans evolved and succeeded as a species due to 26 different, running specific, adaptations. These adaptations allowed us to pursue quarry on the move, at a rate just fast enough to tire that animal out, while we have the innate endurance to finish the hunt and gain groceries. Again, Dr. Dan Leiberman offers a much more through explanation of this theory and it is solidly based in the science of biology and comparative biology. We were able to travel, pretty fast, and fast enough to win food and cross great distances. Clearly, we did this without shoes and anthropologists have not found any evidence of Nikes from this critical time period.
Until Bill Bowerman, the famous University of Oregon track coach, created the running shoe in America in 1972, just 38 years ago, we all ran in very thin light shoes that offered little in the way of a heel cushion or padding from the ground. I have read that he designed the shoe to accommodate what he felt would be a longer and more competitive stride for his athletes. He could teach them to lead with the heel and the longer stride length would out run the competition.
Currently in Africa and many parts of the developing world, children are raised without transportation and also without footwear. It is estimated that the average Kenyan child has about 1,800 miles on their legs and feet by the time they graduate from primary school and all of these miles, for the majority of kids, are without shoes of any kind. It has been argued that this contributes to the number of victories for great Kenyan runners at the international level and on the Olympic podium. Early leg development and natural foot strength (at altitude, Kenya is a mountainous region with an altitude similar to Flagstaff, AZ) allow these kids to develop all the capabilities of their legs before serious training ever begins for competition.
Many cultures are able to train and run well without shoes or with minimal shoes. The Tarahumara Indians of Mexico are featured in Born To Run for their great ability and running in very simple sandals – a slab of rubber strapped to their feet for protection from sharp objects. This is a similar style of shoe to many early Nations of the American Southwest and the pre Spanish cultures in South America such as the Maya and Inca who had thousands of miles of roads and very little in the way of shoes to traverse them. In those days a severe running injury would cause you to drop lower on the food chain – a deadly prospect. So it might be safe (or humorous) to assume that if running injuries did occur in Inca runners – these runners did not pass on the genes for any fragile lower legs and knees.
According to Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run, Alan Webb’s feet where flat and three sizes larger when he started working with his high school coach to become America’s new top miler. In 2007 Alan set the world’s best 1,500 meter time and broke Jim Ryun’s American record for the mile. But his quest began with flat, weak, de-conditioned feet that were in need of rebuilding. McDougall writes about an interview with Alan Webb on page 175 of his book and Webb says “ I had injury problems early on, … so we did foot strengthening drills and special walks in bare feet” McDougall writes that Alan’s feet changed and his arches became higher as muscles strengthened – his shoe size decreased and his injuries abated.
McDougall writes of an Irish Ph.D, Gerard Hartman who is considered an expert in physical therapy and works with professional runners from around the globe to improve their running. He has been a proponent of barefoot running for many years and cites that “the deconditioned musculature of the foot is the greatest issue leading to running injury, and we’ve allowed our feet to become badly deconditioned over the past twenty-five years”. Many folks have advocated that slowly and gently strengthening our feet over time will allow us to run better and with less injury. We may even find that we can run in lighter footwear. Lighter footwear means less effort and perhaps faster or the sensation of faster as the weight on the end of your leg from a heavy shoe creates a pendulum that takes effort to keep moving.
What do shoes do for me? While all seem to agree that having a sole cover your tender skin provides some protection – many experts are currently reexamining what shoes do well and do not do so well. The good news about this controversy is that in the past 38 years, very little substantive research has been done on how shoes truly affect feet and that is beginning to change now. The United States Military is greatly invested in physical conditioning of its personnel and in the past has seen very high rates of injury in basic training and its share of running related injuries. A recent study on determining the appropriate footwear has shown that the type of running shoe had no correlation on injury prevention for the military personnel in the study. This leads us to “well what can I use to control the movement of my foot, for the least chance of injury?” Your gait, how your foot hits the ground and your running technique becomes more important than the type of running shoe that you might wear according to this study. Manufacturers have succeeded in creating footwear that controls movements of the foot and offers important padding from the ground as you begin running. However, seeking to control the movement of the foot by using a shoe will not be successful in the long run according to new studies. Technique will carry the day and great technique; sensitive feet that are aware of what they hit (and strong feet) may lead to using a much lighter shoe down the road.
In the current day there is an entire tribe of folks dedicated to running entirely without shoes. They have run marathons, ultra marathons and farther in bare feet, and carry flip-flops with them to get into Wal-Mart or a restaurant. You can read their websites and their ideas about what shoes do and do not do for the wearer and how they feel more free with naked feet.
These “barefoot guys” read a bit like they are off the deep end – “foot yogi-mysticism” or something. However, take a good look at the number of people from the medical community that advocate the sale of moccasins to children and preach “barefoot is best” for toddlers. The reason for this, they advocate, is that kids walk sooner when they learn to interpret the ground with their feet (proprioception) and build foot strength naturally. They do not want kids to cut their feet and thus sell a light flexible protective moc- type shoe to achieve this. Many parents have subscribed to this idea with the pediatricians blessing and I’ve seen it work for my own kids. (As I was buying lots of shoes for my running, at $80/pair…)
Arthur Lydiard was a cobbler and made shoes before he was a coach. A coach who was very focused on the success of his athletes. He had his runners in the most basic of footwear and preached against anything “more” for his entire career, which extended well into the era of modern shoes. Internationally sought after coach and physician, Dr. Phil Maffetone was suggesting more than a decade ago that minimal footwear was preferable for similar reasons.
Even Stanford University’s world class track and cross country coach (the program gets Nike’s for free) has had his athletes running barefoot in the grass, two afternoons a week, for decades. He said to Nike that his guys got hurt less when they subscribed to this method. (This is what drove Nike to work with Dr. Gerard Hartman to create the Nike Free.) Long before the birth of the very popular Vibram Five Fingers shoe – many companies across the country have made a living manufacturing simple moccasins and unstructured footwear that allow the foot to move and muscles to work. Inuit people, north of the Arctic Circle knew that this is what kept their feet warm in winter – that the boot would flex and allow better circulation.
While this is all good for some; I am most concerned with my runners being injury free, using the best technique and enjoying their running forever. Many will need something on their feet, at least in winter, to do this and barefooting may be something to try and work into their training program along with foot strengthening and conditioning.
Simply walking around without shoes at home is a good place to start and walking farther progressively is another. You may choose to try the new Vibram Five Fingers Shoes as well, which offer that slight amount of protection for your tender skin and not much else for padding. I have started using theses on very short runs (by time) and adding minutes each week very slowly. I spent a year reworking my stride before I ran with these shoes so that I am not landing on my heel much at all but using the mid-foot and most of my foot to absorb the impact of each step. Further you can practice this technique while walking – you need not run in order to learn how to walk more gently and with a light step.
So this year’s Outdoor Retailer Trade show saw scores of outdoor footwear manufacturers gunning for a piece of the barefoot pie, gearing up to make “thneeds”, or feather weight running shoes for everyone who wants to run barefoot. Get ready to see dozens of these models in the marketplace next year – like Crocs a few years ago, but sillier looking. You may choose to try them or go barefoot, grab some moccasins, run in cheaper “race flats” or just try your old Chuck Taylor’s like Lydiard ran in for decades. But think about a deliberate program of gentle foot strengthening for yourself as a possible next step in your program and add it gradually, just like you started running. Feet that “know the ground” and are sensitive, are less likely to sprain an ankle, will run trails better and may run slower at first but that is OK, you’re in shape and will not “detrain” as a part of this process. Your lower legs will continue to develop in a way that may reduce your injuries over time and your stride will adapt to something that is more powerful in the long run. That is what I want for your running – long running for the long run. So run gently out there.
Read an article about shoeless study here
The NIH article on the Army study here
Danny Dryers list of preferred light weight shoes
Interesting article on shoes from a rehab perspective
While the book Born To Run and the recently published research of Dr. Dan Leiberman seems to have energized the term barefooting and made it into almost a household word – running barefoot did not start in 2009 or even in this century. While I would encourage you to read the work of both of these guys – I’ll take a minute to point out some highlights of how we got to running shoes in the 20th century. I hope to also spark a bit of thought about what things looked like before shoes and how that factors into where we are at today. I will refer you to a great article in Ultrarunning magazine as well, which is a great summary of why you should or should not dump the nice running shoes I asked you to buy in the first place. I kept my shoes but I think that every runner should look at the history of our sport and can take a lesson from what shoeless or minimal shoes can do for your running.
26 bones, 33 joints, 12 tendons, 18 muscles; each foot is an amazing piece of machinery and while it has many things it does not have others – so why it is made this way and what was it for in the first place?
Science has made a great case for a theory that the current form of humans evolved and succeeded as a species due to 26 different, running specific, adaptations. These adaptations allowed us to pursue quarry on the move, at a rate just fast enough to tire that animal out, while we have the innate endurance to finish the hunt and gain groceries. Again, Dr. Dan Leiberman offers a much more through explanation of this theory and it is solidly based in the science of biology and comparative biology. We were able to travel, pretty fast, and fast enough to win food and cross great distances. Clearly, we did this without shoes and anthropologists have not found any evidence of Nikes from this critical time period.
Until Bill Bowerman, the famous University of Oregon track coach, created the running shoe in America in 1972, just 38 years ago, we all ran in very thin light shoes that offered little in the way of a heel cushion or padding from the ground. I have read that he designed the shoe to accommodate what he felt would be a longer and more competitive stride for his athletes. He could teach them to lead with the heel and the longer stride length would out run the competition.
Currently in Africa and many parts of the developing world, children are raised without transportation and also without footwear. It is estimated that the average Kenyan child has about 1,800 miles on their legs and feet by the time they graduate from primary school and all of these miles, for the majority of kids, are without shoes of any kind. It has been argued that this contributes to the number of victories for great Kenyan runners at the international level and on the Olympic podium. Early leg development and natural foot strength (at altitude, Kenya is a mountainous region with an altitude similar to Flagstaff, AZ) allow these kids to develop all the capabilities of their legs before serious training ever begins for competition.
Many cultures are able to train and run well without shoes or with minimal shoes. The Tarahumara Indians of Mexico are featured in Born To Run for their great ability and running in very simple sandals – a slab of rubber strapped to their feet for protection from sharp objects. This is a similar style of shoe to many early Nations of the American Southwest and the pre Spanish cultures in South America such as the Maya and Inca who had thousands of miles of roads and very little in the way of shoes to traverse them. In those days a severe running injury would cause you to drop lower on the food chain – a deadly prospect. So it might be safe (or humorous) to assume that if running injuries did occur in Inca runners – these runners did not pass on the genes for any fragile lower legs and knees.
According to Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run, Alan Webb’s feet where flat and three sizes larger when he started working with his high school coach to become America’s new top miler. In 2007 Alan set the world’s best 1,500 meter time and broke Jim Ryun’s American record for the mile. But his quest began with flat, weak, de-conditioned feet that were in need of rebuilding. McDougall writes about an interview with Alan Webb on page 175 of his book and Webb says “ I had injury problems early on, … so we did foot strengthening drills and special walks in bare feet” McDougall writes that Alan’s feet changed and his arches became higher as muscles strengthened – his shoe size decreased and his injuries abated.
McDougall writes of an Irish Ph.D, Gerard Hartman who is considered an expert in physical therapy and works with professional runners from around the globe to improve their running. He has been a proponent of barefoot running for many years and cites that “the deconditioned musculature of the foot is the greatest issue leading to running injury, and we’ve allowed our feet to become badly deconditioned over the past twenty-five years”. Many folks have advocated that slowly and gently strengthening our feet over time will allow us to run better and with less injury. We may even find that we can run in lighter footwear. Lighter footwear means less effort and perhaps faster or the sensation of faster as the weight on the end of your leg from a heavy shoe creates a pendulum that takes effort to keep moving.
What do shoes do for me? While all seem to agree that having a sole cover your tender skin provides some protection – many experts are currently reexamining what shoes do well and do not do so well. The good news about this controversy is that in the past 38 years, very little substantive research has been done on how shoes truly affect feet and that is beginning to change now. The United States Military is greatly invested in physical conditioning of its personnel and in the past has seen very high rates of injury in basic training and its share of running related injuries. A recent study on determining the appropriate footwear has shown that the type of running shoe had no correlation on injury prevention for the military personnel in the study. This leads us to “well what can I use to control the movement of my foot, for the least chance of injury?” Your gait, how your foot hits the ground and your running technique becomes more important than the type of running shoe that you might wear according to this study. Manufacturers have succeeded in creating footwear that controls movements of the foot and offers important padding from the ground as you begin running. However, seeking to control the movement of the foot by using a shoe will not be successful in the long run according to new studies. Technique will carry the day and great technique; sensitive feet that are aware of what they hit (and strong feet) may lead to using a much lighter shoe down the road.
In the current day there is an entire tribe of folks dedicated to running entirely without shoes. They have run marathons, ultra marathons and farther in bare feet, and carry flip-flops with them to get into Wal-Mart or a restaurant. You can read their websites and their ideas about what shoes do and do not do for the wearer and how they feel more free with naked feet.
These “barefoot guys” read a bit like they are off the deep end – “foot yogi-mysticism” or something. However, take a good look at the number of people from the medical community that advocate the sale of moccasins to children and preach “barefoot is best” for toddlers. The reason for this, they advocate, is that kids walk sooner when they learn to interpret the ground with their feet (proprioception) and build foot strength naturally. They do not want kids to cut their feet and thus sell a light flexible protective moc- type shoe to achieve this. Many parents have subscribed to this idea with the pediatricians blessing and I’ve seen it work for my own kids. (As I was buying lots of shoes for my running, at $80/pair…)
Arthur Lydiard was a cobbler and made shoes before he was a coach. A coach who was very focused on the success of his athletes. He had his runners in the most basic of footwear and preached against anything “more” for his entire career, which extended well into the era of modern shoes. Internationally sought after coach and physician, Dr. Phil Maffetone was suggesting more than a decade ago that minimal footwear was preferable for similar reasons.
Even Stanford University’s world class track and cross country coach (the program gets Nike’s for free) has had his athletes running barefoot in the grass, two afternoons a week, for decades. He said to Nike that his guys got hurt less when they subscribed to this method. (This is what drove Nike to work with Dr. Gerard Hartman to create the Nike Free.) Long before the birth of the very popular Vibram Five Fingers shoe – many companies across the country have made a living manufacturing simple moccasins and unstructured footwear that allow the foot to move and muscles to work. Inuit people, north of the Arctic Circle knew that this is what kept their feet warm in winter – that the boot would flex and allow better circulation.
While this is all good for some; I am most concerned with my runners being injury free, using the best technique and enjoying their running forever. Many will need something on their feet, at least in winter, to do this and barefooting may be something to try and work into their training program along with foot strengthening and conditioning.
Simply walking around without shoes at home is a good place to start and walking farther progressively is another. You may choose to try the new Vibram Five Fingers Shoes as well, which offer that slight amount of protection for your tender skin and not much else for padding. I have started using theses on very short runs (by time) and adding minutes each week very slowly. I spent a year reworking my stride before I ran with these shoes so that I am not landing on my heel much at all but using the mid-foot and most of my foot to absorb the impact of each step. Further you can practice this technique while walking – you need not run in order to learn how to walk more gently and with a light step.
So this year’s Outdoor Retailer Trade show saw scores of outdoor footwear manufacturers gunning for a piece of the barefoot pie, gearing up to make “thneeds”, or feather weight running shoes for everyone who wants to run barefoot. Get ready to see dozens of these models in the marketplace next year – like Crocs a few years ago, but sillier looking. You may choose to try them or go barefoot, grab some moccasins, run in cheaper “race flats” or just try your old Chuck Taylor’s like Lydiard ran in for decades. But think about a deliberate program of gentle foot strengthening for yourself as a possible next step in your program and add it gradually, just like you started running. Feet that “know the ground” and are sensitive, are less likely to sprain an ankle, will run trails better and may run slower at first but that is OK, you’re in shape and will not “detrain” as a part of this process. Your lower legs will continue to develop in a way that may reduce your injuries over time and your stride will adapt to something that is more powerful in the long run. That is what I want for your running – long running for the long run. So run gently out there.
Read an article about shoeless study here
The NIH article on the Army study here
Danny Dryers list of preferred light weight shoes
Interesting article on shoes from a rehab perspective
Friday, September 10, 2010
Mark Cucuzzella inspiration
I'll share with you something from the Freedoms Run website where there are a lot of great runner materials and a series of races to register for this fall (hint, hint). Mark teaches running, is a race director, a CHI running instructor and a physician. When I asked him to come speak he graciously said yes, and then our schedules did not connect (he is clearly a busy guy) but I'll share some of his insight for you here and maybe some inspiration.
How to Run the Boston Marathon
Written by Mark Cucuzzella, MD
As you enter the week prior to the race, here are a few visualizations to help you set your plan. Running your best marathon is part art, part science, part guts, part faith in what you can do, and a little luck, whereas running your best 10k is mostly about fitness.
I’ve had the pleasure of running this race 16 times and the last 10 consecutively. My only misses were for military and work duties, and a foot surgery. In all these efforts, I had 5 under 2:30, 5 between 2:30 and 2:35; 2 between 2:35 and 2:40; 3 between 2:40-2:44; and one DNF (first one with lots of rookie mistakes). My best learning experiences were when the men and women started together and I had the privilege of running alongside and witnessing the patient approach of the top ladies.
In the 1998, Fatuma Roba, the Marathon Gold Medalist in Atlanta and 3 time Boston winner, scooted over the ground with an incredibly efficient motion. Her knees stayed low, she lifted up her feet, arms relaxed, and face always relaxed. She stayed out of trouble by tucking behind the lead pack of more aggressive ladies. I followed behind the train and we hit half way in about 1:13. Fatuma then opened her stride up in the second half moving away from all of us to run a 2:23. An amazing second half effort. I was pleased with a 2:27 that day and credit Fatuma as any thoughts to go faster sooner were mitigated by her patience.
A few years later in 2001, I witnessed multiple world champion and Boston winner Catherine “the Great” Ndereba employ the same strategy. Her hydroplaning stride and complete relaxation of effort were a contrast to other ladies in the pack whose body language and breathing revealed they were putting out more energy than Katherine. As a group, we hit the half in 1:14. Katherine stayed relaxed down the last set of downhill during mile 17, then tightened the screws with great acceleration over the Newton hills, running the last 10 miles in 50 minutes for a 2:24. Katherine helped my day. By cuing off her pacing and relaxation, I ran an even race and finished in 2:29.
The other runner who taught me to have fun out there was the legendary 3 time Boston winner Uta Pippig of Germany. In 1997, I ran with her until she dropped me at Cleveland Circle, mile 22. The crowds loved Uta, and the noise escalated as she approached. She smiled the whole way … this may be her cue to relax, feed off the crowd’s energy, and have fun in the moment. In marathon running you must be present in the moment, not thinking about how far you have to go, fearing what you may feel like later, are you going to slow down, when’s the wall coming. Uta ran a strong fourth place that day in 2:28 and I finished a few strides back in 2:29.
All of these ladies made sure to get their fluid and nutrition at all stops. The seconds used here paid dividends down the road. They ran over the road not into the road, especially on the downhills … you could hardly hear them land as they did not employ hard heel striking technique. Their posture was tall and their arms always relaxed. But most vital was their efficient energy conservation and utilization strategy.
So how does this apply to you in your Boston Marathon, whether you are going to run 2:20 or 4 hours plus?
The best analogy I can think of is this: if you have trained your body properly with the right mix of aerobic level training and some up tempo stuff in recent weeks, you have built your efficient hybrid engine ready to race the marathon. Many of you have driven in a Prius and watch the subtle shifts between gas and electric on the screen. You do not perceive these shifts. Your engine runs on gas, electric, or a mix- depending on the effort.
You are starting the race with one gallon in the tank- assuming you have eaten a nice meal the night before with a breakfast top off.
• If you are in all gas mode, your engine will run about 1.5 hours at a strong pace….then you are out of gas.
• If you are mostly electric you can run all day, but maybe not so quickly.
• If you are using the proper mix you will go quick and efficient for duration of your event, and you can even do some topping off along the way.
The glucose utilizing pathway is the gas. This is your stored glycogen and blood glucose (pasta meal and breakfast) - easy to access for ready energy. The fat utilizing pathway is the electric. In marathons you must be in hybrid until the last few miles. Hybrid is where your energy (ATP) is coming from both sources.
Many runners are in great “10k shape” (an all gas event), then run their marathon in the gas mode- and usually crash. No glycogen sparing factors apply in races of less than an hour as long as you had a good pre-event meal to fill the tank. In marathons and ultras- top end fitness matters little and can only be applied very near the finish. Glucose gives 36 ATP per molecule, fat 460 ATP per molecule. Now you know how a bird can migrate 7000 miles without a Powerbar.
So how do you know you are running in your best hybrid mode?
This is difficult because the sense is not as profound as aerobic/anaerobic. A slight increase from your optimal pace will switch you from hybrid to all gas without you realizing it, and the effects are felt miles later. Charging up hills early will tap your gas quickly. Maintain effort not speed.
You must rehearse a bit in training. I focus on relaxation and breathing. If I’m breathing one cycle to 5 steps, then I’m hybrid. Any faster I’m using glucose as sole fuel. Belly breathe- allow lower belly to blow up like a beach ball on inhalation and pull your belly button back to your spine on exhalation. Then you will fill the lower lung areas where oxygen exchange occurs.
Notice the breathing efforts of those around you and many are rapid breathing- they tend to suffer somewhere past half way. Rehearse complete relaxation from the top down- eyes, jaw, shoulders, allow your legs to relax and extend behind you, relax and soften your knees and ankles. Find you own cue for this. If you use the Heart Rate Monitor in training strongly consider one during the event.
In a marathon, the last 3-4 miles you will be all gas to maintain the same speed as fatigue sets in. The breathing is usually on a 3 to 4 step per breath cycle- that is OK. Still stay relaxed and use some relaxation cues that you have rehearsed to keep your form.
Land softly, especially on the early downhills. I use a running method called ChiRunning which focuses on midfoot strike, slight forward lean, and letting gravity do some of the work. A few months after learning this technique I ran a 2:31 here at age 39 and felt none of the usual post Boston soreness. Felt so good I lined up 5 weeks later in Ottawa for another 2:32. I’m never sore after marathons now thanks to ChiRunning and feel I can keep doing them until I enter the retirement home. No pain…thank you.
Your shoes matter too. Not that you are going to change your shoes in the next day based on my advice...but make strong consideration to not running in minimalist racers unless you have trained substantially in them. Your body will need some protection on the downs to save muscle fiber for the later rolling sections. My favorite shoe is the Newton Neutral Racer, an incredible marathon shoe if you are running with a proper midfoot landing. If you relax your lower legs and not push off…these shoes with no heel elevation put you in perfect position to allow natural elastic recoil of plantar fascia, Achilles, calf muscles, and hip flexors. Try to learn the midfoot strike and test the Newtons before Boston 2011. Read Dean Karnazes new book “50-50” (50 Marathons, 50 States, 50 Days). He has figured this gait efficiency technique too and it has allowed him to accomplish some amazing endurance and durability feats. “Born to Run” also makes the case for running with a more efficient stride and questions modern running footwear. The evolving world of modern sports medicine is going back to the future too and rediscovering what evolution has taught us. For an all inclusive document go the www.freedomsrun.org and click “download presentation” from the homepage.
Now a few extra ways to get from start to finish quicker on the same gallon.
• If you can add a little gas along the way then you can go more into gas mode. This works a little at best. If running too fast you shunt all blood to working muscles and nothing digests. If you are in hybrid the early going you can continually add fuel- the key is not only the correct fuel, but the right pace. A Powergel every 25 minutes is easy to digest and tops off the tank. Carry them with you at the start. The weight is nothing compared to the benefit you will get. If you do the gels then you can drink water instead of the energy drinks which are often less predictable on the run. Boston has a Powergel station at Mile 17. Carry 4 at the start (one every 4 miles or so) and reload at mile 17.
• Maintain effort on uphill. Your pace will slow. You can easily use all your gas here if your effort increases. Shorten your stride, relax, and use your arms. Then allow gravity to take you down.
• If you are having a “bad patch” – try to refocus on relaxing, fuel a bit (sometimes a blood glucose drop triggers the sense of doom) , and have faith in your training and race plan. Another nice trick is when you hit mile 21 it is not 5 miles to go, it is 4 and change. Mile 22 is 3 and change to go. Just run to the next mile marker.
The fun of the marathon is that we are always learning and enjoying the adventure of it. I’ve done over 50 marathons now with a couple under 2:25 in my younger years. I’ve had one DNF at my first Boston in 1989. I raced the first half in 1:08 in gas mode not realizing it, in really minimal shoes that I’d not trained in, and was done by 20 miles. My worst time of the all the others has been a 2:44 at “run for hoses” Boston on 2005- 90 degrees and sunny. No hybrid here as efforts to cool were overwhelming. Another slow day was a 2:41 in the “run for cover” Boston in 2007. This was year with 30 mph headwind and Nor’easter rain. I was not in hybrid in this race in efforts to fight wind and cold, hit half way in 1:16, and suffered coming home.
We learn from experience, taking chances, and occasional failures. My first marathon in 1988 was 2:34. This year (22 years later) I hope for a similar time (2:37 in 2009 race with some tough winds coming in). Along the way I’ve accumulated 20 straight years under 2:35 except for my year of medical internship when there was no time to find a race. I’ve learned a few things in 20 years, but still there are uncertainties every time you line up. Relax, taper up, and seize the day.
Mark Cucuzzella MD
Associate Professor of Family Medicine West Virginia University
Lt. Col USAF Reserves
Coach USAF Marathon Team and Medical Consultant for Air Force Marathon
Race Dircetor Freedom’s Run (www.FreedomsRun.org)
I’d like to especially thank my sponsors for giving me the continual opportunity to run this event, be part of new innovations in running and nutrition, and representing Service Men and Women worldwide.
US Air Force: www.usafsports.com
Newton Running: www.newtonrunning.com
Powerbar: www.powerbar.com
And a special thanks to Danny and Katherine Dreyer of ChiRunning for their amazing teaching and passion for keeping runners healthy.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Running Hills
Hills – Mountaineers are better runners.
“Going to the mountains is going home” – John Muir
Runners from Ohio complain about them and the Boston Marathon has the notorious “Heartbreak Hill” as part of it mythology but runners who know the benefits of running up and down hill know something – they have both the competitive and mental advantage on their competition.
This part of your running can easily comprise 35% of you total mileage & will develop your stride and physical capacity to run more easily. You’ll also never fear a racecourse - something flatlanders get chills about regularly. Again, Danny Dryer’s book CHI Running is a great resource here in dealing with hills because technique can help your newly acquired powers to get up any hill efficiently.
Flow and glide – is the earth flat? Easy question - but think about the last time you enjoyed a roller coaster, surfed a wave, rode a mountain bike or snowboard over that very non-flat planet of ours. That slowing and accelerating feeling you enjoyed can be learned and integrated into your running and while it will not be easy, you already have many of the tools to do this well. Concentrate on an easy and efficient pace going up and learn to love that fast gliding down and you’ll start to reap the physical advantage of hill running.
Physical developments – no matter how fast (or slow) you go uphill you’ll be working at a higher PE than you typically do on a training run. You will be gently adjusting your workload and this gives you better cardio capacity while building powerful hip flexors, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves. Towards the end of a race as fatigue sets in runners may shorten their stride and lack muscle endurance to raise their knees and ankles into the next stride. Hill running build stamina in these key areas and prevents fatigue. You’ll have more power to keep running.
Hill repeats – In the same way that we are able to start running or do speed work in small doses – you can also run uphill in short bursts so as to not tire of it completely and still get most of the benefits. Folks who do not enjoy hills or feel intimidated by a hilly course will find a hill that takes one minute to run and run it at a “regular pace” (PE 4) multiple times. At the top you turn around and gently glide back down, resting as needed at the base before heading up again.
Proper form – we have discussed before that if your form suffers while doing this running then you’re not doing yourself any favors and need to slow down. You get some of the benefits from walking the hills too – find a pace you can handle – progress gradually.
Uphill - You will use your upper body more when traveling uphill. A slight lean forward would come from leaning at the ankle. Your focused breathing to power your body upward, and your arm swing – all play an important role. Think about the little engine that could. Small lean and small strides as well as a relaxed state governed by our breathing rate. You do not want to overwork your hamstrings and calves with long strides and pulling yourself up the hill. Small strides, never stepping past your hips, shoulders slightly ahead of your hips, keeps you pushing yourself up the hill in a controlled way. Take it easy and let your breathing determine your pace. Relax your legs and make sure feet are flat on the ground, heels down, and you’re not asking smaller muscles to do bigger jobs. Conserve energy and know that going uphill is always a bit slower. Pump your arms, thinking about elbows moving back, coordinated with your stride to give you extra momentum moving uphill. Your eyes look up – to the top of the hill and your long straight spine allows more air into the runner for hard work. Think about a positive mental image and know that every up has a downhill too.
Downhill – Done poorly, you’ll pound your legs, feet and lower back with 6-10x your body weight with each footfall, hammering your legs and possibly your ability to run later in the week! While not all hills are runnable, many are and you’ll get better at the “glide” skills with practice & enjoy the down without the pounding. Relaxing both physically and mentally allows you to loosen up your knees and quadriceps, give in to the speed a bit and enjoy the movement which can be much faster than you ever run on the flats. Stride, cadence, and orientation to the ground help smooth out the ride you’ve earned.
Think about your hips, shoulders and upper body. You want your hips and pelvis level while you run. Your shoulders and upper body should stay centered over your hips. Leaning away from the hill and bracing will shift your legs forward and as they act like the brakes - you’ll transfer impact to heels, quadriceps, and your lower back. This is a time that you want to stay light and footfalls/strides will be much faster than usual.
Your cadence (number of strides per minute) will increase and those smaller steps will keep your feet under your hips and landing quickly and lightly on the ground. If you need to take longer strides as your speed increases, think about the stride getting longer in the back, or behind you, so your feet do not come past your hips and you are recruiting muscles from the posterior of the body. One item to focus on is peeling your feet off the ground from the heel. This tends to make the mid-foot land first for your next step and keeps your footsteps closer to the pelvis – reducing impact forces to your body. Another way to look at it is to lead with the toe – plantar flex the foot – toes point down as you descend and your mid-foot will hit first and quickly transition to the next step.
Safety – while accidents a few, if you start running 35% of your mileage as hills you may want to take an hour one afternoon (on a grassy slope) to think about falling properly. Cyclists do this annually and skiers do too as their falling season starts. If you practice a tuck and roll, drop a shoulder style of falling you are much more likely to avoid road rash and to stop sooner, post contact with the ground. You want to tuck things in and not splay them out – do not make tender and breakable appendages responsible for stopping your trajectory. If this practice drill sounds scary, remember to walk the steepest descents so that you are in control.
“Going to the mountains is going home” – John Muir
Runners from Ohio complain about them and the Boston Marathon has the notorious “Heartbreak Hill” as part of it mythology but runners who know the benefits of running up and down hill know something – they have both the competitive and mental advantage on their competition.
This part of your running can easily comprise 35% of you total mileage & will develop your stride and physical capacity to run more easily. You’ll also never fear a racecourse - something flatlanders get chills about regularly. Again, Danny Dryer’s book CHI Running is a great resource here in dealing with hills because technique can help your newly acquired powers to get up any hill efficiently.
Flow and glide – is the earth flat? Easy question - but think about the last time you enjoyed a roller coaster, surfed a wave, rode a mountain bike or snowboard over that very non-flat planet of ours. That slowing and accelerating feeling you enjoyed can be learned and integrated into your running and while it will not be easy, you already have many of the tools to do this well. Concentrate on an easy and efficient pace going up and learn to love that fast gliding down and you’ll start to reap the physical advantage of hill running.
Physical developments – no matter how fast (or slow) you go uphill you’ll be working at a higher PE than you typically do on a training run. You will be gently adjusting your workload and this gives you better cardio capacity while building powerful hip flexors, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves. Towards the end of a race as fatigue sets in runners may shorten their stride and lack muscle endurance to raise their knees and ankles into the next stride. Hill running build stamina in these key areas and prevents fatigue. You’ll have more power to keep running.
Hill repeats – In the same way that we are able to start running or do speed work in small doses – you can also run uphill in short bursts so as to not tire of it completely and still get most of the benefits. Folks who do not enjoy hills or feel intimidated by a hilly course will find a hill that takes one minute to run and run it at a “regular pace” (PE 4) multiple times. At the top you turn around and gently glide back down, resting as needed at the base before heading up again.
Proper form – we have discussed before that if your form suffers while doing this running then you’re not doing yourself any favors and need to slow down. You get some of the benefits from walking the hills too – find a pace you can handle – progress gradually.
Uphill - You will use your upper body more when traveling uphill. A slight lean forward would come from leaning at the ankle. Your focused breathing to power your body upward, and your arm swing – all play an important role. Think about the little engine that could. Small lean and small strides as well as a relaxed state governed by our breathing rate. You do not want to overwork your hamstrings and calves with long strides and pulling yourself up the hill. Small strides, never stepping past your hips, shoulders slightly ahead of your hips, keeps you pushing yourself up the hill in a controlled way. Take it easy and let your breathing determine your pace. Relax your legs and make sure feet are flat on the ground, heels down, and you’re not asking smaller muscles to do bigger jobs. Conserve energy and know that going uphill is always a bit slower. Pump your arms, thinking about elbows moving back, coordinated with your stride to give you extra momentum moving uphill. Your eyes look up – to the top of the hill and your long straight spine allows more air into the runner for hard work. Think about a positive mental image and know that every up has a downhill too.
Downhill – Done poorly, you’ll pound your legs, feet and lower back with 6-10x your body weight with each footfall, hammering your legs and possibly your ability to run later in the week! While not all hills are runnable, many are and you’ll get better at the “glide” skills with practice & enjoy the down without the pounding. Relaxing both physically and mentally allows you to loosen up your knees and quadriceps, give in to the speed a bit and enjoy the movement which can be much faster than you ever run on the flats. Stride, cadence, and orientation to the ground help smooth out the ride you’ve earned.
Think about your hips, shoulders and upper body. You want your hips and pelvis level while you run. Your shoulders and upper body should stay centered over your hips. Leaning away from the hill and bracing will shift your legs forward and as they act like the brakes - you’ll transfer impact to heels, quadriceps, and your lower back. This is a time that you want to stay light and footfalls/strides will be much faster than usual.
Your cadence (number of strides per minute) will increase and those smaller steps will keep your feet under your hips and landing quickly and lightly on the ground. If you need to take longer strides as your speed increases, think about the stride getting longer in the back, or behind you, so your feet do not come past your hips and you are recruiting muscles from the posterior of the body. One item to focus on is peeling your feet off the ground from the heel. This tends to make the mid-foot land first for your next step and keeps your footsteps closer to the pelvis – reducing impact forces to your body. Another way to look at it is to lead with the toe – plantar flex the foot – toes point down as you descend and your mid-foot will hit first and quickly transition to the next step.
Safety – while accidents a few, if you start running 35% of your mileage as hills you may want to take an hour one afternoon (on a grassy slope) to think about falling properly. Cyclists do this annually and skiers do too as their falling season starts. If you practice a tuck and roll, drop a shoulder style of falling you are much more likely to avoid road rash and to stop sooner, post contact with the ground. You want to tuck things in and not splay them out – do not make tender and breakable appendages responsible for stopping your trajectory. If this practice drill sounds scary, remember to walk the steepest descents so that you are in control.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Pelvic & Abdominal Power
Why talk about all of these drills that seem to build supporting muscles without actually running? Well, awhile back I spoke about the idea that we are making running a habit and a Practice and this means that we are trying to shape it into a process oriented thing rather than a goal oriented thing. Further you have heard my bias that we are all made to run and yet when we enter into something new, it will often show us an asymmetry, an imbalance or weakness somewhere in our body as we develop into the new activity – be it gardening or golf. This is why we train the supporting musculature.
Why talk about all of this now? Recall that I said that we could easily overwhelm you with good information that could seem insurmountable to a newcomer. Some people will not need to do core work as they come to a program with developed anatomy from another sport or genetic gifts. Others will find that almost ten weeks into their program they are coming into a few minor glitches and wondering how to hop over them. That is why we take the time now to talk about posture and core strength and balance – because for some it will be the next key and you have to present information as folks are ready to absorb it.
So in a potpourri of topics related to core strength I will begin with a summary of a great article by Dimity McDowell, Runnersworld 3/09 titled Never Get Hurt.
Many common injuries are associated with pelvic instability or lack of strength in this region according to the Center for Endurance Sport at the University of Virginia.
Injuries such as shinsplints, iliotibial (IT) band syndrome, and lower back pain are some injuries that can be addressed at the cause and possibly “pre-habilitated” by doing an abdominal and pelvic workout.
If you develop a stable pelvis that supports the legs below and the torso above; the legs will spin almost effortlessly beneath you while the upper body remains quiet and solid. Think about the Roadrunner in the cartoons as he buzzes away from his attacker.
Many of these exercises will positively affect posture and ease the chance of injury from the road. The core work we are already doing for strength training nicely augments this routine.
Drills are about 20 minutes three times a week and can be done before a run
Video of each exercise is available at
http://www.runnersworld.com/video/0,8052,s6-1-0-5,00.html
Besides your abs many muscles help make up the runners core
Transverse Abdominals – cough or laugh and you’ll feel these muscles which stabilize the spine and pelvis, right above your pelvic bones.
Gluteus medius – this muscle on the side of your glutes minimizes side to side rotation.
Your lower back also plays a key role and you need to think about being as strong as is practical – all the way around your core as a protective cumber-bund and to build posture that promotes more structural running.
Some of my favorite stability drills come from Danny Dryer: in one example he ask you to lean forward against a table edge so that the table touches your leg at mid-thigh and you maintain a slight – whole body- lean forward as if you are a 2x4 from ankle to head. Hold this position for as long as you can and slowly increase your time. This is working the lower abdominals in a way that is similar to the way they support you going down the road.
Working these muscles is done with body weight resistance and can be done w/o equipment. Clean form is a must and you only do what you can muster comfortably, and slowly you increase the repetitions or interval weekly.
Some posture guidelines for thinking about a stable pelvis.
Heavy heel strikers typically see lower back pain down the road. Do not overstride and seek to have feet fall nearly beneath you while maintaining a long and neutral spine. Practice good posture daily and translate this to your running. While it may be hard to think about your stride all the time – you take five minutes to think about it, twice during each run, and from there we build muscle memory for best form that will follow you later in your runs.
Danny Dryer in his book ChiRunning, takes this a step further and talks about where we generate power from. “Efficient movement comes from your core muscles, not the muscles in your legs. We are so used to being told that strong legs are the answer to efficient running that when we are told to relax our legs, it is a huge mind body shift away from how we normally move.” So you ask, “Relax my what?” and my simple answer is that you are asking a very big question – but I know that this is not a sufficient answer. You generate the most power from your core and if you have ever hit a baseball, drove a golf ball, skied bumps in spring, practiced martial arts or rowed a boat then you know what I am talking about. These are core sports and activities that require what the literature calls “upper/lower body separation”. In short that means that sometimes your entire body is moving together and other times you isolate the motion of one half from the other half or top from bottom. So while you do need legs to best achieve maximum performance in these sports you will often isolate the movement of the legs from the core and have each doing different tasks or workloads. The core is where a great deal of Danny’s award winning speed and grace comes from and this allows him to not power through on his legs which are not as efficient.
He goes on to say later in the book that the true test of mastery is in how long you can maintain correct technique – quality reigns supreme over quantity. This should sound familiar to you as well. By working these core muscles we allow you to support yourself structurally for longer stretches of time and this will not just benefit your running but your daily posture, air exchange, and daily well being.
On page 72 of ChiRunning, Dryer presents an example of a great drill that you can do anytime to tune into your own posture habits and work on better form. He calls it the vertical crunch and we practiced the idea of this in running seminar in June. If you place your hands at your own waist line (one on your navel and one on your lower back, each just above the bony prominence, or iliac crest) you should get a sense of their relationship to each other. If you are seeking to use your hands to reference the top of your pelvis; is one hand higher than the other? Are they at the same elevation, front and back? Dryer states that this relationship will offer insight into whether you are using more of your lower back, and compressing discs in the process or bowed forward and tipping your pelvis to the rear. If there is an imbalance here - between your two hands “elevations” there may be less room in between vertebrae and a chance of low back stress. You may struggle to breathe from the diaphragm as we have discussed earlier. He points out that when you bring these hands into alignment, front to rear, that you should only be using abdominal muscles to do this and these are lower abdominals that seldom get used so it may take some time and focus to make it all come together.
Other posture tidbits that I find help runners. Another one from Danny Dryer: to begin each step, think about lifting your feet off the ground from the heel – this helps recruit muscles from the back of the body in your running stride.
More training guidelines to prevent injury
Your longest run should not be more than half of your weekly total mileage.
The “10% rule” states that total mileage does not increase by more than 10% each week.
If you are limping you have no business running. If the pain is sufficient to cause a limp your stride will create alignment issues that will tear something else loose before the end of your run. You would not drive with one wheel rubbing the wheel-well because you know that the misalignment of the car would throw you into the ditch or give you a flat. In the same way that you would not drive the car with the rubbing tire, do not run when you have pain to the point that you are compensating somewhere, even subtly.
Here is another great running drill that gives you the strong feel of what solid running posture would be like and points to any current weakness you can work on. This comes from the Chi running instructors.
Leveling Your Pelvis
A Killer Exercise to Develop Coordination and Strength
By Scott Smith, ChiRunning Certified Instructor of the Month
(articles about Chi techniques, and a subscription to the newsletter can be found at chirunning.com)
As a ChiRunning Instructor, one of the most important services I can provide is educating a student on coordinating and strengthening the muscles that that are used to level the pelvis. This movement is essential for optimal posture and efficient movement. Whether I am skiing, cycling, running or kayaking, I always draw my strength, balance, and endurance from my pelvic floor/lower abdominal region. Low back pain and tightness can be reduced greatly by recruiting the muscles that level the pelvis, thus signaling the opposing back muscles to release (reciprocal inhibition).
The following rope exercise teaches you how to level your pelvis while moving your legs (engaging your hip flexors), simulating walking or running.
Step 1: Lay on your back with knees bent, heels close to buttocks, toes up and slide a 3/8" to 1/2" rope underneath your low back where the largest gap exists.
Step 2: Flatten your lower back against the rope by pulling your navel to your spine, pinching the rope against the ground. Try to pull the rope out with one hand. Make sure your head, shoulders and tailbone all stay on the floor.
Step 3: Test your starting point: If the rope slips, then do 3 x 30-second holds, 4-5 days per week. When this is mastered with no rope slippage, add movement of the knees up and down while slowly walking your heels away, half an inch at a time until the rope begins slipping. Now back up half an inch and use this as your starting point, doing 3 x 30 knee lifts for 4-5 days per week. Keep advancing heels away from the butt over the next couple months until you can do straight leg raises, with your core engaged, back flat, and no rope slippage.
With practice, this is an excellent way to engage and strengthen your lower abdominals. Good Luck!
Why talk about all of this now? Recall that I said that we could easily overwhelm you with good information that could seem insurmountable to a newcomer. Some people will not need to do core work as they come to a program with developed anatomy from another sport or genetic gifts. Others will find that almost ten weeks into their program they are coming into a few minor glitches and wondering how to hop over them. That is why we take the time now to talk about posture and core strength and balance – because for some it will be the next key and you have to present information as folks are ready to absorb it.
So in a potpourri of topics related to core strength I will begin with a summary of a great article by Dimity McDowell, Runnersworld 3/09 titled Never Get Hurt.
Many common injuries are associated with pelvic instability or lack of strength in this region according to the Center for Endurance Sport at the University of Virginia.
Injuries such as shinsplints, iliotibial (IT) band syndrome, and lower back pain are some injuries that can be addressed at the cause and possibly “pre-habilitated” by doing an abdominal and pelvic workout.
If you develop a stable pelvis that supports the legs below and the torso above; the legs will spin almost effortlessly beneath you while the upper body remains quiet and solid. Think about the Roadrunner in the cartoons as he buzzes away from his attacker.
Many of these exercises will positively affect posture and ease the chance of injury from the road. The core work we are already doing for strength training nicely augments this routine.
Drills are about 20 minutes three times a week and can be done before a run
Video of each exercise is available at
http://www.runnersworld.com/video/0,8052,s6-1-0-5,00.html
Besides your abs many muscles help make up the runners core
Transverse Abdominals – cough or laugh and you’ll feel these muscles which stabilize the spine and pelvis, right above your pelvic bones.
Gluteus medius – this muscle on the side of your glutes minimizes side to side rotation.
Your lower back also plays a key role and you need to think about being as strong as is practical – all the way around your core as a protective cumber-bund and to build posture that promotes more structural running.
Some of my favorite stability drills come from Danny Dryer: in one example he ask you to lean forward against a table edge so that the table touches your leg at mid-thigh and you maintain a slight – whole body- lean forward as if you are a 2x4 from ankle to head. Hold this position for as long as you can and slowly increase your time. This is working the lower abdominals in a way that is similar to the way they support you going down the road.
Working these muscles is done with body weight resistance and can be done w/o equipment. Clean form is a must and you only do what you can muster comfortably, and slowly you increase the repetitions or interval weekly.
Some posture guidelines for thinking about a stable pelvis.
Heavy heel strikers typically see lower back pain down the road. Do not overstride and seek to have feet fall nearly beneath you while maintaining a long and neutral spine. Practice good posture daily and translate this to your running. While it may be hard to think about your stride all the time – you take five minutes to think about it, twice during each run, and from there we build muscle memory for best form that will follow you later in your runs.
Danny Dryer in his book ChiRunning, takes this a step further and talks about where we generate power from. “Efficient movement comes from your core muscles, not the muscles in your legs. We are so used to being told that strong legs are the answer to efficient running that when we are told to relax our legs, it is a huge mind body shift away from how we normally move.” So you ask, “Relax my what?” and my simple answer is that you are asking a very big question – but I know that this is not a sufficient answer. You generate the most power from your core and if you have ever hit a baseball, drove a golf ball, skied bumps in spring, practiced martial arts or rowed a boat then you know what I am talking about. These are core sports and activities that require what the literature calls “upper/lower body separation”. In short that means that sometimes your entire body is moving together and other times you isolate the motion of one half from the other half or top from bottom. So while you do need legs to best achieve maximum performance in these sports you will often isolate the movement of the legs from the core and have each doing different tasks or workloads. The core is where a great deal of Danny’s award winning speed and grace comes from and this allows him to not power through on his legs which are not as efficient.
He goes on to say later in the book that the true test of mastery is in how long you can maintain correct technique – quality reigns supreme over quantity. This should sound familiar to you as well. By working these core muscles we allow you to support yourself structurally for longer stretches of time and this will not just benefit your running but your daily posture, air exchange, and daily well being.
On page 72 of ChiRunning, Dryer presents an example of a great drill that you can do anytime to tune into your own posture habits and work on better form. He calls it the vertical crunch and we practiced the idea of this in running seminar in June. If you place your hands at your own waist line (one on your navel and one on your lower back, each just above the bony prominence, or iliac crest) you should get a sense of their relationship to each other. If you are seeking to use your hands to reference the top of your pelvis; is one hand higher than the other? Are they at the same elevation, front and back? Dryer states that this relationship will offer insight into whether you are using more of your lower back, and compressing discs in the process or bowed forward and tipping your pelvis to the rear. If there is an imbalance here - between your two hands “elevations” there may be less room in between vertebrae and a chance of low back stress. You may struggle to breathe from the diaphragm as we have discussed earlier. He points out that when you bring these hands into alignment, front to rear, that you should only be using abdominal muscles to do this and these are lower abdominals that seldom get used so it may take some time and focus to make it all come together.
Other posture tidbits that I find help runners. Another one from Danny Dryer: to begin each step, think about lifting your feet off the ground from the heel – this helps recruit muscles from the back of the body in your running stride.
More training guidelines to prevent injury
Your longest run should not be more than half of your weekly total mileage.
The “10% rule” states that total mileage does not increase by more than 10% each week.
If you are limping you have no business running. If the pain is sufficient to cause a limp your stride will create alignment issues that will tear something else loose before the end of your run. You would not drive with one wheel rubbing the wheel-well because you know that the misalignment of the car would throw you into the ditch or give you a flat. In the same way that you would not drive the car with the rubbing tire, do not run when you have pain to the point that you are compensating somewhere, even subtly.
Here is another great running drill that gives you the strong feel of what solid running posture would be like and points to any current weakness you can work on. This comes from the Chi running instructors.
Leveling Your Pelvis
A Killer Exercise to Develop Coordination and Strength
By Scott Smith, ChiRunning Certified Instructor of the Month
(articles about Chi techniques, and a subscription to the newsletter can be found at chirunning.com)
As a ChiRunning Instructor, one of the most important services I can provide is educating a student on coordinating and strengthening the muscles that that are used to level the pelvis. This movement is essential for optimal posture and efficient movement. Whether I am skiing, cycling, running or kayaking, I always draw my strength, balance, and endurance from my pelvic floor/lower abdominal region. Low back pain and tightness can be reduced greatly by recruiting the muscles that level the pelvis, thus signaling the opposing back muscles to release (reciprocal inhibition).
The following rope exercise teaches you how to level your pelvis while moving your legs (engaging your hip flexors), simulating walking or running.
Step 1: Lay on your back with knees bent, heels close to buttocks, toes up and slide a 3/8" to 1/2" rope underneath your low back where the largest gap exists.
Step 2: Flatten your lower back against the rope by pulling your navel to your spine, pinching the rope against the ground. Try to pull the rope out with one hand. Make sure your head, shoulders and tailbone all stay on the floor.
Step 3: Test your starting point: If the rope slips, then do 3 x 30-second holds, 4-5 days per week. When this is mastered with no rope slippage, add movement of the knees up and down while slowly walking your heels away, half an inch at a time until the rope begins slipping. Now back up half an inch and use this as your starting point, doing 3 x 30 knee lifts for 4-5 days per week. Keep advancing heels away from the butt over the next couple months until you can do straight leg raises, with your core engaged, back flat, and no rope slippage.
With practice, this is an excellent way to engage and strengthen your lower abdominals. Good Luck!
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