Range of Motion

Uh oh

What has this picture got to do with the title of this post? For that matter, what does "range of motion" refer to?

The picture is of my Mac charger after my father-in-law's dog chewed through it at the weekend. Incredibly, I was able to find a replacement charger the next day in a shop on the way home from work. Incredible, because I both work and live "in the sticks". However, yesterday, as I was getting ready to do my series of 20 minutes hard running on the treadmill, the new charger started acting up. Rob needs the charger to charge my Mac, to play the film that Rob needs, to be able to suffer the run. The days when I leave my workout until the evening I tend to get a little nervous; for me, the best time is at lunch time when I am neither straight out of bed nor am I spending time when I could otherwise be with my family. I got especially nervous that I wouldn't be able to do my workout unless I could watch some kind of slasher-flick to distract me as I have been doing lately. In the end, not only did I manage to solve the problem but I had the best workout I have perhaps ever had.

I need to qualify that. The thing is, either I was running much faster for less effort than usual, or the treadmill was broken. I'm really not sure which. It felt as though I was running fast but the difference was (and here the title of the post will become clear) that I was kicking my legs up much higher under my butt. The back of my hamstrings started to get warm from the contact with my lower leg and it felt like the leg was rebounding of my bum. I ran the first set of twenty minutes at 16 kph and didn't even go over 160 bpm (for comparison, my recommended heart rate for running a Marathon is 163 bpm). The next set I did at 16.5 kph and the last 20 I did half at the same speed before dropping down to 16 kph for the end (my heart rate was now where it should be, just below the anaerobic threshold at 178 bpm).

By kicking my leg up higher (larger range of motion) my cadence was lower than it would usually be running at that speed. I may try to measure it to see whether it was lower than my cadence at my cruising speed of 13.5 kph. All the schools of efficient running advocate a high cadence of around 180 footsteps per minute - some even suggest you run with a metronome, others simply say that the high cadence is the result of doing everything else right. The Pose Method, which I followed in order to run more efficiently, talks a lot about the range of motion and essentially says that the drills help us find an optimal range of motion. Too high a range of motion and you are wastefully moving your legs; too low and the cadence becomes too high and the extra steps taken are similarly wasteful. This is also related to the stride length and how much we bounce up and down in each stride. Much has been made of the importance of not bouncing up and down too much - this is needless work done against gravity - but it is also clear that this up and down movement muust be optimized not necessarily minimized. A study that was cited in the "Iron War" book that I read over the weekend came to the conclusion that the "bounce" wasn't a determining factor in the efficiency of the runners it tested but, what was critical, was the acceleration / deceleration of each footstep. In other words, the braking effect which is especially exacerbated by heel striking but is also determined by your skill and elasticity as a runner. So maybe I was bounding more by lifting my leg higher, maybe I was bouncing up and down a little more as a result, but perhaps I was running more efficiently. After all, I have long, powerful (and heavy) legs.

If I get a chance I may try a little scientific experiment of one on myself in order to determine my optimal cadence (the measurable consequence of running with one range of motion or another). The problem, of course, is that many other factors influence the heart rate, in particular, how tired you are. Anyway, something to think about...

Nice article from NY Times on running

From the same guy who wrote "Born to Run".

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magazine/running-christopher-mcdougall.html

Thanks for following!

No, this is not the profile of one of the stages of the Tour de France. It is a graph of the number of hits my blog has been getting a month since its inception almost exactly one year ago. (By the way, the sharp drop off in November just reflects the fact that we have only just started the month.) Another milestone is that the blog has received more than 20,000 hits. So, thank you to everyone who has been following this blog, either publicly or from the sidelines. I get a big kick out of knowing that people are interested to read what I have to say because my wife and most of my friends are not. This blog has been an outlet for my obsessions much like deejaying was (will be again?) for my passion for music.

I thought this might be a good moment to link to some of my best and most popular posts over the last year, especially for those of you who are new around these parts.

Race reports
Maratón de San Sebastián 2010 - 3:07
San Silvestre Vallecana 2010
Media Maratón de Getafe 2011 - 1:23
Lisbon International Triathlon (Half Ironman) 2011 - 4:44
Ironman Brazil (Florianópilis) 2011 - 10:45
Lake Merced (San Francisco) 2011
Media Maratón de Valladolid 2011 - 1:22

Usung heroes
Graeme Obree
Chrissie Wellington
Kilian Journet
Pertti Karpinnen
Andy Holmes
Marc Herremans

Shoes
Soft Star Original Run Amoc LITE Review
The quest for the ultimate all-round minimalist running shoe
Kids and running
The Imelda Marcos of Triathlon

Running technique
Running Technique #1
Running Technique #2
Running up and down hills
Treadmill versus road: To lean or not to lean? 
Keep those knees up boy!
You gotta have rhythm
Compact arm swing

Trips
Budapest
Morocco

Miscellaneous
Epilogue (post Ironman Brazil)
I'm back with a vengeance
Tempting fate
Time management
A week during my Ironman preparation
Top triathlon iPhone apps
Home gym
Nutrition plan for Lisbon Half Ironman
Master class

Keep those knees up boy

I've been thinking about what Jonathan told me about my running technique during the training camp in Morocco. The best thing to think while running is about running. Jonathan pointed out that there is a small pause in which my foot shoots out as if to kick a football just before I land slightly ahead of my center of gravity. He said that I should try to lift my leg up and forwards to get the foot in a better position for landing. I've been playing around with this while I've been running this week and the perception I have is very similar to one I had when I first started running POSE. I can only describe it as a feeling that I am preparing myself to sit down. I also notice that my foot tends to land flatter and the heel touches the ground very lightly. I feel that I am picking up the ground more quickly but the proof will be to film myself in slow motion while running. I now have several "cues" to think about while running:

- to extend the hips (or "punching it forwards" as I call it)
- to get my legs up under me ("sitting down on the job")
- to lean from my ankles ("run tall")
- to pick up the ground quickly ("sharp catch")

As you get tired you unconsciously cut these corners because you obtain an immediate energy reduction; however you end up going more slowly and you have less time to recover before the next step so it is a very short sighted strategy.

There is a big debate over which muscles we use while running. The POSE Method makes much of a study in which it was demonstrated with electrodes that the quadriceps cease to be activated once the mid-stance has been achieved (body in balance over point of contact of the foot) implying that there is no active push off in running. This is very counter-intuitive and, as Jonathan says, would suggest that runners are wasting their time doing so many squats in weight training. The POSE Method maintains that there is no active push off and that your foot should be lifted using your hamstrings and not your hip flexors. It's a pretty bold claim and it is what really separates the POSE Method from the other running schools that have popped up more recently. Does this mean that you should not extend your hips while running? What about the convention wisdom of lifting your knees? Should your foot fall "dead" or should you actively grab the ground as your run?

To my mind, this is all to do with the interplay between energy and momentum (I should really say between potential energy and kinetic energy, we think of energy in running as our cost and momentum as the consequence of expending it) and the difference between active muscle use and passive muscle use.

As Dr Romanov himself says, in order to measure how well someone runs, you must have an ideal to hold them to, even if it itself is unattainable. The POSE Method aspires to an infinitesimal contact time in which case it is clear that to position your foot to land under your center of gravity all you need to do is lift it up directly under your butt with the hamstrings. However, when we take our foot off the ground in the real world, we must overcome the angular momentum that we generated by leaning forward to gain forward propulsion in the first place. I have no scientific evidence to back this up but I believe that this means that we must use our hip flexors to stabilize the leg and that this accounts for our perception that we are lifting our leg up vertically when, in fact, it is lagging behind our body. Similarly, I think this accounts for my perception that I am "sitting down" while running when, in fact, my legs are not in front of my center of gravity (as they would be if I really was sitting down). This is similar to if you try leaning against a wall and then suddenly standing up straight: you feel like you are leaning in the opposite direction when you are actually perfectly upright. So, hamstrings or hip flexors? I believe that we should focus on actively using our hamstrings and on the perception we have when we are correctly landing under our center of gravity (passively using our hip flexors).

When we extend our hips (and stand up on tip toes, for that matter), I don't think of it as pushing off but rather translating potential energy from our elastic muscles back into momentum, like a spring extending as it bounces off the ground. In any case, what is the difference between pushing off and leaning forward? If you are standing still, the difference is that you may let gravity pull you forwards as soon as you are out of balance. When you are running, the forward momentum throws you out of balance as soon as you hit the ground. Again, it is another question of active versus passive muscle use.

If you let your foot fall dead then it will be moving forward with respect to the ground when it lands, causing a braking effect. In the POSE ideal of "zero contact time" we would be able to instantly accelerate the foot to ground speed on touchdown but, as this would require an infinite amount of energy, it wouldn't be terribly efficient even if we had the physiology to do so. The analogy in rowing is the "catch" when you put the oar in the water. Ideally it should be not moving with respect to the water at the instant it is placed in the water (you can tell if this is the case by checking that there is a symmetrical splash on either side of the blade). Matthew Pinsent once described this to me as it being like trying to catch and accelerate a spinning fly-wheel without braking or jarring it. One of the things I most like about the POSE Method - again, a concept that sets it apart from the others - is that the focus is on "take off" and not on "landing". I believe that you cannot effectively control how you land because it is something that must be exquisitely orchestrated by the proprioceptive system. In other words, I believe that the landing should be passive but that we should focus on the perception of picking up the ground quickly ("sharp catch").

An Englishman in Midelt

Youness and Jonathan

Youness' neighbours

The kind of stones found on the trails

Youness' dad

Teatime

Is that an aero wheel I see there?

Jacobo, Diego, David, Jonathan, Youness, Rafa, Alfredo and myself

Just like my Vivobarefoot Ultras!

The map for the treasure hunt

Hunting for treasure

Ifrane - looks like anywhere but Morocco

The training ground for the elite

Youness bumps into a fellow runner, also based in Spain

My Run Amocs stood up to the trails beautifully

I thought that I was suntanned until I had a shower...

Fez

Fez

Friday

We met up in the airport a good couple of hours before the flight was due to leave (of course, the flight was delayed a further hour, but that's another story). I hadn't seen Jonathan, my trainer, since before the Ironman so I took the opportunity to give him the book I had made of this blog - it was also a good moment because at least then I didn't have to worry about my bag being overweight! He seemed pretty chuffed by the gesture. On the flight I was sitting next to a man nearing retirement age who started at one point to rave about the current Spanish government, the crisis and 11-M (the terrorist attacks that took place in Madrid just before the last general election). I managed to steer him onto a more upbeat topic before civil war broke out on the plane - that of food. He asked me if I knew any good Spanish restaurants in Morocco. I can't help wondering what he made of his trip.

We arrived after much ado in Casablanca, tired, and somewhat dreading the long journey by car that lay ahead. We were traveling with Youness, an elite Moroccan athlete (1:03 in Half Marathon), to his home town, Midelt, at an altitude of 1,500 meters. Just as well that we changed our plans and stayed in a "colourful" auberge in the old part of Casablanca, giving us some time to recover.

Saturday

We set off for Midelt in the morning and arrived in time to go for a short run. I'd been worried that I'd get left behind as I was the slowest of the group by quite some margin but, in everything but the quality work, we ran at more or less the same speed for the aerobic runs. I literally put my foot in it within the first few minutes: I stepped in a hole covered with grass and my leg went in up to my waist! Miraculously I was completely unhurt. The trails were quite a bit more unstable and stoney than the ones I am used to running in and around Madrid. I'd taken three pairs of running shoes with me - the Vivobarefoot Ultras, the Vivobarefoot Evos and the Soft Star Run Amoks (which arrived last week in the post) - but I ended up only using the Run Amoks as they had the toughest sole. They handled the terrain admirably. Of course they attracted a fair amount of attention from the other runners in the group (Youness was particularly worried that I might hurt myself) and even from Moroccans who seemed to appreciate the simple design and the fact that they were made from leather. I ended up wearing them the entire trip as they were so comfortable and, amazingly, they still smell of leather. What was also remarkable about them is that I didn't get a single blister from them and I was even able to run without socks, something I have never been able to get away with.

After the run we went to the local public baths - a Haman - and washed ourselves in the traditional Arabic way. No-one said anything to us at the time but we must have made quite a racket.

We had the first of many incredible meals at Youness' family house that evening. The hospitality of Youness and his family was second to none. We were really made to feel at home and we ate like kings. Youness insisted on us giving our sweaty kit to his mum for washing so that, in the end, I actually only used a small amount of the clothes I packed. But it was meeting his family, seeing his wedding photos and playing with his nephew that made it unique. I always jump at the opportunity to go to another country where I have some sort of connection: Midelt isn't a particularly special place but Youness and his family made it special. Midelt is just large enough to have a hotel but small enough that the tourist industry is not booming there and so we were able to carry on as if we were the same as any other local.

Youness talked about his growing up in Morocco and his progression as an athlete. Hearing all this in context really made it all the more impressive. Youness makes a living from winning races but this puts a tremendous amount of pressure on him. As Jonathan put it, were Youness a football player of equal ranking, he would possibly be in either Real Madrid or Barça, and would be enjoying quite a different lifestyle. In athletics, once you go below the very top of the pyramid, the possibilities to make a living from it drop off dramatically.

Sunday

Sunday was the day of the series - in my case I was tasked with running 5 bouts of 8 minutes at my anaerobic threshold. I was paired up with Rafa and Youness joined us although, for him, it was an easy trot. I really started to feel the altitude - it felt like I was sucking in the air through a straw. I couldn't get my pulse rate up quite as high as it was supposed to be because it felt like I was drowning and I certainly couldn't run as fast as I would have done in Madrid (at "only" 600 meters above sea level). I found that going up hills was what really separated me from the other, lighter runners. Rafa and Youness soon disappeared off into the distance and, after completing the job, I ran back to the car with Jacobo, who was suffering from a prior injury. I was a little disappointed with myself because I felt that I had neither hit my heart rate nor my pace target but I was definitely very tired and my lungs felt like they had had a good workout.

That evening Jonathan and Youness organized a treasure hunt. We were grouped into pairs (I was again paired with Rafa) and our task was to find 7 pieces of coloured card hidden around Midelt and to bring them back to the hotel. On the back of the cards were written some questions related to athletics and any wrong answers would incur a time penalty. I don't know if I have ever done anything quite so absurd as running in a pair of skimpy shorts through the middle of a small Moroccan town in pitch black, looking for bits of coloured paper with another runner who happened to be deaf. There were times when I was worried that Rafa might get hit by a car as he was running down the middle of an unlit street but shouting a warning was of no use: I had to sprint ahead to catch him up. Between the two of us we managed to get well and truly lost. We had a lot of trouble finding one card in particular - it was supposedly hidden in an olive tree outside the Haman. There we bumped into Diego and David who were also in the same predicament. I was able to explain to some locals in my limited French what we were trying to do and, finally, between all of us we managed to find it. We realized that the third pair - Alfredo and Claudia - had gone off without managing to find the card! However, we still had to find the card at the local sports center. We asked directions from several people and this is where I think our ability to speak French put us at a disadvantage: later we found that we had been only meters away from the sports center before someone sent us in completely the wrong direction! One guy very sincerely offered his bike for me to use but I refused - after all, this was a running camp, not a triathlon camp. People were shouting "courage!" to us as we ran by. What moved me most, though, was finding the first card in the Jaima (or tent). At first I ran into the tent without thinking and then realized that I should have taken off my shoes first. There were dozens of children who helped us find the piece of card and then started to run with us - what an adrenaline rush! I told them to tell the others that it was elsewhere... For the last two questions Rafa and I split up: I went to the market where I saw Jonathan, Youness and a rather smug looking Alfredo. Alfredo's expression changed when I mentioned that I had seen the card that he and Claudia had missed. When I got back to the hotel, Rafa was still looking for the card that was hidden in a hole in the wall. Rafa went off in search of it but I couldn't believe that Jonathan would have hidden it so far away. Doubling back I finally found the little piece of card - it was almost impossible to see in the dark - and now all that was left was to catch up with Rafa again! In the meantime, Alfredo had run back for the missing card and now it was down to who answered all the questions correctly - which was us!

Monday

After all the excitement from the previous night, we left Midelt for Ifrane which is where the elite Moroccan athletes train at an altitude of 1,700m. Ifrane looks like no other Moroccan town I have seen. As it is a ski resort and an imperial city, it is very well kept and in a mock-European style. We headed for the running track where we bumped into several top athletes in training. We warmed up on the track while Jonathan filmed us in slow motion and then we hit the trails for the rest of the 1 hour 40 minute run that was programmed that day. In parts the trail was extremely rocky and my Run Amocs were not quite up to the job - to be honest, I'm not sure if any of my shoes would have been - even the others, in their "normal" running shoes were complaining of sore feet. In these patches I ended up lagging behind a little but at least it was nice and shady in the forest. This time I was sure to take my Camel Bak hydration pack because, at altitude, you lose water through perspiration more quickly than at sea level. In fact, I drank my liter deposit dry some time before finishing the run. The others were able to run without water but I'm either not trained to do that or not able, I'm not sure which. By the end of the run I was actually quite tired. The day before had been hard, what with the series and the treasure hunt (during which we were running quite fast at times).

That afternoon we left for Fez where we could relax and enjoy being tourists for a while. I love the Medina in Fez, it is like traveling back in time. I find it hard to think of a place I have been which has quite this same transporting effect. The Medina, or old city, has a circumference of 14 kilometers. It is packed so tight and the streets are so higgeldy-piggeldy that there is almost no more light during daytime than at night. Sometimes you glimpse through a window or a doorway an artisan cramped over some elaborate carving or beating out a piece of metal. And the smells... At least no-one could tell that I hadn't yet had a shower since my run.

Tuesday

In the car back to Casablanca, Jonathan showed me the videos of me running, as well as those of some of elite runners that he also trains. Although my technique has improved dramatically since I took up the POSE Method, there are still some vestiges from my heel-striking days. I tend to kick out my foot just before landing, as if there were a football there. Apart from there being a slight pause before I pick up the ground, I also land a little in front of my center of gravity. This much I know from the wear patterns on the soles of my shoes. He suggested that I try to lift my leg upwards and forwards with the hip flexors so that it is better positioned for landing. He also said that I should try to "grab" the ground with an active landing so that my foot meets the ground at 0 kilometers per hour relative to the ground. He knows that these two points go against the holy book of the POSE Method but I now feel I have consolidated the basic technique to a point where I can make some little tweaks. As I have said before, I believe that the real value of the POSE Method is in helping you develop a good running technique by yourself, something that requires a certain dogmatism if it is going to work.

At one point we got stopped by the police for going at 131kph in a 120kph zone and a combination of Alfredo's excuse (we were late for our plane) and my translation helped us to avoid a 10 euro fine (my GCSE French has paid off at last!); Youness, who was driving the other car, was not so lucky. He used the same excuse but also added that we were athletes... "So you like to go fast?" is what I imagine the policeman who fined him was thinking.

After a long journey we started to disperse and go our separate ways in Madrid. As we were waiting for the train we saw an advert on a TV for a race in Madrid in which Youness appeared (he looked like he was winning). The trip was a great success and an experience I will never forget, along with my other memories of that wonderful land, Morocco. Thank you Youness and Jonathan!

Running up and down hills

Running down hills is much more preferable to running up hills. Or is it?

Until I attended a POSE Method running clinic with Dr Romanov in Odense (Denmark), I subscribed to the common misconception that one should take bigger strides when running down hill and shorter strides when running up hill. As we will see, this is in fact the opposite of what you should do.

The confusion centers around how we think of stride length. Our idea of stride length derives from our perception of how displaced our legs are from each other as this is the aspect we can sense and control. I'm going to call this relative stride length. However, what we are interested in is how this translates into running speed - in other words what is our absolute stride length as measured between footprints. It is clear that, as we tend to run much faster downhill than uphill, our absolute stride length is indeed longer when running down hills. Nevertheless, we tend to also increase our relative stride length and this, coupled with the increased speed and extra distance that we fall in each step, means that we land with incredible force. This is bad. All too many of us know how easy it is to injure yourself running downhill but I have yet to hear of someone who has injured themselves running uphill.

The theory behind the POSE Method can be just as easily applied to running up or down hills. As I have discussed in previous posts, the POSE Method hinges on the idea of running being a sequence of "poses" (being in balance on the ball of one foot), in between which you "fall" forward by leaning forward from your ankles and you "pull" your foot from the ground. Relative to your body you always pull your foot directly along the line directly between your foot and your butt (actively using your hamstrings as opposed to quadriceps or hip flexors). The idea is that this positions it optimally to fall back to the ground directly under your center of mass (in other words, you avoid over-striding). The only degree of freedom you have to control your absolute stride length is how much you lean and what Dr Romanov refers to as the Range of Movement (ROM), or how far you along the foot-butt line you pull your foot. If we are relaxed, then we tend to find an optimum ROM for a given speed automatically: too much ROM and we waste energy moving our legs excessively; too little ROM and we take too many little steps. I discussed this in a fair amount of detail in my post on rhythm in running. In practice, I never actively adjust my ROM but I sometimes make a mental note of how high I am pulling my feet as an indication of how fast I am running: the faster your run, the higher you pull your feet.

So, running down hill you are running faster and should have a greater ROM? NO! The ROM is the height you should pull your foot so that it falls back to the ground exactly in time to make ground contact. Why do we pull our foot at all? The reason is clear if you try to run with straight legs - apart from them getting in the way, it is also extremely tiring. By folding your leg up, you reduce its angular momentum, or the energetic cost of it rotating, rather like a shorter pendulum. (By the way, the POSE Method stresses the point that this rotation is performed by gravity and should not be achieved via an active use of the hip flexors.) The long and the short of it (excuse the pun) is that it rotates more quickly allowing you to lean further forward which, in turn, means that you get more benefit from gravity pulling you forward so you go faster! Now, if you are running downhill, the distance your foot falls to the ground is a bit greater than it would have been on the flat, therefore you don't need to pull your foot so high. This means that your ROM should be less running downhill. This idea doesn't exactly correspond to the relative stride length I described earlier, but it certainly feels like we are "shortening up" as we run down hill. Running uphill is just the opposite: we have to increase our ROM because our foot makes ground contact sooner than it would otherwise and we have to pull it higher as a result. It is actually much easier to run uphill than it is downhill from a technical point of view. Dr Romanov said that "Everyone runs POSE uphill, the trick is to be able to run POSE on the flat and downhill".

Another difference is that, relative to the ground, you lean less when running downhill and more when you run uphill; relative to the vertical, the amount of lean is more or less constant. This makes sense: uphill you need more "help" from gravity and downhill you are limited by your ability to turn over your legs quickly enough.

At the end of the POSE clinic, Dr Romanov had us run downhill blindfolded (guided by a non-blindfolded partner!). Interestingly enough, we all ran downhill naturally shortening our ROM. We then ran uphill, also blindfolded, and it didn't feel as though we were making any more effort than running on the flat.

Treadmill versus road: to lean or not to lean?

One thing that all the new schools of running technique agree on is that you should lean forward while running. A definition of "leaning" could simply be that your center of gravity is out of line with your point of contact with the ground. If you take this as your definition then it is impossible to run without leaning because you need some horizontal force to overcome air resistance. We tend to think of pushing off when we run and that it is friction that drives us forward, but friction is just a reaction force that is always less than or equal to the force opposing it. Think about it: you can't push off without moving your center of gravity out of line with your point of contact. Instead, the horizontal force comes from the residual horizontal component of force that results when you cancel the force of gravity with the ground reaction force, the force that prevents you from falling through the floor. These two forces act through different points and cause a rotational torque, rather like gripping a pencil at each end with both hands and then moving your hands vertically closer together. Seen another way, your center of gravity moves forward as you "fall" by leaning forward, while you move your legs forward to regain balance momentarily (i.e., point of contact with the ground under your center of gravity). So not only should you lean forwards in order to run, but it is actually impossible to run unless you are leaning forwards. When the running schools talk of leaning, they mean leaning properly, that is to say, leaning from the ankles. The reason for this is that this ensures that all the relevant muscles in the body from the feet to the core are all engaged. The antithesis of this is the classic K-bend where the runner bends from the waist; in this case the core is not engaged and the other muscles are forced to make up for this causing overuse injuries in the hip flexors as well as potential back problems.

Very bad running posture

What about when you run on a treadmill? One would think that relativistic principles would mean that there is no difference between running on the road or running on the treadmill: in one case you are moving past the road; in the other the "road" is moving past you. The key difference is that there is air resistance when you are running on the road so you must produce a horizontal force to counter this in order to advance; in a vacuum, after an initial push, you could "run" on ice by hopping up and down vertically. The difference (as I understand it and think of it) is that, on the road you must lean forward to produce this force while on the treadmill the moving belt pulls you out of balance and you must try to keep upright. So you see, there is a very subtle difference based on cause and effect but the upshot is that you must actively lean while running on the road and must try to stay upright while running on the treadmill.

This post arose after I saw a video on youtube on so-called "Good Form Running". I agree with the principles but, unfortunately, even though it is most practical to demonstrate them on a treadmill, it is also not the place to be leaning forward.

You gotta have rhythm

I was thinking about parallels between running and rowing on my short training outing today. In a rowing boat (a racing shell with a sliding seat) the strokeman or person who sets the rhythm is probably the most important member of the crew. In rowing we talk of stroke rate in much the same way as we talk about cadence in running, but what is far more important, at least in rowing technique, is rhythm. The key is to maximize the ratio of the time spent gliding up the slide (the recovery) to the time spent pulling the oars through the water (the work). I should say optimize instead of maximize because, taken to an extreme, the boat slows down too much in between strokes, indicating that the stroke rate should be higher. Having a good feel for the optimum rhythm is something that one gains with experience but it certainly requires a "sharp catch" (placing the oar in the water and taking the weight of the boat rapidly) and a quick acceleration of the oars through the water, followed by a relaxed recovery. A rowing boat has the advantage of being able to tweak certain aspects like the length of the oars, size of the blades (paddles) and the ratio of the inboard length of the oar to the outboard (gearing).

In running, a good rhythm is one which optimizes the ratio of the flight (recovery) to the ground contact time (work). The best runners seem to be paradoxically both stiff and fluid. We can also feel it ourselves when we are running at our best.

I recently read an interesting article on Steve Magness' blog saying that one should aim to have a certain stiffness in the muscles prior to a race, the shorter (and faster) the race, the stiffer. With this goal in mind, running series of sprints the days before the race can increase stiffness while having a massage can reduce it. It's an interesting idea. I also read in the Science of Sports blog, in an article discussing Oscar Pistorius' advantage, that runners tend to take the same time to swing their legs forward into the landing position independently of the speed they run at and that this time rather determines their maximum running speed. Cadence also tends to be relatively independent of running speed. This implies that, the faster you run, the shorter and more explosive the ground contact must be. This would seem to support Steve Magness' claim.

What does "stiffness" mean? I understand it as the time it takes for the muscle action to ripple through the kinetic chain, like a whip cracking or a spring uncoiling. This stiffness can be lost either through fatigue or, equally important, through lack of mental concentration. Just as in rowing, as soon as you lose your rhythm you enter into a vicious circle: you get softer, the ratio of recovery to work goes down, you increase your cadence to maintain the same speed and get more tired, etc. Put another way, every millisecond you shave off the work phase becomes an extra millisecond in which to recover from this increase in power. For this reason I believe you have to be feeling the rhythm the whole time while you are running: if it slips you make an effort to stiffen up during the work phase and to relax during the recovery rather than increasing the cadence (or overstriding).

Normally I don't run with music because I like to hear the sounds around me, my breathing and the tapping of my shoes. If you can't hear your footfalls they have a tendency to become louder and heavier. But sometimes I like to listen to music, especially when I need an extra motivational boost, like today after a few days of feeling ill. Being a bit of a nerd, I have a playlist on my iPod of music which has 180 beats per minute, which is around the "optimal" cadence. (I put this in quotation marks because I think we are better at finding our own optimum cadence than running to a metronome as some running schools would have us do (for example, Chi Running) but many people do overstride and consequently run with too low a cadence.) As long as I don't abuse it, I think it is a good way of keeping my rhythm in check: by running in time with the music, if I slow down, I must improve my rhythm and avoid getting sloppy. Now I think of it, we did almost all our rowing training at a prescribed cadence that was not necessarily that at which we would compete for precisely this reason.

Compact arm swing

I was thinking about my arms while I was running yesterday. After having watched, "Indulgence", a film about ultrarunning featuring Anton Kupricka, I couldn't help noticing that he runs with very relaxed arms, almost hanging down by his sides.

I tried running like this for a while but it felt so unnatural. In fact it reminded me of how I hold my glass when I am in a disco, something that my wife relentlessly takes the piss out of me for. I hold my glass up against my chest, I suppose because (a) it is less likely to get knocked (although if it does spill, I'm going to get soaked) and (b) there is less distance to travel to my mouth. My wife thinks it is due to my Englishness; Spanish people, on the other hand, hold their glasses at full arm extension, down by their hips.

A compact arm swing should be more efficient because, like a pendulum, it requires less force to swing the shorter the radius. On the other hand, when standing still it is definitely more relaxing to hold your arms as the Spanish hold their drinks. I wonder whether it is better to run like Krupicka does for the sort of ulltralong distances that he covers, or whether this is just his idiosyncratic style.

A few months ago, after putting up this photo of me running in Asturias

a friend of mine compared my running style to that of the President of Spain, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, here seen jogging with the British Prime Minister, David Cameron

I have to admit, it does look weird but once you realize that the arms have to pass each other at the same height at some point however you run, you see that it is just a question of timing...

Running technique #2

I recently came across a very interesting blog by Steve Magness, a competitive runner who is doing a Masters in Exercise Science. What particularly caught my attention were his fairly scathing criticisms of the Pose Method. As you may have read in a previous post of mine, I am quite a fan of the Pose Method, having attended a clinic in Denmark hosted by the charismatic founder, Dr Romanov. These criticisms seem to be aimed at the typical guru style of confidently claiming that they have the panacea, the magic solution, but it can only be acquired by paying lots of money to a certified expert. The Pose Method does of course have its certified coaches and clinics but Romanov goes out of his way to provide people with the tools to teach themselves. He has written a number of books and produced a number of videos but with a bit of persistence you can find almost everything contained in them, for free, on his website. This is how it should be: the Pose Method, like the Alexander Technique or Pilates etc, should be part of the public domain and the added value should come from the convenience of finding everything you need in a book or benefiting from the years of experience of a certified coach. My point is that it should be possible to acquire a good running technique without buying any books or paying any coaches.

As I have said before, the Pose Method is a method more than a technique and I found it a very effective way to run more lightly and more efficiently on my mid-foot with the very real consequence that my knee (with the torn meniscus) immediately stopped hurting while running. As with any method, it is a good idea to define an objective and measurable "ideal" which you are trying to attain - this may require an over simplification of reality or, said another way, the ideal may not actually be itself achievable (for example, zero ground contact time). Romanov developed his ideas based on the way Russian ballet dancers were taught, in terms of "poses". In just the same way as any dance has a basic form which you must first learn and internalize and then build your own style upon, the Pose Method gives you a solid base on which you can make some subtle adjustments, like those suggested by Steve in his excellent article.

Having read his article in detail, I've come to the conclusion that it is to the Pose Method, what Einstein's Relativity is to Newtonian Mechanics. That is to say, Newtonian Mechanics is still what is taught in schools today and is perfectly good enough for most practical purposes but it is an approximation to Einstein's model.
I took away the following ideas, which tally with my personal experience of running with what I think is a reasonably good running technique over the last two years.

1) You should NOT try to get off your feet as quickly as possible. This appears to directly contradict the Pose Method, which advocates "pulling" the foot from the floor as quickly as possible. The pronation (rotation) of the foot acts as a spring which is loaded as your foot rolls from the outer edge to the big toe and is released when you "toe off". In order to benefit from this natural spring, you must allow it to fully load and...

2) ...in particular, your heel should be allowed to momentarily "kiss" the floor for the spring to be fully activated. (Note that sprinting is an exception as you run up on the forefoot, although I am not able to say why at this point.)

3) You should extend your hips in such a way that you optimize not minimize the vertical displacement. I very much liked Steve's analogy with firing a cannonball - too steep an angle of attack and you have more vertical displacement than horizontal; too shallow an angle and you lose flight time and the cannonball ploughs into the ground. I think the cue of "running tall" ensures that you don't take off with too shallow an angle, collapsing on to an overly bent leg.

The irony is that the hardcore advocates of the Pose Method have a tendency to live by its doctrines with what I would be tempted to call religious fervour. Having skulked around for some time in the forums where people post videos of them running for (free) analysis by others - many of whom are certified coaches - I've noticed that the response is usually that they could be puling their foot off the floor quicker. Of course they could - if the ideal is "zero contact time" then there is always room for improvement. Having said that, it is a very valuable tool to have people constructively criticize your technique. What I think is a shame, is that there is such a resistance to ideas like the above that I can begin to imagine what it was like for Copernicus when he exclaimed that the Earth actually revolved around the Sun, rather than the other way round.

In scientific research it is a very difficult balance to obtain, in between rigidly adhering to a particular theory and being swayed from one theory to another depending on how convincingly they are expounded. I think the key here is the difference between what you believe and what other people believe. In order to advance a theory, you need support, consensus, and so it is important to be able to convince others. In doing so, you may need to simplify things or even compromise on certain points but it is vital to be consistent otherwise you will confuse and ultimately lose your audience. But this rigidity does not necessarily have to carry over to your own beliefs; you should be open to other people's suggestions which you may file away for subsequent digestion. I think this distinction marks the difference between followers and leaders and between dictators and true pioneers. In this sense, I am very lucky with the coach I have, Jonathan, because he has a very clear idea of how he believes things should be but he is very open to study any new ideas, whether they come from an experienced elite Marathon runner or someone like me, who runs for a hobby and occasionally turns up interesting things on the internet.

Treadmill technique

Just look at this... It's Marathon World Record holder Haile Gebrselassie "jogging" on a treadmill. When you see him running in the street, it's hard to get much of an idea of how fast he is running, he makes it look so easy. If you had never run on a treadmill before, you could be forgiven for thinking that there was nothing to it after seeing a video like this.

By the way, in case you are wondering, he is running at 4 minutes per mile (no, not per kilometer). What impresses me the most is that his stride is so long, he almost runs out of treadmill.

Running technique

This was the photo I had in my head as I was running the Marathon the other day. The question is: which of the two runners above has the better technique? (Hint: they are both Ironman or Half Ironman World Champions so they are probably running at about 18kph in the photo.)

When I got back into running recently, I was surprised that no-one talked much about running technique in running magazines. Having been a keen rower in my teens and early twenties, I knew how important technique was. Of course, in water sports the resistance is 1,000 times that of air, but even cyclists are well known for their obsession with pedaling technique and posture. It seems as though the only reason is that running is considered to be a "natural" activity (whatever that means) and therefore we are all born with perfect technique. Actually, that's not as silly as it might sound: if you have ever watched small children running, you'll have seen some of the best running technique on the planet. On the other hand, if you have ever run a Marathon, you'll have had a chance to marvel at the extraordinary variety of running styles, not all of which can possibly be considered good technique.

So what happens to screw up our running style? Wearing shoes, that's what.

OK, OK, I know that there has been a lot of hype lately about barefoot running and I really don't want to get into that. (Having sustained a stress fracture in my foot from running too much, too soon in too minimal a shoe, I know the dangers.) However, shoes have been getting ever more bulkier as new materials are developed to allow them to maintain a reasonable weight. The more padding, the higher the heel counter, which means more and more stability features have to be built in as your foot is raised further from the ground. There are two negative side effects to this tendency (apart from the escalating price, that is):

- The stability features take protaganism away from the many muscles in the feet and lower leg that are designed to keep you upright and, as a result, the muscles and tendons weaken (atrophy).
- The extra padding reduces the sensitivity of the feet. If you've ever had your feet tickled, you won't be surprised to know that your feet are especially sensitive: the sensors are there to "automatically" activate the orchestra of muscles in your legs and core as your feet touch the ground, so that you don't fall over. It's something that happens so quickly that there isn't time for the message to be processed by the conscious part of the brain. This is called "proprioception".

These two side effects are viscous circles: the weaker the muscles and tendons become, the more stability you need. The more padding you have, the harder you land (your leg muscles are activated imperceptibly later) and the more cushioning you need. There is also a third feedback loop: more padding encourages you to land on your heel - there is a theory that the lower perceived impact of the foot tricks the body into a walking gait. Heel striking exaggerates the rotation of the foot as you land and requires more stability. This rotation is called "pronation". In fact, this was the alarm bell that rang when I got back into running. I'd run for many years without any problems or ever having heard the word "pronation" before. When I got back into running, my knees started to hurt and I was immediately told I needed orthotics and shoes with extra stability control. Lo and behold, the knee pain disappeared overnight. The problem is that this is rather like prescribing someone with a limp crutches for the rest of their life: their limp may get better but they will be dependent on crutches for life AND more susceptible to further injuries due to weakened musculature. (There are scientific studies out there on the incidence of injuries with motion control running shoes if you look hard enough,)

The other thing that caught my attention was the fact that I was strongly recommended NOT to buy lightweight running shoes or "racing flats" because, at 90 kilos, I weighed too much. As I am a bit of a bloody minded sort of person, this just made me want them even more. I realized that an elite slip of a runner would be hitting the ground with a far greater impact than me because, at more than 20kp/h, the ground forces are much higher than at my more humble speed, even if I am carrying an extra 30 kilos.

I don't want to get into a long discussion of running technique either, but I will give you some pointers in case you are interested. There are several schools out there, all with very similar approaches. As usual, the key is in the subtle differences between them. To name the most prevalent ones there is Evolution Running, The Pose Method, Chi Running, Natural Running,... I can only comment on my own, personal experience and that is that I found the Chi Running book too "mystical" although it was the first time I realized the importance of the core muscles in running; the Pose Method, however, is based on much more hard science and so it particularly appealed to me. What is also different about the Pose Method is that it is, as its name lays plain, a method which is something more than a technique - it is also as much about how you learn that technique. For me, it has two key innovations that distinguish it from the others. Firstly, the charismatic Dr Romanov makes a big deal about concentrating on taking your foot off the ground rather than on how you land. The idea is that you cannot effectively control how you land directly as this is taken care of by proprioception (and, if you try, you'll only tense up and waste more energy / injure yourself). However, as you are flying through the air, whatever you do with your trailing foot is reflected by your leading foot otherwise you would not be in balance. The second innovation is the focus he puts on perception. When I first read the book, I thought this was more mystical mumbo jumbo but I had a chance to experience it first hand when I went on a Pose workshop in Denmark last year with the very same Dr Romanov. We were filmed running, we did some drills and we were filmed running a second time. Everybody improved on the second video but I was sure that I would not have done as I had made no conscious effort to change anything the second time I ran. I was flabbergasted to see that I too, had made a measurable improvement in the second video. The reason: the drills taught my body to be more aware or to perceive important aspects of the running technique.

What the various techniques all have in common is that one should try to reduce the "bounce" in the run as much as possible. If you think about it, as we are running along horizontally, we are doing work against gravity by bobbing up and down. It seems counter-intuitive, but the main way to achieve this is to take shorter strides or, equivalently, run with a higher cadence. Personally, I think it is better to increase your cadence as a result of running correctly (e.g., not heel striking nor over-extending the trailing leg, having a compact arm swing, etc.) rather than to force it by running with a metronome(!) for example. The other benefit of not bouncing is - you guessed it - you land with less impact and are much less likely to sustain injuries.

I should warn you that it takes about a year for all your muscles, tendons, bones and ligaments to "reconfigure" for a new running gait - I learned this from painful experience (in the literal sense). The Pose book actually says that you should only run as long as you are able to run well so that you have to have a lot of patience to learn the new technique, running perhaps 5 minutes only and making up the rest of your training with some other exercise. If you follow any of the above mentioned techniques, you'll end up using your Achilles tendon and your calf muscles much more than before, and your knees much less as the load is shared over the whole of your leg. A good way to know if you are running too long with the new technique is if you have any pain in your calf muscles the next day. I have finally accepted that PAIN IS BAD.