Improving Your Running: Using the Eyes

Have you ever thought about how important your head carriage is to your running?  Have you seen runners when they are tired or anxious begin to let the head come forward or down out of a balanced position?  Perhaps you have noted how letting the head look down contributes to hunching of the shoulders. The way we carry and use our heads contributes or detracts from all of our movements.  Remember the old sayings – keep your eye on the prize, keep looking toward the goal or don’t get ahead of yourself. These sayings can contribute to our continued development as runners. Have you ever thought that the head and its movements are influenced or even controlled by the eyes?  Note how the eyes direct movement in the pictures above. I can’t imagine the dynamic movement you see with Usain Bolt above occurring without good use of the eyes.  Note the eyes directing him down the track as he unleashes his amazing speed or the eyes directing his action as he crosses the finish line or even the eyes expressing his feeling when he hears the time for his race. Let these images of the eyes directing the whole person be in your mind as you do the following lesson.

·         Learn how you eyes can help your running.  If you wear glasses or contacts you can wear them while you do the following eye movements. Run a short distance for just a minute or two and notice how you do it. Don’t try to change your running, just notice.  

·         Now reflect on how your running felt.  Did your head feel balanced and easy to carry? Where were you looking when you were running? How did your shoulders feel? Could you look easily over one shoulder without perturbing your run? 

• Stand and look out about 60 ft.  Focus your eyes on what you see.  Do this a few times and focus on different objects in front of you at about 60 ft distance from you.

•   Now focus your gaze at about half that distance. Pick out several objects and then focus on them for a few seconds.

• Now without moving your head, look down with your eyes and focus much closer to yourself. Now do the same thing perhaps looking down at the ground but not moving your head.

• Go back and forth with your focus at all these distances a number of time.

• Perhaps like many of us you have developed certain visual habits. Perhaps you focus most of the time only on one distance at work. Perhaps you have a habit of looking down when you run.

• See how much of the ground you can see by shifting your eyes down. How much confidence do you have in your peripheral vision?

• Let you eyes drift a little to the left and right as you try out your focus at various distances.

• Remember that your eyes lead you to the “prize” or toward the fulfillment of your intention.

• What happens in your spine as you look out in the distance?

• Go for another short run. If the ground is even try looking out at various distances. How is your head being carried now?  Has your overall balance changed?

•  Don’t settle in to one pattern. Look a little to the left and then to the right at times. Look around. Let your head actually turn a little to the left and right from time to time. Don’t get locked into one pattern. Notice that if you only looked ahead and never scanned in other directions your running becomes more rigid. Experiment! 

•  Sometimes we tend to strain to look ahead. We may move our head forward out of good balance and use more energy than necessary.

• Try this: act as if you had eyes in the back of your head. Now see through those eyes too. Maybe your head might move a little backwards as you use the eyes in the back of your head. Look a little to the right and left and up and down with the eyes in the back of your head too.

•  If the ground if uneven try looking down a little more by using C1 the very top neck vertebrae and looking down by nodding down and bringing the chin a little close to the chest. You don’t have to fold your whole spine to look down. Try keeping a long spine and looking down with this small movement.

•  If the ground is very uneven, full of rocks and roots, then prepare to move more of yourself to clearly see and move over and around the obstacles. There is no need to adapt a rigid posture.

Finally:

 If you become more skilled a using the eyes it will be easier to improve your running. Practice patiently multi- distance focusing. Can you see any visual habits you have? How is your running now?

One more time go for a run. This time notice the whole experience of how you are running. Notice globally. Have you integrated the feeling of improved eye use? Can you let go of thinking? Do you feel any overall improvement? 

Practice this lesson as often as you want. And have fun!

Till next time –Scott

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To find out more about the Feldenkrais Method click here.

Running With Freedom: What’s Holding You Back?

Is there something lacking in your running, something that keeps you from your full potential? Something that holds you back but you can’t quite put your finger on it?  Do you have a sense of falling short of what is ideal for you, a knowing that there is something more but it is hidden from you?  If so, you might want to explore the difference between trying to have good technique and actually sensing what you are doing. 

Where is the ideal? 

Most runners want to run with “good form”.  To do so it is necessary to move beyond mere “technique”, communicated verbally with sayings such as “ run tall” , “ swing your arms forward and backward”, “ look straight ahead” , “ lean from the ankles”, and so on. These are rudimentary expressions of a complex movement. What we need is more sensory experience no matter what level of runner we are.  Try this: 

This is something I recently did before a run.

•   Stand in your normal habitual posture. Notice how you feel.  Do you feel ready to run? Do you feel that your head is balanced over a long non-compressed spine? Does your posture feel easy? 

•    Now stand a little taller. When I did this I felt that I was straining against a habitual tension in the lower back and the upper back did not seem aligned to carry my head well. I did not feel that my standing was as easy as I would like nor could I feel that I achieved a really balanced feeling.  I was carrying mental images of Seb Coe’s great running alignment at the time. Look at the images of Seb Coe below.
  

•   Now lie on the floor on your back and notice your contact with the floor. Use the floor as a kinesthetic mirror. What parts of you are held up from the floor and what parts are now in contact with and supported by the floor.

• Bend both of your knees and let the soles of your feet be in full contact with the floor.

•  Gently, easily and with full attention make a few circles on the floor with your pelvis by shifting the weight of your pelvis toward you low back, right hip, tailbone, and left hip in succession. Do each circle more clearly and lightly. 

• Reverse the direction on the circle.

•     Pause. Take both knees a little to the left. Do not take the knees all the way to the left. This is not an exercise. Keep the movement small, comfortable and easy. Allow your head to move just a little to the right. Make the movement small. Use your breath to settle yourself on the floor. With each breath settle yourself into the support of the floor starting at the waist for a few breaths, then the ribs, then the upper rib cage up very high.

• Take your knees a little to the other side and repeat the settling on the floor with each breath. Pause. Lower your knees. What has changed in your contact with the floor? Notice the relationship of your chin to your chest, your shoulders on the floor, the curvature of your low back, the space behind your knees, the curvature behind your neck, the relationship of your head to your neck and torso.

• Slowly come to standing.  Notice the difference in your standing now.

Trying to stand “straighter” creates more stress. But sensing your shape is something different. When I did this recently I felt that I was standing more easily and that my entire shape had changed. I took this into running and found also a new freedom in my hips. Where tight adductors and short stride length had existed now there was new ease.

Turning the search for “good form” into a personal sensory experience can take you into freer running. Experiment and have fun.

Some of you may remember the sixties movie “The Naked Prey” where Cornell Wilde had to run for his life from pursuers.  

Perhaps the one we feel pursuing is actually ourselves, our own habits and extra, unnecessary, or contradictory or “parasitic” muscular contractions. Those extra efforts that we make that actually slow us down. 

You are running now and movement is yours.

You run trails and roads and tracks and all.

You run in heat, and cold, and sun and night.

You know the mountains, the hills, the moon and the stars,

You renew yourself daily among the trees, and trails afar

Their shelter their shade, their life giving oxygen they share

Your lungs expand as you move through the air.

The effort and effortless mingle for you

You run intervals and long runs and tempos too.

And finishing another run affirms your reality, your possibility

You listen and learn and receive direction

Running is a friend to depend on.

Yet running remains a beautiful mystery

In the dark something eludes

But what?

In the dark someone follows

But Who?

You hurry on but you can’t really go

The more you try the more you slow

It is you, It is you.

Through the night you move on

Waiting for the first rays of sun

To finally come

And make certain the dark is done.

In the light I see, the one pursuing is me

And now I run with liberty.

And seeing, the pursuer is gone

Sensing has opened a new world for me

to move with more purity.

I quit resisting and now I fly

To the top, to the view, the same as the eagles eye

The earth now moves beneath my feet

With a beauty and grace that is so sweet.

-scott forrester

 

Run Freely