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