Flexible Bodies or Flexible Minds: Less down time for runners

No matter what your age, level of experience, or current fitness level is wouldn’t you like to experience less downtime as a runner or hiker?  Though our ages may vary across a wide spectrum, and our structure may be unique, there is a common factor that we all possess, a common resource that we all have.  It is the brain. We can use both the conscious and unconscious processes of the brain to improve. Perhaps you follow the commonly recommended ideas about stretching and strengthening. Simply doing static or even dynamic stretching cannot improve your skill level. Only by increasing your awareness of the details of what you are actually doing, can you engage the learning process and use your best resource, your own brain and nervous system, to help you keep going in the long term. 

“I desire not flexible bodies, but flexible minds” – M. Feldenkrais

 Here are some tips:

1.  Put your feet on the ground. Whether you are a walker or a runner, you can only improve through experience.

2.  You move as an entire system, not a collection of parts. Notice the terrain above. It is rather rocky. It is not only the feet that must adapt to unusual terrain or circumstances but the entire body from head to foot. Stand on two feet and leaving your feet where they are begin to turn a little to the left and the right as if to look over your shoulder. Notice that there is movement from the foot to the head. Everything moves. Sometimes when you run, shift your attention back and forth between one part, say your feet, and your entire movement pattern. Shift back and forth between the part and the whole. Make this a habit on some of your runs, what does a shift in the use of the arms do to the entire pattern?  What does a shift in one part do to the overall sensation of ease? How do you feel the next day and how does your feeling relate to the details of what you were doing, to the tiny experiment you did. Keep learning.

     3.  Who are you? Know yourself.  Are you older, younger, taller, shorter, heavier , lighter, a speed athlete, an endurance athlete, currently rested, currently exhausted, injured or frequently injured, healthy, competitive, stressed, male , female, weekend warrior, consistent trainer. What is your current attitude toward running, toward life?  Be honest with yourself.

 

     4.  Know the difference between long and short term goals.  Do not sacrifice long term goals for shorter term ones. Look at the big picture.

      5.  Learn the word incremental.  Changes often occur and need to occur much more slowly and consistently than we think. Keep moving forward but do it incrementally with awareness. Sometimes the starting point is to visualize the movement you want and then only begin to do it a little at a time. 

      6.  Know that the more you know and can feel what you are doing, the more you can use the environment of running and walking as a way of healing instead of something to be laid off from while you heal or as a medium to injure yourself.  Running and walking provide good circulation and good strengthening and learning environments after an overuse injury but only if you know what you are doing, only if you know what to change.

 

S     7.  See a Feldenkrais practitioner for Awareness Through Movement® lessons and Functional Integration® lessons. 

       8.  Contact Transcendent Running with questions and to schedule sessions at:  scottrun400@yahoo.com
      Download our e-book at  www.transcendent-running.com
      Get Started working with Scott at:  www.transcendent-running.com/get-started
      or call Scott at 541-536-4821.

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

Don’t forget the free e-book is available at click here

For online form coaching and video analyses at click here

To find out more about the Feldenkrais Method click here.

Running Form: How Do We Describe the Ideal Movement Flow?

Here is a word that I would like you to consider; flow!

In previous articles we explored what effortless, well aligned posture might feel like and we introduced the idea of the learning cycle as applied to running form. The learning cycle involves the idea of a growing knowledge of good alignment in running combined with efficient movement where no extra effort is expended. These first two steps lead to more awareness, particularly awareness of how we are doing what we are doing, in other words the details. Awareness continually provides us with more information which in turn leads us back into the cycle of learning. 

Some have simply described running as standing tall and falling forward, letting gravity do the work. This is a wonderful idea and it may help a lot of people let go of effort, helping them to realize what an effortless activity it can be. It is, however, an incomplete description of the running motion. And what about standing tall?  What does posture have to do with running since we aren’t standing still? It is important to be able to apply the idea of posture to action, since our posture is continually being altered as we move through the phases of running.

Let’s consider the idea of walking upright, which is unique to man. When we look at the unique stance and walking motion that humans have we should consider not a static position called posture, but the general vertical axis of the human body. Mankind has the ability to turn around this vertical axis very quickly. The ape has a forward flexed posture and cannot turn near as efficiently as a man. 

1. Try bending forward and dragging your knuckles on the ground. 
2.  Turn quickly to face 180 degrees to the rear.  
3. Now stand up, taking full advantage of your central vertical axis and see how quickly you can turn 180 degrees. 
4. Now stand and place one foot a good distance in front of the other. Can you tell that your foot was not the only thing to move?  Your knee, hip, pelvis and back also moved to allow a large forward step by one leg. 
5. Now try standing with all your weight on one leg, let's say the right leg. The other leg is still on the ground but is used only for balance. 
6. Now with all the weight on your right leg, turn your torso to the left but keep your head and eyes looking straight forward. Make sure there is no tension in the head and neck as you do this. Can you feel that there is a spiraling action taking place in your body, and you are getting taller? Your weight is arranged over the standing leg.

 Your knee on the right side straightens your ribs twist a bit to the left and you get taller. You engage every part of yourself in sequence, from to standing foot, to the knee, to the power center of the hip and the glutes, the low, mid, and upper back. It is a spiral, flowing through the core. And yet it is so smooth and so fluid, that it is really all one movement. 

Your knee on the right side straightens your ribs twist a bit to the left and you get taller. You engage every part of yourself in sequence, from to standing foot, to the knee, to the power center of the hip and the glutes, the low, mid, and upper back. It is a spiral, flowing through the core. And yet it is so smooth and so fluid, that it is really all one movement.

Your knee on the right side straightens your ribs twist a bit to the left and you get taller. You engage every part of yourself in sequence, from to standing foot, to the knee, to the power center of the hip and the glutes, the low, mid, and upper back. It is a spiral, flowing through the core. And yet it is so smooth and so fluid, that it is really all one movement.

Efficient movement flows like a wave through the body. We don't run with the feet, the legs, or any other part alone, but as a system, as a whole person.

When our running is effortful, or injurious it is usually because of a breakdown somewhere in this flow. If our awareness of the overall flow of our running is increasing, we are on the right track.

Here is a definition of flow: flow (fl) v. flowed, flow·ing, flows. v.intr. 1. a. To move or run smoothly with unbroken continuity, as in the manner characteristic of a fluid.

So, running is a matter of coordination throughout the entire person. It is a sensing of how we are made and how we can move straight forward down a track or trail. What is not obvious at first is how much skill is involved in running. All of our bones must be arranged in precise fashion so as to transmit our ground forces well through the skeleton.

Watch David Rushida’s 2012 world record and gold medal performance in the Olympic 800 meter finals. See what great coordination he had between the upper and lower body, the unbroken continuity of movement. This is a quality that rewards runners at every level whether complete novice or world champion. Perfection is difficult or impossible but improvement is available to all. The specifics of what flow means are worth years of experimentation. But the concept of flow is one of the foundations of your running success. Take this word with you today and enjoy building on this foundation.

Scott Forrester is a Student Awareness Through Movement Instructor and a Physical Therapist Assistant and ACE Certified Personal Trainer at Mountain Valley Therapy in La Grande, OR.  Please leave questions or comments here at the blog or contact him at transcendentrunningease@gmail.com

Awareness in Transcendent Running

What is Transcendent Running and why do we talk about awareness?  What is awareness anyway, and how can it improve my running? Awareness is simply being cognizant of something. But wait, that is just using a synonym to define something. We might say that awareness is our ability to observe ourselves, to become an observer, a gatherer of information. Is awareness a general quality that we develop or is it used to develop specific skills in the Transcendent Running program?

The answer to both questions is yes. Awareness is a general quality that we can develop. Learning to observe ourselves is a skill that could be used to further our aims or find improvement in any area of life that is important to us. A favorite quote is "if you know what you are doing, you can do what you want” (M. Feldenkrais).   How do we know the details of what we are doing besides observing them? In other words paying attention to what we need to know, relying on the greatest computer and the greatest feedback system in the world, the mind/body brain. So we are aware of what we are doing and that is self awareness.

We also have another link in the learning cycle, the environment. What we know, think, and sense are all linked to it. That means many things.  One of them is that our relationship to gravity is a great teacher. We learn all movement in the field of gravity.

 

Transcendent Running can take you on an exploration of the value of generalizing the process of awareness, so that your explorations can include all areas of training, and form. Transcendent Running guides you through the process of expanding your running awareness and increasing concrete skills. It will introduce you to and guide you through lessons that will be based on the Transcendent Running learning cycle which looks like this.


Lessons will be helpful in improving breathing, posture/acture, pelvic rotation and coordination of the running movement through the spine and good alignment and transmission of forces from ground upwards through the whole kinetic chain of motion.