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.

The Prevalent Myth Of a Tight Core

You need to strengthen and tighten your core. Is that not one of the most prevalent, familiar, popular and persistent teachings of modern exercise, fitness, and rehab? When we speak of the core, we are speaking of the strongest muscles in the body. 

While it is true that the core, the muscles that control movement around the center of the body is extremely important, forming a habit of keeping these muscles tight is not necessarily beneficial. In fact this idea can rob us of our potential.  

People are encouraged to keep “a tight core”. Occasionally, people are encouraged to keep certain specific muscles tight. . Sometimes the instruction is to keep the core partially engaged when you run.  But you do not need a tight core. What you need to move well is a well coordinated core.

Try this:

Place your finger tips on the front of yourself below the waist. The bones you feel there are the top of the pelvis. Now let your arms be at your side and take a walk. Your walk should feel normal to you. Now begin to consciously engage your core. Now as you walk place you fingers again at the top of the pelvis in the front of yourself. If you are keeping your core consciously engaged you may notice very little pelvic rotation. Does this feel like your normal habit? Notice also that if your feet, ankle, hip joint, and back have a fairly coordinated relationship you might be able to walk this way quite a while. Some people do this all the time.  Notice how your feet, ankles and knees feel!  I did this focus exercise this morning and was surprised to find how little pelvic rotation I had.  Functional strength in the core is not achieved through holding it tight but through using ourselves in more efficient ways. 

Now have no focus on tightening the core. Walk forward with your hands on the front of the top of your pelvis again and consciously move one side of the pelvis forward, say the right side of the pelvis forward to initiate the movement of the right leg forward. Go back and forth between these two types of walking, holding the core tight with no or minimal pelvic rotation and coordinating the core in a way that freely allows and causes, and energizes pelvic rotation. How much pelvic rotation you want, and how you coordinate with the rest of your movement depends on you and what you are doing at the time. Go back and forth until the difference between these two types of walking feels clear. Can you make the differences between the two ways of acting more and more subtle and still feel the difference? Now notice that when you have pelvic rotation you have added an extra element that could be used to soften your walk or run and with practice take stress off the feet, ankles, knees, hips. 

Look at the photos at the top of the article.  Can you see that in the side view, you are getting a good profile of the face yet an angular view across the buttocks? This is due to pelvic rotation. In the front view of Usain Bolt it is clear that one side of the pelvis has advanced in front of the other side. Clearly Bolt is allowing the pelvis to rotate and the spine to twist in a very powerful way. This is not a core that is being kept tight. This is a core that knows how to produce a strong spiralic action through the core.

Experiment and enjoy-

Scott

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Running Injury Tips: Part Two

This week I am going to repeat the tips from last week. However we will switch to using examples of some other lower extremity injuries suffered by runners.

I recently read some advice on-line related to specific running injuries. In almost every case the commentary started out with the suggestion to begin taking ibuprofen, icing, and resting, and then following that up with a program of stretching and strengthening exercises. While all of that can certainly help, it is not a substitute for learning to improve what we are doing.

The common assumption is that the problem is in the tissues, or in the joints, but I want to show that the real problem is not that at all. Why will a running injury often come right back after rest? The answer is that learning occurs in the brain, not the muscles, or joints. The way we do things is the real problem. The human nervous system is capable of a great deal of learning. When we are injured the brain goes into protection mode. We often maintain movement patterns designed to protect us long after the need to protect is gone. But the brain always wants to organize our actions in the most pleasant, strong, efficient, and pain free way possible. That is why we can improve by paying attention to the little things.

Running injury tip # 1

Try running by feel, instead of just thinking in terms of technique. Pay attention to what you are doing and how the overall body pattern feels. Shift your attention back and forth between the parts and the whole. This will have at least two benefits. If you are training or running in a race remember, you can always change something, you are not just a creature of habit. There is not just one way to do things. Some little change or change in emphasis can make all the difference. A problem that is beginning to develop can end up not being a problem with a slight shift. The second reason to run with awareness of the overall balance and feel of what you are doing is that if you do have a problem, and if it appears that you are courting an injury after you are done running or on the next day, then you have filed away a memory of the exact body pattern that you used the day before. That is a huge clue about how to shift your emphasis. If you are stressed in a particular area you can remember exactly how you produced this discomfort. So tip # 1 is about developing a new kind of awareness of the feeling of the details of what you are doing.

Running injury tip #2

Continue to improve your overall awareness of, alignment and form. Simply put the better your overall skill level becomes the stronger and more injury proof you will be. Notice I have used the words skill and awareness rather than technique and form. You might be able to recite elements of good form but we really want to go beyond that and experience good form, so that we “know” what we are doing and can feel it too.

Applying this to real and specific injuries:
This time let’s talk more about lower extremity injuries.

Here is a picture of an extreme heel strike. This is a topic that has been discussed a lot in the last couple of years, and I have picked an extreme example here. It is obvious that there is tension in the anterior muscles of the shin. These are the muscles that are used to hold the foot in this position with the front of the foot pulled up before the foot lands. This is extra muscular tension and it is not necessary to hold the foot this way in order to run. Now let’s look at pictures of the other extreme. These pictures are not discussed as often.



The runners in the pictures above are also using excess muscular energy to run. Have you ever seen runners who stay on the balls of their feet and never quite bring their heels to touch the ground at the mid-stance phase of running? This kind of running can be very hard on the Achilles, and calf musculature, as well as an inefficient overall use of energy. Now we can look at two short video clips.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsUfo_jHQ60




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB4j76D1rx8

In these two video clips above notice the lack extra tension in the lower leg. There is no excessive dorsi- flexion (the front of the foot held up prior to ground contact) and there is no attempt to stay on the balls of the feet. Good skeletal support is used rather than excessive muscular tension. In the second video clip don’t focus your attention on whether there is a forefoot or heel strike but rather on the fact that the whole foot is involved, the outside of the foot, the entire center of the foot and the inside of the foot. If you look carefully you can see the arch collapse since you are watching in super slow motion. The design of the body is being used without the hindrance of extra effort.

There are a whole host of lower extremity injuries that can crop up and I have not attempted to address them all. There is much that you can’t see in the still pictures. They are for illustration only. For instance you can’t see how smoothly each of these heel striking runners moves over their foot strike. But the real point is that we can over emphasize or learn to de-emphasize parts of our stride. To learn, to improve and to move on to something that is more appropriate for our own running is possible. The pictures we have used emphasized the lower extremities, but change always involves re organizing the entire pattern. Foot strike, by itself is overemphasized.

Keep addressing overall form, and shift your attention between the details and the overall feeling of the movement.

All of these pictures combine running injury tips # 1 and #2. They show concepts combined with real world skill through increased sensitivity and awareness.

I hope this article has been fun and useful. Enjoy! But remember, it you need help with specific injuries, I would be glad to help. If you want to learn at a deeper level and are committed to doing the work to improve, then Transcendent Running lessons are for you. To learn more click here.

To get the free e-book, The Runners Body/Mind click here.
Thanks and take care - Scott