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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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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Run Faster: What We Can Learn From the Ostrich? How to Run Faster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2WcMRpozO4s 

How to run faster

There are only two ways to increase running speed, increase your turnover speed per minute or increase your stride length. To run the fastest you must do both, without stride length interfering with cadence, or cadence interfering with stride length. Speed is a beautiful balance between the two. In this first article about running faster we will  look at demonstrations of how to have a long stride.

Both the man and the bird are running on two legs and so the action is amazingly similar. The bird has no arms to balance with but he has a longer neck and uses it well. This video is both fun and surprisingly instructive. Physics dictates lots of similarities since they are both running on two legs. Here are some points that we can take away and apply to our running.

1.      In the still above not that the bird and the man both have their standing leg organized so that the foot is directly under their center of mass.

2.      If you watch the video carefully, it is easy to see the balancing action of the Ostrich’s head over the standing leg. You will see the same thing with Dennis Norcutt although it is harder to see due to the shorter neck. This shows that running with the spine and neck not held rigidly but flowing with the movement of shifting from one standing leg to the other is helpful. What a wonderful help the Ostrich is since all of his movements of balance and power are exaggerated compared to the human.

3.      Turn your attention to the action of the pelvis and hips in each runner. Between the rotation in the hip joint and the rotation of the pelvis there is an organization that keeps the knee directed forward, the center of mass over the standing foot, and the development of maximum power forward.  Notice the shifting of weight laterally in each athlete.  Both of these runners are organizing themselves to drop their feet under their center of mass in a way that would allow them to follow a straight line marked on the ground, and develop maximum stride length and power.

4.      Note that the human runner has a very fast cadence. It might be enough to keep up if his stride length could match that of the Ostrich.  Note how light on its feet the Ostrich is though and how easy it seems for the bird to increase its turnover. It is obvious the human is close to his potential top speed and just as obvious that the Ostrich it not. It is  running so easily.  Whatever your top speed is, try to run more easily at that speed. That is an excellent way to increase your ability. Cultivate the lightness of turnover that the Ostrich has.

5.      Note that with both runners, running is a whole person activity. It is a flow from head to foot.

6.      Neither of these runners over stride.  Both of them run powerfully and very horizontally, meaning that they run along the ground not into the ground. Both of them have a nice “ float phase”.  However the Ostrich is just more powerful.  If you want to run faster, both of these runners provide a good example of how to develop power through the entire structure. It is not all force, but the balance of all of your forces.

Note the massive pelvis in the ostrich compared to the human. The heavy musculature is again in the hip, pelvis and thigh area but the ostrich is designed for to have more running musculature than the human by far. The ostrich also has a longer kinetic chain and a massive foot structure with very strong tendons. The human with a more upright skeleton balanced over a vertical axis has an easy time initiating movement and an interesting way of conserving energy. 

Now watch the same idea about running faster with  Usain Bolt.  Stride length is about whole body organization not just trying harder to push.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHo9e-fdAbM

The main idea in this post is to run faster, learn to open up your stride to what is optimal for you. This requires both technical knowledge and experimentation.

Humans are more adaptable. As the video said – The Ostrich has no hands.  This is very  bad for catching footballs, but good for running faster.  I hope you have enjoyed this video and article and can put it to use in your running.  There is more to come on the subject of running faster. Remember that if you are ready to find out about individual improvement click here to learn more.

Take care till next time – Scott

www.transcendent-running.com

scottforrester@transcendent-running.com