Helpful Video Clip (Read 843 times)

I took this in yesterday and it was helpful to me. I do not think there is anything ground breaking in it.

 

I have no idea about schools of running form or anything like that.  And I do not, to this day, understand how one can deliberatly line up his ears, shoulders, hips, and ankles. I'm guessing, like other aspects of running, it just becomes intuitive over time. 

 

 

Nader:

I respect your eagerness to learn.  I really do.  However, you really do have to be very careful of what information you get on-line and from whom.  That being said, I thought the video was put together very well--very well-done for a couple of high school kids.  I guess it's a hot-topic now and they seem to have covered it well.  I have also noticed that the kid who was demonstrating the form was too stiff--most probably because he was on the video--and bobbing his C of G up and down too much.  His upper body was way too stiff for a good running form demonstration.  I would suspect, from the definition of his muscles, he does some weight training; which probably added the stiffness. 

Another thing I noticed was his trailing leg (I think they called it "swing leg") is way too slow.  He ("Ice Man") was probably way too conscious about "kicking" the back leg instead of "sitting in a buckett" and that most probably had created the "hesitation" to bring his trail leg forward.  Ideally, the knee of the trailing leg should cross the "support" leg's knee just as the C of G sinks in on the supporting foot.  The idea of not bringing your heel up to your butt is good and bad--a lot of people used to think you have to "kick" back high and strong and swing your back leg all the way around and then to the butt.  That's no good.  But you still need to bring it close to your butt, in the image, but instead bring the heel directly on the straight line to your butt; creating the short lever with the trailing leg.  He ("Ice Man") looks way too conscious about not kicking his butt that he was swinging his leg way too low and cerating more of a "kicking-the-football" low swing.  This makes him to swing his leg more like a pendulum--in other words, slow swing.  These kids are obviously conscious about forefoot landing, repeating it more than several occasions.  However, despite the fact they are saying "We are not braking because we are not landing on our heel", Ice Man was actually braking by landing (on his ball of his foot, mind you) way far out in the front of his C of G.  This is because his trailing leg "lags" too much; thus not bringing his knee high and ended up swinging his lower leg way too far in the front.

Okay, you're probably thinking; "Here goes Nobby's meaningless babbling..."  The point is; it's one thing to talk about a few key points like "land on the ball of your foot" or "don't kick in to your butt"...  Like I said, I can run without my heel ever to touch the ground (let alone landing) and still create all sort of braking simply by bringing my foot way too far in the front.  It's not which part of the foot that you land on that matters; but where, in relation to the C of G, your foot lands.  You can't, and should not, look at running form with points by points.  You've got to look at running as a flow; a whole movement.  I always talk about moving your leg like a circle.  If you do that, you won't swing your back leg too far up high; yet you MAY bring your foot come close to your butt.  You'll bring your knee high without swinging your lower leg too far in the front.  Frankly, I don't give a damn whether you land on your heel or ball or tip-toe.  Such debate as "well, look so-and-so (Bekele); he's landing on the heel..."  He may very well be.  In fact, he's kicking his trailing leg way too high compare to most elite runners.  But more appropriate, and more important, point is; at the point of inpact (to the ground), which direction is his foot moving and where is it in relation to his Center of Gravity.  At which point of his foot he lands have very little meaning to it.

By the way, you can surely try but it would be VERY difficult to "deliberately" line up your ears and shoulders and...  I would actually say it's almost next to impossible.  If you try, your form would get so awckward and stiff that you can drill oil with your body.  It's nothing but a "result"; you can't, and shouldn't, chase that first.  No way in hell you can run thinking about lining up your ears, shoulders, hips, whatever.  Usually, when I coach other people, if he/she "sits in a buckett" and don't straighten his/her back leg, instead of telling them "Don't sit in a buckett" or "straighten your back leg" (then he/she would get stiff like Ice Man! ;o)), I'll have them do some hill bounding exercises.  You can think about the correct running form all you want; but if you don't have muscle strength and flexibility to actually be in that particular angle or whatever, your form will never correct itself.

By the way, I'm not trying to be negative.  I really do admire your eagerness to learn and these kids willingness to share what they've learnt.  But, unfortunately, there's a big gap between knowing how to put together some video and post it on YouTube and actually understanding a complex task as "running form" and correctly, and effectively, delivering to public.  They ARE doing a great job--don't get me wrong.  But I think they still have several years of experience to do so.  Afteral, they are still high school kids (fast as they are).

Thanks, Nobby. I'll keep it in mind. 

I was just sort of taking it in and incorporating it into what I generally find comfortable.  But, thank you.

 

Nobby.  I love your posts.  They are almost always fairly lengthy thorough but you don't have to dig far to find the golden nuggets.

 

There has been a lot of guff on the interwebs and in the written media about Chia running, pose, barefoot running etc for a long time.  What you have written above is probably all you ever need to know about running form.

 

Thank you.

Thanks!  Arthur Lydiard wasn't really good at explaining things the way most audience might hear.  I feel he explained things the way he understood--but most audience didn't.  I always try to explain the way I think the audience might think.  In this particular case, I felt it would be nicer to actually explain than just to say, "That video was crap!" ;o)  It really is a good practice for me.  At times, I do get a bit tired of same topic over and over and over...  Lately I feel like I'm getting a bit lazy and say; "Man, go back and read Lydiard's pyramid.  The answer's there!"  I feel like I'm getting more irritable as I get older...

 

Second nugget of the day.

 

I find myself going back to this a lot.

So Lorraine Moller and Dick Brown and myself got together this past weekend and worked on what we call "Interactive Training Program" (the name may come appeared something else in the end...).  It's Dick's program he put together based on Lydiard training.  We still have ways to go but basically, the entire program is based on Lydiard principles.  You type in your current VO2Max (and we have a formula to calculate if you never run a race) and the longest "time" (not distance) you feel comfortable running (say 90 minutes); then it'll calculate the duration and even pace, based on our VO2Max, for everyday's training.  We got together Thursday and, untill late in the evening Saturday, we had a long heated discussion.  If anything, I sort of represented more majority of "mass" voice.  So the question was; "Would this be appealing enough to the mass?"  But, you know what, in the end, it has to follow the correct principles.  It is, after all, based on Lydiard principles.  If someone comes out and say, "I need to peak next month for a 5k race (or to run 1.5 miles in such-and-such time).  What do I need to do?"  Our base program is 24-week long.  You have less time?  Fine.  But you'll still need to work on the base.  There's no shortcut to the top--regardless of what that "top" might represent.  There's a right way to do it; and there are wrong ways to do it.  We all know what the right way to do it.  For some reason, people want more.  They know it's the wrong say.  But they want to hear someone to say; "It's okay..."  They want newspaper article to say; "Interval training is more effective.  Throw away base work and go straight into sprint work..."  Deep down, you know that it's not the right way.  They want to see lots of healthy looking kids running around, looking very fit, eating Big Mac and turn around and say; "See?  It is healthy to eat Big Mac for lunch..."  Printing and video clip can be deadly dangerous if they misrepresent things.  But unfortunately, media writes what they think the audience would WANT to hear.  In a way, for that reason, Nike Free was quite revolutionary.  Not so much, in my opinion, that the idea was revolutionary (we knew it all along and, besides, I still don't like that flaired out and thick heel...) because it's like them saying, "We've been doing things all wrong...!" ;o)

During the olympics, McDonald's was running a tv ad campaign with the slogan "Eat like an Olympian".  The commercial opens as average-Joe Jerkoff stumbles into a McDonalds only to find, lo and behold, that the place is packed, simply packed with olympic athletes!  Everyone was dressed for their sport (ie, hockey players in full gear, skaters/skiiers in bodysuits, etc.)  Then the announcer comes on and, half laughingly says, "You may not always be able to play like an olympian, but at least now you can eat like one!"

 

Cause, yeah, elite atheletes eat a lot of McDonalds.  You know Michael Phelps eats like 50,000 calories a day, so one Big Mac is probably good for an average person.  I mean, if it's good enough for them...

A few years back in Boulder, I was talking to Chris Pilone, the coach of Harmish Carter, 2004 Olympic triathlon champion.  He said, during his preparation to the Games (if I remember it correctly, it was in the final stage of his training), he might go and have a couple of Big Mac at a time.  I laughed about it but he said that his calory expenditure is so great that he burnt it right out of his system.  It was just some "empty calories" for him.  But the point is; he would have, and must have, eaten something with high nutrition value as well unless he was taking some supplements.  I'm sure you've seen some images of poor district where people are overly obese and yet mulnorished.  They may take lots of empty calories but no nutritional value.  Sometimes a simple thing like "it takes some vitamins (B in particular) and minerals to help utilize carbohydrate you take in."  In other words, without appropriate nutrients, all the pasta and carbs you may eat before the marathon may not even help you.

Besides, I'd be very curious to see how many of those real athletes actually eat Mc...  Remember Bjorn Borg?  He always had that red Coka Cola cup during his tennis match and sipping plain water?  "...Not always be able to play like an Olympian but eat like one..."???  Yeah, that would be a sure way to at least fulfill one of those statements (not be able to play like an Olympian)!