Don't shorten your stride!

#101
Nick,

Yes, he does seem to imply that reflexively is the way to keep the bulk of the work. I advise keeping the knee movement reflexive always. In my experience and opinion when one starts ACTUALLY driving the knee forward it will delay the foot and leg from coming off the ground in time with the weight of the bodies speed and thus causing the leg and foot to go excessively forward of the body at the next landing/step. Adhereing to one way or the other is always a choice we have to make.
 
#102
barefootandagile said:
Nick,

Yes, he does seem to imply that reflexively is the way to keep the bulk of the work. I advise keeping the knee movement reflexive always. In my experience and opinion when one starts ACTUALLY driving the knee forward it will delay the foot and leg from coming off the ground in time with the weight of the bodies speed and thus causing the leg and foot to go excessively forward of the body at the next landing/step. Adhereing to one way or the other is always a choice we have to make.
Click to expand...

Good advice. But sometimes I find you have to mentally force things before they become second-nature. In the beginning the movement will be a bit rigid, but as you get the hang of it, you can begin to let go and let it flow, become reflexive as you term it. That's been my experience in other areas, like karate, music, and theory. What I want right now is a few pointers on what to look out for and work on, and this thread has been great for that.
 
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#103
Bare lee,

"""But sometimes I find you have to mentally force things before they become second-nature."""

I personally don't think something needs to be forced to allow us to become aware of what we are doing. I feel that in general most of us do in practice tend to force things more before relaxing and finding the proper effort and movement. In reagards to the "knee drive action," I don't think it should be done actively period whether forced or not. I explain the reasoning and demonstrate in this short clip:
 
#104
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree here. When I was learning guitar and bass, for example, I had to force my hand into the proper position, because what came easily, and the way a lot of people play, was very inefficient. Now I have good technique effortlessly, and it's been almost 30 years since I last practiced seriously. Same with kicking and striking in karate. At first I really had to concentrate, which of course meant that the movement overall was rigid and choppy, but eventually it paid off. I remember one day in particular where I was able to just let go and the heavy bag started moving twice as far as it had previously. I was efficiently building and releasing energy in my hips and knees, which then flowed efficiently through my back, arms and to my fist, delivering twice the power. I was lucky to have excellent teachers along the way who insisted on fundamentals. When I first started doing weights, likewise, my older brother and his friends taught me proper form and technique. Your video also appears to demonstrate a fundamental that may not come easily to me at first, but is worth trying (not today though--today I'm rowing and doing lifts and other back stuff with weights). I'm also going to look into other Pose clips; you've whetted my appetite.

About the clip: are you a Pose instructor?
 
#110
barefootandagile said:
If you are happy with the way you feel when you run and you aren't injured and you are meeting your racing performance goals then your are doing a lot right :)
Click to expand...
Cool. My only injury has come from TMTS, jumping from five to ten miles without building up to it proper, possibly also a factor of age, physically, and mentally too insofar as I don't want to recognize the first significant indications of aging and lower my standards. I have no racing goals though. I've never raced. I hated track the one year I tried it in HS, and went back to boring baseball the following spring. But who knows? I might take it up at some point. Right now the only goal is general fitness and feeling good.
 
#112
Last November I jumped from five to ten miles and got a tiny stress fracture in my left foot. It didn't hurt too much, but it's only been since the beginning of March that it's been feeling completely fine again. So I'm building up more slowly this time. I stayed in the 2-3 mile range over the winter, more or less 3x a week, and then beginning in March, when all residual aching disappeared, began working my way up again. Yesterday I tried seven miles, but I started to feel it a bit in my metatarsals, and so ended up walking the last two miles in order not to risk re-injury. Today my feet feel fine, so I think I'll stay in the five-mile range for at least another few weeks. It's frustrating, but at my age (50), I'm beginning to learn patience.
Click to expand...

We seem to be in a similar bout, although you've advanced considerably more than I. I'm also 50, and am also trying to slowly get my distances up....although after my second time running a full 5k barefoot, I ended up with soreness (almost a bruised feeling) in the center of both feet, about an inch behind the base of my toes. I haven't run in 4 days and won't until it feels 100%, but it's damned frustrating. I feel so good when I'm running. My feet felt great after the run other than a little skin sensitivity. It was the next day that I started noticing the soreness. It is improving quickly though, so hopefully it's just a little bump in the road (another one). I will be soooo friggin' happy when I can go out and just run for an hour whenever the heck I want to. At this point, I could care less how fast I run.....I just want to run.
 
#113
Hawkbilly and fellow semi-centurian,
You might want to try stretching out the foot a bit. I found this helped, and I've continued to do it. I stretch it both toes up and toes down, various ways. I also like to stretch the hamstrings and calves with a leg up on something high, along with the quad stretch, kneeling on the floor. I know there's an anti-stretching buzz going around, but I'm ignoring it until I see the pros stop stretching. It sure seems to help me.
Also, I don't know if complete rest is necessary. My doc showed me the x-ray of the stress fracture when I went in to see him a few weeks later. I couldn't see anything, but he could tell it was already healing, so I kept running at reduced distances, and it got better little by little. Perhaps it would've gotten better faster if I had given it complete rest, but it almost seems like running a bit several times a week helped it. Maybe the winter running helped ice it! Hard to say for sure. In any case, I'm being a lot more attentive to any sign of trouble now. "What a drag it is getting old . . ."
 
#114
Hawkbilly said:
I will be soooo friggin' happy when I can go out and just run for an hour whenever the heck I want to.
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Yah, it's really frustrating, and for a while I even wondered if I was just too damn old. I had never experienced a nagging injury like that previously. When it finally went away, it felt so great.

It will happen. Just keep at it and be patient. It helped when I read even veteran runners have trouble transitioning.
 
#116
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#117
I don't think Dr. Mark said much about core stability, if that's what you're getting at. I think he said a strong core was necessary for knee drive ("you can't fire a cannon from a canoe.").

His running form is a thing of beauty. I watch it before I run then go out and imagine it. I think it makes a difference.
Lawrence Smith said:
Beautiful running from Dr. Mark! A more in depth theory of how the legs extend in running can be found here:
http://www.alexandertechnique-running.com/?p=51
What Dr. Mark demonstrates on the trampoline shows the biarticular system in action brilliantly. I tried to show this in my post Running is Jumping.
Also, the notion of “core stability” has long been debunked. See: The Myth of Core Stability here:
http://www.alexandertechnique-running.com/?p=361

Good posture is constant adaptation, and stabilizing willfully prevents the muscles that are stabilized from adapting within the muscular system.
Click to expand...
 
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#118
BarefootGburg said:
I don't think Dr. Mark said much about core stability, if that's what you're getting at. I think he said a strong core was necessary for knee drive ("you can't fire a cannon from a canoe.").

His running form is a thing of beauty. I watch it before I run then go out and imagine it. I think it makes a difference.
Click to expand...

You are firing the "cannon" from the ground. The firing of the cannon is the extension of the whole body from the foot on the ground. The other leg will recover itself. But an important part of the recovery is the torsion through the trunk, so the transverse abdominals (wrongly referred to as "core" muscles -- there are no real "core" muscles as all muscles are interrelated) are part of the picture. But I believe that it is not necessary or even helpful to drive the knees forward. I mean, did you ever hear of someone not getting is leg recovered quickly enough? It is the extension that is work. There is plenty of time for the leg to snap forward against little resistance if the extension is strong.
 
#119
Lee:

To sum up again, take out of all this what seems reasonable, test it, and see if it works for you. We're all extremely similar, yet we're all slightly different. As you've discovered, anything that leads to a stress fracture is probably not appropriate, at least not under the circumstances that produced it. Weigh the evidence, decide what you want to test, and test one thing at a time to be sure you have a control to see what effect you're actually having. If some great piece of advice that doesn't work under controlled conditions with a fair distance/time trial, try something else. Summary of 6 pages - "whatever works for you."
 
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