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POSE IN PRESS A collection of articles about Pose Method and Dr.Romanov in various publications.
RUNNER'S WORLD (UK)
December, 2004
Striking A Pose
by Alison Hamlett and Roy Wallack
Photos by Mike King
Conventional wisdom says running form cannot be taught, but Dr Nicholas Romanov reckons otherwise
There is a man who wants to change the way you run. He wants you to pose - not by donning Oakleys and Lycra but by learning a new running technique.
The Pose Method has been around for a while but only now is it attracting the attention of scientists and athletes around the world. It was invented in the late 1970s by Dr Nicholas Romanov, a Russian sports scientist based in Florida, who believes that the heel-striking gait of most long-distance runners is not "natural" and promotes injuries.
"To run efficiently," he says, "we need to approach running as if it is a skill to be learned, like basketball or golf." Rather than the standard heel-toe gait of most runners, the Pose Method dictates a forward lean, a forefoot landing with a bent knee, rapid turnover, and short strides (see "Posing the Questions," page 64). Follow this method, Romanov says, and you'll run quicker, use less energy, and subject your knees to 50 per cent less shock than with normal heel-toe running. Detractors say it just shifts injuries to the calves and Achilles tendons, and that furthermore, running form is determined by inherent and mostly unchangeable muscle and skeletal types.
The Pose Method has created enough of a stir in the broader running world to invite scrutiny from famed researcher Professor Tim Noakes, author of Lore of Running, who published results of a limited study in February. Noakes's article was a start, but still no long-term scientific study has ever proven that the Pose delivers all that it promises. So the debate goes on. If the Pose Method is so great, why aren't we all doing it? Is it a ticking time bomb that causes more problems than it solves? All of which begs a larger question: can you actually learn how to run better?
HOW IT WORKS
Romanov developed the Pose Method while teaching at the Physical Education Department of the Chuvash Pedagogical University in 1977, in what was then the Soviet Union. Required to develop training schedules for runners as part of his degree, he panicked; he'd been a high jumper who regularly cleared 2.14m - running all of eight steps.
He'd never liked running much and knew nothing about it. Since high jumping was all about technique, he searched for books about proper running form - and found none. So he looked at news footage of sprinters and distance runners, at pictures of ancient Greek runners, and even analysed the biomechanics of cheetahs. His
conclusion was nothing less than biomechanical heresy.
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| Making a point: Romanov believes we should rethink the way we run |
"Efficient running shouldn't involve propulsion at all - that's too much work," says Romanov today. "In fact, exactly the opposite should happen: efficient runners should let gravity pull them forward. Efficient running is really falling - controlled falling."
In 1981, Romanov named his form "The Pose Method," believing it could be most easily understood as an ideal running position, or pose. He coached in obscurity for 13 years, his influence limited to a small, devoted group that eventually included a Soviet 15K champion.
The Pose Method's "controlled- falling" drew raised eyebrows and sneers from Cold War-era Soviet athletic authorities - as it does today from much of the running establishment - but it actually starts with several familiar elements of what's considered good form: rapid turnover, short strides, and landing under the body's centre of mass.
Beyond the basics though, the Pose gets controversial. It requires a forefoot landing - a natural sprinting technique, but one that's counterintuitive to most distance runners. The Pose runner lands with a bent knee directly under the torso, to absorb shock and minimise muscle strain. Following the forefoot landing, the heel makes light ground contact and is flicked towards the backside. With little effort, according to Romanov, the airborne foot then swings forward like a pendulum. To initiate movement, the runner leans forward. To speed up, the runner increases the lean so that turnover must also increase.
Romanov goes so far as saying that the Pose Method's reliance on gravity for forward motion effectively turns the legs into wheels. "The fastest runners can go 12 metres per second," he says, "but objects fall at 58 metres per second. That means you can fall five times as fast as you can run. Therefore, legs should not play a major role in propulsion. They are just carriers."
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| POSING THE QUESTIONS |
1. BODY ANGLE Lean forward to the point where you will fall forward. 2. BODY FORM Keep an S shape; erect back, not bent at the waist, with knees slightly bent at all times. You should run at a height two to three inches shorter than normal standing. 3. SHORT STRIDE Your foot should land under the body, not ahead of it. Do not flex ankle; keep it at a 90 to 100 degree angle. 4. IMPACT Front foot contacts the ground with forefoot, ball of foot. 5. RAPID TURNOVER The longer the foot is on the ground, the more momentum you loose. 6. QUICK HEEL FLICK After footstrike, pull the heel straight up to the butt with hamstring. It should shoot up like a rubber band. (Tip: Hamstring curls build strength).
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Romanov designed the Pose for efficiency, to avoid the braking force of a blunt heel-strike, but says he soon saw a bonus benefit. "We began to notice that injuries just disappeared," he says, "because of the softer landings and less ballistic shock to the knees and hips." This did nothing to popularise his theories, however, and Romanov began to look for another way to spread his gospel. Eventually, he did what millions of dreamers with eccentric ideas had done before him. He went to America.
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY
In the early 1990s Romanov was living in near poverty in Florida when a professional triathlete, Cyle Sage, introduced him to the triathlon community - a group with a reputation for being open to new ideas. News soon travelled across the Atlantic to the British Triathlon Association, which has been working with Romanov for the last five years. He accompanied the British team to Athens and has coached triathletes Andrew Johns, Tim Don and the 2002 World Champion, Leanda Cave. Graeme Maw, performance director at the BTA, believes that working with Romanov has helped British athletes to improve. "Romanov started working with Johns a
few years ago," says Maw. "He focused on his running and technique through to the Athens Olympics." And has it helped? "Johns certainly runs faster than he used to," says Maw.
Don thinks triathletes are more open to new ideas than runners and was keen to see if the Pose Method could help his running: "I love it when someone rings up and says 'would you like to...' and before they've even finished I say 'Yep, what is it, I want to try it, what is it?' If there's a new design, or a new product, that might improve my performance, or prolong my career, I want to try it." Running, following the Pose Method, is now Don's strongest discipline. "It's very economical and efficient," he says. "So you can run that extra kilometre in a session or your legs aren't as sore as they normally are, or your muscles aren't as tight. It's a way of forward thinking and it does improve performance."
A major criticism levelled at the Pose Method is that you can't "teach" people how to run. Don disagrees. "Physiologically you have a limit," he says, "but technically there's a long way to go to get the technique perfect."
As well as converting a number of elite athletes, the Pose has also attracted many "ordinary" runners, such as sub- three-hour marathon runner Anthony Forsyth, who successfully changed his running style by following the Pose Method. "I cannot believe the difference," he says. "My "natural" running style was appalling and made me injury prone."
He had run with orthotics for years before discovering the Pose. "I am convinced that heels in running shoes are a bad thing," he says. "Radical I know, but I "had" to have orthotics for 13 years and now I am doing all my running in racing flats and I'm going faster at the same effort." He adds, "I wish I had learned to run efficiently (as opposed to "naturally") and never got them. I could never get over 40 miles a week without injury and I now run 120 miles per week routinely."
Few biomechanists in the UK have heard of the Pose Method, much less studied it. Ceri Diss, senior lecturer in biomechanics at Roehampton University, doubts the benefits of totally changing a runner's style. "People start running from the age of one or two," she says. "They develop a certain gait pattern, and muscles and ligaments develop around that. If you try, when they are an adult, to make changes, it can have a detrimental effect."
Diss has worked with a number of athletes, advocating small changes to style rather than the complete running makeover that the Pose dictates. She goes on to say, "There is a perfect, most economical way to run, and when I work with athletes I do look at their running technique. For example, when 800m runners become tired they throw their heads back and lengthen their strides down the home straight, when they should shorten their strides and lean their heads forward. I point this out but I'm not actually trying to change the particular way that they run."
Diss knows from experience that techniques that have to be learned, like the Pose, are often the first thing to go when a runner experiences fatigue.
"When someone gets tired," she says, "they will revert to their old way of running. When Haile Gebrselassie ran the Flora London Marathon a few years ago his coach tried to get him not to run on his toes, because 26 miles of running on your toes will lead to tight calves. The minute he got a little bit tired, after about 10 miles, he reverted to his old style."
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Lean times:
Pose means "falling" as you run |
Maw thinks there are greater benefits from using the Pose than quicker speeds. "In distance running," he says, "one of the biggest problems that all athletes face is injury, and a lot of what Romanov does is related not just to running speed but also to injury prevention." If other biomechanists have not heard of Romanov, Maw thinks they would still see the merit in his ideas. "Romanov has put a name to a particular running style," he says, "but he would acknowledge that plenty of people run with these particular mechanics naturally. He has analysed good running practice and put a name to it. If a blomechanist hasn't heard the name, they might still identify with some of the principles."
Not content with the widely differing opinions of sports scientists, Romanov determined to have his method legitimised by the broader running community, and, in 2002, he contacted Tim Noakes while accompanying the British triathlon team on a trip to South Africa. "No one else will study this,' he told me," says Noakes. "'They think it's a waste of time.' I listened to him, was intrigued that his running mechanics were quite different, and said, 'Let's do
it'. It's my responsibility as a scientist to see if he has something."
Noakes studied Romanov in his lab at the University of Cape Town and found a reduction in knee-loading and impact. Six months later, Romanov returned to Cape Town and spent five days training 20 heel-to-toe runners to use the Pose Method.
The before-and-after study, entitled 'Reduced Eccentric Loading of the Knee with the Pose Running Method," was published this year in the American College of Sports Medicine journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. "We found a substantial decline in impact forces at the knee joint - I was quite surprised at the magnitude of the change," Noakes says, noting that it was 50 per cent. "We have seen nothing else that does this - not shoes, no matter how padded. My opinion? He really does have something," says Noakes. "I think the Pose is advantageous in preventing injuries, which is important since about 60 per cent of runners get injured each year."
AN ACHILLES' HEEL - AND REPROGRAMMING
Noakes does issue a warning: "The Pose has one big negative that prevents me from recommending it: you have to absorb the shock somewhere, and you absorb it in the Achilles tendon and the calf. Some of the test subjects had calf pain."
Romanov, of course, has an answer for that. "We were rushed," he says. "It takes two weeks for the calf muscles to start adapting to the new biomechanics of the Pose. These people had five days - not enough time to get used to the new load."
"I'm glad to hear that," Noakes responds. "He may well be right. We will do a long-term test, but until then I will not promote Pose running. It must have a big warning: if you are one of those who is prone to Achilles problems - after all, injuries are the result of exposure and genetic susceptibility - watch out."
Learning the Pose is a difficult and time-consuming proposition - a fact that begs the question whether any running technique that must be learned is worthwhile. There are many people who think it is, including Professor Peter Radford, the former 200m world record holder and former Director of Research at Brunei University Department of Sports Sciences. "There is evidence that when endurance athletes are matched for VO, Max, those with better mechanical efficiency run faster," he says. "There is a long history of runners modifying their form through the use of specific drills and practice."
Radford goes on to suggest that any coach should "analyse running style and form to determine whether it is mechanically sound, economic, and efficient, and, so unlikely to contribute unnecessarily to the athlete's fatigue or injury." He adds, "That does not mean, however, that coaches should have some preconcieved picture in their minds of the perfect running style. There are many ways to run successfully."
Runners should have a checklist to assess and modify their action. "They must be aware of their striding rate and frequency," says Radford, "their balance and weight distribution, range of swing of the arms and position of their head."
The Kenyans disagree. Not only are they the world's dominant distance runners, they're renowned for a "soft" gait and economical running style that is somewhat reminiscent of the Pose. "Kenya's success is not dependent on form," said Paul Tergat, who set the marathon world record of 2:04:55 last year in Berlin. "No runner's is." Kenyans do not learn or even discuss form. That's the way their coach wants it. "It's crazy to try to alter form," says Dr Gabriele Rosa, the Italian who in 1994 founded the training-camps programme credited for much of Kenya's long-distance success. "You can't run thinking of how to move your feet, your body, your hands - it's too distracting. It's all training, nothing else. Look at the form of Paula Radcliffe; she got the women's world record of 2:15:25 last year in London with her head rolling all over the place."
When Kip Keino saw Romanov's book, The Pose Method of Running, he shook his head. "There is no correct running form, so you can't learn it," said the 1500m gold medallist from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, who is now the head of Kenya's National Olympic Committee. "Form is God-given. If you systematise it, you destroy it."
Even so, not every coach agrees that perfect form comes naturally. "In any other sport, it'd be ridiculous to say form can't be learned," says Ken Mierke, the author of Training for Triathlon Running. "Training only goes so far. All you can do is get more economical."
Ultimately, the Pose may help runners only because it raises the level of discussion about form. Last year, when the retired six-time Hawaii Ironman winner Mark Allen, one of the greatest runners in the sport, was told about the Pose, he blurted, "That's stupid!" Yet this spring, after he attended one of Romanov's seminars, he had a new perspective. "Its main benefit is that it gives you a checklist of things you can think about to run better," Allen says, "and that's a good thing." 
For more information on the Pose Method, and to buy Dr Nicolas Romanov's book Pose Method of Running (Pose Tech Ness), visit www.posetech.com.
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| OTHER ARTICLES IN RUNNER'S WORLD:
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RUNNER'S WORLD (UK) September, 2008
Run Different
Conventional wisdom says running form cannot be taught, but Dr Nicholas Romanov reckons otherwise
Biomechanics expert Lee Saxby was a fairly conventional running coach until he met Dr. Nicholas Romanov; then his whole outlook on running changed. Romanov, an Olympic triathlon coach, introduced Saxby to the Pose Method, a new running style favored by 2006 World Triathlon Champion Tim Don. "Romanov blew my biomechanics education right out of the water,' says Saxby. ...
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RUNNER'S WORLD (US), October, 2004
I Will Learn to Run Better by Roy M.Wallack
Cutting-edge triathletes are studying the controversial Pose Method to run faster with fewer injuries. Is there a lesson here for you?
Mel Wicks, a 65-year-old financial planner from Toledo, Ohio, has been running for 25 years, and guesses he's been injured half the time with plantar fasciitis. Sean Hylton, 32 an eight-time Ironman finisher from Naples, Florida, ran 25 to 35 miles per week for seven years and required five days to recover from every long run ... [Read >] |
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