POSE IN PRESS A collection of articles about Pose Method and Dr.Romanov in various publications.
ALGEMEEN DAGBLAD (NL)
March 21, 2006
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| Nicholas Romanov ( r) lets a volunteer lean forward: the correct framework for the falling running technique is an angle of 22,5 degrees
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Falling or bouncing from start to finish?
by Cors Van Den Brink
Translated by Ruben Jongkind
Pose-technique upsets the Dutch running community.
Running seems a simple activity. However experts still discuss about the proper technique. How can you run the marathon most efficiently? Let yourself fall forward says Dr. Nicholas Romanov, inventor of the debated Pose Method of running. Bouncing like a kangaroo, says Frans Bosch, the champion of BK-method of running.
The ideas of the Russian Romanov - currently working and living in the USA - led to sometimes hot tempered discussions in the Dutch running community. Just like two years ago when Frans Bosch and his colleague, Ronald Klomp, caused serious debating with their ideas about human locomotion.
What once seemed so simple - moving one leg in front of the other - in reality appears to be quite complex. Romanov was in the Netherlands last week to clarify his ideas. Coaches of fame and reputation (training Olympic athletes) formed his audience, though Bosch and Klomp were not eager for a face to face confrontation. Still there is enough reason to compare the ideas of both camps.
In the Pose Method everything is based on gravity. Runners should use this natural force to their advantage to move themselves forward as easy as possible. Just fall, says Romanov, then pull your foot from the ground so that you could allow yourself to fall again and make another step.
During his demonstration in Amersfoort he showed this by deliberately unbalancing some volunteers by slightly pushing them. This never caused any of them to actually fall on their face, because man is made to correct his balance quickly.
Romanov calls his Pose Method the most natural way of running. Children who start to run, just let themselves fall and let their legs catch up with their falling bodies.
The Russian hereby breaks different fundamental rules of more traditional physiology, where the push-off plays a huge role. According to this traditional paradigm, by training the leg muscles you can improve your speed and endurance. Running is then bouncing from one step to the next.
"But why should you move in vertical direction when running is a horizontal movement", is the rhetoric question of Romanov. In his approach a quick pull of the leg is sufficient to allow the body to fall into the next step. According to his theory this is less energy consuming than a fierce push-off.
The regular running shoe, with a thick, shock-absorbing sole, is not suitable for the Pose technique. Romanov teaches his runners to run on the ball of the foot and hence thinner racing flats are more apt. He teaches his runners to quickly pull the leg without exerting force. That's why my runners, as he says, rarely or never have injuries. "It feels like running downhill", says one of the volunteers who took the chance to run with more falling motion. "Exactly", is Romanov's reaction. "And if you run downhill, you'll never think of pushing off"
Running like a kangaroo
The kangaroo is the champion of running, says Frans Bosch. No any other animal is capable of using its energy so efficiently. So we can learn a lot from it, although the Australian hopper runs quite differently than humans.
How does the kangaroo move? By jumping relatively high and having a very short ground contact in-between. Bosch and his colleague, Klomp, once and forever deal with the old adagio that runners must run in as much as possible straight line . No, bouncing like a rubber ball is more efficient. Without lifting the knee too high, because the lower limbs are relatively heavy and this would cost too much energy. It requires quite some training, acknowledges Bosch. He/she who wants to run this technique without having trained his/her hips and legs to develop the proper muscular pretension, will be injured quickly. Six months of preparation is needed to learn it step by step, he says. That one would run better by falling forward, Bosch doesn't accept. "From an anatomical point of view the whole Pose story is nonsense", he says. "And that all elite athletes would train in the wrong way, if they do not run Pose Method, is absurd".
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