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 Click Here to ask Andrew Walters questions on our Running Forum
- Pose MethodŽ Certified Running Coach Level I
- Brisbane Half Marathon Winner (2007)
- First, Australian Marathon Teams Title, 2005
- 11th overall, Gold Coast Marathon, 2005
- 2nd overall, Melbourne Marathon, 2005
- Teacher of the Alexander Technique
- Personal marathon best of 2:26.41
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I gave up running competitively in 1997 after returning home injured from an athletics scholarship at a university in Indiana. I sought out several people to help me with yet another leg injury, and the advice from a sports physician at the NSW Institute of Sport was that I should stop running - my legs were the wrong shape and I would continue to suffer such injuries until I gave it away.
So, give it away I did and threw myself into my work instead. But one beautiful Spring morning, living in inner Melbourne, I woke up and couldn't resist the urge to run. I didn't tape my knee, I left my orthotics at home, I didn't bother to put a pair of shoes on - I didn't want to run for distance, for fitness, for speed ... I wanted to run for the pure joy of it. I didn't go far - but the run was sheer bliss.
That run got me thinking outside of the square and I spent a lot of time researching running technique. Everything until now had seemed like a band-aid treatment - patching a leaking ship but never fixing the cause. Over time, I set about trying to change how I moved so that I wouldn't be dependent on physios, masseurs, orthotics etc. I came close, but had no idea how to bring it all together - until I came across Dr Romanov's work. It was a revelation - putting a complete framework together for all the information I had collected in bits and pieces. He had discovered and set forth a universal system.
Following the drills from the DVD I made a more serious return to running and in 2004 with no formal training ran a half marathon comfortably in 73 minutes. That changed my perception of my capabilities and I started training more seriously. In 2005 I finished the fourth Australian home in the Gold Coast Marathon in 2:26.49 and was part of the team which won the national title. Several months later in November I finished second in the Melbourne Marathon.
All this success was good but it wasn't until I had the chance to work personally with Dr Romanov in June that I truly understood how profound and ground-breaking his work is - and in retrospect I had only been skirting around the edges with the changes I had made. Working with Nicholas now I am running times for 800m and 3000m that I ran as a talented junior - times that I thought were out of reach for a one-speed marathoner. But to be honest - and without wanting to sound blasphemous - the times have become just a by-product of truly enjoying a new sense of freedom in falling over the ground.
Andrew Walters
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