HOW TO MAINTAIN YOUR RUNNING TECHNIQUE

Let’s say you’ve attended a Pose Clinic and spent a whole weekend working on your running technique.

After the clinic is over, your real work of developing running technique starts. What seemed to be clear about running technique during the clinic now is not all that simple. How to move forward and what kind of things should you pay attention to? Which exercise to use in your training? These and many other questions will be arising on your way to the perfect technique.

Where to start? Well the best thing to do would be to write down everything that you remember from the clinic: the main concepts, elements of running technique, the points of attention, perceptions you need to concentrate on and exercises (drills) you need to use to continue learning and correcting your running technique. You can also refer to the Pose Method book and our website for more info. Or you can just read this article, keep these things in mind and move on to the drills and actual running.

From my experience with many athletes that I worked with, I accumulated a list of some important things that need to be followed in order to learn and progress with Pose Method.

You have to keep in mind a hierarchy of elements of running: falling (leaning forward) is the main element in running technique and the running Pose (stance) is the element that produces the right fall or simply put, it is a position that the runner starts falling from. No fall, no running.

Pulling foot from the ground is the element that has the same goal – to reproduce falling again and again.

While we are perfecting all of these elements, the movement which we actually are doing is pulling the foot from the ground, so the action where our physical efforts are applied is the pulling the foot from the ground. How long we can continue to fall and pull is the defining point of the speed and length of running.

It means that the length and speed of your running depends on your ability to maintain pulling the foot from the ground. That’s why your running could last only about a hundred meters for now.

I would advise you to practice your pulling drills in place before each run: 3-5 exercise, 20-30 reps each. First use simple exercise that you can do standing in one place without using rubber bands for resistance, than switch to more difficult ones with rubber band (stretch cords) resistance and than add movement (do the drills continuously moving for 30-40 meters).

Practice falling incorporated with pulling at a slow speed and for a short distance (100-200m), eventually extending the length of the distance but while still perfecting your skill on shorter runs where you can check your perception of proper technique: minimum muscle tension and minimum effort, short time spent on support and appropriate sound of contact of your foot with the ground.

Use the signs of deviations from the standards that you learned at the clinic or from the book, and then use specific exercise to correct these errors.

Yes, you have to focus on what you are doing and always keep your concentration on running elements, for this is the only way to get to your goal – perfect running technique and ability to enjoy your running.

Dr. Romanov