FOOT RELEASE ON LANDING IN RUNNING
I am returning to this topic because of the ongoing discussion on our website after our recent video presentation. The answers already given by Epberlin and Jack are very good, and I just want to clarify again the meaning of this important element of running in Pose Method. The requirement of foot release on landing means that we shouldn't focus on landing, but only on pulling, which includes several different things.
One of them is minimizing to almost nothing any preparation for landing, with no muscle work for this matter, no special movement of the foot or the leg. The most important thing there would be to have no mental focus on the foot tracking as to where to place it properly and in what proper foot position. It is a kind of fear, which we do experience on the subconscious level. So we have to get rid of this concern. But it is impossible just to decide it. Our conventional wisdom is deeply ingrained in our mind, and to get rid of it we can only by "substituting" it with something else. And this "something else" is the action of pulling the foot from the ground.
When our focus on pulling the foot from the ground becomes a dominating factor (an action), then everything else becomes subordinate to this action. It includes timing of the support and nonsupport movement of the body and it parts, muscle efforts and the perception of the run as the whole movement. Basically the pulling action is "organizing" the whole running cycle. But we should be careful not to overdo the pulling action, too, because then we lose the foot release, as well. Try to just break the contact with the ground and give the foot the freedom to move through the entire air time by momentum until the next ground contact, instead of continuing to pull the foot up under the hip joint. This overacting has many negative consequences such as muscle tension, excessive range of motion slowing the stride cadence and forcing landing.
The above described situation leads to the break of the foot movement timing cycle, when the foot is delayed to get on the ground on time. In order to compensate for this delay the body usually forces the foot to move to the ground faster. As a result of this "action" the foot landing velocity is higher than the body's velocity, so the foot, in layman terms, just hits the ground. I guess, I don't need to explain much where it leads. This rushing the foot to the ground could also be explained by the desire to shorten the time of the ground contact as well. It confuses many runners who do not understand that landing is, first of all, landing of our GCM (General Center of Mass of the body), which goes down just by gravitational pull and we can't increase the velocity of GCM going down to Earth, no matter what kind of distance we run, sprint or marathon. I can add here that the vertical oscillation of GCM of the best sprinters and marathoners is the same, about 4-6 centimeters, which means that they are falling basically from the same height.
There is one more seeming contradiction between the two rules of Pose Method: to keep the body weight on the ball of the foot and not to focus on landing. Keeping the body weight on the ball of the foot is just a perception, but not an action, but it helps us to pull the foot from the ground on time. We have to connect the pulling action with this perception as two interrelated things in the running cycle. The loss of perception of the body weight on the ball of the foot (the feeling of pressure on the ball of the foot) is also a signal or sign of terminating (finishing) the pulling action and releasing the foot.
Click here to see the video >
Dr.Romanov
