HOW DO WE KNOW THAT WE RUN RIGHT?

In the absence of a video analysis and the feedback of Pose Tech coaches you basically have to rely only on yourself in order to keep your technique proper. What can we use to provide self control and correction to maintain good technique? How do we recognize the right and wrong technique in our running?

We have only our mind and our senses or our perception in our possession to recognize the right or wrong technique perception. It comes as a perception of time, space, muscle efforts and tensions, body weight location, pressure on the ball of the foot, sound, lightness or heaviness, etc.

Time perception means perception of the time of support and cadence, where cadence we differentiate better than time of support. Plus we have at our disposal a useful device: the tempo trainer, which allows us to keep a target cadence during our run. It allows us to get into a comfortable fluid rhythm of the whole movement. Keep your cadence around 180 steps per minute and higher and you'll get time of support as you need at your best.

Space perception is the perception of our body position relatively to the ground and the body alignment along the vertical line over the point of support. Basically it is a feeling of the body weight being over the support foot (ball of the foot). The integral feeling should be of a compact body position, wholeness of the body versus of feeling apart.

Effort perception is the perception of the degree of muscle tension mostly on support, because the main reason of the muscle tension is the work against gravity or vertical efforts during the support time. The next level of tension comes from the necessity to maintain / reproduce the body position (Pose) during changing the support from one leg to the other. One more factor creates muscle tension - necessity to pull the leg from the ground when the fall is over. When you execute the fall and the pull on time, your perception of efforts is reducing and brings you to effortless running.

Body weight location could be recognized by the pressure location in your feet. Together with the degree of pressure it is a good indicator of the right or wrong, body and foot position and efforts during support. If the body position and foot placement are right, there is no perception of hard pressure on your feet! Certainly, you need to develop this kind of perception in order be able to operate with it.

Sound is a very recognizable sign among others, but you need to know the meaning of different sounds on landing and leaving the ground with your feet. When you can hear pounding, shuffling and skipping noises, then your feet are landing too fast, ahead of the body and you are pulling them backwards, neither of which is related to a proper technique. Good running is silent and you could hear only your breathing.

General signs of good technique are lightness and effortlessness of running, with almost no perception of pressure on your feet (weightlessness), with no muscle tension, short support time and good cadence.

Dr.Romanov