HEART RATE - WHAT IS IT AND HOW RUNNING WITH POSE METHOD AFFECTS IT?

Increased heart rate in running during learning the Pose Method technique is a very common occurrence and it brings up many questions about this matter. Why does the heart rate go up? Is it a normal thing? When does it come back to normal? How does this increased heart rate affect our training in the Pose Method of running?

In general, the heart rate level is an indicator of our efforts and energy costs to do some work. The reasons influencing the heart rate could be divided into two major groups - physical (mechanical) and psychological (emotional). The physical (mechanical) load includes length and intensity of exercise, the psychological - the level of emotional stress, uncertainty.

A simple example of a mechanical load is a long run with a low speed and pace (jogging), or lifting heavy weights several times. An increased load could also come from using more and different muscle groups than with a previous technique. Increased heart rate due to emotional tension, for example, could be caused by an expectation of a difficult exam while not being ready for it, or by an expectation to see someone whom we desperately want to meet, but without possibility to predict the outcome of this meeting.

Almost all of these examples are applicable to our case of learning the Pose Method of running technique. First of all, it is a new neuro-muscular pattern of movement, and as any new thing it brings a higher level of psychological tension. Second, it has much stricter requirements to controlling and correcting the movement with lots of unnecessary muscular activity consuming additional energy. Third, it brings more mechanical freedom leading to much faster running, which is usually undetected by our perception, but very strongly affecting our heart rate.

All of these reasons, whether we understand them or not, affect our heart rate and it is our task to find out, which ones of them are the case. Why do we need to know it? It's because of our concerns about the difficulties and costs, which make us question the reasons for learning a new running technique which seems less economical.

Through simple reasoning we need to accept that it is OK to have a higher heart rate at the beginning while learning new drills and new pattern of movement. There have to be a necessary period of time for us to get familiar with a new stuff and thus to decrease emotional and mental tension, which consequently allow us to reduce the heart rate. This necessary time is very individual and differs for different people.

Very often a successful accommodation of a new technique coincides with a lack of coordination between the level of physiological functions lagging behind and a mechanically efficient running technique. It takes some time to reduce this "disagreement" between technique and physiology, and you should accept this fact as a normal process of development without overreacting with negative emotions.

There is a necessary period of accommodation, which we have to build into planning our transition period from the old to a new technique. It includes not only the length of running, but the speed as well, shifting our training focus from quality and quantity of training workouts to the skill development. In this case our heart rate would be a very good indicator of how successfully we are adopting a new technique and how much we can increase the length and speed of running with this new technique.

Dr.Romanov