HIPS AND RUNNING

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Hips are several pelvic bones performing several important anatomical functions such as a support for internal organs and tissues, for vertebras or spinal column, and a place of attachment of the leg's bones. Another important thing is that hips are an interconnection place for biggest muscle groups of the trunk and legs and at the same time they are a biomechanical center of the body, which means that application of all forces providing body's movement occurs through this place.

Yes, this information is clear enough to consider hips as a very important part of the body for everything, and particularly for movement. But what is not clear is what we are supposed to do with hips, how to hold them in a "proper" position to make our movement efficient? Do we need to develop muscles around hips? There are lots of muscles surrounding hip bones and the question of which muscles are more important is quite difficult to answer. Do we need to develop muscle connections around hips? And if the answer is "yes", then, which ones and to what extent? Which position of the hips is a proper one?

So we are left to operate with some guesswork and have to develop some seemingly proper muscle groups and their connections. For this matter we are strengthening these muscles by using variety of exercises. We are developing verbal guidance as to which muscles to use to keep hips in a tilted position forward and backward in order to have a proper posture of the body.

In the final account it looks a "bit" complicated, when you think how to handle this in real movement where a time frame allowed is too short to make control of all these things possible. If we try to apply this into running, then it is a question of where and how hips should be positioned for the most efficient movement? There are different recommendations of how hips should be held during run including tilting them forward by abdominal muscles, moving them forward, keeping them formed and connected with the trunk.

Needless to say, that though there is nothing wrong with all these recommendations, to perform such a multitask is a problem, when you have only a fraction of a second during support time to put everything together. How can we solve this problem?

We can start from a simple statement that the before mentioned recommendations are just parts, elements of the system which we call movement of the body, and they are hierarchically subordinated to the major one. The latter one is the movement of the GCM (general center of mass of the body), which is located around the hips. So the importance of position of the hips is defined by the fact that it could facilitate or inhibit the GCM's movement.

From this point of view, it should be right to concentrate on the higher elements of movement or the position of the GCM. So our attention in the movement of the body is directed to the position of its GCM, which in the Pose Method should be located over the ball of the support foot in order for the body to be able to fall forward and therefore move forward. Any focus on any different muscle activity or hips position not related with the support foot has much less sense from the point of view of movement of the GCM.

Dr.Romanov