MY REVIEW: TEACHING RUNNING

Just came back from my last, one-week, trip to New York with some fresh impressions from my clinic in La Palestra, a private club, located just across the street from Central Park. An impressive city as always, full of life with lots of everything: shows, shops, restaurants, skyscrapers, crowds of people, lots of celebrities and lots of runners in the park racing and training. New York is always at the top of everything regardless of the field and is also a good litmus test for new things.

Twelve years ago I was doing my presentation on the Pose Method of running in this club for the first time. Since that time I have been coming back there almost every year and asked the same questions again and again: What is running? What is running technique? What is a proper running technique? How are we supposed to learn and teach it? These questions have never been answered.

Why does such an ignorant state of the mind dominate in running? It is a good question for a psychological research, but in general it reflects conservatism of human nature and some wrong historical approach to running as the only kind of human motion that doesn’t need to be learnt. Well, we are paying a high price for this attitude now: as 85 % of runners injured every year present an evidence very hard to deny.

This last clinic in New York was filled up 100% with people having this or that running injury. They tried everything to get rid of these injuries prior to the clinic, but did not succeed. So the Pose clinic was their last hope and they realized it.

30 years passed since the Pose Method was born and I still have to ask myself, why are we humans so stubborn, why do we reject things which could benefit our lives? Surely, there are well-known answers given throughout the history of humanity. Yes, it is the same thing again and again: conservatism, close-mindedness, inhabitancy, fear of change, laziness, etc. But how can we overcome these obstacles for the sake of these same people who do not want to change?

I have no doubt that the Pose Method of running is beneficial for runners. All my years of experience, development and science research proved it, which was completely confirmed by performance of elite and recreational runners. But when it comes to teaching through the books, videos, web site or clinics I find the same difficulties of learning and teaching again and again.

There are basically two major reasons behind all non-successful stories: a low level of perception and inability to be a student. The first one is an unknown territory for general population as individual abilities to recognize differences between sounds, sights, colors, tastes, smells and tactile sensations, efforts, tensions, etc., vary tremendously. Mostly it could be explained by the fact that we never learnt it and nobody taught us how to do it. The importance of this side of our life was overlooked and never brought to our attention.

The second reason is more social, as lots of people have a problem of accepting a student’s role, all of a sudden, and starting to act accordingly – begin learning. They approach the subject with a wrong attitude – some predisposed experience or knowledge and consider it the right base for their comparisons and judgment. In other words, they arrive with their own paradigm of running, which could be quite opposite to what they have to learn. In this case, there is no way to learn a new paradigm – as it is not welcomed. This attitude can be summarized by Winston Churchill’s words: “Everybody wants to learn, but nobody wants to be taught”. When both problems are combined in one person, it’s practically impossible to overcome these obstacles.

So what is the way out? First of all, try to become a good student: open your mind for learning, free it from any judgment and prejudices, pay deliberate attention to your subject, focus on learning. Second, try to develop higher level of perception, which requires special attention, as well, and be persistent with your efforts to go through the learning process. Remember that there is no “ royal road” in learning and don’t expect any overnight miracles. Only your smart and persistent work towards your goal will bring you to success. And the Pose Method will help you in this, but YOU have to do it.

Dr.Romanov