RUNNING TECHNIQUE FOR EVERYONE: sprinters, marathoners and
everyone in between
Conventional, everyday experience plays an interesting game
with our mind when it comes to our knowledge about running.
We are so accustomed to our vision of obvious differences
in technique between sprinters and marathoners that we do
not bother ourselves to get any other opinion on this matter.
It seems that everything, from your personal experience to
pictures from ancient Greek vases and modern art, photographs
in magazines, and books, images in movies and TV tells us
the same thing again and again - that there are elite runners
and everyday joggers, sprinters and marathoners, etc.
So our motto: running technique for everyone sounds a little
controversial. It is really difficult for the mind to accept
that, no matter what speed or distance we do, what age, height,
weight or gender we are, what nationality or race we belong
to, or what our social status is, the running technique is
still the same.
To get this universal vision on running technique, we have
to step aside from all these differences and look at them
from an abstract point of view, get some general, common base
for thinking about running as a specific movement in a specific
environment with distinctive, unchangeable characteristics.
The most general base for our thoughts is the assumption
that running is a part of nature, where everything is governed
by gravity, which fact is known to us, but on a subconscious,
imperceptible level. This means that we are kind of aware
about gravity, theoretically, but cant use it consciously,
with deep understanding, in our skill of movement in everyday
life.
How could this fact be applied to our understanding of similarity
and difference between sprinting and marathon running technique?
What are the common characteristics? The most important one
is gravity, which does work for both sprinter and marathoner
in the same way pulling their bodies, no matter the size with
the same rate down to Earth. In the same way gravity transfers
the body in the horizontal direction from a very specific
body position, which we call the Running Pose, on support.
To utilize gravity we do the same things, regardless of length
and speed of running, we stay in a certain position, leaning
(falling) from this position and disengaging our contact with
support by pulling the support foot from the ground. This
pattern of movement is a common characteristic of any running.
The difference between sprint and marathon is the amount
of gravity we need to run with a required speed. Utilization
of gravity, as we know, happens by allowing the body to lean
forward on support, and this parameter is quite different
for sprinters and marathoners. If in fastest sprint on the
level of the World Record on 100m dash the runner leans forward
from the vertical more, then in marathon on the same level
he leans forward less.
Consequently, it leads to a higher cadence in sprinting up
to 330 steps per minute and for the best marathoners it is
around 180-190 during steady pace. As its easy to see, these
differences require different level of muscular strength and
accordingly developed body shape.
What kind of conclusion can we draw from this for our practical
use? It is very simple: our running is not free from gravitational
force influence, which is supposed to have some impact on
our running, no matter our differences in fitness, size, or
weight. This impact is the same, but using, utilizing it,
differs due to our running task, fitness level, our size and
weight.
Gravity works constantly and perfectly, but our skill, fitness
level, size and weight in most cases do not meet gravitys
requirements. The degree of deviation from this requirement
determines the level of our running skills and abilities.
This makes us average or elite runners, sprinters or marathoners.
The Pose Method of running is built on gravitys requirements,
which do not differentiate between people running with various
speed or distance of running, but on the opposite, on common
ground for everyone on using gravity as an active force in
our running. So the problem is how to accommodate it for an
average or overweight person? The first condition for this
accommodation is to develop understanding and practical use
of this knowledge, where restriction is only our level of
skill.
Dr.Romanov
Pose
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