Something More About Pose
Saturday – Pose Clinic and Feeling the Force
It was quite a long drive down the Egham on Saturday morning after only five hours sleep yet it was worth it on so many levels. I met a lovely bunch of people there and found a missing piece of my Pose Jigsaw thanks to AA and of course Cabletow who reminded me of two key concepts.
I am really quite bad with names so I shan’t attempt to recall everyone by name. It was great to meet some new faces and some I already know. The atmosphere was a really nice and relaxed one which made for a very beneficial learning environment. Everyone without exception learned something on Saturday and all of the clinic attendees made vast improvements to their running style quite literally before my eyes. It was a wonderful sight to behold. So many smiling, happy faces.
I will concentrate on the fundamentals I observed there though in the hope that it will be of maximum benefit to anyone who reads this.
The Spot
CT explained that the day’s clinic would involve some new approaches to teaching as well as the teaching he is compelled to teach by Pose Method. One of the most useful approaches here was involving the pull. I have witnessed quite a few newcomers to Pose now pulling far too much and with a hamstring curl behind them. This means pull direction and intensity is off. CT explained that it could be down to how Pose Method tells people to pull up to the butt or backside. Of course people do exactly that and they end up slapping their own bums with their feet. This is a very inefficient and actually quite exhausting way to try and run – it’s like doing old fashioned heel flick drills permanently!
How was this resolved? Well CT went on to explain that the pull is different for every individual but the direction is always the same. You have to pull the ankle such that it traces or follows the line of your opposite leg up under your hips but not right up there…
CT told everyone to get into the Pose stance then he went around the group showing everyone where their ‘spot’ was. Mine is about five inches behind the back of my knee when in Pose stance. This gives everyone a guideline of direction and how far to pull their ankle. At lower speeds you pull towards the spot, higher speeds closer to it and maybe when flat out you will go slightly past it but not consciously. This has the effect of you letting the knees come forwards properly and thus you have better alignment, balance and suspension while running. It all starts to fit together much better and the running is so much easier. I use ‘the spot’ visualisation to remind myself about pulling when I need to. This was a small yet important part of the Pose Jigsaw and I noticed that everyone in the group started to ‘get it’ much more rapidly after that.
Misdirection
Very often when learning something new in running it is easy to become obsessed with getting a new action right leading the runner to over focus on that particular movement which in turn causes tension and slows things down – precisely not what is required in running!
I used to have horrible problems with this when I tried to concentrate on NOT thinking about how my feet landed. It was a kind of don’t touch the red button scenario where no matter how hard I tried I could not stop thinking about landing. In doing so of course I automatically kept stepping out in front of me which was esentially destroying any efficient running action.
Cabletow had an interesting take on this at the clinic by asking everyone to work in pairs ostensibly on something to do with gettng people to lean correctly. In fact he wanted to see if he could get everyone to pull the foot from the ground correctly by making everyone’s partners run closely behind them. This made the runner in front automatically pulling the foot out of the way of the runner behind which resulted in a very good pull and direction of pull. Most people when fixing on the pull end up forgetting to let their knees come forwards as they pull which results in the pull looking like a hamstring curl – pulling behind. This is not good form. This showed to me that taking a person’s mind off something by occupying their thoughts with something else can be a useful technique in helping them to execute correctly an action that requires less thinking and more simply doing.
Don’t Think, Just Run!
Lots of people say this and I had started to realise that this is what we really need to do. The paradox lies in the fact that too often we find ourselves asking the question “but how do I run?”. The answer is simply, let yourself run, don’t make yourself run. When I met AA on Saturday he exemplified the “just run” philosophy and I could understand why he and so many others get frustrated when they see people over thinking things, going over and over the same problems again and again. AA is a very relaxed individual and he showed me what he means by just let yourself run. Within a few minutes I had another ‘aha’ moment when I realised what it felt to let go properly and let gravity do the work. You do literally feel like you are being dragged along by an inexorable force and that is because you are. All you have to do is support your body through Pose stance and over each change of support. When teetering on the brink of a fall, you have no option but to pull your foot from the ground. Then it dawned on me: there are two things you need to do – lean forwards with hips, whole upper body and bent knees then as soon as your bodyweight passes over the ball of foot you pull that foot from the ground and the other one drops straight to the ground. Relax and just run. I found that the more I agonised over getting alignment right for example, the more I went wrong. I even managed to lean backwards at one point for some odd reason!
Stop Looking for the Force and Feel it!
Cabletow was the first person to say this to me and I think it is a very good description of what we need to do really. When you align yorself properly, you cannot do anything else but feel the force of gravity pulling you forwards. Instead, lots of people tend to get lost in the detail of “pull the foot”, “ensure good alignment”, “land under centre of gravity with ball of foot” etc. plus they expect some sort of magical thing to happen. In reality we have little control over most of the actions we do while running and we shouldn’t attempt to control them. It was Saturday when I finally felt the true power of the force and I have to say I was once again quite amazed. Most of us seem to do everything in our power to stop ourselves from being pulled along by gravity. It was great to see though that everyone at the clinic was beginning to realise what it is like to tap into this force.
Thanks to Cabletow for another excellent clinic, AA for helping me to ‘get it’, RunFree for being such a fabulous hostess and everyone for making the day such an enjoyable and pleasant day out for me.
I would recommend that anyone who is interested in learning how to run with better technique either see a Pose registered coach or attend one of these clinics. It will open your eyes but don’t take my word for it, go and see for yourself.