Posture, Being on the Pelvic Level
Posture, Being on the Pelvic Level
I’m not exactly a fan of the Chirunning philosophy – for technical reasons I will not go into here. However, my recent thinking about posture has been confirmed by MsM a chi running instructor who posted on Fetcheveryone. I think this is a very good summary of what I’m trying to get across and these words have helped me to further understand why an engaged core is so important.
Here is what she said…
“I want to comment some on the “hips forward” FR mentioned:
We never use the phrase “hips forward” in ChiRunning, it is not a specific focus. Why is that?
When you have a sidelook of a runner, you want to see the three dots connected when on support (as the two knees pass eachother): shoulders, hips and ankles should be on one straight line. If somebody is running with a bend at the waist, sometimes called K-bend, the hips are too far backward compared to the shoulders and ankles. So moving the hips forward is the thing to do to correct that. However, the hips being backward is not the cause of a flaw in posture, it is the result. In ChiRunning, we want to correct the cause of the problem, which is a collapsed core. So in ChiRunning we say to people with a bend at the waist: engage your core. An engaged core will correct the bend at the waist. You don’t need to think “hips forward”, the hips will move forward as you engage your core. We think it is better to correct a problem at the root, because the underlying flaw in posture is also the cause of other problems, like too much side to side motion (causing things like ITBS). Engaging the core stabilises the pelvic area, as was mentioned on this and other threads recently.
Summarising: “hips forward” is technically correct, but we move the hips forward by engaging the core, and therefore have “level pelvis” as a focus and not “hips forward”.”
From a Pose point of view, if we are not in good alignment we cannot fall properly and it will result in landing ahead too much no matter how we try not to. I once again speak from personal experience!
Every so often we have these “aha!” moments. A couple of days ago I had probably the most important one. It never ceases to amaze me though. How on earth did I know about the core, know about alignment and know about hips forward but still got it wrong? Because it wasn’t until I had a good look at several videos of myself running that I realised once again that there was a disparity between what I thought I was doing and what I was actually doing. The challenge now of course is to make myself run in this new (to me) posture that feels strange and do it consistently enough for it to become natural for me to adopt rather than the old tendency to k-bend. To compensate I was bending my legs too much at the knee.
Core Blimey!
A few days of making sure I engage my core and it is beginning to feel more natural. I have already noticed an improvement in the knee bend issue I had. I was of course over bending the knee; I think I am not alone in that people when focussing on one aspect of their form tend to overdo it a little which isn’t a problem to start with, I believe it’s a good way of getting the habit firmly programmed into the subconscious. However, now I am learning more about how my body works I realise that I have plenty of knee bend and can now stand up nice and tall while adopting the level hips posture which actually helps you to teeter on the edge of falling which of course is what efficient running is all about. We must seek to minimise ground contact and when we do hit the ground we must be in the best position to begin the next fall forwards.
See the images for markers to look for. These are what I have recently improved upon and I’m noticing this in my running feeling easier, smoother and a little quicker. I am however still a work in progress and I’m fully committed to constant improvements in technique as a way of life rather than any temporary thing one can forget about once having “got it”.
The first image depicts me having just borne full weight as foot spreads and General Centre of Mass is at its lowest point. The distance between the two vertical lines is how far in front of GCM I am landing – down to about three inches now when it used to be about a foot! The other marker to look for is bent knee and ideally by now the knee of the swing leg should be level with the support knee as it almost is below. At his stage my alignment is much improved to what it used to be but there is still room for improvement as you can see.
This shows me again approximately a third of a second later (one frame in the video) where I am in Pose position and already falling forwards exhibiting good (but far from perfect)alignment, a good lean (angle between vertical and the GCM whose apex is at the point of support (ball of foot). My hips are leading and the rest of my torso is following their lead. As you can see, my hips are still level (horizontal line at edge of t-shirt) and my core still engaged.
Everyone hears coaches talking about posture, engaging core and how important it is. I wonder though, how many people actually understand what is meant and actually do it? I would bet that there are plenty of folk like me who think they have it nailed and they are doing no such thing. Look at me last Summer when although I had identified I had alignment issues I didn’t really understand what to do to correct them!
