Stability and Mobility for Healthy Natural Running

Two Simple Exercises to Recover your Running Form

Jenny Hadfield over at AskCoachJenny writes on How to Transform your Running Form with One Simple Exercise. I have seen the single-leg balance mentioned many times as an assessment and balancing exercise, but Jenny adds a tweak to it that is very sensible to me and I can feel its immediate effect when I use this exercise and her tweak. Previously I have seen this as simply a balancing exercise. "Stand on one leg and hold." Jenny has you activate your glute with a simple move. I can feel it work when I use it. This is what Jenny says about the single-leg stance:

The single leg balance activates  and strengthens your stabilizing muscles from your feet and ankles all the way up to your hips and improves your balance too!  If you sit all day like most of us do, that deactivates your gluteal muscles which stabilize as you run stride for stride.  When these muscles atrophy (decrease strength and stability) they no longer engage and support your leg and hip as your foot lands on the ground.  It has a ripple effect in translating to wasted energy as your hips move side to side and increases the friction in your ITB (Iliotibial Band).

Those sound like the things that I need work on. Here are her directions for doing the single-leg stance. The fourth bullet is the key maneuver for me particularly letting the hip relax and then tightening it up again. I can feel my glutes activate when I do this.  Make sure you check out her directions as she gives further advice in the comments on her page:

• Stand up with your feet hip width apart.

• Keep your arms out to your sides for balance.

•  Lift your left leg a few inches off the floor and hold for 30-60 seconds.

• Engage your hip muscles to create a long, neutral line up your body. If this is confusing – try letting your hip relax out to the side and then tighten and contract it to align it under your shoulders – this is also another great exercise hip huggers.

• Repeat 2-4 times on each side. You will feel all the muscles in your foot, ankle and hip fatiguing in seconds!

• When this is easy progress to wearing no shoes.

• When that gets easy stand barefoot on a towel, pillow or pad to further challenge the muscles and balance.  If you get to SuperStar status, close your eyes (very hard).

 Running is basically a single-leg balancing movement where you transition and push off between legs as you run so this type of exercise makes sense. This reminds me of another single-leg exercise that has received much press lately, the 100 Up. Back at the beginning of November, Chris McDougal of Born to Run fame wrote an article in the New York Times called The Once and Future Way to Run in which he rejuvenates and old drill as found in an late 1800s text on running. Here is a video demonstrating the 100 Up. I have done this off and on for a few weeks more as an exercise to work my creaky hip (labral tear operation last July). It certainly can't hurt and it only takes a limited amount of time to do. Both of these exercises can be added to your tool bag of simple exercises to improve your running form.



Update:
The Stark  Center at the University of Texas has a PDF copy of the old 100-Up Exercise book written  by W.C. George in 1913. Find and download it here. They also have  a related chapter on running training by Mr. George published in Training for Athletics. Find and download that here.

Jay Johnston's General Strength Progression

Coach Jay Johnston has 5 videos online which detail his general strength progression for runners. They originally appeared in Running Times magazine. Jay says, "The General Strength progression below is the content that I most frequently forward when answering questions on how to improve your running." You can find his post with all 5 videos here. The Colorado mountains in the background are just magnificent. Here is the first routine




These directions are pretty simple and I wish I knew and practiced this stuff years ago. The short routines that Jay presents are certainly worth the effiort and he suggests doing them post run. I have worked through the first routine a couple of times now. His lunge matrix is another valuable routine that I hope to be able to start again soon with my hip. Jay recommends doing these before running or any other work.




Coach Jay also put together two DVDs in his Building a Better Runner series. I did a little bit of proofreading work for Jay on them, so I hope you don't find any spelling or grammar mistakes if you watch them! Here I reviewed the DVD a bit. I found that the DVD had tons of good information, but knowing what to do and sorting through the DVD to figure it out was too much for me. If you want to work on your building yourself up using Jay's methods, the general strength progression posted above is an excellent way to start. He has posted a lot of other worthy stuff online. I would recommend the DVDs to a coach, a trainer, or to an athlete how wants to dig a bit deeper into building up their body for running so that they can keep injuries at bay and fun faster.

Dathan Ritzenhein on warming up before a run

I only ran 3 days this week: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and did 8 miles each run as it was just perfect running weather all weekend. That is 24 miles for the week and the first time I have done 8 miles three days in a row post surgery. I also had an MRI Thursday night for my lower back. It will be interesting to see what the doctor finds. Saturday's run was dicey as I had become a bit lazy about my hip stretches and had not been warming up prior to my runs. Today I warmed up first with my stretches and loosened up a lot more. I also pushed today's run the whole way and took almost another 2 minutes off my best time for the course post surgery, however the time I posted would have been an "easy run" time prior to last year. I guess it is a good reminder to make sure that you warm up prior to your run. Here is a video of Dathan Ritzenhein demonstrating how he warms up his muscles and improves the efficiency of his running form using dynamic flexibility movements and form drills. This is not what I do or am capable of doing, but it is always interesting to see what an elite runner can do.

Not a Good Week for Running

This was not the best week for running. Since last Tuesday, I have felt slightly run-down as I am fighting off some type of minor illness. I have felt about 80-90% of what I should feel. Now I have a bad nighttime cough, so I am finally seeing a doctor today. With that I have only had two days of running since the Applefest 1/2 marathon last week. I ran last Monday and I did the track workout on Wednesday. The track workout was 2 X 800m, 1600m, and 2 X 800m. I did not get a warmup in and ran the first interval slower as my right calf was very tight. The calf remained tight throughout the workout. I think I did (off my memory) 3:08, 2:53. 5:51, 2:53, 2:51.

Of course the next day, my calf was very tight and with the cold I haven't run since. I don't want to mess with the calf as about once or twice a year I get this and I can be out from one to three weeks of running. The strange thing is that two nights ago I had calf cramps in my left calf and then was woken up an hour later with cramps in the right! The last time that happened was in the Spring when I also had to take a break from running due to muscle spasms in my back. That is wierd, but maybe the inactivity keeps the calf muscles from stretching.I hope to get this cough taken care of and get back to running very soon.

Pete McGill, an elite coach and masters runner, has posted some running form drills on the Running Times website. These are worth watching, although the humor is somewhat "runner-dorky". Younger Legs for Older Runners is Pete McGill's bery informative blog. We did many of these drills a few years ago before the Gate City Striders Wednesday night track workouts. I found them very helpful at the time, but the club doesn't include these anymore, and I don't do them because they make you look "runner-dorky". Maybe I should not worry about what other people think! Ceci St. Geme is one of the elite masters demonstrating the drills. You may recall she was known as Ceci Hopp when she was a high school and collegiate champion. It looks like she can still hop! The video cannot be ebedded so you will have to click on the Running Times link. Maybe we can get some Striders to work on these drills together next year!