Running like a Turkey

photo by Steve Wolfe (more photos)

Today was a race day and I was very excited to run the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter 10k race this morning. It was to be a test of my fitness and the start of the racing season. I had got up to 60 miles last week and toned it down a bunch this week so that I could be ready. I only ran on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but each day I ran my 8 miler pretty well. All three were my fastest times on the route this year. With that in mind I decided to take Saturday off too, so I would be well rested.

Saturday a package arrived for me in the mail. I had decided to order the "Kettlebells From the Ground Up" DVD that I wrote about here. I started looking through the manual and then started watching the first of the two dvds. I reallly liked the content, the instructions, and the background information as presented by Gray Cook and Brett Jones. After watching, I was ready to try out what I was learning. So a started doing the Turkish-Getups "naked". Naked just means without weight or a kettlebell. It helps you hone the movements before adding weight.

This DVD is all about one exercise, the Turkish get-up.  As luck would have it, I have a picture of my first ever Turkish Get-up. This is a photo of me in the summer of 1979 doing a college summer study. We spent 3 days in Turkey. The location is Sardis. I did a get-up in Turkey and am sitting on the top of an ionic styled pillar in the ruins of the Temple of Artemus.

Anyhow the DVD breaks down the get-up into seven steps. I was practicing the steps and the corrective actions for about half an hour. Later after dinner, I was still feeling energetic so I started doing the moves with a kettlebell. I did another half an hour or so of steps, corrective actions, and get-ups. I was learning a lot, but I wasn't smart enough to think about the impact this work would have on my running today. The get-up involves lunging as one of the steps. It is a good exercise, but not when done so heavily before a race. I also did about half an hour of light stretching using the TRX last night. I don't know if that had any impact.

I knew I was in trouble the second I started my warm-up. My glutes and hamstring were stiff and tight. My quads and calf muscles were a bit tired too. I could not get a strong or loose stride going at all. When the race started, I tried to force my muscles to work, but I had a very short powerless stride. I felt like I was running in sand the whole race. In other words, it did not go well. I was being passed left and right, and I had no response in my legs. Halfway through, three other 50 year runners went by, although at the time I didn't realize two were in my age group. I started to feel a bit better on the last mile, but it was much too late. I ended up about one minute slower that last year with my slowest 10K ever (results here). At least I was fourth in my age group and scored 7 points for the Gate City Striders in the NH Grand Prix. According to the age graded times for the race, it was the equivalent of a 36:51 10K, but I am still not happy!

Some days are just not good days. I won't mention names, but a much faster teammate had an even worse day than me out there, so these things happen. Mine could have been prevented, if only I was not so foolish about introducing so much work on the Get-ups in the previous day. I think I will slow down my work on that exercise, but I think it will provide tons more benefits, then the one poor day of running I recieved from being so gung-ho about practicing them. Yesterday was Turkish Get-up day. Today was just a day to run like a Turkey.

On that trip through Turkey, I had an interesting run in a place called Hieropolis, I went out before evening for a solo run from my hotel. It got dark as I headed back. I was running up the road which was over a cliff looking down at some white calcium rocks from the hot springs in the area. I wasn't paying attention or I just couldn't see, but I ran into a man who was walking with another man and some donkeys. I was startled as I am sure they were too, and they started yelling at me and chasing me down the road. Fortunately, I was fast in those days.

Here are a couple of old dusty photos of some of the calcium rocks and hot water we saw.

Laodicia was a nearby city. If you know the prophecy in Revelation, it says that the people in that city are neither hot nor cold, so they will be spat out of his mouth. The interesting thing about the city was that they had lukewarm water only and no local water supply. They could get the hot water from Hieropolis, but by the time it arrived it was not longer hot, or they could get cold water brought down the mountains a few miles away. By the time this water arrived from the aquaducts, it too was lukewarm and no longer cold. They knew hot and cold, but they were only lukewarm! Here is how the water came down from the mountains.

The Best Free Weight Exercise?

Below is a video of Gray Cook, that I saw last night. In it he explains the Turkish Getup as performed with a kettlebell. I think his speech is just as important as the tutorial. I mentioned Gray Cook in my last post. What I didn't mention is that I started my real search to try to improve my running mechanics and posture about 7 years ago after I read a Boston Globe preview of his book "Athletic Body in Balance Book. It did not come with the DVD when I bought the book. Maybe that would have helped! The reviewer raved that this book had saved him from imbalance injuries. I couldn't wait for the book to be published and when I got a copy, I couldn't figure it out at all. It just seemed too complicated. I need to look over the book again with fresh eyes after all I have learned in the past couple of years, but that book has led to new ideas and principles that Gray Cook and other trainers keep building upon and I think that a lot of that building up and sharing of ideas amongst the top trainers has finally led to a a PT finding a solution to my running and postural imbalances.

Anyhow, in the video below, Gray Cook answers the question, "What is the best free weight exercise  you could ever think of if you could only do one?" His answer is the Turkish Get-up. This goes back to the idea that the body is a stack of joints and that we should exercise the entire body as a coordinated unit rather than work just one muscle or joint at a time, particularly if you want your workouts to be movement based. The Turkish Getup with Kettlebells is such an exercise as I mentioned earlier here and here.

The get-up works and improves your posture, symmetry, core, flexibility, stability, low back-hip interaction, and tight hip flexors all in one series of moves. It is not just a stretch or a strength move designed in islolation for one part of the body. You do need to pay attention to the details and use your body correctly, however, otherwise you are training yourself to move incorrectly.

Gray Cook and Brett Jones have a whole DVD set dedicated to the get-up called "Kettlebells from the Ground Up: The Kalos Sthenos". It is sold through Dragondoor here. It is much too expensive for me, but I have considered getting it some day, but there is a lot of info in this free youtube clip. As noted in this youtube video,  "Kalos Sthenos" is the greek word for "beautiful strength" and is the word from which we get "calisthetics". Calisthetics these days refers to body-weight exercises, but it originally it referred to movements with weights like the getup. Here is an article telling more about Kalos Sthenos and this DVD. Gray Cook is involved with functional training and I think the get-up is used as a both functional assessment as well as a exercise to bring balance to the body and that is why they have a 2 DVD set on just one exercise.

If you haven't tried the Turkish get-up this video my prompt you to give it a shot. Don't worry about how much weight you lift, until you get the movement down.



And after running a total of 60 miles in the last 7 days including a rain-soaked run yesterday, I took the day-off from running today because of the constant downpouring of rain. It ended up being a good day for the TRX Suspension Trainer and some kettlebell work, including a bunch of get-ups, instead!

Time to "Get Up" and Get Those Hips Working Again

Everything was going pretty good for my hips until last month when I "tweaked" a muscle in my back. I took time off from running, but when I started back my hips were all off again. Some days seemed a little better, but they kept getting worse. The past week it has been like last year all over again. I can feel how uncomfortable and imbalanced I am, and when I go for a run it has not been smooth going. I have forced myself out the door to run and although I have run 11 miles for each of the past two runs, they have been miserable. I am trying to force my body into balance, and I should know after many years of trying to do so, that I cannot do this while running. After my runs, I find it hard to move around and am moving like a senior citizen.

I have tried all the tricks in my book. Nothing has worked. I probably overdid a bunch of them, but I was hoping to just "pop" things back into place. I woke up stiff and still out of balance this morning and I got to thinking. I have tried everything that I thought was working earlier in the year, except for one thing that I had been doing religiously when things were going well. I took out my kettlebell and started doing the Turkish Get up again (previous post). Why had I negelected to get back to this exercise after I hurt my back?

Here is a great video of how to do the turkish getup that breaks it down into specific drills for each movement. It is presented by Anthony DiLuglio from the "Art of Strength” DVD workout series. Take a look at how mobile and strong the hips and shoulders have to be to accomplish the drill.



You can find even more basic kettlebell drills here at Anthony DiLuglio's "Kettlebell Training 101". There are other basic kettlebell drill here including an alternate video of the turkish getup where he takes another person through the routine seen in the Youtube video. He also has a few different videos on Amazon. However if you want to start learning how to use kettlebells, I really like the DVD from Sara Cheatham. I bought her DVD earlier in the year when she only had 100 copies. Now I see she has it for sale again. Not only is she a good kettlebell instructor, but she is also a top-notch Z-Health instructor and she includes some good Z-Health joint mobility drills on the DVD. You can find information here, or look for her Red Star Athletics blog to the left of this post.



After doing some turkish getups again this morning, I feel the balance shifting in my hips. Hopefully this is the ingredient that I have been missing. Upon reflection, I think the turkish getup takes my hips and shoulders (which have also been very tight and not in balance) through multiple planes of motion. Not only that, but the drill strengthens my hips and the connections to my shoulders as they rotate through the various positions and movements.

Speaking of movement through multiple ranges of motion, coach Jay Johnson put this video on his site recently. He has national class runner, Sarah Vaughn, demonstrate a post workout strength leg circuit routine and then the Athena drill. Like a lot of Jay's drills, found on his DVDs, they can be quite advanced, so I may try some of these drills, although I need to be cautious. These movements work the frontal plane, lateral movements, that are movements that are not stressed in running, so I may be somewhat challenged due to all my exercise is in a forward direction and does not involve side-to-side movements. This could be a weakness that affects my hips. This routine can also be downloaded right to your ipod from Jay's site, which is very helpful if you want to keep the drills accessible.


SV Leg Circuit, then Athena (uncut) from CoachJayJohnson on Vimeo.