- What's up Trainiacs?
We have a super interesting project.
If you've been following, you've been noticing that
I've been workin' on my running form a fair bit lately
tryin' to be more efficient,
and I got put in touch with a run coach over Instagram
who lives in Australia who works on running form.
Also, NTK's here.
Say hi.
- Well, hello.
(upbeat electronic music)
- Oh, wee, we've got fresh new lines in the track here.
So what we're gonna do is we are going to
FaceTime in Paul, this running coach.
NTK is going to point the camera at me.
I'm gonna run back and forth on the track,
and Paul is going to assess my running form,
and with these AirPods he's gonna coach me.
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, that un-paused it.
He's gonna coach me via the AirPods
into better running form,
and then when we go back to the pain cave
we'll talk about what he coached me into.
How colorful am I by the way?
- Very. - So colorful.
Wait until you see the penny I'm wearing.
- Well that's new.
Oh, you got your new shipment.
- These are new too!
- Good, how are you?
- You're on camera by the way.
We're gonna record this and then use it for a YouTube video.
Exactly, yeah.
You're just bright and shiny in the morning.
(chuckles)
(upbeat electronic music)
- Kim, Kim could you say
notice some changes in his movement?
- I would have to have been paying attention.
So no.
- Most people, even if they have nothing to do with running,
they'll see someone who runs really well,
and someone who runs really poor,
and because it's such a natural motion, they'll be like,
"Geez, that person runs really well.
"I have no idea why or how, what's making that person
"run so smoothly", but they'll be able to pick up on it.
- Yeah.
- Then you get people who understand running
and understand movement and go, "Yeah, I can see
"that person there. They run really well.
"They have no idea why."
And then it's about, okay, once you start to get
an understanding of why, then the next step is,
well how do I change it?
And that's where I step in.
- Okay, so full disclosure, this is a couple days later.
I spent the weekend trying to incorporate
what just happened with Paul, The Balanced Runner,
that you should all check out on Instagram.
The guy's killing it.
I got so many messages from people
that are saying, "Paul really helped me",
but I wanted to make sure that what we did with Paul
at the track there was at least able to either
feel better or perform better when I started running
instead of just doing this really controlled situation
at the track and then come here and be like,
"Oh, yeah, went great,
"but I don't actually know if it works."
It worked.
I had a good weekend of running.
So what you'll notice from a lot of my run footage
that I've been noticing lately is a few things.
Number one, I just, I feel stiff in the upper body.
If you take a look at it, basically from here up
it looks and it feels very mechanical,
and what Paul ended up identifying is that my shoulders,
they aren't swinging like this, they're kind of locked off,
and he asked me while I was running,
he's like, "How do your shoulders feel?
"What sensation are you feeling
"as far as swinging back and forth?"
And I said, "Honestly, it doesn't feel
"like I'm swinging my shoulders much at all."
And he went, "ah, that was a trick question."
Touche, Paul.
And what he said is that instead of saying
my shoulders going like this creating upward motion,
essentially I was locked off from here up
and I was running basically trying to move forward,
but twisting as I was going.
So all of my energy was going that way,
then that way, then that way instead of up and forward,
and then what that also resulted in
that I was feeling down below is it was always feeling
like my hips were having to push through the run
instead of snap, like hit the ground
and you see how pro runners like, we'll put,
who's really good at this, Matt Hanson's running.
You can see that he's got snap off the ground.
It's like every single foot strike,
it has a full body propulsion sending him forward,
whereas in my case, it felt like I was having
to push my way through the running stride
even though I was running more or less
under my center of gravity or just slightly ahead,
but it's not like I was breaking a lot.
I was also having an asymmetrical foot stride
where one foot was just kind of sweeping along
the ground where the other foot was able to kick up
in behind me and it all just kind of felt unnatural.
So let me show you what he fixed.
So all of those problems, Paul said,
in my case were coming from all of that stiffness
that you'd see in the upper body.
My lower body has to offset what my upper body is doing,
and if my upper body is really stiff,
my lower body is going to have to fight
through that stiffness and if I'm asymmetrical up here,
having decent arm carry there and a little bit of
kind of chicken wing over here,
my lower body is going to have to offset that.
So what we've got is on the left
is my new recommended running stride,
on the right is my old running stride,
and I'll tell you how this resulted in
a really good run just yesterday.
So, what we ended up doing is one of the big things.
Take a look at my right arm, and you'll see, say there,
where the right arm with the new running stride
is a little bit tighter in the body,
but I'm not thinking about keeping it tight into the body
or keeping it away from getting that chicken wing.
What I'm focused on is, if you just look at that right arm,
what I'm focused on is just letting it
fall naturally into a pendulum of where it'd wanna be.
So if you were to stand just upright
and just kind of swing your arms in a pendulum,
that's all he said to do.
Is just focus on that.
You can see that there's just less up and down bounce
with the new running stride, and as far as
the feeling of it goes, it feels so much more natural.
Now I do obviously have to think
about the running stride a lot more right now.
It's not exactly natural, because I've only done
a few repetitions of it, but what Paul says is
that because it's more efficient
and we know that for a fact, and I'll tell you why,
because it's more efficient, your brain is going to say,
"Oh, that feels a lot better. I want to do that."
So as long as I can keep queuing myself
to feel more efficient, my body is going to want
to very quickly start falling into that
more efficient running stride,
and you can make changes very quickly.
It's not like swimming where you need tens
and tens of thousands of meters
because it's a foreign environment,
and you can't really feel your body,
and your proprioception as easily.
With running, your body can feel right away,
"Hey, that's better."
Now let me tell you about the results.
So yesterday, I did an easy run,
and these easy runs for me these days
are trying to keep my heart rate
at 135 beats a minute or lower.
A very very slow and steady pace, and in my case,
it was actually feeling so slow
because of that clunkiness that I was starting to get
more beat up from that easy running
than I would running harder,
and because there was so much pounding,
there was so much impact,
I was actually finding it exponentially harder
to go that easy.
So, I would go say 530 kilometers
and then as my body would get beat up
from being inefficient, I would have to slow that down
to 535 kilometers, 540 kilometers, 550 kilometers
to keep my heart rate low.
Went for a 6K run yesterday, first kilometer,
520 at 120 beats a minute, second kilometer 517
at about 122, and as I went, I was actually able
to get down to about a 505 kilometer
keeping my heart rate under 130.
Now this doesn't mean that I'm going to go to a 5K race
and be a minute or two minutes faster,
but what it's an indication of is
that I can now run a lot smoother,
because even just the feeling of it,
my hips feel like their snapping forward
like that Matt Hanson elastic running.
I feel like the recoil is actually
propelling me a lot more forward.
I don't feel like I'm spending all of my energy
from here pumping blood to my muscles
just to get over myself.
I'm actually doing it (snaps) to go forward,
and if I can just consistently run instead of a 535
or 540 kilometer at the same beats per minute
and I can get down to a 510, a 515 kilometer
at similar beats per minute, all of a sudden,
my threshold of iron man running around 450,
5 minute kilometers, it's going to be easier for me
to bring that down to a faster pace,
because I'm not working so hard just to chugga-chug along.
I'm actually working at an effort
that is kind of close to my race pace
while keeping my heart rate low so that I can run a lot.
So that is really cool.
I really recommend that you go
and follow Paul at The Balanced Runner.
Now he doesn't do this FaceTime
online consulting all the time.
He was just kind of saying
that this is a first test for him,
but he's just new to it.
So he's building up the audience,
and posting a lot on his website, and on Instagram,
but at least go follow him now, go check it out.
He's got interesting stuff,
and I'm sure as he comes out with more things,
it's going to be easier and easier for people
all around the world to get access to the stuff
that he is professing that I have experienced,
and actually, go subscribe to the Triathlon Teran podcast,
'cause we're gonna do a podcast with him.
All right, later Trainiacs.
Thanks Paul.
Thanks Simon for setting me up with him.