- Evening trainiacs,
we are here at the track again.
My never ending quest
to get my run just totally dialed in.
We are going to have call number two with the best,
the only run coach that I've worked with.
Paul, The Balanced Runner,
who helped me bring my average pace down
by 20 seconds per kilometer
at the same heart rate
while leading into Challenge Roth.
So we're gonna do some before of where I am right now
and then after cause I don't know what he's gonna fix on me.
Let's find out.
(upbeat music)
- So all right trainiacs,
what we're gonna do here is
we did this earlier with Paul Mackinnon,
The Balanced Runner,
whose been changing tons and tons of peoples
running techniques really successfully, way down under,
and he did this with me,
leading into Challenge Roth.
Here, we'll show a little bit of, like before,
I had this big chicken wing.
(techno music)
And then after, and the running stride that I had,
it was able to just open up,
get faster a lot easier,
and at the same heart rate at about 135 beats a minute,
I was able to run instead of 5:40 kilometers
down to like 5:15s, 5:10s,
at the very end of it.
So what we're gonna do,
is we just shot some before
of what my running stride is like now
and we're gonna call Paul
and hopefully we can record the call
and we'll go back and look at my stride after.
(techno music)
Well that was interesting,
very, very different from the last one where,
gave me one cue, like boom okay,
feels so much better this one,
this took some work.
How's this one for you?
- Better, cause I could hear this time.
- We figured things out last time.
I had earbuds in,
and Kim was just staring at Paul's face.
- For an hour.
- For an hour, with no audio,
and not understanding what was going on.
We'll fill you in on what went on there.
That was not what I expected.
- But good.
It will be good after I work on it.
So trainiacs, here it's been two days
and just a little bit of running
since we did that call with The Balanced Runner, Paul.
And I've got some findings,
opinions on how that went,
and I'm gonna show you the before and after
because there is a significant difference
when you start slowing it down
and looking at the footage
of what my run was like before versus after.
And I think we've got some good takeaways,
things to build on.
All right, on the left as you can see,
is the old style,
on the right is the new style.
Now the first thing
that Paul ended up working on
is how I kinda hold my upper body,
it's really the only thing
that we worked on
cause it's very hard to work on
more than one thing at a time.
So I wanna show, here, right there,
so look at that spot in the run there
and look at how scrunched up my upper body is,
my arms are kinda scrunched up,
now what we worked on
is relaxing the upper body
so that can be just a little bit more fluid.
Now look at that right there,
and you see it's a fair bit more relaxed.
Now, that has the effect of
when you are needing to run really fast,
instead of grinding through everything tense here,
it's loose and you can drive those arms,
in Challenge Roth, in the last 15 kilometers,
when things start getting really hard,
the only thing that kept me going
was pushing those arms really hard
and it was kinda like pushing through mud,
but hopefully if I can combine that ability
to push really hard with a looser,
more fluid upper body,
be a little bit easier next time I do an Ironman,
cause I'm gonna do another Ironman.
And here's actually a really good side by side
where you can see how much more relaxed my shoulders,
and my traps are,
and my arm carry is,
from old way to new way,
big, big change there.
The next thing that I wanna address is,
not really related to anything
that Paul and I did in this session
but something that people on Instagram,
by the way go follow me on Instagram @triathlontaren
where I put more of this stuff
and some workouts and things like that,
it's really good, I'm quite something there,
there's also a lot of dogs.
But something that a lot of people are saying is,
right here that my arm
is crossing over the center line,
that's the new way,
and with the old way,
that my arm is crossing over the center line.
Now, somebody pointed this out in my running style,
a few months ago,
and Paul, The Balanced Runner,
actually got into the comments
and he said, yeah, he is crossing over the center line
but the momentum is actually as I'm crossed over,
going up towards my chin,
so it's actually creating lift,
whereas if I was just going that way,
then I'm creating momentum going that way,
and this kind of leads into something
that we did talk about in this session,
is that nothing is as simple as,
don't cross the center line,
nothing is as simple as,
stand tall,
nothing is as simple as,
there's one right way to do things
and there is no way around it
because there are a lot of moving parts in our run,
and what you have to work on
is what works really well for you
and having a good functional run coach
or a functional movement person,
is really important to have
if you want to get better
and do that without injury.
Now the key to this,
is that you have to have somebody who looks at you,
I think very objectively,
instead of just saying, "Stand tall",
and then goes away,
if instead they say, "Stand tall"
and then they see how you run
and they see what that cue of stand tall results in,
doesn't result in a good change
or a bad change
because somebody could tell me to stand tall
and I nail perfect running position.
Somebody could tell you to stand tall
and all of a sudden
you actually do what I used to do
because everyone interprets things different ways,
we gotta make sure that whatever we're processing
is actually translating into the right running form.
The next thing that he got me to work on,
with regards to my upper body
is related to that stand tall cue.
Now let's look at,
here we'll go to a freeze frame
and a side by side of the old way versus the new way.
Now, what was happening with the old stand tall way is,
we're always told like,
be really nice and tall and straight.
Well, when you start running,
in my case,
I end up thinking, all right I have to,
I have to run really nice and tall
so I run really nice and tall,
I point my chest out,
I roll my back so that I've got a arch in the back
and that roll in the back
basically ends up locking up everything.
So one of the tests to see if you are loose enough
that Paul gave me there,
is go like this,
go and arch your back
and take a deep breath (breathing loudly),
kind of restricted here,
now just stand loosely, neutral, balanced,
on your toes and your heels,
put your arms there (breathing loudly),
nice big breath.
So I was running restricted,
I was running like this,
running with my chest puffed out,
running with my arms locked up here,
taking short breaths.
And you can see that in this little bit of a freeze frame,
it's not the exact same
but you can see that I'm a little bit more tall here,
but I've got that arch.
This is a little bit more straight up and down.
Now this is gonna take some fine tuning,
this is where it didn't quite feel natural,
it was taking a little bit of extra effort to do that,
but something of a balance
where I'm not restricting my upper body
and finding that balance of actually being able to,
then instead of, have this locked out
and then not really be able to lean forward.
Now I can have more of a neutral back
and lean forward
and what I found today in the run
is that my glutes,
whoa where they tired at the end
(exclaims loudly),
such a really good sign,
that's a great sign that what we're doing
is actually going to be able to activate those big glute
and hamstring muscles.
Our quads are a lot smaller than our hamstrings.
Our hip flexors are way smaller than our glutes,
our glutes are like the biggest muscle group in our body
and if those aren't turned on
and every foot press
that we have in behind us
is not actually in behind us,
but it's basically just an up and a down,
which is what I was doing,
we're wasting a lot of energy.
We wanna land, have spring,
and shoot ourselves forward
and we do that with the glute
and we can't do that if we're locked up, up here,
so be nice and relaxed, be neutral.
Have a cue for you.
So how you can work on this,
is as you start running
and you might need to do this every five minutes to reset,
is number one, start with the arms,
so instead of saying,
all right I'm gonna start with my arms here,
which you can see right there,
I'm already fairly tense,
start with the arms just relaxed, really relaxed,
nice loose shoulders,
then just bend your arms,
that's about where you want to hold your arms,
nice, neutral, no tension, no tension up here.
Next thing is once you've got that,
feel a neutral spot
where you've got an even amount of balance
on your toes and your heels
and your body isn't like that,
it's just nice and neutral,
just start leaning forward,
and start running from there
and that's gonna give you the cue
for what's relaxed here
and what's neutral up there
without being locked
cause what I was doing is I'm like,
all right, hey let's go for a run,
and all of a sudden I'm really locked up.
So that's that, it's still very much a work-in-progress,
but in my run today,
I ran at a 5:22 kilometer pace for 20 kilometers
in about 28-degree, 80 humidity weather,
which is really, really hot for here,
so you'd think that my heart rate
should be through the roof
but heart rate was able to keep at 133 give or take
about four beats per minute,
so that's telling me
that I'm working just slightly less hard
than I would otherwise,
however, because my muscles were a lot more sore
in other areas that they weren't typically before,
I gotta get used to this,
I gotta adapt to the new muscle firing patterns
but there's hope.
Now, if you are interested in getting yourself
a running assessment,
I recommend Paul,
he's done two things with me,
they take about 45 minutes,
you do it over the phone,
and they're pretty helpful.
He doesn't pay me to do this.
I just, I like it, it's helpful.
Just looking at my before and after.
I have work to do.
All right, if you aren't already subscribed,
hit that subscribe button below
and run fast, trainiacs, later.