♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet. ♪
- Well, hi there folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapists.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapists.
- And we are the most famous physical therapist
on the internet
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- I feel really rested Brad.
'Cause I slept at my SleepOvation mattress.
Is that a good plug?
We'll get back to it.
Today we're gonna talk about nine common running mistakes
and how to avoid them.
And we know what the mistakes are
because we've been doing it for a long time.
- Right between the two of us
we've been running for 55 years.
We're physical therapists.
We have kids that ran in track in college.
- Actually 55 years if you go,
I did last 25 years, but I used to run before that.
So I probably have had-
- Oh.
- Probably up to 60.
- A little incorrect information
and we're using two books:
"Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall.
I believe it is.
And "The Pose Method" by Dr. Nicholas Romanov.
So you are going to get some excellent information.
- All right, by the way,
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- Okay.
- Alright, so we'll get rid of that.
- Enough of that, Bob, let's carry on with the program.
It'll be fine.
- Alright.
So Bob, as usual with running
and as we mentioned, all of our experience and whatnot,
people are really looking for a pretty good program here.
So let's, let's beef it up.
- Alright.
- Posture.
Posture,
it's so important in life from walking
to sitting to standing,
it also is a great influence on your running
and how you run and how much you're going to enjoy running
and reduce pain.
- Exactly, because if you have bad posture
when you're running,
you are enhancing the pain issues you could be developing
because you're getting shock absorption with it.
- Right.
- I mean, so if you've got a bent over posture,
you're going to be putting extra stress on the neck
and upper back while you're running.
- Right.
And what works, so we're talking about,
are you running forward posture,
shoulders rounded forward your head forward,
this type of a posture,
versus more upright.
Now it's true that we promote a slight forward lean,
but with good posture.
And it's a slight forward lean,
not the rounded posture.
And most people that have bad posture when they're running
are not aware of it.
- No they aren't.
It's because love it comes from,
if you sit a lot
and start developing bad posture
where you're just sitting,
it carries over into your walking and running.
I have a lady in our neighborhood, runs a lot,
she looks great as far as for her age and such.
But terrible posture.
I just want to go up to her.
I just, you know, some of us,
- Well, maybe you should stop her and politely-
- No, there's no polite way to do this.
- Take a picture of her and give her the picture.
- That would probably help, like video of it.
- That could make a big difference.
- It does make a big difference.
And you probably should have somebody take video of you.
- Exactly. - You'd be very surprised-
- Look at your posture.
- Yeah and the other thing is
with good posture, you're going to breathe better.
Your diaphragm is in a better position.
My son was a pretty good runner.
- Oh he was good.
- And their whole team,
they worked on this.
And one kid alone.
He started running faster times
just by working on his posture.
- Well, you get more oxygen in.
- You get more oxygen in.
- And carbon dioxide out.
The body's going to function much more efficient.
We better go on to number two.
We kicked that posture one to death.
Not relaxed.
- Yes.
- Now this is something I was very, as a young runner,
I'm talking back in middle school and early high school.
I would,
I didn't know but I would-
- You clench your fists.
- I clench my fists, I clench my jaw,
and I'd be thinking I'm running really, really fast
and everything was just turning into a tight ball.
And then I was coached
and make sure you relax your breathing.
I had one coach telling me
if your fingertips are just barely touching your thumb,
then your hands are okay and then relax your jaw.
And so that's what I focus on
is that my jaw joggling around there.
You know, not going (gargling)
but everything under control
and my fingertips are just touching,
my shoulders are relaxed.
And you'll be amazed how much more energy you have.
- Yeah, you're expanding the energy by squeezing your arms,
squeezing your hands.
It's just very natural.
- Do you have anything you focus on to stay relaxed?
- No, but I do realize like sometimes my arms
almost start feel a little bit numb.
Like I've been tightening it up too much.
- What the heck are you thinking about when you run?
- I'm thinking about, I don't wanna mention it.
- Well okay.
- I don't wanna mention the name.
- This is family show.
Anyways.
Number three,
and this is probably more important
if you're running for a time or possibly in a race,
but not so much if you're running down a hill
and I learned this from a cross country coach I had,
he said, take advantage of the gravity, let things go.
But within control,
so there's that happy medium.
I mean, I've let it go so much
where I sprained my ankle on rough terrain.
- oh sure, you're going so fast?
- Yeah, it's like I was overdoing it.
But I can't tell you how many events I've been in.
I don't know if you call them races,
but you know fun runs.
In my mind I'm racing. (laughing)
- Right.
- But downhill almost invariably
I would pass a number of people
I've never been passed going down the hill.
It's because everyone seems to hold back.
- Well, they're putting the brakes on.
And when you put the brakes on,
you're actually expending energy,
- Right.
- and you're losing time.
You're losing speed.
- Right.
And it's just, it's not efficient.
- I find quite often,
and we'll talk about this coming up real fast, Brad.
But I think a lot of times you take a little bit
of shorter stride going down a hill.
'Cause a lot of times people are putting that brake on
by putting in longer strides.
I think a lot of times, if you do the shorter stride.
- And then also with that, talk about injuries,
you get too much impact.
- Right and bang, bang, bang.
- Your whole body is taking this absorption
and the joints and the hip and the back
and the neck and your eyes and everything, you know,
the whole body is,
so work on going downhill in a relaxed fashion,
let gravity help.
And basically, you know, it's easy.
Let gravity work.
- Yeah.
- You don't have to think about that.
- Exactly. - But in running you do.
- Right.
- All right.
And what's the next one, Bob?
- A heel strike versus forefoot.
- Yeah. Are you a heel striker?
Does your heel coming contact with the ground first?
And some people are aware of this.
If you're a new runner or have no history,
this is can be really important.
You hit with your heel and then roll through very common
from the books that we actually recommend reading on here.
If you really want to get into running,
"Born to Run" and "The Pose Method",
both of them, they talk about being a forefoot runner.
You're going to be faster, more efficient.
- More shock absorption.
And there's story after story of people.
And this is anecdotal a little bit,
but they'll say that they used to have a lot of knee pain.
A lot of hip pains,
and they went to the forefoot running and it went away.
- Well I changed from a heel striker to a forefoot runner
about four years ago.
And my, because my back was spondylolisthesis,
running isn't always very fun,
but that helped take the impact off.
And it's improved my running.
- For me, it was my hip.
I mean,
I was having a lot of right hip pain
to the point where I actually had to stop
for a couple of days at a time.
And went to the forefoot and I haven't had trouble since.
- Right.
- I'm doing some other things
in addition to that, but still.
- If you are historically a heel strike runner
and you want to change your forefoot runner, go ahead.
I strongly encourage it, but it will not be easy.
It's going to take, it took me about two years to do it
where I don't have to think about it.
And I got my calves would be sore because-
- They're taking more shock absorption.
- Right, right.
Yeah and your quads, but usually they're not so bad.
So I definitely-
- I would highly recommend it.
You know, maybe it's not for everybody.
Maybe there's people that just anatomically are made
that they are better heel strikers.
- I'd read the book "Born To Run".
If you're a recreational runner
and you'd be wanting to become a forefoot runner,
it's entertaining, it talks about control.
It's an all around book, it's not real scientific.
So I like that because of that, it related to my running.
I don't run to be scientific, I run to enjoy it.
- Gotcha.
- So that that's a good book to read that way.
Long distance runners, it's amazing.
They're, something's wrong with 'em.
- They're a different animal.
- They're running 100, 200 miles, it's crazy.
- Yeah, those are nuts.
- Anyways oh, we can go on about that forever.
What's next? - Number five,
too much vertical movements.
- And this goes along with both books.
- Yes.
- They talk about a runner that is-
- Is going across the bridge-
- Right.
And all you could see was his head
because of the way the bridge was built.
And his head was just going like this.
Most people you're getting that up and down.
- What Brad is indicating,
'cause he might be listening on a podcast
is that the head is remaining level the whole time.
You find that in a good runner.
In a runner that doesn't have really good form,
you see it bobbing up and down.
- Yeah.
And it looks like a bobber in the water.
- Yeah it's not taking shock absorption well then.
- Right and a lot of these points overlap and relate.
Again keep your body healthy.
You went on a run for a long time,
you don't want to conk out by the time you're 60
or whatever the case may be.
- I wonder when that'd be.
- You'll be faster if you're thinking about speed
and it's gonna take less shock on your body.
- Too much vertical movement often does occur
with the heel striker.
- That's true, I would say, yeah more so.
- So if you're learning to forefoot run,
you may take care of that vertical movement.
- Right.
That all flows together
- It all flows together.
- And that flows with the posture thing too.
Everything fits together in life, doesn't it Bob?
- Yes it does.
- Running, everything flows.
We should write a book on this.
- Number six,
too long of a stride.
Now this is such a common misconception, Brad.
I remember being at cross country races
and I hear parents talking about,
Oh, he's a really good runner
'cause he has a really long stride.
It's like, no, he's got really good cadence and he's,
I mean, that's most of the next one, right?
Number seven.
- Right, so six and seven are very closely related.
But I wanted to use the number nine
just because I never used it on a title before.
Usually I use seven.
You know how I feel about seven.
- All right, nine's the new seven.
- Right.
So anyways.
Yeah, if your cadence or,
I always thought
stretch out you're gonna be faster.
- You're covering more ground.
- Right.
And it's just, it's the opposite.
And those two books talk about that in detail.
- So you want to shorten your stride,
but we want to increase the cadence.
The cycling of the foot heel.
- Right.
Where the foot hits the ground,
and this threw me off completely.
But after I started running, it made a lot of sense,
'cause it felt better.
As your foot should not land in front of your hips,
or your center of gravity,
it should run vertical to it.
And that gives you that feeling
and actually like you're falling forward.
If you have that feeling, you're doing it right.
And that your cadence is a little faster,
but you're overall faster
and everything becomes smoother,
and then the head's going, the vertical movement levels out.
- Well, it's funny a good friend of mine,
how he discovered this,
he said he was running behind this elder lady
who was really quite in good shape.
He was in a race against this woman.
- She was in a race too?
- They both were, yeah.
And he's a pretty good runner.
He ran like an 18-minute 5k when he was 40-some years old,
he was a good runner.
And so he's behind this lady
and she's pulling away from him.
And like, I can't understand why is she doing that?
And I saw she was taking shorter strides,
but she was going faster.
- He didn't trip her did he?
- No no, he didn't.
But so he gets behind,
he starts taking shorter strides too
and he finds out, hey, I'm keeping up with her, so.
- How old was she?
- I don't know how old she was,
but she just said-
- Older than him.
- I think maybe so,
but it was a good time for her.
- Yeah, right, she was cooking.
- Yeah.
- So number eight, Brad
- Training intervals.
How to train.
I remember when I first started running longer distance,
you know, 5Ks and 10Ks as an adult.
And I did it for fun and for whatever,
I thought I should run as much as possible.
If I want to get faster, I should run every day,
but I never did cause I didn't have time.
And then I found out if I ran too much,
I'm kind of getting over tired and fatigued.
And then I realized, well,
it's not how much you run or how far you run,
you want to mix it up.
You may want to run six miles one day,
two miles the next
You may want to throw some speed work in there.
If you're doing that kind of training.
- And some strength work in there.
- Right.
- You know, know my son again, when he ran in college,
they absolutely had one day off a week
where they did something else.
Maybe biked, maybe lifted,
but they always had the day off
because it's a lot easier...
recovery times a big part of your training.
And without a doubt so.
- Yeah, so, and if you're just starting running
and you're watching this,
I would say three days a week is a great way to start,
you know, maybe Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
But for sure,
five days a week would be the most if you're starting.
- By the way, I'm thinking of another one
you should have added here, Brad.
- Oh a bonus.
- Well, I think you should have added sleep.
I think sleep is really underrated.
- Ever since you read that book, Bob.
- I know.
- Everything is about sleep, now.
- I know. (Brad laughing)
- It is important.
Lebron James sleeps like 10 to 12 hours
after a basketball game.
- That's because he probably partied
after the game for 12 hours.
- No, no he doesn't.
That's the whole thing, he doesn't, so.
- I hope if he hears it, he doesn't get it insulted.
I'm sure he's watching the channel.
He might be!
- What's number nine, Brad?
- Vary the distances we talked about that
and the venue, change it up a little bit.
Although I'm guilty I have my pattern.
- I am too.
- And I love my route,
but I did a couple other routes recently
because I wasn't at home
and it was like, oh, this is fun, new stuff to look at.
You know?
- Well I found, I just went, the other day,
I went up my neighborhood, out the other way
and that's uphill right away.
That just killed me.
Like I, you know, just because I changed one little thing
and I was dying.
- That is a good point.
If you change your elevations.
Or if you run on a trail versus on concrete,
all that stuff is good for the body.
- I'll just say as much as possible, run in nature.
- Right, well that's why I run my route
because it goes out into the
rural areas versus going into town.
'Cause they live on the border there.
- Right.
And then you get that mental aspect to it.
- Bob, I gotta say this Bob,
these people, if they're still watching,
they've just wasted 15 minutes of their life
us babbling about running.
- Now this is a podcast,
you can have it on while you're running.
- Oh, that's a good point.
- So it's not wasted time.
- It's like you're getting two birds with one stone there.
Throw the podcast, throw the head things right off
into the woods.
All right, well have a good time running.
- Run, run long.