EXCUSES
So you want to be a stronger, fitter, healthier, be better at, and enjoy your sport more, and even have more energy in your day. Plus all the other health stuff that you can get, and hopefully just be a better person.
BUT!!
I'll warn you. There is a very evil bugger out there that is just looking to railroad you, and your good intentions.
This little bloke is so sneaky, and insidious, and powerful. He knows all of your thoughts, desires, strengths, and weaknesses. And do you know what? He lives inside of you. He has been with you since birth.
His main source of power comes from the way he rationalises things and the never ending, delicious prize of......... COMFORT......... NICE!!
He often says. You know you are not as young as you once were. No, you cannot expect to see the same results as when you were younger. He will sit there on your shoulder, and rub your back. There there, yes this really is very hard. But if you just stop I can make you soooo...... comfortable. People say this is really bad for you. It's been scientifically proven. There really is no point is there. It's okay, you tried, and isn't that enough. People won't denigrate you for trying. And then he uses his number one weapon. He EXCUSES you. It's OK.
When you hear those words, know that this is not you, they have not come from the TRUE core of your being. These words are as bad as a cancer, eating you from the inside out. They will infect not only your fitness and health goals, but all the other goals in your life.
In this moment of retreat he has got you, he knows it will be easier next time.
.So, to make sure that does not happen again, realise now that it is a trap, and don't give in to that rubbish.
Remember that NOTHING THAT IS WORTH DOING IS EASY. The harder that your goal is, the more satisfying it will be when you succeed.
You are never too old to begin the journey, to being the best, and strongest you can be, not only in health and fitness, but with family leadership, work ethics, and an inspiration to people that find the negative battle a hard one.
But remember, no one, not even you are perfect. We all fall in moments of weakness, and inattention.
There is a great advertisement on TV at the moment, about people's journey to quit smoking. How they tried, and fell over a number of times, but they got back up, dusted themselves off, and tried again. Get knocked over 7 times, get up 8. Never stopped trying. Never be defeated. Learn from your mistakes,be comfortable at being uncomfortable, and move onwards, always onwards.
So with that in mind. Let's start on a project that has really taken my imagination. After a lot of thinking (very funny mango I heard that!) and research, and requests from some of my running friends I'd like to embark on something that I like to call Natural Form Running,or Evolution Running.
This project is interesting, in that we all think we know how to run. But do we know? Really? I can swim but my technique leaves something to be desired. I can ride a bike okay but I am constantly working on my technique my bike position etc etc. I can hit a golf ball, sometimes but why not all the time because I have no technique. So why is running any different. We really do need to be shown the correct technique on how to run, with good efficient form, and like all other sports you need to work on it all the time. This is not like a computer program where you put in a disc and download the information. This will take time you will fail sometimes, it will take a long time to get the hang of it and it will always be a work in progress. Just like swimming, golf, tennis etc etc. Technique is often the ability to go from good to great, from being always in the world of niggling injuries, to being virtually injury free. So in the next blog I am going to have a stab at trying to explain to those who read this and are interested some basic techniques that will help you to be injury free and enjoy your running what ever your age. So 1st of all here is MY JOURNEY to become a Natural Form Runner.
A JOURNEYMAN
You know I hate the word "barefoot" running
because it conjures up so many false perceptions. I would much rather call it “Good Form Running”
running. I confess I have pinched the name from a You Tube video. But it is
true, changing your gait, and that is what we are talking about really is an evolution. You will evolve a new
style of running from the ground up,(but it is really from the head down) from
the mechanics to the mental imprint that is in your brain. My journey to change
my gait has been an evolution of 2 years now, and it is still ongoing. I
believe I have the basics right, my body has adapted, and my mind has that
blueprint, that makes it an unconscious, and enjoyable habit. But it was not
always so.
So why have I changed my gait and why I decided to end up
in Vibrams. The reasons really are just two. I have, over a long period of time
had a lot of trouble with my hips, lower back, and hamstrings, the latter being
so sore that at times it meant regular
visits to the Olympic Park Sports Medicine Clinic for an autologous blood injection into the hamstring tendons. I
am lucky that I am a responder, and it had me back running within 10 days, then
6 to 8 months later I was back. My back used to get really sore. There were a
lot of times, I just couldn't bend over to pick something up, and my hips felt
hot and tender. There was this little demon sitting on my shoulder (little
bastard)!! that kept saying "how long are you going to keep this up? I
know you are not going to last much longer, you know you’re 55 now, and that's getting a bit old for all
this". But I had another person( yep, I have the whole neighbourhood
sitting on my shoulder) that told me I didn't want to stop. I loved running, it
was a part of my being alive. It is so hard to explain a deep desire, unless
you are talking to someone else who has those same feelings. So I decided that
I was going to keep going for as long as I could, BUT I had to change
something, or many things to be able to do that. I noticed that when I bought a
new pair of runners, all the aches and pains went away for a while, then 3
months later they were back, so I would buy a new pair of shoes, then I tried
alternating shoes but 6 months was the cut-off point. At $250 a pair, I started
to baulk at that. Something was not right. It certainly wasn't a weight issue,
I am 60 kg whringing wet. I had never thought about style or technique, you
just ran. What caught my eye was some of the Ironman triathletes were wearing a
brand of shoe that I had never heard before ,they were called Newtons, they are
a minimalist shoe with an unusual design, underneath they have a raised section
across the front of the foot that pretty well forces you to land across your
forefoot, their heel now has a negative angle to the foot. I had not heard of
this brand before so onto the Internet I got, and then all of the sudden a
whole new world of stride patterns, frequency, length, fore foot landing v.s heel landing, keeping
your legs under your body,keeping your head upright and over your body. I am a sad case, I spent months on the
Internet researching and sorting through all the information. I became a
scientific experiment of one. I became a researcher, and that gave me a really
huge lift in my enthusiasm for running. I've tried all sorts of things. Some
worked, some didn't. I was still running in my normal shoes, and in the end I
basically made a leap of faith and bought a pair of Newton's running shoes.
Wow, how strange are those shoes. It felt like my athletic club days wearing my
spikes for track races. So, armed with all my new information about foot
landing, keeping my legs under the body, frequent striding etc. So, off I went
for my usual 14 km run in my new shoes. It was the only run I did that week.!!!I
was soooo sore!!!! I could hardly walk let alone run. It was the 1st time I took a
cold shower on my legs and hips I was that sore. What the hell happened! I
thought I was going to be a gazelle or something. Okay, this was going to be
more complicated than I thought . Or was it.? I had browsed over the bits that
said, take things easy, don't do too much, resistance training is a great tool.
Funny, how you remember only the things you want to. So back to the drawing
board I went. I kept my new shoes, and bought a new pair of my old running
shoes. And I ran my normal run in my original shoes, and then ran a 1 km block
around our home in the Newton's running shoes ,landing or should I say caressing the ground with my forefoot for a
minute, and then going back down to my old stride. Changing to the new gait felt
very strange, and I had to concentrate on every step.It felt like I had to
sprint because that's how sprinters run. So now I could go back to my normal
training program, and gradually 1 km turned into 2, then 3, then 5, but it took
me 6 months just to get used to my Newtons, and getting the hang of this fore
foot running, or at least landing on the front of my feet. I started doing
squats, calf raises, and a whole lot of other weight training as well . Then a
friend of mine gave me the book Born to Run, and I am sure everyone has heard
about it these days . It was a good read, no doubt about it, but, I became more
interested in the story behind it. The evolution of us humans as a species. How
did we manage to survive. You know, just look at us. We are so weak and small have
no speed to write home about, yet we dominate .So back to the Internet I went
to look up all of the names of the people in the book, and again a whole new
world opened up. Eventually I realised that there are different hypotheses
about our evolution, but this one seemed to connect with me. That we really are
set up to run, and our intelligence developed through our ability to think
ahead about what an animal will do to get away from you, and if you don't catch
that animal you will not survive. These days watching documentaries on other
animal species like lions and cheetahs, you can see the same things, how they work as a team,
how they use different techniques on different animals in different situations
to get their meal, to survive. We are no different and over time we have
evolved. I started to ask questions, and finding answers gave me a whole new
picture. It wasn't just about how you landed on your feet, it became a package
deal. How you hold your head, your arms, have your body lean forward from the
ankles, your stride frequency and how to turn your stride into a light cyclic
motion. Other issues popped up as well. Questions like why do we have the 4
toughest strongest tendons in the arch
of our foot and lower calf. Why do we have 26 bones in our feet and ankles. Why
have we got this ability to store energy in these tendons and muscles and be able
to release it as forward motion. In the end, I became convinced that our bodies
had evolved over millions of years to what we are today. So that we can run. We
can think, and unlike other animal species we have this ability to be able to
keep ourselves cool through sweating. And we think we are so smart that we can
change that in 30 years with a pair of running shoes. Because modern man knows
better!! All I can say to this is beware of the almighty dollar!
So I ran in my Newtons. As I said they had this raised
section in the forefoot part of the shoe and a low heel and little else by way
of support, and they felt good after another 6 months. But at the same time, I
changed alot of other things. How I carried myself, leaning forward from the
ankles Letting the hips keep a neutral level position relieved my back pain, keeping my legs under me stopped the hip pain,
lifting my lower leg before I brought it forward stopped me from tripping
over things, like stones, and cracks in the footpath. For a while I forgot
about heart rates and pace times as I journeyed through this time. And I loved
it. I couldn't wait to run again to work on something new. Researching through
the Internet for articles and scientific papers. I had pads full of notes and
sore eyes from the computer screen. Again, things started to evolve. Could you
really run without shoes? I could have ended it there and continued on my way
with my Newtons or other racing flats, but I guess I have a bad habit of being
a very curious person, and that gave me the push to see if I could. I believed
I had the basics okay, and to a large extent the pain in my body had gone. So I
went back to being a scientific specimen again, and I ran barefoot around our
local football oval, and….. It felt just great! It was the most wonderful
experience, I just couldn't believe it, but I had learnt my lesson and only did
4 laps. I was sore in the calves the next day, but okay. So I could run on
grass, but I heard about people doing marathons barefoot. Abebe Bikila ran barefoot
in the 1960 Rome Olympics, Zola Budd on the track later on. I found a lot of
barefoot websites, hell there were people everywhere doing it. But only small
in number, and they were classed as weird but, they were capable. So I ran on
the road one night 1 km around our block at home. Just nice and slow, and it
felt…. Fine. Again there was this incredible "talk" between my feet
and brain I really felt like a kid in a lolly shop. Also, a big change occurred
to my gait, unconsciously I stopped kicking my calves and ankles. I watched my
feet as I ran and what I saw was this change in how my feet were coming through
under my body. In shoes I always ran pigeon toed, and now without even knowing
it or being conscious of my feet they were now facing straight and I
was landing right across the ball off my feet. Amazing. Over the next month my
hip pain disappeared altogether. I chose to run in Vibrams, simply because I
want some protection for my feet . I felt uncomfortable thinking I might cut
myself or would damage the soles of my feet. But I have to say it was the
change in the way I run, not the shoe that I am in, and I want to be branded an
“Evolution Runner” not a “Barefoot Runner”. I now run in Vibrams all the time, simply because I love that talk
between my feet and my brain. I feel connected to the earth in a way that was
not possible in a supported shoe. I still work on my techniques, landing on my fore
foot, just caressing the ground with my heel, running with bent knees, keeping
that cyclic action, body angle right, practising increasing stride frequency to
increase pace. I now run longer, staying pretty well injury free, and have
addressed all the issues I had before I started on this journey. I have run
half marathons, trails, and marathons in my Vibrams. I have a picture of myself
in a marathon years ago and my leg is just straight out in front of me landing on my heel
with a dead straight leg, and now I just smile, because I am a long way from
that now.But I can't stress enough that it is a journey, not something you can
do in a month. And it continues to be a journey even after 2 years. It is a
case of millimetre by millimetre, baby steps. But I feel more connected to
running, not only with the ground beneath me, but because I feel now I have
gone back to how we evolved to run. And it is interesting that the shoe
companies are now following us. Still wanting to make a dollar! But I am in a
happy place now, as far as my running is concerned and there is no dollar value
in that, because it is priceless.
We were born to run.
Dr Lieberman was a major part of the story behind the story. He is very interesting
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