Natural Running Symposium – Q & A – Part 1

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John: But anyway, I’m going to throw it out now and we’ll take questions and direct it to who you want. We’re all here, so please, it’s an open forum now.

Audience: I’ve got a comment and a question.

The comment is, I started running, I’m an old guy, and I started running in the ’70s with minimalist shoes, and they were great, and then I ran a lot. And I was a wear tester for Nike years ago, and they had a research place down in Exeter.

And we’d go down there and we’d have our gait analyzed and they’d look at our feet. And they designed these shoes in the ’80s, the high-heeled shoes. And I find it comical, and no offense, but here we are going back to where we were after 30 years of high tech, lots of research, and of the running boom too.

It’s just really amazing! I’ve run for many years, and now I’m to the point where I have all these problems. I can’t run anymore. I have been running barefoot. I ran on the beach this Spring. And it was the first time I could run with no pain in my hip. I think I have some other issues going on here that may not be related to running in high-heels or something. But I’ve found that I felt better barefoot and then I’ve been running in the Vibram shoes a little bit. That was my comment.

Now my question is, I know this is better for me, this will be better for me, and I started running barefoot and with the Vibram shoes. But I had all sorts of issues with my achilles, and just I think what you were talking about. And also, I’m an old guy, I used to run on my toes, because I was faster. But I can’t really do that anymore.

So how do you get to the point where you can get to this? Because I know it’s going to be better for me. If I’m running uphill, my hip doesn’t hurt. If I’m running on the beach, my hip doesn’t hurt. But I’m having a hard time making that leap of faith. But I guess it really is a leap of faith.

Now I don’t have any doubts that this is the right thing to do, but I’m having a hard time moving myself so I can take advantage of this. How do you get to that point where you’re really changing your running style. And I’ve got 50 thousand miles of bad memories, or good memories.

John: Well my point of view on that based on what I’ve seen and heard, and Danny you can answer that as well, I’m sure it’s going to be similar, but you gotta practice it.

And you got to buy again a tool help like Newton, or buy a Vibram. and if the shoe is working for you, that’s great! And as I said before, they’re going to evolve to help with good running form.

One of the things that I know that we’re going to do, and this is been a long time coming, there’s a website called GoodFormRunning.com. And they, no offense, but they are being supported by New Balance and a store called Play Makers out in East Landing I believe, and he’s a big proponent of Good Form Running which is forefoot strike. We’re actually going to be conducting Good Form Running clinics, small groups, as we move forward to help teach that proponent. But like anything, it’s repetition, it’s adaptation, and it’s continue to work at it with the proper tools.

One of the reasons we have shoes is because of our environment. You’re not going to run barefoot on pavement. You’re not going to run barefoot in zero degree weathers. So it’s finding that optimum opportunity to practice and practice and practice, and that’s what Good Form Running is about.

Danny: Well you said it right there, when you run uphill you have no pain, that’s how you run. Slight forward lean. You get your upper body slightly forward, you have to land underneath your mass. And when you land underneath your mass, you don’t push off, you lift your foot off the ground. You’re in a coiled position. Your whole lower body is like a shock absorber.

So we really focused a lot tonight on foot strike, and position of the foot strike, and the lightness of the foot strike, and so forth and so on, but guess what, you run with your whole body. That’s where everybody is missing the picture.

Like the brands. It’s all about the feet. It’s all about the strike. We will guide you from heel strike to toe-off, because we’ve created this over-pronation, we’ve got to guide you from heel strike to toe-off.

It’s about running with your whole body. You have to look to the horizon. You have to be tall through the torso. Good Form Running, that is Newton Running. It’s what we’ve been teaching for the past few years.

Everybody has their variation on Chi Running. Danny Dryer started it many years ago. I’ve started it 15 years ago. Nobody heard about it because I didn’t have a loudspeaker, but I was working with Paul and ? Frasier’s camps right down in San Diego, and we’ve taught thousands of people to run this way. Simply shortening your stride. Simply. Okay, that’s the starter point, shortening your stride.

Tall from your belly button. Because it’s physics and gravity again. Tall from your belly button to your chin; very tall. A lot of coaches used to say run tall, but that’s the tall position, but now tilted all forward. You want to move that way, so you got to tilt that way.

Gravity does not work for or against us, we work against ourselves. So with that statement, gravity is not helping you to get pulled forward, but you’re in a position to just lift your foot off the ground and less of a break in that position.

And the less that you bounce up and down vertically, it’s called vertical oscillation, the less you bounce up and down, the more you’re going to move smoothly or efficiently forward. So as you heel-strike, you’re way low and your upper body is back. You come over your center of mass, then you push, you’re going like this. Okay, so gravity takes more energy to go up, you get slammed down harder. When we’re up, slammed harder. Power out, get slammed. When you run efficiently, you just tilt forward and you slow forward.

Everybody goes, “Wow! Those Kenyans they look like gazelles, they’re just floating across.” You can do the same thing. You have to think light. You have to be relaxed, such as don’t fall forward. Your arms draw back. When you draw your arms back, you put your upper body, your heavy upper body over your running mass. So drawing your arms back, you look into the horizon, tall, lean, high cadence.

I just told you how to do it.

Audience: You can do that. And I was trying to do some of that. And I look like an old man with these short little shuffles.

John: Be careful. We’ve reached a point of no return.

Danny: But there’s a happy place. Your stride might be too short. So you gotta find the stride length, the turnover rate of what makes speed. Turnover rate and stride length, it’s a combo. So when you see the Kenyans they look like they’re stretched out and they’re going to land out in front of their body mass, no! They’re still airborne.

They’re like a foot off the ground. By the time they get to the ground, it’s underneath their mass. So when you see people really over-striding, they’re running 4:50 mile pace. It’s like, “Wow! They have such a long stride.” Yeah, yeah! Hip extension. But they’re landing right underneath their body.

A lot of times there’s a really funky visual when you look at good runners, you’d think they’re over-striding, but they have to do that to run at that pace. But they’re not over-striding, they’re landing under the mass. And you’ll notice huge forward lean and huge arm drawback.

Jamie: I just want to add one quick thing. My rule of thumb is very basic. Most injuries from knees down probably don’t happen in countries where people don’t wear shoes. Half of injuries knees up relate to footwear, but the other half relates to other factors. I feel like my joke is I spend all day in my office just undoing the effects of sitting and wearing shoes.

Danny: Standing is the same.

Jamie: Do everything that he said. And there’s a phenomenon where you can kind of get yourself pinned in a corner if you’ve been running like that for so many years, things can kind of get to the point where you can’t just undo it by changing your stride.

Danny: That’s right.

John: Some people are lazy too.

Danny: You have to have minimum range of flexibility to your hip. You’ve probably really tightened your hip flexors, which makes your hamstrings tight. Almost inevitably correct, anytime you have a pain on one side, the other side is the problem.

If your calf is so tight that you have to use your anterior tibialis to lift your foot up to heel strike, you get the problem in your shin, but the problem was that your calf was too tight and you had to use your anterior tibialis to lift.

So this fore and aft, and you said it beautifully earlier, when we do clinics, the first thing we do is get your posture. It’s called posturing. You got to get your hips level like a bucket. You got to get in an athletic stance. You got to get tall. You have to have posture. And that’s part of it.

And then if you don’t have minimum range of flexibility, yeah, your calves got super tight. Yeah, you weren’t prepared. So all of these things where your achilles got strained, yeah, you were pushing off instead of lifting. So running form is a huge thing, and it’s the whole body. You can’t just strap a pair of shoes on and go, “I’m going to be a natural runner today.”

Because you’ll go out and it feels so free that you’ll overdo it.

Jamie: In other words, don’t run like the logo from the Maine Running Company.

(Audience laughter)

Danny: Well that’s just so classic though. You just pull it off the website and there it is. It’s so classic.

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