Running Man

I had an interesting session with a running coach last Saturday. It took about an hour. The coach came over to my house and we analyzed my running form on the treadmill. She took some videos and then we sat down and talked about some things. The above video is what you are supposed to look like - and I don't. I guess that is like comparing an average golfers swing to the swing of T1ger W00dz (boy we REALLY don't want that traffic).

In general, we found that my running technique is wrong, but not drastically. There are things that I will need to work on this winter.

I heel strike too much. In other words, as compared to the runners above, my heel hits first, rather than the flat of my foot. Also I have very little arm swing. I was told that your arms help you drive forward.

The running coach gave me several drills to do in my basement, which will help me I am sure. Now I just need to do them, and when I do my long dreadmill runs I need to work on my new form. I was also told to not try to fix everything at once, or I will blow up. Apparently the brain can only work on one thing at a time, and outside of the major things of the foot strike and arm swing, I also have a bunch of little things that I need to work on as well. So this should be a fun project for me on the treadmill - one day I will work on arms, one day the foot strike, etc. etc. Eventually I will form muscle memory and (hopefully) do these things naturally.

The session with the coach was one hour and cost $60. Well worth it if I can shave 30 seconds per mile off of my times, which should be a piece of cake.

I recommend if you ever get serious about a sport that you take a private lesson once in a while from a professional. They really open your eyes up to a lot of things that you would never know or see and they also help you to train properly so you don't hurt yourself. This goes for everything, not just athletics.