I’d like to share a little training experience I’ve had during one of my recent runs. After reading some material about how to move more economical (eg. using less muscle power to generate more effect), I decided to try and improve my own technique. The obvious advantages are tempting enough:
- increase your maximum speed by letting less of your available muscle power go to waste
- run easier, faster or longer during long-distance exercises
- lower the stress on your joints and tendons
Normally, a human’s leg movements are controlled automatically by the motorical center of his brain. If you try to modify your own running technique using conscious effort, you will probably notice that your movements immediately lose efficiency. The effect will get worse the more you concentrate on moving consciously.
Obviously, nature is already quite good at saving power, so how could we possibly improve upon that?
First, instead of using conscious control, we need to tell our brain how we’d like to move and then just let it figure out the best way to do that. Let’s bring some fun into this: During your next jog, imagine being a spec ops guy. Run lower, use a longer stride and try to step as silent as possible. Do this on a longer distance.
For the first few kilometers, you’ll probably need to apply conscious effort to keep this running style up. Then, gradually, your autopilot should kick in and the movements should become more fluid and less stressfull. When you’re finally at the end of your training session, your legs will probably be exhausted.
Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting that to keep running like this. This way of moving will always be more stressfull than running naturally. But doing this once in a while will reward you with a better feel for your leg mechanics and train those muscles that often become a bottleneck at high speeds. You will step softer, have less airtime and longer ground contact providing for an extended propulsion period!
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