looks like it might be a fun travelogue..

the 'lost art' is coming it a bit strong, though. Kipchoge might beg to differ..

These running technique analysts are essentially theologians, or poets in the Auden sense, 'poetry makes nothing happen'.

Jack Daniels sent pictures of runners he'd tested in the lab to a bunch of different coaches, none of whom could identify the efficient runners.


The study was reproduced quite recently, with identical results.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17461391.2020.1824020?journalCode=tejs20


Also see the work by Dr Stephen McGregor,
"McGregor’s studies indicate that there is no such thing as good running form. "
https://www.podiumrunner.com/training/qa-an-in-depth-look-at-better-running-form/


Every shred of evidence points to this conclusion. There is no iota, scintilla, jot or tittle of evidence to the contrary. Of course this doesn't stop the pontifications about how to improve other people's run form..

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"It is a good feeling for old men who have begun to fear failure, any sort of failure, to set a schedule for exercise and stick to it. If an aging man can run a distance of three miles, for instance, he knows that whatever his other failures may be, he is not completely wasted away." Romain Gary, SI interview

yeah, so far it feels fun and if nothing else i sometimes find books like this inspire me to grind out a bit of extra training for a while.

but they also usually involve a fair deal of time spend attacking strawmen or pretending that the author is uncovering some incredible truth that nobody else is talking about.

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____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

The summary is disappointing because it just says that no coaching characteristic made a difference. It doesn't say how well they did generally. (E.g. maybe they all got perfect scores, and that's why coaching characteristics didn't help).

That could presumably all be easily cleared up in the full text, which I couldn't immediately get at.

n=1 I think I'm great at it! My case study was I showed up at a local, small-time triathlon like 15 years ago, thinking I might do well overall. As I parked, pre-dawn, I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye of someone running to warm up. And in that instant I knew I was not going to win the overall. Sure enough, I look around at the swim start, and there's Chris McCormack, who decided to show up at a little local triathlon...

Edit: Of course I wasn't estimating "economy" or scientific things. Just "baller." It's pretty easy, I think, to recognize baller runners or swimmers. Cycling is much harder.

yep - i know a guy who's a very good triathlete and experience coach/physiologist. more than once i've seen him call the winner of a race very early. he called the women's olympic tri on the first k of the run, and said, "oh, just look her hip angles."

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____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

You lured me in with the title. When I was in my late 20's I joined my first Marathon training group and spent two years running with guys 2-3 times my age who had done hundreds of Marathons. On long runs I loved to get them taking about the lost art of running. One of those guys was almost 70 years old and still running 3:15 Marathons. He never trained with a watch or heart rate monitor, etc. and had solid advice about how to run using traditional and classic training. I moved from that town after two years with the group and have been running on my own in small rural towns with very few runners ever since. I am now a masters athlete myself and would love to have menotrs live I did 15-20 years ago. I will have to look into this book. I think I would like it.

Run form (or running with proper biomechanics https://www.scienceofrunning.com/....html?v=47e5dceea252) does matter. How to get someone to change their run form, if it's possible and how to do it, and if so hard to do is it even preferable to try to do so, are some of the things that are being debated.

It's true, there is no such thing as good running form. But there is most definitely such thing as bad running form. The thing to look for in elite races is not the elements of form that you most commonly see, but rather the elements of form that you do NOT see.

My thought on running is that because running is an extension of what we do in walking (and you can literally see it in the gait of a sprinter when they walk), each individual human has a zillion steps to practice their most efficient individual gait, just like each elite swimmer gravitates to technique that can actually be wildly different within certain parameters. But humans inherently gravitate towards what works for their body in every sport. The difference for running is that we walk ALL the time. We don't swim all the time, we don't ski all the time, we don't hit baseballs all the times, we don't serve with a tennis racket all the time.

The difference between the other sports and running is humans are evolved to run and walk so we find our best run form for our spine and leg/foot mechanics from the first day we walk. We can't unwire this. Other sports we literally learn later in life. There are Adult Onset Swimmers but zero Adult Onset runners. Everyone picked up running roughly between age 10 months and 18 months. So its "DONE" at that point. No undoing it.

@Dev

You are right, but I still think you give too much emphasis on the 'learning over years' for human running.

The running motion is special for humans because our brains/spinal cord our uniquely wired to optimize it automatically. People automatically fall into the best running motion for their size, shape, and physical ability because of our human genetic ability that is hardwired in to optimize it. Practice over years has less to do with it than the fact we humans are literally primed to optimize it even with little stimulus.

Compare to swimming or other non-natural motions where it often takes years even just to get to a functional level because our body/brain doesn't find the optimal technique naturally. (Weismuller swimming head-out of water freestyle, anyone?)


You mess with runners' natural form at great risk. Try eliminating the low arm-swing of Ryan Hall in his 2:0x marathon primes, and you'd almost certainly worsen his running at that time. Some elite runners have crazy leg swings (that go outward) but again are fixed at great risk.


And as an aside, given the variety of run techniques that we've seen, at a range of leves including elite/pro, it does make you wonder whether pigeonholing every swimmer into a wannabe SunYang is productive. There's almost certainly an area of (small) swim variance that depends on body type, etc. - trouble is identifying the best one for a particular swimmer since the brain doesn't automatically choose it.

As I've posted before, I sometimes see myself in car windows and say "Poetry in Motion, baby!!!"

Well, it may be Vogon poetry ... haiku at the very best, or maybe some beatnik free-verse word-jazz in the Charlie MacKenzie style

Still, it's Poetry - and Poetry is Art, so ...

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Two thumbs up for the Vogon allusion.

REALLY how did my 62 year old female client ( running for years) go from a 2:27 marathon to a 2:08 in one year without losing a lb. If it was all done so long ago. I have hundreds of examples.

Old dogs can change habits much faster then young pups. They have just become to lazy to be a learner as they think they know everything by now.

Also walking and running are like comparing swimming front crawl and breast stroke.

You relate everything to your back issue. BUT how do you know your RUN form / BIKE form didn't cause your back issue and the other way around??? maybe your Ironman shuffle wired your back and not the other way around. Not trying to be rude just why think that way.

Also if you do watch an elite field they all do have the same form of timing at the same pace. But once the speed is increased and the effort is suffering for some the form breaks on the elites as well it is very visual and easy to see if you know what to look for just like swimming.

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Technique will always last longer then energy production. Improve biomechanics, improve performance.
http://Www.anthonytoth.ca, triathletetoth@twitter

You have a 2:08 62 year old marathoner that you brought there from 2:27?

Who is this 62 year old woman?

Let's take me out of the equation. You are being rude (not because of your hypothesis) but because you don't know the full history and making leaps based on incomplete info. I had two really bad crashes and spent several years in really bad lumbar pain and the final straw was an accident with an ART chiro after which I lost control over my left leg. This is not related to any shuffle. From the data out there, I can't see any publication that shows There is correlation between people doing Ironmans and back pain. You're going to have to come up with something more sound than that.

But putting that aside I am generally running and living pain free now after a long period of rehab. Accidents really suck.

Now does your hypothesis of people doing Ironman hurting their bodies have merit. I don't know but we should span a wide swath of athletes to try to see if is has any merits. If I do a general survey of my peer group that does Ironman compared to those who do not do sport, I'd say the Ironman group is generally doing better (I am in 55-59)

I cannot give clients person information without consent but I can ask them and personally message you . I have tons of clients over 55 that are faster now then 10-15 years ago or all time. 66-70 year old.setting 5 km personal bests and bike power. They have never been taught proper form and with it get big gains.

They all come to me with issues and once we correct them we get massive results.

I know you have a history. I have been hit three times with serious injuries as well.

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Technique will always last longer then energy production. Improve biomechanics, improve performance.
http://Www.anthonytoth.ca, triathletetoth@twitter

62 year old woman has the female marathon world record? ok obviously you meant half marathon. in the change you mention yea those are easy gains to be made shuffle jog to jog pace. but when you finally get her into a running form , time improvements will be more miniscule

Haha I ment half marathon.

Why would form improvement be minuscule.

Increase a stride by 10 cm over 10,000 steps an hour is huge.

Plus learn proper form to keep from calapsing on a lung makes breathing easy and just like swimming making your brain enjoy running and being relaxed vs struggling for air constantly.

What do you think running form is???

Why in swimming form is so important but run form is bull shit??? Why do all the top running look identical in form and rythm. then the top swimmers have huge difference in their form.

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Technique will always last longer then energy production. Improve biomechanics, improve performance.
http://Www.anthonytoth.ca, triathletetoth@twitter

Sorry I should add for you. She wore the same non bounce shoes as well. No shoe doping. In fact with all my clients we have found very little increase in overall pace with the nike next percent ect in top speed.

But what they do is make you old form better as you have to tilt over the ball of the big toe faster and with better timing which is one " form issue" that goes as you get tired running.

So the shoes help you keep better form. Unless you already do a very good job of pivoting.

It doesnt make you faster it makes your form last longer.

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Technique will always last longer then energy production. Improve biomechanics, improve performance.
http://Www.anthonytoth.ca, triathletetoth@twitter

Many people claim they make great gains from consciously changing their run form but it has never been backed up by studies or experiments where other factors are controlled for. It seems that for most making conscious technique changes actually impacts running economy in a negative way.

Swimming and running is very different. Anyone can run without any instruction on how to do so or seeing anyone else do it. Ask someone to swim butterfly without instruction, or seeing anyone else do it, and the result will be very different. Running is in our dna and swimming is not. It's something we have to be taught.

Running economy mostly improves by running a lot, running fast(sometimes) and running with others. That top runners converge to similar form after running a lot for years, running fast and doing a lot of running in groups is logical since it's a natural movement for us. Swimming on the other hand is a technique/movement constructed by us which might lead to bigger differences in form.

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BA coaching http://www.bjornandersson.se

you missed my point. you got her from shuffler to jogger. cadence and stride length are obvious fixes. now jogger to runner is next step - where as anyone who finally has made it to a running form - this is where tweaks maybe not worth it. (such as how people swing their arms is highly individualized)

correct..

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4887549/
“Interventions concerned with instructing runners to retrain their running biomechanics towards a specific global running technique, such as Pose, Chi and midstance to midstance running, has generally resulted in either no improvement in RE [62, 85] or a worsening of RE [157].”

Basically it's the Centipede’s Dilemma:

A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, “Pray, which leg moves after which?”
This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
She fell exhausted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.

– Katherine Craster

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"It is a good feeling for old men who have begun to fear failure, any sort of failure, to set a schedule for exercise and stick to it. If an aging man can run a distance of three miles, for instance, he knows that whatever his other failures may be, he is not completely wasted away." Romain Gary, SI interview

Does that mean minding where your foot strike is, in terms of your breathing pattern, so you can either avoid a side stitch or possibly run your way out of one, without having to pull over & recalibrate?

Yeah, I do that, when needed

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I don't know where my post draft went because could have sworn I wrote it for this thread. But you could conceivably fix an elite runner's biomechanics to where it looks good on film...but they end up slower and actually get injured if you don't do this in a controlled fashion. But it's more likely that you should just leave their form alone. We all talk about Lionel's form, but the more I know about running, the more I think other than minor improvements he should be left alone in that department because he's FLYING with his current form.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.