Chi Running
| Author | Date | Message |
|---|---|---|
| Ken Cowley | Mar 31 2011, 5:20pm | Does anyone here have any interest in chi running? I did a course last year with Catherina McKernan and found it extremely beneficial. I'd go so far as to say I might have had to give up running otherwise, as using the technique has been of major help in preventing further damage to my knees. Anyway, she runs the occasional refresher course, but won't have one until the summer. She is also available for private sessions - so I was wondering would anyone else have an interest in booking her for one? I mean, for a refresher course. It might be possible to tie it in with a beginner course. Other than meeting her on the day, I don't know her at all, so this is definitely not a commercial 'ad' for her service, albeit I definitely recommend it. I've been meaning to try out Rene's sessions, which I hear are great - not sure if there's any cross-over there with chi running? Catherina's session is all about teaching the very basic fundamentals of running in what was (to me) an entirely new way of doing it - much more about using gravity and better posture and a mid-foot strike, hence taking a huge amount of pressure off the knees and other joints. At least, that is my (basic) understanding of it. There is a book/dvd you can get as well, by the guy who claims to have invented chi running - his name is Danny Dreyer. Anyone can contact me on kencowley@ireland.com or 085 7129060 about this, or through the forum. Thanks, Ken |
| Rene Borg | Apr 5 2011, 11:01am | Hi Ken, I tried ChiRunning in 2007 after reading the book and it has a lot of good principles and Catherina runs a very good course. There are two very similar schools of thought out there called Pose running and Evolution running which predate ChiRunning. The principles are reasonably similar and differ mainly on the finer points. Essentially, all teach you to use gravity better and adopt a lean from the hips/ankles while usually increasing your cadence. It is essentially the same principles you will practice if you went to a grassy field and ran barefoot 30 minutes per week. The risks, as stated by my physio who has dealt with several ChiRunners, is that whenever you change something you are also changing the stress-load. Danny states in his book that this shifts the load to areas of the body better designed to take them (e.g. away from the knees for instance). However, the transition is the crucial part when pilfering with your running style, regardless of whether you are trying to run barefoot, Chi-running, POSE or anything else. When changing to ChiRunning and similar you easily run the risk of putting more strain on the calf, soleus, achilles etc. and my physio has seen numerous injuries to this area from people doing too much too soon of their newly adopted running style. Catherina does a good job at introducing strengthening principles you should adopt to help this. Danny's book also teaches caution around your volume during the learning phase. It is likely that this advice goes largely unheeded. Personally, and to answer the question on overlap with my sessions, I think changing your running style consciously is putting the cart before the horse. The body will use the muscle memory and strength at its disposal. The reason anyone runs "wrong" is because that is the pattern their muscles have learned to move with and they have built strength to support this movement pattern. If you wish to change it, you need to fix your muscle coordination and correct the weaknesses you have first. An example is glute activation. People who run with a heavy "clomp" often do so because their glutes do not activate at the optimal point of the running movement and/or it fatigues to quickly and shifts the load onwards to the hamstrings. Teach yourself to active your glutes correctly and then strengthen them and your body will automatically use them while running. Your body shuts off fatigued muscles purposefully during exercise, which is likely the main reasno why your running form deteriotates as you fatigue (not lactic acid etc.). My sessions do not set out to correct anyone's running form per se. What the Lydiard Circuit does try to do is transition the body from slower aerobic training safely into faster more intense training. The drills we use, taken from Arthur Lydiard, improve strength, power, coordination, speed and flexibility and as such will indirectly improve your running form if you stay at it. That being said, the best approach is to get an assessment by a strength and conditioning coach to go through the Functional Movement Screening (you can see it here: http://www.functionalmovement.com/SITE/publications/downloads/FMSPB.pdf). Ideally the coach has experience with endurance runners, sprinters or similar. Once your deficits are identified, the coach will first restore normal neuromuscular coordination and then start to strengthen atrophied/under-used muscle areas. This alone will turn you into a better runner with no need to consciusly focus on altering your running style. Expect to take six months to restore normal functional movement and a further year to see significant gains. You are reprogramming years of bad habits essentially. You will also note that if you sprint you are not going to land on your heels even if you are a heel striker. Simply learning to run faster will improve your running style (though not necessarily at slower speeds). If you take on a pair of racing flats, you similarly change your style because suddenly your calf has to stretch further to make up for the lower heel. It takes on average one year of stretching to achieve about 5mm extra flexibility (pretty much the difference between high and low heel shoes) in the ankles, so easy to see why steady transition is essential. Conscious alteration is a very complicated thing to do, once while focusing on "lifting" my knees, I contracted a groin injury because I was using my hip flexors to lift instead of the correct movement. The coach identified that I had poor gluteal activation and stiff hip flexors: together these factors conspired to trigger a chain of events that I could not anticipate. If taking up ChiRunning etc., I would not do it as a once-off but try to work as closely as you can with a specialist and get regularly re-evaluated. Also look out for any signs of lower leg stress developing as this implies your body is not able to keep up with the speed of your change. One blog with more information is here: http://www.triathlontrainingblog.com/articles/chirunningversuspose.html |
| Eoin Keith | Apr 5 2011, 11:12am | Good post Rene, even to a "Don't think about it, just run" advocate :) |
