Think Olympic lifts and gymnastics are important fitness tools? Paul Eich says running benefits athletes more.
Fascinated by the idea of the Pose Method of running since I first was exposed to it on CrossFit.com, I finally attended a training seminar with Pose Method creator Dr. Nicholas Romanov on Sept. 17. What I learned is that without Pose training, I am an inadequate coach, and I’m just begging for injury as a runner.
Running is a cycle of three things: pose, fall, pull. That sounds easy, and it is. But it is also much more difficult because to run well you must sustain and embrace the falling. The pose is how you transition from one foot to the other. If you stand on one foot, bend the supporting knee and pull the other foot up under your hip, you’re in the runner’s Pose.
The best runners in the world are running from pose to pose with precise timing such that their supporting foot contacts the ground directly under their center of gravity. When watching the slow-motion review of the seminar participants, though, it was clear we were running from pose to pose with poor timing. We were moving slower, with less efficiency because we were using muscles to do what gravity could do for us. We were running with fear, running with a desire to be in control, running with the equivalent of one foot on the brake and one on the gas.
The good news was we could all be taught to see the waste in our movement in just one session of “coached watching.”