The folks I coach know how important these three fundamentals are, because they see them addressed or alluded to in nearly every training session they receive from me, each day, week after week…
The folks who attend the clinics or workshops I present get a similar rant from me.
The folks who have and use Runner-CORE, also get it!
If you don’t pay attention to THESE fundamentals, then its only a matter of time before you’re injured or your performance plateaus or really begins to suffer.
It is THESE fundamentals that will ultimately limit how GOOD you can actually be, and how much fun you can have training and racing. And isn’t that why most of us do this? Not to win races or beat our buddies, but simply to find out HOW GOOD we can be, with the goods the Lord gave us, and have fun doing it!
Frans Bosch and Ronald Klomp, in their great book, “Running - Biomechanics and Exercise Physiology in Practice,” say, and I quote: “The economy of running is determined on one hand, by how the degrees of movement are restricted, and on the other hand, on how energy is reused…”
So, can you guess what the FUNDAMENTALS are that I am speaking about?
They are…
Elasticity - Stablity - Mobility.
Elasticity is everywhere in our bodies - every activity or sport we do has an elastic component to it. Elasticity is simply our ability to store and release energy quickly and efficiently. In my Run Easier - Run Faster clinics, I tell the runners point blank that nearly 50% of the energy that is used to run comes from elastic return of the muscle. Most hear it but are skeptical. Its true. Without elasticity, you would have to work a lot harder to accomplish any task, including and especially running, cycling, or swimming.
Mark Verstegen, in his book “Core Performance Endurance,” brings up a great and simple example when discussing elasticity: Try this…put your hand on a table, palm down, and fingers laying flat, and lift your middle finger up and press it down, as hard as you can. Really lift it up high, and then press down hard! Keep at it, and I bet you can feel the fatigue setting in. That’s tiring to do repeatedly.
Now, take your other hand and lift that middle finger up high, and then just release it and watch it snap down! A lot more powerful, yes? Try it again. Look at the difference in power when you use the elastic component available in the tissue vs. just muscleing it up on your own. Not only that, it can be done over and over again with a lot less fatigue, correct?
That’s a great simple example of the power of elasticity! Simply put, the more you can take advantage of elasticity in all its forms, the faster and easier you will run, swim, or bike. In order to take advantage of this natural property of muscle tissue, you need to do a few things…
You need to maintain the natural quality of the tissue. You need to improve your neuro-muscular coordination. Before that though, you need to go back to the other two fundamentals: stabilty and mobility.
All of the core and functional training I prescribe for athletes is, first, simply about improving stability. That is, before we can work on “propulsive strength and power,” we need to ensure we have a basic level of stability strength, first. Stability through the hips and pelvis provides the foundation, or “fixed point,” from which the muscles can stretch and be elastic.
Mobility is the ability to move through a complete range of motion. The greater your mobility, the more relaxed you are, and the more smooth your movements will be, and also, the GREATER the potential to store more energy and release it in a powerful way!
(Go here to view one of my “Endurance Scoop” newsletters, where you will find a “Runner-CORE video TIP” that is a fun and dynamic HIP mobility “warm up” series. All of my athletes use this and variations of it on a regular basis, to improve their overall hip and pelvis mobility.)
As we run, swim, or bike mile after mile or spend too much time sitting (like I am right now writing this!!), mobility can become restricted because of tightness, or dysfunctional movement patterns and mechanics.
In a very real way, mobility and stability form the foundation for elasticity. Elasticity enhances mobility and effects our stability. They are all related, and more importantly, ESSENTIAL for every endurance athlete to develop, and THEN maintain!
Think of that finger exercise again: As you lift that middle finger up, your other fingers naturally press down into the table more firmly. The harder you press those other fingers down, and the more firm they are, the higher you ca lift that finger and the more powerfully it snaps down. That’s stability in action. Those other fingers provide that foundation for lifting the finger.
Also, as you lift it up, the higher you are able to lift it (e.g. the more mobility you have around those finger joints!), the greater the amount of force can be developed as it snaps down. These rather simple properties that we are all familiar with happen at every moment in our movements.
Most importantly, and here’s the point to all of this: The QUALITY of our movements very often reflect our level of these three fundamentals.
I’m using a simple example of you lifting a finger, but this is what happens throughout your hips and the entire kinetic chain when you move or do any form of exercise!
When I do running motion/gait analysis at clinics and for individual athletes, I’m constantly looking for signs of dysfunctional movement patterns or lack of symmetry from one side to the other, as indicators of injury risk or performance potential.
All of these fundamentals, elasticity, along with mobility and stability, combine to lessen the stress on your muscle and connective tissues. When your body is more elastic (a juicy steak vs. beef jerky), it stretches easily and snaps back powerfully.
Think of it like an elastic band: If you were to grab a new, highly pliable elastic band out of the bag and pull it apart, you know it will stretch easily and has very little risk of breaking. But, grab one out of the drawer that’s been there for a while and is older and less elastic, and then tie a few knots in it to restrict its movement potential, and THEN try pulling it apart. What happens? It’ll break, often a lot sooner than you might have expected. That’s your muscle folks, as you lose the pliability and elasticity because of either dysfunctional movement, tissue tightness, dehydration, and of course various degrees of scar tissue and “trigger points” within the muscle, from over use and the chronic intra-cellular damage that comes from our daily training.
Here’s one running example of how this all works together: think of your leg as it swings through and comes forward after push off. As your leg comes forward, the hamstring is contracting eccentrically (contracting as it is getting shorter - which is highly stressful to the tissue!) and while its swinging forward, it is storing elastic energy that will be released when your foot hits the ground.
What is important here, is that the more mobility and elasticity you have in your hips, and the more elastic your hamstring and surrounding muscle, and the more stable and neutral your pelvis and core are, the the farther that leg can swing forward easily, storing MORE energy, increasing your stride length naturally, and ultimately allowing you to put a lot more force to the ground when your foot hits the ground!
When you look at elite runners, this is what you are seeing - the ability to drive the knee forward more easily (via greater mobility and stabilty), storing lots of elastic energy, and what they get is a very powerful application of force upon touchdown and push off, hence a much longer stride, and faster, more efficient running!
Every movement we perform has an elastic component, and requires a high level of stability and mobility to be efficient and powerful. Its that simple, and that essential!
What are the first steps I’d recommend you take to improve your own levels of these fundamentals?
- Start by making a commitment now, to taking care of your body, and it will take care of you on the race course. The first step is to acknowledge you need to think differently, and realize these fundamentals, more than anything else, will allow you to keep doing the sports you love, and also improve!
- Get the feedback of an expert to evaluate the quality of your biomechanics or do this on your own, by videotaping yourself and looking for signs of a lack of symmetry or alignment. Movement quality is everything! Don’t make the mistake of trying to TRAIN and improve phyisologic benchmarks and race fitness if you are placing it upon bad mechanics. That is an injury and frustration waiting to happen.
- Commit to improving the health and elasticity of your muscles. I highly recommend the products from TP Therapy. These tools are the best I know of to pro-actively improve muscle elasticity. The folks there know how elasticity in your soleus, quadricep, and related IT Band and hips (Piriformis/glute) and other key areas of the body have a HUGE impact on your body’s abilty to function efficiently.
- Commit to the right kind of core and functional strength training that builds balance and stability first and foremost, integrates that strength work in a smart way with flexibility/stretching and mobility training, and THEN progressively builds propulsive strength.
- Always look at the quality of your movements first, when performing any exercise. For example, when doing a lunge or 1-leg squat, are the hip, knee and ankle in proper alignment? Are you able to balance on one leg easily, and be relaxed? Are your glutes and calf muscles firing the way they should be? Are there noticeable differences between your right and left sides? Does your hip drop on one side when you lift your knee on the other side? Imbalances make you a LOT more likely to suffer an injury at some point in time, compared to if your body was in proper balance and alignment.
Every single day we go through the training process, if we aren’t thinking stablity, mobility, or elasticity first, we’re likely to be leading ourselves down a path toward under-achievment and even worse, injury.
What I’ve been talking about is truly PRE-habilitation, so you don’t have to go through RE-habilitation!
Without good core/hip and shoulder stability, you won’t be able to produce force in the right places, and will lack power. Without muscle elasticity, you’ll have to work a LOT HARDER to get any result you aim at, be it run, bike, or swim, and there will be lots more stress on the tissue while you are doing more work. Without a high level of mobility around your joints, every movement you do will be restricted, tense, and a lot less efficient and powerful.
As time goes on, I’ll continue to post a few more tips, and provide a few examples of the specific things I do in my clinics and workshops, to help evaluate movement quality, core strength/stability, and some steps you can take to improve these…
Keep on keeping on…
