Et siis alustuseks eesti keeles lahti seletatuna -
kui tahad kiirelt maratoni joosta, siis selle aluseks on et jooksed poolmaratoni veidi kiiremalt.
selleks, et poolmaratoni joosta sellise kiirusega, pead jooksma 10km veidi kiirema tempoga jne
Siin pole küll otseselt kaugemale mindud aga osades artiklites on välja mindud 100m kiiruseni.
ja järeldus oleks tegelikult selline: Hea maratoniaja aluseks on sinu põhi kiirus, ehk siis maximaalne kiirus.
Ise olen sellega täiesti päri ning selle kohta võib veel öelda, et kiirema jooksu aluseks on piisav lihasjõud,
ja piisav lihasjõud ning kiirus annavad parema jooksuökonoomsuse. Mida tugevam oled, seda kiirem. Thats it!
Five Pace Theory
By Frank Horwill
A few years ago on a lecture tour of South Africa, I put forward a theory about training for the marathon. (In 1974 I put forward another theory about training at five different paces over 14 days – Coe adopted it successfully). The marathon theory was as follows:-
1.Five times the 10K time minus 10 minutes was a good predictor of marathon time.
2.If we accept (1) above, we must train weekly to improve the 10K time. In any case, 10K work is 90 per cent of the VO2 max.
3.In order to improve the 10K time, it’s necessary to have a good 5K time (twice the 5K time plus 60secs = 10K potential). So, 5K pace work must be fitted in to the marathon schedule. It’s 80 per cent aerobic and 95 per cent of the VO2 max.
4.A good 5K time is dependent on a good 3K time. The 3K is 60 per cent aerobic and 100 per cent of the VO2 max. 3K speed must be part of the schedule.
5.If we wish to run a marathon at 5 minutes per mile, we must rehearse that speed weekly, starting with 9 miles and add a mile when achieved up to 18 miles.
6.Psychologically, it makes sense to be on one’s feet for the same duration as the marathon target time. If the target is 21/2 hours, we must build up to run for that duration even though we may only run 22 miles in that time.
7.The volume of running required for the marathon has been grossly exaggerated. It’s somewhere between double the marathon distance (52 miles) and treble the distance (78 miles).
Six months later back in England, I received a letter from a coach in Cape Town. After my lecture there, he went back to his female marathoner and said these words to her, "I’ve just listened to a mad Englishman who has a theory on marathon training…" They decided to give it a try. Her schedule was as follows:-
Day 1 – Duration run, building up to 21/2 hours.
Day 2 – Recovery run – 35 mins
Day 3 – Marathon rehearsal run – 9 miles at 6min/mile up to 18 miles.
Day 4 – Recovery run – 35 minutes
Day 5 10K pace session – 3 x 2 miles - with 90 sec rest.
Day 6 – rest
Day 7 – 5K pace session - 4 x 1 mile with 60 sec rest
Day 8 – Recovery run – 35 minutes
Day 9 – 3K pace session – 8 x 800m with 90 sec rest
Day 10 – Recovery run – 35 minutes
Day 11 – Start Day 1 again
The athlete in question was ranked 5th in South Africa when she entered the national marathon championship held in blistering heat (90oF). She won in 2hrs 39 and later run sub 2hrs 30.
Five of my athletes entered the London Marathon. They all had marathon times before joining my squad. All five ran personal best times using the above programme. By the way, an athlete’s success is 90 per cent down to the athlete and 10 per cent the coach. Not vice versa as many think.
15 veebruar 2012
14 veebruar 2012
Maratoni kiirusetreeningust
Ajakirjast "Running Times" juulu/august 2010
Speed Work for Marathoners
THE WHYS AND HOWS OF SHORT,
FAST RUNNING FOR A FASTER MARATHON
IN JANUARY, Brett Gotcher ran 2:10 in his marathon debut. It was the fourth-fastest debut in U.S. history. When asked about his training program in post-race interviews, I was candid about the weekly mileage I prescribed for him as well as the marathon-specific workouts and even his short, fast speed workouts. It was these short, fast workouts that prompted several questions as to why a marathoner would do 200m and 400m repeats. Here’s why I had Brett run these workouts and why I think marathoners can benefit from some short, fast repeats during this last 10 weeks before the marathon.
WHY TO INCLUDE SPEED
The reason for including short, moderately fast workouts in marathon training is threefold:
1) Short, fast repeats improve your running economy (the amount of oxygen consumed at a given pace), and improved running economy is very important in the marathon. Th ink of it as getting better gas mileage — you can go longer before running out of gas.
2) Short, fast repeats break the monotony of training. Often, marathon training starts to put runners in a pace rut. Fast repeats challenge you to turn your legs over and help avoid the “marathoner shuffl e.”
3) Short, fast repeats allow you to insert some volume of running at a pace that is significantly faster than marathon race pace. For example, Brett’s goal marathon pace was 4:55 per mile so we were doing workouts at 4:15–4:40 per mile, which allowed 4:55 to feel easier. Th e same will hold for you.
HOW TO INCLUDE SPEED
While you may have to modify the exact placement of the workouts based on your individual training and racing schedule, here is how Brett and I inserted speed work into his successful marathon plan.
In the last eight weeks leading into his marathon (Chevron Houston), we performed two 200m repeat sessions. The first was eight weeks before the marathon and the second was four weeks out from race day. We also performed two 400m repeat sessions — six weeks and two weeks prior to race day. The basic plan was to perform some short, fast running every other week during the last two months before race day.
For both 200m repeat workouts, I had Brett run 20–24 times 200m with a 200m jog between. Th e pace was 5K to 10K which isn’t too taxing to run for 200m but gives the body/mind 2.5 to 3 miles of running at a pace quite a bit faster than marathon pace. For Brett, the goal was to run 32–33 seconds per 200m (4:16–4:24 pace) and for the recovery jogs to be moderate as well. In other words, he should not be doing the slow, sprinter recovery stumble but should jog slowly but steadily between each repeat.
For the 400m workout, we performed the early workout (six weeks out from the marathon) as 12–16 times 400m with a 200m jog and the later session (two weeks prior to race day) as 8–10 times 400m with a 200m recovery jog. Again, these were fast but controlled efforts and we ran the repeats in a progressive manner. The goal was to run them in sets of four at the following intensities — half marathon, 10K, 5K, 3K.
Many runners think about 200m and 400m repeats only as preparation for a 5K or 10K. But you can adjust the intensity of the repeats for marathon training, making them less anaerobic or tiring than these workouts are for 5K–10K runners. All the short, fast workouts Brett did were very controlled. Could he have run them faster? Of course! But that wasn’t the goal. Th e goal was to augment the marathon workouts with some faster running to keep his form perfect and his legs fresh. Mission accomplished. •
SAMPLE MARATHON SPEED WORK PROGRAM
Eight Weeks to Race Day: 20–24 x 200m with 200m jog at 5K to 10K pace
Six Weeks to Race Day: 12–16 x 400m with 200m jog in sets of four at half marathon, 10K, 5K and 3K race pace
Four Weeks to Race Day: 20–24 x 200m with 200m jog at 5K to 10K pace
Two Weeks to Race Day: 8–10 x 400m with 200m jog in sets of four at half marathon, 10K, 5K and 3K race pace
COACH’S NOTES
MODIFICATIONS FOR ENDURANCE MONSTERS
These short, fast repeats should not be used, however, for runners who struggle with speed work. These “endurance monsters” can run all day but find that speed work leaves their legs feeling flat for several days post-workout. For example, I didn’t include these 200m and 400m workouts with another athlete I coach, Paige Higgins, who ran 2:33 in the same race where Brett ran 2:10. With Paige, we did fartlek sessions (like 20–25 times 1 minute on with 1 minute off recovery jog between), but these were more like a tempo run with surges than a track workout. Her pace stayed closer to 10K to half marathon pace. For her, this exposure to running slightly faster than marathon pace works much better than running 200m and 400m repeats at 5K to 10K pace.
Speed Work for Marathoners
THE WHYS AND HOWS OF SHORT,
FAST RUNNING FOR A FASTER MARATHON
IN JANUARY, Brett Gotcher ran 2:10 in his marathon debut. It was the fourth-fastest debut in U.S. history. When asked about his training program in post-race interviews, I was candid about the weekly mileage I prescribed for him as well as the marathon-specific workouts and even his short, fast speed workouts. It was these short, fast workouts that prompted several questions as to why a marathoner would do 200m and 400m repeats. Here’s why I had Brett run these workouts and why I think marathoners can benefit from some short, fast repeats during this last 10 weeks before the marathon.
WHY TO INCLUDE SPEED
The reason for including short, moderately fast workouts in marathon training is threefold:
1) Short, fast repeats improve your running economy (the amount of oxygen consumed at a given pace), and improved running economy is very important in the marathon. Th ink of it as getting better gas mileage — you can go longer before running out of gas.
2) Short, fast repeats break the monotony of training. Often, marathon training starts to put runners in a pace rut. Fast repeats challenge you to turn your legs over and help avoid the “marathoner shuffl e.”
3) Short, fast repeats allow you to insert some volume of running at a pace that is significantly faster than marathon race pace. For example, Brett’s goal marathon pace was 4:55 per mile so we were doing workouts at 4:15–4:40 per mile, which allowed 4:55 to feel easier. Th e same will hold for you.
HOW TO INCLUDE SPEED
While you may have to modify the exact placement of the workouts based on your individual training and racing schedule, here is how Brett and I inserted speed work into his successful marathon plan.
In the last eight weeks leading into his marathon (Chevron Houston), we performed two 200m repeat sessions. The first was eight weeks before the marathon and the second was four weeks out from race day. We also performed two 400m repeat sessions — six weeks and two weeks prior to race day. The basic plan was to perform some short, fast running every other week during the last two months before race day.
For both 200m repeat workouts, I had Brett run 20–24 times 200m with a 200m jog between. Th e pace was 5K to 10K which isn’t too taxing to run for 200m but gives the body/mind 2.5 to 3 miles of running at a pace quite a bit faster than marathon pace. For Brett, the goal was to run 32–33 seconds per 200m (4:16–4:24 pace) and for the recovery jogs to be moderate as well. In other words, he should not be doing the slow, sprinter recovery stumble but should jog slowly but steadily between each repeat.
For the 400m workout, we performed the early workout (six weeks out from the marathon) as 12–16 times 400m with a 200m jog and the later session (two weeks prior to race day) as 8–10 times 400m with a 200m recovery jog. Again, these were fast but controlled efforts and we ran the repeats in a progressive manner. The goal was to run them in sets of four at the following intensities — half marathon, 10K, 5K, 3K.
Many runners think about 200m and 400m repeats only as preparation for a 5K or 10K. But you can adjust the intensity of the repeats for marathon training, making them less anaerobic or tiring than these workouts are for 5K–10K runners. All the short, fast workouts Brett did were very controlled. Could he have run them faster? Of course! But that wasn’t the goal. Th e goal was to augment the marathon workouts with some faster running to keep his form perfect and his legs fresh. Mission accomplished. •
SAMPLE MARATHON SPEED WORK PROGRAM
Eight Weeks to Race Day: 20–24 x 200m with 200m jog at 5K to 10K pace
Six Weeks to Race Day: 12–16 x 400m with 200m jog in sets of four at half marathon, 10K, 5K and 3K race pace
Four Weeks to Race Day: 20–24 x 200m with 200m jog at 5K to 10K pace
Two Weeks to Race Day: 8–10 x 400m with 200m jog in sets of four at half marathon, 10K, 5K and 3K race pace
COACH’S NOTES
MODIFICATIONS FOR ENDURANCE MONSTERS
These short, fast repeats should not be used, however, for runners who struggle with speed work. These “endurance monsters” can run all day but find that speed work leaves their legs feeling flat for several days post-workout. For example, I didn’t include these 200m and 400m workouts with another athlete I coach, Paige Higgins, who ran 2:33 in the same race where Brett ran 2:10. With Paige, we did fartlek sessions (like 20–25 times 1 minute on with 1 minute off recovery jog between), but these were more like a tempo run with surges than a track workout. Her pace stayed closer to 10K to half marathon pace. For her, this exposure to running slightly faster than marathon pace works much better than running 200m and 400m repeats at 5K to 10K pace.
13 veebruar 2012
Mis on kiirusetrenn? Milline kiirus on aluseks võistluskiirusele?
Mai 2010, "Running Times" ajakirjast
Speed Development
There’s speed work, and then there’s speed work. When most runners talk about doing speed work, they mean things like mile repeats at 10K race pace, or a set of fast 200s, or maybe even a 5-mile tempo run. Such workouts, of course, are integral to becoming a faster runner. But they’re not really speed work, if by “speed” we mean the fastest you can run for a very short distance. When I talk about speed, I mean your maximal velocity — your top speed — which even world-class sprinters can sustain for no more than 30–40m.
But here’s the thing: Th is type of speed is also integral to being the best distance runner you can be. Improve your basic speed, and you’ll run faster in all your races, even the marathon. Th at’s why all the runners I coach, such as 2010 national indoor 3K champion Renee Metivier Baillie and 1:02 half marathoner Brent Vaughn, do regular speed-development workouts. To understand why, let’s start by looking more closely at what speed is and isn’t.
A Quick Overview of Speed
Speed is not 5K race pace or even mile race pace, let alone 10K or half marathon race pace. A typical miler’s workout, such as 20 x 200m at mile pace with 200m jogs, isn’t a true speed workout; rather, it’s a race-specifi city workout that teaches the body to run a certain pace while challenging the anaerobic metabolism. The same is true of workouts you might do on a regular basis, such as 1200m repeats at 5K race pace. Th at workout is about improving your body’s metabolic abilities (its plumbing, in so many words) at race pace. It has nothing to do with developing your basic speed.
Again, by “speed” I mean the top speed you can reach for a very short distance. Why does this matter to you? After all, it’s unlikely you’ll fi nd yourself crouched in the starting blocks for a 100m race anytime soon.
Th e reason that your basic speed matters is that it’s a window into a broader continuum of paces, i.e., speeds, that you need to run to perform your best. When you improve your basic speed, you become more effi cient at the other speeds you need to hit — your repeats at 5K race pace, your tempo runs — to race well. Th ere are lots of reasons why this is so; for most Running Times readers it has to do with coordination.
Coordinated Efforts
Don’t think of coordination as patting your head with one hand, rubbing your tummy with the other, all while standing on one leg with your eyes closed. Instead, think of coordination as better communication between the muscle fibers involved in running and the nervous system. If you regularly do specific speed-development work, the result will be obvious to the casual observer — you’ll simply look better running.
Speed is, at its essence, an issue of coordination between all of the muscle fibers involved in running and your nervous system. Numerous studies have found that, while VO2 max and lactate threshold are important components of running fitness, the key to running faster is improving running economy, the intersection between your metabolic fitness (i.e., your heart, lungs, mitochondria) and your mechanical ability to move over the ground (i.e., muscles, tendons and the nerves that direct them). Many of the latest advances in the world of running, from Pose Running and footwear like the Vibram Five Fingers to stability training on a Bosu and single-leg lunges, have underlying them this concept of improving a runner’s mechanical efficiency. Yet most runners focus only on developing their aerobic fitness and anaerobic fitness, the metabolic components of fitness, and neglect the fact that if you can run more efficiently you’ll be able to race faster. Specifically, if at the cellular level you can use a greater percentage of your muscle fibers available to do work, you’ll race faster. Th is is where speed development comes in.
Fiber Facts
All humans have some amount of fast-twitch muscle fibers; these fi bers are white and can generate a great deal of force in a short amount of time. Conversely, all humans have red slow-twitch fibers that can’t produce much force, yet they are highly resistant to fatigue and allow us to run marathons or hike for eight-12 hours at a time. In between these two ends of the continuum are intermediate fibers that have qualities of the fast and slow; they can produce a moderate amount of force yet they are also fairly resistant to fatigue. And it’s these fibers that most distance runners neglect, because their training lacks the requisite intensity to “recruit” these fibers.
So how does your body “choose” which muscle to recruit when running? Simple. The skeletal muscles in the human body are organized into “motor units,” each of which is essentially one neuron connected to a bundle of fibers. When the neuron fires, all of the muscles in that motor unit fire.
Relative to running, the fatigue-resistant motor units are smaller and comprised primarily of slow-twitch muscle fibers, while the largest motor units are made up of fast-twitch fibers. The human body essentially takes the path of least resistance along this neural-activation continuum. Only activities that require a great deal of force — such as sprinting across a street or squatting to lift a heavy box — cross a threshold of intensity to recruit the largest motor units, ones that control the intermediate and fast-twitch fibers. When you’re jogging or running easy, the nervous system needs to recruit only small motor units comprised of slow-twitch fibers; this makes sense, given that you don’t need to produce a lot of force to plod along at your normal recovery pace.
But the recruitment of fast-twitch fibers is different. Let’s say you’re leisurely walking along a street, latté in hand, and as you cross the street you turn to see a Mack truck barreling down on you. You sprint across the street to safety (dropping the latté — oh, well). In that short moment in time you, the distance runner, did something you rarely do. You were forced to recruit fast-twitch fibers because you had to put more force into the ground to sprint across the street to safety, channeling your inner Bolt. If we want to be better runners, we need to ask our bodies to recruit those fast-twitch fibers more often. While the body is always recruiting all three types of fibers during running, the reality is that when you’re running half marathon pace you’re not recruiting nearly as many fast-twitch and intermediate fibers as you would in the Mack truck example.
Th at’s what we want to change with a speed-development workout — we want you to go fast enough to recruit those fast-twitch fibers, and the only way to do that is to run fast enough that the body is forced to ask the big motor units to power the activity. As I like to explain it, your nervous system is like an eighth-grade boy. It knows exactly how little work it can do to get by, and the only way to get it to work more is to kick it in the butt. Asking nicely won’t work. Doing strides at mile pace won’t, either.
The Workouts
Th e goal of a speed-development workout is simply to “call on” the fibers that aren’t recruited in large numbers when jogging or even running threshold or race pace. The improved coordination between your metabolic system and bodily mechanics from these workouts will result in faster, more efficient running at other effort levels.
Before you attempt speed-development workouts you need to be honest about two questions. Is your posterior chain strong, and have you done some hill strides?
The posterior chain is simply the muscles of the back of the body; for a runner, the low back, gluteal muscles and hamstrings are of special importance. If you’ve not done work to strengthen these areas in the recent past, you’re probably well advised to do the general strength routine I’ve developed as a video series for the Running Times Web site; see runningtimes.com/gsvideos.
Once you have the necessary posterior chain strength then you should improve your coordination and strength in a sport-specific manner: Th is is where hill strides come in. You can do either the short ramp hills of 40m-70m popularized by Brad Hudson (see runningtimes.com/hillsprints) or you can run up a gentle 1–2 percent grade for 100m-200m (and ideally you’d do a mix of both).
After three to six weeks of doing hills two to three times a week, you’re ready to tackle the following workouts, which are presented in a progression that must be followed. For these workouts, you should wear your most aggressive race footwear. If you run only road races, then that’s a road flat. If you’re someone who at least once a year races in track spikes then you should definitely do this workout in your spikes. The athletes I work with never do this workout in anything but track spikes, even when they’ve got a road race as their next competition.
Workout No. 1:
150 In-n-Outs
This first workout is not only a great way to learn how to run fast, but it may also become part of your pre-race, pre-workout routine as well. Th e concept is simple: On a 150m run, accelerate gradually during the first 50m; then run the middle 50m at a rhythm that is faster than mile race pace, then cruise out of that rhythm the last 50m. Jog or walk 250m to recover and repeat.
If you start in the middle of a curve on a 400m track then you have a 50m buildup on the curve, 50m of fast running to halfway down the straight and 50m cruising into the finish at the end of the straight. Start with three to four of these and work up to six to eight with each middle 50m getting a bit faster. Don’t worry about anything other than the pace of the middle 50m.
Take as much rest as you want, as the intent of this workout is not to endure anything, but rather to recruit more fibers. You gain nothing by speeding up the recovery to a steady jog when running 150 In-n-Outs. We want that middle 50m patch to be faster than you’ve run in years, eventually getting to the point that you’re running as fast as you can while still running controlled and relaxed in your neck and shoulders.
Workout No. 2:
30m Max Patch
Once you’ve done several weekly sessions of 150 In-n-Outs, you can progress to this workout. To start, you’ll do three to four of the 150m In-n-Outs. Th en you’ll run 2–3 x 30m at 97 percent; though technically you’re not running at your maximum, most people will actually run a bit faster with the cue of “97 percent” rather than “all-out” or “as fast as you can” because they will stay more relaxed in their neck, face and shoulders.
Every high school and collegiate 400m track has 30m clearly marked, as the 400m relay exchange zone is 20m, with a 10m acceleration zone preceding it. On most 400m tracks two big triangles mark the 20m zone, with a small triangle 10m prior. Th is 30m “patch” will be our focus. The crux of the workout is simply a 2–3 (or 3–4) x 30m patch with a 50m run-in. I like to have athletes run this coming off the second turn, using the final relay zone as the patch for the fast 30m because building up to 97 percent on the turn is a novel stimulus and in some ways it’s protective, in that the athlete will be running much of the 30m patch on the curve, making it more difficult to get to max velocity (but still recruiting a large percentage of the athlete’s motor units).
Th e recovery is 3 minutes walking. Yes, walking. Running 30m at 97 percent is metabolically powered by the phosphocreatine system, and 3 minutes of walking will allow that system to replenish nearly all of ATP needed for the next 30m sprint. Sprinters walk during practice, and in this workout, so should you.
Workout No. 3:
Finish with 120s
This workout is really about feeling good while running fast. You simply run 3–4 x 120m at a “fun fast” pace. But you do this after you’ve done 3–4 x 150m In-n-Outs and after you’ve done two or three 30m Max Patches.
Most athletes are surprised at how fast they can comfortably run 120m, yet a key to feeling good is to either jog the remaining 280m slow, or walk 10m, then jog 180m until the next 120m. One athlete I work with jokes that we never run 120s because I ask them to build up for 30m and then hold their “fun fast” speed for 120m; to him these are 150s, but to me they are 120s because that is the distance that you hold that “fun fast” speed.
Th is final workout of the progression — 3–4 x 150m In-n- Outs, then 2–3 x 30m at 97 percent, ending with 3–4 x 120m — doesn’t add up to a mile of running, yet it’s extremely challenging, and for that reason you should run an easy recovery run the following day.
That fact leads me to the final aspect of speed development. When you’ve done these workouts once every seven-10 days, you should, after four to six weeks, be able to run faster strides, whether it’s 150m, 200m or even 300m distances. Once you’ve done a few speed-development workouts you can, on the subsequent day, run easy for 20–30 minutes and then do your pre-race warm-up routine, change into your flats and do something like 5 x 200m with 200m or 400m slow jogging (emphasis on the slow) at mile pace, or simply a pace that feels “fun fast” — challenging for 200m but you’re not grabbing your knees afterwards. Your legs will “remember” the pace from the day before and most athletes report that they feel very comfortable running the paces on the second day. While I don’t do this every week, a speed-development day followed by an easy run with some 200s is a great way to boost confidence while ensuring that you’re fully recovering from the other workouts on your schedule.
Speed Development
There’s speed work, and then there’s speed work. When most runners talk about doing speed work, they mean things like mile repeats at 10K race pace, or a set of fast 200s, or maybe even a 5-mile tempo run. Such workouts, of course, are integral to becoming a faster runner. But they’re not really speed work, if by “speed” we mean the fastest you can run for a very short distance. When I talk about speed, I mean your maximal velocity — your top speed — which even world-class sprinters can sustain for no more than 30–40m.
But here’s the thing: Th is type of speed is also integral to being the best distance runner you can be. Improve your basic speed, and you’ll run faster in all your races, even the marathon. Th at’s why all the runners I coach, such as 2010 national indoor 3K champion Renee Metivier Baillie and 1:02 half marathoner Brent Vaughn, do regular speed-development workouts. To understand why, let’s start by looking more closely at what speed is and isn’t.
A Quick Overview of Speed
Speed is not 5K race pace or even mile race pace, let alone 10K or half marathon race pace. A typical miler’s workout, such as 20 x 200m at mile pace with 200m jogs, isn’t a true speed workout; rather, it’s a race-specifi city workout that teaches the body to run a certain pace while challenging the anaerobic metabolism. The same is true of workouts you might do on a regular basis, such as 1200m repeats at 5K race pace. Th at workout is about improving your body’s metabolic abilities (its plumbing, in so many words) at race pace. It has nothing to do with developing your basic speed.
Again, by “speed” I mean the top speed you can reach for a very short distance. Why does this matter to you? After all, it’s unlikely you’ll fi nd yourself crouched in the starting blocks for a 100m race anytime soon.
Th e reason that your basic speed matters is that it’s a window into a broader continuum of paces, i.e., speeds, that you need to run to perform your best. When you improve your basic speed, you become more effi cient at the other speeds you need to hit — your repeats at 5K race pace, your tempo runs — to race well. Th ere are lots of reasons why this is so; for most Running Times readers it has to do with coordination.
Coordinated Efforts
Don’t think of coordination as patting your head with one hand, rubbing your tummy with the other, all while standing on one leg with your eyes closed. Instead, think of coordination as better communication between the muscle fibers involved in running and the nervous system. If you regularly do specific speed-development work, the result will be obvious to the casual observer — you’ll simply look better running.
Speed is, at its essence, an issue of coordination between all of the muscle fibers involved in running and your nervous system. Numerous studies have found that, while VO2 max and lactate threshold are important components of running fitness, the key to running faster is improving running economy, the intersection between your metabolic fitness (i.e., your heart, lungs, mitochondria) and your mechanical ability to move over the ground (i.e., muscles, tendons and the nerves that direct them). Many of the latest advances in the world of running, from Pose Running and footwear like the Vibram Five Fingers to stability training on a Bosu and single-leg lunges, have underlying them this concept of improving a runner’s mechanical efficiency. Yet most runners focus only on developing their aerobic fitness and anaerobic fitness, the metabolic components of fitness, and neglect the fact that if you can run more efficiently you’ll be able to race faster. Specifically, if at the cellular level you can use a greater percentage of your muscle fibers available to do work, you’ll race faster. Th is is where speed development comes in.
Fiber Facts
All humans have some amount of fast-twitch muscle fibers; these fi bers are white and can generate a great deal of force in a short amount of time. Conversely, all humans have red slow-twitch fibers that can’t produce much force, yet they are highly resistant to fatigue and allow us to run marathons or hike for eight-12 hours at a time. In between these two ends of the continuum are intermediate fibers that have qualities of the fast and slow; they can produce a moderate amount of force yet they are also fairly resistant to fatigue. And it’s these fibers that most distance runners neglect, because their training lacks the requisite intensity to “recruit” these fibers.
So how does your body “choose” which muscle to recruit when running? Simple. The skeletal muscles in the human body are organized into “motor units,” each of which is essentially one neuron connected to a bundle of fibers. When the neuron fires, all of the muscles in that motor unit fire.
Relative to running, the fatigue-resistant motor units are smaller and comprised primarily of slow-twitch muscle fibers, while the largest motor units are made up of fast-twitch fibers. The human body essentially takes the path of least resistance along this neural-activation continuum. Only activities that require a great deal of force — such as sprinting across a street or squatting to lift a heavy box — cross a threshold of intensity to recruit the largest motor units, ones that control the intermediate and fast-twitch fibers. When you’re jogging or running easy, the nervous system needs to recruit only small motor units comprised of slow-twitch fibers; this makes sense, given that you don’t need to produce a lot of force to plod along at your normal recovery pace.
But the recruitment of fast-twitch fibers is different. Let’s say you’re leisurely walking along a street, latté in hand, and as you cross the street you turn to see a Mack truck barreling down on you. You sprint across the street to safety (dropping the latté — oh, well). In that short moment in time you, the distance runner, did something you rarely do. You were forced to recruit fast-twitch fibers because you had to put more force into the ground to sprint across the street to safety, channeling your inner Bolt. If we want to be better runners, we need to ask our bodies to recruit those fast-twitch fibers more often. While the body is always recruiting all three types of fibers during running, the reality is that when you’re running half marathon pace you’re not recruiting nearly as many fast-twitch and intermediate fibers as you would in the Mack truck example.
Th at’s what we want to change with a speed-development workout — we want you to go fast enough to recruit those fast-twitch fibers, and the only way to do that is to run fast enough that the body is forced to ask the big motor units to power the activity. As I like to explain it, your nervous system is like an eighth-grade boy. It knows exactly how little work it can do to get by, and the only way to get it to work more is to kick it in the butt. Asking nicely won’t work. Doing strides at mile pace won’t, either.
The Workouts
Th e goal of a speed-development workout is simply to “call on” the fibers that aren’t recruited in large numbers when jogging or even running threshold or race pace. The improved coordination between your metabolic system and bodily mechanics from these workouts will result in faster, more efficient running at other effort levels.
Before you attempt speed-development workouts you need to be honest about two questions. Is your posterior chain strong, and have you done some hill strides?
The posterior chain is simply the muscles of the back of the body; for a runner, the low back, gluteal muscles and hamstrings are of special importance. If you’ve not done work to strengthen these areas in the recent past, you’re probably well advised to do the general strength routine I’ve developed as a video series for the Running Times Web site; see runningtimes.com/gsvideos.
Once you have the necessary posterior chain strength then you should improve your coordination and strength in a sport-specific manner: Th is is where hill strides come in. You can do either the short ramp hills of 40m-70m popularized by Brad Hudson (see runningtimes.com/hillsprints) or you can run up a gentle 1–2 percent grade for 100m-200m (and ideally you’d do a mix of both).
After three to six weeks of doing hills two to three times a week, you’re ready to tackle the following workouts, which are presented in a progression that must be followed. For these workouts, you should wear your most aggressive race footwear. If you run only road races, then that’s a road flat. If you’re someone who at least once a year races in track spikes then you should definitely do this workout in your spikes. The athletes I work with never do this workout in anything but track spikes, even when they’ve got a road race as their next competition.
Workout No. 1:
150 In-n-Outs
This first workout is not only a great way to learn how to run fast, but it may also become part of your pre-race, pre-workout routine as well. Th e concept is simple: On a 150m run, accelerate gradually during the first 50m; then run the middle 50m at a rhythm that is faster than mile race pace, then cruise out of that rhythm the last 50m. Jog or walk 250m to recover and repeat.
If you start in the middle of a curve on a 400m track then you have a 50m buildup on the curve, 50m of fast running to halfway down the straight and 50m cruising into the finish at the end of the straight. Start with three to four of these and work up to six to eight with each middle 50m getting a bit faster. Don’t worry about anything other than the pace of the middle 50m.
Take as much rest as you want, as the intent of this workout is not to endure anything, but rather to recruit more fibers. You gain nothing by speeding up the recovery to a steady jog when running 150 In-n-Outs. We want that middle 50m patch to be faster than you’ve run in years, eventually getting to the point that you’re running as fast as you can while still running controlled and relaxed in your neck and shoulders.
Workout No. 2:
30m Max Patch
Once you’ve done several weekly sessions of 150 In-n-Outs, you can progress to this workout. To start, you’ll do three to four of the 150m In-n-Outs. Th en you’ll run 2–3 x 30m at 97 percent; though technically you’re not running at your maximum, most people will actually run a bit faster with the cue of “97 percent” rather than “all-out” or “as fast as you can” because they will stay more relaxed in their neck, face and shoulders.
Every high school and collegiate 400m track has 30m clearly marked, as the 400m relay exchange zone is 20m, with a 10m acceleration zone preceding it. On most 400m tracks two big triangles mark the 20m zone, with a small triangle 10m prior. Th is 30m “patch” will be our focus. The crux of the workout is simply a 2–3 (or 3–4) x 30m patch with a 50m run-in. I like to have athletes run this coming off the second turn, using the final relay zone as the patch for the fast 30m because building up to 97 percent on the turn is a novel stimulus and in some ways it’s protective, in that the athlete will be running much of the 30m patch on the curve, making it more difficult to get to max velocity (but still recruiting a large percentage of the athlete’s motor units).
Th e recovery is 3 minutes walking. Yes, walking. Running 30m at 97 percent is metabolically powered by the phosphocreatine system, and 3 minutes of walking will allow that system to replenish nearly all of ATP needed for the next 30m sprint. Sprinters walk during practice, and in this workout, so should you.
Workout No. 3:
Finish with 120s
This workout is really about feeling good while running fast. You simply run 3–4 x 120m at a “fun fast” pace. But you do this after you’ve done 3–4 x 150m In-n-Outs and after you’ve done two or three 30m Max Patches.
Most athletes are surprised at how fast they can comfortably run 120m, yet a key to feeling good is to either jog the remaining 280m slow, or walk 10m, then jog 180m until the next 120m. One athlete I work with jokes that we never run 120s because I ask them to build up for 30m and then hold their “fun fast” speed for 120m; to him these are 150s, but to me they are 120s because that is the distance that you hold that “fun fast” speed.
Th is final workout of the progression — 3–4 x 150m In-n- Outs, then 2–3 x 30m at 97 percent, ending with 3–4 x 120m — doesn’t add up to a mile of running, yet it’s extremely challenging, and for that reason you should run an easy recovery run the following day.
That fact leads me to the final aspect of speed development. When you’ve done these workouts once every seven-10 days, you should, after four to six weeks, be able to run faster strides, whether it’s 150m, 200m or even 300m distances. Once you’ve done a few speed-development workouts you can, on the subsequent day, run easy for 20–30 minutes and then do your pre-race warm-up routine, change into your flats and do something like 5 x 200m with 200m or 400m slow jogging (emphasis on the slow) at mile pace, or simply a pace that feels “fun fast” — challenging for 200m but you’re not grabbing your knees afterwards. Your legs will “remember” the pace from the day before and most athletes report that they feel very comfortable running the paces on the second day. While I don’t do this every week, a speed-development day followed by an easy run with some 200s is a great way to boost confidence while ensuring that you’re fully recovering from the other workouts on your schedule.
10 veebruar 2012
Kas jooksujalatseid ostes enamus inimesi kulutavad mõtetult?
The painful truth about trainers: Are running shoes a waste of money?
Thrust enhancers, roll bars, microchips...the $20 billion running - shoe industry wants us to believe that the latest technologies will cushion every stride. Yet in this extract from his controversial new book, Christopher McDougall claims that injury rates for runners are actually on the rise, that everything we've been told about running shoes is wrong - and that it might even be better to go barefoot...
By CHRISTOPHER McDOUGALL
Every year, anywhere from 65 to 80 per cent of all runners suffer an injury. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your odds of getting hurt are the same
At Stanford University, California, two sales representatives from Nike were watching the athletics team practise. Part of their job was to gather feedback from the company's sponsored runners about which shoes they preferred.
Unfortunately, it was proving difficult that day as the runners all seemed to prefer... nothing.
'Didn't we send you enough shoes?' they asked head coach Vin Lananna. They had, he was just refusing to use them.
'I can't prove this,' the well-respected coach told them.
'But I believe that when my runners train barefoot they run faster and suffer fewer injuries.'
Nike sponsored the Stanford team as they were the best of the very best. Needless to say, the reps were a little disturbed to hear that Lananna felt the best shoes they had to offer them were not as good as no shoes at all.
When I was told this anecdote it came as no surprise. I'd spent years struggling with a variety of running-related injuries, each time trading up to more expensive shoes, which seemed to make no difference. I'd lost count of the amount of money I'd handed over at shops and sports-injury clinics - eventually ending with advice from my doctor to give it up and 'buy a bike'.
And I wasn't on my own. Every year, anywhere from 65 to 80 per cent of all runners suffer an injury. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your odds of getting hurt are the same. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, fast or slow, pudgy or taut as a racehorse, your feet are still in the danger zone.
But why? How come Roger Bannister could charge out of his Oxford lab every day, pound around a hard
Then there's the secretive Tarahumara tribe, the best long-distance runners in the world. These are a people who live in basic conditions in Mexico, often in caves without running water, and run with only strips of old tyre or leather thongs strapped to the bottom of their feet. They are virtually barefoot.
Come race day, the Tarahumara don't train. They don't stretch or warm up. They just stroll to the starting line, laughing and bantering, and then go for it, ultra-running for two full days, sometimes covering over 300 miles, non-stop. For the fun of it. One of them recently came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing nothing but a toga and sandals. He was 57 years old.
When it comes to preparation, the Tarahumara prefer more of a Mardi Gras approach. In terms of diet, lifestyle and training technique, they're a track coach's nightmare. They drink like New Year's Eve is a weekly event, tossing back enough corn-based beer and homemade tequila brewed from rattlesnake corpses to floor an army.
Unlike their Western counterparts, the Tarahumara don't replenish their bodies with electrolyte-rich sports drinks. They don't rebuild between workouts with protein bars; in fact, they barely eat any protein at all, living on little more than ground corn spiced up by their favourite delicacy, barbecued mouse.
How come they're not crippled?
I've watched them climb sheer cliffs with no visible support on nothing more than an hour's sleep and a stomach full of pinto beans. It's as if a clerical error entered the stats in the wrong columns. Shouldn't we, the ones with state-of-the-art running shoes and custom-made orthotics, have the zero casualty rate, and the Tarahumara, who run far more, on far rockier terrain, in shoes that barely qualify as shoes, be constantly hospitalised?
The answer, I discovered, will make for unpalatable reading for the $20 billion trainer-manufacturing industry. It could also change runners' lives forever.
Dr Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, has been studying the growing injury crisis in the developed world for some time and has come to a startling conclusion: 'A lot of foot and knee injuries currently plaguing us are caused by people running with shoes that actually make our feet weak, cause us to over-pronate (ankle rotation) and give us knee problems.
'Until 1972, when the modern athletic shoe was invented, people ran in very thin-soled shoes, had strong feet and had a much lower incidence of knee injuries.'
Lieberman also believes that if modern trainers never existed more people would be running. And if more people ran, fewer would be suffering from heart disease, hypertension, blocked arteries, diabetes, and most other deadly ailments of the Western world.
'Humans need aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy,' says Lieberman. 'If there's any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it's to run.'
The modern running shoe was essentially invented by Nike. The company was founded in the Seventies by Phil Knight, a University of Oregon runner, and Bill Bowerman, the University of Oregon coach.
Before these two men got together, the modern running shoe as we know it didn't exist. Runners from Jesse Owens through to Roger Bannister all ran with backs straight, knees bent, feet scratching back under their hips. They had no choice: their only shock absorption came from the compression of their legs and their thick pad of midfoot fat. Thumping down on their heels was not an option.
Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury preventionBowerman didn't actually do much running. He only started to jog a little at the age of 50, after spending time in New Zealand with Arthur Lydiard, the father of fitness running and the most influential distance-running coach of all time. Bowerman came home a convert, and in 1966 wrote a best-selling book whose title introduced a new word and obsession to the fitness-aware public: Jogging.
In between writing and coaching, Bowerman came up with the idea of sticking a hunk of rubber under the heel of his pumps. It was, he said, to stop the feet tiring and give them an edge. With the heel raised, he reasoned, gravity would push them forward ahead of the next man. Bowerman called Nike's first shoe the Cortez - after the conquistador who plundered the New World for gold and unleashed a horrific smallpox epidemic.
It is an irony not wasted on his detractors. In essence, he had created a market for a product and then created the product itself.
'It's genius, the kind of stuff they study in business schools,' one commentator said.
Bowerman's partner, Knight, set up a manufacturing deal in Japan and was soon selling shoes faster than they could come off the assembly line.
'With the Cortez's cushioning, we were in a monopoly position probably into the Olympic year, 1972,' Knight said.
The rest is history.
The company's annual turnover is now in excess of $17 billion and it has a major market share in over 160 countries.
Since then, running-shoe companies have had more than 30 years to perfect their designs so, logically, the injury rate must be in freefall by now. After all, Adidas has come up with a $250 shoe with a microprocessor in the sole that instantly adjusts cushioning for every stride. Asics spent $3 million and eight years (three more years than it took to create the first atomic bomb) to invent the Kinsei, a shoe that boasts 'multi-angled forefoot gel pods', and a 'midfoot thrust enhancer'. Each season brings an expensive new purchase for the average runner.
But at least you know you'll never limp again. Or so the leading companies would have you believe. Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury prevention.
If anything, the injury rates have actually ebbed up since the Seventies - Achilles tendon blowouts have seen a ten per cent increase. (It's not only shoes that can create the problem: research in Hawaii found runners who stretched before exercise were 33 per cent more likely to get hurt.)
In a paper for the British Journal Of Sports Medicine last year, Dr Craig Richards, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed there are no evidence-based studies that demonstrate running shoes make you less prone to injury. Not one.
It was an astonishing revelation that had been hidden for over 35 years. Dr Richards was so stunned that a $20 billion industry seemed to be based on nothing but empty promises and wishful thinking that he issued the following challenge: 'Is any running-shoe company prepared to claim that wearing their distance running shoes will decrease your risk of suffering musculoskeletal running injuries? Is any shoe manufacturer prepared to claim that wearing their running shoes will improve your distance running performance? If you are prepared to make these claims, where is your peer-reviewed data to back it up?'
Dr Richards waited and even tried contacting the major shoe companies for their data. In response, he got silence.
So, if running shoes don't make you go faster and don't stop you from getting hurt, then what, exactly, are you paying for? What are the benefits of all those microchips, thrust enhancers, air cushions, torsion devices and roll bars?
The answer is still a mystery. And for Bowerman's old mentor, Arthur Lydiard, it all makes sense.
'We used to run in canvas shoes,' he said.
'We didn't get plantar fasciitis (pain under the heel); we didn't pronate or supinate (land on the edge of the foot); we might have lost a bit of skin from the rough canvas when we were running marathons, but generally we didn't have foot problems.
'Paying several hundred dollars for the latest in hi-tech running shoes is no guarantee you'll avoid any of these injuries and can even guarantee that you will suffer from them in one form or another. Shoes that let your foot function like you're barefoot - they're the shoes for me.'
Soon after those two Nike sales reps reported back from Stanford, the marketing team set to work to see if it could make money from the lessons it had learned. Jeff Pisciotta, the senior researcher at Nike Sports Research Lab, assembled 20 runners on a grassy field and filmed them running barefoot.
When he zoomed in, he was startled by what he found. Instead of each foot clomping down as it would in a shoe, it behaved like an animal with a mind of its own - stretching, grasping, seeking the ground with splayed toes, gliding in for a landing like a lake-bound swan.
'It's beautiful to watch,' Pisciotta later told me. 'That made us start thinking that when you put a shoe on, it starts to take over some of the control.'
Pisciotta immediately deployed his team to gather film of every existing barefoot culture they could find.
'We found pockets of people all over the globe who are still running barefoot, and what you find is that, during propulsion and landing, they have far more range of motion in the foot and engage more of the toe. Their feet flex, spread, splay and grip the surface, meaning you have less pronation and more distribution of pressure.'
Nike's response was to find a way to make money off a naked foot. It took two years of work before Pisciotta was ready to unveil his masterpiece. It was presented in TV ads that showed Kenyan runners padding along a dirt trail, swimmers curling their toes around a starting block, gymnasts, Brazilian capoeira dancers, rock climbers, wrestlers, karate masters and beach soccer players.
And then comes the grand finale: we cut back to the Kenyans, whose bare feet are now sporting some kind of thin shoe. It's the new Nike Free, a shoe thinner than the old Cortez dreamt up by Bowerman in the Seventies. And its slogan?
'Run Barefoot.'
The price of this return to nature?
A conservative £65. But, unlike the real thing, experts may still advise you to change them every three months.
Edited extract from 'Born To Run' by Christopher McDougall, £16.99, on sale from April 23
PAINFUL TRUTH No 1THE BEST SHOES AND THE WORST
Runners wearing top-of-the-line trainers are 123 per cent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap ones. This was discovered as far back as 1989, according to a study led by Dr Bernard Marti, the leading preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland's University of Bern.
Dr Marti's research team analysed 4,358 runners in the Bern Grand Prix, a 9.6-mile road race. All the runners filled out an extensive questionnaire that detailed their training habits and footwear for the previous year; as it turned out, 45 per cent had been hurt during that time. But what surprised Dr Marti was the fact that the most common variable among the casualties wasn't training surface, running speed, weekly mileage or 'competitive training motivation'.
It wasn't even body weight or a history of previous injury. It was the price of the shoe. Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40.
Follow-up studies found similar results, like the 1991 report in Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise that found that 'wearers of expensive running shoes that are promoted as having additional features that protect (eg, more cushioning, 'pronation correction') are injured significantly more frequently than runners wearing inexpensive shoes.'
What a cruel joke: for double the price, you get double the pain. Stanford coach Vin Lananna had already spotted the same phenomenon.'I once ordered highend shoes for the team and within two weeks we had more plantar fasciitis and Achilles problems than I'd ever seen.
So I sent them back. Ever since then, I've always ordered low-end shoes. It's not because I'm cheap. It's because I'm in the business of making athletes run fast and stay healthy.'
PAINFUL TRUTH No 2FEET LIKE A GOOD BEATING
Despite pillowy-sounding names such as 'MegaBounce', all that cushioning does nothing to reduce impact. Logically, that should be obvious - the impact on your legs from running can be up to 12 times your weight, so it's preposterous to believe a half-inch of rubber is going to make a difference.
When it comes to sensing the softest caress or tiniest grain of sand, your toes are as finely wired as your lips and fingertips. It's these nerve endings that tell your foot how to react to the changing ground beneath, not a strip of rubber.
To help prove this point, Dr Steven Robbins and Dr Edward Waked of McGill University, Montreal, performed a series of lengthy tests on gymnasts. They found that the thicker the landing mat, the harder the gymnasts landed. Instinctively, the gymnasts were searching for stability. When they sensed a soft surface underfoot, they slapped down hard to ensure balance. Runners do the same thing. When you run in cushioned shoes, your feet are pushing through the soles in search of a hard, stable platform.
'Currently available sports shoes are too soft and thick, and should be redesigned if they are to protect humans performing sports,' the researchers concluded.
To add weight to their argument, the acute-injury rehabilitation specialist David Smyntek carried out an experiment of his own. He had grown wary that the people telling him to trade in his favourite shoes every 300-500 miles were the same people who sold them to him.
But how was it, he wondered, that Arthur Newton, for instance, one of the greatest ultrarunners of all time, who broke the record for the 100-mile Bath-London run at the age of 51, never replaced his thin-soled canvaspumps until he'd put at least 4,000 miles on them?
So Smyntek changed tack. Whenever his shoes got thin, he kept on running. When the outside edge started to go, he swapped the right for the left and kept running. Five miles a day, every day.
Once he realised he could run comfortably in broken-down, even wrong-footed shoes, he had his answer. If he wasn't using them the way they were designed, maybe that design wasn't such a big deal after all.
He now only buys cheap trainers.
PAINFUL TRUTH No 3
HUMAN BEINGS ARE DESIGNED TO RUN WITHOUT SHOES
'Barefoot running has been one of my training philosophies for years,' says Gerard Hartmann, the Irish physical therapist who treats all the world's finest distance runners, including Paula Radcliffe.
For decades, Dr Hartmann has been watching the explosion of ever more structured running shoes with dismay. 'Pronation has become this very bad word, but it's just the natural movement of the foot,' he says. 'The foot is supposed to pronate.'
To see pronation in action, kick off your shoes and run down the driveway. On a hard surface, your feet will automatically shift to selfdefence mode: you'll find yourself landing on the outside edge of your foot, then gently rolling from little toe over to big until your foot is flat. That's pronation - a mild, shockabsorbing twist that allows your arch to compress. Your foot's centrepiece is the arch, the greatest weight-bearing design ever created. The beauty of any arch is the way it gets stronger under stress; the harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. Push up from underneath and you weaken the whole structure.
'Putting your feet in shoes is similar to putting them in a plaster cast,' says Dr Hartmann. 'If I put your leg in plaster, we'll find 40 to 60 per cent atrophy of the musculature within six weeks. Something similar happens to your feet when they're encased in shoes.' When shoes are doing the work, tendons stiffen and
SO SHOULD WE ALL BE RUNNING BAREFOOT?
BY JUSTIN COULTER, SPORTS PODIATRIST Running barefoot may have some benefit in muscle strengthening as the muscles have to 'tune in' to the vibrations caused by impact loading.
If, like Zola Budd, you grew up running barefoot on a South African farm, your tissue tolerance would adapt over time. But for someone who has grown up wearing shoes and is a natural heel striker (see right), the impact loading will be beyond tissue tolerance level, and injury will occur.
We are all individuals, therefore it is prudent to have your own running technique assessed and work around that.
As for getting out your old worn out trainers and running in them - don't! Based on the individual's size and running surfaces/conditions shoes should be changed between 500-1,000 miles. It's best to seek the advice of a specialist running store.
Originaalartikkel sellisel aadressil:
Thrust enhancers, roll bars, microchips...the $20 billion running - shoe industry wants us to believe that the latest technologies will cushion every stride. Yet in this extract from his controversial new book, Christopher McDougall claims that injury rates for runners are actually on the rise, that everything we've been told about running shoes is wrong - and that it might even be better to go barefoot...
By CHRISTOPHER McDOUGALL
Every year, anywhere from 65 to 80 per cent of all runners suffer an injury. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your odds of getting hurt are the same
At Stanford University, California, two sales representatives from Nike were watching the athletics team practise. Part of their job was to gather feedback from the company's sponsored runners about which shoes they preferred.
Unfortunately, it was proving difficult that day as the runners all seemed to prefer... nothing.
'Didn't we send you enough shoes?' they asked head coach Vin Lananna. They had, he was just refusing to use them.
'I can't prove this,' the well-respected coach told them.
'But I believe that when my runners train barefoot they run faster and suffer fewer injuries.'
Nike sponsored the Stanford team as they were the best of the very best. Needless to say, the reps were a little disturbed to hear that Lananna felt the best shoes they had to offer them were not as good as no shoes at all.
When I was told this anecdote it came as no surprise. I'd spent years struggling with a variety of running-related injuries, each time trading up to more expensive shoes, which seemed to make no difference. I'd lost count of the amount of money I'd handed over at shops and sports-injury clinics - eventually ending with advice from my doctor to give it up and 'buy a bike'.
And I wasn't on my own. Every year, anywhere from 65 to 80 per cent of all runners suffer an injury. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your odds of getting hurt are the same. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, fast or slow, pudgy or taut as a racehorse, your feet are still in the danger zone.
But why? How come Roger Bannister could charge out of his Oxford lab every day, pound around a hard
Then there's the secretive Tarahumara tribe, the best long-distance runners in the world. These are a people who live in basic conditions in Mexico, often in caves without running water, and run with only strips of old tyre or leather thongs strapped to the bottom of their feet. They are virtually barefoot.
Come race day, the Tarahumara don't train. They don't stretch or warm up. They just stroll to the starting line, laughing and bantering, and then go for it, ultra-running for two full days, sometimes covering over 300 miles, non-stop. For the fun of it. One of them recently came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing nothing but a toga and sandals. He was 57 years old.
When it comes to preparation, the Tarahumara prefer more of a Mardi Gras approach. In terms of diet, lifestyle and training technique, they're a track coach's nightmare. They drink like New Year's Eve is a weekly event, tossing back enough corn-based beer and homemade tequila brewed from rattlesnake corpses to floor an army.
Unlike their Western counterparts, the Tarahumara don't replenish their bodies with electrolyte-rich sports drinks. They don't rebuild between workouts with protein bars; in fact, they barely eat any protein at all, living on little more than ground corn spiced up by their favourite delicacy, barbecued mouse.
How come they're not crippled?
I've watched them climb sheer cliffs with no visible support on nothing more than an hour's sleep and a stomach full of pinto beans. It's as if a clerical error entered the stats in the wrong columns. Shouldn't we, the ones with state-of-the-art running shoes and custom-made orthotics, have the zero casualty rate, and the Tarahumara, who run far more, on far rockier terrain, in shoes that barely qualify as shoes, be constantly hospitalised?
The answer, I discovered, will make for unpalatable reading for the $20 billion trainer-manufacturing industry. It could also change runners' lives forever.
Dr Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, has been studying the growing injury crisis in the developed world for some time and has come to a startling conclusion: 'A lot of foot and knee injuries currently plaguing us are caused by people running with shoes that actually make our feet weak, cause us to over-pronate (ankle rotation) and give us knee problems.
'Until 1972, when the modern athletic shoe was invented, people ran in very thin-soled shoes, had strong feet and had a much lower incidence of knee injuries.'
Lieberman also believes that if modern trainers never existed more people would be running. And if more people ran, fewer would be suffering from heart disease, hypertension, blocked arteries, diabetes, and most other deadly ailments of the Western world.
'Humans need aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy,' says Lieberman. 'If there's any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it's to run.'
The modern running shoe was essentially invented by Nike. The company was founded in the Seventies by Phil Knight, a University of Oregon runner, and Bill Bowerman, the University of Oregon coach.
Before these two men got together, the modern running shoe as we know it didn't exist. Runners from Jesse Owens through to Roger Bannister all ran with backs straight, knees bent, feet scratching back under their hips. They had no choice: their only shock absorption came from the compression of their legs and their thick pad of midfoot fat. Thumping down on their heels was not an option.
Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury preventionBowerman didn't actually do much running. He only started to jog a little at the age of 50, after spending time in New Zealand with Arthur Lydiard, the father of fitness running and the most influential distance-running coach of all time. Bowerman came home a convert, and in 1966 wrote a best-selling book whose title introduced a new word and obsession to the fitness-aware public: Jogging.
In between writing and coaching, Bowerman came up with the idea of sticking a hunk of rubber under the heel of his pumps. It was, he said, to stop the feet tiring and give them an edge. With the heel raised, he reasoned, gravity would push them forward ahead of the next man. Bowerman called Nike's first shoe the Cortez - after the conquistador who plundered the New World for gold and unleashed a horrific smallpox epidemic.
It is an irony not wasted on his detractors. In essence, he had created a market for a product and then created the product itself.
'It's genius, the kind of stuff they study in business schools,' one commentator said.
Bowerman's partner, Knight, set up a manufacturing deal in Japan and was soon selling shoes faster than they could come off the assembly line.
'With the Cortez's cushioning, we were in a monopoly position probably into the Olympic year, 1972,' Knight said.
The rest is history.
The company's annual turnover is now in excess of $17 billion and it has a major market share in over 160 countries.
Since then, running-shoe companies have had more than 30 years to perfect their designs so, logically, the injury rate must be in freefall by now. After all, Adidas has come up with a $250 shoe with a microprocessor in the sole that instantly adjusts cushioning for every stride. Asics spent $3 million and eight years (three more years than it took to create the first atomic bomb) to invent the Kinsei, a shoe that boasts 'multi-angled forefoot gel pods', and a 'midfoot thrust enhancer'. Each season brings an expensive new purchase for the average runner.
But at least you know you'll never limp again. Or so the leading companies would have you believe. Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury prevention.
If anything, the injury rates have actually ebbed up since the Seventies - Achilles tendon blowouts have seen a ten per cent increase. (It's not only shoes that can create the problem: research in Hawaii found runners who stretched before exercise were 33 per cent more likely to get hurt.)
In a paper for the British Journal Of Sports Medicine last year, Dr Craig Richards, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed there are no evidence-based studies that demonstrate running shoes make you less prone to injury. Not one.
It was an astonishing revelation that had been hidden for over 35 years. Dr Richards was so stunned that a $20 billion industry seemed to be based on nothing but empty promises and wishful thinking that he issued the following challenge: 'Is any running-shoe company prepared to claim that wearing their distance running shoes will decrease your risk of suffering musculoskeletal running injuries? Is any shoe manufacturer prepared to claim that wearing their running shoes will improve your distance running performance? If you are prepared to make these claims, where is your peer-reviewed data to back it up?'
Dr Richards waited and even tried contacting the major shoe companies for their data. In response, he got silence.
So, if running shoes don't make you go faster and don't stop you from getting hurt, then what, exactly, are you paying for? What are the benefits of all those microchips, thrust enhancers, air cushions, torsion devices and roll bars?
The answer is still a mystery. And for Bowerman's old mentor, Arthur Lydiard, it all makes sense.
'We used to run in canvas shoes,' he said.
'We didn't get plantar fasciitis (pain under the heel); we didn't pronate or supinate (land on the edge of the foot); we might have lost a bit of skin from the rough canvas when we were running marathons, but generally we didn't have foot problems.
'Paying several hundred dollars for the latest in hi-tech running shoes is no guarantee you'll avoid any of these injuries and can even guarantee that you will suffer from them in one form or another. Shoes that let your foot function like you're barefoot - they're the shoes for me.'
Soon after those two Nike sales reps reported back from Stanford, the marketing team set to work to see if it could make money from the lessons it had learned. Jeff Pisciotta, the senior researcher at Nike Sports Research Lab, assembled 20 runners on a grassy field and filmed them running barefoot.
When he zoomed in, he was startled by what he found. Instead of each foot clomping down as it would in a shoe, it behaved like an animal with a mind of its own - stretching, grasping, seeking the ground with splayed toes, gliding in for a landing like a lake-bound swan.
'It's beautiful to watch,' Pisciotta later told me. 'That made us start thinking that when you put a shoe on, it starts to take over some of the control.'
Pisciotta immediately deployed his team to gather film of every existing barefoot culture they could find.
'We found pockets of people all over the globe who are still running barefoot, and what you find is that, during propulsion and landing, they have far more range of motion in the foot and engage more of the toe. Their feet flex, spread, splay and grip the surface, meaning you have less pronation and more distribution of pressure.'
Nike's response was to find a way to make money off a naked foot. It took two years of work before Pisciotta was ready to unveil his masterpiece. It was presented in TV ads that showed Kenyan runners padding along a dirt trail, swimmers curling their toes around a starting block, gymnasts, Brazilian capoeira dancers, rock climbers, wrestlers, karate masters and beach soccer players.
And then comes the grand finale: we cut back to the Kenyans, whose bare feet are now sporting some kind of thin shoe. It's the new Nike Free, a shoe thinner than the old Cortez dreamt up by Bowerman in the Seventies. And its slogan?
'Run Barefoot.'
The price of this return to nature?
A conservative £65. But, unlike the real thing, experts may still advise you to change them every three months.
Edited extract from 'Born To Run' by Christopher McDougall, £16.99, on sale from April 23
PAINFUL TRUTH No 1THE BEST SHOES AND THE WORST
Runners wearing top-of-the-line trainers are 123 per cent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap ones. This was discovered as far back as 1989, according to a study led by Dr Bernard Marti, the leading preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland's University of Bern.
Dr Marti's research team analysed 4,358 runners in the Bern Grand Prix, a 9.6-mile road race. All the runners filled out an extensive questionnaire that detailed their training habits and footwear for the previous year; as it turned out, 45 per cent had been hurt during that time. But what surprised Dr Marti was the fact that the most common variable among the casualties wasn't training surface, running speed, weekly mileage or 'competitive training motivation'.
It wasn't even body weight or a history of previous injury. It was the price of the shoe. Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40.
Follow-up studies found similar results, like the 1991 report in Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise that found that 'wearers of expensive running shoes that are promoted as having additional features that protect (eg, more cushioning, 'pronation correction') are injured significantly more frequently than runners wearing inexpensive shoes.'
What a cruel joke: for double the price, you get double the pain. Stanford coach Vin Lananna had already spotted the same phenomenon.'I once ordered highend shoes for the team and within two weeks we had more plantar fasciitis and Achilles problems than I'd ever seen.
So I sent them back. Ever since then, I've always ordered low-end shoes. It's not because I'm cheap. It's because I'm in the business of making athletes run fast and stay healthy.'
PAINFUL TRUTH No 2FEET LIKE A GOOD BEATING
Despite pillowy-sounding names such as 'MegaBounce', all that cushioning does nothing to reduce impact. Logically, that should be obvious - the impact on your legs from running can be up to 12 times your weight, so it's preposterous to believe a half-inch of rubber is going to make a difference.
When it comes to sensing the softest caress or tiniest grain of sand, your toes are as finely wired as your lips and fingertips. It's these nerve endings that tell your foot how to react to the changing ground beneath, not a strip of rubber.
To help prove this point, Dr Steven Robbins and Dr Edward Waked of McGill University, Montreal, performed a series of lengthy tests on gymnasts. They found that the thicker the landing mat, the harder the gymnasts landed. Instinctively, the gymnasts were searching for stability. When they sensed a soft surface underfoot, they slapped down hard to ensure balance. Runners do the same thing. When you run in cushioned shoes, your feet are pushing through the soles in search of a hard, stable platform.
'Currently available sports shoes are too soft and thick, and should be redesigned if they are to protect humans performing sports,' the researchers concluded.
To add weight to their argument, the acute-injury rehabilitation specialist David Smyntek carried out an experiment of his own. He had grown wary that the people telling him to trade in his favourite shoes every 300-500 miles were the same people who sold them to him.
But how was it, he wondered, that Arthur Newton, for instance, one of the greatest ultrarunners of all time, who broke the record for the 100-mile Bath-London run at the age of 51, never replaced his thin-soled canvaspumps until he'd put at least 4,000 miles on them?
So Smyntek changed tack. Whenever his shoes got thin, he kept on running. When the outside edge started to go, he swapped the right for the left and kept running. Five miles a day, every day.
Once he realised he could run comfortably in broken-down, even wrong-footed shoes, he had his answer. If he wasn't using them the way they were designed, maybe that design wasn't such a big deal after all.
He now only buys cheap trainers.
PAINFUL TRUTH No 3
HUMAN BEINGS ARE DESIGNED TO RUN WITHOUT SHOES
'Barefoot running has been one of my training philosophies for years,' says Gerard Hartmann, the Irish physical therapist who treats all the world's finest distance runners, including Paula Radcliffe.
For decades, Dr Hartmann has been watching the explosion of ever more structured running shoes with dismay. 'Pronation has become this very bad word, but it's just the natural movement of the foot,' he says. 'The foot is supposed to pronate.'
To see pronation in action, kick off your shoes and run down the driveway. On a hard surface, your feet will automatically shift to selfdefence mode: you'll find yourself landing on the outside edge of your foot, then gently rolling from little toe over to big until your foot is flat. That's pronation - a mild, shockabsorbing twist that allows your arch to compress. Your foot's centrepiece is the arch, the greatest weight-bearing design ever created. The beauty of any arch is the way it gets stronger under stress; the harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. Push up from underneath and you weaken the whole structure.
'Putting your feet in shoes is similar to putting them in a plaster cast,' says Dr Hartmann. 'If I put your leg in plaster, we'll find 40 to 60 per cent atrophy of the musculature within six weeks. Something similar happens to your feet when they're encased in shoes.' When shoes are doing the work, tendons stiffen and
SO SHOULD WE ALL BE RUNNING BAREFOOT?
BY JUSTIN COULTER, SPORTS PODIATRIST Running barefoot may have some benefit in muscle strengthening as the muscles have to 'tune in' to the vibrations caused by impact loading.
If, like Zola Budd, you grew up running barefoot on a South African farm, your tissue tolerance would adapt over time. But for someone who has grown up wearing shoes and is a natural heel striker (see right), the impact loading will be beyond tissue tolerance level, and injury will occur.
We are all individuals, therefore it is prudent to have your own running technique assessed and work around that.
As for getting out your old worn out trainers and running in them - don't! Based on the individual's size and running surfaces/conditions shoes should be changed between 500-1,000 miles. It's best to seek the advice of a specialist running store.
Originaalartikkel sellisel aadressil:
09 veebruar 2012
Milliseid tosse siis soovitab
Here are 7 main categories of shoes for you to consider.
Of course, every barefoot runner or walker is at his or her
own unique place on the spectrum from fully barefoot to
needing full support, so judge accordingly.
I discuss the following general categories of shoes in order roughly of most rigid and least barefoot-like to nearly bare. I haven’t written about traditional footwear, but realize that modestly supportive shoes (or shoes with a mild arch) may give your feet the rest they need to recover in between barefoot or nearly-barefoot workouts.
1 . Newtons and other toe-running shoes. I love the concept behind the original Newtons, getting you up and off your heel. I just wish they’d bring you closer to the ground, rather than farther away from it, and wish the lugs were farther forward (as they stand it’s more of a midfoot shoe than a true toe-runner’s shoe). I think Newtons have their purpose as a training tool, though not as an everyday runner. However, I applaud their efforts as one of a growing group of shoes coming out to help get you off the heel. Shoes that get you off the heel may help you break old habits. Look for shoes that are light, low, and without extra cushion. Additionally, make sure they don’t lock you into a particular stride where your foot can’t land on the forefoot where it wants to and move or spring naturally. Some shoes are constraining in this area. You don’t want to be locked in a position, even a good one. Injuries often arise when there’s a conflict between where your foot wants to go and where your shoe directs it to go.
2 . Tri shoes. Marketed toward triathletes, tri shoes tend to be fairly lightweight, often slip on quickly, and are better ventilated than traditional running shoes. Tri shoes are distinguished from true racing flats because they’re a bit heavier with a higher heel. Yet some of them, such as the K-Swiss, are getting very close to a racing flat. They all tend to have a bit too much of a raised heel. Look for shoes with the least heel possible. Most of them still have a curled up toe (toe-spring) as well, so look for models with the least toe-spring. I like that they’re getting lighter and slide on and off quickly. This is ideal for barefoot running when you want to bring your shoes along.
3 . Nike Frees and Free Flexing Shoes. I love shoes that let your feet flex because it helps you land more naturally and stay more injury-free. Nike Frees are a step in the right direction, I just wish they made it easier to get off the heels and run with a forefoot strike. I’m hopeful this will soon change as similar models by other brands are coming out all the time.
4 . Racing Flats. I must admit, if I’m going fast in a shoe, these are my shoes of choice—no matter what the distance. My favorite? The Asics Piranha. True flats have little or no toespring and do not have a raised heel, making it easier to run on your forefoot and keep you closer to the ground. Each season shoe manufacturers debut more and more new flats. While your regular running-shoe store might not stock many flats, often you can find the best selection at a store that stocks shoes for track and crosscountry racers—or online.
5 . Vibram FiveFingers and other Glove-like Shoes. Vibrams are just plain different and fun. With individual slots for each of your toes, they let your toes spread and move more freely and let you run with a far more natural style. I’d like them to go further to get even thinner, lighter, and with less binding or restriction between the toes. I think their new Bikila and future models to follow go a definite step in this direction. The biggest challenge with the FiveFingers is that you still don’t feel the ground nearly as much as you do when barefoot, so it’s easy to overdo it. Also, some of their models, such as the KSO Trek have built in modest arch support. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly for a transition shoe, but it is something to watch for. I can’t wait to see what Vibram does next, and what the competition does; yes, expect to see more FiveFingered– type shoes in the marketplace. Remember this, fit is most important. These shoes don’t work for everyone. If they bind your toes, prevent free movement (up or down of the toes), or twist or cock your feet when running, then no matter how cool or “in” they seem to be, they may not be for you.
6 . Moccasins and Moccasin-like shoes. To me, for the winter, nothing beats my neoprene moccasins, which are really a cycling bootie with an insulated insole. And for walking year-round, a moccasin gives you the closest to barefoot feel of any footwear. However, true leather-made moccasins wear out very quickly unless you use a double-soled version, but then these too will inhibit full proprioception of the ground.
Custom moccasins are also quite costly, particularly given their wear. Other alternatives are Feelmax, which give you a true moccasin-like feel and, with only a 1 mm Kevlar bottom, let you sense the ground beneath you. Feelmax are a great shoe, but because you’ll feel everything, they are not a suitable everyday runner until you’ve built into daily barefoot or near-barefoot runs.
7. Beach socks. Sockwa Beach socks were originally designed for use on the beach. They let your feet move freely and give you the bare minimum of protection for your feet. These can be a smart choice if you’re a near full-time barefooter, but just need a bit of protection from the elements. They’re just about as close as you can get to barefoot, without being fully barefoot. I love my Beach Sockwas, though you’ll wear through them quickly on the roads. Fortunately, they cost a mere fraction of the cost of traditional running shoes.
Honorable mention: Sometimes the best minimalist shoes can be found in dance shoe stores. Modern dance is a version of dance that’s performed barefoot or nearly barefoot. In the near-barefoot category, dancers often wear a flesh-colored leather pad (often called a foot thong or dance paws—some actually shaped like a thong) over the ball of the foot to protect the skin from being torn during repeated spins on hardwood floors. There’s nothing under the toes, and the leather sole is typically only a millimeter thick, just enough protection to prevent your pads from getting beaten up. These small measures of foot protection allow your toes to fully grab and feel the ground.
I like the Ellis Bella foot thongs. You can find different shapes and sizes that fit your feet best. Many dancers prefer the Capezio Sandasol for its sandal-like look and feel (as it wraps around your heel like a sandal) and at a mere ounce or two, you barely notice you’re wearing them.
I discuss the following general categories of shoes in order roughly of most rigid and least barefoot-like to nearly bare. I haven’t written about traditional footwear, but realize that modestly supportive shoes (or shoes with a mild arch) may give your feet the rest they need to recover in between barefoot or nearly-barefoot workouts.
1 . Newtons and other toe-running shoes. I love the concept behind the original Newtons, getting you up and off your heel. I just wish they’d bring you closer to the ground, rather than farther away from it, and wish the lugs were farther forward (as they stand it’s more of a midfoot shoe than a true toe-runner’s shoe). I think Newtons have their purpose as a training tool, though not as an everyday runner. However, I applaud their efforts as one of a growing group of shoes coming out to help get you off the heel. Shoes that get you off the heel may help you break old habits. Look for shoes that are light, low, and without extra cushion. Additionally, make sure they don’t lock you into a particular stride where your foot can’t land on the forefoot where it wants to and move or spring naturally. Some shoes are constraining in this area. You don’t want to be locked in a position, even a good one. Injuries often arise when there’s a conflict between where your foot wants to go and where your shoe directs it to go.
2 . Tri shoes. Marketed toward triathletes, tri shoes tend to be fairly lightweight, often slip on quickly, and are better ventilated than traditional running shoes. Tri shoes are distinguished from true racing flats because they’re a bit heavier with a higher heel. Yet some of them, such as the K-Swiss, are getting very close to a racing flat. They all tend to have a bit too much of a raised heel. Look for shoes with the least heel possible. Most of them still have a curled up toe (toe-spring) as well, so look for models with the least toe-spring. I like that they’re getting lighter and slide on and off quickly. This is ideal for barefoot running when you want to bring your shoes along.
3 . Nike Frees and Free Flexing Shoes. I love shoes that let your feet flex because it helps you land more naturally and stay more injury-free. Nike Frees are a step in the right direction, I just wish they made it easier to get off the heels and run with a forefoot strike. I’m hopeful this will soon change as similar models by other brands are coming out all the time.
4 . Racing Flats. I must admit, if I’m going fast in a shoe, these are my shoes of choice—no matter what the distance. My favorite? The Asics Piranha. True flats have little or no toespring and do not have a raised heel, making it easier to run on your forefoot and keep you closer to the ground. Each season shoe manufacturers debut more and more new flats. While your regular running-shoe store might not stock many flats, often you can find the best selection at a store that stocks shoes for track and crosscountry racers—or online.
5 . Vibram FiveFingers and other Glove-like Shoes. Vibrams are just plain different and fun. With individual slots for each of your toes, they let your toes spread and move more freely and let you run with a far more natural style. I’d like them to go further to get even thinner, lighter, and with less binding or restriction between the toes. I think their new Bikila and future models to follow go a definite step in this direction. The biggest challenge with the FiveFingers is that you still don’t feel the ground nearly as much as you do when barefoot, so it’s easy to overdo it. Also, some of their models, such as the KSO Trek have built in modest arch support. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly for a transition shoe, but it is something to watch for. I can’t wait to see what Vibram does next, and what the competition does; yes, expect to see more FiveFingered– type shoes in the marketplace. Remember this, fit is most important. These shoes don’t work for everyone. If they bind your toes, prevent free movement (up or down of the toes), or twist or cock your feet when running, then no matter how cool or “in” they seem to be, they may not be for you.
6 . Moccasins and Moccasin-like shoes. To me, for the winter, nothing beats my neoprene moccasins, which are really a cycling bootie with an insulated insole. And for walking year-round, a moccasin gives you the closest to barefoot feel of any footwear. However, true leather-made moccasins wear out very quickly unless you use a double-soled version, but then these too will inhibit full proprioception of the ground.
Custom moccasins are also quite costly, particularly given their wear. Other alternatives are Feelmax, which give you a true moccasin-like feel and, with only a 1 mm Kevlar bottom, let you sense the ground beneath you. Feelmax are a great shoe, but because you’ll feel everything, they are not a suitable everyday runner until you’ve built into daily barefoot or near-barefoot runs.
7. Beach socks. Sockwa Beach socks were originally designed for use on the beach. They let your feet move freely and give you the bare minimum of protection for your feet. These can be a smart choice if you’re a near full-time barefooter, but just need a bit of protection from the elements. They’re just about as close as you can get to barefoot, without being fully barefoot. I love my Beach Sockwas, though you’ll wear through them quickly on the roads. Fortunately, they cost a mere fraction of the cost of traditional running shoes.
Honorable mention: Sometimes the best minimalist shoes can be found in dance shoe stores. Modern dance is a version of dance that’s performed barefoot or nearly barefoot. In the near-barefoot category, dancers often wear a flesh-colored leather pad (often called a foot thong or dance paws—some actually shaped like a thong) over the ball of the foot to protect the skin from being torn during repeated spins on hardwood floors. There’s nothing under the toes, and the leather sole is typically only a millimeter thick, just enough protection to prevent your pads from getting beaten up. These small measures of foot protection allow your toes to fully grab and feel the ground.
I like the Ellis Bella foot thongs. You can find different shapes and sizes that fit your feet best. Many dancers prefer the Capezio Sandasol for its sandal-like look and feel (as it wraps around your heel like a sandal) and at a mere ounce or two, you barely notice you’re wearing them.
07 veebruar 2012
Vahepeal jälle veidike raamatuid loetud...
On huvi pärast loetud jooksuraamatuid jälle. Ja siis veidi sellest
loetud kirjandusest ja väljavõtteid. Igal juhul soovitaks neid igaühel lugeda :P
Kas või huvi pärast, et olla ka selliste teemadega kursis...
sai loetud raamat: "Born to Run"
loetakse üheks parimaks ja inspireerivamaks lugemisvaraks uuemal ajal.
mõningaid lõike sealt.
hea lõik siin, veidike küll ajast maas aga ikkagi: "It wasn’t always like that—and when it wasn’t, we were awesome. Back in the ’70s, American marathoners were a lot like the Tarahumara; they were a tribe of isolated outcasts, running for love and relying on raw instinct and crude equipment. Slice the top off a ’70s running shoe, and you had a sandal: the old Adidas and Onitsuka Tigers were just a flat sole and laces, with no motion control, no arch support, no heel pad. The guys in the ’70s didn’t know enough to worry about “pronation” and “supination”; that fancy runningstore jargon hadn’t even been invented yet. Their training was as primitive as their shoes. They ran way too much: “We ran twice a day, sometimes three times,” Frank Shorter would recall. “All we did was run—run, eat, and sleep.” They ran way too hard: “The modus operandi was to let a bunch of competitive guys have at each other every day in a form of road rage,” one observer put it. And they were waaay too buddy-buddy for so-called competitors: “We liked running together,” recalled Bill Rodgers, a chieftain of the ’70s tribe and four-time Boston Marathon champ. “We had fun with it. It wasn’t a grind.” They were so ignorant, they didn’t even realize they were supposed to be burned out, overtrained, and injured. Instead, they were fast; really fast. Frank Shorter won the ’72 Olympic marathon gold and the ’76 silver, Bill Rodgers was the No. I ranked marathoner in the world for three years, and Alberto Salazar won Boston, New York, and the Comrades ultramarathon. By the early ’80s, the Greater Boston Track Club had half a dozen guys who could run a 2:12 marathon. That’s six guys, in one amateur club, in one city. Twenty years later, you couldn’t find a single 2:12 marathoner anywhere in the country. The United States couldn’t even get one runner to meet the 2:14 qualifying standard for the 2000 Olympics; only Rod DeHaven squeaked into the games under the 2:15 “B” standard. He finished sixty-ninth."
"After a full day of infantry drills. When the snow was too deep, Zatopek would jog in the tub on top of his dirty laundry, getting a resistance workout along with clean tighty whities. As soon as it thawed enough for him to get outside, he’d go nuts; he’d run four hundred meters as fast as he could, over and over, for ninety repetitions, resting in between by jogging two hundred meters. By the time he was finished, he’d done more than thirty-three miles of speedwork. Ask him his pace, and he’d shrug; he never timed himself. To build explosiveness, he and his wife, Dana, used to play catch with a javelin, hurling it back and forth to each other across a soccer field like a long, lethal Frisbee. One of Zatopek’s favorite workouts combined all his loves at once: he’d jog through the woods in his army boots with his everloving wife riding on his back. It was all a waste of time, of course. The Czechs were like the Zimbabwean bobsled team; they had no tradition, no coaching, no native talent, no chance of winning. But being counted out was liberating; having nothing to lose left Zatopek free to try any way to win. Take his first marathon: everyone knows the best way to build up to 26.2 miles is by running long, slow distances. Everyone, that is, except Emil Zatopek; he did hundred- yard dashes instead. “I already know how to go slow,” he reasoned. “I thought the point was to go fast.” His atrocious, deathspasming style was punch-line heaven for track scribes (“The most frightful horror spectacle since Frankenstein.” … “He runs as if his next step would be his last.” … “He looks like a man wrestling with an octopus on a conveyor belt”), but Zatopek just laughed along. “I’m not talented enough to run and smile at the same time,” he’d say. “Good thing it’s not figure skating. You only get points for speed, not style.”"
"That was pure Zatopek, though; races for him were like a pub crawl. He loved competing so much that instead of tapering and peaking, he jumped into as many meets as he could find. During a manic stretch in the late ’40s, Zatopek raced nearly every other week for three years and never lost, going 69-0. Even on a schedule like that, he still averaged up to 165 miles a week in training."
"“A lot of foot and knee injuries that are currently plaguing us are actually caused by people running with shoes that actually make our feet weak, cause us to overpronate, give us knee problems. Until 1972, when the modern athletic shoe was invented by Nike, people ran in very thin-soled shoes, had strong feet, and had much lower incidence of knee injuries.”"
"Coach Lananna walked over to explain. “I can’t prove this,” he explained, “but I believe when my runners train barefoot, they run faster and suffer fewer injuries.”"
"but people went thousands of years without shoes. I think you try to do all these corrective things with shoes and you overcompensate. You fix things that don’t need fixing. If you strengthen the foot by going barefoot, I think you reduce the risk of Achilles and knee and plantar fascia problems.”"
"Stretching came out even worse in a followup study performed the following year at the University of Hawaii; it found that runners who stretched were 33 percent more likely to get hurt."
"So if running shoes don’t make you go faster and don’t stop you from getting hurt, then what, exactly, are you paying for? What are the benefits of all those microchips, “thrust enhancers,” air cushions, torsion devices, and roll bars? Well, if you have a pair of Kinseis in your closet, brace yourself for some bad news. And like all bad news, it comes in threes: PAINFUL TRUTH No. 1: The Best Shoes Are the Worst RUNNERS wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123 percent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes, according to a study led by Bernard Marti, M.D., a preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland’s University of Bern. Dr. Marti’s research team analyzed 4,358 runners in the Bern Grand-Prix, a 9.6- mile road race. All the runners filled out an extensive questionnaire that detailed their training habits and footwear for the previous year; as it turned out, 45 percent had been hurt during that time."
"But what surprised Dr. Marti, as he pointed out in The American Journal of Sports Medicine in 1989, was the fact that the most common variable among the casualties wasn’t training surface, running speed, weekly mileage, or “competitive training motivation.” It wasn’t even body weight, or a history of previous injury: it was the price of the shoe. Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40"
"Sharp-eyed as ever, Coach Vin Lananna had already spotted the same phenomenon himself back in the early ’80s. “I once ordered high-end shoes for the team, and within two weeks, we had more plantar fasciitis and Achilles problems than I’d ever seen. So I sent them back and told them, ‘Send me my cheap shoes,’” Lananna says. “Ever since then, I’ve always ordered the low-end shoes. It’s not because I’m cheap. It’s because I’m in the business of making athletes run fast and stay healthy.”"
"BEFORE Alan Webb became America’s greatest miler, he was a flat-footed frosh with awful form. But his high school coach saw potential, and began rebuilding Alan from—no exaggeration—the ground up. “I had injury problems early on, and it became apparent that my biomechanics could cause injury,” Webb told me. “So we did foot-strengthening drills and special walks in bare feet.” Bit by bit, Webb watched his feet transform before his eyes. “I was a size twelve and flat-footed, and now I’m a nine or ten. As the muscles in my feet got stronger, my arch got higher.” Because of the barefoot drills, Webb also cut down on his injuries, allowing him to handle the kind of heavy training that would lead to his U.S. record for the mile and the fastest 1,500- meter time in the world for the year 2007."
Järgmine raamat siis: "The Barefoot Running Book First Edition: A Practical Guide to the Art and Science of Barefoot and Minimalist Shoe Running"
Ja hetkel käsil selline raamat: "Barefoot Running" How to Run Light and Free...
Kirjelduseks:
As seen nationally on TV, radio and in print, Barefoot Running, an orginally self-published book, is the most comprehensive guide to barefoot running, written by best-selling author and running coach Michael Sandler, who has coached and inspired thousands of runners, walkers, and hikers nationwide.
After a near-death accident left him with a titanium femur and hip along with 10 knee operations, no ACL, and an inch leg-length discrepancy, former professional athlete and Olympic hopeful Michael Sandler was told he could never run again. It was only by going barefoot and feeling the ground, he began to heal as he learned how to run light and free. He now runs pain free 10-20 miles a day and in all conditions. His step-by-step method helps runners overcome injuries, find their natural form and rediscover the pure joy of running, no matter their age, history, or fitness level.
Co-Author Jessica Lee hated running and nagging knee pain and swore off running until the day she went barefoot. Now she helps women experience the joy of running barefoot (and pain free) nationwide.
Written to help people get into running, back into running, or run pain free and at your best at any age, Michael Sandler's inspirational book and step-by-step guide is an easy to read bible of information and a must read for any runner. Barefoot Running is the how-to-guide that picks up where Christopher McDougall's inspiring book Born to Run left off. If you liked Born to Run, you'll love Barefoot Running.
Raamatust veidike copy-pastetud:
Here’s false propaganda to watch out for:
· Pronation (or rolling the foot downward and inward) is bad, and if you pronate you must use motion control or stability shoes. Not true, particularly over time. You may just need to strengthen your foot.
· If you get sore knees, you need more cushioning. False. Cushioning makes you hit harder and causes sore knees.
· Materials in most shoes compress so fast they lose their cushioning almost overnight. Not true. You want to feel the ground. Even with hundreds of miles on your shoes, they’re likely still too cushioned.
· Shoes must be replaced every 300 to 400 miles. False. The older the shoe, the more naturally your foot moves and feels the ground, and the less likely you’ll suffer an injury. So dig out those comfortable old soles and put ’em back on.
· Racing flats don’t last. False. While there’s less cushion, the shoe still lasts for hundreds of miles.
· Running shoes should fit snug. False. I fell for this one for years and opted for narrower and narrower shoes until I wound up in a women’s AA width shoe. Feet adapt to the size of their environment. A small, narrow shoe creates a small, narrow foot. Additionally, snug shoes don’t allow your feet to expand when they contact the ground, putting more force on a smaller area of the foot while decreasing stability. If your toes can’t spread, your foot is in trouble. Fortunately, my feet have returned to a more natural, wider width.
· Your arch height determines the amount of support you need. False. Many people ask, “What shoe is good for a high or low arch?” However, the better question to ask is, “How much support do I need for a weak or strong arch?” Just because someone has a high arch, it does not mean you give them a big arch support. When you run barefoot, your arches naturally get stronger and taller—and you need less arch support. There’s no right or wrong arch height, or one height that needs support more than another. It’s arch strength that needs to be taken into account.
Michael’s Checklist for Selecting a Minimalist Shoe:
The goal of minimalist or natural footwear is to allow you the most natural stride possible. To do so, we must throw out much of the junk designed into shoes today such as elevated heels, arches, stability, motion control, curved toes (called toe-spring) and much more. No shoe is perfect, but some are far better than others. With new shoes coming on the market almost daily, use this guide to weigh the plusses and minuses of your selection.
¨ Light weight. Any weight on your foot changes the dynamic of the stride, and the heavier the shoe, the more your stride changes. Weight can cause your heel to drop first, or put undue stress and strain on the shins, which were never designed to carry weight in the first place. A good minimalist shoe is exceptionally lightweight, no more than 6 to 8 ounces (170–227 grams) or less per shoe. Unfortunately, this takes many shoes out of the running that claim to give you a more natural stride.
FOOT NOTE
Even at 100 strides a minute, in a pair of 8-ounce shoes, you’re lifting a pound per stride, 100 pounds a minute, or 3 tons an hour. Double the weight of the shoe for a supportive trainer, and you’re carrying 6 tons of weight on your feet and legs per hour. That’s the weight of a good-sized elephant. No wonder joints crumble!
¨ Low to the ground. The number one acute running injury is ankle sprains, and there’s no better way to lose stability than being high up off the ground such as in a well-cushioned shoe. You gain greater stability and feel of the ground as you get lower. Consider shoes that are ideally a centimeter off the ground or less.
¨ No heel lift. Even if the shoe is close to the ground, if it’s not flat, it’s trouble. The trend in running shoes is higher heels, which unfortunately rotates your pelvis and shifts your weight unnaturally forward. This forces you to change the angle of your ankles, knees, hips, back, shoulders, and neck leading to soreness and serious overuse injuries over time. Ideally, consider shoes with less than 2 to 4 mm discrepancy between heel height and toe. Even a centimeter’s difference substantially affects your stride economy and safety.
¨ Wide toe box. Stay clear of narrow shoes, even if they meet all other criteria. Your foot naturally expands with each stride, both as a spring, and for stability. Many minimalist shoes such as cross-country racing flats and other track shoes do not let your feet expand. This forces more weight on a smaller area, which leads to overuse injuries such as tendonitis and stress fractures, and also creates a very unstable platform on which to land. Women, you may want to consider the men’s version of your favorite shoe to get the room you need in the forefoot.
¨ No arch support. Your foot can’t move naturally if the arch is propped up. Ideally, you want zero support for your arch. Any more than that keeps your arch weak. However, if you’ve been locked in a traditional shoe for years, you may want to wean off slowly, at least in between barefoot workouts. Go with much less arch support than the shoe salesman recommends. If it’s truly holding your foot in place, you’ve got far too much support. (A key point: As your feet get strong, even minimal arch support can become a true danger. Not only will it change your stride and prevent your foot from absorbing shock naturally, but if your feet are strong enough to support you on your own, that little arch support will cause your feet to roll to the outside or suppinate. Suppination can cause serious IT band problems, and knee, hip, and particularly, ankle and shin problems. If you’re doing just fine barefoot, you’ll need a shoe without arch support, or your foot and leg will be rolled to the outside.)
¨ No motion control. The majority of shoes today are designed to move your foot from one place to another through your stride. This motion completely negates the foot’s desire to naturally go where it wants, and that’s even if the shoe was designed for forefoot striking. Most shoes are made to control your foot for a heel strike. Forcing your foot to move in any one plane or direction of travel creates a conflict between the foot’s desire to go one way and the shoe’s desire to go another —thereby creating injury. Avoid shoes with strong groves or channels along the sole that lock your foot in place. ¨ Avoid multiple sole patterns and materials. Shoe manufacturers often vary the density or type of foam and rubber on their soles along with the tread to make your foot move or roll in a particular direction. This is also a means of motion control. You want one material on the bottom, so your foot can choose where it goes, rather than being dictated by the softness or firmness of the rubber on the sole.
¨ Look for a straight-axis shoe. Shoes without in-flare or “banana-nosed” shoes are still hard to come by. Shoes are built on a “last” or sole, and then material is wrapped around them. While our feet are built on a straight axis, the majority of shoes are still built with the toes curving toward the insides of our feet, called in-flare. This is why we wear out the tops of our shoes first and end up deforming our shoes to the outside. It’s always why we end up with curved toes after the age of 6, according to Dr. Rossi. Our feet and toes want to move one way, and our shoes forces them another. This doesn’t just do cosmetic damage as the toes are connected to nearly every ligament and tendon of the foot. Look for a shoe that lets your foot stay as straight as possible on the inside.
¨ Look for a flexible sole. Out of a shoe your toes naturally flex 54 degrees at the ball of the foot, but in a shoe, they flex 30 to 80 percent less, according to Dr. Rossi. The more flexible the sole, the more your foot flexes naturally and feels the ground. This aids with foot strength, stability, circulation, recovery, and flexibility. However, such flexibility can be detrimental, particularly in the beginning, on rocky terrain. Work into more flexible soles over time as your feet gain strength, flexibility, and padding. If not, you’re looking at overuse injuries or because rocks are felt straight through the shoe, even an acute injury such as a fractured metatarsal, from slamming your foot into a rock. In general, the more flexible the sole, the better you’ll feel the ground, mitigate shock, and strengthen your feet.
¨ Stay away from heavy cushioning. Recently someone told me, “It’s the most comfortable shoe I’ve ever run in.” However, the shoe he spoke of was a heavily cushioned clunker. Instead of protecting his feet, he was likely hurting himself. Cushioned comfort’s not the key; a plush luxury automobile might feel great on the highway, but be deadly on the racetrack. Cushioning reduces your ability to feel the ground, causing you to strike harder. It also makes your foot squirm and reduces stability. This can lead to overuse injuries throughout your feet, ankles, knees, and elsewhere (particularly your sensitive IT bands, which were never designed to stabilize a squirmy leg) and can lead to a trip or fall (and subsequent sprained ankle or worse). You’d never catch a baseball with a boxing glove, so why would you try to run while wearing one? Get the least cushioning you can.
Online Shoe Reviews
Please go to our Web site at www.RunBare.com and access the Minimalist Shoe Review section. We will continually update the models and our thoughts about them. We’ll look at new shoes, old shoes, and be your guide before you step into the shoe department so you can be aware and prepared.
PS!
Ise paljajalu ei jookse :D :P
sai loetud raamat: "Born to Run"
hea lõik siin, veidike küll ajast maas aga ikkagi: "It wasn’t always like that—and when it wasn’t, we were awesome. Back in the ’70s, American marathoners were a lot like the Tarahumara; they were a tribe of isolated outcasts, running for love and relying on raw instinct and crude equipment. Slice the top off a ’70s running shoe, and you had a sandal: the old Adidas and Onitsuka Tigers were just a flat sole and laces, with no motion control, no arch support, no heel pad. The guys in the ’70s didn’t know enough to worry about “pronation” and “supination”; that fancy runningstore jargon hadn’t even been invented yet. Their training was as primitive as their shoes. They ran way too much: “We ran twice a day, sometimes three times,” Frank Shorter would recall. “All we did was run—run, eat, and sleep.” They ran way too hard: “The modus operandi was to let a bunch of competitive guys have at each other every day in a form of road rage,” one observer put it. And they were waaay too buddy-buddy for so-called competitors: “We liked running together,” recalled Bill Rodgers, a chieftain of the ’70s tribe and four-time Boston Marathon champ. “We had fun with it. It wasn’t a grind.” They were so ignorant, they didn’t even realize they were supposed to be burned out, overtrained, and injured. Instead, they were fast; really fast. Frank Shorter won the ’72 Olympic marathon gold and the ’76 silver, Bill Rodgers was the No. I ranked marathoner in the world for three years, and Alberto Salazar won Boston, New York, and the Comrades ultramarathon. By the early ’80s, the Greater Boston Track Club had half a dozen guys who could run a 2:12 marathon. That’s six guys, in one amateur club, in one city. Twenty years later, you couldn’t find a single 2:12 marathoner anywhere in the country. The United States couldn’t even get one runner to meet the 2:14 qualifying standard for the 2000 Olympics; only Rod DeHaven squeaked into the games under the 2:15 “B” standard. He finished sixty-ninth."
"After a full day of infantry drills. When the snow was too deep, Zatopek would jog in the tub on top of his dirty laundry, getting a resistance workout along with clean tighty whities. As soon as it thawed enough for him to get outside, he’d go nuts; he’d run four hundred meters as fast as he could, over and over, for ninety repetitions, resting in between by jogging two hundred meters. By the time he was finished, he’d done more than thirty-three miles of speedwork. Ask him his pace, and he’d shrug; he never timed himself. To build explosiveness, he and his wife, Dana, used to play catch with a javelin, hurling it back and forth to each other across a soccer field like a long, lethal Frisbee. One of Zatopek’s favorite workouts combined all his loves at once: he’d jog through the woods in his army boots with his everloving wife riding on his back. It was all a waste of time, of course. The Czechs were like the Zimbabwean bobsled team; they had no tradition, no coaching, no native talent, no chance of winning. But being counted out was liberating; having nothing to lose left Zatopek free to try any way to win. Take his first marathon: everyone knows the best way to build up to 26.2 miles is by running long, slow distances. Everyone, that is, except Emil Zatopek; he did hundred- yard dashes instead. “I already know how to go slow,” he reasoned. “I thought the point was to go fast.” His atrocious, deathspasming style was punch-line heaven for track scribes (“The most frightful horror spectacle since Frankenstein.” … “He runs as if his next step would be his last.” … “He looks like a man wrestling with an octopus on a conveyor belt”), but Zatopek just laughed along. “I’m not talented enough to run and smile at the same time,” he’d say. “Good thing it’s not figure skating. You only get points for speed, not style.”"
"That was pure Zatopek, though; races for him were like a pub crawl. He loved competing so much that instead of tapering and peaking, he jumped into as many meets as he could find. During a manic stretch in the late ’40s, Zatopek raced nearly every other week for three years and never lost, going 69-0. Even on a schedule like that, he still averaged up to 165 miles a week in training."
"“A lot of foot and knee injuries that are currently plaguing us are actually caused by people running with shoes that actually make our feet weak, cause us to overpronate, give us knee problems. Until 1972, when the modern athletic shoe was invented by Nike, people ran in very thin-soled shoes, had strong feet, and had much lower incidence of knee injuries.”"
"Coach Lananna walked over to explain. “I can’t prove this,” he explained, “but I believe when my runners train barefoot, they run faster and suffer fewer injuries.”"
"but people went thousands of years without shoes. I think you try to do all these corrective things with shoes and you overcompensate. You fix things that don’t need fixing. If you strengthen the foot by going barefoot, I think you reduce the risk of Achilles and knee and plantar fascia problems.”"
"Stretching came out even worse in a followup study performed the following year at the University of Hawaii; it found that runners who stretched were 33 percent more likely to get hurt."
"So if running shoes don’t make you go faster and don’t stop you from getting hurt, then what, exactly, are you paying for? What are the benefits of all those microchips, “thrust enhancers,” air cushions, torsion devices, and roll bars? Well, if you have a pair of Kinseis in your closet, brace yourself for some bad news. And like all bad news, it comes in threes: PAINFUL TRUTH No. 1: The Best Shoes Are the Worst RUNNERS wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123 percent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes, according to a study led by Bernard Marti, M.D., a preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland’s University of Bern. Dr. Marti’s research team analyzed 4,358 runners in the Bern Grand-Prix, a 9.6- mile road race. All the runners filled out an extensive questionnaire that detailed their training habits and footwear for the previous year; as it turned out, 45 percent had been hurt during that time."
"But what surprised Dr. Marti, as he pointed out in The American Journal of Sports Medicine in 1989, was the fact that the most common variable among the casualties wasn’t training surface, running speed, weekly mileage, or “competitive training motivation.” It wasn’t even body weight, or a history of previous injury: it was the price of the shoe. Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40"
"Sharp-eyed as ever, Coach Vin Lananna had already spotted the same phenomenon himself back in the early ’80s. “I once ordered high-end shoes for the team, and within two weeks, we had more plantar fasciitis and Achilles problems than I’d ever seen. So I sent them back and told them, ‘Send me my cheap shoes,’” Lananna says. “Ever since then, I’ve always ordered the low-end shoes. It’s not because I’m cheap. It’s because I’m in the business of making athletes run fast and stay healthy.”"
"BEFORE Alan Webb became America’s greatest miler, he was a flat-footed frosh with awful form. But his high school coach saw potential, and began rebuilding Alan from—no exaggeration—the ground up. “I had injury problems early on, and it became apparent that my biomechanics could cause injury,” Webb told me. “So we did foot-strengthening drills and special walks in bare feet.” Bit by bit, Webb watched his feet transform before his eyes. “I was a size twelve and flat-footed, and now I’m a nine or ten. As the muscles in my feet got stronger, my arch got higher.” Because of the barefoot drills, Webb also cut down on his injuries, allowing him to handle the kind of heavy training that would lead to his U.S. record for the mile and the fastest 1,500- meter time in the world for the year 2007."
Järgmine raamat siis: "The Barefoot Running Book First Edition: A Practical Guide to the Art and Science of Barefoot and Minimalist Shoe Running"
Ja hetkel käsil selline raamat: "Barefoot Running" How to Run Light and Free...
Kirjelduseks:
As seen nationally on TV, radio and in print, Barefoot Running, an orginally self-published book, is the most comprehensive guide to barefoot running, written by best-selling author and running coach Michael Sandler, who has coached and inspired thousands of runners, walkers, and hikers nationwide.
After a near-death accident left him with a titanium femur and hip along with 10 knee operations, no ACL, and an inch leg-length discrepancy, former professional athlete and Olympic hopeful Michael Sandler was told he could never run again. It was only by going barefoot and feeling the ground, he began to heal as he learned how to run light and free. He now runs pain free 10-20 miles a day and in all conditions. His step-by-step method helps runners overcome injuries, find their natural form and rediscover the pure joy of running, no matter their age, history, or fitness level.
Co-Author Jessica Lee hated running and nagging knee pain and swore off running until the day she went barefoot. Now she helps women experience the joy of running barefoot (and pain free) nationwide.
Written to help people get into running, back into running, or run pain free and at your best at any age, Michael Sandler's inspirational book and step-by-step guide is an easy to read bible of information and a must read for any runner. Barefoot Running is the how-to-guide that picks up where Christopher McDougall's inspiring book Born to Run left off. If you liked Born to Run, you'll love Barefoot Running.
Raamatust veidike copy-pastetud:
Here’s false propaganda to watch out for:
· Pronation (or rolling the foot downward and inward) is bad, and if you pronate you must use motion control or stability shoes. Not true, particularly over time. You may just need to strengthen your foot.
· If you get sore knees, you need more cushioning. False. Cushioning makes you hit harder and causes sore knees.
· Materials in most shoes compress so fast they lose their cushioning almost overnight. Not true. You want to feel the ground. Even with hundreds of miles on your shoes, they’re likely still too cushioned.
· Shoes must be replaced every 300 to 400 miles. False. The older the shoe, the more naturally your foot moves and feels the ground, and the less likely you’ll suffer an injury. So dig out those comfortable old soles and put ’em back on.
· Racing flats don’t last. False. While there’s less cushion, the shoe still lasts for hundreds of miles.
· Running shoes should fit snug. False. I fell for this one for years and opted for narrower and narrower shoes until I wound up in a women’s AA width shoe. Feet adapt to the size of their environment. A small, narrow shoe creates a small, narrow foot. Additionally, snug shoes don’t allow your feet to expand when they contact the ground, putting more force on a smaller area of the foot while decreasing stability. If your toes can’t spread, your foot is in trouble. Fortunately, my feet have returned to a more natural, wider width.
· Your arch height determines the amount of support you need. False. Many people ask, “What shoe is good for a high or low arch?” However, the better question to ask is, “How much support do I need for a weak or strong arch?” Just because someone has a high arch, it does not mean you give them a big arch support. When you run barefoot, your arches naturally get stronger and taller—and you need less arch support. There’s no right or wrong arch height, or one height that needs support more than another. It’s arch strength that needs to be taken into account.
Michael’s Checklist for Selecting a Minimalist Shoe:
The goal of minimalist or natural footwear is to allow you the most natural stride possible. To do so, we must throw out much of the junk designed into shoes today such as elevated heels, arches, stability, motion control, curved toes (called toe-spring) and much more. No shoe is perfect, but some are far better than others. With new shoes coming on the market almost daily, use this guide to weigh the plusses and minuses of your selection.
¨ Light weight. Any weight on your foot changes the dynamic of the stride, and the heavier the shoe, the more your stride changes. Weight can cause your heel to drop first, or put undue stress and strain on the shins, which were never designed to carry weight in the first place. A good minimalist shoe is exceptionally lightweight, no more than 6 to 8 ounces (170–227 grams) or less per shoe. Unfortunately, this takes many shoes out of the running that claim to give you a more natural stride.
FOOT NOTE
Even at 100 strides a minute, in a pair of 8-ounce shoes, you’re lifting a pound per stride, 100 pounds a minute, or 3 tons an hour. Double the weight of the shoe for a supportive trainer, and you’re carrying 6 tons of weight on your feet and legs per hour. That’s the weight of a good-sized elephant. No wonder joints crumble!
¨ Low to the ground. The number one acute running injury is ankle sprains, and there’s no better way to lose stability than being high up off the ground such as in a well-cushioned shoe. You gain greater stability and feel of the ground as you get lower. Consider shoes that are ideally a centimeter off the ground or less.
¨ No heel lift. Even if the shoe is close to the ground, if it’s not flat, it’s trouble. The trend in running shoes is higher heels, which unfortunately rotates your pelvis and shifts your weight unnaturally forward. This forces you to change the angle of your ankles, knees, hips, back, shoulders, and neck leading to soreness and serious overuse injuries over time. Ideally, consider shoes with less than 2 to 4 mm discrepancy between heel height and toe. Even a centimeter’s difference substantially affects your stride economy and safety.
¨ Wide toe box. Stay clear of narrow shoes, even if they meet all other criteria. Your foot naturally expands with each stride, both as a spring, and for stability. Many minimalist shoes such as cross-country racing flats and other track shoes do not let your feet expand. This forces more weight on a smaller area, which leads to overuse injuries such as tendonitis and stress fractures, and also creates a very unstable platform on which to land. Women, you may want to consider the men’s version of your favorite shoe to get the room you need in the forefoot.
¨ No arch support. Your foot can’t move naturally if the arch is propped up. Ideally, you want zero support for your arch. Any more than that keeps your arch weak. However, if you’ve been locked in a traditional shoe for years, you may want to wean off slowly, at least in between barefoot workouts. Go with much less arch support than the shoe salesman recommends. If it’s truly holding your foot in place, you’ve got far too much support. (A key point: As your feet get strong, even minimal arch support can become a true danger. Not only will it change your stride and prevent your foot from absorbing shock naturally, but if your feet are strong enough to support you on your own, that little arch support will cause your feet to roll to the outside or suppinate. Suppination can cause serious IT band problems, and knee, hip, and particularly, ankle and shin problems. If you’re doing just fine barefoot, you’ll need a shoe without arch support, or your foot and leg will be rolled to the outside.)
¨ No motion control. The majority of shoes today are designed to move your foot from one place to another through your stride. This motion completely negates the foot’s desire to naturally go where it wants, and that’s even if the shoe was designed for forefoot striking. Most shoes are made to control your foot for a heel strike. Forcing your foot to move in any one plane or direction of travel creates a conflict between the foot’s desire to go one way and the shoe’s desire to go another —thereby creating injury. Avoid shoes with strong groves or channels along the sole that lock your foot in place. ¨ Avoid multiple sole patterns and materials. Shoe manufacturers often vary the density or type of foam and rubber on their soles along with the tread to make your foot move or roll in a particular direction. This is also a means of motion control. You want one material on the bottom, so your foot can choose where it goes, rather than being dictated by the softness or firmness of the rubber on the sole.
¨ Look for a straight-axis shoe. Shoes without in-flare or “banana-nosed” shoes are still hard to come by. Shoes are built on a “last” or sole, and then material is wrapped around them. While our feet are built on a straight axis, the majority of shoes are still built with the toes curving toward the insides of our feet, called in-flare. This is why we wear out the tops of our shoes first and end up deforming our shoes to the outside. It’s always why we end up with curved toes after the age of 6, according to Dr. Rossi. Our feet and toes want to move one way, and our shoes forces them another. This doesn’t just do cosmetic damage as the toes are connected to nearly every ligament and tendon of the foot. Look for a shoe that lets your foot stay as straight as possible on the inside.
¨ Look for a flexible sole. Out of a shoe your toes naturally flex 54 degrees at the ball of the foot, but in a shoe, they flex 30 to 80 percent less, according to Dr. Rossi. The more flexible the sole, the more your foot flexes naturally and feels the ground. This aids with foot strength, stability, circulation, recovery, and flexibility. However, such flexibility can be detrimental, particularly in the beginning, on rocky terrain. Work into more flexible soles over time as your feet gain strength, flexibility, and padding. If not, you’re looking at overuse injuries or because rocks are felt straight through the shoe, even an acute injury such as a fractured metatarsal, from slamming your foot into a rock. In general, the more flexible the sole, the better you’ll feel the ground, mitigate shock, and strengthen your feet.
¨ Stay away from heavy cushioning. Recently someone told me, “It’s the most comfortable shoe I’ve ever run in.” However, the shoe he spoke of was a heavily cushioned clunker. Instead of protecting his feet, he was likely hurting himself. Cushioned comfort’s not the key; a plush luxury automobile might feel great on the highway, but be deadly on the racetrack. Cushioning reduces your ability to feel the ground, causing you to strike harder. It also makes your foot squirm and reduces stability. This can lead to overuse injuries throughout your feet, ankles, knees, and elsewhere (particularly your sensitive IT bands, which were never designed to stabilize a squirmy leg) and can lead to a trip or fall (and subsequent sprained ankle or worse). You’d never catch a baseball with a boxing glove, so why would you try to run while wearing one? Get the least cushioning you can.
Online Shoe Reviews
Please go to our Web site at www.RunBare.com and access the Minimalist Shoe Review section. We will continually update the models and our thoughts about them. We’ll look at new shoes, old shoes, and be your guide before you step into the shoe department so you can be aware and prepared.
PS!
Ise paljajalu ei jookse :D :P
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