Radiant Running

Physical Therapy for Runners

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Body Awareness Skill Set

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Body awareness is the ability to feel your posture in any given activity, how you move, and where your body is in space.  When this skill is fine-tuned, we are able to direct what we are doing when we move. Knowing  how and where we hold unnecessary tension in our bodies and how to release it while running, from stride mechanics all the way down to the contraction of specific muscles can be of great benefit. Helping  you understand your movement patterns  and then how  to feel and self-correct your  limiting and unnecessary movement patterns is the goal of my Physical Therapy work with runners.

This  ability  to tap into our body awareness  provides insight into what we may be doing that contributes to the pain we are experiencing which can then point us in the direction of what adjustments we need to make to heal or avoid injury in the first place.  As a bonus, these are the same adjustments that improve our overall running performance and our enjoyment of the sport.

Very much part of this Skill Set is developing our proprioceptive sense (sometimes referred as the 6th sense or kinesthetic sense. Our connective tissues contains a variety of sensory information fibers. In the last couple decades a vast amount of research into the fascial system of the body has revealed far more Sensory Information Fibers exist then was previously understood. These proprioceptors inform us of where we are in space, how we are moving, how our parts and segments contribute (or fail to contribute) to our whole body movement, and even how we feel.Continue Reading »

Injury as Opportunity

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Just as meat and potatoes nourish the body, experiences nourish the spirit. Experiences supply the energy that our lives are built upon. Just as a big hearty protein meal plays a leading role in building the tissue of the body back stronger after our hard workouts, the many and varied experiences that we have do the same thing to our character, our being. How we feel after a race where we tested our strength, endurance, and our mental focus, is the food that builds our confidence and sense of personal achievement. We take that nourishment into our lives and can apply it across a wide range of activities.

This has become a ruling idea in my life, and I have applied it to running: That what is hard has as much relevance, if not more, to the big picture of my life, as what came easily. Apply this to pain and injury and it becomes clear that the healing process has much to teach us if we embrace it and keep asking the question “why?” until we get to the bottom of the issues the injury presents.

Early on, somewhere in childhood we all learn that a bone heals back stronger at the break-site. This is fascinating. Under the microscope there is a world of activity to heal that bone, a lot of hard work, a lot of players; osteoclasts, osteoblasts, chondroblasts, fibroblasts, just to name a few.

Likewise when we get injured, we are presented with options. One is to lament our situation and seek a quick and painless fix. A quite different one is to take it as a challenge to understand and heal it. The latter choice mobilizes our power and ability just as the bone break activates so many healing factors. It can open doors and windows. So what are the components of our power and ability? Patience, confidence, desire to learn and improve, ability to get perspective on ourselves and our training choices or our ability to follow instruction in the case of finding a professional in the medical or coaching world . We get an opportunity to learn and change. These kind of opportunities may not be commonplace in our lives and so taking advantage of them when they arise is important.Continue Reading »

Why Running Form is the Key

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Running From the Core

This is perhaps the most important skill to learn and also the least understood in terms of implementation. How this is generally approached is to strengthen muscles associated with the lower abdominal and pelvic region of the body. Lots of planks, squats, and a variety of other methods of muscle strengthening. Then when we go to run we might study a little about foot-strike, and stride mechanics and hope for the best.

Through the Body Awareness Skill Set, we can learn how “do we learn to direct ourselves” so that our body works harmoniously, all parts contributing their necessary effort to the “whole running body”, with no extra effort. Nothing blocked, rigid, or turned off.

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Positional Deactivation: Why Runner’s Glutes Don’t Activate

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It is well documented that the Gluteus Maximus (Glutes) play a huge role in running. They couple with the Lats in the posterior chain to drive propulsion. They couple with the hamstrings in terminal swing to decelerate the leg and bring it down powerfully to an underbody ground contact. They help stabilize the pelvis in side to side movement. In theory they developed to their modern size and power so that early forms of “us” could run long distances. “The Gluteus Maximus, whose increased size is among the most distinctive of all human features, is strongly recruited in running at all speeds…..”[1] They also look good, right?Continue Reading »

Anatomy of a Runner’s High

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Re-establishing that Unity of Purpose and Action

Truly we feel best when we feel a unity of purpose in our activities. This is not different with running. We feel like we are clicking. Many times I’ve heard a runner say, “it turned over” or “I got in a groove” or “everything felt connected”. These experience are associated with a runners high. We have gone from our day job to the road for an end of day run and boom. Perhaps in some way our day didn’t fulfill some, perhaps vague, deeper need. Our run has transformed us and we go into evening feeling refreshed, relaxed, renewed, cohered, and unified. The simple act of running has delivered a gift. It wasn’t mental, it wasn’t practical, it wasn’t expected, it just was. We deferred to our body, which in its primary motions has a unity of purpose and action. Even when our bodies have been held in questionable, static, and unnatural positions for a number of hours, it bounces back. We feel looser, lighter, more fluid, all of which have a vitalizing and rejuvenating effect on our spirit.Continue Reading »

Runner’s High: An Anatomy Part II – Relationship to Ground and Gravity

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 A Brief Survey of the Territory

Running is a key that generates a variety of experiences and joys for a large number of people world wide, hence the astronomical increase in citizen participation in road races of every distance. This blog and ones that follow will address the topic of “Runners High”, why such a thing exists, how might we cultivate it, learn from it, and weave its lessons into the fabric of our lives?

We have evolved into a species that has all the anatomy and physiology in place to excel in endurance athletics, especially running. We also have developed emotionally and mentally over time, giving us the capacity for a psychic/mystical orientation towards experience. Blend these two qualities, the endurance and mystical capacities, and a very luring hybrid emerges, commonly known as the Runner’s High.

It is likely that the sense of bodily strength, lightness, and the fluid ease of movement that accompanies transcendent running experiences developed first for our nomadic ancestors. As we climbed the evolutionary ladder, our consciousness expanded from mere survival to creativity and influence on our environment, and the mystical aspects of higher emotional and mental functions developed.  Continue Reading »