Most people spend a lot of time building capacity – very few train expression.

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Like many runners who have pain, Sam’s first angle of attack was to look at his running form. In fact, almost every runner who comes to see me starts by asking for a gait analysis as they believe it must be their ‘poor’ running form that’s resulting in their pain or lack of performance. While on the surface it may look like their running form is the cause of it all, but believe it or not, it’s rarely the case – and Sam’s case highlights this perfectly.

Your running form is simply an output – it’s a set of movements produced by your ability to control and coordinate your muscles, joints and other tissue. You can think of it a bit like the final product of a cake-baking process. If your ingredients, method or process are substandard in any way, the resulting cake will not be what you want. The best way to get a good cake is to ensure that the ingredients, method and process are exactly what’s needed to produce the cake you want.

This is exactly the same with your running form. In the case of human movement, the ingredients are the sensory input signals from all over your body; the method and processes are what your brain does with that sensory input and how it integrates it; your running form is the eventual output.

Given that Sam’s shin and calf pain only came on beyond 10k tells us that something about the quality of his inputs or processing and integration wasn’t quite right. And yes, this probably was being displayed somewhere in his running form and I could have gone down the route of measuring angles, looking for muscle weakness and all the traditional stuff – but I chose a much more direct route first.

I started by testing what he could feel from his right calf and shin. Sam had his eyes closed and was to tell me what he experienced. I applied hot and cold touch. I followed this with pressing a sharp point or a dull point at various points. I tested light tough, heavy tough and vibration. In all areas we tested, except one, Sam could feel all these sensations so I knew that his brain was getting a pretty clear map of where his calf and shin were: but not a totally complete map. There was a very small area, no bigger than 2cm round, where Sam couldn’t feel any sensation at all. It was a tiny paler area of skin from a very old scar that Sam didn’t even know was there. Could that be the issue? 

I then did some skin stretch testing on that specific area and found there were some barriers, indicating further that this tiny area was messing with Sam’s braid-body map. I did a bit of work to release the barriers and we retested Sam’s movement quality: in this case we were testing ankle range of movement and calf tightness. We immediately saw an improvement so I knew we were onto something. Then came the really weird bit!

I wanted Sam to get more in touch with the sensory information that was coming in from that area of his skin. To do this, I wanted to dull down two of his primary sensory inputs – vision and hearing. Sam then stood up tall, put on a blindfold and a pair of ear defenders. His drill was to find his way down to the ground, roll over on the outside of his calf where the target area of skin was, and then come back up to standing. He was to do this five times.

The retest after doing this exercise was outstanding! Sam’s calf tightness had all but disappeared and his right-side ankle range of movement increased dramatically.

Sam’s homework for the next few days was to repeat this exercise at home once or twice per day, and just five reps.

Within five days Sam’s shin and calf pain had gone completely! Totally vanished! When he came in for his first proper session with me a couple of weeks later, he had already increased his long run to 14km and was completely pain-free. That was a couple of months ago (June 2025) and Sam has had a couple more sessions with me, and this time we were able to go straight to improving his technique – which he did in a single session – because the stability of his right side was now not an issue and we could look at optimisation. But just from that first exercise, Sam’s pain resolved and it has never come back even though he is now a good way through his half marathon training.

Why was this area causing Sam pain? Because his brain-body map was incomplete, Sam wasn’t able to effectively stabilise his knee and ankle joints reactively (unconsciously) as he was running. When he increased his distance, the skill requirement for stability also increased, especially as fatigue creeps in. The incomplete brain-body map was stopping this from happening so his brain produced the pain experience to get him to stop – it was red-flagging him that something wasn’t right.

As soon as we completed the brain-body map, he was suddenly able to stabilise his joints again and his brain was perfectly happy and safe with him increasing his distance.

Your brain and nervous system are amazing, and by working at their level and communicating with them directly, you really can make life-altering transformations – just like Sam did.

My Runner By Design membership takes everything I do with my clients on a one to one basis, and makes it available online as a set of assessments, courses, education and live coaching calls. It’s designed to take you on your next steps of your running journey, including helping you get out of pain and enjoying your running again.

To find out more, click here. 

The post The Tiny Scar That Solved Two Years of a Runner’s Pain appeared first on RunTeach.

If you are like most of the runners I speak to, you’ll only do a warm up selectively – usually before a race. The rest of the time you just get out and run. Now, I’m not here to pass judgement, and in fact there is very little hard evidence that supports the standard type of warm up most of us would do in terms of reducing your injury risk or improving your performance. The key is personalised neural primers.

That’s not to say your standard warm up is not doing anything at all – you’ll find some runners swear by a warm up where others say it does nothing for them. Interestingly, part of the reason for this polarity in results is the effect of prediction. Your brain gets good at what you do most, and starts to expect it in certain contexts. So, if you’ve always done a warm up and then you suddenly stop, your brain may see that as a threat and is wondering why you’re not doing it. As a result, you don’t get to feel as good as normal and may be more tense, not quite feel balanced or just a little off. The same goes for those runners who don’t normally do a warm up: they suddenly do a warm up and their brain is going “what’s going on – this is strange”.

In both cases, there will be runners who benefit from not doing a warm up who used to do one, and runners who’ll benefit from doing a warm up when they never used to do them – such is the uniqueness of your nervous system. Either way though, doing something before you run can be thought of as a neural primer.

As the name suggests, a neural primer is getting you ready for what’s coming next. To take full advantage of the power of neural primers, it’s best to design them purposefully. So while any old warm up could possibly help to some extent, if it’s not designed specifically for your nervous system and for the aims of the race or session you are about to do, it could set you back before you’ve even started. How could that be the case?

The problem with ‘generic’

We live in a world of personalisation, from tailored social media feeds to glucose monitor-based diets and of course, personalised feedback and recommendations from your favourite running watch and apps.

It’s widely recognised that personalised services are more effective than their generic counterparts, if the data used and the algorithms are accurate of course. However, when it comes to warming up and preparing for a running session or race, the closest most of us get to a personalised warm up is making it run-specific rather than for a different sport. But is settling for a generic warm up setting you back?

Generic is easy; much easier than tailoring services and advice for an individual. However, there is a trade-off in that the generic solutions simply won’t be as effective for 30% to 50% of people. This is not a scientific figure I admit, but it’s a rough split based on all my clients over the years and from discussions and observations from and with other professionals in this space. 

You have most likely experienced this yourself as well. In a group fitness class there are some people who’ll love it and do really well and there will be others who just don’t get on with it at all. How about that mobility course you bought online – how did that work out for you? Maybe you’ve done some Yoga and have tried several different types of Yoga before you found one you got benefit from.

When it comes to warm ups and neural primers, personalisation is the way to go if you want to enjoy your running more, reduce pain and improve performance. But why?

Your uniqueness

Just like your fingerprints, your nervous system is unique to you. In fact, it’s even more unique than finger prints because even identical twins with identical DNA will have different nervous systems because they’ve had different variations in their experiences throughout their life, no matter how small those variations may have been.

You see, your nervous system is being shaped and moulded in every moment of every day. Every experience you have at any given moment in time results in changes in how your brain is wired. Sometimes these are very small changes and sometimes they can be large changes – but change is guaranteed and is a continuous process. This is what creates the uniqueness of your nervous system: it has been shaped and moulded like no other nervous system.

This uniqueness is what you can target to improve your performance, reduce your pain and increase your enjoyment of running.

There are, of course, some baseline similarities between your nervous system and everyone else’s. There are some generic exercises and drills that most people seem to benefit from, and there is a general process by which you can improve your nervous system’s performance. It’s a bit like lifting weights will make most people stronger and achieve bigger muscles (if that’s their goal), but if you really want to perform then you need to tailor those muscle-building exercises for you.

And just like tailoring what you do to improve your running is important, tailoring what you don’t do is just as important – perhaps more so. And this is often why generic solutions just don’t work for many of us.

Performance, Neutral, Rehab

Whenever I design a session or exercise stack for someone, whether it’s to help them get out of pain, improve their performance or to enhance their enjoyment of sport and life, I always look to categorise the exercises for them. The categories I use are:

The only way I can help categorise the drills and exercises for you is to assess them with your nervous system. A performance drill for someone else may be a rehab drill for you. For example, leg swings in a running warm up may make one runner feel loose and amazing. But when you do them they stiffen your hamstrings up, and you start your race with slightly wooden legs and feel terrible.

This is why a generic warm up may make you worse before you even start your session or race.

I’m sure you’ll agree that if most of the exercises you are currently including in your running warm up are either neutral or rehab exercises for you, then at best you’re not doing much to positively prime yourself, and at worst are negatively impacting how you move and run before you even cross the start line.

The same goes for pain. Well-meaning friends, family and even some professionals often give out advice and exercises that have worked for them or clients of theirs, but could make you worse! If they are not taking the time to assess and re-assess the impact of those exercises on your nervous system, then they don’t really know that those drills and exercises aren’t holding you back instead of helping you.

Designer warm ups

So the only way to improve your running and reduce your pain is to use solutions that work for you. And this is the power of a personalised warm up with neural primers designed to work with your nervous system and not against it.

In the next article we’ll get into some of the base neural primers that most people get a good return from. But of course, I’ll show you easy ways to assess and re-assess so you can be sure. Sometimes, just a small variation to an exercise or drill is all that’s needed to move it from one category to another. 

An important note: Even though the rehab exercises and drills can make you worse, these are often the ones you need to do in a controlled environment and at an appropriate time if you really want to improve. But you need to make sure the timing of these matches your goals. The last thing you want to do is a rehab exercise and then go and race. But you might sandwich a rehab exercise between two performance exercises on a rest day, after a run or even a couple of hours before an easy run. 

This is such an exciting area where you can make real gains in performance and enjoyment as well as pain modulation. I’ve been blown away by some of the results I’ve personally experienced and seen from my clients from well-designed routines and exercise stacks including tailored versions of base neural primers.

To find out more about pain and how individualised it really is, click here.

The post Is Your Warm Up Slowing You Down? appeared first on RunTeach.

Introduction

In the first article we looked at some common running injuries and also started to delve into the definitions of injury and whether there needs to be any physical tissue issue for you to experience physical pain. In this article we are going to dive in deeper to get a good understanding of what pain is and how it works.

Because pain is such a complicated topic and often very hard to explain without going into a load of science you probably don’t want to read right now, I’ve put together a short story to help you understand pain a bit better. We can then pull apart individual areas of this story in future articles to tease out a deeper understanding – something I regard as critical if you are going to manage and modulate your own pain.

The Whisper of Pain

It began as a whisper, a fleeting discomfort in Emily’s ankle as she ran along the embankment on a crisp, bright morning. At first, she dismissed it – she had felt her foot slip off a root, but it was a tiny movement; maybe she had banged it as she was loading up the kids’ bags as they rushed into the car for the school run. But over the weeks, the whisper grew louder, becoming a persistent throb that forced her to question: What exactly is pain?

This is Emily’s story, but it could be anyone’s. Pain is universal, yet deeply personal, shaped by biology, psychology, and even society. To understand pain, we must journey into the intricate world of neuroscience, where signals, chemicals, and perceptions weave a complex tapestry.

The Signal of Alarm

Pain begins its journey as a threat signal in the body, often as a response to potential harm. When Emily’s foot slipped off that root, specialised nerve endings called nociceptors sprang into action.

These nociceptors, which reside in her skin, muscles, and organs, are like tiny watchtowers. They detect extreme temperatures, pressure, or chemical changes and send electrical signals racing along her nerves to her spinal cord and brain.

In milliseconds, her body reacted – returning her ankle to its previous position before she was even consciously aware of what had happened. This is the power of the reflex arc, a rapid protective mechanism that bypasses the brain for speed.

The Brain’s Role in Pain

The signals from Emily’s ankle didn’t stop at her spinal cord. They continued their journey to the thalamus, a central relay station in her brain. From there, they were dispatched to various regions:

• The somatosensory cortex, which identified the potential threat’s location and intensity.
• The limbic system, which processed the emotional distress of her rolled ankle.
• The prefrontal cortex, which helped her brain assess the situation and decide what to do next.

Interestingly, Emily’s pain wasn’t just a physical sensation. It was shaped by her thoughts, past experiences, and expectations. This is why neuroscientists say pain lives in the brain.

Chronic Pain – When the Alarm Stays On

Weeks later, Emily’s ankle had long ago healed, but the dull ache persisted. She wondered: Why does it still hurt when there’s no injury?

This is the enigma of chronic pain, where the nervous system continues to send threat signals long after the initial damage has healed. Scientists have discovered that in chronic pain, the nervous system undergoes a process called central sensitisation, making it hypersensitive.

For Emily, this meant that her brain and spinal cord were amplifying normal sensations, interpreting even gentle touches as a threat and creating the experience of them being painful. This phenomenon explains why chronic pain feels so real, even when doctors can’t find a clear cause.

Pain and Emotion – The Brain’s Feedback Loop

Pain and emotion are intricately linked. On stressful days, Emily noticed her pain felt worse. On relaxing weekends, it seemed more bearable.

This is no coincidence. The brain’s pain and emotional centers are deeply intertwined. Neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which regulate mood, also influence pain perception. Stress can amplify pain by flooding the body with cortisol, a stress hormone that heightens sensitivity.

Emily’s story highlights the importance of addressing not just the physical, but also the emotional aspects of pain.

The Gate Control Theory – A Balancing Act

Emily’s movement coach introduced her to a fascinating concept: the Gate Control Theory of pain.

Imagine a “gate” in the spinal cord that controls whether threat signals reach the brain. By engaging in activities like running and other exercise, massage, sensory stimulation such as skin stretch or vibration, and even laughter, Emily could “close the gate,” reducing her perception of pain.

This explained why certain distractions, like playing her favourite music, seemed to help. Her brain was focusing on other signals, leaving less bandwidth for pain.

Phantom Pain – The Ghost in the System

One day, Emily met Sam, a veteran who’d lost his leg in an accident. Despite the amputation, Sam often felt excruciating pain in his missing limb – a phenomenon called phantom pain.

Sam’s story illuminated the incredible adaptability of the brain, known as neuroplasticity. His brain was still mapping the missing limb, generating threat signals as if it were still there.

Through techniques like mirror therapy, Sam was retraining his brain to quiet these phantom sensations, offering hope for recovery.

Pain’s Silver Lining

Despite its unpleasantness, pain serves a critical purpose. Without it, Emily’s system might not have reacted to control her ankle, potentially leading to severe tissue issues. Conditions like congenital insensitivity to pain, where individuals cannot experience pain, highlight its importance.

However, while acute pain is protective, chronic pain often loses its usefulness, becoming a condition to manage rather than a symptom to treat.

The Future of Pain Management

Emily’s journey led her to explore cutting-edge advancements in pain science. Researchers are developing treatments that target pain at its source, such as:

• Neuromodulation therapies, like spinal cord stimulators, which block threat signals.
• Personalised movement, exercises and drills specifically designed for that individual’s nervous system.
• Personalised sensory stacks, where certain sensory receptors are stimulated in specific ways and stacked together in response to the individual’s nervous system output.
• Personalised medicine, where genetic testing helps tailor treatments.
• Mind-body approaches, like mindfulness meditation, which retrains the brain’s response to threat.

The neuroscience of pain is evolving, offering new hope for millions like Emily and Sam.

Pain as a Teacher

Emily’s experience with pain transformed her perspective. She learned that pain is not just an output signal but a story – a narrative shaped by her body, brain, and environment.

Her journey underscores the resilience of the human spirit and the incredible complexity of the mind. While pain may be inevitable, understanding its science empowers us to rewrite its story.

FAQs

1. Why does pain feel worse during stress?
Stress releases hormones like cortisol, which amplify threat sensitivity by heightening the nervous system’s response.

2. What is central sensitisation in chronic pain?
Central sensitisation is when the nervous system becomes hypersensitive, amplifying normal sensations into threatening ones that result in an experience of pain.

3. How does the Gate Control Theory of pain work?
The Gate Control Theory suggests that “gates” in the spinal cord regulate threat signals to the brain. Distractions or physical activities can close these gates, reducing pain perception.

4. What is phantom pain?
Phantom pain is a sensation of pain in a limb or body part that has been amputated. It occurs because the brain’s map of the body persists even after the loss.

5. Can emotions influence pain?
Yes, emotions and pain are closely connected. Positive emotions can reduce pain perception, while negative emotions can intensify it.

6. What are emerging treatments for chronic pain?
Emerging treatments include neuromodulation therapies, personalised movement strategies, personalised sensory strategies, personalised medicine, and mind-body approaches like mindfulness meditation.

Conclusion

Through Emily’s pain story, you can get a basic understanding of what pain is and how pain works. Effectively, pain is an experience created in the brain in response to threat signals from your body’s tissues, combined with your previous experiences and your beliefs.

In the next article we are going to look at some specific case studies where I have worked with clients to modulate their experience of pain, including avoiding surgery and continuing to be very active and performing at a high level.

In the meantime, here is a great resource from Tame The Beast to help you understand pain a bit better: https://www.tamethebeast.org/

The post Running injuries and pain – 2 appeared first on RunTeach.

Common running injuries – what the research says

According to various research studies, Runner’s Knee (Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome) is the most common running injury, followed by Plantar Fasciitis (foot and heel pain). The graph below shows some more details:

The data for this graph has come from research studies conducted mainly between 1980 (Noble, 1980) and 2018 (Mulvad et al., 2018; Sahu et al., 2018) with the most often cited in blogs, articles, courses and presentations coming from 2002 (Taunton et al., 2002). It strikes me that more updated research is due, although there are a couple of more recent studies we can look at but it’s not enough to get a full picture of the current situation.

The first is a one-year study by Desai et al., 2020 where they found a 46% cumulative incidence of running-related injuries, with the knee (27%) and Achilles tendon/calf (25%) being the most common injury locations. As this study looked at runners who had a previous history of injury, it was slightly different from some of the other research. What is most interesting in terms of location is that again, the knee was the most common site of pain.

I’m always interested in what the definitions of a running related injury are in studies, and in how the experience of pain is reported. In this particular study, they used the following consensus statement:

“a running-related musculoskeletal pain in the lower limbs or back that causes restriction of running (distance, speed, duration, or training) in more than 66% of all training sessions in 2 consecutive weeks or in more than 50% of all training sessions in 4 consecutive weeks, or that requires the runner to consult a physician or other health professional.”

To me, the really interesting part about that qualification of a running-related-injury is that it is self-reported, and even if the runner consulted a physician or other health professional, there is no mention as to whether there needed to be any actual tissue issue – something that will become relevant shortly.

The other recent study was by Stenerson et al., 2023. This was a survey driven study, so again it relied upon self-reporting – in this case the responses were submitted anonymously. The aim of the study was to look at the relationship of overuse injuries and training parameters. They found that most runners (84.4%) had an injury history with 46.6% experiencing a running-related injury in the previous year. There was a slight difference in location with the foot and ankle (30.9%) being the most common site of reported pain followed by the knee (22.2%).

What is clear to me from all of these studies is:

1. The existence of an injury is determined by an experience of pain rather than any evidenced tissue issue such as fractures, lacerations, torn muscles, muscle strain or any other physical damage. This itself is actually a positive, or would be if it weren’t for most people’s current understanding and beliefs around the word injury.
   
2. The experience of pain is self-reported, and only provides information on the location of the pain, not necessarily the site of an injury, if indeed one exists. It is now well understood across several professions that where pain is experienced and where a physical injury may be present, are often not the same place.

There are other limitations as well, such as the researchers’ own biases and beliefs around pain and their interpretation of what pain might mean in the context of a runner. But let’s put these things to one side for now, as the two primary limitations I highlighted above are more than enough to be concerned with.

What we need to do is start making some distinctions around injury and pain, and update ourselves on what is really happening when we feel pain. This is exactly what this article, and the next few articles, are all about. Sit back, buckle up and open your mind – we’re going on a journey into the wonderful world of pain!

I’m injured!

But are you? How do you know? Did a running buddy say it was runner’s knee or ‘plantar f’? Yes, you’re in pain – but does that mean you are injured? Perhaps it depends on your definition of injury. Here are some of the common ones:

Medical Definition

“Injury”: Damage or harm caused to the structure or function of the body due to an external agent or force.

Source: World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO includes injuries in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD), defining them broadly as any physical damage caused by external factors, including trauma and poisoning.

​​Sports and Physical Activity Definition

“Injury”: Any physical complaint sustained during training or competition that results in the athlete needing to stop, limit, or modify their activity.

Source: Consensus documents from sports medicine organisations, such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

Occupational Health Definition

“Injury”: Physical damage arising from a specific incident or exposure in the workplace, such as cuts, fractures, burns, or musculoskeletal strains.

Source: Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or similar regulatory bodies worldwide.

There are also legal definitions and psychological definitions, but they take us a bit wide of the mark for what we are learning about here. 

You’ll notice that two out of the three definitions above state that tissue damage has taken place, while the Sports and Physical Activity definition just mentions a physical complaint. Why is it important to notice this? Well, it highlights the fact that most official definitions, like most of our beliefs, support the idea that an injury has a physical damage element. This in itself isn’t really an issue, except for the fact that almost all of us link pain to injury, and therefore are linking pain to physical damage. This is the problem.

It is encouraging though, that the sports definition recognises, perhaps indirectly, that physical damage doesn’t need to be present for an injury to exist. This is helpful because we can say in this context that we have an injury without there necessarily being any physical damage. It frees us to have a pain that stops us from running without there needing to be an assumption that physical damage exists. If we all thought like this, some of the research would be more helpful: instead of looking for a physical tissue issue reason for a runner’s knee pain, we would automatically be taking lots of non-tissue issue possibilities into account as well. 

You may think I’m being really picky (I am!), but I feel it’s important because those studies on common running injuries are all based on some variance on the medical definition of an injury that includes an assumption (or foregone conclusion) that physical damage is present as well as pain. This is very limiting to us as runners as it brings in feelings of fear that we may further ‘damage’ our tissues, or that we need to spend weeks or months seeing injury specialists that are basing their (almost always well-intentioned) solutions around the fact that there is some aspect of physical damage or physical movement issue when there may be none at all.

In fact, there is some research (Van Mechelen, 1992; Vincent & Vincent, 2017; Salzler et al., 2020) that suggests that between 20% and 56% of runners report pain even though the original physical damage has long-since healed. This is what we call a chronic pain state. But I would suggest that even that percentage is on the low side; the research isn’t there to determine this one way or the other unfortunately, and with the varying definitions of injuries and outdated beliefs around pain, it is more reliable to look at what is happening in the pain neuroscience fields and learn from that.

It may seem like you’ve read a lot in this article so far and not moved forward much, but getting a background to what you hear and are told (even by medical professionals) about injury and pain is important as it allows you to put it all into context with your own pain.

The real point I want to make here is that we say “I have a running injury” when what would be far more helpful is to say “I have a running pain”. This frees us from making a possible incorrect assumption that there is always physical damage that we need to be wary of.

I know, this can be challenging and it’s far easier to carry on thinking as you have done, but making this paradigm shift can open up a whole new selection of possible solutions that could get you out of pain and back to running very quickly – and at a fraction of the financial cost.

To summarise this section:

• Most definitions of injury include some aspect of physical tissue damage.
• Most of the research around running injuries use some variation of these definitions of injury, so an assumption is made that there is a physical tissue damage element – even if that is only how we as non-scientists interpret it.
• We have read, listened, watched, been instructed about, taught, and been convinced that pain and injury are inseparably interlinked.
• This thinking is limiting our pain modulation and rehab options, and is often the primary cause for runners not being able to return to running sooner.

It’s time to break away from these limiting beliefs with a new understanding of how pain works and what we can do about it. Join me for the next article where we’ll dive right in.

The post Running Injuries and Pain – 1 appeared first on RunTeach.

But that’s all just a starting point and if you are interested in really improving your breathing then you are going to need a proven framework to help you get there.

Luckily for you, I’ve put such a framework together – and it offers you so much more than any other breathing course I’ve found. In fact, it’s a Respiratory Revolution!

Throughout this series of articles, you’ve learned about the importance of the biomechanic of breathing. Now, you’ll often hear a lot being said about strengthening your diaphragm and using it better in your breathing, but you’ve learned there are a lot more muscles involved in breathing other than your diaphragm.

Almost no one else will teach you that though, or how to actually activate those breathing muscles and your diaphragm so you can even start to strengthen them. A very high percentage of the runners I see really struggle to get even the smallest amount of activation, so how are they supposed to strengthen them and move the rib cage well to allow your diaphragm to work in the way it’s intended?

Being able to create and maintain a strong and stable breathing cylinder with a well mobilised rib cage is a fundamental and critical element of functional breathing for running, whether you are able to transition to nose breathing or not.

I cannot emphasise enough just how important this is, and most breathing courses and systems I’ve found only give this a cursory mention at best: they are missing out a crucial aspect to helping you breathe better when you run.

Calm and relaxed, but left behind…

In addition, as good as they are (and there are some amazing courses and systems available) most breathing courses you’ll come across are designed for the opposite of what you need as a runner. They teach you breathing techniques for relaxation, calm, and keeping your carbon dioxide levels low or within a level. This is fantastic for helping to reduce anxiety and bring in a calm mindfulness, but it just doesn’t help you functionally as a runner. Yes, there are elements of calm and relaxation that you need to bring to your running, and you certainly do need relaxed and well-paced breathing. 

But the reality is that as the duration and intensity of your running increases, you build up carbon dioxide in your cells and blood. If you do not learn to tolerate these higher levels, you’ll always need to slow down and you always risk inducing a feeling of panic and paradoxical breathing. This is what makes my framework different:

Functional breathing designed specifically for running

So with that, here is what you’ll learn on the RunTeach Respiratory Revolution breathing course for runners:

The Respiratory Revolution is an 8-week course, with each module becoming available

each week so you have plenty of time to practise without feeling rushed. In fact, as the course is self-paced, if it takes you 16 weeks or 20 weeks to complete, that’s absolutely fine. Once you have access to the course you have it – there is no time limit. This means you can refer back to the lessons and supporting material whenever you like.

The topics covered in the course are built on the elements that you learned about in the quick guide and articles:

• The Biomechanics Of Breathing
• The Biochemistry Of Breathing
• The Neurology Of Breathing

The topic include:

• Course introduction
• Assessments and benchmark
• Why breathing skills are needed for running well
• What is dysfunctional breathing?
• Diaphragm mobility
• Diaphragm strengthening
• The muscles of inhalation
• The muscles of exhalation
• Why nose-breathe? Discovering the benefits
• Nasal decongestion
• Learn to nose breathe and avoid the panic of air hunger
• Running specific breathing background and techniques
• Breathing Challenges throughout the course to help you learn to breathe better, more quickly

Every module has practical exercises designed to help you improve your breathing right from week 1.

There are also supporting lessons taking you through topics to help you get the most out of the course. For example, do you panic if you hold your breath? Well, I include techniques to help you get over this so that you can take full advantage of the breathing challenges and exercises.

So if you are ready to take the next step on your breathing journey, you can find the course here.

If you would prefer to work with me on a 1-2-1 basis to improve your breathing or other aspects of your running, you can contact me here.

The post Pulling it all together – A framework for better breathing appeared first on RunTeach.

In this article we are going to build on what you’ve learned in the free quick guide to breathing ebook and the first four supporting articles that expand on each topic in the book. We are now going to look at nose breathing: what it is and how it can benefit you both in your running but also in everyday life.

We’re going to begin by looking at some of the common benefits of nose breathing in general and then you’ll discover why these are important. We’ll also uncover why you may not currently want to nose breath and how to go about changing that. Finally, you’ll learn a nose breathing exercise and protocol that you can begin using right away. So, let’s get started.

Nose Breathing Benefits

Some of the common benefits often cited about nose breathing are:

• Filters the air and helps remove allergens and dust
• Warms the air
• Humidifies the air
• Pressurises the air

All of these sound great, and they are, but there is so much more that isn’t often highlighted unless you begin to dig deeper.

• Helps to induce relaxation: When you breathe through your nose the air is slightly restricted which helps to slow down your rate of breathing and encourages better regulation. This slowing down and breath regulation is what promotes relaxation.
  
  However, due to the restriction of the airflow through your nose, you may find this creates some air hunger – a feeling that you don’t have enough air coming in. This can then cause mild panic and lead you to believe that you simply can’t nose-breathe. This is particularly the case if you often suffer from a blocked nose. But you can relax as we’ll look at ways that you can get over this feeling and start to nose-breathe without the panic.
  
• Improves cognitive function: There is some research that supports improved brain function through improved breathing. Actually, the study looked at people with dysfunctional nasal breathing and measured impaired cognitive function leading to the conclusion that efficient nasal breathing helps overall cognitive health and avoids impaired cognitive function. How you breathe also influences the neuroplasticity and predictive models of your brain, so it makes logical sense to deliberately and positively influence these with efficient breathing rather than to leave it to chance.
  
• Smell is important to us in mapping out our environment in the same way as vision and hearing are. The more efficient you become as a nose breather, the more improved (in general) your sense of smell becomes. If you remember back to the article where you learned about the predictive brain, you’ll begin to understand why a good sense of smell is important in helping to provide your brain with the most helpful information it can get. There is some research that links nasal breathing to improved visuospatial awareness, particularly in a sports environment. It does this through synchronising electrical activity in the brain on a wavelength that appears to improve your visuospatial awareness.
  
• Improves the recruitment of your diaphragm which leads to more efficient breathing and is strongly linked to the biochemical aspects of breathing. A strong and well activated diaphragm has also been linked to improved midline stability, something that is very important when you are running.
  
• Increased oxygen uptake in the blood: Nose breathing is more effective at increasing oxygen uptake than mouth breathing. This is something we’ll look at in a bit more detail later on in this article, but for now it’s helpful to know that arterial pressure of oxygen in people who consistently nose breathe increased by 10% over those that don’t.
  
• Production of nitric oxide: As you breathe in through your nose, you produce a molecule called nitric oxide which helps to maintain healthy lung function and may protect against certain respiratory diseases. Nitric oxide also helps to open up your airways, maximising the available oxygen for transfer to your blood and working muscles.
  
• Dilation of blood vessels: Nose breathing helps to open up the blood vessels in your lungs that then improves the amount of oxygen being carried around the body and to your working muscles and other tissues.
  
• Improved blood distribution in your lungs: The nitric oxide produced when you nose breathe helps to improve how your blood is distributed throughout your lungs which has been shown to improve blood by up to 24%. This is particularly the case with the upper areas of your lungs where gravity may otherwise present a challenge to the gas exchange process. Essentially, nose breathing is helping to improve the diffusion of blood from your lungs across into your blood.

I could continue with many more functions of the nose, but this is enough for us to start looking at a little more detail into some of these things so you can begin reaping the benefits of breathing through your nose in a more consistent manner.

Increased Oxygen

Let’s start with increased oxygen because this can seem a bit at odds with the restricted airflow of nose breathing compared to mouth breathing. However, with the help of a small formula it’s easy to see why nose breathing facilitates more oxygen availability. 

When we are exercising hard it’s easier for us to take air in through the mouth because we basically get more air in than we do through the nose. However, if you also speed up the rate of your breathing, you actually end up with less available oxygen. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you are breathing through your mouth and you are breathing at the typical resting rate of between 12 and 20 breaths per minute. Let’s actually say that you are at the healthier end of this scale and you are breathing at 12 breaths per minute.

The amount of air you take in each breath that is usable is known as the tidal volume (TV), and the total amount of air taken in one minute is called your minute ventilation (MV). The typical minute ventilation is around 6 litres: that is, you take in around 6 litres of air per minute. This is represented in the formula below:

Respiratory Rate * Tidal Volume = Minute Ventilation

RR * TV = MV

12 (breaths per minutes) x TV = 6 litres

So TV must be 500ml of air per in breath:

12 x 500 = 6000ml = 6 litres

But, not all of the air you breathe in a single breath can be used for oxygen transfer. Around 150ml per breath remains in various areas of your throat, trachea, bronchi and bronchioles. This is known as dead space air and it cannot be used for gas exchange. So our tidal volume now becomes:

12 x (500 – 150) = 4200ml = 4.2 litres.

That’s 1.8 litres of air that cannot be used for oxygen exchange in the lungs.

Nose breathing generally encourages a slower breathing rate, typically between 6 and 8 breaths per minute, and at rest we are really aiming for a respiratory rate of 6. However, the amount of air coming into the nose remains the same as the mouth breather in the first example as they weren’t overbreathing, something we’ll look at next. So the total amount of air coming in in one minute is still 6 litres.

The amount of dead space air is the same as before, but our calculation now looks like this:

6 x TV = 6 litres

6 x 1000 = 6000ml = 6 litres

6 x (1000 – 150) = 5100ml = 5.1 litres

So you can clearly see that by slowing down your breath rate to around 6 breaths per minute from 12 breaths per minute, you are gaining an extra 20% of air that can be used for oxygen exchange. 

Of course the question is: “if I’m a mouth breather can I slow it down and get the same benefit?”. In theory, yes. In practice though, slowing down your breathing when just breathing through your mouth is hard to achieve on a consistent basis. You also won’t get the other benefits of nose breathing such as filtration and the very important nitric oxide.

So, nose breathing combined with slowing your respiratory rate is the preferred method of increasing oxygen in your blood. Doing exercises to help with the pacing of your breathing, such as those you learned in earlier topics in the guide and articles, will help you maintain good pacing in your breathing as your exercise intensity increases.

Over-breathing

You’ve just learned that slowing down your breathing rate can increase the available oxygen for gas exchange – something that is very important when you are running because you need to maximise the amount of oxygen that gets to your working muscles and other tissues.

So, why can’t you just take bigger breaths through your mouth to achieve the same thing? Well, apart from losing the benefits of nitric oxide you will also be breathing in too much oxygen. Not a bad thing you might think, except that it will displace the carbon dioxide in your blood (hypocapnia) and that certainly is not a good thing if it happens over longer periods (hours or days) – so you don’t want to be relying on large mouth breaths to get the oxygen you need.

To understand the issue of persistent hypocapnia (as opposed to deliberate, short term hyperventilation training for a few minutes at a time), we need to refer back to the previous article on biochemistry that included an explanation of your energy systems. If you remember, the higher the intensity of your running the harder it is for your body to get oxygenated blood to your cells. As a result, carbon dioxide builds up and eventually you will get to a point where the cells don’t work well and you’ll be forced to slow down. In practice, this is like starting your 5k race way too fast, rising quickly from aerobic to lactic and possibly to alactic, only to blow up a few minutes later and then having to settle down into a more sustainable pace in your aerobic or lower threshold zone. During this high intensity phase there is a build up of carbon dioxide, or a hypercapnic situation. This is the opposite of what happens when you over-breath, but being in a high intensity situation can force you to hyperventilate and over-breathe to compensate for the carbon dioxide build up and leave you in a carbon dioxide deficit.

As part of the normal cellular processes, the carbon dioxide that is shuttled from your cells is combined with water in the blood to form carbonic acid. The next reaction is to disassociate into H+ (hydrogen ions) and HCO3 (bicarbonate ions). This creates an alkaline buffer that neutralises changes in your blood’s acidity. When you hyperventilate or even just over-breath through large mouth breaths, you start to remove a lot of carbon dioxide. This leaves an excess of bicarbonate ions and a deficiency of hydrogen ions. At the same time, your breathing volume decreases to help restore your carbon dioxide levels. However, this will only work during short-term hyperventilation bouts as you return to normalised breathing quickly, allowing those carbon dioxide levels to settle. With continued hyperventilation or over-breathing, you end up in a constant state of hypocapnia and this impacts on your blood’s pH levels. As a consequence, your kidneys start to offload the excess bicarbonate ions to try and normalise your blood’s pH, making them work harder to maintain this fine balance.

In addition to your blood pH levels, the low level of carbon dioxide can cause other issues. Carbon dioxide is a strong catalyst for releasing oxygen from your blood into your cells, so by over-breathing you end up doing the opposite of what you may think you are doing. It is also a dilator of smooth muscles, the kind of muscle found in some of your airways. Therefore, over-breathing can actually restrict some of your airways, further reducing the effectiveness of your breathing.

Essentially, over-breathing other than when doing specific hyperventilation training exercises for a specific outcome, is going to reduce the available oxygen and hamper your running.

Carbon Dioxide Tolerance

Sticking with our carbon dioxide theme and becoming even more running specific, I just want to go back to the energy systems and the build up of carbon dioxide as your effort level increases.

You’ll remember that as you transition from your aerobic system being dominant to your lactic system becoming dominant, the level of carbon dioxide in your blood starts to build up because your system cannot pump the blood fast enough back to your lungs for the carbon dioxide to be diffused back to the lungs for exhalation. This is a state known as hypercapnia where there is excessive amounts of carbon dioxide and eventually this will help create an environment where your cells cannot perform well so you are forced to slow down so everything can begin to normalise. This feeling of not getting enough air in is called air hunger and you can actually use this state to improve balance and brain function – but that’s for another article.

The good news is that you can increase your tolerance to this CO2 build up so that you can push on for longer in this transition zone between energy systems. Ultimately, this means your speed endurance improves and therefore your race times. Even if you are not motivated by running faster and instead want better endurance, being able to operate for longer with a higher CO2 level means you are more fatigue resistant as you are overall much more efficient.

And the starting point for increasing your tolerance to higher levels of CO2 is by nose breathing, even at rest. This is because nose breathing naturally restricts the airflow by up to 50% compared to mouth breathing. Right away you are dealing with less oxygen going in and less carbon dioxide going out. This is also why you may find nose breathing, even at rest, challenging at first: you are not used to this build of CO2 and a reduction in O2 so you respond to the CO2 trigger to inhale as your brain perceives holding out as a threat. Remember that your brain is a prediction engine and the predictions it uses are shaped by every moment in your life so far. As soon as you start to train your CO2 tolerance, you are also shaping your predictive models for future reference.

So where do you start with this and how can you progress it?

1. Start with nose breathing at rest as often as you can, aiming to make it a permanent change.
2. You may find it challenging at times, so take a break but always go back to it and push yourself that little more. Nose breathing will actually help you to open up your airways (remember nitric oxide?) so persisting with it is the key.
3. Begin to build in nose breathing when you are walking, which will present more of a challenge as the CO2 will build up quicker and you may experience stronger air hunger. Again, take a break and go back to it. Each time you do this you are letting your brain know that it’s perfectly safe and you positively shape those predictive models.
4. When you are ready, try some nose breathing when you are on your easy runs. This may only be for 30 seconds to a minute at a time, but it’s all positive graining and positive reinforcement for your brain to build predictive models from and feel safe.

Nose breathing is such an important part of functional breathing, whether you are running or sitting on your sofa, that ignoring it is like ignoring speed work, strength work and other aspects of your run training.

In the next article I’m going to pull everything together and show you how you can improve your breathing in a step by step framework that also takes into account how you are feeling during some of the more challenging aspects of nose breathing, breath holds and rib cage mobilisation.

The post The Benefits Of Nose Breathing appeared first on RunTeach.

You can find the first supporting article on the Muscles of Inhalation here.

As a reminder, we look at the biomechanics of breathing, we really need to be looking at:

1. The muscles of inhalation
2. The muscles of exhalation
3. The skeletal components such as your rib cage
4. The integration and control of all of the above, and you ability to effectively use them under different conditions

This article takes a brief look at the muscles of exhalation.

Exhalation

Exhalation, or breathing out, involves a number of muscles including:

Some of the muscles of exhalation

As with inhalation, exhalation involves a lot of muscles that need to contract to help change the size and shape of the breathing cylinder. As important though, and often overlooked, is the ability of all of these muscles to relax.

For the rib cage to expand up and outwards during inhalation, the muscles of exhalation need to be in a relaxed state to allow this to happen. Equally, for your rib cage to come down and in, the muscles of inhalation need to relax.

It is this coordination of tense/release that allows fluid movement of the breathing cylinder, helping to form the foundation of efficient and functional breathing. It is always my starting point when working on improving someone’s breathing, as even if they don’t get some of the other techniques right away, I know they will have good quality movement in this area.

High quality movement is amazing for reducing the overall threat that your brain experiences in every moment of every day. And given that you can only handle a certain amount of threat before you begin to experience undesirable outputs such as pain, panic, anxiety, fatigue and a whole host of other stuff, deliberately practising high quality movement throughout your body is an essential element of achieving and maintaining a high level of health and wellbeing.

To experience the muscles of exhalation, you can use the same exercise from the first article (see below) as it is a fantastic awareness exercise. Just shift your focus to the exhalation aspect, making relaxation a deliberate action. This can seem a bit strange at first as focussing internally can result in more tension in your muscles. One way to get around this is to close your eyes and imagine the contraction of some of the muscles of exhalation while also allowing a smooth relaxation to occur. This takes a bit of practice but is worth doing. 

This is also a fantastic mindfulness exercise that can help calm and settle you.

1. Stand or sit with your back straight, shoulders relaxed.
2. You may find that lying on your back can be a useful position for this version of the exercise.
3. Place your hands around the base of your ribs.
4. Inhale slowly through your nose.
5. Exhale slowly, feeling your ribs come down and in, reducing the size and shape of your breathing cylinder. 
6. Repeat the exercise a number of times to get a good idea of how well you are activating and relaxing the muscles that help your rib cage to change shape and position.
7. Do you notice a difference between your right side and your left?

Now change the position of your hands so that they are half way up your rib cage and repeat the deep, slow exhalations. Do you feel your rib cage moving at this level?

Now move your hands to your upper ribs, just below your collar bones. Repeat the inhalations and observe how well your rib cage is moving.

What’s Next?

Take some time to practise both versions of the awareness exercise: inhalation and exhalation. Doing this daily is a great way to add some mindfulness while at the same time bringing in body awareness. It’s absolutely fine if you can’t move smoothly at the moment as it takes some deliberate practice and good coordination between relaxation and contraction.

And this coordination skill is the subject of the next article as we look at the role of neuromechanics and your brain in helping you to breathe better and more efficiently.

The post The Biomechanics Of Breathing – Muscles Of Exhalation appeared first on RunTeach.

But maybe you’re the complete opposite and you love going to the gym but have found that no matter how much strength work you do, you still get those niggles and quite simply, you’re not getting any faster. 

As a runner, if you do a quick search on the Internet for reducing your injury risk and/or improving your performance, you’ll discover very quickly that “getting stronger” is the top tip from almost anyone. And I’ve got to agree with all of them: getting stronger is one of the outputs we need to develop to keep us running for longer and working towards our running goals.

Strength Is An Output

You see, strength is an output from your system. It’s the result of a whole bunch of stuff coming together and allowing your muscle fibres to contract to whatever level is needed to achieve the task. That task might be lifting a kettlebell or handling the forces of running. In all cases though, one huge element in strength is stabilising a joint as you lift, move and run. In fact, I would even argue that in our day to day lives outside of an experimental lab, joint stabilisation is one of the main things our expression of strength is doing.

They all start with trying to activate the muscles themselves. You’re given squats, lunges, deadlifts, landmine lifts, single leg exercises and much more. This can work for some people, but if the rest of your system won’t allow your muscles to activate and contract well, at best doing these exercises will just take a very long time to get any results. More often than not though, they simply won’t help you get any closer to your running goals at all.

You Are Already Superhuman!

You already have so much strength within your muscles already. Your strength, or “expression of strength” as I prefer to call it, is controlled by your brain. It’s not just to do with muscle size. You have neural inhibitors that actually block and reduce the amount of strength you can use. This is primarily a protection mechanism so you don’t injure yourself if the rest of your body and system can’t handle the forces you are generating.

A good example of this is when you have a limited quality of movement around a joint. If you can’t move well and control a joint, your brain will not allow you to exert or try to handle large forces across that joint. In other words, your ability to generate strength around that joint will be limited. This can have a cascading effect throughout the whole kinetic chain – all the other joints in your body, even if they are nowhere near the weaker joint.

Traditional strength training can work, but it usually takes a long time and a lot of patience because you are forcing the development of a skill (how to stabilise a joint) by working at the sharp end and hoping that your system will respond without you getting injured. To me, this is inefficient and completely backwards.

There Is A Better Way

The RunTeach system uses the following process to help you develop the strength and resilience you need as a runner:

Strength is the final output of the process and often doesn’t even need to be trained directly, depending on your running goals and current ability level.

By first developing the skill of joint stabilisation through working directly with your brain and nervous system, you can unlock the neural inhibitors and unlock your strength. This often happens very quickly: we’re talking minutes or hours of training as opposed to months and years of training! Longer term results will take longer, but it’s all relative to your goals and how much strength you need to be a resilient runner. 

Having developed the appropriate level of skill you need, adding endurance to that skill will enable you to run longer and faster without increasing your injury risk – essentially, you’ll be able to keep being strong for longer distances, more sessions, and at higher speeds.  Once you’ve got that strength, keeping it tends to have a very low requirement in terms of exercise and time. In fact, running just by itself can be the main maintenance factor.

If you want to find out more about this really quite jaw dropping approach to getting stronger, I would recommend attending one of our Resilient Runner Workshops. You’ll not only learn more, but will be able to actually apply it to your running right away.

The post Stop! Does Strength Work, Work? appeared first on RunTeach.

Do you love going to the gym? Or perhaps you’re like me and just don’t enjoy it at all; it seems way too much hassle carving out the time for a strength routine when you could be out running. Sound familiar?

The problem is, whatever we hear and read about reducing injury risk, injury prevention, prehab and rehab, getting stronger is something that almost always tops the list. And in many ways the phrase…

…is absolutely correct. We do tend to be more robust and more resilient when we are stronger. We are also able to develop more power and have greater stability – two things that go hand in hand in helping us run faster. Furthermore, if you are a runner over the age of 40, research implies that we should pay even more attention to staying strong in order to improve our performance and reduce our injury risk.

So essentially, you’ve got to get stronger! But hang on a minute… What does that actually mean? Does it mean you need to make time for two or three weight training sessions per week? Does it mean you need to drop one run per week to focus on strength work?

If the very thought of it is making you anxious, the good news is that you may not have to do this at all. There are ways to help you get stronger without lugging giant weights about, or spending numerous hours per month doing resistance training. Actually, some of that might still be necessary, but as it will be super targeted it will be shorter in duration and you’ll see results far quicker and they’ll last far longer.

What Is Strength?

Before we get into that though, we need to look at what strength actually is. Here are some dictionary definitions:

The ability to do things that need a lot of physical or mental effort

Cambridge Dictionary

The Merriam Webster dictionary has these definitions:

Looking through each of those, I can apply them in my mind to running. But is that what most of us really think of when considering doing strength work in connection with running? Although it seems logical that we need to be strong to run, do we really think “I’m going to make myself impregnable, solid and tough!” Or do we just think “I wish I could run faster and longer without my knee hurting! I better make sure it’s strong enough”.

So dictionary definitions of strength don’t actually help us at all in a practical sense. And I’m pretty sure most of us think we’re robust enough already, until we aren’t of course.

Be honest here, how many of us would skip strength work if we didn’t really need to do it? What’s that – you are already skipping it?… Yeah, I hear that all the time from runners.

But that’s OK. To me, strength is like fitness. It changes in the different areas of your life. If your goal is to sit on the couch all day and watch TV, and you can achieve that goal, then you are both fit and strong enough to do that. Equally, if your goal is to run a 20 minute 5k, but you’re currently running a 25 minute 5k, then you are neither fit enough nor strong enough to achieve that goal. We can split this down a bit further to be more helpful.

If we leave fitness to one side for now – mainly because I view strength as just one aspect of fitness and this could get very complicated – and just focus on strength. We can view strength in a similar way in which I view resilience:

The ability for your body’s tissues to withstand the forces applied to them, in the intensity, duration and frequency which your activity demands.

So basically, you are strong enough if your body’s tissues can handle all the forces you chuck at them without either giving up (injury) or forcing your nervous system to introduce some red flags such as fatigue, niggles and the warning experience of pain.

To complicate it slightly, strength is also linked to your ability to produce power, which in turn helps you run faster. But let’s just keep this simple for now, as your nervous system won’t let you express high levels of power without first having a powerful expression of strength. If you just went “uh?”, then let me explain:

Strength can be expressed in two different ways:

When you run, your feet will typically only be in contact with the ground for between 220 milliseconds and 350 milliseconds. At the more elite end of running, the number is lower as the foot turnover (cadence) tends to be a little higher. And I know, we are all told to improve our cadence.

But the trick with improving cadence is also keeping good form and not just turning what may have been a half-decent heel lift at a slower cadence into something that resembles a fast shuffle, just to get your feet turning over faster. There is also the challenge of being able to put down enough power in a shorter amount of time, but I’m kind of moving away from the point here and these are topics for different articles. Back to strength…

With your feet being on the ground for such a short period with every step, you don’t have enough time to voluntarily think about keeping your joints stable in your feet, ankles, knees, hips, pelvis, back, shoulders and neck. This all needs to happen automatically or reflexively. It also needs to be coordinated across the different areas for improved movement efficiency. And while you may think that only being on the ground for a fraction of a second means that there isn’t enough time to even bother with joint stability because you essentially hop or lunge from one foot to the other continuously, the forces of running are such (up to 3 times bodyweight – possibly more depending on what you read) that stability in each step is critical. 

Many of us get away with less than ideal reflexive stability over short distances and when we are not tired, but ramp it all up and suddenly the impacts are amplified and before long we certainly know about it. The same is true if you start to push the pace. More pace generally means more force both into the ground and back up from the ground (ground reaction force), so your body’s tissues need to be able to handle the greater demands and the need for even better reflexive stability.

One great example that we can all observe is the classic hip drop. The next time you are running behind someone, look at the movement of their pelvis. If their hip drops down to the opposite side of their stance leg, then they are likely to have some reflexive stability issues. Ordinarily, if you have hip drop, you will be told to do lots of glute (maximus and medius) and core strengthening and integration exercises (hopefully), but if your reflexive stability is poor, you are still unlikely to be able to build or use that strength properly.

Mastering the skill of reflexive stability is, in my opinion, a relatively quick and highly efficient way to improve your overall expression of strength for running – far better than just lifting weights and hoping it will all work. You will feel more stable, be able to put more power into your running, and run longer distances more comfortably than you’ve been able to before. 

You will also be teaching your nervous system how to identify, activate and control your muscles (these are all individual skills by the way). This then forms a fantastic foundation for you to carry on with any other strength work you may enjoy doing, and it will have much more of a positive impact and the benefits are likely to stick around for longer.

For clarity, to improve your reflexive stability, you do need to do voluntary neural drive exercises (i.e. resistance training), but they need to be well designed so they stimulate and upregulate the parts of your brain and nervous system that control reflexive stability.

Summary

To summarise then, first think about reflexive stability when you think about strength in running. Once you have mastered this through well designed and personalised exercises, you may or may not need more strength work of the normal “just lift weights” kind. You may find that your running sessions already provide you with enough stimulus to keep improving your resilience and neural drive strength. Of course that does depend on your goals, but that’s a topic for another article…

The post What Is Strength In Running? appeared first on RunTeach.