Training Calendar

So, welcome to spring in New England! Days are longer, and generally wet. Oh the joy. As a general rule, unless it's insanely wet, I will plan to get together each week. Feel free to email or call to check - my phone number is in the signature line of most of my emails.

The calendar for the future is such:

• Monday, 4/26, 6-7pm, Hope HS
• Monday, 5/3, 6-7pm, Behind Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket
• Monday, 5/10, 630-730pm, Hope HS
• Monday, 5/17, 6-7pm, Hope HS
• Monday, 5/24, 630-730pm, Hope HS
• Monday, 5/31, 6-730pm, Colt State Park
• Saturday, 6/5, 6-730pm, Goddard State Park
• Monday, 6/7, 630-730pm, Hope HS
  
• Monday, 6/21, 6-730pm, Colt State Park
• Saturday, 6/26, 8-9am, Hope HS
• Monday, 6/28, 6-7pm, Hope HS
• Wednesday, 6/30, 6-8pm, Colt State Park (the race!!!)

The sessions at Colt are to give us an opportunity to explore the course (or at least the location) of the 5k in June; the Saturday sessions are opportunities to run together, if you're interested.

We have a full week off in June, as I'm leaving for a meditation retreat; if anyone would like to coordinate the group together, I'm sure it would be much appreciated! By that time, you'll have enough experience to be able to effectively critique each other's form.

Looking forward to seeing you (all???) tonight; if you can stomach the weather, it's really worth coming. If it's really wet and cold, we can work on some higher-exertion speed work.

Run mindfully,

Michael

The brave and few

Ok, maybe we weren't brave but we were crazy to be standing out there last night in the rain and thunder and lightening! Having said that, I still had a great time, learned a lot about my body posture while running and hey, we got to see a beautiful rainbow as the sun came out. Oh, and now I know just who the crazy people are!! When my dog walked me this morning I made a conscious effort to be mindful of my arm swing, and the position of my feet; do they really splay out?? Hope everyone has a great day, look forward to see all of you next Monday.

My first blog...ever

Hi everyone! So, this is my first post. It took me the first week to figure out how to get onto this blog and the second week I was dealing with a very sick pet. But I am here now and will try to be a consistent contributor. I was only able to attend the first of the last two training sessions. It sounds like a lot of really good stuff was covered last week so I am hoping to catch up at tonight's session. As I've been practicing the chi running techniques, I've noticed a few things. First, my legs aren't sore the next day! Prior to Chi Running, if I went out for a run my leg muscles would talk to me for days! Letting gravity do the work is an amazing concept. As our training continues, I'll be excited to see how much easier our running becomes on our bodies. Second, my upper back and shoulders are sore! And this is something that I need to work on, the whole "needle in cotton" concept. I've got the "needle" part. I am able to stand tall, pull my shoulders down and back and tighten my core muscles. But when I do this, I know that the rest of my body is not relaxed and "cottony" the way it should be. Third, I have found using a metronome incredibly helpful. I got one for Christmas and started using it about a month ago. I played around with it and found that 85 strikes per minute matched my cadence perfectly. On my last run, I tried following Michael's advice and increased the metronome to 86. Amazingly, it felt great. I had no trouble matching my foot strike to the new pace. After a few weeks, I'll try 87! I can't wait to see what new discoveries tonight's session will bring. I'll see you all soon. Jenn

Walk/ Jogg- My Thoughts

Hello Bloggers, So I am currently at a Level of Walk/Jogg. I am up to 3 minute Jogg & 5 minute walk for 3 miles. When I went for my Jogg after Monday meeting with focus on Arm Swing, I realized that I had okay arm swing, I wasnt going crazy or jogging with any-thing in my hands. So I relaxed on the focus of the arm and really tried to pay attention to keeping in alignment with my body and especially where my feet hit and how I use them. I tend to hit harder on the out-sides of my feet but from what Ive noticed I dont heel strike nor do I use the ball of my foot when I land. The drill we did with walking slowly on Tuesday last week really helped me realize how my legs and feet should feel when I jogg or walk as well as how my feet should almost feel neutral. I also noticed that I tend to tense up if I lose concentration while in the position. It definatly is taking some getting used to how it should feel and look. I find myself looking at my shadow to check out the way my form is. I also notice that I tend to walk or jogg with my Bum out and when I tuck my pelvic, my abs tightened and always in tact. Its like my legs are floating away but my upper body is doing all the work and holding all force. This is how I felt after my most recent Jogg. Ciara

Running (and walking and standing) tall and thinking about distance

Hi everyone, I've really enjoy the mindfulness component of chirunning, and the focus on form. Our work so far has made me realize I have terrible posture these days! I was a ballerina for many many years, but years away from the ballet barre, a lack of mindfulness about how I stand, and a job where I spend about 2/3 of my time in front of a computer have resulted in some pretty poor posture and alignment. Since our first class, I've been focusing on standing up straight and realizing that I stand with my pelvis to far forward and spend most of my day compressing my spine. I went for a nice run yesterday and focused on the mantra "run tall" and was amazed at how different it felt to stand up correctly. I took a walking break mid-run and tried to apply chirunning principles to walking. I felt so light and tall in a way that really surprised me. I've been focusing on my posture in other areas of my life, from yoga, to biking, to driving a car and sitting at my desk - its made a big difference! I choose a 3 mile loop for my run yesterday, which helped me pace myself, set goals, and feel more comfortable running. As I begin to run more, I may look to create some other preplanned routes and distances to help motivate me and track my progress. Also - I'm really looking forward to having a metronome - I think it will be a very useful tool for me as I found it hard to monitor my cadence when I was running by myself. See you next Thursday!

Session #2, Logs

Also, a question raised last week by Rebecca, regarding keeping a log...do it! A log or journal is more important as you work on form that just about anything else...shoes, metronome, clothes...all are secondary to watching what happens in the body.

Here's my list of things I encourage you to track for your runs:

• Date and time of day
• Length of run (or run/walk) in minutes
• Weather conditions (general statements are fine - humid/dry? sun/cloud/rain? temp?)
• Shoes (if you own more than one pair)
• What your form focus was before you left the house
• Your energy level before you left the house
• How did you feel during your run?
• How well did you keep the form focus?
• What questions or ideas came to mind while running? (form things, but anything else...a new business plan? a desire for 10 mire children?)
• Your energy level when you got done
• Where did you run? (neighborhood, park, beach, etc)
• What was the most interesting thing you noticed inside your body?
• What was the most interesting thing you noticed inside your mind?
• What was the most interesting thing you noticed in the 'outside' world?

These points are guidelines, but they all have value in understanding your internal patterns. If you wish to track distance, one option is to use the Google Maps Pedometer, which will allow you to create and save routes, calculate distances, and plan running routes for when you go on trips.

Have fun, run lightly, and be well!

-Michael

Follow Up From Session #2

Wow - a great session last night. The knee-down drill (kicking up, then letting gravity create propulsion) was an eye-opener for a number of people, the setting in of the sense of letting the energy for forward movement come from an external force. This also highlighted the lean: we lean from the ankles with relaxed lower legs, while keeping the body's column alignment.

We also spent time on armswing and cadence, so let's review.

First, guidelines for the arms:

• Hands start at 90°, but the angle will open and close a little bit
• Hands stay in close to the chest
• Hands never cross the centerline of the body
• Elbows move actively back, and passively release forward
• Elbow the person behind you
• The range of motion is elbow and wrist to ribs; the hand only comes forward to bring the elbow to the side of the ribs, and only back enough to bring wrist to ribs
• At a slow speed, armswing is very gentle and relaxed; as speed increases, so does the rearward effort of the armswing
• The arms do 50% of the work of our running

Next, cadence and gears:

• The target cadence is 85-90 strikes per minute, counted on one foot
• The way to increase your cadence is, using a metronome, find your current, habitual cadence; spend two weeks running at that cadence; then, increase your cadence one beat per week until you're in the target range
• Regardless of our pace or speed, we keep the foot cadence the same
• To increase speed, we increase our lean (from the ankles), which will increase our stride length
• Each gear is just one more inch of lean at the nose; 1st gear = 1 inch; 2nd gear = 2 inches...

And we spent time on how the feet leave the ground:

• The ankle lifts, peeling the foot up off the ground; visualize a postage stamp being peeled up off the roll
• The toes dangle in space, with no holding in the lower legs
• The ankle lifts just high enough to get the dangling toes off the ground
• There's no pressure or pushing in the ball of the foot as it leaves the ground

Finally, the 3-step process to engaging gravity; we have been using this all along, but it was codified for the group who stayed after 7pm:

• Check in with the posture (lengthen the spine, level the pelvis)
• Drop the focus to the bottom of the feet
• Lean from the ankles

The next time we're together is next Thursday, April 22nd, at 630pm. I'm on spring break, and will be taking a few days to go camping early in the week. We will start off with the body-looseners, a set of pre-run (or anytime you're feeling stiff or just need a boost of energy) openers for the joints; we'll then warm up with a lap or two, and then I want to provide some individual focus points for everyone. If we have time that night we'll do some speed play on the track (with everyone working at their own pace!). That night will have moments of generating a lot of heat, and then some moments of standing, so bring an extra layer in case it's cold and windy again.

Your homework this week: focus on the arms, keep working on posture, and just generally try putting everything together! Any questions? Post or comment, and we'll work it out!

-Michael

Practice

This week's homework is to focus on where our feet meet the ground. I tried to practice while out for a run last night. The goal I think is to land on the entire foot while it is under you rather than landing on the heel with the foot in front of the body. I thought I was doing fairly well but after paying closer attention I noticed I land on my heel on the left pretty consistently and am a little better on the right. In order to not heel strike I really need to keep my feet under me and in order to do that I need to pull my hips up and lean forward more (from my hips not my waist). When I got it right it seemed to make running easier. It will take a lot of practice and slower running at first but I am excited to have someone to guide my along and give feedback.

First Session-1

Hey everyone, First off it was great to meet some new people last Monday, I am currently working at a Walk/Jog Pace of 3 Miles and on Tuesday after our First Chi-running meeting, I went for my Walk/Jog. I used the new practices Michael had taught on Monday. I was excited to see some differences right away. First I was able to Breath much easier then I have before and noticed how light I felt and the effort I felt I had to use to force myself forward was almost invisible. This was nice because I am of larger Stature and usually takes so much effort to move let alone Jog at this moment. Second it took allot of effort to keep my stance, especially keeping my shoulders down and head aligned. I was definitely sore in other areas then I had been, but it was also rather empowering to feel connected from head to feet. I felt like I fit in on the Blackstone Blvd with all the other Joggers. I can only hope it gets better from here.

Gait analysis

I had a gait analysis done. I found out my right leg is slightly shorter than my left, which I'll be correcting with orthotics. In the video of my gait, I was surprised how much wasted motion I had with my current shoes; my feet wiggled in a lot of different directions!! The idea with the orthotics and best shoes for me is to have my feet only moving forward, which should help my chi running form. I think I remember Michael saying that there's not much a runner can do about their bone structure, but there's a lot that can be done with the other soft tissue. My gait analyzer said the same thing. So, it was good to find out about difference in leg length, which is bone structure, and correcting for it with the orthotics. With that corrected, I hope to work on the things I can change through our practice sessions.

1st session

I really enjoyed our 1st sesssion and look forward to getting to know everyone. I have been trying to apply the proper body "technique" at the gym the last 2 days as well as when I go out for walks with my dog. It certainly takes alot of concentration!

reflection on session #1

First, it was great to meet/see all of you last night. I'm excited about our work together, and am really looking forward to helping you make running a positive and invigorating practice in your lives.

If you haven't yet, please register for the 5k soon; there's a link within the blog post just below this one.

Also, there appears to be a shortage of metronomes- even ChiRunning headquarters is out of stock! They are available through Amazon, and here's the link:
Link to Amazon for metronomes.

Please access me as a resource for anything you have questions about... That's my purpose here with you! Also, next Monday, I will make myself available after our time together to talk, get coffee, practice, or answer any other questions. You won't miss anything if you leave at 7, but if you'd like to talk about running plans, injuries, core strength, or anything else that comes to mind, plan on staying a bit longer!

Run lightly,
Michael

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Happy Sunday!

Looks like we'll have a beautiful day tomorrow for our first session together! We'll meet at the Hope High track at 6pm. The plan is to do introductions, a bit of a warm up, and then video taping of everyone's form. We'll then start working on posture and alignment, run a bit more, I'll share a whole ton of mantras for while you're running...and we'll plan for the next week!

Also, it'll be a week or two before we need metronomes, and I need to order some, so tomorrow night I'll take a count of how many I need to order. Finally, registration for the 5k looks to be entirely up and running here: http://www.active.com/running/bristol-ri/colt-state-park-5k-2010..

See you tomorrow!

-Michael