Super Bodies!

I have been extremely busy in the last few weeks, coaching is a 24/7 job and my coaching plan didn’t reflect the progress I was expecting. Sickness has been around too and many of them had to recover from it.

I traveled for 24h in the last 48h between car, plane and train. I had the time to do some interesting thinking about my new article. Our readers are always looking for the extra tip which will make them quicker. I was trying to look at the way the athlete’s footsteps can be improved; we know for the last 50 years that the foot optimize itself by automating the motion along with body posture. The human body is made to run, but even if most people think that there are not many skills or postural development to be made, we all heard about injuries, and new techniques developed such as the Chi-running which has been proved been beneficial.

But generally, the body is capable to learn itself how to save energy naturally. Why do we let our head change this natural ability? If you never had injuries, why would you change the way you run, add insoles etc.... I always remember when I started running looking at the older runners passing me with nice small strides and look slow when I was running like an animal. I am sure it happens to you too!

Athletes also neglect their core and strength training, such as squats, jumps which help to reduce the cost of energy in short distances up to 10km. I personally believe in a more natural ability to evolve in your running techniques, simply by increasing the strength of your leg muscles, the body will adapt the strides along with the muscular development. Adaptability to the environment is what makes us different. The same way that if you live in a country exposed to the sun your skin will get browner and thicker to adapt and protect against the UV and sun burn. So if your muscular mass is increasing I would consider that your balance changes, like what happens to a woman during pregnancy. Doess that mean people are falling down every day? No, it means our body find a new way to balance and compensate, like toddlers do when they grow. The human body is amazing it can reorganise itself, around the environment it is living in.

Another example would be the temperature or weather, if you go to Alaska most of us would not understand why people are living there in an ice cold environment. The same way my French family doesn’t understand why I came to Ireland where it is suppose to rain nonstop. I used to have the excuse to say “it rains I can’t run today”. Now I coach or train in whatever weather is and most of the time can’t even remember what the previous day was, I just accepted it and my body leads my head, it just know what to expect and change my physiology slightly around It. In Alaska the guys can wear a T-shirt when you will be wearing a skiing jacket.

If you run mountain races, like the ones organised by IMRA, they are amazing to run, your eyes adapt themselves to the surrounding without looking at the ground for each stone, like beginners do. The guys just run through and do you know that there are less injuries in cross country or mountain runs than on the road regarding sprained ankles and other similar injuries? Yes it is “body adaptability”, the joints and insertions learn to be stronger and even more flexible if you do some research reading.

What I am trying to explain in a simpler way, is that sometimes we are trying too hard to change things to make ourselves better, and getting obsessed with technical details which actually make our motion too robotic or mechanical. Sometimes been more relax and natural will make you go quicker. But of course nothing will ever replace training, good quality training and a minimum of volume of training hours.
So be good with your body, they are all super and capable of amazing things.

Sebastien Locteau

First Published on runireland on the 20/11/2009