The feet are just the beginning: the impact forces of running are so great that they must also be absorbed by the legs, hips, and back—all the way up the body’s kinetic chain. At each point along this chain, those forces are sensed, absorbed, stored, and released in similarly miraculous and interconnected ways. We’ll explore this dynamic biomechanical progression in the chapters to come.
DRILLS
Our goal is to develop internal strength, coordination, and support for the muscles of the feet. As my colleague Jay Dicharry puts it, “You need less from your shoes, more from you.” To determine if you’re ready for minimalist running, you may want to watch the video (on the book website’s videos page) that Dicharry and I shot for Running Times. And if you’ve been wearing highly supportive or confining footwear, the drills in this chapter offer a plan for making the transition.
Foot posture
Toe yoga. Stab your entire big toe down to the ground, while lifting the other four. Bend only at the metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joint (see arrows in the following images), without curling the toes. Now lift the big toe while stabbing the other four down. Your arch will naturally rise. Repeat. This helps develop foot control.
Short foot posture. Create a “dome” by elevating your arch and anchoring (not curling) your toes, while driving the first metatarsal head to the ground. (See the “Short Foot Posture” video at runforyourlifebook.com.) This effectively shortens your foot, and it involves moving your knees just slightly to the outside—from a slightly knock-kneed stance to a straight stance. (If you move your knees any farther, you would appear bowlegged. Refer to the images below.)
To realign your feet, repeat the foot posture exercises above whenever you can throughout the day—at work, in class, while standing in line, even while brushing your teeth.
Within a few weeks, your base of stability will improve.
Slow heel raises. While balancing on your right foot (use a hand to secure yourself, if needed), slowly lift your heel so that you are balancing on the ball of your foot. Go up as high as you can, then rotate your lower leg slightly counterclockwise, as your weight naturally transfers to the big toe. This is the same rotation that occurs in your lower leg at the end of the running stride, as power shifts to the big toe for toe-off. Then slowly lower yourself. Do the same with your left foot, rotating your lower leg just slightly clockwise at the top of the lift. Do this up to fifty times on each foot, once or twice a day (at your stand-up desk!), and you’ll see greatly improved foot control.
If you would like to transition to more minimalist shoes and techniques, try a small amount of barefoot running. There are about twelve hundred steps in one mile of running, but even running a hundred yards down the sidewalk and back will give you quality, outdoor exercise for your feet. Early experiments with barefoot running should be done on a safe, smooth, firm surface, while listening to your body. Run slowly but at a high cadence, with a soft, springy motion (not bounding). Your forward speed may be slower than a fast walk. It’s okay if your feet are a bit sore the next day, but you should not experience pain. Progress gradually. This may seem difficult, but it should also make you smile. After months and years, you will have bulletproof, resilient feet.
Light hopping drills and jumping rope awaken the springs of the feet. Many of these simple drills—part of the U.S. Air Force Phase One Drills series of exercises—can be viewed on the book website’s videos page.
CHAPTER 5
The Springs That Move Us
There are those who suffer and grow strong; there are those who suffer and grow weak. This mystery of pain is still for me the saddest of earth’s disabilities.
—SILAS WEIR MITCHELL, doctor and patient
MYTH: Structurally, the body functions mainly through the interaction of muscle and bone, with some involvement of tendons and ligaments.
FACT: The connective tissue known as fascia (which includes tendons and ligaments) plays a much larger role than we ever imagined in how our bodies work.
MYTH: Running mainly requires strength.
FACT: Running requires “spring” as much as strength.
My own discovery of the fluidity, grace, abounding energy, and injury-free comfort that can result from smooth running form didn’t happen immediately.
After a lot of trial and error (including serious pain avoidance and suppression), I gradually learned how to judiciously pace my running, how to harness my body’s internal springs, and how not to land a step. The more that I discovered and understood this, the more I trended toward wearing minimal shoes and tending to my fascia—and the better I felt.
Our muscles, tendons, bones, nerves, and internal organs are all suspended and sheathed in a web of connective tissue known as fascia. This collagenous material begins a couple of millimeters below the level of our skin, and permeates our bodies, appearing variously as stringy clumps, as closely packed bundles, and as layers of mats, sheets, and films. Some of it is delicate, some tough and fibrous. Some of it binds structures together, while some lubricates the organs so that they smoothly glide over each other in order to dissipate (or relay) the mechanical forces generated by the muscles. In essence, the fascia facilitates everything that moves in our bodies, in an efficient, coordinated way.
When you dissect a wedge of orange, you expose progressively smaller, individually wrapped cells filled with juice. Everything but the raw, liquid juice itself is formed of connective tissue. This is comparable to the fascia in our bodies.
Surgeons tend to regard fascia as the nondescript, light-colored stuff that they slice through en route to the muscles, bones, or internal organs they’ve targeted. Fascia is omitted from the anatomical charts on the walls of your doctor’s office, in order to better display these other organs. But it’s the fascia that encases and suspends them all. It even cushions the spaces between our vertebrae (our discs are a form of fascia). Ligaments (a type of fascia) join bone to bone, while tendons (another type of fascia) join muscle to bone.
So how does fascia work, relative to our muscles and bones? Its operation can be illustrated in an unusual way.
TENSEGRITY: TENSION AND INTEGRITY
Our musculoskeletal system is conventionally viewed as individual muscles acting upon bones. But this doesn’t fully explain our remarkable ability to move gracefully and efficiently over long distances on two legs, while maintaining near-perfect balance.
The skeleton is not a stack of bones, like building blocks sitting atop each other. You might have seen that medical school skeletons are held together with wires. That’s because in life the bones mostly float independently—wrapped and swathed in layers of fascia. We would collapse in a heap without this connective tissue.
Some highway bridges, such as the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, are constructed according to a flexible, dynamic design principle known as tensegrity, or tensional integrity. They are strong and stable, yet dynamic, built on the interplay of tension and compression. Traditional suspension bridges employ some of these design features, modern designs even more.
Tensegrity structures gain their strength through the dynamic interplay of tension and compression. The Golden Gate Bridge
First defined by Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s, tensegrity also describes the relationship between our bones (the struts) and the muscles, ligaments, tendons, and other fascia (the connecting cables), as seen in the following models. Bones provide great compressive strength, while muscles and fascia provide continuous tension, all in a strong, tightly linked yet flexible matrix.
Like a tent, the fascia brings optimal integrity to the structure only when it is fully tensioned.
To a surprising degree, the dynamic structure of our bodies and the interplay of its parts work on these same principles of tensegrity.
Olympian Lopez Lomong loads his hip flexor fascia (traced by the line
). The more tension he creates through powerful propulsion and hip extension, the swifter his leg springs forward.
BOUNCE BACK BETTER
If left unattended (think prolonged sitting), the fascia grows sluggish and stiff, and will constrict the muscles and the nerves. Many people don’t realize that (over a period of several months) the elastic properties of the body’s myofascial tissues can change. There is a term in materials science called elastic hysteresis, which is commonly illustrated with a simple rubber band. If you apply force or load to the band, it stretches (deforms)—but returns much of that loaded energy when the force is withdrawn. A super-bouncy ball is said to have a tight elastic hysteresis curve (when the ball is thrown to the ground, little energy is lost between loading and the return bounce), whereas a hacky sack or Nerf ball has a very fat elastic hysteresis curve (there is little bounce—almost all of its energy is lost).
By training and minding our fascia, we can significantly tighten the elastic hysteresis curve of our fascia and enhance its springiness and energy. Children exemplify this: they can hop like kangaroos or jump rope for hours. Throughout, their calf muscles are mainly used isometrically, for stabilization and balance. The length of the muscle fibers changes little. The lengthening and spring and bounce in their legs comes primarily from the fascia:
When running well, muscle length changes only minimally. Most of the movement and bounce occurs in the fascia, especially the tendons and connective tissue.
For an impressive example of how to train this, watch “Ethiopian Runners Training Off-Season” on the videos page of runforyourlifebook.com and see the rhythmic plyometric drills of Ethiopian runners exercising during the off-season.
THE TRICKS PLAYED BY PAIN
All of this movement and tension is healthy for the fascia—up to a point. The collagen fibers of the fascia must slide, flex, and stretch smoothly in order to work properly. The fibers, which are normally arranged in springy waves or interwoven nets of tissue, flatten out as they withstand great unidirectional tension.
But when the fascia is overly stressed, it can become bunched into a knot, and we quickly become aware of it: the fascia is densely arrayed with receptors and nerve endings that telegraph pain and discomfort. It’s like yanking hard on the ends of a rope to untangle a knot: it only makes the knot harder and tighter. Too often, we do exactly this in the name of physical therapy and traditional stretching exercises.
Only recently has the medical community begun to realize how important all this connective tissue is to the efficient, pain-free movement of our bodies. Among runners, fascial microtears and inflammation (such as Achilles tendinosis, iliotibial or IT band syndrome, and plantar fasciitis) comprise most of the chronic ailments and nonspecific recurring pain that I see. Almost every runner (and countless walkers) have experienced plantar fasciitis (or more accurately fasciosis) at some point in their lives.
In order to seek relief from the pain and while hoping to avoid future injury, we often focus on the place that hurts, though the restriction that was causing the pain may have originated at some distance from the injury. With plantar fascia pain, which originates in the sole of the foot, we often need to loosen the Achilles tendon and do some deep squats to open up the hip flexors, which tighten and shrink when we sit for long periods.
Many doctors are stumped by patients who complain of pain that originates in the fascia, because it’s not readily visible in X-rays or on MRIs or CT scans. But growing numbers of sports physicians and physiotherapists have developed a deep understanding of it, and they use their eyes and hands as their primary diagnostic tools.
It is now believed that even psychological stress can contribute to fascial injuries; the fascia tightens and hardens in response to emotional and mental stimuli, predisposing one to injury.
THE CARE AND FEEDING OF YOUR FASCIA
No one feels loose and springy when they first wake up in the morning. It takes ten to twelve minutes of exercise for our bodies to warm up, as the fascia loosens and melts the sticky stuff in the intermuscular spaces. (Picture a cat stretching when it arises from a nap.) When we immobilize a joint or remain in a fixed position for an extended period, the synovium-lubricated fibrous web of cartilage and collagen (fascia) that encases the joint capsules becomes sludgy and stuck together. Sticky microadhesions then form between fascial surfaces, and harden sufficiently to inhibit our range of motion. Over time (within as little as a week in the case of a shoulder), this immobilization can cause “freezing” of the joint. The shoulder can be “melted” and the stuck fascia restored to its range of motion, but usually not without pain and extensive work. Unfreezing a joint sometimes requires heavy sedation.
WORK IT ON OUT, NOW
Imagine stretching a piece of taffy. This is your fascia. We tend to assume that the thin areas (where the injuries occur) are the sites that need to be treated. But movement and manipulation of the stuck-together bunched areas, which may be remote from the injury site, fills in the thinner, injured areas. Injured plantar tissue in the sole of the foot, for instance, usually requires loosening and stretching around the bunched areas in the feet, hips, and ankles. This is what the foam roller and other fascia work does.
The process of restoring flexible, strong, and resilient fascia can take between six months and two years. Be patient. While doing these exercises, move and stretch slowly, holding and “relaxing into” the stretches, because the fascia responds more slowly than muscles do. Fascial fitness training is not a substitute for strength work, endurance training, or improvement of form, but it is an important element of a healthy training program.
At my store in West Virginia, we do simple corrections to runners’ and walkers’ gaits almost daily. We start the runner off with some soft-tissue foam rolling, then have them open the hips with a few Mountain Climbers, and then move to the Awesomizer, all described below. In most cases, the runner’s stride visibly opens—lengthens—and he or she starts to engage the powerful glute muscles. Nothing else out there is as powerful as this progression for bringing immediate change.
Foam roll the “knots.” First thing every morning, take a few minutes to fully stretch out, head to toe. Then with a foam roller, “tissue floss” by rolling your legs, hips, torso, and back—gently and slowly—while remembering to breathe from the diaphragm. Your body will tell you where it needs attention. Roll from the middle of the muscle group up to its insertions, while avoiding the joints. When you find an area of tightness or tension, slowly roll out the knots by massaging above and below the area, for at least ten to fifteen seconds. (Ageless track phenomenon Olga Kotelko, the subject of the book What Makes Olga Run?, used a wine bottle as a foam roller.)
You are rolling not just fascia but also muscles, nerves, and other connective tissue. Picture squeezing a sponge, then allowing it to fill again with water. Squeeze out the stiffness and congestion, and allow relaxation and fluidity to flow into the voids.
The calf region is especially prone to restriction, and needs regular attention. Those who sit for hours (locked in that familiar forward flex) should focus on the hip flexors and upper back. An area often neglected is near the ASIS (the anterior superior iliac spine, a bony projection of the iliac bone) and the PSIS (posterior superior iliac spine). And foam roll areas adjacent to the IT band and the quads, which often have adhesions. While lying on the floor on your side, you can slide your hips over a foam roller.
Mix up the areas that you foam roll each day. Be slow and mindful. This is not a rushed activity performed while answering emails or texts.
Rolling the ASIS (anterior superior iliac spine)
Rolling the PSIS (posterior superior iliac spine)
The Mountain Climber is remarkably effective at opening up and releasing your hips, as well. It can be done before a run or a walk or after an activity—or anytime, really.
Plac
e your hands and feet on the ground, as in the illustration below, with your right foot to the outside of your right hand. Sink your left hip by squeezing the glute. Shift and move the position of the back leg by rotating your foot (lean your heel to the outside and then to the inside). When you move it to the outside, it helps open the IT band, and to the inside it stretches the inner thigh. Switch feet and repeat. Don’t forget to sink the hips. Once you’ve loosened up, you can go dynamic and spring from one foot up to the other.
The Mountain Climber: Sink the hip by engaging the glute.
Feel the spring from the hip flexors.
The Awesomizer. Developed by Dr. Lawrence van Lingen, the Awesomizer is one of the easiest and most effective ways to release tightened hip flexors and tune the fascia of your pelvis and legs—all the way down to your feet.
Stand and face a chair or low wall, about three feet from it. A solid table can work.
Place your feet shoulder-width apart, so they point directly to the wall.
Run for Your Life Page 7