The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [159]
3. For the pull off the ground (see the first three frames of Trial 3), imagine pulling the heel up to your buttocks at a 45-degree forward angle instead of straight up off the ground. This visualization is what allowed me to go from Trial 2 to Trial 3 in two hours. If I thought of pulling the leg straight up off the ground, I subconsciously leaned less, which was self-defeating. Lean at an angle, and envision pulling the heel up at an angle.
4. Use minimal arm movement and consider keeping your wrists near your nipples the entire time. During the initial 100-meter repeats, I purposefully ran directly behind the best ultra-distance runner in our group, matching his tempo and form. He ran with the shortest, most contained arm movements of all. I noticed it was infinitely easier to maintain a high stride rate when mimicking this. Reflecting afterward, it made perfect sense: we are contra-lateral in motion. If one leg moves forward, the opposite arm must move backward, which means you have to maintain the same “stride” rate with both the arms and legs. If your arm movements are too large, your lower-body stride rate has to drop to match them. Solution: bend the arms at least 90 degrees and use small movements.
The Pose method isn’t all rainbows and kittens. It’s very useful, but it doesn’t, despite confusing claims, rewrite physics. It’s hard to make forces disappear.
The Pose marketing machine points to one particular study as evidence of the method’s ability to reduce landing forces on the knee: “Reduced eccentric loading of the knee with the pose running method,” published in 2004.
This isn’t the problem. The problem is that they fail to point out another finding in the study: two weeks with the Pose method also increased the eccentric work of the ankles. This, in theory, increases risk of Achilles tendon injuries and calf muscle problems. Ross Tucker PhD, a friend and Pose Level I certified instructor who was involved with this study, helped supervise an attempted follow-up study. Runners were split into supervised and unsupervised groups, and the objective was to observe retention of the Pose technique. The study couldn’t be finished because almost every runner in the unobserved group (all of whom had been trained in the Pose method) and about half of the supervised runners (who’d been trained by Romanov himself) developed Achilles tendon and calf muscle problems.
In an e-mail to me, Ross concluded:
“In some, the technique might stick and work. But in many others, the technique will stick and destroy their calves, ankles, and tendons.” The moral of the story? Take it slow. Make changing your running a gradual process and stop if it hurts.
Pose has devotees with religious fanaticism for a reason: it can work spectacularly well. But that doesn’t mean it’s a cure-all. For some, the drills will help more than strict adherence to the gospel while running. For others, like me, the focus on increased stride rate will make the exposure to Pose extremely valuable, even if the other “rules” aren’t followed to the letter.
Find your own path. One-size-fits-all, taken to extremes, results in pain.
End of Chapter Notes
13. Named after Dr. Izumi Tabata, who demonstrated that these short sprints produced dramatic improvements in both short-duration anaerobic (without oxygen) performance and, surprisingly, longer-duration aerobic performance.
14. The Western States 100 doesn’t even qualify in the top ten.
15. Compare this to his maximum leading up to his very first Ironman, when the training made him weaker instead of stronger: 75 lbs. × 4 reps.
16. More precisely, the VMO is used to refer to a horizontally oriented group of fibers in the vastus medialis that should stabilize the patella (knee cap) and keep it tracking properly. Some physiologists believe that the importance of these horizontal fibers is overstated.
17. Vastus lateralis. See the video of this at www.fourhourbody.com/biopsy.
18. See “From Geek to Freak.”
19. See “Reversing Permanent Injuries.”
20. Born to Run.
21. www.fourhourbody.com/ice-run