Averagebum
10 months ago
Hi Andrew, this is going to be a long post, and I am not sure if there is sufficient space here for it.
From my observation, some of us who have bought the videos and the books from the Posetech website did run faster BEFORE meeting up with Dr Romanov or a coach who would insist on following the strict criteria of his method.
After meeting up with one of them, however, we discovered that we weren't doing Pose at all. In fact, in the workshop that I attended back in 2007, run by Dr. Romanov himself, almost ALL of us discovered we were not doing Pose, try as hard as we did, and with some
of us, such as myself, already having tried it using book and video for some time prior to the workshop.
Let me offer you a few possible reasons for this, Andrew:
(1) When we read the books, articles, and watched the videos, we interpreted Pose technique in a certain way, and then we allowed our bodies to do what felt right.
An example of an improvement in technique for those of us in this category would be avoiding over-striding and braking.
Another would be the lean from the ankle onto the ball of the foot rather than bending at the waist.
And another would be relaxing as much as possible while we ran.
However, NONE of these factors that improved our running technique was unique to Pose.
I will list for you the points that are unique to Pose technique further down. Here, I am trying to show that all these points I have just written about have been taught by good running coaches for decades, if not centuries.
So, after reading the books and watching the videos, you may have corrected over-striding and improved. Or you may have corrected leaning at the waist. Or you may have gotten rid of excessive tension in your trunk and limbs while you ran.
(2) Dr Romanov's technique is far more restrictive. In fact, he disallows so much freedom of movement that the runner usually has to chop his stride unnaturally, and move either like a snail, or use a ridiculously high cadence even for an average to above average pace, such that the pace cannot be maintained, and injuries would very likely be produced.
(3) In other words, if you followed Dr Romanov's strict guidelines, it is unlikely that you would beat your PB achieved using a more natural running form.
(4) Pose coaches are taught to tell their runners that perfect Pose technique is desirable but UNATTAINABLE. This is but an excuse to cover up for the scam that Pose produces more efficient technique when it doesn't.
Let me list for you the factors in running technique that are unique to the Pose Method of Running:
(1) Pulling the foot directly under the hip and avoiding any push-off. The purpose of this is to speed up the Recovery Phase of the foot after lift off, to get ready to drop it straight down to the ground, and to avoid a trailing leg, which is termed as lag and Late Pull.
(2) Avoidance of knee extension during the Recovery Phase so that the foot never extends in front of the knee. This is so unnatural that you won't realize you are not doing it until you actually film youself. As I explain in my classes and in a website I am trying to find time to create, it is actually undesirable and based on the false premise that extending the foot beyond the knee will lead to landing in that position.
Virtually all elite runners will produce knee extension with the foot anterior to the knee during the Recovery Phase, but will sharply pull the foot posteriorly prior to landing. I will not explain in detail here why they do this, but I must say that this is most necessary for the avoidance of braking, for the maintenance of velocity, and for producing acceleration when required.
(3) Increase of stride cadence for the increase of running speed while maintaining a very short stride length. This means that in order to speed up, you will only be allowed to increase cadence and NOT stride length. Most of us at first will think we are doing this after reading the books and watching the videos, only to find that in the workshop, we are far from doing it.
To maintain the short stride length required by the Pose Method, the running speed either must be kept ridiculously low, or the stride cadence must be so high as to make the technique totally uneconomical.
The most common observation is that Heart Rate will shoot through the roof with such an increase in cadence, and the runner will be panting like a mad man.
Let me share with you some real issues in the marketing and teaching of the Pose Method of Running:
(1) Reduction of knee loading while running at the same velocity can also mean that the reduction in load has been distributed somewhere else, in this case, the ankles and the feet.
Almost all of the injuries I have noted with my runners using Pose, and with my fellow Pose workshop mates, have been at the feet and ankles.
(2) Whenever the runner relies on forward lean to increase speed, he must do so in such a way as to increase vertical impact.
(3) Whenever we truncate the stride length unnaturally, we will increase ground-parallel forces going through the landing leg. There is insufficient space for me to explain this here, but this is a major premise in the model of running I teach.
(4) Preventing Push-off is most certainly going to slow a runner down. I can take any able-bodied Pose runner, add a proper push-off, and instantly increase his running speed compared with
his running while using a strictly Pose style. This is very easy to prove to yourself. Please note though, that I am not advocating a triple-jumping, ridiculous type of push-off that would cause overstriding and lower your cadence so much that you end up running more slowly.
(5) Whenever a Pose coach is confronted with the slowing down effects of the strict technique of Pose, the excuse would be that during the learning phase, you would need to slow down, and slowly speed up as your cardiovascular system gets stronger, and/or as your ability to concentrate and coordinate your body to produce perfect technique can be sustained over increasing amounts of time.
(6) After spending up to a couple of years or more in frustratingly slow running sessions using the Pose Method, when this runner approaches and complains to a Pose Coach that he can hardly be said to be improving, the Pose coach will say that this is the best for the runner because perfect Pose technique is really unattainable.
(7) Pose coaches use elite runners such as Michael Johnson, Bekele, Haile Gebressalassie, and Usain Bolt as models of Pose when none of these are running Pose at all, and I am not claiming that they need to be officially coached Pose style. They don't run Pose style, full-stop.
Whenever someone shows individual pics of these elite runners extending their foot ahead of their knee during Recovery, and their knee fully extended posteriorly after lift-off, they will provide the excuse that running motion can only be observed in sequence, yet whenever a runner would attend a coaching session with them, they will always breakdown their form, no matter how fluid, to show them their errors, frame by frame, pointing out the slightest extension of the foot ahead of the knee, or the slightest push-off behind the hip.
In fact, if a runner like Bekele or Haile were to attend a Pose workshop disguised as a beginning runner, their competitive form would be criticized in the same way, if not much more, than many non-competitive runners, simply because they push-off more, extend anteriorly and then pull back more sharply than most of them.
The only reason such elite runners look fluid and compact in their running form is that their push-off is extremely powerful, and they have an amazingly short Recovery Phase, meaning they perform the entire stride more powerfully than most other runners. They look as if they were running the same way as an ordinary runner running, only that they are moving faster on the track. This is because they are COVERING MORE SPACE per stride, without overstriding.
This is completely contrary to Pose, which advocates a much higher cadence and with the maintenance of the same stride length. If Bekele or Haile were to follow the strict guidelines of Pose, they would be running with much shorter strides and with an almost machine-like cadence. They would not look relaxed and fluid at all.
The only way to realize that these elite runners are running more powerfully than slower runners, besides drawing this conclusion from their much greater speed around the track and comparing with that of a much slower runner who looks as if he were running with the same form, would be to look at the elite runner's running motion frame by frame.
Arguments, with very clear pictures, against using Haile, Bekele, and other elite runners to demonstrate Pose style have been posted in at least one forum, the Letsrun.com forum.
In summary, the Pose Method of Running books and videos will benefit the following categories of runners:
(1) Runners who read and applied the good points of technique NOT unique to Pose, as mentioned above,
(2) Runners who run with very bad form to begin with, such as overstriding, and an excessively powerful push-off with extremely low cadence.
(3) Total beginners or those recovering from injury. who would likely run faster on any program.
Total beginners would break any PB, of course, on almost any kind of running program.
Virtually
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