The Art of Running: Raising Your Performance With The Alexander Technique
Book by Malcolm Balk and Andrew Shields
Book Review by Herb Rubenstein
Introduction
A good running book should accomplish three things for the reader:
1. Improve how they run.
2. Increase the enjoyment of running for the runner.
3. Increase the amount a person runs.
This book is three for three for me and is a good running book for many other reasons.
I am a person who was headed for neck surgery in the 1980s until I found about the Alexander Technique and worked with Meade Andrews, an Alexander Technique practitioner. I was also both a runner and a golfer at that time when I worked with her. At one point I was running 40 miles a week running through the Monuments of Washington, over the Memorial Bridge and the 14th Street bridge, and beginning and ending my daily runs at a place in Washington, DC few knew about in the early 1980s, Buzzards’ Point.
Recently, I have started running again after a long period of not putting in many miles and have also become a professional golfer at the age of 65. So, this book was very timely for me, and could be for you.
Combining A Book On Both The Alexander Technique and on Running
A reader should know that a book review is never a substitute for the actual book. This review discusses only some of the content of the book and can never do justice to how well the authors explain the Alexander Technique and explain how to run. There is another book that also combines the Alexander Technique with how to play the Cello. This book is titled, Cello, Bow, and You, (2017, Oxford University Press) by Evangeline Benedetti who has been a member of the New York Philharmonic for over 40 years. Also forthcoming is the book by Dr. Meade Andrews, Ph.D and Jana S. Tift, MFA titled, Your Body Knows: A Movement Guide for Actors. This book will be out in March, 2020 by Routlege Press.
This book is certainly worth reading, but don’t plan to read it quickly. If you are new to the Alexander Technique or running books, ou will pause early and often in the book, and maybe even stumble, on such unusual Alexander Technique terms as:
• The Means-Whereby
• End-Gaining
• Good “use”/poor “use”
• Primary control of use
• Use of the self
• Proper alignment (not leaning backwards)
• Outside – in approach
• Quickening the mind
• Connection with what the body is doing
• Associated and disassociated
• Automatic performance
• Inhibition (as a skill of not responding to a stimulus the way you have habitually done it)
• Space between the stimulus and the response or delayed/intentional/good reaction to a stimulus that previously used to generate a poor habit or poor use
• Recognition of poor use (bad habits) and the power to prevent them
• Non-doing
• Faulty sensory awareness
Therefore, I will attempt to describe the Alexander Technique just enough for the reader of this book review to understand just how useful this technique is to help a person perform any sport, or even walk or sit in a chair. The Alexander Technique is about much more than good poster. It is about improving how we use our bodies to perform physical activities of every kind. I will also provide numerous key insights about running that the authors provide in the book.
Roger Bannister and Freedom
This book is not only a book about the Alexander Technique and running technique, it is a book about the “joy of running.” One day I was running in Oxford, England and saw a fence with a plaque on it, and stopped to read the plaque:
The first quote on the book is where Roger Bannister suggests that running is freedom. Roger is right. But, to enjoy this freedom to the fullest, one must have some insights into how to run. This book provides those insights.
Running Lessons
When I ran 40 miles per week, I never took a running lesson. When I was required to run four miles a day in gym class in high school, no gym teacher ever taught me, or anyone in our class, how to run. Today, there are running teachers or “coaches” as they like to call themselves, and recently I took a running lesson, with a video analysis of how I used to run. However, I am convinced most recreational runners have never taken a running lesson from a professional and have not read a book about running.
Now that I have taken a running lesson, and have begun to apply the great lessons of this book, I am improving as a runner in five key ways:
1. I have reduced the impact on my feet and joints and run with my feet pointed straight ahead rather than towards 10 and 2 o’clock as they used to.
2. I have reduced the effort it takes to run the same distance and at the same speed.
3. I now think more clearly about how I am running, and have a specific improvement goal each time I run.
4. I am using my hips, shoulders, and arms much better and relieving stress on my legs and lower back when I run.
5. I am looking out about 150 feet rather than looking down or only about 10 feet out and this has improved both my posture, breathing, and stride significantly.
The Alexander Technique
The Alexander Technique is more than a posture improvement system. It is a system that helps human beings move more efficiently, using the right combination of muscles, joints, weight distribution, and posture throughout the body to make every move we make every day, and want to make in every sport, easier. It almost sounds too good to be true, but the Alexander Technique can help alleviate back, neck, shoulder, knee pain and tightness as it “frees” up the body to move better.
For FM Alexander himself, it was the approach he developed to fix a big problem he had. He was a Shakespearian actor, was brilliant on stage at recitation and his voice was his “instrument.” However, approximately 100 years ago, he started losing his voice on the stage. So, Alexander decided to figure out what he was doing while speaking and acting on stage and Alexander that was causing him to injure his vocal cords and lose his voice. He studied how humans move and how he moved very scientifically, keeping copious notes, and publishing his methods of observation and findings. He used every observational trick in the book in the early 1900’s including mirrors, as he tried to figure out three things: 1) how was he moving his head, neck, vocal cords; 2) why did he move the way he moved; 3) how could he become more aware of how he moved, so he could correct it; and 4) how could he move more efficiently and avoid injury.
Alexander discovered the more we tighten a muscle, or the tighter a muscle is, the less feedback it provides to the brain about how it is performing. So, when a tight muscle that has been tight over time (anyone out there with a tight hamstring, calf, hip flexors, hip rotators, rotator cuff, lumbar or thoracic spine, trapezius, scapula, rhomboid, quads, Achilles, groin, arch in a foot, neck, shoulder, glutes, upper or lower back??) it loses its ability to communicate with the brain. Once we lose our ability to control that muscle proper movement and performance of that muscle is very challenging. And, when we do not use a muscle correctly, it affects the “compensating” muscles who work hard to help out the body perform as the brain commands it.
Focusing on his head, spine, neck, shoulders, Alexander realized he needed to reduce “tension,” and lengthen muscles he was unintentionally contracting to avoid injury. His research spread to all parts of the body because he realized that moving any single body part affects how we move every other body part. He used to say, “The self is a unity.” A central tenet of the Alexander Technique is that our bodies are systems. Alexander discovered that one of his main problems causing him to lose his voice was that while he was acting, he “shortened his neck” and pulled his head down into his spine. Most every human being does this, and it affects how we breathe, how we walk, how we talk, how we use all of our muscles inefficiently, and even how our feet struggle to perform their “tasks” in walking or running.
The Alexander Technique is a hands-on technique where a practitioner puts their hands on your body to move it, sometimes subtly, to a better position, a better form, and takes advantage of a little known fact: the head is “poised freely on top of the spine.” Freeing up the head, which is approximately ten pounds in adults, allows for it to move freely, allows the neck and shoulders to relax, and makes every movement in the body, especially running, a lot easier. Relaxed shoulders are low, not up near your ears.
Key Insights On Running
The Art of Running provides over one hundred key insights into how to improve your running, avoid injury, and enjoy running more fully. In this book review, I have created a list of some of the book’s insights.
The problem with “lists” is they lack context. The context contained in the book with each of these “running technique recommendations” is excellent.
1. Breathe through your nose in a cadence coordinated with your stride. The authors admit when they first stated doing this, it was very, very difficult, so be patient when you try this and over time you will get the hang of it.
2. The head (and torso) move very little when running.
3. Lead with your head but do not push your head, or especially your chest, forward when you want to increase speed. When you want to increase speed, do so by increasing the activity and rhythm of your arms.
4. If you try to increase your speed by increasing your leg movements, you will contract or tighten the back of your neck, shorten your spine and waste a lot of effort.
5. Land on the ball of your foot, or the whole foot, but never on your heel as you run.
6. Do not land your foot significantly in front of the center line of your body. When you run use a forward lean as your head leads your upper body and your knees and hips lead your lower body.
7. In fact, use the front of your hip joint and thighs to lead your knees when you run and focus on the crease where the thigh meets the hip joint. By focusing on the front of the hip joint, you have three great benefits. First, you take pressure off and effort from your lower back when you run. Second, you are using the largest joint in the body, the hips, to be your anchor and this allows for the proper hip movement to help propel your run. Third, this takes some of the effort and stress off that smaller joint, the knees, when you run. (This point number seven was not mentioned in the book, but comes from Meade Andrews, an Alexander Technique practitioner and I believe Malcolm Balk, the author of this book, would agree with her on this point.
8. Do not push down against the earth (or try to push the earth away or out of its orbit!) when you run. Rather touch the ground lightly with your foot and move your foot and your entire body away from the earth as quickly as you can when you run. (This is something I learned running up the long escalators of the DC Metro System. When you push down with your feet on an escalator going up, you double or triple the effort of running.
9. Touch the ground for as short of a period of time as possible (quick, light steps) to take advantage of the “spring” or “bounce” from every step that will give your running new energy. If your foot is on the ground for too long, there is no “spring” or “bounce” and you have to exert a lot of extra effort for the same results. So, think about getting your foot off the ground before it touches the ground!
10. Shoulder, hips and ankles are vertically aligned with the support (back) leg in running. The body is leaning forward so as to create a sense of “falling forward” with your forward leg “catching” your body. This form provides momentum to move the body forward with as little “up and down” movement of the shoulders, head, and body. Running is a horizontal sport. (Jumping and leaping are more vertical).
11. Do not sway or lean to one side at any point in your stride; do not let your arms/hands cross the center line of your body as they move; keep your elbows bent 90 degrees, and don’t create either a floppy hand or a tight fist/thumb or wrist. When thinking about your arms, they should move from the back of the shoulder, not the front area near your pecs. Connecting your arms with your back in the shoulder region promotes a slight turning/rotation of the shoulders in cadence with your stride. Also, when you “move” your arms, focus only on moving them back to give you power. Your arms will release forward as you run without any attention on them.
12. When your shoulders/upper torso rotates, there is a counter rotation of the hips. When left knee goes forward, the right hip rotates to the right (spirals) and the right arm comes forward. As the right arm comes forward, the left side of the torso/shoulder rotates left (spiraling in opposite direction to hips).
13. The hips are level with each other, except as one side rises to help make room for that side’s leg moving forward in the stride.
14. The head and upper body leaning forward leads the stride, (but chest is not pushed forward because this throws the head back, which tightens the neck, shortens the spine, and causes great inefficiency in running. Here is what leads the stride with your lower body - the ankle releases, then the muscles release up toward the back of the knee and that allows the knee to move forward effortlessly, then the thigh swings forward.
15. Relax – tension shortens the spine and all muscles and makes them less effective and much less efficient. Be sure to release tension in thumbs and armpits for better running.
16. It is essential to contract the correct muscles at the right time in your stride and then releasing the right muscles at the right time of the stride. (You have to buy the book and learn some anatomy to learn this essential running technique that improves efficiency. I have a lot of work to do in this area and it will be my next area of study in running.)
17. Do not sacrifice form for speed. Always run with control.
18. Run and train at different speeds and use interval training.
19. Keep track of steps per minute and achieve 160 – 180 steps per minute. Many devices now will calculate steps per minute.
20. Plan your run, your distance, pace/speed.
21. Plan time for recuperation and regeneration.
22. Runners should exhibit “independence” – the ability to move one part of their body without moving the rest of the body – such as the ability to move the legs and arms without moving the torso; move your eyes without moving your head; and move your head without moving your neck.
23. Runners should exhibit dynamic stability – head poised high on top of the spine and torso, and back tending to lengthen and widen during the run.
24. Great warm up – bounce on your feet, first on two feet, then on one.
25. While running you have to think, because thoughts trigger action!
26. Balance is essential for running. Stand in front of mirror, feet close together, raise one knee – see if you lean to one side. If you do, that is a problem. Work to stand tall, head well above the neck and spine, and straight on one leg for good balance.
27. Lie down after a run or exercise to “re-lengthen the spine.
28. Drill – run with “high knees” – thighs parallel to ground.
29. Drill – kick your own butt with your heels while you run.
30. Drill – 30 seconds of acceleration during your run, but not at the beginning.
31. Drill – run in place, feet barely off the ground, very quick-footed, gradually raising them until your heel hits your butt.
32. Study plyometrics – the loading or lengthening/stretching a muscle and then contracting the muscle to produce both speed and power. Examples - Vertical jumps from crouched position. Jump off bench and jump as quickly as possible back on the bench. Press up (like a push up) with a clap in between press ups.
33. Beware of overstimulated fear reflexes as you are about to begin a run/race (and in life itself).
34. Have a plan for what you are going to work on (technique) during the run.
35. Get a running partner, or group, or support team to help keep you going.
36. In racing, like any competitive sport, focus on what you are doing, not the potential result or (like your “time” or whether you will win the race. Thinking about “winning” a race, or in golf, shooting a particular score especially as your get close to the 18th hole, causes the following chain reaction:
a. Thinking about the potential result takes your focus away from your activity, your running or your golf or whatever activity you are trying to do well;
b. Thinking turns into worrying.
c. Worrying triggers fear reflexes.
d. Fear reflexes create tension which shortens and tightens muscles.
e. Tight muscles do not perform on command as quickly or as well as relaxed muscles.
f. Tight muscles also do not give accurate or quick feedback to the brain, so you literally do not know what you are doing and cannot correct the situation.
g. Result of all of this: Often poorer than hoped for results.
Conclusion
This book is a real contribution to two fields – running and the Alexander Technique. I recommend that if you plan to run on a regular basis get a running lesson and if you can find a professional runner or running coach who understands the Alexander Technique, so much the better.
Who knew there was so much to know in order to run as efficiently and therefore effortlessly as possible. I was an “unconscious runner.” Trying new stuff as a runner is hard as the authors admit when they started trying to breathe through their nose, it was really hard for them at first.
By reading this book I am confident that I am on the road toward becoming a better runner. By becoming a better runner, I will enjoy the both the freedom and discipline of running, gain some significant health benefits, and will become a better golfer as well. Tiger Woods once said, “The more I ran, the better golf I played.”
If you have struggled with running, it might be you were not running with “good form.” Be sure not to “over train,” or increase how much you run too quickly, even if it feels good. By running you are “stressing” your lungs, muscles, and joints, but if you practice what the authors teach in this book, you will have much less stress and much more enjoyment when you run.