To Improve, Make Small Changes.

Building strength compounds on itself.

Working on form and mileage at the same time really pays dividends.

Running Form and the Brain-Body Connection

Last week, we talked about setting flexible, multi-faceted goals that will serve you for years. This week, let’s bring it down to the daily: let’s talk about form.

As I’ve said before, concentrating on form has a lot to do with stoic practice, since form is really one of those things you can practice forever but never get perfect. As runners, when we work on our form we have to focus our minds to do so, but communication between body and mind is a loop, not a one way street. 

Through focusing your mind on your form, the beneficial mental effects we’ve talked about in this newsletter before take hold. Clarity, patience, and creativity will be buoyed. On the physical side, working on your form will absolutely increase your efficiency and has a good chance of decreasing your run times (if you’re into measurements like that). Great form also decreases your chance of getting injured as well as collapsing your recovery time when you do end up with an injury. For these reasons, if we think about the movements of our bodies having an indisputable connection with the movements inside our minds, then focusing on improving the physical absolutely improves the mental, overall increasing the efficacy and joy of our runs. 

Tips to Get You Started

To illustrate this, I’m sharing some movements I return to in my form over and over again. Try them out yourself and let me know what you think! These are some of my trouble spots, and, again, I know I’ll never perfect them, but working on them makes me mentally and physically stronger, so the effort is absolutely worth it. 

Mid-stride, focusing on form.

Knock Knees:

My knees collapse in on each other while I run, as a result of weak adductors! I’ve really had to work on this. I did it by starting to do barre exercises and engaging my inner thigh and outer gluts. It was really good cross training for me.

Outward rotation:

Over rotating your hips outward can really result in pain. To correct, you’ll want to work on pulling toward your center line when you run. It sounds weird, but practice standing up straight, pull in. You’ll feel it in your inner thighs and pelvic floor.

Ankle strength:

Ankle strength is so important. Strong ankles means the entire support chain up your body can stay in alignment. Build your ankle strength by doing some basic point and flexing exercises at your desk. Harder than you think!

More on ankle strength:

If you feel your ankles collapsing in or bowing out when your run, consciously engage your glute muscles whenever your foot falls to the ground and your adductors as you push off. It sounds weird but one way you can alleviate ankle pain is simply by engaging your larger muscles to lift more of your body weight.

These might seem like insanely small things to focus on. You might not even be able to find some of the contractions I’ve referenced above! But exploring how these movements and alignments work is part of stoicism, and it’s part of knowing your body well and focusing your mind. So if you can’t immediately figure out how to flex your gluts while you strike or engage your adductors when you cycle through your kick, don’t worry about it. Just keep trying, keep concentrating. You’ll get stronger in body and mind.

See you all next week on social and this newsletter. For today, remember: go run.