RUNNING AND “FUNCTION”
“Form follows function.” What does this mean? Answer: Seek to be healthy and functional, and you will burn calories along the way. If your goal was to improve your body composition, this will happen along your journey to a stronger, and likely more flexible body. Fuctionality, at its core, just refers to how well-oiled the machine is–how closely to its potential your body can work… So your level of function is subjective, depending on your goal(s).
Flexibility equals range of motion. Greater range of motion allows potential for more force production on any joint or movement chain. This is important because power is defined with a speed or velocity component, whereas strength works on an absolute displacement or can be static. Think of power as “rate of force.”
Athletes use the ground against gravity to move themselves or other objects around by applying opposing forces… This means that if you want to run forward, at least with some degree of efficiency, your feet will optimally ONLY push BACK on the ground! “Stride frequency plus stride length” is layman’s jargon for the makeup of the formula for increasing running speed, so how can I apply this to the use of good mechanics?
What really makes up stride length? Yes, I hope you said in your head just now that the answer is the distance between points of contact on the ground. Good. So how can I increase my stride length? First of all it doesn’t hurt to be moving fast but you have to start somewhere. And since, really, the difference between running and walking is potentially as simple as contact time, then it all breaks down to power. A sprinter will spend a nearly equal amount of time in the air as on the ground…
Why, then, is it important to lift your knees if attempting to get somewhere faster than your opponent in the next lane? Answer: The higher my knees come up, the harder I can bring them down. AND, the harder my foot comes down, the more force I can apply to the ground. The more force I apply to the ground, the greater the oppositional thrust is placed on my own (preferably muscular) body mass! … And when this thrust is generated at the correct angle and in the proper plane of movement AND at an adequate FREQUENCY, the odds are in my favor that I won’t see someone in front of me when I cross the finish line.
The actions of PULLING (a muscle’s only job) my knee up and pulling it back down are both performed at the hip. The hip is the closest hinge to my center of mass. If that’s not the case for you then you’re not gonna play football anytime soon. Why am I talking about this now? Because running, among a host of other movements, requires healthy hip function; it’s gotta be smooth both ways or one cannot benefit from the other. If I can’t fire my foot down hard enough to pass you up, it might have to do with poor upward mobility (hip flexion) of my knee. This can be the result of poor flexibility or weakness (which are closely related) or the fact that they don’t have valet parking at my gym.
So now that you’ve suffered through the previous paragraph, here’s the significance. The scenario just described (poor hip function in a race) is a dangerous one. It’s dangerous because the subject is overconfident. In fact, he still thinks he can win. In fact, he used to be pretty fast, so I’m not accusing him of being stupid. Since he’s not stupid, he knows that in order to speed up, he has to compensate for lost range of motion with greater frequency, and thus, much to his chagrin, he’s equally screwed. He has now raised his chances of incurring an injury either in a seldom-used hamstring muscle (a “stride recovery” muscle in my opinion), or in that same dysfunctional hip flexor. Okay. Lesson over. By the way, the reason for the likelihood of trauma to the hip flexor muscle has to do with the likelihood of equally dysfunctional hamstrings. Call me if you want to know the rest.
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Sweet article! Very well written!
Sweet article and very well written!
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