Summer is on the way in southern hemisphere and am replacing lunch time long runs by early morning and evening workouts. Speaking of training at late hours, am pleased with a free running group down in Manly organised by Karmea Fitness (www.karmeafitness.com) every Thursday at 7 pm. We do interval training and is different from a week to another. It fits my plans and is always good to work on speed beside slow-and-long runs. If you do not have a speed workout in your routine and you can commute to Manly I would recommend these sessions. Nice atmosphere by the usual participants and of course the beautiful scenery of Manly beach are in the package.

And now about Vertical Oscillation. For those who do not know what it is, it is the amount of going up and down at running. For those who are confused because they think running is on a horizontal direction, you should take a video of someone’s running and watch it in slow motion to see how much the top of the runner’s head goes up and down. Minimizing this travel would be hugely cost effective. A typical marathon runner would almost climb a few sky scrapers during the course of a marathon. Let’s do some math to see:

• Number of strides per minute: 170 (180-200 is the best, but  most of runners are below that)
• Average time to finish a 42.2km marathon: 4hr
• with only 5cm vertical oscillation at each stride there will be : 4 (hr) x 60 (min) x 170 (cadence) x 5cm = 2040 meters!

Although this vertical travel is inevitable, there are  movements in runners techniques that increase it. One main culprit is the push-off the ground. As I must have said it a few million times at my blog posts, most of recreational runners push off the ground for propulsion (and that is my single goal I like to fix in the runners’ community).

Talking physics, this push (yellow arrow in the snapshot below) has two components:

• Horizontal (green arrow)
• Vertical (red arrow)

The horizontal component is the only part runners are after. The vertical part, which comes as a by-product of the push, throws the runner upwards (the so-called vertical oscillation). So the question is, how bad is it? Is there any benefit in doing that at all?

Those who have a relatively higher VO travel longer in the air because they go higher upwards so it takes longer to come down. It is a symmetrical two-way move meaning by the same amount of time it takes to go up it does to fall back down. During this time the runner travels horizontally. In fact by this technique runners buy more time to move horizontally so end up in longer stride length. The downfalls are:

• Higher impact with the ground
• Landing ahead of the body
• Longer ground contact time

The last one is an interesting consequence. Although the airborne phase looks longer, the ground contact phase gets longer too for another effective push-off so the overall airborne time does not find a higher ratio to the total time. Landing ahead of the body is usually an outcome of pushing-off the ground, and in most cases comes with letting heels touch the ground first; if not taking words from me on how bad it is, speak with your physio. Lastly, the higher impact with the ground is simply because the runner falls from a higher height.

At the alternative technique, Pose method, the stride length is meant to be kept short. What increases is stride rate (cadence). In fact we have a short window to make a stride before we fall back down from a shorter height. Does it make sense? Let me explain it from a different angle. At this technique the source of propulsive force is from falling forward. That means there is a short amount of time before falling flat on our face to make a stride! If you try it you will see it happens so quickly until you feel the urge to put a foot forward to avoid it. If you are not quick enough you miss the window. As long as you feel the need to have longer time to make the stride you end up in pushing for a slight upward jump to lengthen the period of each stride. Once  you mange making a stride within that window you end up in having higher cadence. This cadence falls automatically in 180-200 strides per minute. So interesting that this known right cadence of 180-200 is actually a by-product of running in pose.

Have a look here. Keep your focus on top of Dr Romanov’s head to see how far it goes up and down. The second focal point is to watch his feet, to see how passively they leave the ground after landing. Final point is the engagement of hamstring and how quickly they are utilized. Usually at leaving the ground knees push; they do not do it here. Constantly decreasing angle of knees frame by frame straight after leaving the ground is the indicator.

My first experience with minimalist running shoes goes back to 2011. I can tell it was one of my biggest discovery at running. I slowly transitioned into a pair of Vibram Five Fingers (TreckSport was the model to be accurate) and then increased intensity and distance as I progressed. I ran two full marathons in them in 2012, fastest at 3:11, and achieved the PB of 56:58 in City2Surf.

Despite ticking all the goals at high mark, the glory did not last long as I faced a benign Achilles tendinitis. I looked into the cause of that and found Pose Method of Running explaining it the best.

I certainly over-trained during that period but in addition to that the issue with my running form/technique was I used to push off the ground, mainly toe push off. I also had a wrong understanding of utilization of natural shock absorption in the legs which led me to forcibly stay on the balls of my feet holding my heels high all the time. I forced myself to hurt my right Achilles tendon, simply because of lack of knowledge.

What I gained during that glorious period was strong, lean and muscly lower legs. Interesting that recently bumped into this article as a proof to this experience of my own: www.shape.com/fitness/gear/should-you-wear-minimalist-running-shoes in which reads:

In a study conducted by Hong Kong Polytechnic University in conjunction with Harvard Medical School, researchers found that training in MRS (Minimalist Running Shoes) increased runner’s muscle mass and strength in the feet and lower legs…

I still run in VFF and recommend them to everyone however if you are not running in pose you might get yourself injured if you train too seriously in them. I always tell everyone, once you learn how to run efficiently you will realize how less important shoes are.

Coming at a different angle on this subject, we were looking for a new pair of shoes for my 4.5 yo son a few months ago, for sports other than running like soccer, and I could not choose anything better than Nike Revolution and then Nike Free, although was not totally happy with either due to their slight heel elevation (they are NOT zero-drop). All shoes at the shops we went to had lots of support in them which would not be approved by me the barefoot-running evangelist daddy especially when it comes to kids. Bad news is last week I took a video of his running form and was shocked when saw his over-striding, landing ahead of body and heel-striking! All the three devils were at the party!

I asked him to take his shoes off and run again. That came with another shocking moment that the evils were still there.

Cannot believe how easily we may deviate from the so-called natural front-foot landing technique, the outcome of human evolution in a few million years, over a short period of time running in cushioned shoes. Amazing how comfort leads us.

You must have heard of natural running but I have not come across any certain set of rules anywhere yet that clearly defines it. If there is any, it has to start with basics. If I try to write the basic rules down here I would start with these:

• Legs shock absorption must be fully incorporated
• Tendon elasticity must be utilized

These two are natural features in our legs that play important roles at running. Note that half of the tendon elasticity (second item) is within the first item, the shock absorption, meaning our tendons stretch out as our muscles load at landing time to preserve a portion of the kinetic energy. This is done along with the rest of shock absorption mechanism to slow us down on the vertical direction. After the last moment of vertical stopping, the tendons unload to unleash the energy, like a stretched rubber band that returns energy once released . This is a big saving that helps us getting off the ground for the next stride with less muscular effort.

The shock absorption feature is simply in the curvy bendy shape of our legs broken down with joints. Three major joints exist between torso and the contact point with the ground: hips, knees, and ankles. Tendons around these joints provide some room to smooth the impact of touching down, as well as the other soft tissues inserted inside and around the joints. The more number of joints engaged at landing, the better the landing shock is handled. That simply means landing on the front foot would engage ankles whereas heel-striking would by-pass it relying on shoes to absorb the shock, not to mention leaving knees and hips with more pressure to deal with.

Now do you see how shoes and legs differ in terms of absorbing the landing impact? The answer is the one done by shoes would send kinetic energy to waste whereas legs can release back a portion of it due to their elasticity. My honest advice, improve this elasticity and it pays back the initial training by saving a lot of energy as you go.

I would call a running form unnatural if the technique in it, no matter how or why or caused by what, prevents utilization of any of these two features, and call it natural if not only it uses these features but also it enhances them and make the running economy be relied upon them more.

If you are up to choosing proper minimalist running shoes consider these four specifications:

1. Bendable: can you bend both ends of the shoe to meet in the middle?
2. Big toe pocket: Our toes are meant to cling to the ground at landing providing a wider surface for balance to start shock absorption thereafter. This behavior is supposed to be maintained inside shoes.
3. Zero drop: There should not be any elevation at heels, so there must be zero drop in elevation going from heel to toe.
4. Light in weight

To name a few minimalist brands:

• Vibram Five Fingers: Many models but Seeya is the lightest
• Zem Gear: variety of options
• New Balance: Minimus (afaik only one unfortunately)
• Inov8 – variety of models

Just started reading this book The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease and it is already fascinating. Giving me insights into how we evolved and where we are heading to. Should write about it once I finish the book.