Relearning to run again.

For those of us who haven't done much running since the 1970s/80s and may be a bit biomechanically challenged (wonky and/or creaky) the idea of starting running again in mid life may seem like an appealing but daunting idea. Running's bad for you isn't it? Damaging to knees and lower back?

But I wanted to do it and was delighted to discover that there had been an outbreak of sanity in parts of the running world; people who weren't willing to accept injury as part of the process.

Runners and authors such as Malcolm Baulk and Danny Dreyer have made use of the principles in the Alexander Technique and Tai Chi to to explore stress free running forms that improve efficiency and speed as well as eliminating or at least reducing the potentiality for injury.

In addition yoga teacher and marathon runner, Laura Denham Jones, amongst others have discovered many that many of the movement principles in yoga, as well as the conditioning and stretching of the yoga postures, are beneficial to runners.

As a yoga teacher and Thai massage therapist myself, putting the ideas of the above authors into practice hasn't been too difficult for me. But it is work in progress and I really consider myself as a student of running with no doubt still much to learn.

Many of us do not consider that we need to learn how to run, or that we need to condition ourselves to run both mentally and physically. Whilst on some level we do know how to run, if we want to make it something we can enjoy recreationally or competitively for the long term there are forms of running that we may have got away with as kids which will not serve us for long as adults before problems arise.

There are a number of mistakes many of us make when we (re)start running as adults:

1. Assuming that we know how to run.
2. Not realistically assessing our current physical conditioning.
3. Not allowing for the fact (and it is unfortunately a fact) that by age 30 (and sometimes younger) most of us have developed hidden imbalances in the body resulting from some combination of postural or movement habits and/or old unresolved and currently masked injuries.

I've been running again for about a year now, injury free. Starting slowly and treating each run as a practice of stress free running principles I've been amazed at what has been possible. More details to follow on my next running post, but until then here are some sites to explore.

Malcolm Baulk - Canadian running coach and Alexander technique teacher who comes to the UK each year.

The US site of Chi Running.

A UK based Chi running instructor.