The start of the academic year provides a similar feeling to the start of an annual running cycle. There’s a feeling of newness and optimism in the air. Each year also provides an opportunity to play with running theory, building off the past, and sharpening through experience.
In 2023, the team theme was push, in the physical sense. Giving one’s mental and emotional best is inherently known, and with that comes one’s physical exertion. Effort is never questioned – runners are trusted to provide their best at every practice. The push we refer to comes with the cycling of the legs, where during the landing phase, one’s foot claws or pulls at the ground, providing a push action of the hips– cycle the legs well and the hips will thrust forward with each stride, thus pushing the hips forward. In doing so, runners remain tall, with shoulders stacked on the hips, and hips stacked on the foot strike.
The 2024 theme has been rhythm, in a way, building off the 2023 theme of push. To find a cardiovascular rhythm, athletes should have some semblance of fitness, so they may comfortably sustain an elevated heart rate for a predetermined amount of time. Rhythm running can be experienced during various forms of training, such as interval or tempo training, where an athlete is running at a heightened level of exertion than normal, to mimic the feeling they might experience in a race. Since the Whisper demographic is rather young, we lean on intervals to gain experience of feeling the desired rhythm.
While running is predominantly a large motor skill, knowing how to manipulate one’s gate for efficiency through fine motor control is an essential component to improving running mechanics. Like playing an instrument, anyone can blow air through a horn, but to make an instrument play well, precision – aka, fine motor skills – is imperative. Knowing the proper feeling of how the foot should land, the placement of the hips, or the relaxed shoulders with retracted scapula requires minor fine motor skill modifications throughout one’s maturation as a runner.
Last Wednesday we broke out the speaker to practice rhythm running using the Metronome Beats App set at 180 beats per minute. After a warm-up, the kids ran around a 200-meter oval, one long side dedicated to running at 180 strides per minute, and the other long side dedicated to a recovery jog. For years, I instructed runners to land on each beat, thus learning the turn-over rate of 180 strides per minute – a comfortable rate among competitive distance runners. However, during Winter Training last February, Kyle Leif suggested timing the beat with the hind kick – lifting the foot off the ground during the pulling action of the stride. Kyle added that in doing so, runners will feel propulsion at the hips, rather than their foot potentially stomping onto the ground. This strategy made sense and has become an essential part of this rhythm drill.
An additional activity that supports rhythm running includes the use of cue words, which also elicit relaxation, decrease performance anxiety, and improve focus. Using cues to remain sharp, keeping form consistently efficient, can be very advantageous. This is especially true when attempting to sustain a rhythm that can be uncomfortable. A cue word or phrase is an intentional thought or word that elicits a relaxed or controlled state. Much like running practice makes one a better runner, the use of cue words helps make one feel more connected with their body, and in control of their running.
