Monthly Archives: December 2011

Getting In Tune

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“Be patient.  Take it Slow.”

I have to tell myself that almost every day.  If you are like me doing this transition, you are way too anxious to get to the end game and run all day long.  Impatience has taught me a few things.

First, you push too fast too soon and you’ll delay your transition because of overuse stress or injury.  I did it on my first run and then about 3 weeks into it.

Second, your feet get used all the time!  I have been doing a lot more barefoot walking and standing around to help strengthen the muscles. Without the masking of shoes, your feet are working all the time except when sitting. And you can stretch and exercise them then.

Third, I need to put me feet up at night for a little while.  Makes sense.  The muscles are developing so blood flow is greater.  Let gravity help your heart.  Once again men, your lovely lady would appreciate your helping gravity with a massage of those sore feet.  (That will be my last hint on the ‘foot massage as start of foreplay’ topic!)

Cautions now administered, just be aware that your feet are going to hurt while you make this adaptation.  I mean the muscles in your feet.  And I am surprised by how many muscles these puppies have.

The topic of conversation.

The new acronym I discovered is TOFP – Top of Foot Pain.  I didn’t realize we had muscles on the top of our feet!  They notified me of their existence a week or so ago after I did a stupid 10+ mile run too soon.

This, too, shall pass, but don’t push it.

NOTE:  There is a difference between pain from use and exercise versus pain from injury.  I learned my body’s language over time and can tell the difference.  You need to do the same.

Before I cover some new hints, let me recap the big two.

1) Thumbs forward. This keeps your elbows in and helps maintain an upright posture for your run.

2) Knees up. Don’t push off with your foot, lift up with your knees.  Lifting means you aren’t kicking out and your knees stay bent.

Now, we start “Getting in Tune with the Straight and Narrow”.  As you can see, I’m into trying to find the simple rules that make everything else work right.

Corollary #1 – Get in Line  When you run barefoot you’ll find that the most comfort happens with a slight hip rotation to help keep your feet running along a straight line.  It isn’t a pronounced rotation.  Everything in barefoot is subtle.

Try this:

Follow the line

If there is a line on the side of the road, run so that you feel your heels (not your forefoot) touching the line.  The line will be perceptible to your feet, so you’ll know if you are hitting it.  Heels in line will lead to the right hip rotation.

Corollary #2 – Watch Your Speed  Here’s the deal.  To run barefoot, you have to shorten your stride because your aren’t kicking your feet out, but lifting them up.  Shorter strides means more strides covering the same distance as traditional running.  Normal shod running hits around 120-140 steps per minute (counting both feet).  Barefoot running moves that up around 180 steps per minute, or 90 steps per foot.

Got a chronometer on your watch?

Who needs a watch when you have an iPhone?

Count the number of footfalls on one or the other of your feet for six seconds.  Then multiply by 10 and that will give you a relative cadence.  There are 10 six second groups in a minute.  After a while, as you continue to check the cadence, you’ll feel when you are at the right cadence.  You can go faster, it is a matter of what’s right for you.

Side Benefit Alert – You do that little hip twist 180 times a minute and you end up working your core a bit.  Which leads to “Honey, are you losing weight?”

Corollary #3 – Get Hippy  You are running more erect (go ahead, make your puns) and you are taking shorter strides while not pushing off with your feet. So where the hell does the forward motion come from?  I mean, this sounds like running in place.

It’s all in the hips.  You need to keep you hips over your stride area.  If you push them forward a bit, the stride moves forward with them.  This may feel a little weird, like you are making yourself fall forward.  Wait!  Isn’t that what running really is?

This is the key.  You’ve got the position and the technique, now we need smooth.  Smooth comes from having the hips feel like they are being pulled forward by a rope anchored on your naval.  Not a bowed back kind of pull, but just enough to keep you hips a bit forward with a straight back.

Try different amounts of extension.  You’ll find that when you have hips forward just right you start to run smoother.  And lighter.  And faster.

We have all the pieces.  Now it is a matter of putting them together to make the run a cohesive movement.

Take a look at this and use it to help you visualize good technique:

Barefoot Running Technique

Or the beginning of this one:

Barefoot Ted with Awesome Form

BTW: Barefoot Ted is featured in Born to Run

Notice how everything I’ve mentioned is being done with subtle movements.

Take it slow, but get out and feel the run.

Next up – How the hell do I go downhill with nothing on my feet?

Finding Your Barefoot Form, Part one

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Learning to run barefoot is like learning a new technique on the guitar.  Even the most experienced guitarists have to take it slow when starting something new.  They follow a few simple rules.

- Go slow.
- Keep the practice short.
- End the practice on good form.

My Les Paul - the other relaxer

You play slow to focus on technique and getting each note clear.  Your muscles have to adjust to the new fingering, so keep the practice short.  As the time of the practice nears the end make sure the last fingering is done correctly then stop.  Your mind will remember that last instance.

All of these rules apply to learning to run barefoot.

As I mentioned, I opted for the “just eff’in run” mode and spent the next two weeks working my calves back to normal.  Plus, my first barefoot run was not barefoot.  I wore a pair of 5 Fingers.  That wasn’t the problem, but it did allow me to run 4 miles along the rolling hills of Connecticut.

Had I been barefoot, I would have only gone a mile or so.  That would have been just the right distance to let my calves feel the strain of the new mode while not debilitating me.

Two days later I had done a lot more reading on technique.  It was cold and a bit damp outside, so I opted to wear some old socks.  That was actually a nice transition feel.

One caution.  Be prepared to throw the socks away. My 1 mile trek trashed the ones I wore.  They were old and worn and the rough surface ate a hole in them pretty quick.

I learned a lot in that mile and the subsequent miles since then.  The biggest discovery was that while learning to run barefoot, you need to run barefoot.  You need to feel the contact with the road.

I do live in New England and made the wise choice to start my transition during late Fall.  Trees are defoliating, dumping leaves and branches on top of grit and other litter, while the temperatures tap freezing and there is usually some frost in the morning when I usually run. It is beautiful, but not kind to bare feet.

My solution?  I start each run with minimalist protection and, during the last mile or so, I remove the coverings and go barefoot.  Ending each run barefoot gives me the tactile feedback I need to have good form and keep me moving in the right direction.  I did it for convenience since it is easier to take the 5 fingers off than to put them on. Afterwards, I realzed that it brought me conformance to guitarist rule #3.  I end each run on good form with great feedback.

The End of a Run

What is weird is that the bottom of your feet are not what will hurt.  Sure, the skin will be a little sensitized, but no where near what I had expected. It is your calves that will give you the greatest degree of discomfort.  Because you no longer have heels, your calves are stretching out.  That is one of the main reasons for going low mileage up front.

You will also feel it in your feet, but not the bottoms.  Without shoes the muscles in your feet that support your arch and all those bones (there are more bones in the foot than any other part of the body) are now getting exercised.  Every step requires them to make micro adjustments that shoes have denied them.

Attention Men.  If your lovely woman is starting to run barefoot, a foot and calf massage after those first few runs will garner you major points.  Use them at your discretion.

Finding the Form – Part 1

While I was out on the barefoot part of run number two I was trying to think of my feet landing the right way on road.  That helped me to make a complete mess of my form.  The footfall is just too complex to try and think about.

I needed to find that “leading indicator”.  That one thing to focus on that would make the rest of the form come into line.

Then I noticed something.

Lift your knee.  When you lift the knee, even just a little more, it seems to get the foot in just the right position to land correctly.  What you’ll notice is that lifting the knee up keeps you from pushing off with the ball of your foot.  That is good, because the push off leads to kicking out, not lifting up.  That is the traditional heel strike mode and we are not doing that anymore.
Good.  You’ve got a simple thing to think of that will take care of the complex foot landing.

Line up your thumbs.  I need you to take a leap of faith on this one.  I discovered it years ago from an add in a running magazine.  It wasn’t what they intended, but it works like a charm for getting the right upper body form.

Forward motion comes from a slight movement of the hips forward and that is only possible if the knees come up, not kick out, and the upper body is straight and upright.  To keep your body upright, you need to keep your shoulders back.

Here is a picture of the position you need to hold your thumb over an unclenched fist.

Thumb Forward Position

Image a line perpendicular to your body that runs right up and parallel to your thumb.  The unclenched fist should be perpendicular to the ground as you move your arms back and forth.

Play with it a little.  You’ll see that if you bend the wrist in toward your center that your elbow moves away from your body.  Likewise, if you bend too far out your arms constrict against your side and make it hard to have the free swing you need.  Turn your wrist away from perpendicular and you’ll feel the impact all along your shoulders and elbows.

When you run with this thumb forward line, your shoulders will naturally pull back and keep your posture where it needs to be.

Freakin amazing, isn’t it?  Barefoot or other, this works.  I have shown this to many runners and they all love it.  On those long runs when my form started to go haywire, I would remember to do this and everything would line back up.

There you have it for Finding the Form, Part One.  Lift your knees and keep your thumbs forward over your unclenched fist.  Now go out and practice this at a slow and comfortable pace (somewhere over 120 beats per minute).  Run at least the end of your run in bare feet and make sure you end each run in good form.

Focus on making it easy and light.

I’ve discovered more tricks to keeping good form and those will be in the next installment.   Maybe you’ll figure them out before I do my next reveal!