Pose = crazy???

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I won't make an attempt to argue against it. You problem have a better knowledge of anatomy than I. Furthermore I agree that the hamstrings are not the only active muscles when pulling the foot from the ground. I consider the hamstrings as the "primary" muscles doing the work and focus my attention on their activity while working on my running form.

For the time being I accept that Pose seems to work for me even if I don't have a good "scientific" explanation which might convince others. This Pose web site does not provide this either - "Gravity will do the work" is just nonsense.

Nice discussion with very intelligent American people. Especially Asterix with his incredible knowledge on the mechanics of sport and biomechanics impresses me. Can I have your autograph, or maybe even better: you can come to Europe and give some lectures at Universities here and clinics for runners. I'm sure that you can make a lot of money and be famous in countries like Spain, The Netherlands and Germany if you consider the fact that those stupid Pose people in The Netherlands e.g., were able to make Pose Method of Running an established and respected running technique, which has helped dozens of runners from sub 15 5 K runners to recreational runners to improve performance and get rid of nagging injuries. Strange that all over the world from Australia to South-Africa to Spain and Holland these stupidities are gaining interest. I guess morons exist everywhere then...So please Asterix help us out here in Europe, we are too dumb and stupid to think and we need great minds and smart American people like you here...

O..before I forget..I have a question.

- Were do sprinters get their acceleration from if you consider the fact (see The Human Machine, prof. McNeil Alexander, pp76,86,1992) that tendons return 93% of the work done stretching them and that 7% is lost as heat while the faster a muscle shortens the less work it can exert? In other words: The sprinter goes faster but has to compensate for the 7% loss. But at the same time his ground contact time goes down and he shortens his muscles faster which means that his muscles can exert less work, according to prof. Mcneil Alexander himself. Where does the push off come in here? I was just wondering...please Your Great Highness Asterix help me..I'm so lost...I'm sure you will explain this contradiction and correct prof. McNeil Alexander.

In the meanwhile, while your Great Mind is working and while you are correcting prof. McNeil and writing an answer which blatantly exposes my stupidity and lack of knowledge compared to you, I will go outside and work with my athlete who was National Champion junior ladies with 2.07 on the 800 metres at 16 years, manifold National Champion in middle distances from 12 to 16 years, but after that was 6 years without running due to back injury and stress fractures, crying of pain when trying to run again with push-off paradigm, even at school crying of pain in her back, wearing 400$ orthotics which had to be changed yearly, 120$ shoes which had to be changed bi-annually and told by the best medical doctors in The Netherlands that she couldn't run anymore, but now after 3 months training with Pose runs without pain barefeet and will do her first race after 6 years next Friday... and all of this thanks to these Pose morons and particularly upper Moron Nicholas Romanov

Yours Sincerely

from Europe

I'm not USAnian.

Thanks for actually reading the thread closely since I never claimed to have an incredible knowledge of the mechanics of sport and biomechanics.

If you'd been following the continuing story, you'd see that I have been repeatedly pointing out how high school level physics is enough to show that the explanations and descriptions given by POSERs and the POSE website are fundamentally in contradiction to reality.

Gee, thanks again for the offer, but I'll re-iterate that I do not claim special or advanced knowledge about running or training. Please show me a cite where I have said otherwise.

Religious fundamentalism has been increasing in the US in the last twenty years. Does that mean that there must be something to this 6,000 year-old earth storyline?

I'm not going to dispute that people claiming to follow POSE may be running faster or with less injuries, but it is physically not possible for them to be running the way POSE is described.

It is physically impossible for gravity to 'pull you forward'. This is directly related to the specific POSE instruction to not push-off which makes it impossible to return the body to the starting position, let alone to generate much in the way of forward momentum. This has been covered ad-nauseum and if you still have questions, please re-read this thread and identify which specific parts give you problems rather than repeating the same tired lines we've seen numerous times.

Are you aware of the false start setup with sprinters blocks at high level meets? Do you know how they operate?

They are pressure sensitive and are programmed to give a signal if the athlete applies a significant force to the blocks before 0.100 seconds after the firing of the starter's gun.

Why would the athlete be applying a force to the blocks? Shouldn't they just 'fall forward' and get up to top speed? How is it possible to apply a significant force to the blocks if one is not pushing off and powerfully driving with the quads through full extension of the knee?

Wait! You've got the revolutionary method to false start without getting caught! If a world class sprinter were to run POSE and simply 'fall forward' out of the blocks, they could false start to their hearts content since they'd never trigger the recall system.

Pass this news to Jon Drummond. It could have solved all his problems!

What is the point you are trying to make? Are you saying that it is physically impossible for sprinters to run as fast as they do? Have I been deceived all these years by 10 second 100m runs?

I really don't see how your description above is related to that of POSE. Surely you aren't claiming that someone like Asafa Powell or Maurice Greene doesn't push off. As stated before, I'm no biomechanics expert but surely you can easily find stats showing the muscle activation in a hard sprint or do a little Googling to find photographic evidence of every last sub 11 second sprinter driving hard with full knee extension and straight legs.

Again, thank you so much for actually reading and understanding what has been covered numerous times in this thread. I (and others) are not saying POSE may not have injury reduction benefits.

We have been very clear though that the description of POSE, both by POSERs on this thread and on the vaunted website itself, is fundamentally physically impossible. You may THINK you are running according to the description, but you aren't anymore than it is possible to turn lead into gold.

If you could just be a little more honest about it, you'd have a much easier time (although since you wouldn't be bringing anything new or revolutionary to the table, it would be much harder for you to make a buck from books, DVDs and seminars).

Gee I guess my MSc. degree on industrial engineering is completely fake since your level of hi-school physics apperantly is higher than our academic level. Where do you live? I will send my kids to that school.

Seriously. I see you don't know anything abt biomechanics and logic is also diffivcult for yopu. Please try to grasp the contradiction stated in the works of one of the great experts on biomechanics in the world. prof. McNeil Alexander. You can do it, it is not so hard..

Hint: maybe another force than muscle force is involved in forward movement and is redirected by muscles efforts...since muscles apperently are unable to perform the work to accelerate and the elastic system has heat losses..something else than musle power must add this lost energy.

We will work on here in Europe and withing 20 years we will talk again. Paradigm shifts aren't easy.

Bye

RJ wrote:

Hint: maybe another force than muscle force is involved in forward movement and is redirected by muscles efforts...since muscles apperently are unable to perform the work to accelerate and the elastic system has heat losses..something else than musle power must add this lost energy.

You have got to be kidding!?!

Is it now your turn to spout the 'let gravity do the work' line of reasoning that has so thoroughly been debunked here and in just about every other POSE thread?

Have you not bothered to read these explanations?

If you've got an MSc degree but somehow have been convinced that you can harness gravity to get a free ride in the horizontal direction, then that is a big warning not to attend the school that educated you.

I'll ask you (since not a single other POSER has bothered to provide a solution): please explain how Newton's laws can be applied such that a force that acts in a downwards direction (that would be gravity) can be used to provide a NET (imagine that word flashing to highlight its importance) assistance for movement in a horizontal direction.

If you can do this, not only will I drop the matter, but I'll even do whatever it takes to attend the awards ceremony for your Nobel Prize in Physics.

RJ: Thank you for removing any lingering doubt that I had. POSE believers are indeed crazy.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(pose IS crazy)

Come on folks remember the old saying that is truer today than ever before:

"Arguing on the Internet is like competing in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded."

Now what I want all of you anti-posers to do is answer one simple question: do you believe that one runner can have a better running form than another? Just yes or no.

Gatorade wrote:

Now what I want all of you anti-posers to do is answer one simple question: do you believe that one runner can have a better running form than another? Just yes or no.

Yes, of course.

Lets keep things clear. I am 'anti-poser' in the sense that i do not like POSE being held up as the 'gold standard' of running technique. I'm not saying that every point in POSE in wrong, but it has limitations, flaws, and some downright nonsense in terms of Dr. R's accounts of the mechanics.

Being anti-pose does not equate to being against:

1) Working on form

2) midfoot / ball-heel-ball (or any other non-heel strike technique)

3) Minimalism

....and so on.....

I'm sure we could find anti-posers with a variety of opinions on these points. Our common point of view is that we think POSE is not so great as its advocates proclaim.

Gatorade wrote:

Now what I want all of you anti-posers to do is answer one simple question: do you believe that one runner can have a better running form than another? Just yes or no.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: what is good form for one person is not necessarily good form for another.

As stated before, there may be some benefits to POSE, but it certainly ain't because of 'falling forward' or 'not pushing off'. And it certainly is not the ONLY way to run (as evidenced by not a single Olympic finalist running POSE).

The problem is that POSERs are completely unwilling to accept any logical or factual criticism of their mindset, as further shown on this thread and by statement on their website such as recent poster Reuben who says he was "completely convinced that Pose Method was the only right way to correct technique." (http://www.posetech.com/services/RubenJongkind.html )

Now, how about an answer to my question?

RJ wrote:

The sprinter goes faster but has to compensate for the 7% loss. But at the same time his ground contact time goes down and he shortens his muscles faster which means that his muscles can exert less work, according to prof. Mcneil Alexander himself. Where does the push off come in here?

Either professor McNeil has made an error, or something he has written has been misquoted / misinterpreted / taken out of context, and adopted into POSE propoganda.

"he shortens his muscles faster which means that his muscles can exert less work"

Sorry, that just doesn't follow. The sprinter is shortening his muscles against a load - that is doing work. Shortening them faster is doing work more quickly (greater power).

It just doesn't sound like a biomechanist's phrase either. "exert less force" or "do less work" would be consistent, but "exert less work" - i don't think so - its been Romanoved!!

Sprinters need to impart a large impulse but are constrained to a brief contact time. Therefore, they have to apply high forces, for which they require strong muscles.

"Now what I want all of you anti-posers to do is answer one simple question: do you believe that one runner can have a better running form than another? Just yes or no."

In broad sense, obviously yes, but what I imagine is implied in your question is that if you believe that if there is good and bad form there must be a standard by which this is judged.

In practice I don’t think that it’s that simple. I believe there are certain pointers towards what I would consider good form, e.g. a relaxed landing on the ball of the foot and a quick recovery. However, that’s what works with my running, and I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to claim that I had the perfect model. Nor would I try to back this up with fake science that flies in the face of common sense let alone high school physics.

There was a brilliant posting on this subject when this topic came up before by Steve Magness, who put forward an alternative model which was actually much closer to the way elites run. It was on his website, but unfortunately I don’t think it’s there anymore. If I were younger and faster I would be much more inclined to adopt his model in its entirety than anything that pose has to offer, but is it the perfect model – I’m not sure.

Now that Dr R is about to release the pose method of swimming and presumably about to tell us all the only correct way to swim, the following might be relevant.

If we see a bad swimmer thrashing about in the pool next to a fast smooth swimmer it’s pretty obvious who has the best technique, but then it starts to get complicated. There is already quite a lot of controversy about the correct way to swim and ultimately we have to make our own judgment about what is best for us. I think the “perfect model” is an illusion.

I can’t wait to see how Dr R’s book will be greeted by swimming coaches at the top of the sport who have been coaching all their lives. Will it be another “paradigm shift”?

The swimming thing will be interesting. How does one explain away Janet Evans. Very unorthodox yet highly efficient. Also, I believe in my seminars I heard of Richard Quick teaching breast stroke different to different swimmers depending on their reaction to each style.

Gatorade wrote:

do you believe that one runner can have a better running form than another?

Define your term. By "better" do you mean prettier to look at or more economical/efficient? Jack Daniels has stated that his research has shown that what looks nice may not be economical for a given individual (and vice versa), so getting a person to "look" a certain way while running will not always lead to improved performance. It may, in fact, prove detrimental. Thus, if you're arguing that changing your form so that you appear the same as some idealized model will improve your efficiency and thus your times, the experimental evidence says "no". This, of course, is a completely separate issue from whether or not someone can gain "free energy" through a process of "continuously falling forward".

Personally, I think years and miles of training will lead an individual to an optimal form for that person, which may or may not look particularly efficient or pretty. I also think that it's possible for a coach to speed the process by pointing out gross problems in the early years (such as overstriding). While it's nice to watch someone who has a "pretty" form, I'd rather have an "ugly" form if it got me to the finish line quicker.

OK, it seems that this thread has gotten out of control due to perceived antagonism on both sides (sometimes real, sometimes imagined) which has led to defensive reactions and an escalation of uncivil behavior. I personally think that those arguing against specific points of the POSE technique have presented a much more cogent argument, but remember that their arguments have been against specific points and should not be extrapolated into general arguments against the possibility that there can be bad form.

I think that it will help ease tensions if the POSE advocates understand that those of us who do not believe in the system are NOT ridiculing the attempt to improve running form, nor are we ridiculing everything about POSE. We are only ridiculing each of you for the stupidity you've displayed on this thread.

I hope that helps bridge the gap between both sides and promotes a more harmonious dialog.

During the last POSE flair up, Steve Magness (txrunner) had a fairly civil discussion with the POSE board regulars.

http://ww2.posetech.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=16866&prevloaded=1&rid=706&start=0

I believe they came disagree on just a few points once all was said and done. For the most part, there isn't too much difference between Steve's method and the POSE method (forgetting the gravity BS). The big difference is presentation (IMHO) where the POSE method tries to highlight perception and separate it from result. I think this gets lost in the gravity BS since they are usually presented together. The idea of picking only a few things to focus on and forgetting the rest is helpful (at least to me) since people have a tendency to overanalyze and try to think too much about running (for example, forgetting about push off cause it’s going to happen anyway). This has helped me to increase stride rate since I can think ahead and not get caught up in mechanics. I don’t feel out of control at a fast cadence as a result.

It is too bad that the forum has become what it has, which is mostly Jack preaching and coming across like a fanatic. While Jack is very helpful to most people, I believe his tone has helped to propagate the general sentiment people on this board have… that it’s a religion more than anything else. I don’t see anything wrong with taking bits and pieces, but talking about such things on the forum is considered heresy.

"I do not like POSE being held up as the 'gold standard' of running technique"

Why? Because you don't like the "gravity" thing in Pose and thus you tend to reject everything that is labeled as "Pose" - or do you believe that there can't be a golden standart?

"what is good form for one person is not necessarily good form for another"

Since in this whole thread you were the one who tried to "demolish" Pose from the standpoint of "pure physics" - could you please elaborate more on the above sentence of yours? Do you want to say that overstriding that is bad for one person can be good for another? Or a long time on support is bad for everybody, but there is a certain Joe who would benefit from it? Or - to make an analogy - if moving from point A to B in a straight line is the most efficient way for one person, moving in a curve would be better for another? If you are such an adepth of pure physics - tell me, is there only one THE MOST EFFICIENT way for a body to travel in space, or are there many such ways?