Pose = crazy???

John Richard wrote:

So, I’m wondering what the proof is here with regards to the ongoing discussion?

I think you've pretty much covered the proof with this post:

- POSE presents nothing new (just different packaging)

- people make deviations from what Dr R would say or do (ie the POSE method)

- people spout misreprentations that do "not represent the basics of the teaching and perception of running"

- these people then "start yanking information out of their arse-hooles"

- nowhere is it stated that readers should "take what he writes with a large grain of salt" (which I guess means don't trust anything written on the POSE site - probably the most important point you make)

- being a certified POSE coach does not mean you understand what you are talking about (which raises the question of what exactly they are certified in)

Is any of this incorrect?

"I think it works for only those people that accept the ideas of perceptions and don’t think too hard about it, and for people that think too hard about running but know to take what they need or can use from the POSE method perception wise."

I agree. Even Dr R will say to "go for the action", but it's the people analyzing Pose to death that force him to explain the required perceptions outside their original intentions. And don't forget Dr R is Russian and his English is not very good and Russians express themselves in descriptive ways.

Pose is a method of teaching perception and unlearning wrong habits. Forget to only use the hamstings. Of course you'll use hip flexors pulling your leg up. But it's the perception of using only the hamstrings.

Please continue the discussion. I find it very entertaining and I do pick up interesting things. But tomorrow I'll just pull my feet under the hip - I don't care if I use hip flexors and hamstrings or if I do push off a bit or not and I even care less what vectors provide the net force to move me forward. I move forward.

Asterix wrote:

Is any of this incorrect?

Nope. You got it. There may be a tad of commentary in your summery, but I will accept it.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Why has this gone 20 pages? Seriously? Left, right, left right...is running that freaking difficult?

Alan, no it's not difficult, it's as easy as you say, but my goal here is a simple one, and that's the removal of BS. I've seen pose threads over and over and they never resolve anything. They almost always devolve into "I never said that" or "you don't understand what I said" or go off on some crazy tangent. Now, if I could sit down with Dr. R. and talk about this, that would be ideal because what I've heard from some pose people is physically impossible (but I will admit that I may be misinterpreting what they're saying). That doesn't mean that what they're saying is what Dr. R is saying, and that's another problem. The way I see it, a way to resolve this is to be very painstaking about the details and definitions. I know it's a pain in the ass to some people, but in the long run, we all know that just shouting at each other will do no one any good. Although ST is pretty much taking up the pose side, it would be better to get input from others as well. It may be that ST, Asterix and I all wind up in agreement but that we don't get agreement from Gatorade or Jhuffman, and Dr. R is somewhere in the middle. At least it's a start.

For example, here are two possible outcomes (perhaps of many):

1) We wind up agreeing that Pose basically says to land on your forefoot, minimize vertical oscillation, and don't land on your foot in such a way that it's ahead of your center of mass at impact. Now, that's fine advice, but it certainly wouldn't be unique to pose. I heard those things years ago, long before I ever heard of pose. In such a case, I'd declare myself an advocate of "true" pose.

2) We agree that pose says that the force of gravity can be used in order to propel a runner forward in place of muscular contractions that create a horizontal force. To that, I would declare hooey. No vertical force is going to replace one perpendicular to it. In such a case, I would declare pose is a scam, pure and simple.

Regarding the commentary about Dr. R not being the best writer, that may be true (many of the things I have read use very vague terminology) which does not help the situation. If he is speaking figuratively about gravity and voluntary vs. involuntary action, then the analysis proceeds a little different. I remember reading in the first edition of Galloway's book (back when it was a decent source) he said to run with the chest high, and to imagine that you had a cable attached from your chest to a 10 story building a half mile away. Now THAT'S figurative.

Jim,

I’m just a spectator on this thread now, but I can assure you this discussion is definitely not a pain in the ass. Until your four questions resurrected it, the whole thing was descending rapidly into little more than name-calling – I know, I was as guilty as anyone else.

Please don’t stop now guys. I’m having to work hard to keep up, but it’s really interesting and you’re resolving so many issues for me. Not just about pose but about running in general.

bobbing head wrote:

Steve,

What is your opinion of Paula Radcliffe's form?

I'd have to take a lookat Paula's form and analyze it. I know about the head bobbing and such and obviously think that causes some inefficiency but I'm more concerned with what the legs, hips are doing. How she's pushing off, how she's striking the ground, etc.

As I said earlier I spent most of my time watching frame by frame in many instances 800-1500 runners, some 5k races.

Could someone address this problem I've found with Pose? Since you don't get much height off the ground when doing pose (I've read you're only supposed to get an inch or two), then in order to go fast, your cadence has to speed up. That may be fine when you're sprinting, but try maintaining 5-min pace for a mile when using this form.

"Maybe it would help if I had your answers to the above questions, because I'm quite sure you've made the point that you DON'T want to be running like elites. Even Geb would have to completely stop running and start from scratch to properly run POSE."

I'll try to digest it for you:

Yes, even Geb would benefit from learning Pose. But there is one big "BUT": to start from scratch for him would mean while new movement patterns would ingrain, he would lose his ability that he earned in years of hard training, his running career would be over long ago. I wouldn't do it, if I was him.

Digesting again:

No, Pose doesn't teach to run like Geb, because from Pose standpoint his form has some flaws, although deviations from Pose in his form are much less than of some other runners. That's what I said at the begining of the discussion: Geb runs almost perfect Pose. "Almost perfect" - means sometimes there are minimal deviations from Pose, and sometimes they are bigger. English is a third foreign language for me, and I'll blame this fact for your inability to understand what is being said.

"So once again, what is different between forefoot landing and short ground contact time and POSE that makes POSE so special? JHuffman or anyone else are also free to educate me on this one."

JHuffman answered this already for you. The difference you are speaking of is that in Pose when your foot lands, you are already in pose, means the foot lands on the ball right below your gravity center, with the knee bent. Looking form the side view when the ball lands, it must be behind your knee, anything more forward is overstriding. If the knee of the landing foot is straight, there is no way to land under the body. When running you should not be able to see the toe of your landing foot, if you can see it - you are overstriding. Concerning minimal ground contact - if you land in front, the only way to minimize it is to increase cadence, but with the same incerased cadance if you land under your gravity center, the ground contact duration will still be shorter. Now - if you try to push off, you will inevitably land in front: your trailing leg will be late, means you will have to pull it forward with hip flexors, means by inertia it will fly too far forward

Now you can attack me with examples of elites who, in spite they don't run Pose, are able to be short on support. And then we will be repeating everything again.

"My conclusion... the vast majority of the time the top guys in the race were running with very good form. They may have had one or two minor things different, but they all did the major things right and correctly."

This proves that there is ONLY ONE GOOD WAY TO RUN. The better is the form of a runner - the more it ressembles Pose running. These elites are products of natural selection, the ones who, together with superb physical qualities, have the ability to INTUITIVELY grasp the essence of good running form. On the contrary, Pose teaches how to do it CONSCIOUSLY, so that not only the naturally talanted ones could learn to run correctly.

"Take it for what it's worth, but I rarely ever remember seeing an elite with bad form. "

Yes, if you watch 800-5000 m races. But watch marathons - you'll be amazed, everyone runs differently, including the winners, lots of marathon elites pound the pavement with their heels so that it's painful to look even on TV.

I thought all I really asked was for you to take a 'correct/incorrect' stab at the four questions. We're trying to establish a baseline as to what people's understanding of efficient running (which can cover many manners of form) and then checking to see whether that matches with what POSE is. Similarly it would also be nice to get a clear definition as to what exactly POSE comprises since myself and others have been told numerous times that what we read on the POSE site and from POSERs themselves is not what they meant.

I guess I'll follow this tangent.

I'm interpreting your quote here to say that even if someone is running so close to POSE that it is "almost perfect" POSE, they are still so far off that they would have to completely stop and start from scratch again, rather than tweek something here or there. I can see why Geb wouldn't want to curtail his training like that.

This tells me that unless your POSE coach knows and understands every last nit-picking detail about POSE, you could very easily end up running "almost perfect" POSE, but have enough flaws that your effort to learn would be largely wasted and you'd have to start all over again.

Having a coach that knows and understands these things must mean that they can easily explain them to others. Is that the case with all the certified POSE coaches, including those who've posted on this thread?

Did I misinterpret anything here?

If this is what makes up the basis of POSE, then I've got no problem with that. It's pretty much common sense and follows basic physics.

But I wasn't aware that this concept represented a "new paradigm" of running motion. I'm pretty sure just about every running handbook talks about this with respect to 'good' (or at least efficient) form.

Is there something else that makes POSE unique or a 'new paradigm' that I've missed?

I'm not sure what you are trying to associate with what here, but I again have no problem subscribing to the idea that shortening ground contact time and increasing cadence (still landing forefoot and under the CM) is a good thing.

I wasn't aware this was unique to POSE as I'm sure I've seen it sourced from well before the advent of POSE.

This, I think is flawed reasoning. Just because you push off does not mean you can't land on your forefoot under your CM. In fact, I think we had just established in the last page or so, a definition of running between ST, Alex S, JimFiore and myself that there MUST be a pushoff in order to provide forward motion. I'm pretty sure it was also universally agreed that this pushoff is partially, if not wholly, voluntarily controlled.

No mentions of elites. Just talking through the explanation. Please feel free to answer 'correct/incorrect' to the four previously posed questions.

Gatorade wrote:

This proves that there is ONLY ONE GOOD WAY TO RUN

Whoa there! I completely fail to see how this PROVES that there is only ONE good way to run. Can you explain this logic to me?

I believe the point Steve was making was that since there are noticeable differences between all Olympic finalists and winners, that there is more than ONE good way run.

bump, see question above.

Gatorade wrote:

"My conclusion... the vast majority of the time the top guys in the race were running with very good form. They may have had one or two minor things different, but they all did the major things right and correctly."

This proves that there is ONLY ONE GOOD WAY TO RUN. The better is the form of a runner - the more it ressembles Pose running. These elites are products of natural selection, the ones who, together with superb physical qualities, have the ability to INTUITIVELY grasp the essence of good running form. On the contrary, Pose teaches how to do it CONSCIOUSLY, so that not only the naturally talanted ones could learn to run correctly.

whoaw there gatorade..... "The better is the form of a runner - the more it ressembles Pose running." On whose opinion??? Yours.

The better the form of the runner, the more it resembles my idea of what correct running form should be. You can't just say X runs like pose or any method. In my eyes, El G, geb, kipketer, etc. all run like I think correct form is. And my idea of what correct form is, is not pose.

The problem with just watching video is that you don't know what the athlete is thinking or doing. Hell sometimes the athlete doesn't. I remember seeing a video where Mo Greene was telling everyone to always keep your arms bent at 90 degrees.....well guess what he doesn't do that. His arms open up....

Anyways, I don't want to get in this debate. I've done it somewhat civily already. There's no changing some of these pose guys. There are aspects of Pose that I think are very good, there are also aspects I think are completely wrong.

The problem I see is that Pose found a market. There are not many good easy to understand descriptions of running mechanics. And further more there aren't many good teaching manuals or anything like that. There are ways out there to learn how to consciously run that way and make it subconscious. However at this point it normally takes a very good coach. I know because I've done it.

"I'm interpreting your quote here to say that even if someone is running so close to POSE that it is "almost perfect" POSE, they are still so far off that they would have to completely stop and start from scratch again, rather than tweek something here or there. I can see why Geb wouldn't want to curtail his training like that."

If you are studying Pose ( that is, trying to learn it, CONSCIOUSLY doing all the drills, etc)- tweeking something here and there is what needs to be done, because you know ( or a Pose coach will tell you) what in particular you have to improve, and what particular measures you have to undertake. This means the road to perfection. But if you run "almost perfect Pose" intuitively ( i.e.,you don't know what you are doing right and what wrong - just "almost perfect Pose" happens to you by itself) - you would benefit from starting from scratch. Needless to say that if you have an intuitive "almost perfect Pose", you'll master Pose much much quicker than if you are a leisure heel-striker. The problem is that is you have a good natural form ( that is, your form very much ressembles Pose), there is a good chance you are a competetive runner and showing some good results. In order to start Pose you would have to cut your training - and I doubt if you'd like to do it, because to you it might be like trying to repair something that is not spoiled. As I said earlier, you have to feel the need of change to be motivated to start Pose - and you must decide if you will still be running when the time to reap the benefits of Pose comes. Pose is a life long journey. Pose is for people who think about runing into their elderly years -not for those to whom runing will end when their competetive carrier will be over. So you will, like Geb, run "almost perfect Pose", going into Pose and getting out of it without knowing it, and it is mostly the times when you are out of it when you get injured. On the other hand Pose doesn't claim that it will make you immortal, so even with perfect Pose if you jump from 20 miles per week to 100, you are l;ikely to get injured. So don't accuse Pose about claims that it doesn't make.

"This, I think is flawed reasoning. Just because you push off does not mean you can't land on your forefoot under your CM."

Can you push with a leg and pull it AT THE SAME TIME? Damn sure you can't, these two actions can only follow each other. So pushing and pulling will take more time than only pulling. And lean fronm the ankles will do what pushing off did for you. Throughout this lenghty discussion did you ever do anything except typing? I mean - did you try any of the Pose drills, trying to feel what should be felt? Or is winning a discussion your main goal?

"The better is the form of a runner - the more it ressembles Pose running." On whose opinion??? Yours."

And whose it the opposite opinion? Yours.

"The better the form of the runner, the more it resembles my idea of what correct running form should be."

Please explain this sentence of yours. "...the better the form...the more correct it is..." What is "better"? Linguistically "better" means "closer to 'the best'". It means you admit there is some standart that can be called "the best". I agree with it fully, and this standart is called Pose. If you don't like the name Pose - feel free to call it "Best". The essence will not change - the best form is the one that is biomechanically most efficient. And Pose ( sorry, Best) teaches you how to consciously achieve this efficiency.

Is there any chance you'd take a stab at those four questions posted earlier so we can make some progress towards a mutual understanding or are we going down this road again?

So there is a difference between someone like Geb running "almost perfect POSE" and someone who is learning from a certified expert coach and also runs "almost perfect POSE"? Why couldn't the certified coach instruct almost perfect Geb on what little things he needs to tweek without having to curtail or completely stop his training?

I'm obviously just not understanding what "almost perfect" means.

I can see where this is leading...

This is it, isn't it? Contrary to ST's assertion where the "gravity does the work" statement from POSE only applies to letting the trailing foot fall back towards the ground, you are going with the idea that somehow just leaning forward will allow gravity to now act in a horizontal direction and "pull you forward".

Did you read the previous couple of pages where the explanation of what happens at pushoff, and more specifically, why it is necessary?

We've agreed you need a pushoff that includes at least a partial voluntary additional component in a direction somewhere between the horizontal and the vertical. And now you're back to the whole 'don't push' concept.

I think we're going to now need to explicitly define what POSE is so it can be contrasted with our earlier definition. I see you haven't answered my question as to whether forefoot landing under CM and short ground contact are the key or only 'unique' points of POSE, other than this return to the insinuation that harnessing gravity for horizontal motion represents the new paradigm.

You make it sound like providing a rational, understandable explanation that is compatible with the way the real world operates is a bad thing.

"Now - if you try to push off, you will inevitably land in front: your trailing leg will be late, means you will have to pull it forward with hip flexors, means by inertia it will fly too far forward"

I disagree that these consequences necessarily follow a push-off.

" the best form is the one that is biomechanically most efficient."

Agreed

"And Pose ( sorry, Best) teaches you how to consciously achieve this efficiency."

Disagree. I think POSE would lead to a de-emphasis of the drive compared to what elites do, and what i would consider 'best form.'

You can't just arbitrarily declare that POSE is the gold standard - it is just an opinion - one that in my OPINION, is incorrect.

You don't consciously pull. See you think you can get the leg to cycle through faster by pulling it from the ground and pulling it through the cycle back to the ground.

However, if you let the foot load up and push off correctly, you will activate a stretch reflex which will "autimatically" return the leg back to it's original position (i.e. cycle the leg through). And furthermore this stretch reflex will pull the leg through faster than can be done by consiously trying to pull it through. So in what I think is correct running, you don't try and do anything with trying to cycle the leg back. The only thing you really pay attention to is putting the foot down underneath you and pushing off and letting the hips extend.

You missed my poiny. I was saying that you see Geb and think he's running POSE. I see Geb and think he's running my idea of correct running form. There is a standard that can be called the best. And in my opinion it's not pose. It's something else, the only difference is I don't have a fancy name to sell it with. So I'll call it Tellez style running b/c that's who professes the ideas. The Tellez style teaches you how to consciously achieve this best efficiency too.....The difference is that its proven both in science and perhaps more importantly at the upper levels of elite running in real life situations.

Not trying to get in a shouting match, but you ask people to try pose drills and such. Have you ever tried other running methods? And don't give me the oh for 10 years I ran "normal". No you probably didn't, you probably heal banged and then changed to Pose which is a step up from heal banging because it at least gets your foot to land basically flat under your hips. But have you considered that maybe there's another step up from that?? Just something to think about. B/c I think there is.