Does Jae Gruenke have any real credentials?

She's not an expert, she's a self-classified "guru". Her knowledge is divine. Spiritual. Heavenly. The G in LGBT means "guru".

So many posts from Nike headquarters here.

She has a degree in Literary Studies and Modern Dance.

She has some kind of personal trainer certification and was a Clinical Professor (I don't know what that is) at a hospital, but doesn't have any medical or PT degrees listed in any of her bio stuff, just this Feldenkrais method mumbo jumbo all over the place.

How did some random self-proclaimed expert make it to the Letsrun homepage?

MohammedAA wrote:

So many posts from Nike headquarters here.

Yeah. They're really worried about what some dance instructor says about their shoes. Meanwhile, Nike can't make them fast enough. The owners of this website will post anything derogatory about Nike. Guess who doesn't advertise on this website.

Wait til you hear what she charges. She would make PT Barnum pround. She wants $4k to teach you those exercises via skype! There really is a sucker born every minute.

Showmethemoney wrote:

Wait til you hear what she charges. She would make PT Barnum pround. She wants $4k to teach you those exercises via skype! There really is a sucker born every minute.

PT Barnum never said what you think he said.

MohammedAA wrote:

So many posts from Nike headquarters here.

Letsrun has something on the scale of 3 million TOTAL monthly visits, and 100,000-150,000 or so unique monthly visitors. A single sponsored athlete from Nike has more unique followers for their social media posts than that. Nobody from Nike would remotely bother posting here for anything other than entertainment.

Seyta wrote:

MohammedAA wrote:

So many posts from Nike headquarters here.

Letsrun has something on the scale of 3 million TOTAL monthly visits, and 100,000-150,000 or so unique monthly visitors. A single sponsored athlete from Nike has more unique followers for their social media posts than that. Nobody from Nike would remotely bother posting here for anything other than entertainment.

Yeah, because a group of 150,000 running enthusiasts with high education and income (on average) isn’t worth trying to influence for zero cost except the time it takes to type the message.

For the critics of Gruenke. You're all entitled to your opinions, but have any of you actually tried the Feldenkrais method to see if it helps your running? There are plenty of free lessons online. Have any of you read Gruenke's online analyses of runners' form? If you haven't, then maybe you really don't know if what she has to offer is valuable. If that's the case, I'll make the guess that you get some kind of satisfaction from attacking someone who is getting attention for their work. My guess could be wrong of course, just like your crits could be wrong.

Jae is a certified Feldenkrais Practitioner -a movement body awareness modality, that postulates that it is possible to retrain your neuromuscular system to be more movement efficient. Jae has applied this knowledge to running and arguably has made a difference in some of the people who have studied with her. She is all over the internet with some of her classes and analysis of elite running form. She is a believer in minimal shoes which may account for some of the negative commentary.

She is someone worth listening to.

Svhnnnnm wrote:

Seems like anyone could call themselves a “running form expert”.

The thing is most running form coaching is not very useful, irrespective of their school of thought. There are a very small number of basic things to keep in mind about form that most beginner runners discover anyway by just running a lot and allowing their body to naturally adapt. Forcing a form change unnaturally is very rarely a good idea.

FWIW, as a beginner recreational runner, I found Gruenke’s videos engaging and warm and felt like I was learning something I could usefully apply (even if I actually wasn’t), but the thing is that that satisfaction of feeling like they’ve learned something is valuable enough to many people to spend time or money on her teachings. At the end of the day, the Feldenkrais method is not scientifically grounded, but so much of sports nutrition and physiotherapy is often also so (statistically) weakly grounded in science that many people will give something new a shot if other things haven’t worked well for them. As she says, some of these people who she has coached include olympians.