You were not made to run. (Here’s how we can help)

What’s wrong with your form? Pasquale Moncchia a famous gym owner and fitness instructor. He works at a gym called La Palestra- what the ancient Greeks and romans called gymnasiums. The gym is located in an old ballroom of former hotel des artistes on Manhattan upper west side. Pasquale knows a lot about running because he is a runner himself. Now the statistic goes that 42 million American injure themselves every year running. If you believe the worlds to biomechanical experts and elite coaches, it’s not for a lack of conditioning. And it’s not because we’re wearing the wrong shoes. Either it’s because no one taught us how to run. So now were going to give you a crash course on how to run.

More people are getting injured running than ever before. As that could seem a bit dramatic. But the statistic could be even more starring when you take into considering other athletes getting injured running in there sports. Also injures mean broken bones to more long time injuries like runner’s knee, Achilles tendinitis, plantar fasciitis, shin splits. Things that drive runners to a bike in the summer. For the record it’s not just talking about hardcore runners the statistic includes everyone in a while joggers. So the question is what are so many people doing wrong?

Well first thing would be most say running isn’t something that requires coaching. Ashwell, that the best way to improve on running is to just run more. Most the time people think the remedies is just buying a new pair of specialized shoes. Manocchia strongly disagrees. The gym owner and former college hockey player who went to brown university, is a disciple of Nicholas Romanov, P.H.D. a career coach of the Russian Olympic team whose unique thoughts about running. A long overlooked margin of sports, are finally going mainstream. Pretty much the belief that running is a practiced skill not just a natural movement. Which means if you’re not juts extremely lucky with natural born talent or have gone through a lot of training you’re probably going about running wrong.

The pose method and how it will save you. This method was devised by Romanov in the 70’s and is widely being taut now by running coaches across the world as well as cross fit coaches. But here is the way all types of runners can work towards it. Head, when you’re in proper form your head will stay without any side to side motion. Legs, think about pulling up your back leg with your hamstring rather then pushing off with your quads. This will help with getting down the falling forward motion t=rather than lunging yourself forward. Knees, maintain a constant bend in the knee makes the transition from foot to foot quicker. Back, focus on a straight back but not tensing your back muscle to much. You don’t want to strain your muscles. Arms, keep arms to the side and don’t worrying about pumping them just keep your back and shoulders lose. Hips, when falling forward try dropping your hips to line up with the balls of your feet so you don’t take too long of strides. Speed is maintained by your fall not the size of your strides. Feet, keep your body weight and focus on moving from one foot to the other quickly. Distributing ground force s keeping weight off your joints, ligaments, and tendons.

Sounds easy right? Think again. Remember learning how to through a football or learning how to swing a golf club for the first time. To remember correctly and perform correctly you have to get muscle memory down for running too. Just think now that you know speed is not measured by dexterity but about how fast you fall forward. This is why you see new things in Europe such as pose clinics it develops the necessity of evening out weight on your joints for a better overall body health. Romanoz says “good driving skills will save your life”