New Name
Last week, I posted a chat letting everyone know I am trialing a new name for this newsletter. The new name is Make Running Our Yoga.
As I wrote in that announcement, I like the name because it resonates with what has been unfolding here in my exploration of running training from the ground up. I hadn’t been thinking about changing the name but, when I was walking to the grocery store, Make Running Our Yoga popped into my mind and caught my attention. It perfectly captures my desire to build a running body on foundations of awareness and create programs around that focus.
It also captures something else. I don’t want to live in a world that bifurcates the spiritual and everyday aspects of life. I don’t want to feel like I have to go to a church or a temple or an ashram or a yoga studio to be spiritual. I want the spiritual to simply be what I do. And what I like to do, more than anything else, is train and run and learn through self-exploration.
The new name is not meant to be confrontational or appropriative and I hope it is not perceived or received in either way. What it is meant to do is capture the deep desire that has grown in me since I entered the spiritual realm to bring spirituality to what I do rather than abandon what I do (and myself) to be spiritual. I feel like this new name does that and it feels inwardly galvanizing. Perhaps it will be galvanizing for others, too.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
Running Body Model
Recap
Last week, I talked about the 4-part running body model I’ve been sketching out. It started with 3-parts: the shoulder girdle, pelvic girdle, and ankle complex. These body parts seemed most relevant to running from a biomechanical perspective.
Feeling that something was missing, I realized, with Claude’s help, that it was the spinal complex. I talked about that in the last article. Adding in the spine incorporates the animation, so to speak, in that the spine links the shoulder and pelvic girdles, and even the ankle complex, to the central rotational movements of the body when running.
Refinement
But there was still something missing, something I didn’t clue into until sitting down to create a visual representation of the model that could quickly convey the idea. In that process, I kept getting drawn back to a diamond shape centered in a square. The diamond would represent the spine. The four spaces it creates in the corners of the square would represent the other parts. But there were only three other parts to the running body model, not four. So I initially abandoned the idea.
Then the diamond-in-a-square concept came back around and I didn’t want to let it go this time. It felt like the diamond shape conveyed solidity, strength, and power, which seemed appropriate for the spine. I also liked the symmetry the shape created. Mulling it over, I realized the brain could go into the empty slot. (See image below.) While the nervous system includes the brain and spinal cord, in the running body model, the spine represents the biomechanical rotation and whipping effect of the torso. It also encompasses the breathing apparatus so central to running.
With the brain added in, the model is now complete. One could make the case that it should also include the knees. I addressed that consideration in a footnote in the last article (The Running Body) but will do so again here.
My thinking is that if our pelvic girdle and ankle complex are healthy, our knees will also be healthy as the movements at the pelvis and ankles affect the knees. Also, unless we’re doing specific isometric exercises targeting the pelvic girdle or ankles, when we train these areas, we’re also training the knees. Thus, we can integrate knee awareness in our awareness training for our pelvic girdle and ankles. In some cases, though, we may also need to give individual attention to our knees.
The Brain as Central Governor
The brain, on the other hand, represents something else. When the instinct or inspiration arose to add it to the model to fill out the visual concept, the idea of the central governor came to mind to make sense of that instinct. The central governor theory, something I learned about from a book I read many years ago by Matt Fitzgerald and Tim Noakes,1 is the idea that the brain regulates the fatigue we feel when we run.
According to this theory, our brain keeps tabs on everything that’s happening in our bodies. When it senses that we are reaching our safe limits, it sends fatigue signals to let us know it’s time to slow down.
Training the Brain’s Resistance to Fatigue
As I recall, in their book, Fitzgerald and Noakes talked about research looking into whether or not the brain’s fatigue tolerance could be improved through training. To figure it out, researchers had runners tire their brains by spending time doing brain games before heading out for their endurance runs. Results suggested the brain’s fatigue tolerance could indeed be trained.
Before I go further, I want to repeat what I said in my last video: I am not a scientist and do not read the research at this time. Yet, because I read about the central governor theory, it (or my understanding of it) is a framework that naturally comes to mind when considering the potential effects of the awareness exercises I have been doing based on the running model. What follows is my sense-making process on this possible effect, not what I know to be true from research I have read.
Awareness Exercises and the Central Governor Theory
Exploring the subtle movements of the running body in the awareness exercises I’ve been doing, I wonder if compensatory patterns are part of the fatigue puzzle. If we are relying on parts of our body that are not designed to do an action to do it (because the parts that are supposed to do it aren’t able to) it stands to reason that our brain would pick up on the danger and send fatigue signals sooner than it would otherwise need to.
While we would be able to train our muscular endurance up to a point through running training, we may reach a plateau because our baseline discomfort, even though experienced as normal, would be higher than we might expect to see in an uncompensated body. If this proposition is true, then bringing awareness to our running bodies through exercises focused on specific parts of the running body could offer one pathway to improving fatigue resistance in the brain.
Why Awareness Exercises Might Work
There are two reasons for this possibility that I see. The first is that, by becoming aware that muscles not designed to do a movement are doing it, we can work to restore the right muscle engagements through targeted exercises. Second, by doing awareness exercises, we feed information into the system that allows the system to make adjustments.
This second way - feeding information into the system - reminds me of how homeopathy is thought to work. We add something into the system - a remedy - that is close to but not exactly the same as our current state. Because it is close but not the same, the body can recognize its own dis-eased state and correct.
When it comes to awareness exercises, when we slow our movements down and isolate them to single joints and compare what we are experiencing in our bodies with what is supposed to be happening, we feed our awareness the contrast it needs to start rebalancing our bodies.
Conclusion
While the spine, shoulder, pelvis, and ankles encompass key biomechanical aspects of running, the brain encompasses another dimension, one that is equally relevant to running and runners. Thus, including the brain completes the model.
References
Fitzgerald, M. & Noakes, T. (2007, September 4). Brain Training for Runners: A Revolutionary New Training System to Improve Endurance, Speed, Health, and Results. Berkley.
See Fitzgerald & Noakes.
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