Our movement is our signature to who we are. It determines how we meet people, how
we make friendships, what we will enjoy and it will determine later in life the
contracts we make. I believe
running skill is at the very foundation to our body’s language, it is one of
very first instinctual survival skills we learn in our first 18 – 22 months of
learning to walk and run. It is
among others our very first big milestone to achieve.
Below is a story of two sisters who are
very athletic and have been subjected to approximately the same stimulation in
their growing up. The only
difference being that one sister has been subjected to more time in her motion
control shoes.
The younger sister’s form is as you would
expect from an athletic 11 year old.
Her form is beautifully composed through her posture and has a keen sense
of balance whilst retaining an agility, lightness and springiness. (Subconsciously she is using the first
law of motion - inertia efficiently) However you can see that there is a slight
difference in skill when she takes off her shoes and runs barefoot.
This would suggest that the shoes have
changed natural mechanics. With
her shoes off she is displaying a better foot strike, which makes her running
form look lighter.
The older sister a 14 year old, 3 years
older, is showing signs of further loss of skill. And I believe this is mainly down to the extra three years
she has been exposed to the effects of the motion control shoes. Shoulders are now elevated, her arm
action is too high (almost trying to hold her self up) and she is a much more
aggressive heal striker than her sister.
She still shows signs of good running mechanics with a nice pull through
of her trailing leg and this is due to the fact that she still has some skill
left in her running from earlier years. (Springiness)
You could say this is a perfect description
of adolescences however you might want to consider that the brick walls a lot
of us parents deal with at this age is due to the fact that children too
quickly lose their movement skill.
The 13 year old and beyond is a time of exploration and the impending
fall into weight with the remnant of light, agile, child-like springiness to allow
them (and us adults) to interplay between the inner and outer worlds. From my view dealing with patients on
biomechanical issues this loss of springiness rings true to all common injuries.
It is when you see the older sister run
unshod that you notice a huge difference.
To me this just highlights how much skill she has lost through wearing
thick cushioned shoes.
She is not like an adult where a sports
curriculum is involuntary and where the majority of us are tied to a desk all day. Therefore it is the information she is
getting from what is on her feet that determines her skill not the added
disadvantage of the seated posture as with us adults.
At the BPA we do not train the kids like we
do the adults. We utilise
appropriate games to subconsciously increase their spatial awareness to
increase their skill of balance.
Good running form is about a balance that
controls an unbalancing action. (First
law of motion – the law of inertia)
If we are stable we do not move, like a rock on the floor, but perch
that rock on a cliff edge then we can all visualise this rock is about to go
somewhere. That is the balance point
we want to perfect landing at with every step so not to waste energy in pushing
ourselves to this point. Because
at every step, if we are at this pivot point, by shifting our weight we fall forwards
(off the cliff) to move before the other foot hits the next balance (pivot)
point to remind our body of stability before becoming unstable again, falling
forwards.
It does not take long to re-balance a body
if the coaching skill is right.
Children tap into it far quicker as their instinct to move is far keener
than with the adult who has lost skill and compensated for much longer.
The worry with these children and their age
group is as the running becomes excessively heavier through growing bigger and through
losing running skill, injury prevails and worst still enjoyment is lost. This then leads to another modern day
dilemma where in today’s world stimulation can easily be found elsewhere,
mainly in front of a screen in a virtual world, which will speed the process of
losing more movement skill.
