BODY TWIST AND VAULTING POLE RUNNING TECHNIQUE

Think of the leg by itself as a vaulting pole. The leg is locked at the knee with a little give to absorb the landing and toss you up. When running the top of the leg starts from behind the foot and swings to a bigger distance ahead of the foot. The bigger distance the top of the leg travels ahead of the foot, than behind, averages out to an off balance stance. When you stand off balance gravity will make the top of the leg fall forward with the upper body resting vertically on top of it. The jump changes the downward fall to an upward forward swing. There is no direct horizontal force. Gravity starts to pull you forward and down, but when you start to fall the jump continues the fall forward going upward.

The reason most people can’t run very fast is that their sense of balance prevents them from dropping their feet far enough behind and with more steps behind. The way it lets champion runners do that is because they exchange their feet fast to catch them before they fall too low. They exchange their feet faster with a hard body twist which makes the stationery hip a solid platform for the foot to push off of.

When you reach your pace the feet start dropping in front of the upper body’s center. You need to keep the feet dropping as close to center as possible. The farther ahead of center you drop your feet the slower you make the pace you reached.

You can do everything you are taught about speed and still run slowly or even hop in place, except for my single discovery. I discovered that only gravity can pull you forward and nobody else’s techniques can. They assume like everyone else does that only a push gets you to run. What is true is that nobody runs with a push because it is impossible to do. The legs are designed only to toss you straight up from underneath the hip when you are not falling ahead. The front muscles across the knee and the hip pull the foot forward to absorb the landing and toss the body up the entire stance time. The opposite muscles cannot pull it back during that time.

Getting back to your sense of balance which won’t let you set yourself off balance if it feels you will fall. Exchanging the feet fast won’t give you the speed by itself. When you exchange the feet fast you must also drop your feet back as far as possible. By being at more of a slant at landing gravity pulls you faster exponentially with each step.