Next Jog

Hi all,

Kind of forgotten what number jog it was - there may have been one between the last one I blogged on and this one.

This post is about core strength. Core strength is one of the main things you work on in yoga, sometimes called "mula bandha", for the Sanskrit amateurs amongst us, or "pelvic floor" for woman who have given birth. The "core" in question is a set of muscles around about your hip area - the easiest way I can describe it is that it's like a dinner plate that holds your guts up.

There, now that I got that out of the way, let's talk about what the core strength is good for. Basically, it's a very convenient pivot spot for your entire body, being pretty much in the middle. That is, your legs push down from that point and thus it supports your lower body; your back pushes up from that point and thus it supports your upper body (and there's another pivot point around your neck from which your head pushes up and thus supports your upper extremity); and at the same time, it can swivel your hips outwards so that the whole system is straight rather than falling in on itself. In short, an important point of the body to strengthen.

I've basically now described why core strength is also extremely useful for jogging. In jogging, posture is best maintained in that way - legs pushing down (and at the same time, knees forward and back legs back alternately), back pushing straight up (and neck pushing the head up with shoulders relaxed rather than bunching up to the ears), and hips swivelled outwards so as to run straight rather than collapsing a bit inwards.

And as I mentioned before, running in this way ensures that only as strength is built up can speed - and overall distance - increase; that is, speed and distance do not come at the expense of posture but are rather both a result and cause of strength.

That is all. Bye!

Daniel

Fourth Jog

This post is about proprioception*.

Proprioception is the ability to know, even with your eyes closed, that you do or do not have a foot. Or that your arm is raised higher than your shoulder. It's quite an important ability in the scheme of things.

Yoga apparently improves proprioception, in that yoga assists practitioners in concentrating on their bodies, such that they are able to isolate different parts of their body, or to consider various different parts as a whole.

At first this feels like just pretend (the teacher says: "Breathe into your left leg", and half the class is thinking: "Did this guy study basic anatomy, like where the lungs are positioned?") but after a while you notice that physical things are actually happening from these things you thought were just in your head. It's a bit like when you ride into a telegraph pole on your bicycle just because you were looking at it.

So how does this connect to jogging? Well, on my recent jog, I noticed that for many years I had not internalised a simple principle, which is this: You run with your legs.

It sounds funny, but I found that whenever I was running in the past, and wanted to increase my speed, I would start bouncing my torso up and down. This was exhausting and convinced me that running was not fun - just exhausting.

What I discovered on this jog was a continuation of my thought on a previous jog - that breath, posture and speed are interconnected, and that the only way to properly increase speed without losing breath and posture is to develop strength. Specifically in this case, the strength of those same groin muscles I mentioned before. Basically, I've got two heavy legs dangling from those muscles, and rather than compensate and lift my legs using muscles from my upper body, I need to develop those muscles so that they can do it alone.

This realisation made for a faster run (under 30 minutes) and the ability to maintain a running speed (a relatively slow one, but a running speed nonetheless) the whole four point whatever kilometres.

Thanks proprioception, you made the whole thing much easier.

* Got to be one of my favourite words. Thanks, Oliver Sacks.

Third jog

I practise yoga, law and the piano.*

When I say, "I practise yoga", the meaning I give the word "practise" is the version of "doing it over and over again by way of training", like the piano, and not "doing it as an end in itself", like working in law. I think there are people who practise yoga in the sense that I practise law, that is, they treat it as a sport, or an end in itself, or something that is "done".

Whilst I wish these people all the best, I don't see yoga as something that should be "done". Historically, I believe, there were yogis who travelled India making their living from doing yoga (there were apparently "miracle"-workers who would bury themselves alive in a chamber with limited air and claim to die and come back to life for huge sums of money, and then move onto the next town to do the trick over and over again).** I think those guys "practised" yoga in the sense of doing it, and I've got to give those guys credit.

But in our day, there is probably little scope for doing yoga as a job, and I think it has far greater benefit in giving us a way of training ourselves.

One of the ways in which I feel yoga has helped me train myself is in being aware of my body. Most of us live in our bodies and can be blissfully unaware of the various feedbacks and warnings that it gives us on a day-to-day basis. Eventually, something hurts or we get sick, which is like our body screaming at us. But a lot of the time, if we train ourselves to be attentive to our bodies, we can hear these messages earlier on - obviously, doing something about it is an entirely different story, but just as in medicine, before we can treat, we need to diagnose.

Which brings me to this jog. I managed to cut five minutes off my jogging time, essentially as I had managed to strengthen somewhat those muscles that I was feeling on my last jog (yes, the ones in my groin). This meant that I was able to "lift my front knee and stretch out my back leg" (obviously they then alternate) and lean forward with my body so that my weight was more on my front leg, as was suggested to me by this bloke.

The first part of my run was therefore faster. I then turned left and was getting ready for the last part, which is uphill, when I realized that my breath was very hot. When I say hot, I don't mean just hotter than normal - obviously in jogging my body is going to get hotter and thus my breath. I mean, hot in a way which strongly reminded me of being sick with a fever, lying in bed, and feeling the heat of my breath.

Basically, I slowed right down whilst still maintaining my posture. As I mentioned in my last post, this allowed me to regain control over my breath and to continue jogging whilst waiting for my breath to cool down. Eventually it did, and I managed to very carefully increase my speed again.

In the end, it is difficult to know what, if anything, would have happened if I were not attentive to my body in that way. Possibly nothing. But I'd rather not find out.

* Possibly "syllepsis". Thanks q-pheevr for teaching me that one.
** Thanks "The Science of Yoga" for that one. Really great book.

Second jog

I have recently decided that I need to do some exercise. I can discuss the triggers in a separate post. What I want to write about here is the way in which the ten years or so of yoga that I have done influences the way in which I am approaching jogging.

As I was jogging this evening (4.2km, 35 mins), I was focusing on the same issues that I have been focusing on in yoga recently - primarily posture and specifically the idea of opening my pelvic area (yes, that's my groin).

In yoga, particularly for men - who for some reason seem to be much more closed in the pelvic region than women - there is a great deal of importance to this. The idea is to try to roll outwards (open) the part of the legs from the thighs down the knees, and to counter that (so that you don't walk like a duck) by rolling inwards (close) the part of the legs from the knees down to the feet.

I have been trying to apply this equally to jogging (as well as walking in my day-to-day life) and feel that it is quite a good thing. It has also made me realise that part of the process in improving my jogging will be strengthening the muscles in my inner thighs (yes, that's my groin again). Basically, I was feeling that I need to lift my entire leg (in order to properly lift my knee) from those muscles. I believe that without doing this I would be compensating using other muscles, leading to bad running posture and then the whole thing would go to crap (bad feeling, ineffective running).

One thing that I realised during this jog is that there is a tension between three essential elements in running - speed, breathing and posture. If you push the speed to much, you can easily lose the breathing and posture. Breathing and posture for people who practice yoga quite go together, and thus in jogging counterbalance only against speed, however I can imagine that people who don't practice yoga, good breathing and good posture could also theoretically work against each other.

The overriding element in the tension is strength. As we build up strength in the relevant muscles (in my case, starting with the inner thighs) I believe that I will be able to increase speed without losing breathing and posture. I am interested to see if there are other factors that I notice over time that feature in this equation and which influence the overall benefit of the run.

End of post, thank you for your attention.