January 5, 1987
Fitness
FOR SOME TOP ATHLETES, SUCCESS IS ALL MENTAL
The best athletes seem to have a special quality: They become more calm and more in control as the situation on the field of play becomes more difficult.
A quarterback passing out of his own end zone. A high jumper down to one final attempt at a record height. A platform diver who needs a perfect score to take over first place. A golfer faced with an impossible shot for a birdie.
This ability appears to have little to do with physical training. Other athletes on the same field may have trained longer and harder, but under this stressful situation they begin to come undone.
It is only recently that attention has been given to the mental side of sports; not so many years ago it was believed that success was 50 percent physical and 50 percent mental. Some Oriental competitors have ultrarevolutionary ways of looking at the mental side of training. Koyoshi Nakamura, the coach of Japan’s great marathoner Toshihiko Seko (1980 Boston winner), feels that physical preparation is only 10 percent of the equation, the remaining 90 percent being strictly mental.
Russian sports scientists feel much the same, and have for years done research in that direction, especially involving their nearly unbeatable weightlifters.
The past several years have seen a rush of research published on the mental aspects of sports performance. Many of the publications are heavily steeped in research and go lightly on practical application. Others work so hard at teaching application that they confuse rather than enlighten.
A recent book that tackles the subject and manages to make the leap to practical application is Mental Toughness Training for Sports: Achieving Athletic Excellence by James E. Loehr (Stephen Green Press, $8.95). Loehr’s program is presented in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step manner.
Although coming to the subject from a tennis background, Loehr’s program is applicable to virtually any sport, but seems especially suited to team sports.
This is not to say that it has no application to individual sports. In recent years I had been going to the starting line of races would so tight that the first three or four miles were spent fighting myself to relax, but a session with Loehr’s book re-established that essential loose and relaxed feeling. The methods Loehr espoused managed to keep the running style loose and efficient so that I could concentrate more on monitoring what systems were working, instead of worrying about systems I had anticipated wouldn’t work that day.
The book, unlike others of its type, is neither overwhelming in size nor confusing in its presentation of concepts. However, it would be easier for nonteam athletes to use if it weren’t written so heavily toward the major ball sports. It takes some practice to get into the mental framework necessary to read everything in the book in terms of the individual athlete, but if you begin the process from Page 1, the book works wonderfully well.
January 19, 1987
Fitness
GOOD STRIDE MECHANICS
(First of of three parts; third part is in the February, 1987 articles.)
To the long-distance runner, the epitome of the sport was Abebe Bikila. The Ethiopian won the Olympic marathon in 1960 and ’64.
The rest of us, to varying degrees, are imperfect copies of Bikila—copies made on a machine running badly.
Bikila’s perfect mechanics did not come from studying computer-generated stick figures that represented the biomechanical ideal. His mechanics came from a lifetime free of tension and trauma.
Bikila’s fluid style not only set him apart from other runners of is time, it also set him above them. It gave him an edge in performance, and his solid mechanics protected him from injury.
Twenty years after the hard fact that Bikila presented as art, we can say that he had excellent stride mechanics. His legs had minimal crossover, his arms barely crossed in front of his chest, his arms were used to move him forward, he not did overstride, and there was minimal bounce.
A film or video of most of us when we run, viewed in slow motion, would quickly point up out imperfections—with significant consequences.
If perfect stride mechanics increase performance and decrease injury, the converse is also true. The worse our stride mechanics, the more likely we are to become injured.
The most common mechanical faults, according to Bob Prichard, a kinetic analyst with Somax Sports Clinic in San Rafael, are:
- Leg crossover. Viewed in slow motion from the front, the runner’s feet, on impact, have crossed over a line drawn vertically from the hip joint to the ground. Result: energy wasted in unnecessary lateral motion. Injuries to hips, knees, and ankles.
- Arm crossover. Again, viewed in slow motion head-on, the runner’s arms waste energy moving sideways or across the chest. Result: energy wasted in unnecessary lateral motion. This twisting can cause overpronation of the feet.
- No use of arms. Arms remain immobile or are swung minimally. Result: reduced stride angle, short stride. Twisting of upper body can cause overpronation of feet, or runner may compensate for small stride angle by overstriding.
- Bounce. Viewed from the side, the runner’s head rises and falls on each stride due to vertical lift. Result: energy is wasted on unnecessary vertical lifting of body. (During a marathon, a three-inch bounce translates into the runner completing the marathon and climbing one mile vertically.) Injury implications? Bounce increases the impact absorbed by the legs and feet.
Certainly one of the prime ingredients of good performance and injury prevention is a solid training program. But the main ingredient is the athlete’s body itself. No amount of good training will overcome serious mechanical difficulties. And shortcomings in stride mechanics can be corrected.
Unfortunately, they cannot be corrected by the runner’s consciously changing running style; such manipulation usually results in adding even more bounce. What is needed is a way to reduce stiffness and release adhesions between muscles that contribute to reduced range of motion.
January 26, 1987
Fitness
HOW TO AVOID OVERSTRIDING—AND INJURY
(Second of of three parts; third part is in the February, 1987 articles.)
The two primary goals of the long-distance runner are to improve performance and avoid injury.
Improving performance usually involves running faster. There are three ways to run faster: increase leg speed, cover more ground with each stride, or a combination of the two.
Unfortunately, in the search for increased performance (speed), many runners choose to cover more ground with each stride and in the process train themselves to overstride, which can—and does—cause injuries to every part of the body from the hips to the toes.
Overstriding involves the runner reaching out with the lower leg, landing with the ankle in front of the knee.
“To overstride is to write yourself a prescription for problems,” said Bob Prichard, a kinetic analyst with the Somax Sports Clinic in San Rafael. “To begin with, overstriding doesn’t increase performance, because when you overstride you strike the ground well in front of your body and as a result your foot tends to brake and slow your forward motion.
“Additionally, overstriding puts a great deal of stress on your feet and legs because they are not planted at a proper angle to safely accept the weight of your body.”
Consider the implications: A runners takes 12,000 strides on each foot in a marathon; each impact is equal to about three times the runner’s body weight; if the runner weighs 150 pounds, that means each foot accepts the impact of 1350 Volkswagen Beetles during each marathon.
Prichard stresses the importance of stride angle as opposed to stride length; when the stride angle is increased the runner will cover more ground with each stride, thereby increasing his speed.
Prichard videotapes runners and freeze-frames them in full stride in order to measure stride angle. He finds the midpoint of the hips and draws a line from there down through the center of the knee joint of each leg, then takes an angle measurement.
“Recreational joggers often have angles of 60-80 degrees,” Prichard said, “while relatively experienced runners are generally in the 90-degree range. National- and world-class runners tend to be up around 100 degrees. Obviously, increasing your stride angle can put you into a different class of runner.”
Ed Eyestone, the winner of the 1986 Bay-to-Breakers, ran the first half of the race with a stride angle of 90 degrees. But then, Prichard said something interesting happened:
“Midway down the backside of Hayes Street Hill, Eyestone shifted gears. He went from a stride angle of 90 degrees to 100 degrees, and from that point, anyone wo was going to catch him was going to have to bring a motorcycle.” With each stride, he was covering 20 percent more ground than his competitors.
It’s all very well to talk about stride angle as a yardstick of measuring a runner’s real-life performance potential, but what if a runner has, by nature, a very small stride angle?
Prichard increase stride angle by improving flexibility. His methods include stretching (primarily groin, hamstring, and hip muscles) and, where necessary, the release of adhesions that form in the connecting tissue between the muscles.
Adhesions can be caused by a variety of things, from slight injuries suffered in childhood to traumatic injuries suffered in auto accidents. Adhesions in many cases have been in place for decades, and they severely restrict the play of one muscle against the other, thereby severely restricting range of motion. Prichard removes adhesions by using a special set of wooden tools to break them up.
He stresses the importance of stretching every day in order to promote the flexibility needed to keep the stride angle great, and chastises distance runners for their lax attitude toward stretching.
“You go to a track meet,” Prichard said, “and you see the sprinters, whose event lasts less than a minute, stretching and loosening up for a half-hour, while the 10,000-meter men stretch for a minute in preparation for an event that lasts a half-hour.”