February 2, 1987
Fitness
TAKING A CLOSER LOOK AT TOTAL MECHANICS
(Third of three parts, first two are in 1987 January articles)
There have been numerous discussions of the difference between jogging and running. They’ve ranged from philosophical to statistical.
“Jogging” is a word that is somewhat jarring and ungainly; “running” is smoother, inferring movement over the ground in an almost fluid motion. In their respective sports, joggers bounce along while runners sort of flow. There is a relative difference in speed for the two activities.
Most joggers are quite capable of running, at least for short bursts. When a jogger runs, his style changes completely. There is less bounce to the head, the stride angle generally increases, there is more vigorous use of the arms to help propulsion, and there is frequently a decrease in both leg and arm crossover. In effect, the jogger becomes more biomechanically efficient.
Unfortunately, the jogger is usually not trained well enough to keep up this disguise for any length of time; the running mode seems so much more energy-consuming than the jogging mode.
In reality, the opposite is true. To jog is merely to run inefficiently. And to “run” inefficiently is to invite injury while guaranteeing that there will be little if any improvement in performance.
By using videotapes, Bob Prichard, a San Rafael kinetic analyst, began noticing some startling connections between the upper and lower body. When he stopped the slow motion and made measurements, then bumped the image forward a little and remeasured, a pattern emerged.
That pattern indicated that many people wo were analyzing joggers and runners from the hips down were missing the real dynamics of movement. He discovered a direct relationship between what the lower body was doing and what the upper body was doing. Or, more precisely, vice versa.
He found that the characteristics exhibited by the legs during jogging and running were often dictated by what the upper body was doing. For instance, a rotation of the left shoulder on the rear swing of the left arm due to a broken collarbone at a young age, and the body’s subsequent attempt to compensate for it profoundly affected the left leg by causing it to cross over to the body’s center line, thereby predisposing the runner to ankle and knee problems on the left side.
In the past, a podiatrist might treat the ankle and knee by incorporating a device inside the shoe to correct the instability of the foot when it hit the ground. Prichard found that this only treated the symptom, but that the real problem was the left shoulder. Improving the left shoulder flexibility got rid of the left leg injuries.
He referred to this phenomenon as UBT, or Upper Body Torque.
By looking more closely at total body mechanics, then, Prichard found that by giving joggers and runners stretching and other exercises for the upper body, he could often create positive effects upon the lower body, improving mechanics and decreasing injuries.
In some instances, he found that removing adhesions in the connecting tissue between the muscles of the upper body would have corresponding good effects on the lower body.
Once he had improved their flexibility, he urged joggers to become runners, even if it meant that the person had to run for two blocks and walk for one before again breaking into a run. Since running is more efficient than jogging, Prichard found that this method often cured chronic injury problems suffered by long-term joggers by making their physical activity more mechanically correct.
One client who did a five-mile course in 42 minutes improved to 39 minutes by combining running and walking instead of jogging; four weeks later she had it down to 36 minutes, running all the way.
By a combination of analyzing mechanics and improving both lower and upper body mechanics, Prichard has managed to effect improvements in runners from rank beginners to national-class marathoner Nancy Ditz.
February 9, 1987
Fitness
TAKING RECOVERY TIME AFTER EXERCISE
In 1976 the film “Rocky” won the Academy Award for best picture. The film inspired Rusty Hufft, a College of Marin football player, to strive to become the best fullback in history.
By incredible motivation, Rocky Balboa had whipped himself into shape in five weeks so he could face Apollo Creed. Day in and day out, Rocky rose in the predawn dark, ate a half-dozen raw eggs, went out and ran, and then spent the rest of the day working out with the weights and the punching bags.
Hufft spent the summer at Tahoe, following a similar routine. He increased his body weight from just over 200 pounds to 253. On one unforgettable day of training he ran a 40-yard dash in 4.35 seconds, pushed a full-size car one mile in 25 minutes, carried his wife a half-mile uphill, and bench-pressed 385 pounds.
That day stands out as a peak in his life. There’s never been another like it, although Hufft has been searching doggedly for the formula of work and rest that made that performance possible.
He has done some incredible feats since then, certainly. But he has never been able to come close to duplicating that day at Tahoe, and now—since he has age working against him—he realizes he’ll never do it.
Hufft has realized, during the intervening years, that the element missing from the training equation at Tahoe was recovery.
Since then Hufft has been attempting to scientifically understand recovery. Hufft has spent years struggling with the question of how we recover from work (i.e., exercise) and how we can best make constructive use of that knowledge to enhance performance.
Although not especially complicated, the way Hufft explains it, the concept is more complex than this column can accommodate. In brief, he attempts to come to grips with the problem of not recovering from merely one exercise (say, 80 jumping jacks), but rather how to calculate recovery from several different exercises performed on the same day, with an eye toward equaling or bettering the performance one or two days later.
Most of us grab our recovery when and where we can. We recover almost by accident. Hufft would like to change all that; he’ll present his program tonight at the Pleasant Hill Recreation Center’s conference room between 7 and 10.
February 16, 1987
Fitness
WEIGHTY TOMES FROM A PAIR OF SMALL NORCAL PUBLISHERS
While many large New York publisher cut back on their new titles lists for 1987, two small Northern California publishers weighed down their lists with hefty tomes on fitness that deserve a place on the bookshelf of every serous practitioner.
Although both books are softbound, their 8½ by 11 inch dimension, with nearly 450 pages each, makes them a mail-carrier’s nightmare and a barbell aficionado’s delight. Although they’re both on fitness, the books complement each other, as though publishers Dave Bull and Lloyd Kahn had lunch at a restaurant halfway between their offices and planned it that way.
The offering from Bull Publishing Co. ($22.95, Box 208, Palo Alto 94302) is The Sports Medicine Fitness Course by Dr. David Neiman. Neiman is a professor in the School of Health at Loma Linda University, and has led seminars and workshops preparing candidates for the American College of Sports Medicine certification exams.
This is a source book that no health and fitness professional should be without. The book, in fact, is an evolution of the manual used to train fitness directors. It provides ready access to the knowledge accumulated on fitness over the last decade—the decade that saw fitness explode upon the scene as both a viable avenue to good health and as an avocation for millions of Americans.
The book is written in a straight-forward fashion. There is little tendency to mystify or complicate the information. And it is formatted so that locating topics within its 16 chapters is a cinch. There is no index, because the contents page outlines the entire book: everything from the sociological implications of the fitness boom to the impact of exercise on the brain. The end of each chapter has a summary and a complete bibliography, and, as a bonus, Appendix E is the complete fitness exercise program, fully illustrated.
The second big tome is Getting Stronger by Bill Pearl ($12.95, Shelter Publications, Box 279, Bolinas 94924). What Pearl doesn’t know about building muscles isn’t worth knowing. He was Mr. Universe in 1956, ’61, ’67, and ’71. And he has trained bodybuilders who have gone on to nearly duplicate his accomplishments, proving that through hard work and knowing what you’re doing, you can bring together the elements it takes to win.
Pearl’s earlier book, Keys to the Inner Universe, is the bible of bodybuilders who want to learn every exercise in the known universe. But his newest book isn’t about bodybuilding—it’s for you and me, a book on putting together a strength-training program that is sport specific. The book contains exercise programs for literally every sport you can think of: aerobic dance and baseball to golf and ice hockey, powerlifting and triathloning to track and field and both types of skiing.
The book does have a special section for bodybuilding, but if bodybuilding isn’t for you, merely skip it and move on to the next topic that interests you. As is typical of Shelter Publications, the book is as close to graphic perfection as you’re going to get. It is well thought out, and in usual Pearl fashion, it misses nothing. An expert in each field is consulted; for example, basketball features Kermit Washington, fitness consultant at Stanford and a former National Basketball Association All-Star.
February 23, 1987
Fitness
DITZ TO DEFEND TITLE SUNDAY IN SECOND L.A. MARATHON
At 9 a.m. Sunday in the Los Angeles Coliseum, Nancy Ditz of Woodside will take the starter’s gun as defending women’s champion in the second annual L.A. Marathon.
The City of Angels is attempting to make its marathon the country’s biggest and best—and organizers are well on their way to their goal after only two years of work. The marathon has everything Southern California can offer: favorable weather, a segment of the 1984 Olympic marathon course, media hype, cars, stars, and starry-eyed spectators.
Ditz’s talent speaks for itself: She won the San Francisco Marathon in 1982, the now-defunct Oakland Marathon in 1983, was the first American woman at the New York City Marathon in ’83, was seventh at the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984, was U.S. National Marathon champ in 1985, and was the first American woman at the ’85 World Cup Marathon in Hiroshima.
She is coached by New Zealand Olympian Rod Dixon, one of the few men in the world to have run the mile in under 4 minutes and the marathon in under 2:10. She says she is a better downhill runner than Dixon, and recounts a game they sometimes play while training on hill trails.
“Rod gets behind me and we’re on this really skinny trail and he has to pass me and it’s like motocross,” she says. “You’re allowed to do anything—throw elbows, cut people off at corners. We’re going faster than my 10K race pace, flying down this hill, jumping over root stumps and thing, and it’s really fun.”
Having fun with her running seems to be a hallmark of Ditz’s career. She says that when it stops being fun, she’ll stop doing it.
Although she jokingly says she’s reluctant to give away any secrets, she admits to being partial to taking a couple of weeks off in winter during which running is the furthest thing from her mind. Instead of running, she says, she goes downhill skiing and tends to “pork out” in order to give her body a rest from the strain of training.
It apparently works, because the one time she failed to take the winter weeks off (during the hectic 1984 Olympic year) was the one time she suffered an injury.