Get In Great Shape

Your plan to get fit, fast and happy. It’s all a matter of achieving balance

Finding the right balance in four areas of your running life is the key to becoming a better and happier runner, says Jonathan Beverly

DESCENDING A SLIPPERY, SNOW-PACKED trail last winter, I quickly noticed that a successful run – and, perhaps, my survival – would require maintaining a careful balance. As long as I kept my feet beneath my body and my torso and arms poised over my hips, I could dance comfortably down the trail despite the treacherous surfaces underfoot. However, any time that I relaxed my core or overreached on a step, I would slip and stumble, catch myself awkwardly and risk falling or straining something.

The trail exaggerated the fact that running is – even on level, stable ground – a dynamic balancing act. Improving our balance is one of the first and most important ways to improve our running stride. Good balance means we spend less time on the ground, use less energy, reduce injury risk and create that smooth, effortless efficiency of the elite runner that many of us work hard to achieve.

As I kept myself upright, I began to consider how this physical ability isn’t the only balance that affects our running. In fact, finding balance is central to success and longevity in every aspect of our running lives. We also need to balance training loads with recovery in order to get stronger and faster without picking up an injury. And we must establish an equilibrium between goals and abilities to maintain motivation and enjoyment. Finally, it’s only by tempering our obsession with respect for other areas of life that we can avoid burnout. Find the balance in each of these areas and we can fly through years of enjoyable miles; err too far to any side and our running lives stumble and crash. Like the physical balance of running, each of these other balances is dynamic, always shifting and changing. Achieving a balance requires self-awareness, honesty and adaptability – but it is worth it, as mastery leads to growth, satisfaction and lasting joy.

PHYS ICAL BALANCE

WHEN WE DESCRIBE HOW GREAT RUNNERS MOVE, THE WORD ‘LIGHT’ is often used. Elite runners, like young children, seem to float, barely touching the ground. A large part of this effect stems from their impeccable balance. When we are balanced we don’t slam our feet into the ground or spend time wallowing while we right ourselves for the next step. All our energy can be spent propelling our balanced bodies forward.

Consider how unstable a building would be if the stories were stacked helter-skelter and the top half was leaning dangerously off to one side. Unfortunately, this is the case with many of our bodies in the modern world. Rather than standing tall and neatly aligned from feet to head, our hours of sitting and sedentary slouching leave us as twisted towers, rigidly locked back on our heels. Even when we’re standing, our hips remain flexed, our shoulders rotated forward and chests concave.

A remarkable thing happens when we restore our neutral posture and get ourselves balanced over our feet (see Getstacked, p40): we instantly feel lighter and more athletic. We’re also able to move with far less effort; rather than having to reach out and pull ourselves, we need only to tip the balance slightly and then step

underneath the new position. International elite coach Bobby Mcgee calls this ‘dynamic balance’, a slight full-body lean that is stable while in motion but that would cause us to fall on our face if we stopped abruptly. ‘Don’t hold yourself in an upright, overly safety-seeking position,’ says Mcgee. Perfect this dynamic balance and you will find that your running stride will improve in numerous ways: your cadence will increase; you’ll start to land naturally beneath your body and extend your legs out behind from your hips; and you will use more of your natural springs. You’ll become, Mcgee says, ‘smooth, light, quiet, compact’.

Once we’ve discovered the beauty of this physical balance, the challenge for most of us is then to maintain it throughout the run. Jay Dicharry, renowned running-biomechanics expert, calls this, ‘postural endurance’. Building it requires both releasing tight muscles to restore range of motion in the front of our hips and shoulders, and strengthening weak or sleeping muscles, primarily our powerful glutes. Then, as we gain comfort in this new balance, we need to practise using it. ‘ You as an athlete need to know neutral posture when you’re standing there talking to me, need to know what it is like during an easy run, and know what it is like during a long run and during speedwork,’ says Dicharry.

One of the best ways to practise is to regularly shake up our running routines. By running at a variety of paces, in a variety of trainers, over a variety of terrains – even a rough, snow-covered trail – our bodies and brains are forced to use different strategies to balance and move, and discover more-efficient movement patterns. As we restore our physical balance, each run begins to reinforce key muscle strengths and range of motion. This improved strength and flexibility, in turn, makes running tall, light and balanced, creating an ascending spiral of improvement.

WOR KLOAD BALANCE

WHILE RESTORING A BALANCED STRIDE CAN MAKE RUNNING EASIER,

more enjoyable and more effective, experts agree that most injuries occur from disturbing another balance: the relationship between work and rest. We usually hurt ourselves by doing too much, too hard, too soon.

While sedentary lifestyles tend to compromise our physical balance, we can blame our cultural history for disturbing the work balance. We’ve developed a work ethic that equates hard work with virtue, overlaid with a little Nietzsche – ‘That which does not kill me makes me stronger’ – and created a cult of productivity that confuses activity with results. It’s easy to feel that we’re being lazy at any moment when we’re not working hard.

Too often, we forget that the goal is not an impressive training diary but improvement – and improvement comes not from constant work but through a more delicate interchange between work and recovery. ‘The key is balancing the right amount of stress with the right amount of recovery. Stress + rest = growth,’ write Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness in Peak Performance (Rodale).

In defence of the ‘no pain, no gain’ ethos, it is true that to make progress we need to work harder than feels comfortable. But the work doesn’t make us better runners; it only breaks us down and causes stress. We get better when, in response to that stress, our bodies send signals that they need to get stronger so we can handle that level of activity. And building a better body requires rest and time.

The key to improvement is to find the proper dosage of stress: how much and how often. The work has to be

hard enough to induce adaptations, but not so intense that it causes injury. Then we have to wait long enough for the body to rebuild above our former ability before hitting it again and creating another cycle of fatigue, recovery and growth. This pattern occurs with each workout, and over larger cycles of weeks and seasons.

How can we manage the work/rest balance? We can start by following patterns such as alternating hard and easy days, gradually adding volume and intensity, and taking recovery weeks every month or two. Each individual is different, however, in how much work they can handle, how much rest they need and how they adapt to each type of workout. This is where running becomes an ‘experiment of one’, as the running physician and philosopher George Sheehan called it.

Too much work isn’t always the problem, though. Many of us err on the ‘too much rest’ side of the scale. Counterbalancing our propensity to train too hard are other cultural imperatives that keep us on the sofa. Our society has adopted the Industrial Revolution’s elevation of efficiency that decries ‘unnecessary’ work, and we embrace the leisure and comforts that such efficiency allows.

Training too little, too easily and too infrequently is as detrimental to our goals as the inverse. Not only will we fail to stress our body enough to induce growth, but we also set ourselves up for injury. A wealth of studies show that injuries are more likely after rapid increases in training load, not from ‘overuse’. Heavy training loads that we step up to gradually, adapt to and perform consistently will actually make us robust and less likely to get hurt. We are at our best when we attain the ability to be able to work hard regularly, balanced with days of ease and recovery.

CHAL L ENGE BALANCE

abilities – but not above – will not only make us stronger but also set us up for our best and most enjoyable runs, indeed the most enjoyable moments of our lives. ‘Contrary to what we usually believe...the best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times,’ writes psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow:the Psychology of happiness( Rider ). ‘The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.’

Csikszentmihalyi discovered that moments of flow – when we feel in control, focused, successful and satisfied – occur when the challenges we face balance with the skills we bring to meet them. Faced with too great a task, we become anxious and overwhelmed, mentally retreating to defend ourselves – like coming up with excuses when a race or training run starts going sour. Given too little challenge for our skill, however, we lose focus, get bored and our minds wander off, often settling on perceived threats or unpleasant matters we have pushed aside. At just the right balance, we can focus on the task and bring all of our skill to meet it.

Given too little challenge for our skill, we lose focus and get bored

The more skill we have, the more enjoyment we’ll get from this balance. Low skill meeting low challenge won’t make us anxious, but it won’t satisfy either. We have to make an investment of effort to develop adequate skill to accomplish tasks that inspire. The full joy comes when we can say, ‘This is really hard – and I can handle it.’

That confidence in our ability is critical. ‘It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel, but the ones we think we have,’ writes Csikszentmihalyi. Friends or coaches’ assurance of our potential will do little good if we don’t share their belief. In the midst of battle we’ll look for escape rather than focus on matching the challenge. We must, with boldness and honesty, assess our readiness for each challenge and set our goals appropriately.

Because they are perceived rather than actual, both challenges and skills are also dynamic, able to change in an instant. This is why setting multiple goals for a race or workout is effective. How often do we panic when, midrace, the effort required to keep up suddenly seems to exceed our ability? Having a lesser goal to fall back on allows us to reframe the challenge to a level we feel we can manage at the moment and to continue working toward success rather than giving up. Often, relieved of the panic, we regroup, bolster our confidence in our skill and refocus on meeting the original challenge.

The full joy comes when we can say, ‘This is really hard –and I can handle it’

The challenge/skill balance changes over longer periods as well. As our abilities increase through training and experience, we need to set more challenging goals to avoid boredom. These more difficult goals motivate us to build stronger skills, which, in turn, inspire more daunting challenges. Fortunately, the challenges of running never run out.

Sometimes, however, maintaining this balance requires scaling back the challenges we face. When we’re coming back from injury or layoff we need to adjust our expectations to match our temporarily reduced ability. And then there is age. If we don’t dial down the challenge, there will come a point where every run results in frustration. The balance shifts irrevocably so our skills never match what we feel we should be able to do.

Failure to live up to the image of ‘runner’ we’ve backed ourselves to be can lead to frustration and depression at any age. These are the runners whose expectations have exceeded their reality, perpetually unhappy with every race result, dissatisfied with every training run. By honestly assessing our skill and scaling our goals such that they test us to our limits, we can find ongoing joy and satisfaction whatever our speed.

PASSION BALANCE

FINDING PEACE IN OUR RUNNING LIVES REQUIRES A final balance, one that holds in one hand the joy of a single-minded passion and in the other the varied roles and responsibilities of a well-rounded individual. Failure to achieve this balance can not only ruin our running, it can sour our entire lives.

The uncomplicated joys of flow and progress lead some of us to love running so much we develop what psychologist Robert Vallerand calls an ‘obsessive passion’. Running becomes all of life. ‘An internal compulsion leads the person to engage in the activity even when he or she should not, thus causing conflict between the passionate activity and participation in other tasks,’ Vallerand writes.

When we lose this passion balance, running can take over, can become so important that we may ruin our health, damage relationships or sabotage our careers so that we can run more. If we’re not able to indulge as much as we want – or need – to, this passion makes us resent anything that stands in the way – blinding us from seeing that these other things are also important – indeed, essential – in our lives.

But passion need not be negative. ‘Passion can fuel motivation, enhance well-being and provide meaning in everyday life,’ says Vallerand. Part of the joy of being a runner is that it gives structure and meaning to every element of our daily routines. We want to be passionate enough that running influences our lives to make us more disciplined, more motivated, more confident, healthier, happier and, yes, faster and better runners.

The secret to managing this balance is to develop what Vallerand calls a ‘harmonious passion’. Those with this type of passion, Vallerand writes, ‘are not compelled to do the activity but rather they freely choose to do so. With this type of passion, the activity occupies a significant but not overpowering space in the person’s identity and is in harmony with other aspects of the person’s life.’ Put simply, you chose to run because you love it.

Creating a harmonious passion requires giving up the obsessive’s illusion of single-minded perfection, that Rocky- themed image of glory that waits for us if we can just go all in, eliminate every distraction and align every variable. Harmonious passion seeks not perfection but mastery. Mastery holds no illusions, nor makes excuses. It starts with genuine honesty about where we’re at today and how much we are able to give to our running at this time. Accepting all the constraints, compromises and conditions, mastery asks, how good can we become despite these obstacles?

True harmonious passion balances humility against any delusions of grandeur, acceptance against hunger and hope. Like other balances, each side of the equation is in constant flux. A clear-eyed self-knowledge allows us to adapt to changing life situations and abilities and to keep enjoying each day’s success and progress.

Balance is not in vogue these days – conventional wisdom says that the answers lie in going to extremes, giving 110 per cent, not settling for less than the best. Those who survive and thrive in the running life, however, find happiness lies in a more moderate path of daily improvement.

Ironically, in the process of getting better each day, they often rise higher than those who burn brightly and fiercely for a short time. Learning the balances of the running life can keep us tall, smooth and steady as we stride down the road to a lifetime of running success and satisfaction.