WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, RUNNING IS A BIT LIKE OILY FISH
This year, I have clocked up more than 1,200 miles. On paper, that looks pretty good, but it hasn’t been a vintage year for me on the performance front. The closest I got to a PB in 2019 was in a New Year’s Day parkrun, which I ran gloriously hangover-free. Ever since then, my running has been a bit…meh. Trying to figure out what went right, or wrong, is one of the most useful aspects of keeping a training journal, and a leaf through it reveals a clue to my less-than-stellar year – a woeful lack of non-running activities. Despite my belief in cross-training – not just to benefit your running but also to balance it with other healthy movement – I have managed just three bike rides, eight swims and one Pilates class. I’ve become a one-trick pony.
To be honest, I didn’t need to see this in black and white to be aware of it; I have for a while now sensed my body’s disgruntlement at being deprived of a more varied menu of movement. The more I’ve restricted myself to the sagittal plane (forward and backward movements), the more I’ve found myself saying ‘oof’ as I get up from the sofa; the more stiffly I walk first thing in the morning; the more I wobble when I stand on one leg to pull on my running tights.
Running is a great form of exercise, but it’s not everything. It moves us in one way, over and over. Therefore, it doesn’t move us in all the other ways we could move, or use all the other muscles and joints we could use. The urges I’ve been having to experience different patterns and paces and directions of movement are a message from my body that it doesn’t like being a slave to this singular, linear action. And the more I’ve disregarded them, the stronger those urges have become: to stretch up to the sky, squat low, arch my back like a cat, swim a length underwater, curl into a ball, balance in tree pose, bend, circle, lengthen.
There’s a new movement afoot. It’s called the Movement Movement – and its mission is to promote the importance of natural movement – ie moving our bodies in all the ways they’re designed to move in all the environments they’re designed to move in. Of course, all exercise is movement; but not all movement is exercise.
Katy Bowman, a biomechanist and pioneer of natural movement, has coined the term ‘movement nutrition’. In her book Move your DNA, she writes: ‘I propose that movement, like food, is not optional; that you have been receiving signals of movement hunger in response to a movement diet that is very low in terms of quantity and poor in terms of quality – meaning you aren’t getting the full spectrum of movement nutrition necessary for human function.’
As runners, we’re not going short as far as quantity of movement is concerned. But what about quality? Imagine running is an oily fish, such as salmon. It’s packed with omega-3 oils and high-quality protein, but you’re going to need some whole grains with it – say, brown rice – for carbohydrate and perhaps some leafy greens for vitamins, minerals and fibre. You can’t just eat salmon and be healthy, right? In Bowman’s view, ‘just running’ is equally likely to lead to deficiencies, movement ones rather than micronutrient ones. ‘Being strong or healthy in one specific way doesn’t transfer over to being strong or healthy in every way,’ she says.
Going back to my training journal, my first reaction to the paltry show of cross-training was a resolve to get back on my bike and back in the pool in 2020. But if the Movement Movement is to be heeded, my cross-training should not be restricted by exercise and should instead strive for a more varied diet of movement in general. More cycling and front crawl would just mean more sagittal plane motion – more oily fish – when what I really need is couscous. ‘Our bodies,’ says Bowman, ‘require more movement nutrition than exercise provides.’ Mine’s been trying to tell me that for a while – and I’ve started to listen.