DAVID NG

Accepting what you have today rather than aspiring to what you don’t have is for some stifling ambition and progress. Our human spirit is designed to challenge the status quo and to seek to evolve.  But at times we also value familiarity.  Runners are often rooted in entrenched habits that perhaps for some, ease the demands of running and for others, are a secret ingredient for potential performance excellence.  So think of that quirky running-kaki that must wear her favourite socks on competition day; follow the same pre-event routines and meal plans; run the same training routes or be specific about the order he uses safety pins to attach a race number to his lucky running vest.

Being Present, Being Honest

Your “Present” is your starting point.  Your next run, or thoughts about your next run are what you can control.  What is immediately within reach is how you approach that run; how you appreciate the prospect of that next run; how you may understand the context of that run and its impact on your future are opportunities to engage in your “Present.”  That your future comes from the present and your future is linked to how you see your “Present” may seem glib and obvious.  But by taking for granted that your present engagement is actually rooted in your history can build a barrier to performance improvement.

Can your present view of yourself be more accepting?  Is your dashboard of current performance measures complete?  What else can you understand about where your stand in your relationship with running today that may in fact be a moderator of your enjoyment, your attitude and your biases to how you can and should approach your next run?

Instead of dwelling on what you think you can be in the future, embrace yourself as you are.  Accepting the Present as your starting point is committing to your reality.  It’s viewing your running dashboard and being honest with what stage you are at in your current running cycle and being candid about your running fears.

Faster, Higher, Stronger!

“Coaching” at a junior level is often rooted in soft foundations where community minded volunteers are well intentioned and keen to bring knowledge and guidance to aspiring young sports lovers.  Junior sport, and thus our first experiences with pastimes, games and organised sport is often initially casual, unstructured and informal.  Our perceptions of what sport and competing can bring is possibly shaped deeply from our initial encounters where early experiences can leave indelible marks on our views on performance achievement. 

Consider the volunteer parents that oversee training and team management, selection and substitutions. Whether it is under 6’s football, junior netball or deciding the doubles combination in a junior tennis match, the desire to seek a winning combination is understandable, forgivable and fundamentally human.

“The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight; the essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well.”
- The Olympic Creed

Contrast this with the spirit of the Modern Olympics.  Whilst “Citius, Altius, Fortius!” was chosen to embody the achievements of the individual competitor, the national adulation given to any medalist that brings pride to their country remains a focal point.  Subsequent sponsorships and the associated billboard ads, TV commercials and Instagram followers are reminders that we all love a winner.

The balance between getting a return on the sporting dollar spent at a national, varsity, team or even family budget level and being reminded of the wider reasons for participation can however sometimes be forgotten in our results orientated society where merit, adulation and success are linked with ranked achievement. Our forgetfulness about the joys of participation can leave a threatening cloud hovering over our expectations, and fearful of missing targets.

Internal Possibilities

Dealing directly with our fears is for many a daunting road and so emphasizing our strengths is often easier, requires less thinking and so becomes our preferred approach.  Confronting one’s fears takes energy.  To seek out and acknowledge openly our fears and doubts is to highlight our shortcomings, our perceived weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  It demands that we are honest about having perhaps wasted past efforts; that we didn’t listen or absorb lessons and examples from knowledgeable peers and coaches.

Our competitive society embraces success stories.  We see winners as role models and perhaps our deeper primal tendencies automatically praise speed, strength and end-product.  Thus replace ‘hunting and gathering’ deliverables with personal records, medals, finisher tee-shirts and souvenir pictures.  The focus our parents may have had on classroom milestones in our early school years perhaps seeped into the annual sports day, where their secret hope was for a medal finish, even in the egg-and-spoon novelty race.

The increased adoption to broad community themes such as diversity & inclusion, personalisation and self-managed goal setting has been a clear recent theme filtering perhaps between dressing rooms and boardrooms as leaders and individuals seek a winning edge.  Advances in personal development best practices has been one clear spill over effect of a confluence of innovation domains in sport, echoing the benefits of cross domain knowledge (e.g. sports psychology and sports science) and the advent of technology (allowing for data collection and processing) to give instant personal insights on incremental improvement possibilities. 

Beyond Classification

Runners perhaps understand the realities of aiming for incremental improvement targets better than many boardroom executives, with the fussing over minute details around training plans, clothing options, shoelace tying systems and pre-race dietary preparation all being a standard part of any holistic approach to performance improvement.

Runners can and often like to be categorised.  Seasoned runners expect categorisation. We can have elite categories who start at the front and set the pace; the talented juniors; the mid-pack grinders; the steady improvers; and the costumed socialisers that mix fun with fitness.  We also accept age and sex categories in competitive community runs.  Often, we prefer more categories as is the case with Masters racing.  As a sport, we further segment into distance specialisations – the sprinter; the mid-distance masochist; the distance mavens; the trail adventurers and the ultra-warriors.  Whilst categorising can perhaps even-out the field so performance can be more appropriately measured, the act of measurement and comparison results in a bias towards perceived measures for success, minimum expectations and standards.

The mindset of a new athlete is best when it is positive and open to acquiring new skills. Often new or anointed coaches wish to build their credentials and so seek to impact quickly.  Creating value-add and seeking out rough diamonds in a new season should they be lucky enough to be given a coaching responsibility can become an understandable short-term goal.

Our Inner Coach

A focus on our fears and missing targets is an under explored area that can yield powerful insights to impact our growth as runners.  We all can easily access strength-based coaching philosophies and off-the shelf digital content and training plans highlighting victories and personal bests, but a personalised and introspective analysis of our fears about our running goals is for some, an unexplored source of improvement.

To focus on one’s deep-seated fears is a novel (and proven) strategy in the wider performance improvement domain.  The entrepreneur and lifestyle guru Tim Ferriss pioneered the idea of “fear setting” and using it as a tool to confront your biases.  “Fear-setting” is a general tool that Ferriss has popularised, applying it to business, personal and general decisions. The application to running is equally appropriate, noting Ferriss, a serious weightlifter, also applies the methodology to his athletic pursuits.

Following below is an example of applying this process-approach to surveyed responses from some RUN Singapore readers.  Consider your own running fears and do your own “fear-setting” against the reality of your current running dashboard. Be honest with what your running fears may be. Document ideas on how to prevent the fears materialising and if they do, then have your ‘fixes’ ready.

By honestly identifying your fears about running and your running goals, you allow them to be acknowledged.  By documenting these fears and your prevention and remediation plan should they materialise, your internal self can be that coach you always wanted – one that understands your depths, your history and champions your future authentically.

Self-coaching Questions to Manage Fear in Running

Diagnosis:

• How wide is the gap between your expected performance and actual performance?
• What is the gap in percentage terms?
• How do you feel about the performance gap? 
• Why are you disappointed with a performance/race/session?
• What is a realistic timeframe to address the performance gap?

Remediation:

• What factors were outside your control that influenced your performance?
• What key remediation steps can you think of to address the gap?
• If a fear does eventuate, how can you look at that occurrence positively? 
• What options exist in dealing with fears that become a reality?
• How can this current and new understanding of your performance shortfall gap help you revise your specific goals?  

Principles:

• Learn from every run about the inner you. What can you learn from your most recent running experience?
• Today represents your starting point. Each run is within your control; history and external forces cannot influence your running experience.

Further Reading

• Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers.  Tim Ferriss (2016)
• Handbook of Competence and Motivation. Andrew J. Elliot, Carol S. Dweck (2005)
• The Inner Game of Tennis. Tim Gallwey (1974)

The key dos and don’ts of good running technique is seemingly simple to many, given running is such a natural human action.  We run every day, and from young as children.  We run naturally, un-coached and often never coached.  By the time we may want to become more self-aware of our innate running technique, it may be after years of already running.  How can we then deal with transitioning from sub-optimal technique to better technique?

Focus-Focus:

Short of a scientifically based comprehensive review of running studies, the task of designing and prescribing a fool-proof program for improvement is impossible. And even if one bothered with reviewing all the science of running studies, the focus of studies is predictably isolated to at most, one or two variables, performed in laboratory conditions.  There are too many factors in the quest for running improvement, and of equal importance is the need to acknowledge that a personalised approach to planning must be the preferred approach versus a “one-program-suits many” attitude.

Here are my top four tips, combining science and common sense.

1.  Managing Your Centre of Mass:

By understanding that your ‘centre of mass’ is a unique point in your body whist in running mode that defines a net nil weight balance, you accept the idea that weight distribution whilst moving is fundamental in running effort. 

The centre of mass (“CoM”) is dynamic (i.e., changes with each step) as you move forwards when running. It adjusts according to the coming together of your (i) forward propulsion and (ii) gravitation influence. The combination of the forward propulsion (due to a combination of gravity’s effect on your mass as you lean forward, and the effort of your muscles and tendons to push and then pull, along with natural recoiling) and the downwards effect of gravity on your body mass results in your forward momentum.

The various forces at play in running announce themselves in how you ‘feel’ during and after a run. It is impossible to seek to consciously control the many micro factors that are dynamically at play as you run. Furthermore, these factors change as you tire, or become stronger and more able to maintain a consistent pace as you train. The alternative is to experiment with forward lean, balance and stride length & rapidity.

The legendary 1950s coach Percy Cerutty emphasized the notion that runners should “lift his weight out of his pelvis” meaning the hips should not be dragging and be instead forward leaning. This is a clear reference to the importance of finding and feeling one’s centre of mass when running. The Pose method suggests 22.5% forward lean is the maximum permissible, after which you need to put a leg forward to maintain upright balance.  The percentage of lean is however variable amongst runners, contingent on flexibility, overall strength of legs, speed and weight balance.

A further way to maintain a more even Centre of Mass is to minimise sideways movement.  So aside from the horizontal rise and fall, there is also the lateral (or sideways) movement, which is affected by arm swing and how straight your feet are.  Arm swing for a distance runner should be different from a sprinters arm-pumping action, and the wrists should not rise above the shoulder or below the hip.  From a forward view, the knuckles should not cross your torso’s centre line nor stray excessively from your side.

2.  Quiet Feet, Straight Feet: 

Your footfall should be quiet– the less noise from your shoes then the more efficient your effort.  Less noise indicates better CoM distribution and thus your shoes contacting the running surface with less friction.  The less pounding, the smoother your pace and so the less vertical impact on your legs. 

By targeting a focus on horizontal momentum, you harness what forward momentum you have built up in your prior strides.  A misconception is you can only “glide” if you are fast.  You CAN glide at ANY pace. Focus on running an imaginary straight line, with less pace variation when you push off your rear leg, and pull through with your front foot.  Pace consistency is more possible with less over-striding. It’s better to shorten your strides and attain pace consistency, whilst minimising vertical leg bounce.

Whilst there will be inevitable vertical movement, visualise minimising the variation in the maximum and minimum height range of your shoulder (or hip) line from a sideways view. Running styles that can be heard from a distance usually indicate excessive vertical pounding and/or excessive and pro-longed contact with the ground (due to scuffing from tiredness and thus excess friction with the ground).

The benefits of being aware of lessening your tendency to bounce is to reduce the gravitational forces on your legs and back and thus your tendency to experience lower back and knee pains.  Similarly, if your feel lower back pain, sore shins or knees, consider if these are symptoms of too much vertical pressure and so too much rise and fall in your CoM.

3.  Weight ‘management’:

The changing nature of our weight is indisputable, especially when we factor in pregnancies, illness, weight training, seasonalities like Lunar New Year eating and ageing. Our weight and how it is distributed, changes our Centre of Mass.  If the change and distribution is for the long term, then our technique (and training) will likely need adjusting. If your aim is to reach your potential, then realise your potential changes as your Centre of Mass abilities and realities change.

Our expectations around our running ability, expressed through any number of measures, including endurance, speed, recovery ability and consistency of form and speed maintenance.  If the main aim is to be a confident and injury free 4+ km runner every second day, then as a committed runner, improvement if likely an understandable and serious pursuit. 

Weight management is thus also understanding how weight distribution affects your Centre of Mass, and so the amount of forward leaning impacts your running style.  Finding the optimal angle of leaning forward is of course inter-related with your ability to maintain a leg turnover rate that ‘catches’ your gravitational force of your weight fall and converts some of that momentum, whilst also imparting the projecting ground force that comes from a combination of your combined leg, angle and feet muscles, hamstrings and tendons which provides forwards and upwards thrust and pull.  The natural combination of these two broad effects per Romavov & Fletcher (2014) are termed ‘gravitational force’ and encompasses the idea of running being a pursuit that is optimized by less emphasis on pushing off the ground, and instead an action which is ideally about balancing weight distribution and your speed of travelling. 

4.  Harness Verbal Optimism:

Tell yourself (and others with your interest at heart) what your running goal is. This may be a distance goal, a time goal or a commitment goal for a particular (say) week.  This fourth tip is perhaps the most powerful as it recognises the power of goal setting and our mental capacities to dictate our actions.

Concrete goals help us focus on relevant activities and help us think longer term about strategies for achieving or gaining improvement to achieve worthwhile targets.  The recent field experiment by the (management) academics Sackett, Wu, White and Markle (2014) involved the monitoring of 1,758 marathoners and the effect of self-set goal targets for an upcoming marathon.  Of the experienced marathoners who were a part of the sample, it was shown that those who were asked about their goal target prior to their run ran 6.75 minutes quicker than the experienced runners that were not asked to state their goal time.

The survey respondents in this novel study had an average finishing time of 4.36.01 and were runners in the 15 main marathons across the US, including Boston (2008), Chicago (2007-2009) and New York (2009).

By sharing openly your goal in a specific and quantified manner, the power of commitment and its effects on actions is thus clear from this study.  What is unexplored, but more than likely implicit in the finding is that committed runners will consciously and sub consciously look to run efficiently to meet or better their targets. 

In this story reprinted from the February 2016 issue of RUN Singapore, David Ng explores the debacle that enveloped the athletics scene when a series of scandals rocked the industry.

Reflection:

The end of a calendar and Lunar New Year presents a natural running coda. A chance to review your effort and to set new challenges. Whilst there may be some (or hopefully many) targets in the past year which have been reached, others may remain near or distant dreams. For those uncomfortable or driven by their unfulfilled goals, ask yourself:

Were your targets actually realistic? What can you action now to bring you closer to these goals? What sacrifices are you willing to make to improve your running potential?

Each individual has personal (running) goals, but what lengths should an individual resort to in their quest for achievement? We can be guided by personal circumstances and constraints, which define our resources available to achieve our limits. Redefining what we think our limits may be, and not setting preconceptions of what our limits may be, is perhaps the alluring attraction of being a runner.

With the ability to track our progress, and the wide availability of advice on coaching methods, running technique, diet and scientific knowledge that helps optimise potential, we love to run because of the possibility of achieving more. At the elite national and international level, this allure is magnified, with the prospect of prize money, recognition and adulation. Achieving success and podium recognition, or even higher ranking on medal tables are favoured ways to build national pride and national identity.

Broken Dreams:

Year 2015 in the sport of Track & Field has seen many examples of misguided goals, where the sacrifices beyond the norm have been made, and a several high profile scandals have been exposed. Whilst the temptation to cheat has perhaps always been there, the high profile nature of T&F World Championships, Olympic Games and the riches of the professional running and T&F circuit has increased the temptation to take short cuts. At a home level, money prize purses at most local races, notably the Singapore Marathon, Sundown Marathon and most other established local events inevitably increase the temptation to push legal limits.

With the ever increasing presence of depth in running talent, facilitated in part by the internationalisation of running events and the ability for running to be a way out of poverty for developing nation runners (with Kenya, Jamaica, Ethiopia being notable traditional hotbeds of talent), there is an endless supply of committed athletes. Meanwhile, the perennial powerhouses of the USA, Russia and China, where running also offers financial riches and nation defining pride at high profile competitions, pressure is perhaps sourced from governing bodies that need to give a return on funding.

Further fuelling of the prospect of dishonest behaviour in running at an international level is the importance of sponsorship contracts and the competitive nature of securing funding for national governing bodies of sports associations, and the professionalisation of the administration aspect of sports management, where non-runners gain a living from managing the sport and current runners.

Managing Realistic Targets:

One outcome of the increased money in running is the ranking on league tables at major T&F meets, be it international, regional (Asian games) or sub-regional level (SEA Games) being a key focus for many involved in the sport. In the case of the likes of leading track nations like Jamaica and Kenya, and the perennial powerhouses of Russia, the USA and China, national pride and the need in many instances to show a return on government subsidised training programmes to maintain funding is a driver for performance. League table performance can however be seen as a ‘meet specific’ target, which can be considered short term.  Such specific targets ignore a longer term approach which involves commitment and a grassroots funding to talent development to ensure a pipeline of new athletes are uncovered and properly engaged in the sport.

At the individual athlete level, development targets remain personal given the individual nature of running. Yet often individual goals are seen collectively and so intertwined with national and administrative goals.  With the aggregation of team (and national) targets, individual athletes are grouped to arrive at meet targets, having the effect of depersonalising individual goals.

The advent of various national level scandals and suggestions of systematic doping programs in the Russian athletic federation is currently the subject of ongoing investigations in France and Russia. Meanwhile, the Russian athletics federation has been suspended from competition indefinitely after the recent World Anti-Doping Agency report found evidence of state-supported doping of athletes.

This recent mess is in addition to the questions hanging over Lamine Diack, the immediate prior President of the IAAF amidst claims of bribery to supress the alleged Russian doping, for which the World Anti-Doping Agency (‘WADA’) report released in November 2015 found evidence that brings into serious question the London 2012 Olympic T&F results. The fallout is that multiple results are now about to be corrected to strike out medals won by now tainted athletes.

We live in an era of doubt when exceptional running performances are posted. The shadow of Ben Johnson from 1988, and the many other questionable results before and since that watershed running moment. The dangerous combination of money, misguided national agendas and intermediaries that include administrators, agents, coaches and the like who may be tempted to support short term goals at all costs is always going to be a challenge for vulnerable athletes who have at most 10 years to stay internationally competitive and achieve financial security.

Bandits, PEDs & Cheats:

2015 has been a busy year for negative press for the sporting world, with dishonesty, corruption and vested interests building even more notoriety in our sport. The non-exhaustive list includes the 2015 Nairobi marathon where a ‘bandit’ claimed second and for a time, the $7,000 prize money until he was exposed. Then there is the cloud over Kenyan athletics, with multiple suspensions being served by ‘winning’ athletes over recent years, being capped with the recent suspension in November 2015 of the Kenya Athletics President, whilst the IAAF investigates on subversion of the anti-doping procedures and possible misuse of funds.

This backdrop of doubt being raised about clean athletes and administrators compounds the even more damaging impact that the Union of Cycling Internationale (UCI) administration has had on professional cycling. The recent and long-running Performance Enhancing Drug (PED) controversies around the Tour de France, with Lance Armstrong at the centre, has surely pushed some spectators and athletes away from that sport.

The dilution of fundamental ethical values and the preference for pushing vested by administrators and the support staff of athletes is a key cause of creating environments which allow cheating via PEDs to occur. Whilst each individual athlete is consciously responsible for their own in-take, it is unlikely they could infringe without complicit knowledge and help from support staff. But at the core of doped athletes, what other factors drive them to take short cuts and cheat?

Values and Context:

Each guilty athlete is unique, and so it would be folly to generalise with broad statements. However, what is a common factor is the lack of regard for genuine achievement of long term goals. The temptation for elite athletes to boost performance by a few percentage points quickly is a crossroad that each cheat would have encountered. The decision to infringe on the values of fair-play to fellow competitors and one’s own integrity would have been trumped by doubts about their own abilities, training regime and prospects at that time. The decision to cheat would be with little regard for the long term goals and the prospect of taking a longer but untainted route to achieving their true potential.

PED cheats, be they athletes, administrators or coaches also forget about their responsibility to our great sport of running. They disregard the basic beauty of it being free, intuitive and within us all to run. They forget that it is our first sport as humans, and that it is the foundation of all sports given running is about agility, speed, endurance and persistence. They forget about the interrelationship of short goals and long term goals, and the beauty of testing and finding one’s natural limits, and then redefining them. For those PED cheats that remain unexposed, their achievements are of course equally tainted, and their relationship with running will be without spirit and authenticity.

So as you review your past year of running and set new-year targets, make them reflect your reality. Be honest with your targets, and then create ‘reach targets’ by knowing each short-term goal is linked to your long-term vision of what you can become as a runner. Whilst speed and endurance are favourite measures of your progress, consider also your wider credo, and what running achieves for your life-balance. Your willingness to sacrifice and deal with disappointment, and using that disappointment as motivation to get you back on the road the next day in your favourite running outfit is the essence of a truly dedicated runner.

Trust your running to bring out your best traits in the long run. Those that seek short-cuts feel uncomfortable with facing their running reality, and lack trust in the ability for running to bring out the best in themselves.