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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Indiana

    Pose or Chi running

    Is anyone familiar with Pose or Chi running? Does it really help prevent injuries (particular in the knees)? Is it a mechanically and medically sound way to run? Over the past several years I have had problems with inflamation and pain in my knee, which has made it difficult for me to run with any regularity. (My doctor told me to wear a knee band which has helped.) Pose running sounds promising. Is it worth the effort to train myself how to Pose run or is this a medically questionable fad?

  2. #2
    I'm not sure about Chi Running, but I think Pose Running feels more natural. I'm not a long distance runner, never have been and never will be. I've been trying interval running rather than long distance running. I'm essentially sprinting for 30 seconds and taking 90 second breaks where I'm walking. During the sprints, I'm up on the balls of my feet.

    So far: no shin splints, no knee injuries, no pain other than the "good burn" from going all out.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, D.C.
    A little bit of information or knowledge can be dangerous. We all have a dominant eye and a dominant leg and they often coincide. ("So what, grey, we're talking about my knee here." Patience, we'll get there in a sec.)

    So, for some of us the dominant leg is really dominant. You want to know which one is your dominant leg, stand on one leg. Chances are, unless your knee is really, really hurting right now, you just stood on your dominant leg which, if I am right, is the one with the inflamed knee.

    The short of it. Your dominent leg will correspond to rigidity along the entire side of your body, as compared to the other side, on which the ribs will be much more flexible, much more susceptible to constricting and expanding.

    The chances are that your pelvis on the side of your dominant leg does not move up and down with the ease required to create the type of machine that you would want when stepping onto and pushing off your foot on the side that coincides with your inflamed knee. Improve the functioning of your pelvis, learn how to soften the ribs on that side, free the connection between your pelvis on that side and your shoulder blade on the other side, and your knee might improve.

    Or you can follow your doctor's advise.

    How to improve the movement of parts on your dominent side and the coordination of activity in your pelvis with what goes on in your upper torso on the other side of your body (the two are intertwined in all of us) takes some fun exploration over time.

    A visit to a good Practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method, the Feldenkrais Guild of North America can help you with that, and a single Functional Integration lesson, will give you some insight into whether my hypothesis, and that is all it is, has some vitality, or whether there is something else about how you organize yourself that can be improved that will put less undo and unnecessary pressure into your knee in running. You should be able to tell after one to three such lessons whether you would like to explore this system of self education. It can become a very enriching and enjoyable part of your movement regimines that will allow you choices in how you do what you want. Hope this helps.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, D.C.

    Addendum

    Here is a simple test. Have one of your running buddies or other friend help you with this little experiment.

    Sit in a regular folding chair towards the front. You want a flat surface. You definitely do no want your pelvis tilted back. Sit with your feet flat on the floor with your legs a normal comfortable distance apart, in line with your hips more or less.

    Have your friend sit on a chair about a foot or so in front of you and then move his or her chair so their middle is aligned with the knee of one leg, let's say the right. What we are going to want is for them to use their body, staightening their spine to lift that leg up as far as it goes easily, they will be able to notice when what is "easy" changes as will you.

    The way they would do this is to have their left arm hang down and extend beside and below the lower part of your upper thigh just above your knee on your right side, the part that extends out from the chair. They would extend the other arm, right arm, on the inside of your right leg and interlace the fingers of the two hands to form a loop. As they extend their back to a more vertical position, the sling they have formed will lift your thigh, and lower leg from your hip joint, part of which is your pelvic bone. Have them do this several times.

    It is important that they exert no undo force. This is not an exercise about proving your range of motion, It is an experiment to show the extent to which one hip joint/pelvis, easily lifts and the other doesn't.

    If my guess is correct, using exactly the same amount of minimal force on each thigh, one thigh and leg will not budge off the ground, while the other will lift so that the foot at least begins coming off the ground. Chances are, that leg would be the one that has the inflamed knee.

    If I were the person doing this little experiement, I would do some easy things with your leg/hip/pelvis on the side that is more available for movement that will take over the movement that you do using the vectors that you do them in. I would combine this with something similar with your arm/shoulder, ribs on the opposite side.

    After 5 minutes or so, we would go back to the experiment. First to the leg that lifted easiest. You will see some improvement. Then we would then go to the leg that did not lift at all. You would swear it was magic. Cheers!

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Indiana
    Quote Originally Posted by 2535Miles View Post
    I'm not sure about Chi Running, but I think Pose Running feels more natural. I'm not a long distance runner, never have been and never will be. I've been trying interval running rather than long distance running. I'm essentially sprinting for 30 seconds and taking 90 second breaks where I'm walking. During the sprints, I'm up on the balls of my feet.

    So far: no shin splints, no knee injuries, no pain other than the "good burn" from going all out.
    Apparently, Chi running has similar mechanics to Pose running. If I am understanding Pose running correctly, it involves landing on and lifting from the metatarsus area of the foot as opposed to landing on the heel and rolling the foot forward.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Indiana
    Quote Originally Posted by greybeard View Post
    A little bit of information or knowledge can be dangerous. We all have a dominant eye and a dominant leg and they often coincide. ("So what, grey, we're talking about my knee here." Patience, we'll get there in a sec.)

    So, for some of us the dominant leg is really dominant. You want to know which one is your dominant leg, stand on one leg. Chances are, unless your knee is really, really hurting right now, you just stood on your dominant leg which, if I am right, is the one with the inflamed knee.

    The short of it. Your dominent leg will correspond to rigidity along the entire side of your body, as compared to the other side, on which the ribs will be much more flexible, much more susceptible to constricting and expanding.

    The chances are that your pelvis on the side of your dominant leg does not move up and down with the ease required to create the type of machine that you would want when stepping onto and pushing off your foot on the side that coincides with your inflamed knee. Improve the functioning of your pelvis, learn how to soften the ribs on that side, free the connection between your pelvis on that side and your shoulder blade on the other side, and your knee might improve.

    Or you can follow your doctor's advise.

    How to improve the movement of parts on your dominent side and the coordination of activity in your pelvis with what goes on in your upper torso on the other side of your body (the two are intertwined in all of us) takes some fun exploration over time.

    A visit to a good Practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method, the Feldenkrais Guild of North America can help you with that, and a single Functional Integration lesson, will give you some insight into whether my hypothesis, and that is all it is, has some vitality, or whether there is something else about how you organize yourself that can be improved that will put less undo and unnecessary pressure into your knee in running. You should be able to tell after one to three such lessons whether you would like to explore this system of self education. It can become a very enriching and enjoyable part of your movement regimines that will allow you choices in how you do what you want. Hope this helps.
    You are correct about which knee is giving me problems. I may look into the Feldenkrais Method.

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