 posted Sep-19-2005 01:50 PM
   
Tigger,We have a lot to learn from animals. Why do you call yourself Tigger anyway? What connection do you make with Tigger to better explain yourself? My connection simply goes a lot deeper. While most feel animals beneath them, I’m willing to humble myself and learn from them. The four legs VS two legs is the most common response to my studying animals for running observations I hear. Second most popular comment is “Can I smoke some of that?” But the world’s fastest running animal has four legs and I can’t change that. While most humans pay thousands of dollars to have running coaches, not one of them could beat a cheetah in a race or an antelope for any distance race. My question was very simple; what’s the difference between the cheetah and their prey that also have four legs? They don’t look the same, nor do they run the same. So what separates their skills and can I apply that difference to my own running style is a valid question, don’t you think? It’s not a common question, but why haven’t others asked the same thing. If I were the only one to think of the human animal connection, I’d say fine. But in the science world, biomimicry is considered one of the newest frontiers of research. And the whole point for me is that the women of Kenya and other tribes in Africa as well have been studying animals with great success. They walk like cats. That’s the whole tie in this for me.
The number of legs doesn’t matter, a cheetah is the still the world’s fastest runner. I’m just willing to let them teach me how they do it. The women of Africa also respected their skills and adapted their running advantage to carrying their firewood. To placate the number of leg argument, I offered the story of the Theropod, a monstrous two-legged dinosaur. It doesn’t matter to me, if they’re good, then I’ll humble myself and learn. Humans look to races in minutes, meters, and miles. Mother Nature measures her races in millions of years. So looking to other animals for athletic inspiration to me was the opportunity simply to ask why any animal living today is alive in the first place. What race of survival did they win, and why? The cheetah is the world’s fastest runner and horses can run extreme distances. There are a wide variety of horse species, but only one thoroughbred. What separates them? They all have four legs, but very subtle differences in running technique. Do you look at birds as competing in the race for survival? My world is much more philosophical in nature (no pun intended), yet as stated I got tired of reading the same things in running books over and over again. My joke is that books and articles of running technique seems to be the only form of writing immune from plagiarism laws for prosecution. We’ve walked and run the same way for 3.7 million years. The women of Kenya were the first documented blip of change in that fact and I wanted to know why. I wanted to learn and write something new. So for me, I’m just putting it out there, that this planet is full of some incredible athletes that we’ve simply ignored out of some mysterious egotism. I just wanted to find out what I could learn from any athlete, regardless of sport or number of legs they have that I might be able to apply to my own sport skills. Grasshoppers have taught me to skate, snakes taught me to row, octopuses taught me how to throw a baseball, and cats, horses, and dinosaurs are my running coach. My teachers may have more legs or even no legs at all, but each is simply the best at what they do and I appreciate them for their skills and (obviously) stand alone in willingness to apply their skills to my sports. Hey, aren’t you glad that you’ll never know what you read from me instead of “been there, done that.” And I’m not the only one to think my way. That’s what’s so unique to me. As Africa is home to an incredible variety of animals, the women of Kenya observed the same thing I did long before I did. Why are they so efficient? It’s because they walk like cats. We push our weight, and cats pull theirs forward. The women of Africa simply have the same teacher I do, and that's why I can explain them, while the "experts" can't. As to your stride statement, yes it’s natural for humans, but why let natural stride limit yourself. What determines your stride and what determines the stride length of other runners regardless of species is my thought process. My question was how to maximize it naturally and that’s why I run like a dinosaur. Humans determine stride length at push off like you said, but that’s our efficiency downfall. The energy cost is that we push ourselves up higher and risk over striding upon landing. The energy we waste landing is what gives a cat its biomechanic skill as the world’s fastest runner. Have you ever watched a cat stalk in your neighborhood? Did you notice that they keep their hips and shoulders as close to the ground as possible as they creep along the ground? Humans push themselves up to improve their stride length while felines drop their bodies closer to the ground to improve their stride length. That’s why I’ve been documented to walk at speeds exceeding 9mph. And to do it, my hips drop to the ground to increase my stride and trust me, I pull like h***. A feline based running technique gets rid of increased bodyweight impact. Which would you choose knowing the difference? That’s why cats are the world’s most efficient and therefore fastest runners. And that’s what the women of Africa have figured out as well. I just see it and I’m just describing it. After watching cats slink to the ground, how to drop your hips to increase stride length for a two-legged animal was my question. The answer came from my Theropod running coach. Read the nature article I’ve mentioned and you’ll have a better interpretation of Laura walking and running and why she’s doing it that way. A 163 million-year-old athlete that’s still in the survival race is something I admire, and reason enough for me to learn from them. If a Theropod is obviously one of the few athletes winning the race of survival through adaptation as they're the ones that first developed feathers, then why can't we adapt a new running gait to keep racing as well? For the Theropod, the shift of parallel to linear running gets rid of the need for any counterbalance of the tail and most importantly, rotation of the hip structure. Think of a very long garden hose being held in the middle… If your grasp starts oscillating the hose in the middle, then you’ll create a wave in both directions from your hand, not just in one direction. Which is why your tail as counterbalance statement is incomplete. The Therapod, at 30 ft. long with 6 ft legs if you can imagine, has the same problem of the garden hose. Hip rotation is cause of it’s body and tail wave creations. So to run without any tail or body motion, it changed its gait cycle to centerline running or centerline thrust in shift to a linear running gait eliminating hip rotation. Only its solution was to simply to get rid of any hip rotation in the middle of its body. This animal, regardless of length, had no tail swing at all. It’s entire body ran with a perfectly straight body posture. And that may have been a factor in its survival today. In humans mimicking this dinosaur means being able to walk and run with no counterbalance arm swing. That Victor was willing to risk his reputation to publish my article and get this idea out there as its first real publishing, is my appreciation to him. So that’s just a first step for me. Sedentiary,
Well if space aliens that came across the galaxy and walked up to you with my technique before inserting your probe would that satisfy you?
The people who do listen to me are the ones with back pain (because it gets rid of hip rotation), knee pain (because it takes the pressure off the kneecap), and ones with plantar faciitis (because with no linear rise, there is no pressure to the plantar tendons). So the injured love what I do, now I’m simply going after the racers for the same reasons. I’ve been teaching this for five years with surgical rehab patients and they enjoy, appreciate, and recommend me to others in the same situation. I agree that if you weren’t in pain, then why would you listen to a dork like me. Because for the same reason this is a more comfortable way to walk and run for surgical patients, it’s a faster way to run for the healthy ones. I would love to do more formal studies, but for now, this video is the best I could do. What Laura does prove is that my technique is teachable, which is most important because it demonstrates that there are principles of physics applied that are reproducible. Hopper, Yes the cow story was a joke… I just wanted to see if you were able to appreciate a bit of humor. What I do hope you get out of it is that treamill training is a very new frontier in athletes of multiple legs, so don’t dismiss what they can teach you. Horses on treadmills powered factories in the early days of the industrial revolution and that’s the story behind horsepower as a definition of motor output in your car. Did you know that? And yes training with treadmills isn’t Kentucky Derby normality, but like I said, experts said that surgeons didn’t need to wash their hands either. New ideas take time to adapt. But in humans, treadmills can be a torture devise of miles of running boredom, or a very unique tool that can improve your balance skills to save wasted energy, or strength development to improve gait turnover efficiency. That perspective is why treadmills are used for surgical rehabilitation for horses and why humans ignore them. Water emersed treadmills for horses were first used in rehabilitation, and that’s where it’s growing from. In fact water emersed treadmills are now found in swimming pools for human post surgical recovery, so new ideas can go both ways. My goal is simply to offer a different perspective of training techniques that you and many others probably haven’t thought of trying. And putting that to use is your choice. Working with Tom Ivers may not meet your standards of horse trainer, but he was willing to let me come into his barn and find out my peak running speed because I could already outrun a 12mph human treadmill. I was also allowed to put on a pair of rollerblades and skate on a horse treadmill to make a training video. I have a lot of people call me crazy, but Tom was willing to let me do something out of his norm as well as spend time to introduce me to his world that I knew little of. You still haven’t told me the name of any horse you’ve trained, so I take your criticisms with a grain of salt (around my margarita glass). Tom allowed me into his world to watch, and learn how a horse runs from a three feet away perspective. He taught me their training goals in terms of what muscles of a horse are important in their running biomechanics and how to maximize the stride length of a 1200lb animal. He’s written books on horse training and I still don’t know the title of your books on the subject. The muscles racehorse trainers develop either by ground running or treadmills is no different. Treadmills simply offer another variable proving even cows that train with treadmills can beat cows that don’t train on them which is a point in itself. I’m not writing this to express an expertise in training horses. For me it’s about how a horse runs, and how we can apply that to humans. I find it interesting that no racehorse trainers have published a book for humans to follow, because developing speed in a horse is far more sophisticated than it is for humans. Tom Ivers showed me his world and introduced me to a runner that demonstrated how humans can use our glutes better and more efficiently, and horses simply showed me how they do it. Cats are simply more efficient in how they use their hamstrings more efficiently than humans, but only the women of Africa seem to have figured that out until Victor published my work. Some people think themselves above having a running coach with four legs or 163 million years old, but from them I’ve developed an appreciation for how these animals have survived a race of millions of years in duration. Your best race hasn’t lasted more than a few hours I’m assuming. So this is new for most people to read, I accept that. But if you can find me a faster runner than a cheetah, point me in that direction and I’ll make them my new running coach. If you can find me a better distance runner than a 1200lb horse or antelope, then I’ll fully give them my attention to learn from them too. I’m not looking to details of who trains and what horses train to run. I wanted to know how these animals survived the race of evolution and extinction and figure out how to apply that to humans. If you think I’m nuts, then fine, walk away and I won’t feel insulted, but for those who might be interested in the principles of physics that separate the cats from any other four legged animal, that you can copy, then I’ll keep writing. If you want the skills from a distance coach of an animal that can run incredible distances for their size at speeds that amaze me, then please keep reading. New ideas usually scare people, and I’ve taken that in stride. But for those few who might say hmmmm, I’ve never thought of that perspective, then I’ve met my goals in doing this. And the best part is that I’ve had the exact same conversations with the biomechanic scientists at Nike, and they’ve invited me into their laboratory to have my technique formally studied. That’s the difference in some people. Victor gave my writing an opportunity for others to read that few would accept. Because of him, I’m walking onto the world of the best biomechanics in the world of sports. I just guess real scientists view my work a little differently than you do. It just takes a different perspective to understand what you’re reading. I guess that’s why you’re definitely no scientist.
IP: Logged |
Touche'
