writings: ARTICLES
"Fine Tune Your Running" By Ian Jackson (Runner's World, January 1981)
To fine-tune your running, you've got to "tune in." You must feel your running. By learning to fit your breathing into your footsteps, you can increase your awareness while on the run. In an unusual article, Ian Jackson explains how a certain feeling, achieved by "tuning in" can enable you to run with better balance, efficiency, and power.
Marathon on the silver screen. It's 1964. A movie theatre in Hawaii. I'm watching the Tokyo Olympiad. Abebe Bikila in slow slow motion.
Entranced. Dark profile. Ebony skin on an angular, bony face. The faint glow of a glazed eye.
Forehead and nose—temple, cheek, and chin-glistening. Gathering in the cleft of the chin, glistening there, a drop of sweat. Trickling down the forehead, trickling down the cheek, gathering in the cleft, the drop grows bigger. It hangs. It sways a little. Fascinating to watch.
It shows the rhythm of the footfall. The drop stretches down, then shrinks back into itself, step after step. It keeps coming close to release, but somehow hangs on and pulls back. In slow motion, it stretches and shrinks till its weight pulls it free. In slow motion, another drop begins to form. I follow the glistening, drop after drop— forming and falling, falling and forming. Each grows so heavy before it falls. How is it possible, I wonder, to run so smoothly that they hang so long?
Drying Salt
It's haunting me the day after: run so smoothly that they hang so long. How is it possible?
A late north swell at Waimea Bay. The surf's so big, it’s almost closing out. Straddling my board, straight backed with eyes held high, I'm scanning the horizon.
The sun burns heavy on my back, drying a network of salt. The salt clings to my pores, shrinking as it dries. With each inbreath, it pulls gently across my back. As the ribcage opens with each inbreath, it stretches the skin so I can feel the network. As it closes with each outbreath, the feeling fades. I lie down on the board and paddle, very slowly. My inbreath seems to lift my arms and carry them forward, low to the water. My outbreath seems to push my palms back, to put muscle on the water beneath the board. Strange: now I feel the salt on the outbreath, and the feeling fades on the inbreath.
On the inbreath, my arms glide easily over the water. On the outbreath, they push back against it. Recovery on the inbreath, effort on the outbreath. Smooth breathing and smooth movement. Run so smoothly that they hang so long.
I look back to the horizon and fear flutters awaken me. The approaching swells are already big beyond belief. The salt is there no more. All I feel is the urgent work of powerful muscle.
Smooth Breathing, Movement
It's 1972. This marathon is on no silver screen. It’s about to happen inside me. A California spring morning. The sun barely warms us. It’s the West Valley Marathon, with a big pre-running-boom crowd of 300. We're waiting for the gun.
We go when it goes. The noise of the gun and the sound of running feet. I take it easy on myself, dawdling along at the back of the pack. To cover 26 miles as fast as possible, my breathing and movement must be finely tuned, my running must be polished. I want to waste as little energy as possible.
So I start slowly and take time to tune my awareness to the running. I use the rhythm of my footsteps to smooth my breathing. Four steps to breathe in; four steps to breathe out. Eight steps for each breath cycle, breath after breath; eight-step cycles, over and over. The flow of the breathing is a metronomic mantra that patterns the run.
Working with my toes brings my focus to my feet. I press the tops of my toes up against the forefoot nylon. I wiggle my toes in the forefoot space. I curl them into the forefoot insole.
I try to balance the feelings and the sounds of the footsteps. I isolate my footsounds from those around me. I make them a little louder, just to prove to myself that I can change things. Then I make them a little softer, and softer still, and very soft. I can no longer hear my footsteps: they are drowned in the sound around them.
I imagine that my skull is dangling from a skyhook, my spine dangling from the skull, weighted down with ribcage and pelvis, arms and legs. The more clearly I focus the image, the lighter I feel.
I take time to relax my shoulders and balance my armswing. The more deeply I am absorbed in the feelings, the more smoothly I run. I notice that I am passing people steadily, as if moving in a different dimension where gravity is eased. I run easily to a 2:33 PR. The twelve who finish before me all break 2:30. Don Kardong runs a first marathon of 2:18.
The next day, my legs are so tight, I have to walk backwards downstairs.
No Movement
It’s 1974. I’m sitting on the living room rug in a forward-bending stretch. My interlaced fingers are pulling back against the soles of my feet like a single stirrup. It’s been over a year since I started yoga. Back then, I was so tight I could reach my fingertips only midway between between my knees and the floor. Now I stretch down and wrap my hands around my feet. It feels good to be loose.
I am absolutely motionless. I feel steady stretching along my back and behind my legs. As I breathe in, I can feel the belly against the tops of my thighs—smooth skin pressing against hairy skin. As I breathe out, the contact fades. By letting my head hang down on the inbreath, I can set up an intense glow of warmth in my lower back. I can't release it completely without turning the warmth into heat and then pain. To keep the warmth at an enjoyable level, I have to lift my head to a precise level.
So I lift my head a little as I breathe in, and the warmth in the lower back fades. Then I drop my head down a little as I breathe out, and hold it where I can enjoy the feeling of the stretch. It's a soft and steady spreading, up the spine and on both sides of it.
I'm halfway through an intended ten breaths when the quality of feeling changes. There's something added, but at first I can't identify it. There's the smooth warmth of the stretching muscles, the measured rhythm of slow breathing, the consciousness of their connection, and something else. Something is flowing around my stillness like water around a sandcastle, melting it into movement.
Music and Movement
It's the sound of music, as if at a great distance. Harpsichord and violins. In the upstairs apartment, there's a rich and joyful lilting. For me, it's muted by the ceiling. Because it seems just beyond my reach, I want to draw it closer. The subtleties of muffled music tantalize me, so I listen with all of me, trying to make it mine.
Not just with ears, but with smooth breathing and stretching muscles. I let my breath flow naturally into the phrases of the music, and I let the flow of the music melt my muscles into movement. I let myself become entranced.
The music stops and I am awakened. Something tells me there's something missing from my world—I realize that all I have now it breathing and silence. A vague sense of loss, a sudden ache of loneliness, then surprise that I stretched so long and enjoyed it so much, then hunger for more, then greed.
And then embarrassment, and relief that no one was watching. In a pleasant perplexity, I try to remember how it happened, and how good it felt. I realize that I have just lost a lifetime's inhibition about moving to music. I've just been surprised into freedom. I have to move with this feeling.
I step into my shorts and running shoes. Out the door for a run. The air is cool, the sunlight muted. I let harpsichord and violin breathe me and move me. A concrete sidewalk, buckled and cracked, floating over it in a smooth run.
Muted music. Listening with all of me makes me run with all of me. I’m afraid of it but I want more—music, movement, dance.
Dancer in Disguise
It's 1975. A dance studio in Palo Alto, California. I step back from the doorway as a class files out. Barres along the side and back walls, mirrors across the front. Polished light on the hardwood floor. I feel a little insecure about being here.
By staring at the mirrors, I can watch without appearing to watch. Skintight nylon on naked skin, slender torsos, muscular legs. Soft leather slippers, white and pink, brushing the hardwood floor. I wish there were at least one other man here. I have suddenly become very shy, and I’m furious at my ears for blushing. The ballet slippers fit and my running shoes don't. Nor do my hairy legs, torn shorts, and sweat-stained T-shirt. Maybe I don't fit here.
My decision to study and play with dance is recent. The struggle between my love of movement and my fear of male-dancer stereotypes is still with me. I’m wearing a disguise: I'm a runner exploring an unusual way of improving; I'm an athlete in search of body awareness. To save myself from being labeled "a pansy in tights," I have decided, starting with this first class, to run to and from the studio, seven miles each way. How this type of display is supposed to save me I don't really know. But I'm here, and I'm feeling more comfortable in my running disguise than I would in tights and leotard.
I stand in the back row, close to the door. If at any moment I am overwhelmed by my fear of being conspicuously out of place, I have a ready exit. The class starts, and I begin to learn about plies, demi-plies, the articulation of the feet, the muscular center, balance, isolations, and rhythm.
By the time it ends, I feel tired, bewildered, and excited. My strength, flexibility, and coordination have been challenged. My body feels different. My hips feel oiled and my belly feels strong. I'm wondering how those seven miles home are going to feel.
It's dark outside and the air is cold. The first thing I notice is that my feet feel somehow different. The change is not dramatic (perhaps it’s just my imagination), but I think my feet are softer and stronger on the pavement, and (it may be wishful thinking) I think my running is a little smoother. I feel like a jungle cat, moving like a shadow on rubber paws. The more I surrender to the feelings, the more I realize how profound the changes are. There seems to be more clarity in my movement. Somehow, I know how to float better. I feel lighter, more balanced, more graceful. When I first notice the grace, I get worried and let myself move more clumsily again. Then the fear (of being thought effeminate) seems ridiculous, so I let grace back into the run and enjoy the power it brings.
I am home in no time. So concentrated was I in the movement of running that the miles just slipped by. What a revelation! I run to class feeling good, I attend class, I run home feeling even better. Running to class is easy; running from class is easier. The dance class sharpens my awareness in striking ways. The improvement amazes me. I hope it happens again.
And it does, and not just once in a while, but often. Heightened awareness is more the rule than the exception. Most of the time, the contrast is there: good running to class, smooth and polished on the way home. Each class seems to set me up for a beautiful run.
I enjoy the classes so much, and they seem to make such a difference in my running, that it's only a few weeks before my enthusiasm conquers my shyness. I drop the runner/athlete disguise and start wearing tights and leotard to class. There I change into ballet slippers so that I can get a better feel for the floor.
The smooth stretch of nylon on skin is an (inner) eye-opener. I can feel my buttocks, back, and belly. I can feel my legs. The dance clothes help me feel my body, and that helps me learn about movement faster.
They also help by changing my self-image. Dressed as an athlete, I dance awkwardly, stiffly; I run with more power than grace. Dressed as a dancer, I move (and run) with light fluidity. It’s as if grace amplifies power.
The Pelvic Pump
It's 1976. The same dance class, different me. My self-image does flip-flops between dancer and runner. I wonder which is which. Then, though this incredible class, the wondering stops. It no longer matters. Before I'm a dancer, or runner, or both, I'm a breather. Before anything and everything, I'm a breather.
This is the class that leads to the discovery of the Pelvic Pump and its muscular-breathing patterns for power and fine-tuning (and relaxation, stress-play, problem-solving, creativity, filling certain needs…). This is the class that points the way to running so smoothly that they hang so long.
It's the last section of the class. Warmed up and tuned in, we're ready to play with combinations. And tonight we get a new one. It’s a playfully sexy series of four-step walks—forward, backward, to the left, and to the right. The pelvis rocks forward and backward. The hips rock side to side. The teacher makes it look exciting when she dances it. I know my body is flexible enough, but I'm not so sure about my mind.
Rock the pelvis forward so the buttocks tuck under; rock it back so they stick out. Rock forward, rock back, listen with the body, feel the beat, rock to the beat.
Keep rocking and take steps to the beat. Put the weight on the foot and rock forward; bring the other foot through and rock back. Then weight on the other foot and
rock the pelvis forward again. Rock it back as the first foot comes through. Walking in erotic undulations. It looks like a mating ritual of some kind. The class is shy about it for a while and then suddenly everyone gets outrageously uninhibited. Twenty wild women and one wild man.
I let myself go and the rhythm is strong in my body. I want it to last. There's the music, there's the movement, and there's something else just begging to be noticed. It won't be ignored. What is it? It feels too obvious, too close to be known.
Suddenly it's there; I feel it and hear it at the same time. As the pelvis rocks forward, the breath is forced out; as it rocks back, fresh air is drawn in. It triggers memories. Abebe Bikila and dangling sweat. Waimea Bay and drying salt. Smooth breathing and smooth movement. I wonder if I can rock my pelvis as I breathe and run. Something tells me to take the long way home.
I am thankful for the darkness. As soon as I can, I turn down a side street and start playing. The intuition is strong—I know I'm on to something.
I know it, but it doesn't come easy. For the first few hundred yards, my body feels tangled in some arthritic fertility dance. I feel like a square wheel trying to roll. Not only that—my lower back begins to hurt. I let the pelvic rock go and slow to a walk to sort things out.
Why did that forward thrust force air out? And why can't I make it work in running? Asking the questions points to the answers. Understanding is immediate.
As the pelvis rocks forward, the belly drops back as if folding from a punch. I rock forward by contracting my abdominal wall. The contraction pulls the pubic bone up as it pulls the lowest ribs down and in. It simultaneously increases pressure in the abdominal cavity and makes the ribcage smaller.
The pressure is greater and the ribcage is smaller. This combination helps dome the diaphragm up higher into the undersides of the lungs. The more-corseted torso provides a fuller excursion of the diaphragm and a more complete outbreath. And a more complete outbreath means a higher volume inbreath. We breathe in as much as we first breathe out. This has got to make a big difference in running.
To integrate it with the running movement, I’ve got to make it subtler. Instead of a pelvic rock, I'll need a gentle pelvic tilt. Instead of a full tilt (forward and back), I'll need only a forward half tilt. Eliminating the back tilt will eliminate the lower back pain.
So I'm going to think of squeezing the air out by contracting the abdominal wall. I'm going to let that contraction pull down on the bottom of the breastbone and up on the top of the pubic bone. I’m going to release that contraction when the air's all out so that the body opens in recoil from closure, without effort. Nature abhors a vacuum. I'll let the inbreath become a rebound from the outbreath. I'll just rest, relax, and let myself be filled.
I'll reverse the breathing pattern of a lifetime; instead of an active inbreath and a passive outbreath, I’ll practice an active outbreath and a passive inbreath. Effort when I'm breathing out, relaxation when I'm breathing in. Waimea Bay, paddling for position, float the hands forward with the inbreath, plunge them backwards with the outbreath. This is going to feel different.
Naked in the Dark
I stand so I cast no shadow, directly under a streetlamp. I squeeze my body, from bottom to top, pulling the belly button back towards the spine, then pulling the breastbone down and back. And as I hear the air pressured out, I feel my pubic bone tilting subtly but strongly up. That familiar erotic movement. Suddenly I feel naked in the dark.
There's no one around to see me. The movement is too subtle, anyway, to draw attention. Why do I feel that I'm doing something wrong? How could something so natural, so easy, so very pleasurable, be wrong?
When I feel myself sufficiently absorbed in the breathing, I start walking. I fit my footsteps in, four to the outbreath and four to the inbreath. On the last step of the outbreath, I force out the last of the air with a gently emphatic sound.
To help myself feel the rhythm of the breathing, I put steps into it, and sound. I let the breathing feel as if each step forces more air out, or lets more in. I begin to hear words in my head, with one syllable to each footstep: "Squee-eeze-ow-out, Ree-ee-lax-in. Squee-eeze-ow-out, Ree-ee-lax-in…."
A couple of blocks of that hypnotic rhythm—the interweaving of breathing and movement—and I'm beginning to feel that I'm being breathed down the street. I notice that the emphatic last step of the outbreath is always on the right foot. The feeling reminds me that my right leg has been most frequently injured. I wonder if I am creating some kind of imbalance.
I begin breathing in over three steps instead of four—which leads to the emphatic last step of the outbreath switching sides. By anticipating the switch, by knowing exactly how the breathing fits with the footsteps, I am somehow making the walking feel a lot easier. My awareness of the rhythm allows me to relax into it and release its energy. Even more than before, I feel breathed down the street.
I let myself open into a slow run, increasing the airflow with the same 4/3 pattern by increasing the outbreath effort. It’s easy. The breathing seems to be doing the running for me. I change the words slightly so that what I hear now in my head brings the switch-side outbreath more clearly into my awareness. Four syllables out, three syllables in: "Bre-eathe-out-left, Ree-lax-in. Bre-eathe-out-right, Re-lax-in…."
I play with it all the way home, letting the rhythm float me through the darkness. In the last few miles, I begin to notice that I seem to surge slightly with each outbreath. It's as if the outbreath power boost adds enough momentum into my run to let me relax on the inbreath. And that's not the only contrast I feel with my breathing. Wherever in my running body I focus my awareness, there is a subtle difference between breathing out and breathing in. Contracting, squeezing my torso on the outbreath sets up a different footfall for the outbreath steps, a different arc for the outbreath armswings, a different feeling in the shoulders, in the lower back, in the chest, and in the neck.
After a lifetime of running, I've discovered an inner eye to help me explore what it's all about.
Searching for Meaning
It’s 1980. Years of learning and teaching have followed that first night of discovery. Dangling sweat and drying salt are related to the fine-tuning of running because they triggered the insights that lead to the discovery, learning, and teaching.
There is so much to tell. I can only scratch the surface here. I know, too, how difficult it is to teach breathing and movement through the written word. It can be difficult to teach even in the ideal situation—with an attentive teacher and frequent repetition. I remember, for instance, wondering what on earth the ballet teacher was talking about. How was I supposed to "open up the front of the hip joints," or "connect the belly to the spine"?
The words have no meaning until you can experience them. One day, you are surprised by a feeling of opening in the front of the hip joints. On another day, you are delighted to feel a definite muscular connection between the belly and the spine. And once you have those experiences, it’s easier to believe that all the other feelings the teacher is talking about will someday come. You’ll know how to "hold on to your back," and "balance with the inner thigh muscles."
Just knowing the words does you no good at all, but searching for their meanings within your own body can work wonders.
Of course, you don"t need words from ballet training. You need words you can use to fine-tune your running. The principle is the same, though, and to head off frustration ("I tried what you said and nothing happened!"), I have to let you know that the learning will be slow, and that it's a matter of feeling, not of nice sounding formulas.
Feeling Your Running
We all feel our running, but we deal with the feelings in different ways. Research shows, for instance, that the average runner tunes out the feelings. He or she does not know how to deal with the feelings, let alone how to use them to fine-tune running technique. The average runner tends to dissociate—that is, to focus attention somewhere else. Rather than feeling those aching thigh muscles, for instance, the average runner will think about a favorite teacher or an upcoming party.
The elite runner is different in that he or she tunes in the feelings. Research shows that the elite runner tends to associate; that is, to pay close attention to all the feedback sensations from the running body. The elite athlete welcomes the feelings. Knowing how to make good use of those feelings, the elite athlete is unafraid of them. The elite runner does not want to dissociate those feelings because they are an essential part of bringing smooth efficiency to running technique.
So when I speak of learning how to feel your running, I am talking about the kind of feeling that plays such an important part in the extraordinary performances of the elite. I am talking about the kind of feeling that will enable you to run with better balance, efficiency, and power. I am talking about feeling that has been organized, patterned, and simplified by a special way of paying attention.
If you reread the account of my run home from that dance class, you'll notice that I was organizing my feelings in two basic ways—by sameness and contrast. The sameness was in the repetitive breathing patterns—three steps for the outbreath and two for the inbreath, or five out and two in, or four out and three in, or whatever the work rate demanded.
The contrast was in the difference between the breathing out and the breathing in. The feeling of the contraction, or squeezing, of the outbreath is distinctly different from the feeling of the relaxation, or releasing, of the inbreath. The outbreath generates the feeling of surging, whereas the inbreath generates the feeling of floating. The outbreath generates the feelings of the increased cross swing, the closing of the ribcage, the flattening of the belly, and the upstretch of the spine.
As you learn to fit your breathing into your footsteps, and to sense the contrasts between the two phases of each breath cycle, you will be developing the habits of association, the habits of tuning in that are important success skills of elite athletes. Your awareness of what your running is all about will be automatically expanded and refined as you search for the feelings I have described.
Experience tells me that you will learn faster if you treat this search as a game to be played when you feel interested in doing so. Some people get the impression I am telling them how to run when I am simply describing an approach to sharpening awareness. As you sharpen your awareness, your running will improve. In this sense, ways of sharpening awareness are fine-tuning techniques.
You have here some simple but powerful ways of getting that sharpening process started. You can play with odd-count breath cycles, noting the way that each outbreath ends on the opposite side from the one before it. You can also make the outbreath active instead of the inbreath. If you come back to these awareness games again and again, you'll be amazed how much your body learns. I have been playing with these games, and with many others, for years, and the rate of learning increases over time. Running is always fascinating because I am always wondering what the next discovery is going to be. It is never a boring routine.
One of these days you might notice sweat trickling down your face and gathering in a drop hanging from your chin. You might breathe many breath cycles before that drop takes on enough weight to drop free. You would then know in your own body how it's possible to run so smoothly that they hang so long. And you'd realize that your breathing is the key—your feeling the breathing in the movement, as I first felt it in the drying salt.