Posted on: September 15, 2006
Run this Way
Pavement hounds take note: there is a right way to lengthen your running career.
By Lisa Arnett
CTW Features
A competitive runner for much of his life, Chris Griffen had finally reached the end of the line: “I had always loved to run, but it got to a point where the enjoyment had gone out of it for me and I was getting injured on a regular basis,” Griffin laments.
Injuries spanned from the standard runner’s shin splints to calf pulls to a post-marathon stress fracture in his toe.
“I didn’t know what I was doing; I was reading what I thought were the right magazines, and they were just telling me how to go faster or build up mileage, but nothing about form or how to do it safely,” Griffin says.
Looking for answers, he hit the Internet and stumbled upon Chi Running, a technique focusing on alignment and body awareness to prevent injury.
“Running is another form of movement, but we’re never taught that; we think it’s a no-brainer. So when I came across this, I thought, wow, this could really help me not only focus my mind but also take [away] all that effort and impact I’d been experiencing with running in the past.”
Griffen took a clinic class taught by Chi Running creator Danny Dreyer in California’s Bay Area and was hooked. Four years later, Griffen is a master instructor on a team of more than 100 instructors teaching Dreyer’s technique around the world.
Running: It’s a Love-Hate Relationship
Like Griffen, most people have a love-hate relationship with running, citing everything from “It’s too much work” to “It’s bad for your knees.” However, it’s not the act of running that’s bad, says Dreyer, a runner for 35 years. It’s running with poor alignment and being unaware of it that causes problems.
During the ’90s, while training for ultramarathons and trying to achieve a more efficient running style, Dreyer started to lean forward slightly while running. “Every time I got passed late in a race, it was always by somebody leaning,” he says. “Every time I see little kids running around, they’re always falling forward. Kids run with a natural lean, but then adults don’t.”
Another element entered the equation in 1998 when a friend introduced Dreyer to Tai Chi.
“My Tai Chi instructor was working with me to create a central axis with my body around which my arms and legs [would] rotate in order to do the Tai Chi [exercise.] And I said, ‘Whoa, this feels good; I wonder if I can add a lean to that and put it into my running?’ And the next day I went out and tried it, and it was a huge light bulb for me.”
He returned home far less exhausted than after his routine runs and continued to work on developing a technique combining Tai Chi’s mental principles with an aligned but slightly leaning posture, which soon became known as Chi Running.
Still somewhat unheard of today, Dreyer’s technique started to take off as he started to offer classes in San Francisco in the early 2000s.
“People who had stopped running because their knees were bad, or their doctors told them to stop, or they had had knee surgery were getting back [into] running and they were loving it,” Dreyer says.
It’s Just that Basic
Traditional “power runners” run with an upright stance, relying solely on leg strength to propel them. Chi Running relies on the basic principles of correcting your posture to achieve proper body alignment for an efficient and safe running stance.
Chi Runners engage their core muscles to stabilize their posture-pelvis level, back straight, hips in line with knees and ankle, rather than focusing on using leg muscles to propel themselves. “The concept of lifting the knee up, pushing your foot forward, and pulling yourself with your foot along the ground, it is too much work,” says Los Angeles-based Chi Running master instructor Kathy Griest. This traditional running technique results in the heel striking the ground in front of the body with each step, providing a repeated impact that stresses the knees. Conversely, runners who use a sprinting technique and run on the balls of their feet overwork their calves and shins, Dreyer adds.
Hitting a balance between heel-striking and on-your-toes sprinting, Chi Running takes an aligned body and leans it forward slightly from the ankles, allowing most of the body to be in front of each foot as it hits the ground. Not only does this cause the middle of the foot to hit the ground with less impact, but the leaning motion also replaces leg propulsion with the natural falling motion of gravity “Your legs are only there for momentary support within strides, and gravity does the work,” Dreyer says. “It’s a controlled fall.”
The Mind-Body Connection
Dreyer’s incorporation of Tai Chi mental principles is what he hopes converts running from a sport into a practice. “Now [running] is a sport that’s goal-oriented, and people get injured that way. They go beyond what their body is capable of doing,” Dreyer says. “If you turn it into a practice, then every time you go out to do it, there is something you’re focusing on to improve your technique or yourself.”
Chi Running incorporates Tai Chi-like mental focus on the body’s workings, on holding correct posture and relaxing muscles not being used.
This mindful connection is likened to the calming nature of yoga or Tai Chi.
Traditional runners usually take one of two routes when it comes to their mental role in running, the most common is mind over body, Griffen says.
“I always said, I’m going to run five days a week, and I have to run this time and this distance and this speed, and [I] never checked in with my body. I just kinda used it,” he says. “Usually the only time I checked in with my body was when it was really loud; it was sore, injured or fatigued.”
On the opposite side of the spectrum, many see running as a mindless activity. “People [say,] ‘This is the only time I can space out and not think about anything.’ [I] realized that if I’m spacing out and not connected to my body the same time I’m using it, I shouldn’t be surprised if I’m getting injured.”
Rather than sporadically realizing bad form and recovering from it, a Chi Runner refreshes proper alignment constantly through continued mental focus. Renee Moore of Chicago has walked several marathons but started training with a running group with hopes of running a future marathon.
“I would start out running for maybe for a mile or so, end up totally spent, and then [have to] switch to my walking. I wanted to be able to be run without thinking, “I’ve gotta stop, I’ve gotta stop,” Moore says. “I would be winded, and I’d really have to pace myself. I know part of the reason was because I was going at their pace instead of mine.”
Moore took Chi Walking and Chi Running workshops, and the technique’s mental focus is the strongest factor in keeping her moving. She keeps a constant mental dialogue with herself to check her posture, lean and alignment, which she says has proved more effective than mental strategies she’s used in the past when she grew tired, like imagining her arms pulling two ropes to propel her along.
For Moore, adjusting to Chi Running’s gradual process has been the most challenging.
“The idea of doing something gradually instead of going all out and doing it is very challenging for me.”
But so far, she’s achieved her longest runs yet without aches or pains.
