Get Your Motor Runnin'

Hi, I'm Miriam Kane. Thank you for joining me. As we continue our dialogue regarding running free and the tools that are needed to do so today we're going to be addressing the pelvis and the role that it plays in running free. I'm not much of a difference since in our bodies and our physiques since our ancestors who ran apparently quite a bit as they either rand afford their dinner or to prevent being dinner and ourselves who really don't need to run, but maybe we still do for joy. What can we do to take our lifestyle issues, any race, the problems that that may cause. Let's take a look at that. So we were designed to run. I believe that wholeheartedly.

If you just look at the human body, we um, addressed the ankle foot complex just recently and the little springs that we have all through our bodies, the Achilles tendon and how the plants are flasher creates a little trampoline for us to be able to be propelled forward. And we discussed the elastic recoil of that and how that can be up to 35 to 50% of free energy. Well, today we're going to look at the glutes and the kind of the amount of energy that can be generated from those very strong muscles. So if we think of the gait cycle, let's look at that first. When we are walking, we go from a foot strike, whether we're walking or running us, we have foot strike, a running stride. Typically we'll, and hopefully we'll actually have us landing more on the mid foot.

And then we'll go into a mud. The stance where our energy or body and actually two and a half to three times our body weight will be supported by this stance leg. If we're walking, we'll then go into another foot strike. We do a pendulum type of movement, but for the sake of running, we actually go from here and we're still focused on this leg. This leg comes through, we're in flight and this leg extends and Go-to's off before I get sprung forward and does this again thousands of times in a mile. So if you'll take a look at the slides, the bottom left one has a photo of these awesome, amazing, powerful glutes of ours. And on the right side you'll see that there's a transparent area where you can see through the glutes to the hip rotators and at the very top there's one guy who's a little thicker or a good bit thicker, um, and at the very top and he attaches to the sacrum that's the Piriformis and you hear of pear form as syndromes.

I'm always careful when I hear the word syndrome or idas because I think that's very generic and it might mean we aren't sure, but that pear form is tends to get a little bit more wear and tear than he's designed to when the glute Medius, which is very important to our stability is not working as it should. So we'll talk about that and we'll go right down to our next point because we do need to get our butts up. That is the difference between our ancestors and ourselves. I think that is most glaring is that we sit so much, we get up in the morning, we have breakfast, we might get on the tram or in our cars on the train, get to work, and then we sit for anytime is really too long. We're not designed to sit. I'm happy to see people using the vary desks and starting to stand up at their desks. And I'm hearing great results from that.

And then we see that where the pelvis is actually supposed to do, when it's able to work efficiently. So if we're lying down, when we're in our police practice, whether we're lying down or kneeling or standing, it really doesn't matter. We pay a lot of attention to a neutral pelvis. And since the pelvis is the bridge between the upper and the lower body, it needs to be in a neutral position to be able to transition with fluidity from one movement to another. And that's where we have harmony. Everything's working as a team and we're less predisposed to injury. So let's take a look at how we get there.

So we're going to set up for running free. We talk about running free because it should be a free experience. It should be joyful. And it also, if used, if we're set up properly, we have access to free energy that we've been talking about that elastic recoil, the three non negotiables that we need to have to run freely is one the mobility. Um, I used, I'll have my little rubber band here, I can use this right now, but if you think of muscles as rubber bands, this guy's a little thick, but if he wasn't so thick I would just pull back a little bit and let him go. And he would fly just enough if he was very mobile or hyper mobile, that's not so good either because I could pull back, pull back and then he would just still flop. I don't get much enough tension to actually have that free energy, but I do have to have enough mobility for the movement to actually happen.

And then I need to have enough stability or I should say for that range of motion. Okay. And then I need enough stability for balance. I was just showing in the stride how we in the mid foot strike a stance, we need to be based right over our foot. That's a lot of weight. If everything's happening correctly and those biomechanics, then it's nowhere in tear really on the knee joint. As a matter of fact, they found that that compression of the joint is really great. The synovial fluid flows. There's um, lubrication and hydration that occurs as long as we're doing it correctly. And then the final one is our power.

So the glute offers serious horsepowers the strongest muscle in the human body. There's gotta be a reason for that, right? So we don't sit on those. We need to make those really strong and allow them, I should say, to be really strong and do what they're designed to do. And then we're going to assess, do we have enough of what we need? So I hope that you took the math class, that you have the opportunity to do that. And if you didn't, um, you can still do that and use it to actually address the issues as well.

We're now going to assess the range of motion at the hip. So what I'm going to do Manny, if you don't mind backing up just a little bit so that we can see what I'm doing. If you're at home, what you can use is a doorway. That's ideal, but this is perfect. So what I'm going to do as I'm going to put myself up against this imaginary doorway, and I am kneeling with my other leg just directly in front of me, and I'm going to take a breath and I'm going to go ahead and take myself into a posterior tilt of my pelvis. So you go ahead and I'm going to give you time to do that as well. But I'm going to talk about this as I'm doing it. I feel tension immediately, right in my hip flex, or maybe even a little bit in my quad, but definitely in my hip flexor.

So that's telling me that I probably need to stretch this guy. There's tension here. It's going to inhibit my hip extension. It might if my hip flexors don't allow it. Okay. So if you feel it more in your quad than perhaps your quads are tighter or hold more attention even than your hip flexors. So we'll need to release that area first in order to be able to even get to the hip flexors. And then our next assessment is going to be a single leg balance.

If you ladies would like to join me, I've got Mandy and Danielle here and they are willing and able. So the first thing we'll do, we're just going to go ahead and lift the leg. So I want you to do the same thing. It doesn't matter which one we just lift up without even thinking. So if we weren't really thinking about it, um, ideally we were still able to balance and ideally we didn't feel a shift to one side.

And we'll go ahead and put that foot down and then we'll bring the other foot up. So now you're thinking, I'm sure. But if you're not thinking, then the goal for all of us is going to be conscious or unconscious functionality and bring it all the way back down. If that was difficult for you, don't fret. That's something that we'll be working on and something that you can practice 24, seven, that's homework actually when you're brushing your teeth. Um, homework, when you're standing in line and you feel like, Gosh, I'm really, oh, I've got to go. It's like, oh no, this is that time in our day where we can practice on our alignment. We already know about a neutral feet and then we're going to bring ourselves to alignment for the rest of our bodies. Okay. All right. And so we move on to our homework. Um, homework is something that's imperative and makes it very obvious to me when my students come in, if they've been doing their homework or not, we're either celebrating or we're making eye contact. But now I'm just kidding.

But not really kidding because 10 minutes a day can make a huge difference. The first thing I want to show you guys, cause this is really fun. Um, if you'll take your, if you have a yoga block or if you have a book, um, it really doesn't matter what it is, it'll still get the point across. These are a little wider than what I really think would be beneficial for you, but you're going to put that block about, oh, right above your knee caps, like so. So if as a child you have those little dispenser of Candy called the Pez dispenser. Well this is the Pez dispenser exercise. And thanks Lori Nimitz for this and what we're looking at, I want you guys to pay attention.

I hope you've had the time to get your book or whatever and put it right above your knees. I just want you to take your femurs, here's your femur right here, and you're going to externally rotate it and bring it forward. And then you're going to internally rotate it and bring him back. The rest of you isn't really going to move. Now go ahead and do that a few times. So as we externally rotate, if you look down, you probably dispensed a Pez and then you're going to take it back. You're taking the Pez back. And then let's explore that whole kinetic chain.

So as we go forward, you probably felt your arch lift up. See, it's all connected and you can feel your adductors firing and you can feel those rotators and you probably feel, and then do it again about 20% of activity in your glutes. And so we're going to dispense the Pez again and just hold that. And I want you to look down heels on of the hands, on your hipbones fingers on your pubic bone, and notice that at this point you're probably in a neutral pelvis. Okay? Now keep your hands here and let's take that Pez away again and feel how you go into an anterior tilt. So those of us that lock our knees out, can you feel how that locks your knees out? Go back to neutral again by dispensing a Pez.

They can do rainbow passes. Okay? And feel how you're neutral right here. So that connection is very important from your arch all the way up. This is our stance. Let me just very quickly show you what this looks like from the side. I know you're saying it from the top and then from the front and then from the side and you can see, and I'll use my own shortcomings or roadblocks.

I happened to go in this direction, more of an anterior tilt in real life and I really have to think of dispensing that Pez. And you see how what that does is there's that rotation, there's this connection. And if I let it go, I go back to my old habit. I bring it back forward and here we go. I hope that was helpful. And we'll now go into some soft tissue mobilization. So what I'd like you to do is I'm talking to you is find a ball, um, whether it's all really hard, Lacrosse ball or a soft ball and a softball might be a bit much or even a tennis ball. And we're going to use this for a little bit of soft tissue mobilization. We'd already spoken about this with the ankle foot complex, but just to recap, the soft tissue mobilizations for everyone.

There's none of us, no one should not be doing this. And it's a great prehab tool. If the muscle fibers are able to glide correctly and do what they're supposed to do, then we're much more apt to have success in our neutral alignments of our joints. Okay, so we're going to with the hip and what I'm going to do, I'm going to lay down, but for right now I want you to see this. Find your hip bone and you're going to bring this ball when we laid down on our sides right above that hip bone right here. And we're going to be taking it across to start a little bit cause we're seeking, we're checking for little points of interest and then we're going to start moving it down into this area here.

And it will be different for everyone because we all have a different story, right? And then since I'll still be laying down, but I'll show you, we're going to start moving down the quad. All right, so here we go. Are you ready? You've got your ball. I'm going to take this ball and I'm going to put it right above my hip. So you ladies are ready. There we go. And so then we're going to start to add a little bit.

And so this how we do this right here is not necessarily all that important. You can take a leg and use it to take a little bit of pressure off or you can add a little bit of pressure by just sinking into it. I like to first get a heads up and then when I start to feel something I go, oh, here we go. So for me, I went to my hipbone, went a little bit further back, pretty much were the obliques and some of the low back extensors lived and glutes glue made with men. And I'm just going to stay right here. You guys feeling anything yet? So we find a spot. We didn't have to go very far. I did wait. So we find that spot and that's a potential roadblock.

Those are fibers that are not able to be as intelligent as they could be because they're stuck. They're glommed together. So we're just going to stay here for a moment and we're going to sink. And what we could do is work on our contract relax technique that we use for stretching as well. By contracting those muscles. You don't have to overthink it. Just push in for a couple of breaths. Yeah, found a spot and then relax and melt.

Okay, nice. And so that's an area of interest. We're slowly going to start to bring it forward, honor your own body. It has its own story depending on what you have or have not been doing. So gradual progression here and we start to move forward and we're going to bring the ball down now a little lower. So I'm going to right about here. TFL? Yeah.

So I have some clients that use TFL, acronyms to tell me it's a very tough ligament, but really it's the tensor Fascia Lata which also the it band comes out of and that it band can get pretty tight on us. Here's some soft tissue that we can work on. So we're going side to side you feeling in anything and you can start to go down and you can go across the fibers, right? Cross fibers. You can continue moving down and you might go, oh, this is breeze right here.

There's absolutely nothing going on. You're seeking and searching and then you go, yeah, uh, mid bay. So if we tense up, we tend to like spitting somebody who's fingers out when they try to tickle you, you just tighten up. It's the same thing with this. So if you try to just relax and then when you find a spot, and did everybody find a spot? Do you guys find a spot? We're going to bend and extend. So now we're flossing. Oh yeah. So this could take awhile. So when do we do this? It's like, oh my goodness, do I have enough time to add this to my very busy schedule? Of course you do. So you're reading a book or you're watching TV and you're going across, right? And then we continue to go on down.

So we could be here a while. What happens is you're going to find some spots that are particularly interesting. Oftentimes lateral quad, the very front, the rectus Femoris, so the rectus femoris crosses both the hip joint and the knee joint. And continue as we can talk and do this at the same time we can, um, that's a very important area. The rectus femoris can cause a lot of knee pain because the Patella lives in there. And if it pulls that Patella out of align because it's too uptight, well the Patella is going to scream at you and your knee and you're gonna have knee pain and you're going to get all freaked out and you're gonna think you can't run. And that's not necessarily the case. So before you really do get freaked out, you would release this tissue release above and below that knee.

The stuff we did in the ankle, the stuff we're doing today. And that will free up some slack for your knee and that could very well take care of the pain. So we're continuing down, we're almost finished with this leg, but normally we would take a little more time. We're going to go all the way down to right above that knee cap because I wouldn't want you to miss that. And you're going to hold and bend and extend again, and then you can turn a little bit side to side. Yeah. And you can feel as you do this, your body might tense up a little bit.

So I want you to stay at the spot where you were most excited, right? So you're gonna stay right there and we're going to hold for a second and let's contract that muscle, give it to breath. So you're making a fist out of the muscle. So in this case it'd be like knee extension, right? With the muscle does. Then you're going to relax and you're going to sink into it. Give it permission.

This is our amazing vehicle for running and for life. So we really want to take care of it and it'll take care of us. And then we're going to bend and extend again. Oh my. And we're about done with that for today. Okay? So we'll go to the other leg and see what happens over here.

Same thing but a different story. It's a different leg. So we've done different things so you might find something different. Again, we're going to start right above the hip bone, so you're gonna find your hip you to go above it. Nice. Thank you ladies. So I'm excited to have my dear friend Mandy and my dear pregnant daughter Danielle here with me today and I'm really excited you've joined me as well. I feel like there's so many times that we're afraid that something's wrong and I can't run and it hurts and it really shouldn't.

There are just tools that we need to have in our own back pocket and it's very empowering and that's what I'm hoping you get. So here you'll notice if you feel anything, I think we all probably will. There's a lot that attaches when you think 45 muscles attach it, the pelvis, somebody is bound to be a little uptight. But for the sake of time we're going to take the ball and we're going to move it down towards the TFL. So go to your hip and out a little bit. Hip Bone, front, hip, bone, sis. And now we're just going to go across these fibers. How are we doing here?

Yeah, so when this guy is tight, especially if you think of that it band going down from the hip all the way down to the outside of the lower leg, it comes in at an angle. So if it's tight, it could easily create issue where there's that juncture where those bones meet the Tibia, the fibula and the femur. We call it the knee, but it's more of an area, right? So we're going across back and forth, and then we'll go ahead and lay down front or on the quads or we're at the top. So there's a lot that's happening in here, right under the hip, and we start to move ourselves forward. And here I like to bend and extend. That tends to immediately let me know if there's a point of interest. Okay, so in order not to fall off here, I'm going to move it down instead of continuing to move up.

But if you're doing it, you're moving that way, you're just moving up towards your head. Ben Did extend and then a cross so that these muscles, what we're doing, if they're glommed together, they can't possibly work properly. They just can't. They're stuck together. They're sticky and we need glide. So often we'll find that just doing this type of release work makes enough of a difference to give us the range of motion that we're looking for. And if not, we stretch. And I think it's really important to know why we're stretching what we're stretching and what we need to strengthen to support what we stretched. Right? Ooh. So we find a spot.

I think we have all found a spot, at least one. And we're going to stay right here and we need to at least do the same thing for this side. We're going to allow ourselves to sink into the spot. Try not to tense up, let it go. And now we're going to contract. We're going to push against the spot. We're spitting it out, give it a couple of breaths, and then relax. Oh boy.

And then slowly bend and extend. So you're in a little bit deeper. Deepest. Good. Very nice. [inaudible]. Okay. So we're going to go ahead and come off of these balls. I'm sure you ladies like to do this all day, but, and we're going to now address the hamstrings. So we're going to grab a box to be able to sit on.

So if you ladies would like to grab a couple of boxes and I can do it up here and at home, you can be on a hard surface. So what we're going to do is you're grabbing your box. The harder the surface, the better. So sometimes if I don't really have a hard surface, I have maybe kind of a soft chair. I'll find something that's hard. Um, I've been known to use a big cutting board. Yep. Okay. And you can put it right under your hamstrings. So we'll start in the middle. You're gonna go right in the middle. There's three of those guys back there. And we'll start right here.

We're gonna sit up tall because remember the hamstrings start at the sit bones, so they insert behind the knee. So if we're schlump, we're not in optimal position and we'll bend and extend. So you might say, ah, that's no big deal. I'll have any problems back here. What else do you guys, well, you're going to move it to the side a little bit. So take the meat of your leg and you're going to take it off the bone. Okay, you're gonna move it this way and there's going to go up a little bit and laterally. Oh dear. We all might find a little something sung and that's what we're looking for. Okay. And we bend and extend. So essentially we're flossing, we're pinning it, and then we're getting things to move. And you're making a mental notation. Ooh, that leg, that side right there. Pay Attention. Okay. Because everything has a purpose. We were designed incredibly.

We want all your things in place, doing what they're supposed to do. And that's how we run fluidly and back up. And then we'll come down maybe a little bit. So you're just seeking and destroying Ben extent, sitting up nice and tall, using that alignment. You're already in that 24 seven awareness mode thinking, oh, I'm sitting up, I might as well sit up. Well, right. Create new memory in our bodies, how we sit and we continue going back and forth.

Now once you become a real rock, start this you can push down, add a little bit of weight, maybe have a friend sit on you. [inaudible] and very nice. So we're going to continue. We're still in this leg, but we're going to continue up a little bit. So we're going to position this up a little bit higher right around the sip bone. So I have it to be honest with you. I think we'll do this in a moment. Lying down. I think you're going to get a little bit more out of it. So we'll skip that for right now.

We're going to go ahead and put it under the other hamstrings. Plan B, it's good to have a plan B. So we bend and extend. We'll go the other leg. You can do the glutes seated. I just feel like you get a better feel either standing with it up against a wall or lying down. And I want you to feel it. Well, okay. And again, you're going to go to the lateral, so you want to take your time with this speeding up through.

This is not going to have the effect. So go ahead and slow down and see what happens and push down and take your time and feel, feel health little gremlins start to show up a little bit differently now. Right? We'll just do a couple more seconds. I'm sure we don't want to do this together all day, but you'll be doing this tonight before you go to bed when you're watching the news, right? So here we go, back and forth. Very nice.

And one more [inaudible]. So while Mandy and Danielle are maybe continuing because they have found some spots of interest, I'm just going to show you how to do your glutes lying down. So we're, I'm going to position the ball, I'm going to start it. This is the very top of the pelvis and I'm going to go from my sacrum out towards my femur. So I'm going to start lying down like so. And then I'm just going to put some body weight into it and start to turn and press. And once I find a point of interest, then maybe I'll extend my leg to floss.

Okay. And so you'll get in here, if you feel nervy kind of stuff, little tingles and nerves then don't go there then you're done and you, you change spots. That's not something we want to deal with. But I wanted to show you that and so we'll grab that. Okay, wonderful. I did want to say, um, well actually I did say the knee is the middle child. So if you feel things in your knees, make sure you do these releases and I hope you can see how that would create a little bit of flack. The knee isn't, the Patella is not held so tight that it would start, it would continue giving pain. That's what I would hope for you. Now we're going to go into some stretches. Um, just one word about stretches. Do you know that you need it? So we did the hip flexor, um, assessment and I know I need hip flexor stretches.

If you don't feel anything and it's no big deal, then you are fortunate and that's fine. And there's no reason to release something that already has enough range of motion, but the other 99% of us are probably going to need to stretch hip flexors. And so we're going to do that. Um, so what we would like to do, Danielle, Amanda, if you can move your boxes a little further back. We did this stretch in the running mat class that I hope you took as an assessment. If not, you can take it to address. We're going to bring our hands parallel to each other and bring the leg closest to me forward.

So this knee is directly over the ankle. The Shin is vertical. You don't want it way forward. Put a lot of pressure on the knee. That would be counterproductive. And both hands are going to be on the inside. The back ankle is relaxed. So you're getting a little bit of a stretch, maybe in front of your Shin as well.

We're going to take a nice deep breath and as we exhale, we're just gonna go into a deep posterior tilt. Now notice it's not about dropping down, it's about the positioning of the pelvis. If we're talking about a hip flexor quad stretch. So we're dropping, we're thinking pubic bone up actually. And now we're going to take the other hand, turn it out. We're gonna rotate towards the bent knee and hug it in as we drop the pelvis in towards the box or towards the floor or your mat.

Take a nice deep breath in here. And exhale. Nice deep breath. Exhale. And one more exhale. You're going to stay here and you're going to contract. You're going to press down with the outside of this bottom leg into the mat.

Again, three deep breaths. While you're doing that, it's an isometric contraction. And now you're gonna allow yourself to deepen your stretch. And this is a place that you can stay in this stretch for a couple of minutes, just allowing it to let go and all of that fascial tissue and the muscle. And that would be a great thing to do if you feel a lot of tension there. And then we're going to bring it all the way back to where we were and we're going to bring ourselves up, right? So as we bring ourselves upright, once you to think here we're going into a posterior tilt trying to stretch the hip flexors and the quads. Now one thing that you could do, and if one of you ladies are up for it, you could try to put your foot up on the box so you could have something behind you.

Maybe your right in front of your couch with your coffee table there so that you can balance a little bit, right? So you go, okay, I've got this, now I feel this. So then you begin to slowly and gradually we want gradual progression. Body doesn't really like surprises. We begin to bring it up. How does that feel? Did you feel more in your quad? Okay, wonderful. You could also do this if you can see what they're doing.

You can do this like so holding up, but you could also, if you can imagine that box being up against a wall and bring yourself up against that wall and then you're going to go into a deeper posterior tilt and begin to bring yourself, oh, take a breath. Now, oftentimes I'll hear, oh my body doesn't do that. Well it probably doesn't. That's why it doesn't do that. Simple as that. Okay. And very slowly you're going to come down and we'll go into the hamstring. So the hamstrings, we're going to stay with our chest. Yeah, we can get away from the box. Now their ego with the chest is going to stay with the leg and we're just simply going to go back.

And I really liked this because the minute that I know my chest is lifting up, I am accommodating my tightness. And we don't want to do that. Stay with your leg and pull your sit bones back until you feel like, wow, I'm getting a stretch. I want my leg to be straight. Because, because why? I don't know. It doesn't have to be straight to the hamstring stretch. But we used to think so then you're gonna lift your sit bones up nice and high. So now we're feeling a stretch. And with the foot down, you're gonna feel it more in the front end of the ankle.

But we addressed the cast when we did the ankle foot complex. So right now we're just going to say just like this, but now we're going to lift the flip phones up a little higher. So we're at a stretch point. Let's spread those baby toes out. Notice the reaction in your foot. Don't judge it. Just notice it. Take a breath in and press the leg through.

So this as if you're trying to pol your leg back for three, two and one. Ideally you would actually do that for five full breaths. And then now you're going into a deeper stretch. So you're trying to reach your sit bones back. You're not thinking I have to straighten my knee.

You're reaching your sip bones away from the back of your knee and we'll hold this and for today we're going to hold it for five breaths. Nice deep breath in. Exhale and again and final breath. Let those sit bones now. Little High, really reaching. Beautiful and bring that through and we'll go to the other side. So we'll bring the other leg forward.

Okay, so again, both arms are going to be on the inside. We make sure the ankles directly under the New York easier. Just think of this bone being vertical leg is we find a place where we're getting a stretch already going post teary or with the pelvis. So if I allow myself just to drop down, which often happens, I might go further, but I'm not stretching what I want. Instead I'm just kinda hanging into my lower back and that's not what we want to be doing. We're going to turn the hand to the outside, grab the and pulling in, and then we're dropping the pelvis or the hip in towards the floor.

And here we'll take a nice deep breath. We'll take three of them breathing into the sides of the ribs and dropping a little further into the stretch. We could use our contract, relax here, pressing down into the floor with the leg and then releasing and then allowing the body to go further. And it is about allowing stretching's never about forcing. Beautiful. We'll bring it all the way back and same thing, rinse, repeat, but different stories. So we'll see what we find. We're going to bring ourselves a little more upward.

Perhaps put your foot up onto the couch or this might be plenty for right now. That's fine. You have plenty of time ahead to just bring yourself into a deeper stretch day by day as you practice. Right? I'm gonna bring that foot up. Nice job guys. And really the back knee should not be on the kneecap. Your forward or higher up above your knee cap, pulling it in and then lifting the chest even higher.

And then our contract release on this would be to press down with the leg as you resist with the hands. So it's as if you're trying to straighten your leg. We press for three breaths holding isometrically. Yeah. And use the things around you to help yourself. Props are awesome. Well done. And last breath and then go into deeper posterior tilt, lifting your heart up and then gently we bring it back down. How'd that feel?

And then we're gonna slide. So here we're sliding back. So again, this leg has a different story. It's not a one legged story. It's a two legged story. And we may have done different things to different sides. So be aware of that. If this is a tighter side, what I would do on a daily practice is I would stretch the tighter side, stretch the not as tight side, go back the tighter side.

So you're biasing and within probably to 10 weeks you'll see a tremendous difference. So the research is showing that three to five minutes of stretching, four to six times a week. Um, after about 10 weeks, the little chains, the little links, the star premiers of our muscles actually are what we, I've read deformed, I don't really like that name. Reformed maybe is better. Um, it's and there are longer so you are creating some changes in your body if you need them. And let the sit bones up high. Let's press the whole foot down for four and three and two and 1:00 AM with those sit bones that be even higher allow. So if you breathe into it, it's funny how we can actually contract what we're trying to let go of. So we hang onto it, don't we? And we do in our bodies as well. So take another breath and we're going to bring it through.

Nicely done ladies. So regarding strengths, I feel like when it comes to running, our strengths should mimic our movements. So we're squatting and typically we're in a single leg squat going from one leg to the next. So you're in flight with a single leg squat. So that would be the movement portion of it. And then in the stance portion where we're absorbing two and a half to three times our weight, that's quite a bit if I'm doing that. But I'm well positioned, it's no big deal. The body's designed to take it. I mean it's pretty incredible. If I'm not in a position and I have to absorb that, then I'm in trouble.

Okay, so that alignment that you're practicing 24 seven is critical. What I like to do for the glute, we are going to do together. Now we are going to be lying on our sides. You don't need anything for this, but if you're a rock star at this, you could always use a leg weight. We're going to be sideline like so. So you ladies can just face me. We're going to lengthen the spine. So I'd like you to be in alignment, even though we're laying down. For some reason, we have a tendency to still look down with our head.

So I'd like you to think that you're up against the wall. Your ribs are down, your pelvis is neutral, your legs are reaching away. And we're going to bend the bottom knee. We're going to reach the top leg away. And when you do that, you should feel sunlight underneath of the bottom of your waist. We're going to flex this bottom foot or top foot, and we're going to bring it forward. So here, pull your hip away from you. What happens often is that we round forward, and when you're rounded forward, and I'm rounding forward right now, this is what I don't want you to do. Um, when we're rounded forward, we're not able to use our glutes, right?

So you don't want to walk around, tucked under, reach away, and hinge forward. So it's here, it's just a hinge and it'll go wherever it goes. No judgment. If you go to here, you go here, it's not a big deal. Okay, we're going to drop the foot in, let it go. If your hip is well positioned, your hand can come back down and we're going to drop that foot and bring it back up and drop the foot and bring it back up. So we probably feel a little bit of something, something up here, right? The biscuits are starting to burn perhaps, or at least they're warming up and we come back up and we go down, we come back up. It's pretty simple, but you work in that glue and one more time. And we hold and we bring it back. We're going to do that again. We're going to bring it forward. We're going to drop it and down and back. Up and down and back.

Up and down and back up and a couple more and one and we bring it back and we bring it forward. We internally rotate and we exhale down and up slowly. So yeah, sometimes we can use tempo and sometimes we don't. And bring it back and return it. Nicely done. Bring that knee in and we'll go to the other side. So again, something that's simple, you're watching game of Thrones or whatever you watch and you could be doing this and being very productive at the same time, bottom legs back, you can extend the top leg and you reach your hip away. You know that it has a tendency to just, this is just comfortable. It's lazy, right? So that's what the body will do.

It's trying to just save energy. So we reach away, flex the foot and again hinge. So it's a clean hinge. Yeah, and bring it back. And of course those abdominals are holding a steady hand is forward. We reach and we reach back and this time we'll reach and we'll stay here and we're going to internally rotate. And so we come down and we come back up and we come down. So I did some little reaches back and forth.

Now we're really zeroing in on that glutamate and back up and internal rotation as well. When we don't have internal rotation in our hip, we tend to see a gate where we kind of loop the lay kind of kind of loops to the outside with every stride. We don't want that. So we need hip flexors that allow the leg to go back and I think we've done 80, we'll go all the way back forward again. I have to buy us to the other side later when we're watching our favorite show down and back up and down in, back up. But back to that thought for just a second. When the hip flexors allow the range, then we can have the necessary internal rotation as the leg goes back as well.

One more time and bring it back and I don't know about you but I feel a little burning going on. Awesome. All right, for you to all the way back up. Nicely done. Um, something else and we can stay right where we are and you guys are just gonna face away from each other for a second. We're going to go ahead and roll over onto our apps. And when I say a score function form, following the function of what we're going to do in our gait cycle, the leg goes back. So if you feel like you don't have that kind of range yourself when you are not the range, but maybe the strength, you could just lay it prom and you can bring one leg up and really reach it far away and fire up your glute and bring it back down.

Take the other leg and you're going to lift it. You're going to reach it far, far away, squeezed through the glute and come back down. Reach that leg away and reach far, far away. Squeeze that glute. Feel that glute, own that glute. I'm ran back down and again, up and retreat, reach, squeeze and back down. Keeping the hips down. So keep that left hip down, Andy. We're going to lift that leg and extend.

So you could be doing this with your head down if it bothers your back like Mandy is. I don't know if her back's father. I hope not, but I liked it. Her head's down. Danielle is up. It's up to you as long as you're neutral with your pelvis and bringing it back. And again, one more and we reach and reach away. And so they feel that it can be very simple. It can be part of another movement, but you're actively using that glue. Very nice. Thank you ladies.

And then we're gonna press back into arrest position for a second. Take a nice deep breath and exhale. And again, lateral breathing. We want to practice that as much as we can. Deep breath into the ribs, exhale everything out, drawing the abdominals in and whole sphere that we're drawing in towards the spine. Very nice. And then for strength as well come up to a standing position.

We are mentioning that running is really a series of single leg squats. So one of the things that we started with in our map class as you remember was the standing foot work. Well standing foot work can also go standing hip work, right? The work on the reformer we know is not just foot work. The whole leg is moving. So if we use the standing up, which is functional because that's what we do, we're first going to think of that Pez dispenser exercise, right? Pelvis is neutral, knees stay pretty much where they are. As we squat back and I'm just bringing the arms out to counterbalance.

That's what they do when they run as well. And then we've come right back up and back. We go, big toes, press down for stability of the foot and we come right back up, squeezing and dispensing a Pez and back and right back up and squeeze. And we'll do just one more like that. So back and squeeze and hold right there. So that's something that you can do in line and start to feed into your work as well. If you find that that's difficult, especially in don't do enough of it.

Now, once that that feels comfortable to us, then we can go to single leg so we could stand on a single leg. Draw your abs in, you've dispensed your Pez single leg. Spazz, Pez, dispensings little heart. And we'll do the same thing on one leg. So we're looking for tracking and right back up. It's not easy at all and back, but drills are exaggerations and back up. So you're thinking big toe down. Draw that core in. Stand tall.

Feel the balance. Own it. Oh, woops. Speed. Basques needs. So I'm not going to go fast. I'm going to own this and back up. Beautiful. We'll go to the other leg. Nice job. Awesome. So remember the toe splay, get our baby toes back. Toes are splayed out for balance. Big Toes press down. The whole chain is involved. Neutral Pelvis and same thing.

We're just going to go forward at the same time, we might as well be aware that our shoulders are out of our ears and we go forward again. So what we're watching for is that knee waving back and forth. Right? I can feel mine too. And back up does it has a different, oh, I looked at you. Look what happened. All right. Ideally we should do this with our eyes close, but keep your eyes closed. You'll see me doing it with my eyes closed too and back up. Good.

And come all the way up. Nicely done. So that covers a little bit of the mobility and stability and strength. And so we're talking about setting up for success. We can run successfully, we can run having a great time and running for meditation and we want to be able to run from the card to the store when it's a rainstorm and we want to be able to chase grandchildren and chase dreams and we want to be able to do that without any injury whatsoever. We are physically designed for that and now it's our responsibility to set up for that. Using those three non-negotiables you assessed. You know, what is it that my personal body needs today?

Do I need to work on mobility somewhere? Do I need to work on stability or strength? You know what you need, you use the tools. Am I going to use a soft tissue mobilization? Do I need stretching? Do I need some drills? And then stand up. Don't spend too much time sitting down. Okay. Thank you so much for joining me and I hope to see you again in the next video and on the mat class.