Why Running Drills are Bad for You.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And on the other line with me is a guy who has a multitude of skills and he has given up a lucrative career in information technology to instead pursue his passion helping people achieve their fitness and their lifestyle and their triathlon and running goals. This guy knows a lot about running. He's a nationally accredited triathlon coach down in Australia. He's a qualified sports nutritionist, a strength conditioning coach, even a masseuse. And he's coached kickboxers, MMA fighters, and also triathletes. The guy's name is Graham Turner. He doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walk too. I've personally been to races with him. He's competed in triathlons and running events for longer than I have. For over a decade. He's done Hawaii Ironman, he's done Ironman 70.3 World Championships, qualified for Boston Marathon, and he really understands athletes and I've seen some of the stuff he's been doing and really appreciate it. A couple other accolades that he has on his resume are being a fourth degree black belt. So do not try and mess with him in a dark alley. And he's even performed for a little while in a circus. But today we're going to talk about running and running drills, and in particular why running drills are bad for you, Mr. Graham Turner from Australia. Thanks for coming on the call.

No worries, Ben.

So I'm going to cut straight to the chase here. Why, why are we kind of talking about running drills? Like, how did you get into this whole, you know, coaching and being interested in running drills and analyzing running drills gig?

Yeah, it's a good question. Growing up in Australia, I played a lot of sport as a kid. I played, played cricket, played football, and when I was about 15, I switched over to doing karate and in particular full contact karate and kickboxing. And that involved a lot of running in there to keep fit as well. And after about 15 years of just constantly getting beatings around the legs and all that pounding, my knees were shot. So I went off, had them examined. I had osteoarthritis in the knee. I had plicas, which is basically a folding of the cartilage within the knee and actually had all the cartilage removed from both knees through surgery. And at the time, the orthopaedic surgeon actually told me to give up all forms of running and all forms of percussive sport. Now, my personality type doesn't work well with being told that I can't do something. So I really kind of worked on analyzing within running, what are not so much the biomechanics of running, but what are all the different forces that are applied to the body. So the torsional forces, the impact forces, And I guess you could say it was putting some of the physics back into physiology in terms of actually understanding how I could actually lessen those impacts. And the interesting thing is that, I mean, that was 15 years ago. the time, I was told I'd need a full knee replacement within 10 years. And I haven't been back to that surgeon. I'm probably running faster now than I was back then. Wow.

So in terms of what you did, you know, you say putting the physics back into physiology, you know, when you kind of get down on the ground, pun intended, and put this stuff into practice, what kind of things did you start doing?

Really? It was looking at where the foot was landing relative to the body. If you think about where the force is applied in terms of the body moving forward, anything that's out in front or behind the body is really going to be applying different forces to what your body's actually seeing suited for. I mean, if you think about. If you think about trying to balance on something, and maybe this is where some of the circus comes into it, There are two ways that you balance. You either counterbalance or you use momentum. And a lot of the work that I see people doing is they're more focused on the counterbalance rather than actually using the momentum.

Gotcha. So we're going to get into running drills. And in terms of drills, what drills people typically do wrong. But before we even do that, I know there are people listening who may not even do drills at all. Or in some people who may not be that familiar with drills, the drills that they do, the names of them, how they look, that type of thing. So if we were going to kind of, kind of get into semantics here for a second, you know, when you throw around a word like running drills or what kind of things are you talking about?

It's really things that are focused on creating a repeatable motion. So creating proprioception within the body, creating a subconscious path for the body to move. So it's practicing techniques, even some of them slowly. I was with a guy this morning, and one of his drills, he actually sits down in front of television to perform, but he's creating a rapport, repeatable, subconscious movement. And that's really the focus of drills.

So what kind of kind of movement patterns are we talking about, like heel kicks or high knees or marching or moving sideways what kind of drills?

Yeah, it's an interesting point that the most common drills that I see people do and I see people coaching are actually the ones that I see people doing incorrectly the most. And those three drills, I mean, if you start with doing butt kicks, I mean, you'll see everyone doing butt kicks out on a track.

You mean like when you're standing in place or on a track and just basically kicking your heel up to your butt over and over again?

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, and that drill's designed to do two things. It's to create more speed of movement out the back of the running stride. And it's also designed to teach bending the knee and bringing the foot up underneath the body. And when I see most people do butt kicks, they really focus on the first part. They focus on kicking out the back. And 99% of people I see do it have their knee pointed exactly at the ground, and there's no flexing or no movement at the hip at all. So they're really just firing their feet back as far as they can. The issue there is they're not just firing their feet, but back as fast as they can. They're actually firing their feet into the ground quite quickly as well. And you'll see them, they're basically kicking their foot directly into the ground. And what that's actually doing is it's creating a braking motion. I often use the analogy with people of a skateboard. If you were to stand on a skateboard and you wanted to stop that skateboard, the way you do that is by jamming your foot into the ground. If you want that skateboard to go faster, you actually skim your foot from the front to the back. And so with doing the butt kicks, by jamming the foot into the ground, it actually creates a braking force. And what that means is people then need to effectively create momentum again to bring themselves over that breaking point. And a lot of people tend to do that through the hip flexors. And if you look at a one hour run with an average cadence, that's about 10,000 steps that people would be taking. So if they're creating that braking force, that means 10,000 times in an hour, they then have to engage the hip flexors to push their body up over that point. And that creates a lot of stress. So typically, if I find people and they say, yep, I get really sore through the hips, or the other one I find is blisters because their foot is trying to move forward while the shoe is actually trying to decelerate. Them nine times out of 10, it points to the fact that they're doing that particular drill or that technique wrong.

So if you are going to do heel to butt kicks, is there a way to do them right?

Yeah. The focus when you do heel to butt kicks is on lifting the knee. So effectively, you're kicking the foot underneath your body, not out the back of the body.

Okay.

Now the focus there, too, is whenever I talk about lifting the knee, the key word is always lifting. You are never pushing off the ground to get the knee up. You're always raising that and then kicking underneath your body.

Gotcha. Yeah. I think that, you know, I was at a triathlon with you down in Thailand. I think you showed me that one in particular where I tended to kick my heel up towards my butt. And you kind of showed me how you should almost, like, lift your knee a little bit more. Just thinking about that one little modification of the drill helped out quite a bit.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's interesting if you ever go onto YouTube and look at someone like Michael Johnson, for example, running, he looks like he's running incredibly upright, but if you look, he has very, very high knee lift and then quite a fast snap. I mean, and obviously that guy can run.

Yeah, yeah. He, I think, knows a little bit about running.

Yeah.

So we've got that drill, and I know that that's a lot of times referred to as the. The C running drill. At least over here in America. There. There are also, as part of, like, the A's, B's and C's, you know, track and field type of running drills you see a lot of people doing, with the A's being kind of like a high knee skip and the B's being kind of more like a kicking your leg out in front of you and pawing the ground. Are those other two drills that I just mentioned also drills that you see people doing wrong? Or are those drills okay?

Yeah, they're quite a common one to do incorrectly as well. And sometimes people refer to those as strides as well. And for a lot of people, what they focus on is the outcome rather than the drill itself. And so when they're doing those, they tend to reach forward in front of the body with their foot. And what that means is that it's even worse than butt kicks. They're actually landing forward of their center of gravity, usually trying to land on the front of the foot. And that puts an incredible amount of force up through, for example, the Achilles, which has to try and stabilise the ankle as well as having all that force applied to it. The interesting thing I find with those drills, especially when you coach guys over women, is a lot of guys grow up playing a sport that involves kicking, whether it's they're playing football, soccer, even in karate, etc. And so when they lift their knee, it's almost a program motion to actually extend the foot like they're kicking. And when that comes into doing the A and B drills or doing strides, they automatically and basically subconsciously extend the foot out in front of the body when they're doing that.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. So in terms of other running drills that you see people doing incorrectly or other popular running drills that you. You maybe would even recommend, are there other drills kind of floating around out there other than kind of the A's and the B's and the C's that we've talked about?

Yeah. The other one that I see a lot is people practicing leaning. So they look at a runner and they look at them. They have a forward lean, so they'll actually practice doing a leaning drill. And the interesting thing with leaning drill is there's basically three spots that you can bend within the body when you're running. So you can bend at the neck, you can bend at the waist, or you can. You can bend at the ankles. And a lot of people when they lean will automatically bend rather than lean. And I think you've mentioned it before, but, I mean, the human head weighs about 22 pound, I think it is. And so to actually carry that when you're bent at the waist or bent at the neck creates a lot of strain on the body. So the correct part is to bend from the ankles, so to keep your body straight. But even then, I see people going back to that momentum versus counterbalancing will actually kick out the back as they lean forward to try and balance the body. So they still have that same problem with jamming into the ground.

Gotcha. So is there something people can kind of like, you know as probably as well as I do, when you're doing running drills and swimming drills, your IQ basically drops like, you know, 30 points while you're out there exercising. Are there simple visualizations that people can use to incorporate some of these concepts that you're talking about? You know, if someone's listening to this podcast right now and they're out running, you know, what. What kind of cues would you give them?

Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting that the. The most valuable cue that I have when they're running is the sound so when people are kicking too far out the back, you tend to get a scuffing sound as they're running, which is basically that deceleration as the foot is hitting the ground. When they're extending too far out the front, they'll actually get a slapping sound as their foot is actually hitting into the ground. So that's the cue that I actually ask people to do, is listen. Listen for the sound, first of all, and that will give you a very good idea of where your foot is actually landing. The other one that I focus on, the mantra for people is lifting over pushing. So people will read, okay, I have to get my knee up, which is fine, but they'll think to do that I push off the ground. And that has a couple of different issues. First of all, it's putting a load on the calf. So again, if you're a longer distance runner, you're basically doing a lot of extra work to lift yourself up. The other interesting thing then, this is something Danny Abshire was mentioning when you had him on the podcast, is your body doesn't want to push off the ground until it feels that it's stable. So by focusing on the push, you'll actually have more ground contact time, and if I call it heavier ground contact time while your foot gets stable, to then push you off the ground. And obviously, ground contact time is your enemy. That's when you're slowing down within your running stride. So the focus that I give people is really lift, not push. When they're out running and they're kind of the two things. Listen to what you're doing. Focus on the lift.

Okay. Listen to the sound that your body's kind of making as you're running. And then kind of visualize, instead of pushing off the ground, just lifting your foot off the ground. Is there?

Yeah.

Like, if you picture, like, a string or like a laser line from your knee kind of going up towards the sky, does that help? I mean, I know like in swimming, you know, you can think about, like, being a puppet on a string, and your elbow kind of gets pulled up towards the ceiling to get yourself to have a high elbow. In the recovery of swimming, does that concept kind of work for running?

It can, I guess, one thing a little bit. Like swimming, I mean, you can consciously think of a. I think it's seven things that you can consciously think about at one time. So if you're out running, you've already got some things like, you know, what's the terrain, what's up ahead, etc. So I try and really limit within people's running the number of things that they have to focus on. I mean, really just keep it simple.

Gotcha. Okay, so we've talked about drills, and I've kind of thrown some drills at you for you to talk about. Now, you know, if you were to just, you know, let's say you were to take a runner and you were to sit down with them, and you wanted to make them a better runner, and based on the number of runners that. That you've seen, you were to take your favorite drills that you would use to turn them into a better runner.

What.

What drills would you personally use? What are the best running drills?

Sure. So the most common drill that I use with people because a little bit like swimming with the hand, the foot is what's called a long lever, which means relative to the body, there's not a lot of feedback as to where it actually is. So for a lot of people, they're not actually aware of what they're doing with their feet. And so the first drill that I normally get people to do is to create a bit of an awareness of what they're doing. And that's called the toe up drill, which is basically to pull your toes up against your shoe as you're running, and that will create awareness. But the other interesting thing it does, it's almost impossible to kick your feet out the back while you're pulling your toes up. It naturally creates a small degree of knee lift when you're running.

Okay, and what's the name of that drill?

I call it the toe up drill. I guess one disclaimer I'll give on any drills, especially with the personality types of a lot of runners, don't go out and run 10k trying to pull your toes up against your shoe. There's a small muscle at the. At the front of your shin that is not going to be particularly happy with you.

Okay. Okay, so we've got that drill. And what other drills?

Yeah, the. The second drill, and I'll give you the PG version, is I call it the dog poo drill. And the simple analogy is if you had something on the bottom of your shoe and you needed to wipe that off, then that is the motion that you're practicing. Now. It's a good one to do. To start with, standing next to a mirror, or if you don't have a mirror, just use the sun to create a shadow to work with. Because, like I said, 99% of guys especially can't actually do this without extending their foot out in Front of them. And so what you're trying to do is create that circle underneath the body, often referred to as running. You want to run like the Roadrunner. If you remember in the cartoon, the upper body was completely still, and he just had the legs going in a really fast circle underneath.

Okay, gotcha. So you don't actually have to have dog poo present to practice that drill, right? Just use powers of visualization?

Yeah. I mean, you can if you really want to, you know, embed this drill, but, yeah, it's not necessary.

Good to know, because I'm certain some people may have tried to drag their dog out so they could do the dog poo drill. What else other than the toe up and the dog poo? Any others that you recommend?

Yeah, the third one that I use with people is I do use the leaning drill with people just to get them having that slight amount of forward momentum, But I combine that with knee lifting so that they are leaning forward, basically to the point where they just feel themselves lose balance, but with a strong focus on pulling the knee up in front of the body.

Gotcha. Okay, so those three. And I'm sorry, what was the name again? The last one.

It's the knee lift drill.

The knee lift drill. Okay, so we've got toe up, dog poo, and knee lift. Can people actually see these drills anywhere?

Like.

Like for the visual learners like myself, who would actually want to see videos of these?

Yeah, there's actually. I've put the dog poo drill up in without any dog poo on YouTube. So what I'll do is I'll say I'll send you through some links to. To these drills. Perfect.

Because then I can. What I'll do is for folks listening, and I'll embed these in the show notes for this episode. And if you're listening to this for, you know, sometime after it comes out, just go to the website and do a sear for run drills, and it'll probably come up in the hits, because that's what I'm gonna title this post. So. Okay, so those three drills, it sounds like that's a really, really good place for people to start. So if you were to kind of give the takeaway summary, the synopsis of this. Graham, as far as the biggest mistakes people make running, for the people who just want your concise summary, what are the biggest mistakes that people make when doing running drills?

Yeah, I think the one biggest mistake people make in running drills, and I think in pretty much all triathlon drills, is they focus on the outcome so rather, strides is a classic example where rather than focusing on strides, which is really about lifting your knee higher, if you have higher knee lift, you have a larger circle. And it's pretty simple geometry that says that that is actually a bigger stride, where people focus on reaching out in front of them, thinking that's what is required to make the larger stride. Same with the butt kicks. They're focusing on the outcome, kicking their butt, rather than actually focusing on what the drill itself is trying to program into them. The other comment I'd make, too, the most common mistake people make is they do them too. That frequency is good, but you don't necessarily need to go out and do 5km of butt kicks.

Gotcha. Okay.

So one other thing I'd probably say that most common bit of feedback I get from people when they have drills is they go, yeah, I did that, but it felt really weird. And so I stopped. And I guess the takeaway there is weird doesn't mean wrong. Weird just means different. And I guess if I was to look at their normal running style, I'd probably say, well, that looks pretty weird. And so what I quite often do is after I've done some drills with people is say, right now I want you to run 50 yards running like you normally run. And majority of people come back and go, yeah, actually, the way I was running is what feels weird.

Interesting. Okay, cool. What I'm gonna do is I'll put the videos that you talked about in the show notes for this. And then, folks, if you want a little bit more direction from Graham, he is a featured coach now at Pacific Elite Fitness, meaning you can hire him to coach you for triathlon, for running, for endurance sports, and he even does some fitness and nutrition and lifestyle stuff too. He is definitely Ben Greenfield Fitness endorsed. I wouldn't have him featured as a coach at Pacific Elite Fitness if I didn't really, really, really trust him and see the type of coaching that he's doing. So if you're interested in having Graham work with you, maybe even sending him some running videos to analyze your running gait, to coach you on a monthly basis, whatever your needs are, Graham is now available to do that. So if you want to do that, I'll put a link in the show notes to Graham's personal coaching page at Pacific Elite Fitness. Or you can just go to PacificFit.net and find Graham there. So a guy with a lot of skill and a good eye, especially for these running issues. Graham, thanks for coming on the call today.

No, thanks, Ben.