#80: Transform Your Running, with Lawrence van Lingen

Hey Lars, that was the best run I've ever done in my life. Massive breakthrough of a run. The amount of relaxation in the running right there, I've never experienced that before.

And so there is almost a sense of movement enlightenment and awakening for sure, like 100%. Like, people basically become self-aware in terms of movement. Like, it's a compartmentalized enlightenment or a compartmentalized awakening, and you go, oh, and then everything things start to shift, and this can be so powerful.

Today, a conversation with my close friend Laurens van Lingen. He has made a huge difference in my life, and he helped improve my running in a variety of different ways. Laurens is a running specialist from South Africa who's gaining a lot of attention in the endurance space. For example, this month Triathlete magazine came out with an article that is titled Meet the Genius The Genius of Running Behind Jan Frodeno and Taylor Knips' Comeback Stories. Why are the already fast world champions flocking to Laurens van Lingen to revamp their running form? I have so much respect for Laurens, and I'm very thankful that he was able to share his insights here today. If you would like to learn more about Laurens' movement programs, check out innaRUNNR.com. That is with one R. See also the link in my description. If you'd like to learn more about my Personal Best Running Coaching Program, check out pbprogram.com. Those are the letters pbprogram.com. This episode was brought to you by LMNT, which is a delicious electrolyte drink mix that I drink daily. I'm excited about the newest LMNT flavors that I'm using to create different holiday drinks myself: chocolate mint, chocolate chai, and chocolate raspberries. Electrolytes really facilitate hundreds of different functions in the body, including hormonal regulation, fluid balance, nutrient absorption and the conduction of nerve impulses. LMNT is used by everyone from the NBA, the NFL, Olympic athletes, Navy SEALs, to everyday moms and dads and exercise enthusiasts. Right now, LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any order. That is 8 single-serving packets free with any LMNT order. This is a great way to try all 8 flavors or to share LMNT with a salty friend. Get yours at drinklmnt.com flow. That is drinklmnt.com/flow. Hope you enjoy my episode with Lawrence Vellingen. And here we are. Lawrence, welcome to The Extra Mile Show. I'm glad you're here.

Oh, thank you, Floris. So privileged and honored and happy to be here. And I'm so excited.

Absolutely. Same here. I've been, I've been really looking forward to this conversation. I've known you for 18 months now, and you have made a massive difference on my health and running journey. And I want to start out by saying thank you for making such a positive difference in my life and in the lives of so many different athletes out there. So thank you.

Oh, thank you. It's a, it's a, it's a privilege, and I'm just blessed. Thank you.

For sure. There's so many different directions we can take this conversation, but I want to start out with, you help athletes move better, and I've seen that in many different scenarios. Yet your approach is quite unconventional, and it's starting to get more and more attention right now. And maybe you can start out with explaining some of the key principles behind your approach and how it's actually different from some of the traditional running wisdom out there.

And I think A helpful way of explaining is this: I don't think I've strayed too far from the path, and I think my approach is the more traditional approach. I honestly feel, you know, like in science, the pendulum swings, and, you know, at one stage, you know, water was bad and you ran without water, and then, you know, then people were drinking themselves to death. I think a pendulum as a narrative swings, and I like to think of myself as more along the midline. More the middle of the road and not extreme, and really sticking to sort of core values and core fundamentals. You know, I had a life-changing experience where I met Dan Lieberman, Professor Dan Lieberman, and just the way he saw the world and just his worldview and like looking at things in light of evolution and anatomy so strongly really, really inspired me. And I think that's sort of what started my journey to becoming more, as you say, unconventional. But I believe, you know, running in a healthy human is completely natural and normal. You see children running beautifully all the time, and we lose our way. And a lot of the time, I think I have a much more focus on learning to move from the center out or having intrinsic knowledge and reflecting that knowledge. And as a metaphor in running, that generally revolves around learn to extend from your hip. I know it sounds so simple, but if your glute extends, we start to create structure and organization that will free you up in your running. And I think there's a traditional approach, or different techniques where possibly you might be forefoot running, or you might be hitting the ground back through the hamstring or contracting your hamstring. And I'm much more about, because of my sort of training and how I treat people, more interested in how fascia connects and how big elastic energy return systems through your body. And running is an efficiency sport and Basically, learning to move from the center out. I think these are core values that are timeless and are likely to still be important to humans no matter where sort of the current running paradigm goes.

Why do you think that happens, that we know how to run well as children? Even I have like a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old, and I'm looking at them move, and it's so fluid, it's so natural. And all of a sudden that changes over time. Like, I know, for example, kids sitting in chairs all day long in school can be one of the attributing factors. But, but just like, what are some of these changes that people experience over the years? And what is there that people can do to kind of get back to that original way of running?

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's like 10 podcasts in itself. I think, I think, I think society imprints heavily on us and we don't realize it because it's like it's a fish in water. They don't know they're in water until you take them out of water. And so culturally, there's a big narrative, you know, like in North America, it's a stiff-spine country. You must have backbone, you must stand for something. And if you go to sort of, let's say, a more Latin American country, you know, it's about a salsa or belly dance or fluid movement. So culturally, we can understand just being in a certain environment shapes us way more powerfully than we think. I think sitting's got a huge, is a huge factor. And I think we're sitting longer, more, and from young. There's no doubt that screens massively impact us. When you stare at a screen, there's a thing called screen apnea or email apnea where you basically hold your breath when you read an email or you get an email because you're anticipating an event. And these things are pinging in all the time. If you stare at a screen that's close to you, your eyes fixing, become, you know, you're not looking far, you're not looking wide, you're not using your eye movements. And your eye movements are linked to the muscles at the back of your neck because that's how you track a bird or something that comes across your path, and it's reflex. And so, you know, just pupil, just the fixation of your eyes will tighten up your back and tighten up your hamstrings and shorten your hamstrings. And you can do this, you can do like big figure of eight movements with your eyes and sort of look far, look near, or they call it pencil pushing, look at your thumb. And then extend your thumb out in front of you and then bring your thumb closer and stare at the back of your nail as you do sort of pencil, pen push-ups or thumb push-ups with your eyes. And then check your hamstring flexibility and your hamstrings can lengthen out. A short muscle is a reactive muscle, it'll generally contract first. And I think people get stuck out of the movement pattern just by, from those, just modern lifestyle, okay? And then Trauma, both physical, emotional, mental. We'll see people that fall on their tailbone and tighten up their pelvic floor and their hip flexors, which tend to sit in the anterior part of your pelvic floor. And suddenly their whole gait pattern changes, their knees are coming up, and you can literally have glute inhibition from falling on your butt. You know, some people fall on their butt slowly, you know, you sit long enough, it's a slow trauma. And then emotions, we store negative emotions in flexion. And I know this might sound a bit weird for people, but, you know, life kind of can beat down on us and bear down on us, and we can internalize things, and we can— so there's that sort of notion, which I don't want to go too far down the path. And then the other thing is, if we spend so much time in flexion, and basically you're in a fetal position in the womb, It is your place of comfort, and it does feel very, very natural and normal for people. And there's a huge psycho-emotional component to this. So kids are fearless, they're creative, they're expressive, they have dreams and ambitions. And like a thought exercise I did with a person recently was I said, like, you used to be able to run, just remember. They were intrigued by this but didn't understand what I said. So I said, well, sit down in a quiet space and spend some time and go back to your child when you were happy and ran well, because you know you ran really well, and you had these dreams and, oh my, I can remember running in the sensation of flying and open. I said, go back and have a chat with that child and check in with them and see what were your dreams and aspirations like then. And what— and he says, oh my God, you know, like, I wanted to, you know, I was creative, inventive, I had all these ambitions. And, you know, like, life, we start reacting to situations and a lot of like You can get yourself in it, and these are all continuums. Obviously we need a little bit, and you need, look, you need to struggle, otherwise you'll never grow, and you need all of these things. But a lot of people are reactive and become reactive and reflexive, and their options shut down, and they're not as creative as they used to be. And a fluid spine is a fluid mind. Being creative, being the authority or the, the author of your movement, or moving proactively, or choosing how you can move. I mean, you know, this is why you think I'm controversial, unconventional. It's like, you either— like, a lot of people are not the master of their movement. And you can do this by doing a lot of reactive drills. What are you doing? You're reacting to an external stimulus in a very predictable pattern. We have reflex defensive pathways, and once our mind and our body starts becoming reactive and defensive, we find our options narrow and shut down. And, um, so this— there needs to be a state of play, there needs to be a sense of, um, creativity. I think, like, I love Rick Rubin's book, which I'm sure we'll get into.

Yep, we will bark into that.

The greatest running book ever written.

Yes.

Yeah, so, so, so from those, those points of view, I mean, this is complex, like, stuff, but these are all the thoughts where I see people snagging and People lose rhythm. People, you know, musically trained people, we'll help them learn and rediscover running by learning to waltz or dance or put rhythm into the running. And so humans are extraordinary. Who you surround yourself with, what the social media— oh my, you know, we see these elites doing fancy drills because they look good, and then we think we must imitate that, and that's how they got good. And it's just, you know, and the reality is you know, they run a lot and they run well. And like an elite athlete might do drills and they don't sort of get into their system as much because their overriding dream and ambition is to move forward and express themselves and go forward in the world, which is drive. But we as a, like, and I include myself, you know, we can sit there and react and copy and imitate because we are apes, we like to ape, okay, and kind of get stuck in the spot and lose the fact that what is the purpose of running? The purpose is to go where your heart calls you or to express or to move forward through life. Strava had that study where something like, I don't know, 90% of people don't enjoy running.

Unbelievable.

You know, running is one of my greatest joys and my wish is to try and help people find and rediscover the joy in running. Use it as a healing experience.

I want to share just a few thoughts of things that I've noticed after we have started working together. So about 18 months ago, it's kind of interesting how the universe works. So I have a podcast for the last, whatever, 8, 9, 10 years I've been making running videos. And over time, several people have reached out and they're like, hey, you should get Laurens van Lingen on the podcast. And I was like, all right. Have a guest list of 200 potential podcast guests, but all right, let me look into this again. And then like, ah, another person mentioned it. And literally over time, I think more than a handful of people had brought up your name. And you lived here in Laguna Beach and I lived here local in Irvine. And so eventually it was through Andy Blow from Precision Hydration. He was like, yeah, you've really got to connect with Lawrence, blah, blah, blah. And we eventually made it happen. And so some of the things that I noticed initially, like, yes, I went into your place here in Laguna Beach at the time, you I now live in Boulder. And like, we started at some point, you just like kind of observed my body. And you're like, all right, this area might be tense, or this might be tight, or this, this. I just started realizing how tense and tight my body was, whereas I thought I was quite relaxed. I actually was not. And just that part of starting to like work with you through certain breathing patterns, through certain movements, through not rushing things, but actually really slowing in some of your movements, in slowing down some of your thought process. I was always an advocate of ice baths and heat exposure, whereas you're like, yes, you can do it, but you have to be cautious with it. You have to be calm with it. You can't force yourself into an ice bath and just sit there shivering for 5 minutes because it's a big shock on your nervous system too. Like, you have to be kind to your nervous system. And you, you often talked about the importance of having a calm nervous system and being in line with your inner self and whatnot. And then eventually, once I started doing some of the running myself after working with you, I started feeling a sense of calm coming over me. And all of a sudden, being able to run with an open chest— one of the things we had talked about was like the posterior chain running and anterior, like, we'll talk more about that later. But after a while, I started noticing these massive breakthroughs, these massive senses of release of tension, the release of tightness, and all of a sudden feeling really connected between my body and my mind. And although I thought I was pretty in tune with it, it completely shifted everything. And I remember at one point I went out and I sent a video to you where I literally had an emotional breakthrough on my run. Where I was just bawling. Hey, Lars, I just had a massive breakthrough of a run with the running technique you mentioned. The amount of relaxation in the running right there, I've never experienced that before. Love you, brother. I know that I'm not the only one who has experienced that, so can you, can you talk a little bit more about What is happening in a case like that? And yeah, just kind of curious to hear your thought process about some of the things I described here.

Yeah, well, thank you. And I remember that video, and I mean, and that's what I live for. I mean, I didn't— someone was saying, oh, you should say this and you should do this and you should do that. And I said, dude, I, I don't care about the big numbers. I just want one more person to have that experience and that sense of release and joy and empowerment. And I know it sounds crazy to people, like it's almost a spiritual journey. And like, I don't know, Nietzsche's got the whole stages of spiritual development. It's to basically become childlike again. And, and that means you are the creator and the author of your movement and your life. And so many people people don't realize they're trapped or they're reflexive or they're stuck in patterns. And running does happen on reflex, but again, you know, is the tail wagging the dog or is the dog wagging the tail? And most people, I'm sad to say, aren't. It's really, really interesting, this whole sort of area, and it's different for everyone. Some people can, you know, slow, but again, this notion of held tension in your body I've had someone, we talk about flow rope maybe, I've had people that have swung the flow rope and I don't know if you know this and I need to look into it a bit more, but some people don't have an internal dialogue. I mean, I've got an internal dialogue and it can drive me nuts sometimes.

Especially when trying to meditate, it just doesn't stop.

Yeah, exactly. They started swinging the rope and they became aware of the internal dialogue. Like, it activated for the first time in their life, and they were 50. And then I've had people that have become self-aware or start moving, and then they say, I never realized how hard I was on myself. I never realized how negative my internal dialogue was. And so there is almost a sense of movement enlightenment and an awakening, for sure, like 100%, like a people basically become self-aware in terms of movement, like it's a compartmentalized enlightenment or a compartmentalized awakening, and you go, oh, and then everything starts to shift. And this can be so powerful with elite athletes now. I basically tell them that things might change because— and pre-warn them and pre-arm them, like especially if someone's at rock bottom. So if someone's really injured Generally speaking, people slowly improve. There's progress, not perfection. Things fall into place. Things start to— it's normally not that dramatic, right? And it's the way we work. It's pretty safe. In fact, I mean, there's an extraordinary element of don't get injured, how to do this safely, how to not— but the purpose is to build you up, not break you down. But let's say you work— like, if I work with a really good athlete and they have a— like, I feel that they're at a roadblock. Like, let's say you have an injury and they can't overcome the injury. No one can help them, right? And we know we need to change things around. You know, I will literally warn them and say, if you solve this problem and you start becoming more creative and you change and reframe the way you're moving, how the world sees you will change and how you see the world will change. And that can be very disruptive because old And they said, well, what do you mean? Well, like, and it happens with coaches. Like, let's say we're working on extension and you suddenly thinking about pressing the ground away and the economy of movement and relaxing into it. And the less tension you have, the better you move. Your coach is telling you to sort of increase your cadence and decrease ground contact time, or someone that's telling you like you need stiff ankles and stiff feet and hard tendons. To run better just doesn't make sense for you. And so they'll tend to fall out of your life. So that there is a— it's pretty— it can be extraordinarily profound. And it's one of the reasons why I stick to my guns. Like, I get a lot of pushback, I get a lot of flak. I'm not for everyone, but I don't care because the truth of it is, it's just, you know, this extraordinary healing thing. I mean, I've had people that help, like, cure themselves of alcoholism. I've had people that have reconciled with their deceased mother. You know, people's life-changing. And so it's, for me, running is far more than just running. And learning to run and move well is, is so rewarding and it's infinite and it'll engage you for the rest of your life. And I think that's why children are so— well, I know that's why children are so happy, because they're obsessed with movement. And the movement is the meditation and it's what keeps them so happy and engaged. And round about 10, They look up and say, okay, I can do all the things my adult can do. I can tie my shoelaces, brush my teeth. I can do a cartwheel. Dad can't. And then suddenly you realize what's next and you go, oh, adult. Oh, study. And then, you know, you have teenagers who are going through massive crises and it's almost like you're coming back to, oh, learning to explore movement and movement patterns is really, really cool. It makes me happy and engaged and smiling and laughing again.

Yeah. I want to talk about the flow rope for a little bit because this, this is what made it click for me. This is where you and I have been talking for several different weeks and all of a sudden you pull out this rope. You're like, hey, let's try this. So can you explain a little bit more about the concept and how, how anyone even listening to this can potentially try this at home or experiment with some of this?

Yeah, the flow rope's really easy. Um, Okay, so what I'll do is I need to send— you're more savvy on this than I am— I'll send you a link to a YouTube video for the Flow Up and how to use it in terms of running. I'm going to backtrack one little bit. If you, you touched on ice baths and your nervous system. Most people are using ice baths to calm their parasympathetic nervous system down, whereas you should, through movement, and you should be able to calm your parasympathetic nervous system down. So a way of reframing is that you should be able to warm the water not let the water calm you, or you should calm the water, is a way of reframing it and sort of putting the power back in you. It's not the ice bath that's the problem, it's constantly reacting. Like, people say, oh, I'm in a sympathetic state, and they splash water on their face. Like, that's, you know, you need to calm the water. You need to be calm. You need to— that needs to come from a deep sense of authority and inner working, and it is possible. Okay, so flow rep works like this. We'll talk a little bit about the anterior chain and posterior chain. A way of thinking about this is like the front of the horse or the back of the horse. Or if you can envisage a sort of chimpanzee galloping across the— and I like the word gallop— across the ground, if you watch Planet of the Apes, it's very asymmetrical. So we have a massive asymmetry in our nervous system in terms of gait. Okay, so we don't want to control it too much, but the front pulls and the back kicks or extends. A lot of people are stuck in anterior chain dominant patterns. I work with a lot of triathletes, and because they, they generate power and flexion on the bicycle in a flexed position with the knee in front of the hip, they massively prioritize almost movement patterns of the front of the horse. With the Flow Rope, what we can do is we can swing the rope forward, which is an anterior chain pattern. You can swing the rope in reverse, which lights up the posterior chain. Pattern. Again, you sort of get a posterior rolling of your shoulders, which is how Michael Johnson ran. I mean, Google how Michael Johnson ran. I don't think people realize how extra his posterior chain sort of pattern was. And so we can wake up that posterior chain. And so you can wake up those patterns and give it— because a lot of people say my posterior chain is strong because I do deadlift, but that doesn't mean that that's going to translate into your running. And the pattern is a figure of 8. Our hips work in a figure of 8 and our shoulders work in a figure of 8, and restoring that dance or that into play. Where you're thinking is getting your shoulders off your hips is one of the primary reasons we use the Flow Rope and also decompresses your spine. So once you start animating your spine and your spine starts to become fluid, you've got so many intersegmental muscles and micro muscles and small muscles in the spine. And when they animate, it pops your spine up almost like a suspension bridge works. You create tensegrity or a sense of space in your spine and it decompresses nerve roots When your spine is very fluid and creative, you can— it indicates you can solve problems in the moment. So like, imagine if I put you on a total brace and you had to walk across rocky terrain, you wouldn't be able to stabilize or brace or solve movement problems in real time. And animating your spine allows your spine to solve complex problems very, very rapidly. You know, you go to the right, you can immediately put your head to the left to save a fall, or you start to become the author and the creator of your movement. And then, you know, we talk about how do we get into this pattern, you know, the common, the current scientific literature strongly supports a stiff, rigid spine to protect you from back pain. Whether that's not the truth, that an animated, strong, flexible spine, or using your spine as an engine and using it as a source of your power and authority of your movement is very, very healing. So there's that, and then, and from a neural pattern, And your cerebellum, which is a little acorn at the base of your brain, kind of integrates right and left movement and also word processing and also math. And it's extraordinary. You'll have people stuck on an anterior chain and they're dyslexic, or they're stuck on the anterior chain and cannot do math, or have a real hard time doing math. And, you know, it's not really my forte, but balancing out your cerebellum and having an anterior and a posterior chain and waking up those neural pathways. You know, a lot of people find that their spelling improves, and a lot of people find that their math and their number improves, and it balances you out on a very, very central movement pattern. So we love the FlowRap for that neurological sort of neuroplasticity and creating opportunity and animating your spine. And again, you animate your spine, you know, new neurons light up in your brain, and possibilities just start opening. So many people are just painted into a corner. And breath, you guys, I know you're big on breath. Breath is the same, you know. I used to be a lifeguard, lifesaver, and when you rescue people, the drowning person has no options and they make really bad decisions. So they're like climbing on their siblings' heads so that they can breathe, you know. Mothers step on their children, literally climb on top of their children so that they can breathe, you know. And, and that's a breath crisis, and it narrows down your options and you make bad decisions, you make reflexive decisions, you know, that that aren't in character for you. And it's extraordinary when your breath softens and you're calm and relaxed, you know, options open up. You go, oh, I never realized that. Oh, but you, you know, all these options start to open up. And people just— like, what I'm saying is so self-evident that people are just not awake or not aware to it.

I have a few thoughts to add to that just from my own perspective. So initially it was like, all right, here's a rope and we're going to swing this backwards. Yes. And so to me, I had to like learn how to swing the rope backwards, which like for some people this comes more natural. You said for other people it does not come natural. So for me, I started swinging it sideways, sideways, natural, and it felt good. Then I tried to do that to a few other people. I gave them the rope and they could not go backwards. They literally, they could only do it forwards. Yeah, it sounds so like, oh, it seems very easy. I've literally seen like half the people I did this with, they couldn't swing a rope backwards. Yeah. And so once I started swinging it, you're like, all right, now step to the side or like step on the side. And so you learn that rhythm just by standing still and then by slowly walking. And like it becomes like this movement where like, yes, your chest— my chest felt more open by doing this. And then like you came over here to my house. I remember standing in front of my house and we were like practicing this together. I was like, all right, so this is how this goes. And then eventually you said like, yeah, now you can start running in this way as well, where you have like more of a sideways movement with your arms instead of your arms going so forward and backwards. It was a lot more open. It seems your chest opened up more and it almost seemed like it was easier to breathe at that point too. Like just your chest being much more open. Yeah, can you talk through that a little bit more, like the, the open chest and even some of the videos you've recently posted with Jim Walmsley and some of these other athletes?

Okay, so, so the chest opening is really— I mean, you, you've reflected on that a few times. So tight hamstrings and adductors from a, from a fascial connection, from a multi-chain muscles— like muscles connect to each other across joints, or your fascia. Um, you know, Thomas Myers, anatomy trainer, wrote a book and he sort of drew these links through the body of how muscles talk to each other across different chains. So there's a nomenclature.

I'm—

this is— don't die on this hill. But generally speaking, anterior chain running will tighten up your— the sort of the muscles, posterior tibialis, okay? And then your medial hamstring and adductor. And that chain tends to run through your hip flexors, and it tends to run up your psoas, and it gets into your diaphragm. So you can experience this very, very simply if you just sit on the floor with your legs out in front of you. You'll notice that it's difficult to sit upright and your chest will feel compressed and constrained. You won't be able to get your hands over your head very easily or not very likely, and you won't be able to breathe, and you'll almost feel like your chest is being pulled down from the inside. Whereas if you tall-kneel, you take all the tension out of your adductors and hamstrings, and immediately you'll feel your posture improves and your chest and breath open. Opens up, which is a kind of a representative way of showing how powerful your adductors and hamstrings can affect your breath and your posture and your movement. And so more posterior chain, and I want to be very clear here, we talk about these descriptive processes to help you understand, okay, don't, don't, I'm like, humans should never ever attach a label to themselves. Okay, so, and it's common. So you'll be like, I don't know, like the full foot anterior chain sprint runner on Instagram, okay, then you can't change your mind, you don't have options. Okay, so please, please don't become the posterior chain runner of awesome breath, okay? Because you're painting yourself into a box, you know. You need to be fluid, and things change in these deeper levels of understanding and insights, you know. So, so that is what happens. And the other thing is, with the rope, you learn to move from the center out. So you talked about your hands on the outside in. Swinging the rope teaches you to move from the center out, and it's so powerful because that's what creates space in joints. And we recognize that as excellent in athletes. You see a pro golfer, hips first, then hands, then club head hits the ball. That's the sequence. They move and generate power from the center out, whereas someone who's never played golf before will tend to whack the ball with their hands, their head, you know, you're moving from the outside in. And that's one of the things which is one of the hardest movement lessons to teach people is to move from the center out, to generate power from your core, your spine, and let that ripple through your body. And that's why we want to extend from the hip first. If your hip extends, then your hamstring, then your calf, and then off your toes. Whereas a lot of people are going— and even your awareness, you're thinking of how my foot hits the ground. You land with a locked foot, your plantar fascia's tight, your calf's tight, your Achilles tight, your hamstring's tight, which tightens up your hip flexors and adductors, and it tightens up your breath and sort of affects the way you breathe, which is kind of why you don't— that's why I don't teach running that way. We teach people to open up and relax and run with rhythm and ease and timing. Fluidity, breath, you know, and then you can start to calm down. And then people find swinging the rope— some people find it extraordinarily calming because you act— there seems to be a link between posterior chain and parasympathetic. And so some people swing the rope to fall asleep at night, and some people like walking backwards, which really helps animate all of this and is a fantastic teacher. Um, some people find it just completely calms them down for sure.

And so on what I will do is on this YouTube video version, I'll show a few video clips overlaid while you're talking through this on the podcast version. I'll make sure to link to that actual video that you describe over here. One thing that I've also— that has helped me tremendously in my running is something that you have mentioned around pushing your feet into the ground instead of focusing so much on like putting your foot in front of you and putting a lot of pressure on your hip flexors, actually like focusing on pushing your feet into the ground. Can you talk through that a little bit more.

Some of the things I say might be controversial to you, or you might like to sort of go back to sort of studies on running and ground impact, okay? But real simple basic fundamentals, everyone should try, and research strongly supports this in biomechanics, is that you should try and get your foot to land as close to under your hip as possible. You do not want your feet making ground contact in front of you and A huge part of that is getting your head on top of your shoulders and getting your arms back. So if your head's forward, your feet will go forward. If your arms are forward, your feet will go forward. So posture will really, really help get your foot underneath your hip. Super shoes are designed— you're going to compress the shoe and spring out of them like a pogo stick. And I think it's really helping a lot of people's running form and elite running form because you're starting— people, the narrative is going back to, or people are starting to experience energy return and efficiency or elasticity in their running. Running, which I think, you know, we sort of got into like a muscle phase where you muscle through running and you work on your engine, your cardiovascular system, and there's a big focus on muscling it. One of the reasons why I think people should cue on pressing the earth backwards, because it's a very, very powerful cue of moving from the center out, and also if you want to run fast in super shoes, you need to compress them into the ground and then use the elastic boing out to aid your running. And yeah, you're moving from the center out is also why we press the earth away. And then it's drive, hip drive. A lot of people will try and improve their running mechanics by, let's say, working on cadence. Most people increase their cadence by picking their feet up off the ground. Okay, I personally don't work on cadence hardly ever because I think decreased cadence is a central movement pattern problem, and I'd rather you swing the rope You learn to move from the hips. You learn to generate power from where it's supposed to do, and the cadence will come. And then it's kind of like in all movement lessons in the world, we all understand you practice slowly and the speed and power comes. Okay, so like I'm learning guitar, practice slowly. And most of the work that I do, we'll do walking or in the room and slowing it down. That's the quickest way to teach your nervous system how to do things. If you do things quickly, you'll do them the same way you always did them. You'll go back to your reflex pathways. So there's a huge component of learning things slowly and letting the speed and power come. And I'm going to, just to help you, because some people get like, they've worked so hard on their cadence, or it's a strong fundamental part of their running. The best way to work on cadence, if you want to work on cadence, is to do what we call the one-hand drill. And so instead of going like when you're running, going 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 on 180 beats or whatever you're trying to achieve, it's really helpful to go one and, and on the one your foot lands and on the and you press the earth backwards or you drive or you just say the word. And what will happen is that one and helps you start to transition into I have enough. Well, I'd love to talk about the perception of time and running. Okay. But the one and will teach you how to drive, how to extend. And you go one and two and three and you emphasize the and. And that "and" will create space in your running and allow your foot to land. If you're in super shoes, compress, and then you're timing the "and" to the release of the super shoe. Or if you're running barefoot, if you're running whatever you're running, you're learning to land, roll off your toes, and then use an elastic recoil from your hamstrings, your calves to propel yourself forward. And then that, that's for me is really helpful way of— if you're going to work on cadence, think about the "one and" not just "one, two, three," because on "one, two, three," I promise you, you'll just run, you'll increase your cadence by picking your feet up off the ground. And running well is a component of cadence and stride per distance, and most people are decreasing their stride per distance because they're so working on their turnover. And it's again, it's flexion, and we want to move from the center out, which is extending. I need to drink water after that.

Well, here you go, I will go. One thing to add from my own experience in this is once I started paying attention to actually, all right, let's, let's focus a bit on pushing my feet into the ground. In particular, when I was doing speed work or when I was doing higher intensity running or when I was racing, I noticed like I felt I was able to rotate my shoulders more easily too when I was like actually focusing on pushing, pushing my feet into the ground. I was able to open my chest fairly easy and it just made sense. It all just clicked. Like I think this was one cue to me that, that just made it all kind of combined. One of the other things that you've said at some point, um, and trust me, I've made notes and no pages and pages of notes after all these conversations. I have like an Evernote sheet that's called Floris Verlingen over here. But one of the things here was sometimes when we do speed work, sometimes when we run at higher intensity or we do a race, It is the anticipation of what's to come that makes it challenging. In the moment when we're actually running, we are okay, we're fine. Yes, it might be challenging, but we're okay. People don't stop because of that. They stop because I still got 10 more rounds of 800s to go, I still got 8 more miles to go, versus be here now. Like, we did like the power of now, the whole being present in this moment. And just, you and I often speak about Mark Allen and some of his fundamentals with this as well when he was running in Kona and the lava fields and that whole part of being present, being here now. And I think very often as athletes we disconnect. We either look at like, ah, it's hurting over here or I got this much more to go versus just being there. So I thought that was a good reminder. Maybe you can speak through that a little bit more.

Yeah, 'cause that'll get into the perception of time, which I love. A very, very powerful cue which doesn't make sense to people is to not go anywhere when you run. So you can literally try and instead of running towards something, you don't go anywhere and you run things towards you. So like, let's talk about the sort of like the psycho-emotional. So you can't separate motion from emotion. How you move is how you feel, and that's why it matters so much the cues you choose, how you perceive running, because it massively impacts how you feel. Okay, and that's all we ever worry about is how are we feeling. Okay, so if I'm like, oh my, this is my ultimate joy is underneath the Christmas tree, like, oh, I'm so excited and I want to get to it and I'm going to run over there, like, look at the anticipation. And I'm thinking about this, what's in the box, I want what's in the box, and I'm getting ahead of myself. Humans, from probably credit card companies' fault, we now place so much significance on an event that's going to come that we perceive will change our life, and then we perceive we can have all these good things if we do that thing, whereas the reality is we only have the here and now. Okay, and you open that box and it might be the wrong toy, and then it's not so amazing. So, so think that's the sort of mindset of of getting ahead of yourself or running towards a point. And it's quite interesting, you can try this as a thought experiment. Just stand still, okay, and see if you can walk an object towards you and feel like you're not going anywhere. That you, like, if the world is a bit, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen people in a wine barrel running in water, they just run on the place, okay. Imagine that you're not going anywhere, you're turning the whole world underneath you, and you're running that object towards you. And notice the massive change in your psycho-emotional state. Okay, and it takes away a sense of anticipation. It makes you present now and in the moment, and the step you're making now, if you make that as well as you can, that'll set you up for success in the future. And I think that very, very powerful reframing, if you get it right, is one of the most powerful endurance cues you can use. I've seen people have really, really good races simply because of the way they frame in their mental and emotional state. And the ability to stay in the moment. It's very, very, very powerful. And it also— we're going to take this back to our perception of time. When you swing the rope and you've taught people how to swing the rope, a lot of people rush and they can't slow down and they can't stop and they can't listen and they can't think. And I'll make them aware of this moment and say, can you see that you're rushing and that you, you, you're going on to the next thing? A lot of people can't learn because they're too rushed, they're too anxious, they're not present, and they're not in the moment. And when you, when you start swinging the rope backwards and you start to create movement options and you start to reframe things, you create a sense of more time and space. And it's one of the reasons I don't like working on cadence as well, is because cadence makes you feel you don't have enough time. You're not taking enough steps per minute, you should take more steps per minute. Makes you feel rushed and anxious and I don't have enough time. You know, in the military they'll say Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, or in transitions in triathlon, don't make mistakes. And anyway, we have this perception of time, and when you're running well, you probably find you have a perception of, I have all the time in the world. All the great runners, and when I talk about a great runner, I want to know that they weren't injured either. I don't want to know that someone had this, like, that's the truly great. So I had the privilege of and pleasure of helping Sebastian Coe once. And I mean, he had his first injury that stopped him from running when he was 60. And don't think he doesn't train hard and don't think he doesn't run a lot, you know what I mean? So it's extraordinary. All those great runners, when they run, they'll say their foot lands, then they transition off and then they'll toe off and then they'll propel and they have this sense of land, load, explode or land, load, drive. So they have time, they can tell you what their foot does and they have this like, time is stretched, whereas a lot of people working on the canes, time tends to shrink. You can't even take enough steps per minute. You know, as soon as your foot hits the ground, you have to pick it back off. You don't have a sense of rolling your foot, relaxing forward, flourishing off your toes, hip drive, because time is narrow for you. And that lack of time and your sympathetic nervous system and your sense of anxiety, you know, your breathing rate will be higher than it should do, your blood lactate won't be what it could be, you might find your digestion doesn't work as well as it could do. So all of these things start to link in and sync up together, and when you get it right, it's luminal or it's transcending or it can be incredibly powerful.

I'd never even thought about relaxing my ankles when running until you mentioned that at some point, and I was like Hold on a minute, you can actually relax your ankles when you're running. And all of a sudden, indeed, like it does seem like a sense of calm comes over you even through something like a focused area of the ankles. Yeah, it's, it's not just the shoulders because I see quite a few athletes like getting tense in their running and you can instantly see the shoulders are going up and they're like just looking very— but even on some of these other body parts where you can intentionally relax them.

Yeah, it's a big one.

Yeah.

Tight, the front of your ankles are strongly linked to your hip flexors. And so if they're tight, your hip flexors are tight. And as we discussed, your hip flexors, if they're tight, tend to affect your breathing and your pelvic floor. So your pelvic floor needs to move in sync with your diaphragm. And if your pelvic floor is tight, your diaphragm will, will, the frequency of your diaphragm will increase, which means the frequency of your breathing, you tend to overbreathe. And then that will lead to anxiety and plus the fact that you've got tension in that system, you can't take a breath. So a lot of people have a sense of sort of anxiety or breathlessness or excitement, anticipation and too much, you know, you're over-aroused. So that's why it works. And for people listening and going like, no, but hip flexion is so important for running. A healthy muscle is a muscle that has full range, it can fully relax and contract and it can do it has the ability to be coordinated and fluid and dynamic, like it can make each movement a little bit different as it needs to be. Okay, a tight-held muscle or an engaged muscle or a braced muscle, okay, is not functionally appropriate for locomotion, for endurance running. Like, hey, you're gonna get punched in the stomach, for sure brace, you know, but boxers will shake out the tension so that they can be the quickest and most reactive and punch the hardest because no tension is how you engage the muscle fully, you have full range of motion. So that's why it's so much better to relax the front of your ankles, to relax the hips. Your hip flexors actually function better than held tight, engaged, and stiff. And, but that's difficult, like, that's the nomenclature and science at the moment is obsessed with, with sort of rigidity, bracing, guarding. But again, that puts you in a reactive state. You're not the author of your movement. We need these things. You need to be able to react, you need to be able to brace or stiffen, but you can't live in a guarded, braced, stiffened state. Your movement becomes segmented, it becomes choppy, you're not getting the best out of your muscles. If your shoulders are up near your ears when you run, your diaphragm and your pelvic floor are tight. You have to relax your diaphragm, you have to relax your pelvic floor, and you have to, you know, when you learn to— and you talked about your shoulders rotating— shoulders swap from side to side because your hips are animated. Your shoulders and your— they call it a fore-knot complex. I don't like the word knot, but shoulder, shoulder, hip, hip. And if your hips are empowered and animated, your shoulders will swap when you're running. And then there's another thing, like common nomenclature is keep your hips still when you run. No, they should be animated and they should have contralateral movement and they do this weird figure of 8 dance, which is just extraordinary. I mean, I still haven't figured it out. But what happens is your shoulders will animate and you'll see that in the really good runners. I think everyone should watch Faith Kipyegon running. I think she totally nails it. You can see just no tension in her chest. When she runs corners, she's on her forefoot or accelerating on the flats at world record mile pace, she's heel toeing, you know what I mean? It's just magnificent. And the other one is seeing the back leg go dead straight, which is a sign that you have hip drive and you're using your hamstrings as a spring. With so many people doing skips and shortening the hamstrings, contracting the hamstrings, or there's a narrative of my hamstrings are bicep and you should contract them. I like to think of hamstrings as handsprings, and if you're driving with length, you'll actually stretch the hamstring and it's contracting as well. It's doing two things at once. And that will help. You'll see in elite athletes that run really well, their back leg goes dead straight.

I love that, uh, ham, ham, ham, hamstrings, watch, hamstrings comment right there. I remember at the last Chicago Marathon, I was texting you some videos of even Sifan Hassan coming through where you were also seeing like that back leg movement. That was, that was fascinating. Talking about relaxed running, sometimes at the end of a race, I notice it gets hard, you get tense, and the more you can tell yourself, actually try to relax even when it's hard. Try to relax, all of a sudden it becomes easier. And you would think sometimes like, ah, you just got to try harder, you got to like, right? Try to relax, drop the shoulders, breathe in, and all of a sudden it just becomes easier again. It's—

yeah, and get back into the moment because often— so I mean, we were having this conversation with Taylor Knibb, you know, and she says— and I explained this in preparation for Ironman, for Kona. I said like you, I call it the 'oh my word' moment in a marathon. And I said the 'oh my word' part of an Ironman marathon is when you go like, 'Oh my word, this is a lot.' Like, oh, it's almost like you wake up, you can be, you know, you're swimming, you're biking, you're doing all the things and you're running and it's all going fine. And there's one, there's some pivotal moment you go like, and I think like in the marathon, you hit the wall, right? It's like you go, 'Oh my word, I've got 12K to go,' whatever it is, you know what I mean? Like, that's a lot. Run about now, I'm having a lot of sensations. Generally speaking, that's the time when you started, like when you're running, you're like, I've done 5Ks, I've done 10Ks, you're worried about your pace and where you've been and what you're doing. And generally speaking, it's the point where you suddenly start thinking how far left I've got to go. And so you pulled out of being in the moment. And it's the anticipation of what's to come. That is, is one of the things that lead to a lot of people having like hitting the wall, not just a nutrition or training thing. And again, yeah, immediately what you should do is get present, get in the moment. Don't think how far you've gone, think how well you're doing and do what you can in the moment to set yourself up for this, for the next step. And that can often take the tension out of it. And you're quite right. Yeah, you got to relax, be in the moment, get back in the moment. Mantras at this stage, your mantras, the mantra is very, very important. Important, and your internal dialogue. You'll notice again, bad movement and bad internal dialogue go together. So immediately working on a positive mental dialogue and reframing, you should talk to yourself in the third person at this stage. You should be saying, Flo, you're awesome. Flo, you're in the moment. You know, I don't know if you ever have a mantra. They sound so corny. If you ever say them out loud.

Oh yeah. Well, anything to get you to that finish line at that point, right?

So, yeah. And that's something if you're doing ultra endurance or Ironman is have your why before. Don't in that moment suddenly think, oh, I need to think of a reason to get to the finish line. You need to have that preloaded. And that's why so many people run for charities or cause greater than themselves. And then humans have that in you. So if you're doing, well, I mean, you can do it for any distance race, but particularly for ultra distance races or longer races or the marathon, have your why beforehand. Know why when it gets tough, why you're going to push through. I don't think you need to be tougher than other people. Well, I mean, there's a lovely Boston study basically showing from Boston Marathon showing that the tougher you think you are, the more of a pain game you think a marathon is, the more prepared you are to suffer, basically that's the best predictor of slowing down in the second half and ending up in the medical tent. So I'm not saying, I'm not saying be tough or hard, I'm saying have your why. Know why when it gets tough you're going to carry on running and have that figured out before because when you're in the middle of a race, that's not the time to start figuring out your why. So why?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mentioned Taylor Knipp, and I want to briefly talk about that because there was an awesome Triathlete magazine article that recently came out, and she actually credited you for helping her sleep better and enhance her running performance. Can you share some of the insights into the techniques that you used over here to achieve these results with her? I would love to talk through this a little bit more because I know this applies to her, but it can apply to other athletes as well.

Here. Look, Taylor is, um, not special. She's unique. She's, she's relatively unique, as in, or rare, as in, um, she's a very, very good problem solver, and she's very brave, and she's very intelligent and articulate, um, which is— we should all be that way, but we're not always that way, right? So she can solve problems, movement problems quickly, and she's not afraid of— she has courage. So it takes courage to let go, takes courage sometimes to try something new, takes courage to hold on to a strong-held belief. And so she has all of that. So I'm just going to frame that up. So her results have been pretty extraordinary. I mean, she figured out running and basically took about 90 seconds off her 10K time in about 3 weeks, okay, by sort of figuring out running processes, okay, which is not— it happens often. I mean, I think you had sort of almost like a performance breakthrough for your fitness, and that happens relatively often, okay. The way I work is, is, and with Taylor, is setting her up for success. Like, running well, if you have to remember how to run well, that's one thing. If you didn't really ever know how to run, that's a whole nother enchilada, right? And it's when you're working, you don't like, let's say you have a child that does math, you don't give them a problem that they can't solve. You can give them a challenging problem, but they need to be able to solve that problem. So with movement problems, we're always helping someone with a problem that they can solve, because otherwise they'll think they're movement done and they'll get You know, like, so with Taylor, interestingly enough, before the race, I said, I think Taylor's going to have— before Milwaukee, Taylor's going to have a breakthrough in her running. And, you know, there was a narrative, oh, she totally can't, she's got to believe. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like, this is engineered. Like, all the components are there. And I think when she wants to express herself, these things will fall into place for her. And that's exactly what she had. Her breakthrough wasn't the day before and the session before. Or the breakthrough was during the race, like that, the, you know, she had access to all the ingredients. And so it was a math problem she could solve. And under duress, she sort of solved it. And interestingly enough, she did the same in Paris. Like she had a running breakthrough in the race. There was nothing to reflect that she could run. We knew and she knew she was running better, but she didn't know she could run that fast. And in the Paris event, she had the third fastest run, which kind of goes a little bit under the radar because she had a very slow second transition. But that was again, And that's a sign of— we can call it a champion or whatever you want to call it, but it's a sign of someone that under sort of pressure or demand brings the best of them. And I think that can be learned for everyone, you know. And again, so that's, that's interesting context or framing for the whole big picture. For me, when I first worked with her, I treated her, and what we did is I sort sort of unwound and helped her with neural tension, and she slept better. And one of the reasons why she started working with me is her boyfriend said, when's Lawrence coming to town? Because I like you much better after Lawrence has worked with you, because the whole nervous system— she's much calmer, she slept better. And he noticed the change in her, in her whole mental and emotional state. And so she's one of those people that's very, very sensitive or reactive nervous system, which, which often happens in elites. They have a sensitive nervous system, so that which responds, you know, and it can be a blessing and a double-edged sword. Um, so Taylor, like, again, she swings the rope backwards, it calms her nervous system down. You know, she does backwards walking, which I strongly suggest people walk backwards, it calms the nervous system down. She gets calm, grounded. Um, and, and so her nervous system is extraordinarily responsive. But Taylor's, Taylor's pretty unique in, in quite a lot of ways. Your nervous system or neural tension, or if you have an asymmetry in your nervous system, can dictate the way you move a lot. And she had a twist in her nervous system which made an asymmetry in her movement and was also sort of linked to foot injuries. So balancing out your nerve tree, which, you know, you the listener can do with like nerve flossing techniques and just big fascial plane movements and having big connections between, like, let's say trying to get your right hand and your left foot away from each other as much as possible, okay, helps balance out your nerve tree. And that often helps calm your nervous system down, is having symmetry in your, in your nerve, in your nervous system. And we, you know, you can have had whiplash and twisted your neck and you get an asymmetry, or some people have like, you have like a piriformis and the piriformis is clamping on your sciatic nerve and suddenly you have an asymmetry your nerve tree. Getting your nervous system to glide and slide through you is really a good idea if you want to move well and you want to be the author of your movement and not reactive. Because remember, like, your, your brain defends it, your nervous system defends itself. It's almost like an alien that lives inside you, and it prioritizes itself over you because if it does, you die. So people won't move through nerve pain. You'll move around nerve pain, or you'll move around nerve tension. So, so part of what we do is make sure that you're not moving around neural tension. And then that's, that's again sort of feeds into this holistic view of looking at people and getting all everything to start gelling and working together.

You have a website where you often guide people through some of these movements that you're just describing over here as well. Can you tell a little bit more like Because this is what I found powerful as well. There's, there's things that you can do on your own, but you also have some guided follow-along exercises. And this is focused on movement, this is focused on calming the nervous system, this is focused on breathwork. Can you explain a little bit more where that is, what, what people can find over there? Because I think it's a very powerful tool that can help a lot of people in there, in there. Journey.

Thanks, Floris. Yeah. So on www.innerunner.com, there's only one R in the middle of that, Inner Runner. Okay. So I have a community and, and I'm sure for many of the listeners what I'm saying, there might be light bulbs going on, or you might have a sense of connection, or you might have a like, oh my word, what's he talking about? He's totally wrong. But it's because I'm trying— what I do really want to do is create a culture and an environment where you can explore movement, explore running in a safe space and work on your running in a very safe way. So we have a community, I do 2 live classes a week. One is Monday, we do mobility and we'll always emphasize a little different part of, of our body in that mobility routine. And then on Wednesdays, we do deep dives and explorations like we'll do today, we're talking about foot movement and hip movement and how to improve that before a run, or we'll do breath, or we'll do psoas release or belly balls. Like there's always Wednesdays, it's called, we started it calling Mastery Not Medals. But again, Taylor, Taylor's helped me reframe that. It's mastery and medals. Or mastery gets the medals.

Champion mindset right there.

So, and, but that's, that's mastery of movement. And if you, if you master your movement, then things come to you rather than, you know, so many people. Again, this whole, are you the creator of your movement, the author of your life, or you, who's in charge? And focusing on mastery, good things come towards you. So we have those two live classes a week and other little special classes. And I have some little courses and I'm really going to put out pretty shortly and I know you've been prepping me for this for a long time, a very detailed course on how to run. So hopefully by the time you listen to this podcast, it might be ready. I'm thinking by February 2024 that will be out. But there's plenty of resources on there. We share videos, the flow rope, detailed how to flow rope, how to tire walk, how to walk backwards, when to do it, everything. There's just a whole online community and cultures to support you to better express yourself through movement and running.

And, and just to add some comments from my perspective over here, I see quite a few people listening to this podcast, like they have, let's say, 5 hours a week available to train or 10 hours a week available to train, and all of that effort is going into running and that is it. Whereas there's something so powerful to take some portion of that time and allocate that to mobility, to strength training, to some of the backwards walking or some of these other things that you're talking about over here, that will make you a better athlete even though it's not as direct as you think it is. You, like, I see the thought process so often: to become a better runner, I gotta run more. And very often it's not the running more that's going to get you, but running the right way with a calm nervous system, with a holistic approach where everything is connected, that will get you more joy and more fulfillment out of your runs.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I only work with people with a long-term view. I want you to be like Sebastian Coe. I want you to still love running when you're 60 and run forever. And so if you look at the— if you zoom out and look at the big picture and say, what does an injury cost me? What does breakdown in running and not being able to run cost me? Like, where How do I improve when that happens? You know, and sort of zoom out. And again, we get in this reflective state. We're anxious and we're not enough and we don't have enough, we don't have enough time. And so, you know, it's just this whole mindset. And you will not— you have to change your mindset in order to change the way you run. It's just the reframing and then good things come to you. So, you know, you can start slowly and you can start very, very gently. You can just say, okay, I'm running I run 25 hours a week, and I run, we'll make this easy sums, we run 5 times a week, 5 hours a week, right? Just walk backwards for 5 minutes, you know, you're donating 25 minutes to your 5-hour week and see if suddenly you're not running better for the work that you've been doing. And it is a slow entry. And a lot of these things we can practice while we're running. So you are running, but you can practice your breathing, or you can practice rhythm, or you can practice letting go while you're running. But yeah, it's very, very important to move well and move and have a long game. And, you know, your joints will thank you, your nervous system thanks you, your health. I mean, there's much more. It's digestion. I'm going to tell a quick story. I know we're running out of time. One of the most fulfilling things I've ever done is helped one of the all-time greats of triathlon, and she was known for running, run again. And she'd been retired and she hadn't been able to run for 10 years. Her whole identity was running. Running. She's known as a runner, the best runner ever. And she'd had 2 hip surgeries and hip— she says, I'm never having another surgery. They don't help. That's not the problem. But also when she ran, her nervous system blew up. So either she couldn't sleep, like she became basically insomniac, or nervous system got wired, or her stomach would react very negatively. So she basically tentatively would run about 20 to 30 minutes once a week, every 10 days. Had to be on a soft surface, preferably go out and running on a gentle uphill or into a headwind first, you know, would never run downhill first or with a tailwind first. So, so extremely sensitive but didn't know what to do, was just desperately trying to run. And reframing running and how she perceived running and giving her permission to do things that she did naturally that had possibly been coached out of her— I mean, we're talking two 20-minute sessions, Changed her life completely. Now when she runs, her nervous system calms down. Now when she runs, she can sleep. And, you know, she runs 5 to 6 times a week and she can run 3.5 hours. And her joy and love for running, who's part of her identity and who she is, has been returned to us. And that's, that's what obsesses me, and that's what I so badly want for other people. And that's, that's the healthy way to run. And then you have it all, you know, you have performance, you have longevity, you have joy, and that ripples through all aspects of your life because now she's a better mom and she's more creative and she's, she's going forward through life. So there is really this sort of almost utopian aspect to running, and you want to just have progress, not perfection. And individual results may vary, but that's where you want to be going, or that's the end goal in mind. Can I run well, and can I run well forever? And if you have that in the end goal, it's amazing how coming back. I mean, the pact between Taylor and myself is, she says, never ever let me do anything that's going to harm me for the long term. And I said, like, that's not the— you know what I mean? And I have at Kona— I mean, I don't know if I'm oversharing— you know, I have full permission to pull her from the course if I thought she was doing any damage to herself. She says, if I'm damaging myself, you pull me off that course, you tell me to stop. And so that's so— in the triathlon community, like, people just don't think like that. Oh, I muscled through it, I ran through it. Like, you know, where you've got one of like someone who has the potential to be one of the all-time greats, and you look at them at 25 to think like that and express like that. But that's what we should be thinking. What's the long game, you know?

Um, always. Yeah, because we're in it for the long term, for sure. Two more things, and, and then we'll, we'll record another podcast again down the line because there's literally like 15 more topics I want to talk about with you, but you mentioned backwards walking a few times. There might be some people listening that are, that have heard of backwards walking, and some people might be, what is Lawrence talking about? Can you explain briefly how would someone go about this and, and what are some of the benefits that you're experiencing here?

If your running becomes more hip extension based, okay, or again, as a descriptive term, posterior chain, but don't I'm gonna die on that term. You tend to leave your heel on the ground longer. Okay, and you start falling forward over connected leg, which is why it becomes so efficient. Okay. And to prepare you for injuries and to not get injured because you draw, you'll use— so this is how I mean, the Triathlon Magazine with Jan Frodeno, like, he had a career-ending Achilles injury. And we got him to run again. He got himself to run again by using the Achilles in a healthy manner, which means you, you draw deeper but softer. Okay, so you use the full range of the Achilles and that doesn't hurt. So if he stiffened his foot and had a tight Achilles, he had Achilles at one point, he had Achilles pain. But if he relaxed his foot, relaxed his calf muscles, and took all the tension out of his foot and actually ran and loaded the Achilles deeper, it was pain-free. And that happens often. So backwards walking is basically increasing the range of motion of your Achilles, preparing yourself to run with your whole foot, which means at some stage your heel is going to be on the ground, and you kind of trust your heel. So walking backwards prepares you for all of that. But it also teaches you that because the exact shape of backwards walking is probably the movement patterns that you want to introduce into your running. So walking backwards will create forefoot to rearfoot mobility, it'll soften your toes, it'll lengthen out your plantar fascia, it'll lengthen out your Achilles and your hamstrings, it'll soften the front of your hips, but it's also giving your brain permission to put your heel on the ground and to trust all your weight in your leg. You'll see when you walk backwards, you put all the weight on your leg and you have this sort of sense of, I don't have tension in my leg, and then I take the next step. We want to introduce that element into running forward. So it's just one of the most incredible ways of improving your running. How you execute it is— treadmill is the safest place to walk backwards because we run out of real estate very quickly when you walk backwards, and you might be concentrating on what the experience is that you're going into. And trust me, in the gym, you'll walk into gym equipment, you'll walk into a pole, you'll hurt yourself. So treadmill is probably the safest way, or big open field to walk backwards.

I have actually found going to a soccer field when there's no one out there and just walking along the line has actually helped me sometimes. If I like, oh, I can just see the line like one foot next to me and there's nothing over there. Like that, that was one part because sometimes even here in Southern California, there's snakes out there, there's pine cones, or you want to watch out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, please be very careful when you walk backwards, okay? Big safe environments. Okay, so what you first— there's sort of two components mostly that you want to master with that backwards walking. One is soft toes, so, so, and it's best to walk backwards barefoot as well. Okay, um, you want to have a sensation that your toes are bending, soft toes, and then heel down. And you just walk backwards, soft toes, heel down, soft toes, heel down. And it's remarkable, a lot of people get very stiff and locked feet and their toes can't soften. Um, and backwards walking is fantastic rehabilitation for plantar plate injuries, plantar fascia injuries, Achilles injuries, hamstring injuries. Okay, so that's the first component, is soft toes, heel down, soft toes, heel down. Once you've got a sense that, oh, I can, my toes are soft and my whole foot hits the ground, the second component is to get your belly button to point towards your lead leg. And 9 out of 10, or probably 99 out of 100 people here, if they backwards walk, will do that the other way around. And that's a really important tell, and it's very important to get that right and to make sure that you're doing that right. So initially you don't have to worry about it, but as soon as you've got the heel-toe part, the toe-heel part right, make sure that your belly button points towards the leg that's in front of you. Okay, I call it grizzly bear walking. If your heel's tight, you'll turn this way. Okay, and what you need to be doing is you need to turn towards the lead leg. So if that leg's in front, your belly button must point towards the lead leg, and your belly button must point towards the lead leg, not the other way around. And that will teach you the proper hip shape, and you'll notice when you get that right, your shoulders sort of track and swap on top of your hips. As your hip makes the right shape, your shoulder makes the right shape, and that's one of the most healthy elements of running, is to see people with shoulders that move with your hips. You're not trying to get your upper body to move, you're not moving your upper body against your lower body. The two work together, and you can learn that very, very powerful connection walking backwards.

I think once you are able to nail the flow rope, this backwards walking with the belly button pointing in the right direction becomes easier as well, because I feel like there's, there's quite a bit of a connection between the two. I noticed like once I had the flow rope down, even me walking around just changed. All of a sudden, my— not just the way I'm running, but even the way I'm walking and walking out. Like, when I wake up in the morning, first thing I do is stand up and I just notice I'm walking differently. And yeah, all of a sudden it just clicked, and that becomes a new norm kind of thing. And so that's not a matter of— sometimes you talked about, ah, some of these processes take a long time. Like, once it clicked, it was just like, okay, now all of a sudden that's the new norm.

But yeah, yeah, it's always quantum, you know. And I mean, like, I take about, you know, we talk about like breakthroughs don't always happen. But in most people, if you're anterior chain dominant, and you figure out posterior chain, there will be a definitive moment and you go, oh, there was me before and there is me after. It's just the size of what before me and after me is. And very important, and that sounds crazy. I asked a lot of athletes that I work with to read Marianne Wilson's poem. It's We're more afraid of our light than our darkness. And who am I to be so talented? And also there's a narrative of you don't serve people, you don't serve the world by being small, constrained, or not expressing yourself. And I asked them to read it and say, if any part of that doesn't resonate, let me know. You need to think about why is your brain sticking on part of that poem. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light and not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love. I know it sounds crazy, but so I had this narrative with an athlete and they had fantastic success. Okay, they learned to use their hip properly, they took 2 minutes off their 10K, in about 6 weeks, you know, completely changed the trajectory of their life. This is an elite level, okay, in triathlon. I mean, it was life-changing. And they, they, I remember the moment very, very clearly. You know, they said like, we want to extend this and how does this look and we want you part of our program and our process and what does this involve? And we were going for a run. And I love talking and running because you think so much clearer and you express things so much better, right? And I said, I'm just telling you now and you need to listen, okay? The hardest part was you got to where you are, leaving no stones left unturned, working the hardest, being the most diligent, being the most professional. And I said, and now talent has entered the scene and you have to believe and accept graciously that you're now a talented athlete. Athlete, and you don't have to work as hard. And you don't have to, you know, that's where we go into mastery, not medals, and trying to frame a safe environment. And people have a terrible time with this. And the number one roadblock or stumbling block I see when I'm working with people is they, they can't accept that movement could be easy, could be— I mean, running is still a tough sport, and you still have to have grit and determination and to work but they can't accept the gift of moving easy and they'll derail. And so they'll be running beautifully and everything's amazing. And then they'll say, oh no, I need to add, I need to do this drill. So-and-so is doing this and you start aping and imitating. You just go back through a spiritual— basically a wheel turns, right? So it's totally okay. But it is very, very interesting is that mentally and emotionally being able to accept the gift of moving so well and running becoming a joy. And a lot of people, that's the hardest part to reconcile. But it is very, very interesting is, is that mentally and emotionally being able to accept the gift of moving so well and running becoming a joy. And a lot of people have— that's the hardest part to reconcile. Um, so we said that's an interesting thing is can you receive this massive— like a lot of people want the gift, but can they receive the gift graciously and then pay it forward? And, and as you are, I mean, it's, it's helping change your life for the better, and then you want to share and grow. And hopefully that's how That's how we make the world a better place.

Yeah, that's the reason why we're having this conversation.

Yeah, but then, you know, there's this element of guarding and defensive, and I have the knowledge, and I'm in charge, and I know these drills and extra drills, and there's a power differential, and there's like, you know, like, you know, this narrow view, and, you know, people guarding the secrets of their training. And so it's really sort of interesting space where we end up. Humans being human.

One more I want to mention was the Awesomeizer, like talking about flexibility of the hips and this being one exercise that, that I do on a pretty consistent basis. Maybe, maybe you can briefly talk through that and I'll link to that one as well. But this is one I've seen a video a few years, years ago. First, Dr. Marco Guzella brought that one up. I've seen it in his book, but I've seen it, I've seen that video being shared quite a few times. Can you just explain a little bit further?

So Awesomize is pretty much like walking backwards. You're learning to make the shape of running, and which running is a big split stance, and it's basically, you know, problem-solving restrictions in your hips as one, balance problems, upper body stacked on torso problems, and then learning the correct shape of running, learn to be calm and relaxed in the shape of running, thinking about your running form and then preparing your feet for the demands of running is pretty much the intention behind it. And also the Awesomizer is not very— it's pretty simple. You, you find a low object that's probably about between knee and hip height. Again, you put one foot up onto it and then you basically rock forward and back on your hip and you decouple your hips and then you practice rolling off your toes. The interesting thing is you can use this as a tell whether you're anterior chain dominant or not, or whether your hips are really tight. There's a lot of people when they step up onto the awesomeizer, like we're talking about with walking backwards, will step and open up the hip. Okay, and that's homolateral gait, that same side, same side, and what you want— so when you teach the awesomeizer, you say, turn, like, pick a leg that's going to step up, okay, turn your belly button towards that leg and then step up, and it starts to teach you contralateral gait. And if we've got time, I know this is a long podcast, okay, humans love homolateral gait. As a baby, you'll suck your right thumb first and you'll move your right leg and you'll fire up on one side and then the other side. Okay, so developmentally, you come out the womb in a fetal position. Okay, then you learn to move homolateral, right, right, left, left. Only when you crawl do you learn crossover contralateral gait and this contralateral movement patterns and the proper hip-shoulder connection. Some people don't crawl, some people skip crawling. Okay, so, and then we talk for reasons we sort of shut down movement patterns, but it's almost like we'll default to what's comfortable and best. And when you were a baby sucking your thumb, you're pretty darn happy. So that's one of the reasons why we might default to these patterns. And now we've got an adult and we've got to take our best foot forward. Now we need to boldly step where our heart calls us to. Okay, so, so when we automatize, we turn and proactively actively step and getting proactive with your hips.

Being—

having your hips in the right place at the right time proactively is a lot of what this boils down to. Not landing, then trying to get your hip in the right place, which is a way of explaining why— what a lot of people actually do. You caught behind your hips and then you land and then you try and fix. It's too late. So it's proactive hips and the timing, like your hips should be ahead of your feet. And when you're running, you should have a distinct sensation my hips are ahead of my feet and my feet are landing behind me. They will never land behind you, but it feels like it is. But the awesome eyes are you practicing that shape and learning to relax and be calm and competent in that shape. You know, it's awesome eyes, you'll realize, oh, my one elbow's up, and you go like, oh, I don't totally need to have my elbow up and I can relax it. And when I decouple my hips, my elbow drops because my hip tension was flicking my elbow up. And so you can problem solve. And I used to use that as a teaching tool for athletes, to show them where their movement patterns are breaking down in running. So that's the Awesomeizer.

This is one of the exercises I do frequently and I really enjoy, so we'll make sure to link to that. Last question, Lauren, before we do though, where can people find out more about you?

InnerRunner.com. I'm creating a community on there and we're trying to create a cultural safe space to think about running, and I want to put my time and effort into Inner Runner and teaching online. And a lot of this you can do, you know, it is online, it is teachable, it is coachable. You can totally learn to transform your life and your movement virtually.

Absolutely. And these are several of the videos that I'm watching myself. You do like the twice a week classes on there that are super helpful, so I can highly recommend that. We'll make sure to link to this. Last question in closing: do you have any closing thoughts, any advice for runners looking to become a stronger, healthier, happier athlete?

Just listen to the podcast again. Rick Rubin, we didn't talk about the book, okay? Running should be a creative act of self-expression, and if you can do that you'll tend to make the right decisions and pick up on the right cues and start following the right people. The world, the universe, is a little bit like in social media. If I go into social media and create a blank account and I seek out hate and vitriol and have strong opinions and I try and reinforce my belief system on, on social media, I'll have a very— the world will just project that straight back at you. And what we need to do is we need to shape our reality and be the creators and authors of our movement, and we need to take back control. And it requires bravery, it requires courage. You're going to feel— one of the things about Jan Frodeno, he says, Lawrence, you've got to feel. You are not coming on this journey without experiencing the lows, and if you don't have the lows, you can't experience the highs. And you have to feel. A lot of people have been hurt and traumatized traumatized and don't want to feel, or shutting off, or overwhelmed and can't feel. And so it basically, it is a courageous act of creativity that you need to undertake. And if you can start thinking of along those lines, that I strongly suggest you read Rick Rubin's book because he seems to have distilled out these, these really complex concepts and made them actionable. And, and he just has a beautiful gift of, of describing kind of how reality works, but live your life as an artist and create. And that means courage. It means you're the authority of your movement. You create your movement and learn to trust your body and your movement. And you might need a guiding framework on that journey, which is what I'm trying to provide. But that's the way, and that's how we will change the world for better, one person and one runner at a time.

Spot on. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. We'll make sure to link to that as well. Lawrence, thank you so much. Really enjoyed this conversation. We'll have to record another one because like I said, there's so much more to talk about. Maybe we'll do it next time in person. I'll come visit you in Colorado and or next time you're out here.

So yeah, please do. I look forward to it anytime. And yeah, thank you, Flo. This is amazing. And congratulations to you because again, it's courage and, you know, you have an identity wrapped up in your persona and teaching and suddenly you're like, I'm prepared to reframe it. You know, there's a lot of coaches and coaches that don't because their identity got wrapped up in a technique, you know. So thank you for being so open-minded and positive and caring. And, you know, the world needs more Floris. Thank you, Floris.

Thank you, Lawrence. We'll talk more soon, my friend. Have a good one. Later.

Okay, take care. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening. It really means a lot to me that you made it all the way to the end of this conversation. And there's so many subtle messages in the different things that Laurens has shared over here. And sometimes you might have to even listen to this a second time to get that. I'll mention one example, and that is the power of backwards walking that Laurens has talked about. And you might think like, ah, it's just backwards walking, but he often talks about that connection of even helping calm down the nervous system. For example, yesterday I had a pretty stressful day Ended up going outside and backwards walking barefoot for about 5 minutes and really opened up my chest while doing it and having the right movement and relaxed ankles. Then I went out for a speed session this morning and that body just felt good. I could notice the difference of walking backwards 5 minutes the day before on my speed session this morning. And this is just one of the examples over there. I would love to hear from you. What was one lesson takeaway or quote from this episode. I read every comment on YouTube and it's always really eye-opening to see what the different takeaways are from different people over there. In closing, I just want to say, always remember, have fun out there on your runs. See you next time, bye now!