My coach finished her video analysis and the next stage was to go around to her home gym where she assessed my mobility. There was a lot of detail, but the main outcomes are:
1. My right hip flexor has nowhere near the same range of motion as my left. This is surprising to me as my left always feels very tight! Perhaps because it works harder. She’d spotted it on the video that I wasn’t getting as much hip extension on the right and confirmed it in her gym. It wasn’t just a small difference either.
2. My left shoulder/trap is very tight. She thinks this is contributing to my imbalance on a rotational level as it intereferes with my arm swing and I kind of throw my weight over to the right side. I’m not sure if she’d completely figured it out from the video, but she’d picked up that something was going on with my left arm. She had my do a few overhead squats and the moment I said the main place I was feeling it was in my left trap she started smirking as if she knew I was going to say that.
3. My landing is forward from my centre of balance, which seems to be caused by me leaning backwards a bit. It’s very obvious in the video stills. She thinks I’m a bit unusual with this because I seem to have a strong core and I’m not sagging in the middle, which is usually the problem with landing too far forward, I’m just getting my centre of balance wrong. Apparently I’m missing out on a lot of speed because I’m having to use my hamstrings to pull myself forward as soon as I hit the ground, rather than already being the right place (I think she’s right on this – I think I should be quite a bit faster and this looks like a big energy cost).
The first two she was quite pleased about because she thinks it’s easily fixable outside of running. I just need to loosen up the muscles and fascia. Ok, easier said than done, but lying on a foam roller for 15 minutes a day is a lot easier than altering my running form.
The leaning thing, however, is going to take some work. We were focusing on it last night during the group session. I think some of it is mental, in that you feel like you’re going to fall forward, and you just kind of need to switch off from that and keep putting your feet underneath you to catch yourself. I felt like I was keeping a lean for brief periods but it wasn’t coming easily.
I’m pleased about this too because the first two are things I would never have worked out on my own. I hadn’t realised that my right hip flexor was restricted and although I was vaguely aware of tension in my left shoulder I would never have considered that it would affect my running. I had worked out that my lean needed some work, but I’m sure I’ll get much better results with her than on my own with this.
Rambles 