Whatever follows in this post is extracted from this beautiful book called “The art of running faster” by Goater and Melvin. I have tried to implement a lot of things mentioned in this book and I have seen changes in my running once I implemented them. So, here in this chapter titled take a deep breath, I was reading about the relation of breathing with running. Of course we breath while we run, some even pant. It is the controlled breathing that could make your runs more efficient.
Run tall and relaxed. One needs to master the skill of effective breathing.
It was said that try to maintain an even balance of number of steps with the inhaling and exhales. So it could be two/three/four steps for every inhale as well as for every exhale. While the numbers are unmatched, you’re not at your best. And it indeed works well!
In my last workout, which was supposed to be mostly a steady run with occasional boosts/pick-ups, my focus for most of the time was on my breathing. I was breathing deeply and with more control. I was trying to impose this control because I know that my natural running could be with uncontrolled or uneven breathing. I wanted to test this theory. Most of the times, I ran with three or four steps for every inhale/exhale and for the time I was sprinting, I could not care to count it because my focus was on to cover as much as ground as possible with the cruising speeds I wanted to achieve.
To increase the lung capacity, it is important to be able to breath deeply, no matter you are running fast or slow.
I am still in the process of learning how to run, how to run faster and more efficiently. These are some of the points that I have implemented so far in my run, based on this book:
- Cadence is very important. For those who don’t know what it is, it is how fast you switch between your legs i.e. the speed of your legs or the number of steps per second, you can say. I try to maintain a good cadence and while uphill running, I (try to) maintain the same cadence with shorter strides (stride is the length of your single step, these two things together determine your speed). While I want to outrun someone who is at a same pace as of mine, I increase my cadence accompanied with a slightly shorter stride and when i outrun that person, I try to keep the same cadence with the original stride I was running at.
- Arms are your acceleration pedal. The faster you can move your arms, the faster you’ll be able to run. I have personally experienced it every single time I am on the track. To increase my cadence, I never move my legs faster, I start to move my arms faster and the legs go along by themselves.
These were some of the noticeable changes that I experienced while practicing my runs. If you have any of yours or anything else, feel free to share them here.
MultiEMOtions 