The Educated Guide to Better Sports Performance

If you don’t know Adam Robinson, you should. By all accounts, Robinson is a modern-day polymath: robustly opinionated and ubiquitously coveted for his expertise. His palmares include being an American Chess Master, obtaining a law degree from Oxford University, co-authoring the New York Times best-seller Cracking the SAT, co-founding The Princeton Review, and applying his advisory elbow grease to problems facing the heads of some of the world’s largest hedge funds. You could argue that Robinson is a prodigy, someone having that rare intelligence that includes both mathematical and conceptual genius.

Robinson is self-described as “systems builder, wizard, shaman of global markets, manifester, do-gooder, alchemist, and embracer of possibility” (Wiser Conversations). His notoriety skyrocketed as a featured guest on several of Tim Ferris’s pods. When listening to Robinson speak, I’m struck by the athleticism of his brain – so nimble and quick-witted. He thinks for a living, immersing himself in projects of imaginative discovery, always expecting “magic and miracles.” He lives in the world of ideas, having recently delved into the concept of stupidity. As he discovered, “stupidity is not the opposite of intelligence, but the cost of intelligence overwhelmed by a complex environment.” He spent many months frolicking around with the idea, in preparation for a presentation that has evolved into the book How Not To Be Stupid (so engaging was the information that Warren Buffett, his friend and mentor, endorsed the project remarking that “you gotta get this information out into the world”).

Essentially, Robinson identified seven mitigating factors that define stupidity. By studying everyone from Olympic athletes to con-men, and everything from political blunders to hoaxes, he was able to pinpoint what “induces stupidity .” And although Robinson cautions that all seven elements (below) don’t have to be present, there is a definite and undeniable cause-and-effect relationship that compounds between them.

1. Being outside your normal environment

2. Information overload

3. Requiring intense focus

4. The presence of a large group of like-minded people

5. Being in the company of authority

6. Having physical or emotional compromise/stress

7. Sense of urgency or rushing

Looking at these factors (further discussed by Robinson on the RP Daily webcast), you may wonder how they relate to your running? Most runners, and running-predominate athletes are, paradoxically, a step away from malady. Yale Medicine reports that “at least 50 percent of regular runners get hurt each year”, so if you aren’t injured this year, there is a good chance you will be injured the next. Some studies put that number as high as 85% for every 1000 hours of running (IJSPT, 2012). In my probing to unpack the mechanism of injury, Robinson has led me to the belief that running, as a sport or activity, puts runners in the Stupid Zone. That by definition, runners are “overlooking or dismissing conspicuously critical information” invaluable to the execution of gait motion. Running, for most, is an “invitation to be stupid.” Why runners are tumbling into the inevitable abyss of pain is way more important that how.

*

Running isn’t bad. And being “stupid” during running isn’t a denunciation. “Last year, the current estimate is between 210,000-440,00 deaths from hospital error. That’s in a
good year, that’s in a normal year, because of the antecedents of stupidity”, reveals Robinson. Stupidity happens. Robinson has burrowed and discovered rich nuggets for examination and exploration. He’s offering us the “appropriate warnings,” to which human beings, unfortunately, tend to ignore. The challenge is more about what to do when you find yourself in the Stupid Zone, and how to successfully navigate it to your advantage. Knowing that every run has the potential for stupidity, gives you the power to sidestep pitfalls and control your daily performance outcomes.

In Part 2, we will further examine how Robinson’s precepts can be utilized to augment your running and keep you stupid-free.

Wiser Conversations / Ep 16: How Not To Be Stupid with Adam Robinson https://open.spotify.com/episode/13pyDfHeOUJ0Qn3kq18UrQ?si=vEa6S_1PTtK9msyQM_eHEw

The Tim Ferris Show / Ep 219: Lessons from Warren Buffett, Bobby Fischer, and other Outliers
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?i=1000380737827

The Tim Ferris Show / Ep 254: When To Quit: Lessons from World-Class Entrepreneurs, Investors, Authors, and more
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?i=1000390208177

The Tim Ferris Show / Ep 322: Adam Robinson – Outsmarting and Outflanking the Competition
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?i=1000414316531

The Nantucket Project / rp daily: What Is Stupid?
https://youtu.be/_XdRyQBdkwk
Yale Medicine / Running Injuries
https://www.yalemedicine.org/conditions/running-injury

International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy / Training Errors and Running Related Injuries: A Systemic Review
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3290924

About PEAL: Tracy Steven Peal, Sr. is a Skill and Movement Specialist who specializes in biomechanical analysis and teaching proper form. His emphasis is improving Running Gait, and has worked many elite, pro, D1 and aspiring athletes. Triathlon, Track & Field, and Strength & Conditioning Coach. He has been engaged in the field of movement study for more than 20 years, as a Triathlon, Track & Field, and Strength & Conditioning expert. Tracy works directly with athletes, assisting clients with their recovery from a variety of sports-related injuries. Tracy is currently scheduling individual sessions to help show athletes how to avoid injury, recover quickly, and handle the stresses of training and competition.

To learn more, visit http://www.pealsportsperformance.com. To schedule an appointment you can also reach Tracy at tracy@pealsportsperformance.com or 302.753.0220

On this, the last night of 2017 – with the temps in single digits and the LOML, charitably, making a difference in a less fortunate part of the world this week – I figured what would be better than settling-in with a glass of wine, keeping warm and writing a year-ending blog post. I always feel that writing is cathartic, an opportunity to be creative and illuminative; though, I’m sure it often seems like I’m just being petulant. There are probably some deeper demons at work here, something inside needing to be exorcised: some point to be made, perspective to be argued, frustration to be reckoned. And it doesn’t help that in my field, opinions are like assholes…I find pointing that out to be kinda irresistible.

Initially, I was going to critique an article that was sent to me by my good friend, one who takes great pleasure in my misery, antagonizing me with a never-ending barrage of harebrained quotes, videos, research articles and op-ed pieces from the dopey world of sports science. He loves raising my ire – usually with the hope that I’ll be so pissed that wild horses couldn’t stop me from lashing at my laptop. Venting aside, I do feel a responsibility to set the record straight, provide some logical counterpoint to the nonsense that’s often spewed in the name of science, training or (gulp!) common sense. Yes, I know that the public can be easily mislead by force output capacities, joint moments and stretch-shortening cycles – but who is out there protecting them from gibberish? Surprisingly, as I sat down to re-read the article (https://athletex.us/sprint-training/how-to-run-fast-sprint-mechanics/), I couldn’t pull the trigger.

About midway through, I stopped reading. Who cares? I thought to myself. Yeah, I could’ve painstakingly gone through the article, countered every “fact”, and delivered a pretty solid rebuttal amid beautiful photos of Usain Bolt or Wayde van Niekerk sprinting splendidly toward some medal and proving how off-the-mark is author Cody Bidlow. But again, why does it matter? We’re often spending so much energy trying to disprove someone wrong, that there’s little time being spent on what matters most: the power of our rightness. The year 2017 was challenging on many fronts. I found myself compromising a lot. In the end, it didn’t leave me happy.

I’ve been fortunate to have learned from some really great teachers. Their knowledge and expertise has shaped me, and given me a unique skill set. I found over the course of the past 12 months that bargaining takes a heavy toll. Alliances are necessary, concession is not. Sometimes the price was way too great, whether I was debating on social media or coaching a team or consulting. As I’m poised to jump into 2018, I’m excited again. Fresh start. Do it my way. Call bullshit? Yes, that will never change. But instead of solely whining about some research geek or complaining about some coach I don’t know, its time to celebrate the things I do that are right. tracypealspeed is primed for big changes and bigger challenges. Trusting the process has never been easier.

#speed #speedtraining #biomechanics #sprinting #posemethod #running #sportscoach

In Luke Dittrich’s July 22, 2012 Esquire  article “A Lament for Tyson Gay,” he explains it this way:

By almost every criterion, Gay is the better runner. He trains harder, gets off the blocks faster, has superior form. Even in purely physical terms, Gay has the sort of dense, muscular, compact body that was long considered the apotheosis of the human sprinter before that tall, lazy, gangly showboat [Bolt] loped out of Jamaica and changed everything.

The only area in which Gay falls short is the most important one…

And so the debate begins. Usain Bolt is the most celebrated sprinter in history. At the start of the 2016 Rio Olympics, he is poised to achieve an unprecedented “triple-triple”: gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m for the third straight time. Over the course of these past 8 years, he has dominated the sport of track & field with unparalleled aplomb and celebrity. On his way to two world records (9.58/100m and 19.19/200m), Bolt has beguiled, bewildered and charmed his way to the top. Unlike any other athlete of this era (with appreciation for LeBron, Phelps, Serena etc.), the fascination with his prowess is unmatched. Although under such circumspection, Bolt’s talents still remain a mystery. Everyone from sports announcers to mechanical engineers to even Bolt himself, are still trying to piece together a consistent, air-tight explanation for how the 6’5″ sprinter from Jamaica hits top speeds of 27.79 mph.

Much of what we learn from kinesiological science is peripheral – results spawned from long-held beliefs, data that has been culled and massaged to support preconceived notions about human movement and performance. In an article on biomedical research published July 2016 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (“What Happens When Underperforming Big Ideas In Research Become Entrenched?”, Michael J. Joyner, MD; Nigel Paneth, MD, MPH; John P. A. Ioannidis, MD, DSc), the authors make an interesting observation: “When claims about high-profile, dominant “big ideas” are viewed against their mediocre benefits, it seems that [one] basic course(s) of action…is to reevaluate and reset the current focus…. In the current environment, scientists are pigeonholed in a narrow discipline and are penalized [if] they exit their specific niche. There should be incentives for scientists to acknowledge that their research focus should be abandoned and help them switch to another potentially more fruitful research area.”

What does this mean with regards to Bolt’s sprinting technique? To this day, sports scientists are buried in the “big idea” of vGRF (vertical ground reaction force), most notably presented by Weyand and others in 2000, which proposes that the forces our muscles generate at foot strike are the propulsive trigger for motion (J Appl Physiol (1985). 2000 Nov;89(5):1991-9. Faster top running speeds are achieved with greater ground forces not more rapid leg movements. Weyand PG, Sternlight DB, Bellizzi MJ, Wright S.). On the surface, this seems plausible – albeit with a warped and incomplete interpretation of Newton’s laws – that the harder we push into the ground, the faster we can accelerate ahead. Even Usain, in a YouTube post described his sprinting this way: “After the acceleration phase the goal is to: ‘Keep driving, driving, driving.. …. After completing the drive: ‘Get tall, knees up, dorsiflex, get your toes up, plant, push again.”  However, this theory and description quickly lose persuasiveness considering studies have shown that Bolt’s maximum power output doesn’t match his maximum running velocity and that “less than 8% of the energy his muscles produced was used for motion.” (On the performance of Usain Bolt in the 100 m sprint, J J Hernández Gómez, V Marquina and R W Gómez; Published 25 July 2013/European Journal of Physics, Volume 34, Number 5). O. Helene and M. T. Yamashita, in The force, power and energy of the 100 meter sprint, Am. J. Phys. 78, 307 (2010), further noted that the maximum force, the maximum power, and the total mechanical energy values produced by Bolt were, surprisingly, smaller in 2009 than in 2008 when he broke his own WR.

What Bolt has recounted (“get tall, knees up, dorsiflex, get your toes up, plant, push again”) is considered the “classical” approach to sprinting. The difficulty in accepting this model is that Bolt truly doesn’t run that way. Hard to imagine, especially in the world of elite-level athletics where mechanics are obsessively critiqued over and over again, such a discrepancy between perceived and real-time action could exist. Show me where Bolt drives? Pushes? Plants? There is not enough time in the stride cycle for these things, where even the most minute fluctuations in timing are disastrous. His elongated stride? Notice how his foot touches beneath his body. His driving forward? Look at his compact thigh angle and hand position right before take-off. He pushes into the ground? The lack of complete knee extension at take-off indicates that his support leg is prepared for recovery mode. The research flounders, as scientists and bloggers attempt to correlate or reconcile his stride length, step frequency, taller frame, strength, acceleration, longer (relative) ground contact time, resistance to air drag, leg stiffness. Nevertheless, one of world’s foremost experts on human performance, SMU professor Dr. Peter Weyand (who has intensively studied Usain Bolt’s running characteristics and is the foremost proponent of the force-generation model), summarized in 2014, “Yet despite interest, incentives and intervention options that are arguably all without precedent, the scientific understanding of how the fastest human running speeds are achieved remains significantly incomplete.”

So what gives? Lost is the fundamental idea that “locomotion is a ‘falling-forward’ cycle, in which the body mass falls forward and then rises again. Mass that falls from a higher altitude falls faster…” (“The Evolution Of Speed In Athletics”, Adrian Bejan, Edward Jones and Jordan D. Charles – International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, Volume 5(2010), Issue 3). This concept is not new. Throughout the ages, many have understood this relationship, from Leonardo Da Vinci (“Motion is created by the destruction of balance…”) to British physiologist Graham Brown (“It seems that the act of progression itself – the centre of mass of the body is allowed to fall forwards and downwards under the action of gravity….”) to the father of podiatric biomechanics Dr. Merton Root (“Vertical forces become less than body weight when the center of gravity of the body passes over the foot…”). In 2010, the lesser recognized study by F. Kugler and L. Janshen (“Body Position Determines Propulsive Forces In Accelerated Running”, J. Biomech January 19, 2010Volume 43, Issue 2, Pages 343–348) indicated that “…greater forward leans of the body which finally resulted in greater propulsive forces. Consequently, maximizing forward propulsion requires optimal, not maximal force application.”

As applied to running, these insights were systematically presented and expounded by Dr. Nicholas Romanov (Pose Method), and the only model that acknowledges how Bolt effectively utilizes gravity, specifically gravitational torque, to his advantage (“Analysis Of Usain Bolt’s Running Technique”, http://www.posemethod.com). Romanov articulates how Bolt, as if released from a slingshot, receives a horizontal propulsive thrust from the angular acceleration of his Center of Mass (COM). Since force is a vector property, this angular acceleration is determined by how optimally Bolt rotates on the fulcrum of his foot at the peak of maximum leverage. As a biological system that must organize and integrate a complexity of elements in the blink of an eye, Bolt handles force via the experience of rapid accumulation and loss of bodyweight during the stance phase. This “experience” provides a feedback signal common to all bipedals, a temporaneous equilibrium used as a perceptive nudge to move us from one foot to another. Without succumbing to the potential degradation of momentum, Bolt is able to maintain a more consistent velocity, moving his body in a continuous flow of energy. In its simplest terms, he is falling better, more powerfully and with less wasted effort.

It’s now time to start looking outside this simplistic model of sprinting as force dependent. Although the basic F= ma and stride length x stride frequency formulas hold true when discussing the general principles of physics, all the forces that are operating in a system of movement must be taken into account. There is no factual evidence that sprinters are best served by intensifying force application. The reality is this: sprinting requires the remarkable ability to absorb, withstand, control, recoil and transfer the forces they encounter. Bolt’s genius is his skill. Of similar brilliance was Jesse Owens, whose legendary coach Larry Snyder described his footstrike as “the lightest tread I have ever seen.”    (“The Training Of Jesse Owens,” 1956, Clinic Notes, NCAA Coaches Association). When Bolt sprints, it has been equally written, “The metal of his spikes clacks against the surface of the track like a tap dancer’s shoes on the stage.” (Sports Illustrated, July 2016, Tim Layden).

These are hardly the descriptions of hulks brutishly striking the ground! Of note, according to David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene, biomechanical analysis of the speed of Jesse Owens’ joints shows that had he been running on the same surface as Bolt, he would have been within one stride of the modern champion, almost indistinguishable. Those who oppose what Bolt accepts cannot match his speed. They lose time with every step, their inefficiency both unnecessary and counterproductive. He is a warrior at one with his environment. His emotional focus and mental toughness almost superhuman. Win or lose (and I’m betting on the former), Bolt has set a unique standard of athletic precision. Watching him, I’m reminded of a quote by Tony Robbins: “Push will wear you out. When you’re pushing to do something you only have so much willpower. But when you’re being pulled, when there’s something larger than yourself that you’re here to serve, [it] brings you energy, transforms.” As they say, sometimes the answers are right in front of you. High-profile, dominant ideas be damned.

About four months ago I started cooking. Life circumstances nudged me away from the kitchen for over 20 years, and current life circumstances have pulled me into this previously unfamiliar space in my home. I didn’t know what to expect when I first delved into the pots and pans, but what I found was an extreme pleasure in the creative process of cooking. Great cooking, or gastronomy if you will, is a complex mesh of food science and art: how do we properly utilize our knowledge of chemical reactions and nutrient interaction to develop the flavors integral to great tasting food? And the means to this end have infinite possibilities, as unique as each cook’s culinary acumen, cultural traditions and palette.

Yet, for as individual and endlessly varied as food preparation is, there are rules to the game: improvisation aside,
standards abound from cooking methods to levels of doneness and seasoning to appropriate storage procedures. “[It] must be admitted that understanding the scientific principles of boiling an egg will be more useful to many more people. If all you have to eat is an egg, you had better know how to cook it properly.” (Hervé This, Molecular Gastronomy). Still, the majority of us ignore the science. We assume the “composition and structure of food” chemistry and focus in on the craft of cookery – transforming and manipulating our groceries into delicious edibles. It’s almost as if, absent-mindedly, we put that steak onto the grill with knowing expectation that its composition will change into something we enjoy. The essence of great cooking can be tasted when inspiration meets knowledge meets skill – culminating in memorable and blissful indulgence. Who of us doesn’t remember each and every morsel of the best things we’ve ever eaten?

Running is no different. I’ve spent most of my blog space proselytizing the biomechanical side of it, trying to help you understand the kinematics behind running movement. You’ve read about everything from footstrike patterns to falling angles. You’ve heard all about my pet peeves with regards to the teaching of better running form, as I’ve tried to be a guidepost for your quest to move efficiently and injury-free. But what I neglected to remind you, through the preaching and research, is that this is also an artistic pursuit: great runners move so effortlessly and beautiful. Like eating, running is about transcending the science; here, by coordinating the sum of our physical parts beyond the over-simplified idea of “putting one foot in front of the other.”

Timing is critical. Great chefs have a “feel” for when things are done or should be added. Comparatively, great running technique is about sensing the proper time to act. The patience in letting a soufflé rise is akin to allowing the body to rotate precipitously – and trusting the outcome. We can’t control the science, the interplay of forces (external and internal) that dynamically create the movement impetus. But we can negate it’s effects by not following the recipe, by adding too much or not enough to the mixture: acting contrary to our anatomical design and basic human need.

So many of us cook without formal training – and it shows. We lack the accumulated know-how and finesse of an experienced chef. Why we’re blown-away by tremendous food quality, depth of flavor, presentation and clever cart du jour comes as no surprise. Eating well makes it difficult to do the alternative – just consuming calories for the sake of biological necessity (economics aside). However, we do it anyway. Grabbing something out of sheer hunger. In the same vein, substandard running (rife with injury and poor performance) doesn’t stop us. We have an appetite to move: stress relief, weight loss, competition, endorphin rushes. Artifices that motivate us to put on our shoes and head out the door. Are there times when these cravings should be ignored? When our urges obstruct our running precision? Where aptitude needs to be the precursor of refinement?