FAST〜all you need to know about how to run well

Iten is a small village in Kenya. 　That village has produced so many world class long distance runners.   It's a little surprise that the running coach of the training camp there is a Europian priest who has no experience in running.  In Japan, all running coaches for high level teams are former elite runners. no exception.  But maybe it's better because of that. Something he can see, maybe those elite coaches cannot see because of too much of a experience.

Here I want to introduce what he talks about running. 4 key important things about running, FAST

F=Focus
A=Alignment
S=Stability
T=Timing

Focus is self explanatory

Alignment... In Japan, martial artist would often talk about JIKU which means body's axis. it's basically a posture and positioning. Where you put your center of balance, where to contact with ground etc

Stability... Core stability. How long can you hold this good alignment? When people get tired, your body collapse. Keeping the good posture is also very important.

Timing... Basically, a rhythm.

He only looks at those 4 things. He never looks at how fast they are running or how much they are running.

In Japan,  a former gold medalist Noguchi Mizuki has a famous saying that "the distance that you run never betray". so people believer more you run the better.
But here is almost opposite.  It's nothing to do with how HARD you train or how MUCH you train. It's all about how WELL you train or how RELAXED you train.

The EKIDEN teams always train so hard. and the only thing they talk about is the distance and the pace.  This thing actually show in research before.

There is a study compared between Kenyan elite runners and Japanese elite runners who are at same fitness level (measured by VO2Max).   The study showed that when they are running at the race pace, Kenyan runners' VO2 level is so much lower than Japanese runners.   basically Japanese runners were  using so much more energy to run at the same speed.
Get it? Japanese trying to run hard, Kenyans trying to run easy.

anyway, first time writing my blog in English and this takes time so I don't know if I can continue... I'll do my best though.  anyway, I'm participating in the blog ranking in Marathon category. so if you liked the article, please click the icon below.