Your Pose Running Coach's Blog - This blog is devoted to topics related to running, Pose Running Technique, barefoot running, minimalist running and general fitness.
CrossFit Level I Certification (Expired November 2011)
CrossFit Nutrition Certification
CrossFit Endurance Certification
Army Master Fitness Instructor
ACSM Exercise Test Technologist
B.S. Exercise Science - UMass Amherst
Note: As of November 2011, I have let my CrossFit Level I
Certification lapse. At this time, I have no plans to re-certify. I'm
leaving my CrossFit certification listed only because I think that
CrossFit was a valuable part of my education as a trainer.
Experience:
Research assistant at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine 1993 - 1998
January 1963 - I was born I had fairly normal and not very interesting childhood. My only real difficulty in life was a mild form of dyslexia. Dyslexia was really a "blessing in disguise". I'm convinced that without it I probably never would have been a runner and I'm sure I would have wasted my time with more traditional sports like baseball and football.
April 1975 - I start running I've run, in one form or another, since the spring of 1975. I started running with my Dad at the age of 12, because he quit smoking and wanted to get into shape. At the time, I never intended to continue running for very long. I really just wanted to support my Dad in his efforts to quit smoking. I'll never forget my first run; I don't think I even made it half of a mile. However, for reasons I don't really understand, I did stick with it, and there is no question that running ended up becoming an important part of my life.
Things were very different in 1975. At that time, the idea of exercising or "working out" simply for the sake of being fit was a novel idea, and it was not universally accepted. That's not to say there weren't people who exercised outside of preparing for a sport, but there were very few, and they were generally thought of as very strange. If you were a runner, you were among the strangest. When my Dad and I started running, we became the neighborhood "exercise fanatics". By today's standards this would be laughable, because we were doing no more than 12 or 15 miles a week. Very few people today would be impressed by this, or even take notice of it. However, in 1975 this was enough to elicit a very strong reaction from most people, and that reaction was usually one of the following: bewilderment, disgust, amusement, suspicion and occasionally admiration.
I quickly decided I wanted to be a miler. I thought of the mile as representing the intersection between sprinting and long distance running. At first, I naïvely thought this meant that every day I should go out and run one mile as fast as possible for my training. Fortunately, my Dad had a more advanced understanding of how to train. Within a few months, we had settled into a routine of one day doing a "long" run of 3.25 miles (which included a substantial hill) and then the next day we would run either 10x100 yard dashes or 5x220 yard dashes. Although this was clearly not ideal training for the mile, it was still very effective, and my 1 mile time dropped dramatically. By the following summer, at the age of 13, I was doing a sub 6 minute mile. This was nothing to write home about, but I felt as if it was just a matter of time before I would be running in the Olympics. In case the reader is wondering, I never did make it to the Olympics.
1976 - The running boom starts By 1976 there was a dramatic increase in the number of people running. Aerobic exercise was the latest and greatest thing in fitness. Because of the way the popular press discussed aerobic exercise, a trend in the running community started that remains a problem even today. That trend was to think of fitness as directly proportional to volume. In other words, the more miles one runs the fitter one must be. There was very little consideration given to exercise intensity. As a result, a lot of people have wasted a lot of time and effort, and suffered innumerable injuries obsessively putting in mileage.
Unfortunately I was not immune to these ideas, and I was guilty of filling my training log with lots of junk miles in the pursuit of some magic number that made me feel fit. Fortunately, I was smart enough to listen to my body, and this probably prevented me from becoming part of the really frightening injury statistics associated with the running community. I always backed off if I felt an injury coming on.
By the fall of 1976, I was still in Jr. High School, but my Dad convinced me to talk to the high school Cross-Country coach to see if I could start working out with the team. The coach was Mr. Bamford, and he was happy to let me train with the JV team. So every day after school I would take the bus home from the Jr. High school, and quickly change and run over to the high school. I would usually make it there just as practice was starting. It was a great experience for which I have my Dad and Mr. Bamford to thank, because when I entered High School the following year, I qualified for the varsity Cross-Country team as a freshman. Wow! I could just smell Olympic Gold.
1977 - High School: My freshman and sophomore years went really well. I lettered both years in Cross County and once in track, and I continued to improve at steady rate. Unfortunately durring my Junior and Senior years, that rate of improvement leveled off and became much more incremental. Although I lettered in Cross Country and Track both years, by the end of my senior year, it was clear to me that I would not be competitive at the college level. I had a mile time of about 4:55 and a two-mile time of about 10:30 - good, but not great. My Olympic dreams were dashed, as I realized the reality of my limitations as runner.
Of course looking back now, I realize that my training was clearly sub-optimal. Also back then, no one really knew anything about running technique. A lot of people told me that I had a strange running gate, and that maybe I should run differently, but no one really had anything specific to say about the changes I should make or how to go about making them. I just ignored the advice for the most part. I figured that I was faster than most other runners, and I never seemed to get injured, so I must be doing something right. I also figured that the people offering the advice probably didn't know what they were talking about anyway. I was wrong on my first assumption and correct on the second. The old cliché is very applicable here about both my technique and my training - If I knew then what I know now, I probably would have been significantly better.
Besides my high school track and cross-country meets, I also ran in a lot of road races. I starting road racing when I was in junior high, and continued right through high school. Most people wanted to enter longer races like the Marathon, but I usually stuck with races that were10k and below, and my favorite distance was the 5k. I just thought of myself as a middle distance runner, and so I raced like a middle distance runner.
1978 - Biology Class In my sophomore year I learned about the theory of evolution in biology class. I'm very grateful that I did not grow up in the bible belt or I might have missed out on this. Anyway, it became obvious to me that most people think they understand evolutionary theory, but actually almost nobody really does. Naturally, I began to apply evolutionary thinking and concepts to running and diet. My thinking led me to two conclusions; first we should not need running shoes to run. It just didn't make any sense that we needed something, invented a few years before, to do something people have been doing very well for millions of years. The second thing I concluded was that the advice to eat lots of carbohydrates like pasta and bread also did not make sense from an evolutionary perspective. Grain based carbohydrates just would not have been available for most of human history as part of people's diets. It turns out that I was almost certainly correct about not needing running shoes to run, and that I was very likely correct about grain based carbohydrates.
June 1981 - I joined the Army After high school I joined the Army. Because of my running and natural upper body strength, the physical part of basic training was not very difficult. In fact, I actually put on weight, and left 2 months later probably in much worse shape than when I started. Also the Army Physical Training Test was really the perfect test for me. 2 minutes of push-up, 2 minutes of sit-ups, and a 2 mile run. I used to "max" the test in the morning, and then go do my "real" workout in the evening. In other words, I didn't find it very challenging.
During this time, I started running every other day rather than every day. This change was very beneficial, because I always felt good when I ran, and because I felt good, I was able to run harder and push myself more during each workout. It also gave me time to pursue my new athletic passion which was Martial Arts. I also believe that training every other day is one reason I went more than 20 years without a significant injury caused by my running. Besides running my Army 2 mile PT test regularly, I was also doing occasional road races. Usually 10k races, because they were the most numerous. I was usually able to run them at a pace of about 6 minutes per mile. Again, I was good, but not great.
January 1989 - I go to college In 1989 I finally went to college. I attended UMass Amherst, and majored in Exercise Science. I also reentered the military by joining the Massachusetts Army National Guard.
January 1993 - I graduate from college and reenlist in the Regular Army I reentered the Regular Army in 1993 after graduating from college. I did this for a chance to work at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine or USARIEM. A lot of research in physiology was happening there. Particularly in the areas of Environmental and Exercise Physiology. I ended up working in the Biophysics Directorate under Richard Gonzalez Ph.D. During this time, I did the ACSM Exercise Test Technologist certification, I went to Army Master Fitness School becoming an Army physical training instructor, and I also started working on my Computer Science degree which unfortunately ultimately pulled me away from Exercise Physiology for quite a while.
November 1997 - I leave the Army again I left the Army and went on to finish my Computer Science degree. I also slowly drifted away from Exercise Physiology and fitness. I still ran, and studied Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but I ended up becoming an overweight "fitness" jogger.
November 2006 - Trying to get back into "shape" At the age of 44, I found myself 20 lbs overweight and unable to run an 8 minute mile. When the realization hit me that I was not even able to run an 8 minute mile, I knew I had to take action. At the age of 37, I was easily able to run the mile in 5:20, so I had really let myself go.
Predictably, I turned to what I knew best, which of course was running. I started to increase my mileage, and the intensity of my running. At first the results were promising, I lost 10 lbs, but I leveled off at that point. I was not losing any more weight, and I was not getting much faster. I also did something that I had not done in since 1987. I injured myself. Not only did I injure myself, but I did so twice. After a year of trying to get back into shape with running alone, I was nursing injuries, and still 10 lbs overweight. I had clearly overestimated how quickly I would improve my running speed and level of fitness.
January 2008 - I tried a personal trainer I then started to work with a personal trainer once a week, and working out at the gym twice a week. I lost about 8 more lbs of fat and put on 4 lbs of muscle, for a net loss of 4 more lbs. However, I kept reading about the new trends in fitness related to high intensity and highly varied functional movements. I was intrigued and decided to explore this fitness trend.
June 2008 - I start CrossFitting I stumbled over CrossFit on the internet, while doing research on the current trends in fitness. I was a little dubious about some assertions made by the CrossFit community, but it was clearly the kind of high intensity program I was looking for. So I located a local CrossFit affiliate which was CrossFit Metrowest run by Will Tagye. I stayed there for about 6 months, until he closed shop. I then joined CrossFit New England run by Ben Bergeron, which opened at about the same time in January 2009. My experiences at CrossFit were humbling. It was clear from the beginning that I was badly in need of conditioning beyond running and traditional weight training.
By doing CrossFit workouts, I was continuing to lose fat and gain muscle, and I had a net loss of another 6 lbs or so, but I also was getting much stronger. However, my weight seemed to be stuck at a net loss of 22 lbs from my peak. I was no longer overweight, but I still had some love handles, and I was still about 10 or more lbs over my competition weight.
November 2008 - CrossFit Endurance Certification I went to the CrossFit Endurance Certification in November 2008, primarily to learn about Pose Running Technique. After attending, I was having a lot of problems learning and adopting Pose. After several weeks of practice, I was very disappointed and frustrated with my lack of progress, so I decided to go straight to the source.
January 2009 - Pose Running Level 1 Certification In January 2009, I went to the Pose Level 1 Certification course. I learned a lot, but I was still having trouble picturing the technique. So I spent the next few months training, watching a lot of videos of runners, and doing further research on Pose running. I also started to train a few people. Doing all of this, really helped solidify the technique in my mind. I now knew that I really understood it, and so I could start training myself to reproduce the technique on my own.
June 2009 - CrossFit Nutrition Certification I went to the CrossFit Nutrition Certification in June of 2009. I wanted learn about and start implementing the Paleolithic diet. Afterward I started implementing the diet, and my weight dropped another few pounds. Once I realized that I was much less hungry doing "Paleo", I started skipping lunch because I really wasn't hungry until dinner time. After doing this, by January of 2010, I managed to drop a total of 30 lbs from my peak weight and I had reached my original goal set in November of 2006. I was now very lean and more muscular from CrossFit. I had finally gone from 170 lbs to 140 lbs. Although I had a net loss of 30lbs, my fat loss must have been much greater, since I had put on a lot of muscle. I would guess that I lost a total of 40 lbs of fat. Also, now I understood how much effort it can take to lose weight and to become fit again, but if I had started with CrossFit and the Paleolithic diet from the beginning, my return would have been much faster.
November 2009 - Pose Level 2 Certification I organized a Pose Clinic with Dr. Romanov at CrossFit New England with the help of Ben Burgeron. The clinic ended up becoming not just a clinic, but also a Pose Level 1 certification, and a Pose Level 2 certification (for me) all rolled into one.
December 2009 - CrossFit Level 1 Certification I attended a CrossFit Level 1 Certification in December of 2009. I learned a lot. However, the most important thing I learned was that I needed to spend a lot more time mastering CrossFit concepts and methods before thinking of teaching them. I had a lot of skills left to master, like the Olympic lifts for example.
May 2010 - I Left CrossFit
I had to leave CrossFit for financial reasons. At the time, I intended to return as soon as my finances fell back into place. However, I began to realize that there were some elements of CrossFit that I didn't like, and that frustrated me. It was very effective training, but I wanted to be able to focus more on my weaknesses.
August 2010 - Pose Level 3 Certification
I organized a Pose Running Certification with Dr. Romanov at Vagabond CrossFit with the help of Kevin O'Malley. I continued to refine my understanding of Pose Running Technique, and learn Dr. Romanov's methods for training runners for greater performance. Every time I work with Dr. Romanov, I end having to re-evaluate everything I've learned about running and training.
January 2011
I found a new trainer, Josh Conway, who focuses on movement and mobility using primarily kettlebells, Indian clubs, body weight exercises and sandbags as tools. Josh and I hit it off right away, and I started studying the use of kettlebells and Indian clubs with him. His training has made me stronger and improved my hip and shoulder mobility a great deal. I've finally found a Gym that I can call "home", and training methods that allow me to work more on my fitness deficits.
September 2011
I attended another Pose certification at CrossFit Reebok in Canton, MA. I always pickup something new when I work with Dr. Romanov. Unfortunately this will likely be one of the last Pose certification Dr. Romanov does for quite a while. He wants to focus more on research and writing.
