Building a Better Runner: Building from the Ground Up. Jay Johnson and Mike Smith. RunningDVDs.com. 2007.
What is this notion of building a better distance runner “from the ground up?” We all understand the general concept of building a better distance runner—improving speed, efficiency, endurance, and cardiovascular capacity—but what does starting from ground level and working up have to do with it?
According to Jay Johnson (assistant track coach, University of Colorado) and Mike Smith (assistant track coach, Kansas State University), building a better distance runner has everything to do with increasing the athlete’s capacity for work. Yet, with most young distance runners we encounter, the primary limiting factors to increasing their work capacity are not located in the lungs and legs, but in the physical platform from which the lungs and legs must do their work. Simply stated, in a culture where computer games have displaced physical labor in the daily routines of our youth, more and more young distance runners lack the physical strength necessary to train as they must in order to maximize their endurance capabilities.
The stronger the distance runner, the greater tolerance he or she has to both volume and intensity in training. The first area in which young distance runners typically exhibit deficiencies is the foot. And that is where Johnson and Smith begin.
“Building from the ground up” is more than a metaphor. Several foot-strengthening exercises are introduced. All of these exercises are presented with an eye toward reducing injury, but many also lead directly toward minimizing ground contact time while running. From the foot, the exercises proceed upward through the legs and into the hip girdle. Several of the exercises are variations of core strength activities many successful coaches already have in place—though perhaps with a bit more emphasis than usual on the lower back muscles relative to the abdominal and oblique muscles. In the end, over 100 exercises are introduced. All are aimed toward producing a stronger, more injury-resistant, runner. Many of the exercises aid in the development a more athletic runner as well.
This coach needs no convincing of the basic premise that Johnson and Smith set forth. In male and female runners alike, I see far more of runners whose performance is restricted by injury or by deficiencies in the basic strength required to train effectively than I see of runners restricted by the pace of their cardiovascular development. As a coach, I can only train the cardiovascular system and improve running economy to the extent that the athlete’s musculature will withstand the work necessary to accomplish that. Push that platform too far and you end up with shipwrecked dreams and way too much quality time with the trainer.
Numerous valuable lessons emerge from this first “Building a Better Runner” DVD. In the future, I will pay better attention to strengthening the feet of my distance runners—and I’ll do that without engaging in the hazardous activity of barefoot running. I will work athletes through many of the injury-prevention exercises (the hamstring, IT band, and patellar tendon are the areas of primary focus in the DVD) illustrated and expect to see a significant decline in the incidence of those injuries.
I am likewise adding several exercises to the repertoire of core strength work we already use in our program. Better yet, the exercises Johnson and Smith provide rely less on holding static positions (not something we use very directly in running) than many of the exercises we have used in the past. I anticipate seeing athletes drawing increased benefit from this work and feeling less like core work is a bit of dreary routine appended to the end of recovery days. One nice feature of the DVD is the printable pdf files illustrating each of the exercises demonstrated on the disk. These pdf files might have been slightly more effective as line drawings than as photographs, but at considerable additional expense.
While there is much to appreciate about this DVD, there are also improvements that can be made in future installments—and I trust there will soon be more installments—in the series. If Hollywood-quality sound and video are critical to your viewing experience, this DVD may leave you frustrated at points. Although the technical information is never compromised, there is a measure of distraction to overcome in sorting out the narration from the occasional noise of a breeze blowing over the microphone. No attempts are made at using varying camera angles in the interview portions of the video, and video segments are sometimes abruptly spliced together. All of that is readily overcome, however, if the content is your focus.
The athletes who demonstrate the exercises are first-rate. The overwhelming majority of the exercises presented are demonstrated by Christian Smith and Morgan Bonds, two of the finest middle distance runners Kansas State has produced and both national-class athletes. If there is any drawback to this, it is that they display a knack for making some exercises appear a great deal easier than they are. That, however, is but a small price to pay for seeing the exercises done to the level of precision Bonds and Smith demonstrate.
For young athletes looking to find ways to make their off-season work pay bigger dividends or seeking to harden themselves against injury, and for coaches who find their runners lack pieces of the physical platform necessary to do the work required to take their performances up a notch or two, this DVD is a solid investment. The video is a worthwhile reminder that, as important as heart rates, interval sessions, and recovery days are, they do not complete the picture.