JESSE: Right. That's what I always sort of like, before I hired my own coach, I guess I worked on-- I’ll say, I've worked with Barb Lindquist, I'll say that but it's kind of a loose affiliation. And she always talked about like, you're coming in transition gear down, make sure you're you're definitely cranking above 90, which you should be for most of it anyway, but just like, get ready for the run. She always said that and I don't know that I've seen a lot of other people talk about it. Maybe it's just something people do and they don't talk about but yeah, ?? 0:33> for the run is so crucial to having a good day not having a bad time. Yeah, it's like my friend, Todd Buckingham, who is this last year he was the IT amateur World Champion at the Olympic distance. He was talking about, I had him on in one of the early episodes, and he's talking about his cadence on the run is like, depending on whether you’re counting one leg or two legs. He counts two legs. He said 200 reps per minute. So, on one leg 100 beats per minute, which is like he's turning, he's really turning over. I'll turn over like 92-93 at race pace, but I can't even imagine getting up to 100, and he moves. He's not a very big guy. I think he's maybe 5’7, and he'll run 32-33 minutes 10K's. BEN: Yeah. Yeah. Which is absolutely nothing to sneeze at. It'd be interesting to look at what the hip range of motion looks like with that kind of turnover. JESSE: He would know, he has his PhD in exercise physiology. He's the head of like, a new lab at this hospital where he lives. So, he probably already know that. BEN: That's super cool. Yeah, no, I mean it's-- because actually, my master's study was on like maximum velocity sprint mechanics, which 85-90% percent translates back over towards distance running stuff. There's not a direct correlation. But there's a lot of pieces of it, and one of the one of the variables that we really narrowed in on was ground contact time. If you're turning over at 200 reps, he’s got to be touching the ground. JESSE: He looks like he floats. BEN: Yeah. Yeah. Not a lot of vertical oscillation at all. JESSE: No, it's super smooth. BEN: Yeah, that's beautiful. JESSE: Yeah, he did. So, for his dissertation, he took data from it was at I think, the 2017 National Championship. He took data from various people wearing this particular type of Garmin watch, and tried to figure out like, what were the differentiators in terms of performance between all these athletes. And you know, we talked about cadence all the time, cadence, cadence, cadence, cadence, gotta get your cadence up, don't run at 75 RPMs, run at 90. And, interestingly, which this somewhat makes sense, the biggest differentiator, like in terms of speed was stride length instead of cadence. BEN: Well, and I bet the slower the folks are running, the longer they were reaching. JESSE: Well, yeah. But if you think about it, at the same time like if you if all things are equal, say everybody's running in 90, well, then who has a longer stride length? Like, it's kind of just almost a duh moment. But it does to me illustrates the importance of working on that power, and also having your pushback all the way through your toes instead of letting off the ground early. You know what I mean? BEN: So, from a teaching standpoint, you want to try to teach that sense of running on hot pavement. You know if you're at the pool, and you're scooting across the hot concrete, we tend not to take very big steps, but we're very quick on the ground, right? JESSE: Right, right. BEN: That's the most effective way to think about running fast. JESSE: Okay, so when you, like if you take that philosophy, so you do a video of that athlete, where does the cycle end as their leg’s going back and - still have ground contact, where does ground contact end? BEN: So, ground contacts going to end-- JESSE: This is a little tough to show without ?? 5:16>. BEN: If you go back and you look at, and whether you pull up like Carl Lewis or whether you pull up Gebrselassie, who’s like a phenomenal historical...runner, you're going to see the hip extend just a little bit, like where the thighs extending just a little bit beyond the foot being underneath the hip. But then it's going to get yanked right up back underneath the hip, right? So, the thing that a lot of folks, a lot of folks, especially under fatigue, the foot is going to cycle back behind the body really far, which sets up casting action at the lower leg. So, like the knee is going to extend and that ends up creating a reach and slap on the ground in front of the hips, which is a major breaking action, like that's where your shin splints could come from. You know, that's all kinds of no bueno. The more that as the foot comes off the ground, the more that you can lift it to the front immediately, and minimize that backside of the mechanics; the more that you keep everything to the front side of everything. And I'm like, I've realized I'm sitting, I'm moving my hands behind the camera. JESSE: Yeah, it's okay. BEN: The more you keep everything to the front side of everything, the easier everything gets, because if you were just a stand up where you're sitting there, and you push your leg behind you, like just stick your foot back there behind you were like the quote unquote, like pretty Gazelle type running goes on, you feel a postural difference in your low back. That's no good. But if you just stand up and you just lift your knee, straight up to your chest, there's nothing that changes posture really there. That's what we're looking for. JESSE: So, basically, let me see if I can summarize that. So, without having like, a hard-- like, we don't have a little model or a doll to like move, unfortunately. So, basically, you want to-- the idea is to extend as far as you can, without changing upper body position. BEN: See if we can do this here. Does that show up okay? JESSE: Yeah, you're all right. BEN: All right. So, what I was saying is that if I stand here, and I push my leg back, you see a compromise and my posture immediately, right?
Smart Athlete Podcast Ep. 15 - Ben Yocum - PUREBRED ATHLETE - Part 3 of 3
Right. That's what I always sort of like, before I hired my own coach, I guess I worked on-- I’ll say, I've worked with Barb Lindquist, I'll say that but it's kind of a loose affiliation. And she always talked about like, you're coming in transition gear down, make sure you're you're definitely cranking above 90, which you should be for most of it anyway, but just like, get ready for the run.
