Alternate supermans....strengthening my gluets and back!



































Working hard on those gluets
with the gymstick!


















Quick feet and sweating buckets....




























Working on my
DYNAMIC MOVEMENT SKILLS.....
ewww tuff work!

































Working my foot speed with lateral
box jumps! 






























Bridge lifts.....Ouch....!

























One leg Squats........Oh my god!!!!!!!!!


















Tuning up my hamstrings...on the
exercise ball...........Phew!



































Working my core and gluets with a
lunge and rotation!

INcreasing my stride length ...Striding OUT!

















Training My Gluets!


















Cycle that leg....The Leg Cycle!






















Supermans on the Gymstick, burning up my Gluets!

Running School Blog
For the next eight weeks, journalist and sometimes football player, sometimes runner but mainly layabout Edwin McGreal is being put through his paces at The Running School at the Sports Injury and Sports Medicine Clinic. He'll blog twice weekly detailing the highs and lows of his progress.


Week 8 :That thin line between enjoyment and excess


Its Christmas week and my commitment to my Running School training is going to be tested severely. I always try to give myself a couple of weeks off exercise at Christmas but this year may have to be different.

I’m in week seven of my eight week Running School sessions and it would be serious detrimental to my progress if I put the Reeboks and the Gym Stick
away for a fortnight. Progress would be halted and while I wouldn’t be back to where I was before I began the sessions, I’m be playing the chasing game
to an even greater extent.

See, I’m chasing it already. I missed a week of training and assessment after a knee strain picked up playing astroturf soccer. It’s quite ironic really. I wrote in my last blog about how free of injury I was from my new running technique but when I went back playing astro and away from the treadmill, some of the old habits returned and an attempt at a sharp turn left me reeling.

It was only a week but it was noticeable afterwards that I was behind. The latest programme I’ve been given by Running School Director Martin McIntyre
involves the longest and most difficult set of runs yet and very tough dynamic exercises thrown in to boot.

I’ve to run at 12 km per hour for two minutes five times, do the same at 13 and 14 and then come down in time to one minute at 15, 16 and 17 km per hour. I try to give myself only a maximum break in between of 30 seconds. It would be hard for my unfit self at the best of times. Having been idle for the week before certainly didn’t help either.

But we’re getting there. The dynamic stretches involve jumping from a standing start to four corners of a mat, jumping up and down of a raised aerobic step and doing side to side jumps on the same piece of gear. Added to that are a series of stretches with the Gym Stick. It’s a workout that takes around 90 minutes and, believe me, you’ll know you did it afterwards.

The first session was, I’m afraid to say, not one of my better efforts. I hit the wall early on whilst on the treadmill and while I was trying to drive on through the resistance my body was giving me, I had to call a halt. But I never thought it was going to be easy, the week off didn’t help and it was a case of applying that Vince Lombardi quote that stares down at me in the gym: ‘It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up’.

The sessions since then have seen an improvement. I haven’t been helped by a poorly timed dose of a cold but I’m treating that only as a mild distraction. The main distraction is the holiday period. This week now I’m planning on hitting the gym on Thursday and Saturday (Christmas Eve). There’ll be some sort of workout on St Stephen’s Day – possibly a GAA game – and then the gym will be hit on December 28 and December 30. That’s the plan anyway. Steinback once said ‘the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray’. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. The question I have to ask myself is how willing am I.

Such is the conversation we often have with ourselves when we’re putting ourselves through a regime. I’m looking at it from the point of view of conquering a few targets next year. Hopefully there’ll be a more rewarding pint of Guinness after the Achill Half Marathon in July than on St Stephen’s Day in Castlebar. Not that I’m going to be on the dry either mind. No, the only cold turkey I’ll encounter over the Christmas will be in the St Stephen’s Day sandwiches but hopefully there’s a a balance to be found.

I’ll be back in the New Year with a video of my last session which will, hopefully, show a remarkable contrast from the first session eight weeks previously. If not, you’ll know my plans went astray.


Week 7 ; The need for speed

I’ve never been much of a speed merchant. When I was playing football at Under 10 and Under 12 level in school I always did alright because I was bigger than a lot of my age group and could use that power to my advantage, some of the time.

But if I ever came up against someone with pace, I was in bother. I remember declaring at Under 10 level for Breaffy that I wanted to play centre-half back in our next game against Castlebar Mitchels. I had been watching Stephen O’Brien play the role for Cork and thought that with him being a bit on the heavy side but not being restricted by it, that neither would I be.

Dwayne Flynn thought me different. He was centre-half forward on the Mitchels team and by the game’s end he had kicked 2-5 from play off me. He would turn me inside out and I was like the proverbial donkey and cart turning. It was back to choosing between full-forward or in goals. Pace was not my thing.

As I’ve said here before, it was my impression that pace was purely something you were born with. Sure, fitness and physique might be aids to it but not central.

Right now at the Running School Martin McIntyre is setting me a series of dynamic speed exercises to go with the running technique work I’m doing on
the treadmill.

Slowly but surely my new – and proper – running technique is coming more naturally to me. I’m up to running for two minute blocks at the different speed, the theory being that I should be able to keep going with that technique for much longer than was the case at the start of the work. And the theory is proving itself to be right.

I’ve been challenged to a five mile run by a friend in late January and that’s the target I have in mind for myself in the short-term. There’s a bit of work to get to the level where I’ll be doing that with the correct technique but, no more than building up fitness, it is just a gradual thing. More worrying will be the Christmas period coming up.

There’s all the nights out that you can’t miss out on – and don’t want to either. There’s the lazy days at home where it feels like you’re almost force-feeding yourself junk and those two combined make exercise seem a very foreboding thought. But try I must. This is not a race I intend to lose or can even contemplate losing. That is motivation enough to do what I need to over the holidays.

But back to the dynamic speed work that I’m doing hand in hand with my running technique. I’ll safely say it is the hardest part of the training so far.

There’s standing jumps off aerobic steps and then sideways steps the same way. The next set of exercises is on an exercise mat where I have to go from a standing jump from the centre to each corner and back each time. Try doing a full lap, six times in a row and you won’t be long feeling the pinch.

But no pain, no gain is a truism. What I’m more worried about is carrying on what I’ve done over the Christmas. I won’t be able to catch Dwayne Flynn, even now, but hopefully I might not be at the end of the sprints at Breaffy training either. But first I’m off to Tesco to buy the drink and sweets for the Christmas!

Week 6: No body’s perfect

We can all be our own worst critics. But, sometimes, too, we can be blind to glaringly obvious flaws in ourselves. I would always content that I was a slow runner because my body just isn’t designed to move quickly when running on the playing field or the road. You’d often here veteran footballers talk about the loss of pace towards the end of their career and they would lament that their bodies can no longer do what their mind is telling them to do.
They are slower to react and the speed is gone. I feel like that but I’ve always felt like that. The mind has often been willing - and, being honest, sometimes unwilling too - but the body has frequently let me down. I took it to mean a very simple reality. The physiology of my body was built in a certain way and it wasn’t designed with any need for speed in mind.

Added to that was an often lamentably low fitness level and a good few excessive pounds from time to time. But the last few week’s have been very instructive in terms of assessing my pace. I’m not going to be as zippy as Keith Higgins by the end of it, let’s be honest, but I’d like to think with a hard winter’s work behind me I’ll be that little bit quicker, that bit faster when it comes to next year’s football season.And I’m hoping I’ll be much better equipped for having a crack at a long distance road race. The Achill Half-Marathon is a target at the minute. Depending on how I progress, the Dublin City Marathon might be too. But we’ll defer on any commitments like that just yet, the speed bump that is Christmas could be problematic yet!

Slowly but surely I’m getting the hang of my new running technique. I’m still not at the stage where I’d be confident of going for a 5k road run and maintain the correct technique but the brain won’t adapt overnight. It will be a gradual process and where I’m at right now is very well advanced from where I was when I started.Looking back on the video of my first assessment with my warts and all running style was instructive this week. I was banging off the treadmill. The impact on my legs as I pounded into the treadmill was causing so many problems. So was the noise. Small wonder I always had no one on the treadmill next to me! It is beyond belief how much easier the last few weeks of running have been on my joints. It has been a while since I have had such a tough cardio work-out on a treadmill as what Martin McIntyre of The Running School has me undergoing but, equally, it has been a long time since I was less stiff and sore than in the past few weeks.

The difficulty will be making the technique become instinctive. What I am doing now is running for 30 seconds at 12k per hour. I repeat that four to six times and go up through the speeds, whilst gradually coming down in time.The treadmills in the gym I use don’t go beyond 16k per hour top speed but, ideally, I’d be looking to build it up to 18 or 19, and possibly more in time. The challenge at the minute, well one of them, is to get my leg cycle moving in line with the speed I’m going at. Initially I was trained to cycle fully at 12k in order to just get the flow moving. Obviously that meant a lot of excessive work so with the flow going, now Martin has me running more economically more the speed I’m going at.And it is working. I’m tempted to go for a long run to see how I cope but I’ll be patient just yet.

Working hand in hand with the running technique is the stretching and dynamic work which are aimed at improving my core-strength, activating my gluts and generally helping with my very poor flexibility. I’ve been equipped with a gym stick for the latest set. It is basically a three foot long carbon-rod with rubber bands at each end which you put your feet (or hands, as the case may be) into and work various stretches.It’s a great piece of gear and you can feel the improvement compared to when you might do these stretches manually (Superman stretches, leg lifts etc). But, be warned, you will look very conspicuous in the gym. I’m getting used to that by now. Everything feels different, everything feels now. Best of all, everything feels better. We’ll see how things continue to progress but the work so far has certainly imbued in me a great desire and hunger to really push on from a fitness and performance point of view. I’ve been down that road before so I better be careful before I make any promises. I reckon I’ll be quicker than I’ve ever been by the end of it. Pity I’m 30 next birthday. The race against the hands of time begins in earnest!


Week 5 ; Going straight

I always remember as a young fella watching American sprinter Michael Johnson glide around the tartan running tracks at various Olympics with his
wonderful elegant stride and magnificent, straight posture. He made it look so easy. That back so straight, the hands moving perfectly along his side and the feet just gliding off the ground. But I never thought he was doing it the right way. I thought he was that good that he could run fast and look good doing it at the same time. I didn’t realise that the two were linked. In fact I thought he’d be quicker still if he leant forward a bit more. He was, I thought, showing off! How wrong could you be?

I’ve completed three sessions now at The Running School in Castlebar, including my initial assessment and while I’ll be no Michael Johnson by the end of it, I’ll be a big improvement on my starting point, which was more akin to Boris Johnson! Trying to run with a straight back and with your arms moving straight along your side is, to be honest, a weird feeling. Try it yourself. If it feels normal then you’ve been doing a lot right up to now. If it doesn’t, well then you are a lot like me, although hardly as slow. It is very hard to correct something you’ve been doing wrong for so long but when you are told the benefitsof correct running posture, it would make you appreciate all the more the need for it.

Leaning forward leads to drag and your upper body being off-balance. It’s like a car swerving all over the road instead of going straight on. The same principle applies with your arms. I always thought I ran with my arms straight but the video showed otherwise. Unbeknownst to me I was dragging them across my body. More drag and inefficiency. But when you are trying this correct technique inthe gym, you don’t half stick out. And if you don’t, it sure feels like you do. But, bit by bit, you get the hang of it. And it does become so much easier, so less taxing. I’m sure it is harder to do when you get tired - all my work so far has been for short, sharp bursts - but that’s a battle for another day. The leg movement is starting to come naturally to me now and what is really noticeable after a session on the treadmill are two things. Firstly how taxing it is from a cardio point of view.

My t-shirt looks like it was used to mop a wet pub floor but the programme is tough, especially at the higher speeds and I try and make it harder by keeping the intervals down to a maximum of twenty seconds. But, even more noticeable is how I feel so much better than usual after a session of running. Normally after using the treadmill I would be stiff and sore, especially in my knees and my upper legs and my feet would often be very sore too. Now, with my technique corrected, I’m a lot looser and more limber afterit. My calves are still a bit sore afterwards - because I’m using them in a way I haven’t been doing all my life. But they’ll get used to it, they’ll have no choice. The training continues. I’ve three more sessions at The Running School to do. A lot of work done, more to do as that awful political slogan goes. Unlike Fianna Fáil though I feel like I’m only getting started though.

Week 4 ; Getting on with it

I got a text from Martin McIntyre, the director of The Running School, on Tuesday morning shortly after 8.30am. My face lit up. I was due to go in for the first Running School training session at 9am and I was dreading it. Dread of physical activity sometimes paralyses me. It especially manages to do it after a big Bank Holiday weekend and last weekend saw little in the way of holding back. Maybe the text was to postpone the session to the following day? Those extra 24 hours could be the difference between being fit and ready or having to call a halt after ten minutes. I was right, Martin did want to postpone the session ... But only by half an hour. So much for rolling over in bed. But ever one to try and look at the glass half-full, I got myself into a state of mind where I told myself that it wouldn't be that hard. Rome wasn't built in a day and surely Martin wouldn't be expecting miracles, would he? I had been in the previous Thursday for my assessment with Niall at The Running School (see previous blog) and he took me through what was wrong with my running technique - that took some time. In the intervening period I should have been working on it but the 2km run I did that Thursday evening had my calves so hard that walking was often sore, never mind running. I was literally discovering muscles I never knew I had when I was being taught to run properly. But that put pay to any extensive work over the weekend. Well, that and many's the pint of porter. But how I was getting on with The Running School was a strong topic of conversation with a few of the people I met over the weekend. A crew of Castlebar Mitchels players in Ray's Bar on Castle Street were extremely curious after reading the blog. As a Breaffy man I wasn't sure if I should tell them the benefits but I was deep in enemy lines so I had to cough up ... Most felt that they had plenty of creases in their technique that needed ironing out as well but whether they were as bad as me is hard to believe. Anyway, I eventually made it to The Running School on Tuesday morning and, wonders of all wonders, it wasn't that difficult at all. Not in terms of the physical activity part of it. And do you know the strangest part of that - it wasn't too hard in spite of the fact that I ended up running on the treadmill at a pace I'd never went at before. Martin started off by working on my legs from a static position, manipulating each leg into the proper cycle and then trying to get me to do the same. Essentially I needed to get more backlift on my heel, drive forward with my knee and land my foot under my body, three things I hadn't been doing heretofore.

We then brought it onto the treadmill and it went surprisingly well. I was concentrating on where my foot was landing and everything else pretty much
followed from that, although I did flick my legs back a few times rather than cycle them - a key distinction I'm told. We started at 12 km per hour, up to 13,14, 15, 16, 17 and then 18. It was about 30 seconds to begin with, then hop off (the bit I found the hardest, as accident prone as I am!), and back on about four times at each pace. By the time we got to 18, it was down to ten seconds a go but a few things were surprising me. I had never went at that pace before on a treadmill. Obviously I'd be able to sprint faster than that but on a treadmill if I go near 16km, it feels as if the machine is going to leave a crater in the ground it is shaking that much! I'd always blame my bodyweight on that and while it wasn't a negligible factor, on Tuesday I could hardly hear anything.

I told Martin that these must be serious treadmills to cope with me at 18km but it turns out it was how I was running, not what I was running on. My feet were not pounding onto the machine in front of me and I was gliding along, a very surreal feeling I can tell you. The reason for the short intervals - apart from my lack of fitness - became apparent the following evening when I went for a game of astro-turf. The mind finds it hard to get the body to move in new ways. For short bursts where I was completely concentrating on the task in hand, I was achieving it but fatigue and time can see the old habits creep back in. They were abundantly obvious on the Wednesday night so there's little doubt that this isn't going to be an overnight success but the benefits of the changes were
clear for me to see. Training the mind is the next step. I've to do three sessions myself before next Tuesday's second session at The Running School and, unlike last Tuesday morning, I'm looking forward to them for the right reasons. Plus, I'll be able to hear music on my iPhone on the treadmill in the gym, instead of the sound of my thundering into the treadmill. 
 

Week 3 ; Pimp my stride
It is Monday afternoon as I write and my calves still haven't quite recovered from last Thursday. That was when I was at The Running School for the first assessment of my running technique (or lack thereof) and to call it a eye-opener would be understating it.

Niall from The Running School took me through the session which consisted of my being filmed from the side and the rear running on a treadmill at fourteen kilometres per hour. There's always something uncomfortable about watching yourself on film but it is even more so the case when that image is of a far too rotund version of you struggling on the treadmill but part of me was fascinated too - I didn't think I was running that badly so I waited with baited breath to hear Niall's assessment.

I ticked pretty much every box in terms of what not to do. My feet are landing about a foot forward of my centre of gravity - they ought to be landing under my centre of gravity; I was landing on my heels rather than on the balls of my feet; my heels were not going high enough behind me; my back was too far forward and my arm movement was, literally, holding me back. The implications of each of these things I'll go through in the coming weeks but the net effect of all of them is that when I run I'm putting too much pressure on my hamstrings and my hip-flexors and am not using my calves or my glute near as much as I should be. The result of it all is a combination of factors, none good. My technique means I am too slow, too off balance and too prone to injuries by overusing muscles that aren't designed to be doing the work I have them doing.

Niall reckons plenty of people have similar problems. Maybe they do or maybe he was just letting me down gently. But it is absolutely incredible to think I've been running so incorrectly for so long and have only discovered it now. Who knows how far my football career might have went if I had known in time? Although lack of ability hardly helped either! I took in all the information like an eager child, only dying to put it into practice. I asked Niall to let me on the treadmill for a minute to try and run how I ought to be running. It felt very strange, I can tell you. I just did it for a minute but then went home and went out for a 2km run. I didn't go that fast or anything and that distance wouldn't normally be an issue for me. But by the time I was finishing I was hardly able to walk. The reason being that my calves were like led, they were that heavy. Quite simply they just weren't used to being used for running!

The next day they were worse and then on Saturday at our last Gaelic football league game of the year, I had to get them rubbed down by our physio. Even at that I was struggling to run and doubt I would have been able to do much if I was called on. Luckily I wasn't.

But it just goes to show how wrong I clearly had been running heretofore. It's not going to be easy to change the habit of a lifetime but I'm sure the lads at The Running School won't ease up on the whip either. Tuesday morning is my next session. The fun continues.

Weeks 1-2 ; Stretching my limits

Running seems like such a natural thing that you would never think you need to train yourself on how to run. I certainly didn't anyway. That was until I attended a demo at the Running School in Castlebar a year ago. The improvement that could be seen in terms of running speed for multi-directional athletes and the improvement in running times for road runners after going through the school was there for us to see. There was something in it. Technique adjustments and muscle assessments certainly made big differences for those who went through the school. I thought at the time 'I'll have to give this a go' but like so many things in life, it got put on the long finger.

So it was with very tentative steps that I went back into Running School director Martin McIntyre a few weeks ago and told him I wanted to give it a go. The reason for the tentative steps was not so much uncertainty about whether it would be successful or not, but fear at how difficult it was going to be because I am nowhere near as fit as I was when I viewed the demo a year ago.

There are a few reasons for that which I'm sure I'll need to explain in the coming weeks as I blog my progress but for now they can be condensed into two words - injuries and laziness.

Before I could even think about starting the Running School, there were a few fundamentals I needed to address. Martin did an assessment on my body - God bless his patience and understanding - and found out a few things, some I knew, some I didn't. I most definitely didn't know that my shoulder, which I dislocated when I was 12 years old, had never been properly re-aligned. One trip to Sligo osteopath Charlie Townsend and one frightening bear-hug like readjustment and I was right again.

The other problems Martin identified were not news to me I'm afraid but knowing you've something that needs work on and doing something about it tend to be two very different things for myself. Flexibility has never been my middle name. An attempt to touch my toes whilst keeping my knees straight gets me halfway between my knees and my ankles. My back is very tight and I've had a lot of injury problems over the years from playing football where the strain on my groin, hip-flexor and quad muscles has been too much. There are ways to avoid it - proper pre-hab stretching and continue that through the year - but I've always been quite blasé about such things, mainly because of the boredom. That had to change.

So Martin gave me two set of stretching exercises to do over three to four weeks. Every day I had to stretch for over an hour. I won't lie, it was incredibly boring. That I could see an improvement was an incentive to keep going but rarely would I be in good form at the thought of doing them. Years of neglect are to blame. Martin insisted on making sure I did it every day. He knows how lazy I can be and there was definitely a need for the stick rather than the carrot approach. I went into him then once a week to do some passive stretching - where he manipulated my body rather than me doing it myself. That actually sounds like a breeze the way I've described it, it is anything but. By last Tuesday, our last passive stretching session, I was more flexible than I ever was before. A month ago I was like an old, battered and frayed elastic band. Now I'm a slightly less frayed plastic band. Someday I might be like a new band but Martin isn't a miracle worker, that isn't going to happen overnight!

Wednesday morning of this week is the first session for the actual Running School. I'm trying not to think about it because I know it won't be easy but I've committed to it now, for better or worse, so there's no turning back.

THE RUNNING SCHOOL IS NOW OPEN IN CASTLEBAR, ATHLONE AND SLIGO...NOW ALSO WORKING WITH TEAMS AND SQAUDS...CALL US ON 094 9020005 FOR TEAM DISCOUNTS...