Creating The Perfect Running Form - Shane Benzie

1. 0:00 – 0:28

   Intro

   1. SBShane Benzie0:00

      You could spend $10,000 on a pair of trainers. It's not gonna make you land with a tripod landing. It's not gonna make you leave the f- the ground correctly. We can't buy our way out of trouble. It's- I think it's easier to order something and for it turn up on the doorstep, and we put them on, and it's a magic pair of trainers, and now all our troubles are solved. We'd rather do that than spend 12 weeks learning to move differently. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:24

      Shane Betsy, welcome to the show.

   3. SBShane Benzie0:26

      Thank you for the invite.

2. 0:28 – 7:53

   Training Extreme Surfers

   1. CWChris Williamson0:28

      You were just in Portugal. Tell me what you were doing.

   2. SBShane Benzie0:30

      I was just in Portugal. So, I was in, uh, a place called Nazare, and Nazare, uh, has the biggest waves in the world. So, it's on the Atlantic Coast, and, uh, it has huge waves. And, uh, I'm predominantly a running coach, but actually, more and more, I'm becoming a movement coach with different sports. And I'm actually working on a project out there studying and coaching some of the big wave surfers. So, these guys are surfing waves up to sort of 70, 80 feet. So, I'm really get excited about, you know, their foot contact on the board, how are they balancing on that board, you know, what are they doing? What's their perception of their movement? Their mental approach to something that's pretty dangerous, and that you can't just go out every day and practice because of course these big waves only come sometimes. So, I use very clever sensors to put in their boots to kind of have a look at how they're interacting with the board and all sorts of stuff. And that does, believe it or not, feed back into running.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:25

      What is the similarity between surfing and running?

   4. SBShane Benzie1:29

      So, for me, if I'm coaching running, one of the big things I get excited about with running is the- the foot. The- the- you know, the human foot is a very, very clever thing, and I like to think of the foot as the interface between us and the ground. Yeah. If the foot lands well, and if the foot leaves the ground well when we run, it creates stability, it creates elasticity, it creates amazing proprioception from the quarter of a million nerves on the bottom of it, it spreads impact, it does loads of amazing things. So, if I can understand how the foot interacts with lots of other surfaces, uh, and in other sports, then I can learn some very interesting things about maybe how we should land the foot and leave the ground when we run.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:12

      What are some of the things that you've learned since working with these psychopathic surfers?

   6. SBShane Benzie2:17

      (laughs) Well, uh, one of the other big things about sport as well is- is the mental approach. You know, that- that's- that's extremely important. So, we're learning all the time about the foot. The- I- when I'm looking at, uh, foot contact in whatever sport it is, I'm always looking where possible for what I would call a tripod contact with, uh, the board or with the ground or whatever it is you're working with. So, I'm learning from them about how they create stability in what is a very kind of dynamic situation and how that foot changes based on their interaction with the board. And maybe then I can understand how better we should change and interact our foot as we move- move over maybe uneven surfaces or uphills or downhills because of course they're- they are on, uh, you know, they're up going at some pretty crazy angles. So yeah, lots to learn and- and lots of information to swap. I did a- a similar, well, say similar, I had a- I have a collaboration with British Diving, um, so worked with British Diving in the- in the lead-up to the Olympics. Uh, and, uh, just looking at how the divers have their- their- their movement on the board, not the twirly stuff, that's all really exciting and impressive, but I just work with them on their three steps on the board and then how they leave the board. So, looking at things in minute detail, but then maybe bringing it back into running is something we might do tens of thousands of times in a single run.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:36

      What about fear? What did you learn to do with the mindset of these guys? They're running ... they're, uh, uh, swimming out to go down these 60, 70, 80-foot waves. How are they coping with the nerves and anxiety before, enduring, and keeping themselves in the zone?

   8. SBShane Benzie3:54

      Well, I think- I think for sports, you know, for athletes, and- and I think when I- when I say athlete, I think that's anybody who does sport and anybody who does anything athletic is an athlete. I think with athletes, I think, uh, fear, excitement, being nervous, I think they're actually good things because that produces adrenaline and that gets us maybe in the place that we need to be. So, I think they are good things. I think what the surfers do a lot of, and what I try and get my athletes to do, is a huge amount of visualization. So, when they come to surf a big wave, they visualize that wave many times and they visualize what they're going to do on that wave many, many times. So, they don't try and, uh, sort of, uh, ward off that- that nervousness or- or that fear because you need a healthy respect for the ocean. Um, but, uh, yeah, they channel it so that it reduces adrenaline that goes in the right way.

   9. CWChris Williamson4:42

      Yeah.

   10. SBShane Benzie4:42

       And then their- their ability, yeah, to- to visualize what's- what's gonna happen and how to deal with it.

   11. CWChris Williamson4:47

       I have a friend, Bridget Phetasy, who's a- a comedian, and she has a little mantra before she goes on stage. Every time that she goes on stage, she gets butterflies in her stomach and her palms get sweaty and her heart rate increases. She just keeps telling herself, "I'm not nervous, I'm excited. I'm not nervous, I'm excited. I'm not nervous, I'm excited." And I used that. I had- I- I've done a couple of big things recently and, uh, "I'm not nervous, I'm excited" is a really fucking good mantra-

   12. SBShane Benzie5:10

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson5:10

       ... because the difference between being nervous and being excited really is just the framing that you put around it. Physiologically, it manifests in a pretty similar way.

   14. SBShane Benzie5:18

       Yeah, I- I would agree. And, you know, but coming on- coming on the show today, you know, there's that minute before you're about to sort of hit that button and come on, you're thinking, "Okay." And I think what I do, and I think what it- what- what's good for sport as well, is if you get that initial minute right, if you get that first minute right, if you're confident about how you approach and then you've started in control, then you adapt to where it goes. So, someone might chuck you a- a- a tricky question, and then you- you'll deal with that. But if you start in control and if you feel in control, I think that's good. And I guess that's what the surfers are doing, you know, when they're- when they're towed onto that wave by the jet ski, I think they're thinking, "Right, you know, I've done this a thousand times. This is what we do. This is how I'm- this is how I'm entering the wave, and I'll now deal with the wave in the way that I have to deal with it." But if- if you start in control, I- I think that's, uh, that's the best you can do.

   15. CWChris Williamson6:04

       What do people mean when they call you the Indiana Jones of running?

   16. SBShane Benzie6:07

       (laughs) Yeah. So, so, my work really is I, you know, I literally do travel all over the world, um, to chase, chasing human movement, that, that's kind of what I'm doing. Because, you know, if I, if I, if I watch a runner run or if I analyze a runner or I'm coaching a runner, I'm coaching a human, uh, you know, part of the human species. I'm coaching an animal, if, if you were. And so I travel all over the world trying to track down what is good human movement, and I trace athletes all around the world to lots of different environments, often extreme environments like jungle, um, arctic, uh, high mountains, um, Amazon jungle rainforest, to understand how they adapt to these, uh, extreme environments. But I also spend a lot of time with tribes and indigenous people as well, people who do incredible things with their bodies but aren't necessarily race- wearing a race number but doing amazing things.

   17. CWChris Williamson7:04

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SBShane Benzie7:04

       I might go and live with the Sherpas who will carry twice their body weight all day, you know, or go and, go and live with the Batek tribe in the, in the Malaysian rainforest, so amazing tree climbers. How are they doing that? So humans are incredibly good at adapting their software, their brains, and their hardware, their body, to different tasks around the world to suit their environment. But isn't that what an athlete's doing? An athlete is adapting their body to a specific task. So the more I can understand, A, what is good human movement, and B, how to adapt that human movement to a specific task, I think the better coach I can be. So I think that's where the Indiana Jones thing has come from, is because I'm just constantly chasing this thing around the planet that, uh, yeah, it, it, it's the whole, it's that, that holy grail of what is human movement and, and how to adapt it in coaching.

3. 7:53 – 14:45

   Running is a Lost Art

   1. SBShane Benzie7:53

   2. CWChris Williamson7:53

      Yeah, it's interesting to talk about it being a, a lost art. I, I, I'm not so sure what, um, what you mean by being a lost art. We've just had someone run a sub-two-hour marathon. It doesn't seem like running is that much of a lost art to me.

   3. SBShane Benzie8:05

      Sure. Well, actually I was there when, when Eliud Kipchoge did it in Vienna. I was, I was there for the, for the sub two. Um, and so, I mean, he's a, he's a good example. So, you know, he, Eliud Kipchoge didn't run a sub-two marathon because he ran like a hunter-gatherer. He ran a sub-two marathon because he harnessed all of the gifts that Mother Nature gave him as a running species, and then he maximized as much potential as he could out of his software, his brain, and his hardware. Yeah, he turned it into human performance. But because the envi- the environment that you and I live in is not the natural environment that humans grew up in.

   4. CWChris Williamson8:48

      Yeah.

   5. SBShane Benzie8:48

      So before, before I was working, before I was studying human movement, I was working with sharks, okay? So sharks ... So I did stuff with great white sharks. So great white sharks have been around for about 400 million years, and their environment hasn't really changed over that time. You know, they just swim around, have baby sharks and eat seals. That's it.

   6. CWChris Williamson9:06

      Water. Yeah.

   7. SBShane Benzie9:07

      Yeah, exactly. So nothing's really changed for them in 400 million years. So they've got amazingly good at swimming around in a very efficient way and living in an efficient way. For us, for, as, as humans, you know, that's really not the case. We've been round in a, in a blink of an eyelid of that time, and in that time, we've gone from hunter-gatherers to farmers. We've gone through the Industrial Revolution and now the technological revolution. So we're actually like a fish out of water really now. You know, we, we don't ... We no longer live in an environment that we were designed to live in. And so because of that, we're adapting what we do to our new environment. So it is a lost art. Movement is becoming a lost art because we're no longer the animal that we were, so we're no longer moving in that way. And what's really fascinating is if you were to go out this afternoon and, and, and run around-

   8. CWChris Williamson10:02

      It's minus eight in New York City. I'm not going out there and running around anywhere.

   9. SBShane Benzie10:06

      You'd have ... Well, you'd have to run just to stay alive because, um ...

   10. CWChris Williamson10:07

       Precisely, yeah. That's true.

   11. SBShane Benzie10:09

       Now if you, but if you ran around Central Park, your movement would actually be based on two big things. There are many things, but the two big things are the environment that you spend your day in. So you're sitting at the moment. So if you spend a lot of your day sitting, your skeleton is essentially free-flowing in a sea of tension. It's 206 bones that don't t- touch each other. They just sit in an elastic sea of tension, and that sea of tension in your body is created during the day when you're static. You then take that out into dynamic movement. So if you ran around in Central Park, you're actually gonna be running with a sea of tension in your body that you've created for the other 23 hours of the day. The second big challenge for us is that our movement is based on our perception of our movement.

   12. CWChris Williamson10:56

       Yeah.

   13. SBShane Benzie10:56

       And you think, "Well, I have no perception. I just run. I just go out for a run. I have no perception." We all do, even if it's a subliminal perception, and our subliminal perception of our movement is one that's based on the traditional view of biomechanics, which makes us feel mechanical. The clue is almost in the word. It makes us feel like we're moving as a series of levers and our skeleton is a structure, so we move in a block-like mechanical way. But actually, that's not the case at all, but because of our new environment, we sit a lot and we're static a lot, and because of our new environment, we are educated about our movement in a way that's based on biomechanics, which makes us feel mechanical. So those two things are creating a world that means that our movement is almost becoming like a lost language. It's changing because our environment is changing, and it's getting harder and harder for me to have to go further and further afield to find people that aren't looking down into mobile phones and that aren't sitting.

   14. CWChris Williamson11:56

       Yeah.

   15. SBShane Benzie11:56

       Even in the last decade, that's become much harder.

   16. CWChris Williamson11:59

       Hmm. You have gone and studied a bunch of different groups, looking at their movement, looking at how they move themselves through, and not all of them were runners, right? So the Sherpas, I think you, you tried to get them to run and, and basically they weren't, they weren't particularly fantastic at running, but they're very, very good at strong, uh, heavy carries, two times their body weight and stuff like that.

   17. SBShane Benzie12:19

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson12:19

       Of all of the people that you studied who had the most beautiful running form naturally?

   19. SBShane Benzie12:26

       So, the East Africans, I think, have, uh, you know, uh, you- you'd have to go a long way to beat the, the Ethiopians and the Kenyans. And I think, for me, mainly the, the Kenyans. I think they move beautifully.

   20. CWChris Williamson12:37

       What is it? How would you characterize the way that they move?

   21. SBShane Benzie12:40

       They move with a lot of height in their body. It's elegant. Yeah, it's elegant. They move with elegance. So, this sea of tension ... In fact, I'm just gonna show you this. So, this is a kind of ... It's, it's a child's toy, okay?

   22. CWChris Williamson12:53

       Mm-hmm.

   23. SBShane Benzie12:53

       But it's actually a tensegrity model, okay? Now, the concept of tensegrity, or biotensegrity for you as a human, is, as I said earlier, the 206 bones that are your skeleton are free-flowing in a sea of tension. So, this child's toy kinda tells that story. The wooden dowels are your bones-

   24. CWChris Williamson13:13

       Yeah.

   25. SBShane Benzie13:13

       ... and the plastic stuff that holds the toy together are your tendons and your ligaments, and something called myofascia. So actually, when you move your skeleton, it just free flows in a sea of elasticity, and that elastic tension is created by your fascial system. So, if you get beautifully tall in your movement, when you move, you move with a lot of elastic recoil. You have connective tissue that runs from your toes continuously right up into your skull. Now, when the East Africans run, they run with beautiful height in their body, so they really load that elastic system, and they do that beautifully. But you know what's really fascinating, and what I think is, is really exciting as well, is that when you watch Eliud Kipchoge-

   26. CWChris Williamson14:01

       Mm-hmm.

   27. SBShane Benzie14:01

       ... Wilson Kipsang, Ronex Kipruto, world record holders that I've been lucky to spend time with, you know, they move beautifully. But if I was to ask them to list the top 10 things that, uh, ma- wha- what made them think they were great runners, they would put movement pretty much at the bottom. Which is a little bit disconcerting for me, because I'm a movement coach.

   28. CWChris Williamson14:22

       Mm-hmm.

   29. SBShane Benzie14:22

       You know the reason why they put it at the bottom is because they don't know they learnt it, because they learn it by running in the group. So by flow, by the power of the group by osmosis, by being surrounded by beautiful movement, they start to move in that same way. It isn't coached as a technical skill. They just join in with the group. They mimic ...

   30. CWChris Williamson14:44

       Yes.

4. 14:45 – 18:48

   Mimicking Movement & Form

   1. CWChris Williamson14:45

      Well, I had a, a guy that wrote a book about Rene Girard, who, you know, he ... th- his entire thing was this mimetic desire, and he, uh, saw it as a social phenomenon that we want what other people want to want, and then we presume that that's what we want. So, are you saying that there is an equivalent here, but biomechanically, that we see other people around us, we m- mimic the way that they move, and that becomes a part of ... I remember when I was playing cricket, uh, you know, growing up, and you'd see one of the lads that was a, a quicker bowler than you or a better batsman than you or a better thrower than you, and you'd try and pick apart, or at least I would, I'd try and pick apart the little things that they did, presuming that there must be some component of their movement which is contributing to these effective outcomes. And, um, yeah, it makes sense, and that, I suppose as well, in that way, that you don't need to break it down biomechanically. If you have effective runners in the group and you run with the group and you watch the group, then you become an effective runner as a byproduct of being there.

   2. SBShane Benzie15:42

      Completely. And it becomes your default much easier, because it wasn't a learned skill. So, when you're running so hard and trying so hard that you don't even know your own name, your default is gonna be relaxation and beautiful movement, because that, that, that's how you learnt it, by running in the group. We could learn a lot from that. We ... A huge amount from that.

   3. CWChris Williamson16:00

      Is there a, um, is there an implication here that the people who are training and running, especially, uh, uh, as youngsters, that you want to get them into a group with other high-caliber, very, very, uh, precise movers?

   4. SBShane Benzie16:17

      Completely. Absolutely. And again, I think it's one of the things that, certainly in the UK, that we don't do so well. And, and, you know, and, and it is a challenge, because if you had three groups of runners and you were gonna take them running, it makes sense for the fast runners to run together, then not so fast, and then the pretty slow. Um, but it means the pretty slow never get to mimic the fast.

   5. CWChris Williamson16:35

      Precisely. You end up with this sort of them and us scenario, where it starts to split out, yeah.

   6. SBShane Benzie16:40

      But what the East Africans do, which is ingenious, is the ... So, y- they have the same problem, because boy, have they got some very, very fast runners and some quick, fast runners, and not quite so fast, so everything's at upper level. But there are different speeds. But they do this very clever thing where they will have a, a grid system. So take, you think of something four time... Like, maybe four soccer fields, the size of four soccer fields. And they will have the runners running, but it's, it's in diagonals across these football fields, or this ... Make the size of these soccer fields, so they run in diagonals. So, you are constantly running past world record holders. You're constantly then running behind them, then towards them. You're always moving in different angles across these pitches. But you never leave the best runners in the world, even though you're a complete beginner.

   7. CWChris Williamson17:27

      And that's why they've done it? Is that one of the reasons that they've said that they've done it, to get people around these beautiful running form guys?

   8. SBShane Benzie17:33

      Yeah. Yeah, so they can see each other moving, and also it's easier for the coaches to be in the middle of those diagonals and watch everything that's going on. Nobody really disappears.

   9. CWChris Williamson17:41

      Oh, yeah, of course, because they're ev- you don't actually have to go all that far away, but you can still run a far distance. That's really, really clever.

   10. SBShane Benzie17:48

       It is. It's, it's ingenious. You can have ... You know, sometimes you can have as much sports science as you like and, you know, and as much funding as you like, but sometimes just the simple things are, uh, really, really helpful. And so-

   11. CWChris Williamson18:01

       Look at your son's Matchbox cars track setup and just duplicate that for a running method, yeah.

   12. SBShane Benzie18:07

       Yeah. Yeah. It, and it's re- it, it works amazingly well. And, you know, people maybe listening to the podcast might be able to kind of relate to this, that it ... If you do a marathon or a half marathon, sometimes it's an out and a back, and as you're still going out, the fast ones are coming back. And for that fleeting moment, you see them and you think, "Wow, how ... Look at them. Well, that's amazing." Well, you get to see them for two hours just constantly weaving in and out. Very ... It's, it's, it's a great thing, and we, we could ... I think we could learn a lot from that.

   13. CWChris Williamson18:34

       So, if that's the Kenyans and they're the best runners on the planet, talk to me about the sherpas, 'cause they're strong guys. Nims Purja, who did the, uh, 14 Peaks Challenge, he, uh, he was on the show a little while ago, and he's a complete freak too.

   14. SBShane Benzie18:47

       Um,

5. 18:48 – 31:50

   Sherpa Strength

   1. SBShane Benzie18:48

      yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah, they're incredible. I mean, and this is... So, I'd, I'd been to Nepal. I used to climb, uh, and I'd been to Nepal maybe 25 years ago, um, and was in complete awe of the sherpas then, but wasn't a coach or a movement coach. Um, just thought they were amazing people. But then when I started to become a movement coach and started to think, "Right. Okay. Well, what is, what is strength?" You know? What is strength? I think we, in the Western world, see our strength as muscle. Yeah. If, if you're talking about strength, we tend to think of muscle strength. But I don't. I don't see that. I think that it comes from actually a symbiotic relationship between bone, muscle, and fascia, that like that children's toy, it creates that sea of tension.

   2. CWChris Williamson19:30

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SBShane Benzie19:30

      And so just like I'd thought, "Right. Okay. Well, where do I think the best runners in the world are? Where are the strongest people? Where, where, where are the strongest people?" And I'd seen when I was at, in, in Nepal 25 years ago, sherpas carrying almost comical loads. It was just absurd, where you could barely just see a little pair of legs and just this huge load to the point where it looked like something out of a cartoon. And, uh, I thought, "Right. I'm going back. I'm gonna study it." And I found an amazing guy, um, and, uh, he allowed me to come to his village, which is a very remote village. You can only trek in. And, um, and I stayed in the village, and, uh, the sherpas... There were, there were three Everest summitters in, in the village, and the, the, the-

   4. CWChris Williamson20:11

      Yeah.

   5. SBShane Benzie20:11

      ... sherpas were back 'cause it was off the climbing season, so I think they had something like 24 summits between them. And, uh, and, and, and was also spending time in the sherpa community, trying to understand and crack this code of why they are so strong and yet actually pretty slight and certainly not muscular to, to look at. And also, why would they carry everything around their head when all the smart people are carrying big weights over their shoulders, you would think? So, A, why can they carry weights that we couldn't even look at? And why are they suspending them round their forehead? That's... Why would they do that? That... I found that really, really interesting. And if we can learn... I thought, "Right. If I can learn wha- why they can do that, then that's gonna give me some really good ideas about how maybe runners can run with small packs on their back, or, you know..."

   6. CWChris Williamson21:01

      Yeah.

   7. SBShane Benzie21:01

      And I've, and I've worked, I've worked with the military as well. Um, and obviously carrying weight and stuff like that is obviously pretty important. So, so I went out to live with the sherpas and to study them and to understand them. Studying the power of the group as well, which I would love to talk to you about 'cause I think that's massive. It's, it's everything actually. Um, so studying the power of the group and also how they move. And they really did show me that actually it isn't muscle strength at all. It is this symbiotic relationship between bone, muscle, and fascia that doesn't just create an elastic body-

   8. CWChris Williamson21:34

      Yeah.

   9. SBShane Benzie21:34

      ... it creates a very strong body. And this continuous elastic tissue that runs from our toes continuously up our body actually finishes in our skull, in the top of our head. And that's why they carry their weights around the forehead, because if you hang something off your shoulders, you've actually cut off the last link of your strength, an elastic chain. By suspending something around your head, you incorporate every single part of the chain of your body.

   10. CWChris Williamson22:01

       Presu- presumably they don't know or they haven't broken down the biomechanics of how the fascial system works.

   11. SBShane Benzie22:07

       No.

   12. CWChris Williamson22:07

       What they've done is they've tried it on the shoulders, they've tried it in their hand, they've tried it around their waist, they've tried it attached to their knees, dragging it behind them, and they've ended up saying, "Look, it would appear..." So it's just a, an evolution of what was most effective.

   13. SBShane Benzie22:21

       Absolutely. And if you travel around the world, um, and go to the more, more far-flung places, people are carrying things either around their head or on their head.

   14. CWChris Williamson22:30

       Yeah. Yeah. Well, you see that with, um, ladies carrying water for the tribes, right? You know, going to whatever the, the local well is and then carrying it back on top of their heads. Yeah, it's so interesting when you see... Uh, taking the approach that you have as somebody that does the, the sport science, you know, real technical analysis of running movement and so on and so forth. But then when you go and you just look at evolution of what was effective, what was it that people did who were good at this thing? What are they doing? How can we then repurpose that? So having to re-engineer our own movement in this way.

   15. SBShane Benzie23:05

       Yeah, yeah. I think, I, I thi- I think it's the way, because, you know, a human, 6 million years ago, we would have been quadruped, so we would have went on all fours, and very muscular with, with a lot of muscle. And we wouldn't have moved really very far. We'd have probably moved around about the size of those f- four soccer fields.

   16. CWChris Williamson23:23

       Why did we need, uh, why did we need so much muscle?

   17. SBShane Benzie23:27

       Why did we need so much muscle? Well, I think... I... It's, it's a good point. I don't know, because if you were a, a, if you were a primate, you wouldn't actually need to have a huge amount of muscle to, to get your food, but-

   18. CWChris Williamson23:38

       You're not carrying stuff.

   19. SBShane Benzie23:40

       No, but then I guess if you're competing for a mate, it probably helps to be pretty strong. And really, evolution is about, you know, the strongest or the fittest or the, the most able to, to reproduce passes on their genes. So I guess through evolution, it... the stronger you were, the more able you were able to get a mate.

   20. CWChris Williamson23:58

       Well, one thing could be that the, the muscle size is less a function and more a signal.

   21. SBShane Benzie24:04

       Mm-hmm.

   22. CWChris Williamson24:04

       It's not that you're actually concerned about what the muscles can do. It's that these muscles are almost like, um, everybody knowing that you've got some nukes in the arsenal.

   23. SBShane Benzie24:14

       And it- Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson24:14

       You don't necessarily need to even use them, but if you didn't have them, they wouldn't work as a deterrent. And if you're looking to signal, "I am a strong and capable provider to my family," uh, and I mean, I, I've heard some stories about two or three chimps can quite easily rip another chimp limb from limb.

   25. SBShane Benzie24:31

       Oh, they do it. Yeah. Yeah. The abs- I mean, it's a pretty disturbing sight. And I think it's a disturbing sight because we kind of relate ourselves quite-

   26. CWChris Williamson24:38

       That was us not long ago.

   27. SBShane Benzie24:40

       Yeah, absolutely. And it can be quite a disturbing thing to, to see.... but we took a different ... So, we would've been, six million years ago, those quadrupeds and quite muscular and really not moving very far off those four soccer pitches. And then we did two things: we developed a very clever foot, and we developed the ability to stand tall and get elastic. That meant we could cover more ground with more efficiency, catch more food, get bigger brains, get a space program. Now, I'm not saying we've been more successful than the primates-

   28. CWChris Williamson25:12

       Yeah.

   29. SBShane Benzie25:13

       ... but a human's USP is a very clever foot and the ability to stand tall and get elastic and dynamic and efficient. So, when it comes to playing sport, if your sport allows it, we should get as much height in that body as we can, because that's a human's USP.

   30. CWChris Williamson25:31

       Given the fact that the sherpas aren't jacked-out-of-their-minds bodybuilder style guys, what have you learned is ... Uh, uh, what is the function of strength? Or what, sorry, what is the contributing element to strength? You know, if the bodybuilder or the powerlifter or the CrossFitter isn't the person that can carry the most, uh, weight per kilo of body mass, it's the sherpa, what is it that they're doing? Where, where is their strength coming from?
6. 31:50 – 36:38

   Ancestral Performance Comparisons

   1. CWChris Williamson31:50

      How far were our ancestors running in one go?

   2. SBShane Benzie31:54

      So, there's my, the, my go-to person, the person that I love to listen to and I think makes absolute sense is, uh, a guy called Daniel Lieberman, Professor Lieberman. I don't know if you've heard of him or not.

   3. CWChris Williamson32:05

      Nope.

   4. SBShane Benzie32:05

      Amaze- absolutely amazing guy. Runner, anthropologist, e- fantastic. And, you know, he was going out to Kenya a long time ago and, and looking at how everyone was moving. He's, he's absolutely fantastic. So, he would kind of say, uh, really about, uh, they would run about maybe a half marathon at about a four-hour marathon pace. So, to go back to my original statement of Kipchoge did not break the sub two by running like a hunter-gatherer 'cause clearly, he, he would have pulled up a lot earlier.

   5. CWChris Williamson32:35

      Yes. Yes.

   6. SBShane Benzie32:36

      So, there was some running. There was quite a lot of walking. Yeah. And, and, and actually, you know, a lot of times sitting and digging roots and, and, and doing stuff like that. So, what we're doing now is taking human movement and turning it into human performance, and that's when we have to adapt our software and our hardware. So, it's really interesting because if you look at humans, if you watch a human move, humans are very wonky, imbalanced things. A human has a stabilizing leg, and it has a probing leg.

   7. CWChris Williamson33:08

      Yeah.

   8. SBShane Benzie33:08

      It has a stabilizing arm and a manipulating arm 'cause different sides of the brain. Well, that's how a human's designed. But if you wanna squeeze as much performance out of a hu- out of a human as you can, you need to eradicate those and create as much balance and symmetry in the body as you can. Certainly for running. Different sports might need different things if it's a w- very one-sided sport w- with one side of the body. So, we're taking... And this is why it's a challenge, because we're taking this fish that is out of water-

   9. CWChris Williamson33:38

      Yup.

   10. SBShane Benzie33:38

       ... that is not living in the environment it was designed to be lived in anymore, and now trying to squeeze incredible performance out of it to do evermore amazing things. And that's why we have to really think about it, rather than just try hard or just do it a lot.

   11. CWChris Williamson33:53

       So, you're saying that persistence hunting typically would have pulled up at... Uh, th- the animal would've overheated within 13 miles, or we would have lost it on average, something like that?

   12. SBShane Benzie34:06

       Yeah. So, so ess- so we would have run-walked. So, essentially-

   13. CWChris Williamson34:09

       Oh, okay. Yup, yup.

   14. SBShane Benzie34:10

       Yeah. So, we would've, we would've walked and run, walked and run. So, yeah. But essentially, the idea of persistence hunting is, you, you get an animal that's technically much faster than you over a shorter distance, keep it in, and keep it in eyesight, and just keep it moving because it can't carry water, and it can't sweat. So, it's gonna overheat a lot quicker than us.

   15. CWChris Williamson34:28

       What I suppose is... So, the thing that I had in my head, because I've never persistence hunted, surprisingly, uh, is that the animal would've just gone and then gone, and you might have lost sight of it. But if I was an animal and I knew that I didn't have an unlimited gas tank, I would run faster away. Then I'd turn around and look, and I'd wait and see, "Are they still coming? Oh, shit. They're still coming. Right. Okay. I'll run a bit more."

   16. SBShane Benzie34:50

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson34:50

       Turn around and look. So, I suppose that, yeah, th- the, um, the fact that you would stop, I guess, the guys would maybe be stopping to make sure that the tracks are going in the right direction if perhaps they've lost sight of it directly.

   18. SBShane Benzie35:00

       Absolutely. They're, they're trackers as, as much as hunters and, and... Yeah, exactly. You're not gonna be able to keep that animal in your view the whole time. So, their ability to track and understand, almost put their self in the animal's position and be like-

   19. CWChris Williamson35:12

       Where would it run? Yeah. It's gonna steer clear of those trees. It's going towards that whatever.

   20. SBShane Benzie35:17

       Yeah. E- exactly. And the acceleration and the constant acceleration and deceleration, the stopping and starting of the animal is incredibly tiring. If you go to a shopping mall or if you go to a, uh, a museum and you're walking around, stopping and looking and walking and stopping and walking around and looking, that's actually quite tiring.

   21. CWChris Williamson35:35

       Mm-hmm.

   22. SBShane Benzie35:35

       And it's because of that constant stopping and starting, accelerating and decelerating and stopping. You're far better just rolling along. Because I think we, you know, e- and it's interesting with, with, with, certainly with running is we built up this incredibly adversarial relationship with the ground, because we blame the ground for impact and we blame impact for injuries. And, and so we try and avoid impact, and, uh, we've almost become scared of the ground. And, uh, the moment we can sort of s- the moment we can step up and, and walk across the kitchen floor for the first time, uh, our feet are rammed into shoes to, to protect us from the dirty ground. And, and so we don't have a great relationship with the ground. And yet, when I travel all around the world and see people that are growing up in their feet-

   23. CWChris Williamson36:23

       Yeah.

   24. SBShane Benzie36:23

       ... they have a beautiful relationship with the ground. They're not scared of the ground. They hit the ground beautifully. It creates elastic energy and springs them off. Whereas we're trying to spend as much money as we can to buy, buy very clever trainers that will claim to protect us from the ground and, and make them-

   25. CWChris Williamson36:37

       Yes.

7. 36:38 – 43:29

   Modern Shoe Technology

   1. CWChris Williamson36:38

      I mean, this has been-

   2. SBShane Benzie36:38

      ... more

   3. NANarrator36:39

      Mm-hmm. Yes.

   4. CWChris Williamson36:39

      ... this has been probably the, the most interesting thing to watch as a-... a non-runner, uh, over the last few years. It's been the development in shoe technology, and then the subsequent, uh, litigation that's come in, you know, the, the, the solution that, that was, um, created in order to restrict the amount of real estate and, and technology that can go into shoes, was just to restrict the stack height, right? That was the solution. Okay, you have this amount of real estate to play with, which is where the sole fits. Within that, put a rocket booster, put 25 carbon plates, do whatever you want, but this is how much you have. 'Cause if you look at what Kipchoge, uh, broke the two-hour marathon barrier in, they're like platform shoes. They're almost comical, right? They're so big- Mm-hmm.

   5. SBShane Benzie37:20

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson37:20

      ... these huge things. So, what are your thoughts about the modern developments in running shoes, and then also what are your thoughts on minimalist running shoes or, or barefoot running shoes?

   7. SBShane Benzie37:29

      So, I think the big thing is that we should try not to get so excited about any kind of shoes, and just get really excited about the human foot. Because, as I said earlier on, the human foot, a- as well as being able to stand tall, the human foot, i- i- the very clever human foot, is our USP. It creates... 'Cause everything we're trying to create with technology is emulating what the amazing human foot has, creating stability, creating elasticity, spring, dissipation of impact, proprioception. The foot's amazing at all of that. With what we're actually doing is wrapping the, that amazing foot in rubber, and then putting some technology on it.

   8. CWChris Williamson38:05

      Yeah.

   9. SBShane Benzie38:05

      So, what I would try, what I would urge everybody to do is get excited about their feet, first of all, because you could spend $10,000 on a pair of trainers. It's not gonna make you land with a tripod landing. You could spend £20,000 on a pair of, uh, trainers. It's not gonna make you leave the f- the ground correctly. So, you know, we can't buy our way out of trouble. It's, I think it's easier to order something and for it to turn up on the doorstep, and we put them on, and it's a magic pair of trainers, and now all our troubles are solved. We'd rather do that than spend 12 weeks learning to move differently. (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson38:40

       Mm-hmm.

   11. SBShane Benzie38:40

       So, so let's not get suckered into that, and let's, let's, uh, create, let's create an amazing f- human foot that has an amazing relationship with the ground. And then let's put our foot in a pair of trainers that helps our foot interact with the environment it wants to move through. 'Cause that's what the trainers should be doing, 'cause clearly our feet can't... We can't run around with bare feet anymore. We just, we just don't have those feet. We can't do it. I mean, people do in other parts of the world, but we can't. We don't have that foot anymore. So, we need to utilize this amazing human foot, but then choose something to put it in that allows us to stick to rock or run through mud or whatever it might be, so that the trainers interact with the environment, but we do all the clever stuff with our foot. But that's where I think-

   12. CWChris Williamson39:26

       But what about minimalist shoes?

   13. SBShane Benzie39:28

       Well, it would make sense because we kinda want, uh, we want to emulate, you know, how our ancestors move and move naturally. It would make perfect sense to go to something completely minimalist 'cause then we'd be there. But again, we're not that animal anymore. And so we have to be very, very careful about wearing something minimalist with zero drop because that's gonna put our Achilles tendon, our calf muscles under a lot of pressure because that's not what we've been doing. And suddenly, we've got, we're running around, and we've got two and a half times our body weight coming back at us 'cause that's what it is. When you're running, it's around two and a half times your body weight. That can create a huge amount of stress on the body. The body has to adapt to that. And so, if we are gonna go to something minimalist, we... It has to be a very slow transition.

   14. CWChris Williamson40:15

       Yeah.

   15. SBShane Benzie40:15

       Bone, well, bone remodeling takes 17 weeks. So, if you started to move differently today, it takes 17 weeks for the, for the bones to kind of remodel and create density where, where they need to be dense. So, you know, running around in the park in, in some, in a bare, i- in actual bare feet or something very minimalist can be good fun. Um, but be very, very careful. And again, don't assume that, that wearing next to nothing on your feet will make you move beautifully as well because it, it, it, it doesn't. It doesn't. The, we have to learn that skill. And then pa- choose a pair of trainers that allow us to do it. A very wide toe cap in the trainers is good to allow that foot to splay.

   16. CWChris Williamson40:55

       Okay.

   17. SBShane Benzie40:56

       That's important. It tends to hem our feet in with trainers. So, a nice wide toe cap is, is a good thing to have.

   18. CWChris Williamson41:02

       You see that in, I think, a lot of the shoes that are really architected to try and have good foot movement, that they, they seem to be c- almost, if you look at them, kind of like flippers. You know, they're kind of-

   19. SBShane Benzie41:12

       Yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson41:12

       ... they look a little bit silly at the end, but presumably that's for the, e- exactly this reason, to give it a bigger toe box so that you have that room for everything to move. So, okay, we've, we've sort of spoken about some of the key principles that you think contribute to great running form. One of them has been this tripod landing. What's that mean?

   21. SBShane Benzie41:30

       So, a tripod landing is essentially when you, when, when we land the foot, if you imagine you've got, uh... So, a tripod has three points to it. You've got a point just sort of underneath the ball of the big toe, a point underneath where the ball of the little toe would be, and then the heel, the calcaneus. So, you can almost draw that tripod. If you get that tripod landing, tripods give us stability, so we get instant stability when we land. And then the tripod landing allows the arch of the foot to work correctly. The arch of the foot gives our foot its strength. That's why we use arches in architecture.

   22. CWChris Williamson42:04

       Yep.

   23. SBShane Benzie42:05

       And the arch of the foot also creates a dome effect for the foot. If we land on the tripod landing, the dome effect of the foot works, and we use domes in architecture 'cause we want to spread weight. So, and also, if we land on that tripod landing, it means we load, uh, something called our plantar fascia correctly, which is a beautiful piece of elastic that runs along the bottom of the foot. We load that plantar fascia, that piece of elastic. That springs us off. And then, maybe the most important subject here, but for me, I get very excited about it, you've got a quarter of a million nerve endings on the bottom of your foot. Okay? There are more nerves in your feet than there are your hands. Two types of nerve endings, exteroceptors.

   24. CWChris Williamson42:45

       Yeah.

   25. SBShane Benzie42:45

       The exteroceptors, they tell you how hard you hit the ground and what the ground felt like. Was it bumpy, soft, rocky, moving? And then you have proprioceptors in that nerve network. They give you your spatial awareness.... and they give you a perceived rate of exertion, how hard you're trying. So, every time your foot lands, those quarter of a million nerve endings are telling you everything you want to know about your environment as you're running over it. So, if you get the tripod landing, you instantly get all of that information.

   26. CWChris Williamson43:13

       When you say tripod landing-

   27. SBShane Benzie43:16

       Mm-hmm.

   28. CWChris Williamson43:16

       ... do you mean heel and those two ball points strike at the same time?

   29. SBShane Benzie43:22

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson43:23

       That if you were to put them onto the floor that they would be straight down?
8. 43:29 – 47:44

   Most Common Landing Mechanisms

   1. SBShane Benzie43:29

   2. CWChris Williamson43:29

      ... what is the most common type of foot striking mechanism that you see at the moment?

   3. SBShane Benzie43:36

      So, over the, over the last decade, I've worked with over 4,000 runners, many in groups, but 4,000 runners where I videoed them and worked with them. And, and all the time I'm coaching them, I'm also taking data. Up until the last 18 months or so, um, of that 4,000 runners that I saw, 84% of them heel strike. So, they land on their heel first on a relatively straight leg. Yeah, 84%. That's, that's now at 63%, so over the last 18 months, that's changed. It has got... It's changed to 63%, so it's coming down.

   4. CWChris Williamson44:13

      What's happened? W- that's a really big difference over 18 months. What's happened?

   5. SBShane Benzie44:18

      Well, I guess to a large degree, a lot of the people that come and see me have read my book. And so, the book-

   6. CWChris Williamson44:23

      Oh. Ah, ah, ah. There's a selection effect going on there.

   7. SBShane Benzie44:26

      Yeah, you'd have to assume. Yeah, absolutely.

   8. CWChris Williamson44:28

      Okay.

   9. SBShane Benzie44:28

      So-

   10. CWChris Williamson44:29

       Some worldwide pandemic. We didn't realize that COVID had actually changed people's, uh, foot strikes.

   11. SBShane Benzie44:34

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson44:34

       It's not, it's not good for breathing, but it's fantastic for your gait and your cadence.

   13. SBShane Benzie44:38

       It's... It could be the thing. It could... It might not be my book at all. That might be just wishful thinking.

   14. CWChris Williamson44:42

       Yeah, maybe.

   15. SBShane Benzie44:43

       But yeah, lots more people that are coming... And I work remote, I work with remote video analysis with people on six continents as well, and even i- uh, we're seeing it with them as well. So, it's coming down. I mean, you could argue that that's, that's not good enou- you know, I... It should... I should write a better book. It should be better. It should be less than 62.

   16. CWChris Williamson44:58

       (laughs)

   17. SBShane Benzie44:58

       I should up my game a little bit here. But yeah, so that's what you're generally seeing, and that's what we see. Now, and it's interesting because a human is designed to land on its heel when it walks. That's what a human does. If you went for a walk around Central Park now, you would be landing on a heel on a relatively straight leg and then rolling through. So, what happened a few decades ago now is-

   18. CWChris Williamson45:22

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SBShane Benzie45:24

       ... we started running with a walking gait. Yeah? So, the difference between running and walking is when you walk, one foot is always on the ground. When you run, you get air. Both feet come off the ground at, at the same time, uh, during the-

   20. CWChris Williamson45:39

       Yeah.

   21. SBShane Benzie45:39

       ... stride. So, we can be running, technically, because we're getting air, but we're doing it with a walking gait. Jogging, I guess. It's... That's how most people would describe it as jogging. So, you un- listen, there's no such thing as, there's no such thing as bad exercise, by the way. You know, it's, it's good to get out and do stuff. Um, but essentially, wha- what I'm seeing a, a lot of is people technically running, but with a walking gait landing on that heel on a straight leg.

   22. CWChris Williamson46:05

       Why?

   23. SBShane Benzie46:07

       Because I think really, because they're running at relatively a slow pace, and so they're not creating very much air. And so there isn't any air for us to get our legs circling and cycling underneath us. So, the leg can only land out in front and straight. Because we've been told one of the big urban myths of running, there are lots of urban myths of running. One is that impact is bad, we're all running around-

   24. CWChris Williamson46:33

       Yeah.

   25. SBShane Benzie46:33

       ... trying to avoid impact. Well, impact turns into elastic energy and throws you forward. One of the other big urban myths is that air or bounce in your run is bad, is inefficient. We are told to suck ourselves down to the ground. But if you think of your stride, your stride is a curve. It kind of is. You leave the ground, you go into the air, and then you land. Your stride is a curve.

   26. CWChris Williamson46:56

       Mm-hmm.

   27. SBShane Benzie46:56

       If you limit the amount of height you get in your curve, you can only have little curves. So, we're all running around trying to suck ourselves down to the ground because we've been told that's efficient, so all we can do is land on a heel on a straight leg out in front of us, which ironically means we don't dissipate the impact we've been trying to avoid by going high.

   28. CWChris Williamson47:17

       Interesting. Yes, so this sort of shuffle is, is a function of people not running particularly quickly and also trying to limit the amount of impact that they're hitting the floor with. I see this in myself, you know. I'd... I've never had running analysis done, but when I think about the way that I run, I absolutely heel strike. You know, I didn't think about sort of the pronation of the foot and about where I'm striking it, but I didn't think that I was supposed to, supposed to land with that, that tripod position. Um,

9. 47:44 – 1:01:45

   Head Positions & Stride Form

   1. CWChris Williamson47:44

      what about head position? Because I know that's another big part of this.

   2. SBShane Benzie47:47

      Yeah, head position is absolutely fundamental, and it's really exciting because it's fundamental and incredibly doable to, to, to get it right. So, if we go back to how a human was designed in evolution, you know, a human was to stand, really designed to stand up very tall, look around for food and make sure that they didn't become food. So, the head belongs up with the eye line on the horizon, essentially. And there are th- so, it's the... If it... We've talked about this elastic connective fascia, this tissue that runs continuously from our toes up into our skull. We need our head up, eye line on the horizon, because that creates beautiful tension then in our elastic system. Also, your inner ear, your vestibular area, your inner ear-

   3. CWChris Williamson48:29

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SBShane Benzie48:29

      ... that's where your balance and spatial awareness comes from. So, the head really needs to be up where it was designed to be for that balance and spatial awareness to be right. If it's down, then that's a problem. A- and mobi- w- walking around with mobile phones and just sitting looking at mobile phones, we've been spending so much of our time now with our head down. Huge amount. This has been-

   5. CWChris Williamson48:51

      What's the difference in weight between your head when it's up and your head when it's leaning over?

   6. SBShane Benzie48:56

      So, are you a pounds or a kilo? Who, what are we... We're going pounds or-

   7. CWChris Williamson48:59

      Kilos. Kilos.

   8. SBShane Benzie49:00

      So, your head, the human head weighs... Well, some of them weigh slightly more than others. But the human head weighs around about five kilos. Okay? When it's eye line on the horizon. For every inch forward it comes forward-... it weighs another five kilos. So, if your head is three inches down, you've now got a 20-kilo head. Now, actually, the head itself doesn't get heavier. It's- it's- it's- it's a moments thing in- in physics. It's essentially, i- i- it spreads. So, it's actually the spot, the- the upper neck and the spine that is now taking that quadruple weight.

   9. CWChris Williamson49:33

      Yeah.

   10. SBShane Benzie49:34

       And- and so ... And what ... And I'll tell you what's really been interesting is, with- with, you know, the pandemic we've had over the last couple of years and people are wearing masks, of course, actually to see your phone, because the mask restricts your view, people, uh, our heads are coming down even further. So, instead of putting the phone up in front (laughs) of our faces, actually we crane our head even more to allow-

   11. CWChris Williamson49:55

       Oh, wow. Yeah. Of course.

   12. SBShane Benzie49:56

       ... our arms so that ... So when we talk ... We were joking earlier on about the pandemic and does it make you land on a tripod and all of this sort of stuff. Well, actually, one of the offsets from this, which is pretty unta- intangible at the moment, but people's head positions are cr- changing quite substantially, another probably another five kilos on the- the- the distribution weight of your head because of a mask. I can see it. I can see it.

   13. CWChris Williamson50:19

       Even though the mask weighs three grams?

   14. SBShane Benzie50:23

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson50:23

       The impact of the mask is causing you ... That is so interesting.

   16. SBShane Benzie50:27

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson50:27

       What about, um ... Talk to me about stride length, stride length and cadence and turnover and stuff like that.

   18. SBShane Benzie50:33

       So- so, yeah, so cadence, we've all come, we've all got pretty obsessed with cadence over the years, I think because cadence is the first one, the first running dynamic that we could monitor. And- and so it's the one that- that technology joined in with first. And so for anybody listening who doesn't know what cadence is, it's essentially how many times our feet hit the ground in a minute. And the holy grail of cadence has always been talked about as being 180, that we are told that when we run around, we should be hitting the ground 180 times a minute.

   19. CWChris Williamson51:03

       Or three times a second.

   20. SBShane Benzie51:04

       Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Now ... And that's true as it goes, but not for the reason we've been told generally. So remember, I said 84% of those 4,000 runners were heel striking on a straight leg and that's now gone down to 62%? Well, the average cadence for those people was 163.

   21. CWChris Williamson51:27

       Okay.

   22. SBShane Benzie51:28

       So the average runner, if there is such a thing, is running around at 163 cadence, landing on a heel on a straight leg. And we don't want that. So what had started to happen was coaches would get metronomes and put a metronome onto somebody or just get them running at a cadence of 180. So they speed their cadence up from 163 on average to 180, which meant that their feet would turn over quicker and-

   23. CWChris Williamson51:55

       Yeah.

   24. SBShane Benzie51:55

       ... land more underneath them, no longer on a heel. So that sounds like a good antidote, but it's a bit ... a little bit like sticking a plaster over a fracture because you've tricked the person into not heel striking anymore. You haven't changed their gait. You haven't really changed anything. You just made them have stride length of a mouse-

   25. CWChris Williamson52:14

       Yeah.

   26. SBShane Benzie52:15

       ... so their-

   27. CWChris Williamson52:15

       Yeah.

   28. SBShane Benzie52:15

       ... feet will land underneath them. But the moment they try and run fast again or open their stride, they're just going to go back to landing on a heel on a straight leg. So for anybody listening out there who's monitoring their cadence, do not let cadence dictate your form. Tay- cadence isn't about correcting your form. The reason we should get excited about cadence is ... And actually, the figure should be between, I believe, 175 and 185. That's- that's what the cadence we should be looking for.

   29. CWChris Williamson52:42

       Okay.

   30. SBShane Benzie52:42

       So it isn't ... It doesn't have to be 180. It can be between 175 and 185 because when you're running, when your foot hits the ground, as I said earlier, you have about two and a half times your body weight coming back at you. That impact coming back into your body creates a load of elastic energy in the body. And that elastic energy has a frequency. Everything has a frequency, a frequency of creation, store, and release of elastic energy. So the foot hits the ground, bang, you've created the elastic energy.
10. 1:01:45 – 1:06:19

    Rewriting Running Movement

    1. CWChris Williamson1:01:45

       go through? Do you advise people to say, "Okay, so for your running, over the next X number of sessions or X number of weeks, we're going to focus on hands and shoulders." Then after maybe someone's introduced that for a period of time, "Then we're going to look at cadence, then we're going to look at breathing, then we're going..." You know, trying to add too much in at once is going to end up with nothing being done. Have you got a, a protocol for how people can introduce things bit by bit?

    2. SBShane Benzie1:02:07

       Yeah, definitely. And so one of the big things for everybody to think about here is that if you go out and start changing your movement tomorrow, you are not creating new muscle memory. We talk about muscle memory all the time, and we assume that we're teaching a muscle to do a new trick. We're not. Muscles don't really remember anything. What we're doing is rewriting our software. We're telling, we're changing our software, which then tells the muscle what to do. So changing your movement is definitely a cognitive thing, yeah, you're rewriting this. That's quite exciting because I think it makes it, it makes it very doable. We have to understand the challenge to be able to do it. So if you went out for a run, let's say you went out for a five-mile run tomorrow, if the first mile you ran beautifully, but the last four weren't great, then actually you're gonna re- you're gonna retain the software of the, the not great form.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:02:57

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBShane Benzie1:02:57

       If you start to change your movement, the good movement has got to outweigh the, the not so good movement. So that's the first thing to think about. And so that probably means for some people to jo- go for that little and often approach rather than just long runs. Yeah. So, uh, you know, if you were running 30 miles a week, uh, in three runs, you might wanna run 30 miles a week, but in five or six runs. So half the distance and just do it twice as often.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:03:23

       Because you're focusing more on the biomechanics. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

    6. SBShane Benzie1:03:28

       Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:03:29

       And are you doing, would you say one... Are y- do you partition off what you're focusing on? You know, for this period of time, we're focusing on one thing?

    8. SBShane Benzie1:03:38

       Yeah. So I think the first thing to really, uh, you know, that, that, that foot being the interface between you and the ground is y- you've gotta get that interface right, like everything else. If the interface isn't good, everything behind it doesn't really work. So, g- so first port of call is to really practice landing that foot well and leaving the ground well, and then start to work up the body, and, and yeah, just pick them. It, it's interesting, it all sounds like even the stuff we're talking about, you think, "Well, I've gotta go out, I can't think about all of those things."

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:04

       Yeah.

    10. SBShane Benzie1:04:04

        You know, the first time you jump in a car, you have to think about the, the clutch and the gears and the, and indicator and steering and you think, "I can't do it, I can't do it." It's not long before you can do all of that and chat and, you know. So what's sensory overload at first, actually you get very good at building those motor skills. But yeah, in the early stages, little and often, pick something, work on it. When you feel you've got it, add another skill to it.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:04:27

        How is it that we've got through an entire conversation about people being good at running and we haven't spoken about lactate threshold or VO2 max or HRV or any of that stuff?

    12. SBShane Benzie1:04:36

        Well, I mean, it's really interesting. I mean, (laughs) yeah, we've done well. Um, it, I'm, my, I've got a research project going on with the University of East London at the moment, and that, that research project is, uh, 20 sensors that go all over the body. This is running outside, nothing on a treadmill. I always work outside.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:04:55

        Yeah.

    14. SBShane Benzie1:04:55

        I think that's another reason for the Indiana Jones things, it's only ever research, coach, analyze outside. So we've got these 27, 20 sensors that go all over the body that create 3D models of people running outside. But we're also collecting mobile gases as well, so CO2 levels, oxygen levels. And what we're seeing, even now in the early stages, is that our running economy can be bettered by up to 30% just by changing the way that you move. Now, you'd have to work pretty hard to get your VO2 max up just a little bit or your lactate threshold up a little bit. 30%, and that's actually on practice. That's when they're not very good at it, if they go away and practice. So the gains are huge. And when, when I first started-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:39

        Yeah.

    16. SBShane Benzie1:05:39

        ... going in Ethiopia, and when the athletes used to come over to Europe to race, they would come through Heathrow, and I would kind of gather them up, take them to the university, and we'd get them on, um, sort of treadmills and they'd be putting all sorts of stuff on them and looking at their lactate thresholds, VO2 maxes, and they were always fantastic. But what was always off the scale was their economy. Yeah. So the economy of movement. It's good to build a big engine, but if you can build a big engine and take the toll of what that engine's got to do down by using elastic energy, by using gravity, by using other things other than thirsty muscles, we don't need such a massive engine.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:06:17

        I love it. Shane Benzie,

11. 1:06:19 – 1:06:52

    Where to Find Shane

    1. CWChris Williamson1:06:19

       ladies and gentlemen. If people want to keep up to date with what you do, where should they go?

    2. SBShane Benzie1:06:22

       Uh, so, um, so it's Running Reborn. So runningreborn.com. You'll find me there, and everything that I do and everything I'm getting up to will, will be there. And, uh, yeah, it'd be great to see you.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:06:33

       Thanks. What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:06:52