Two weeks ago, if you told me that I would spend a Friday night comparing and contrasting photographs of a runner and a robot (and would pay for the privilege to do so), I wouldn t have believed you. However, that s exactly what I and 19 other Central Park Track Club members did this past Friday, as we attended a Feldenkrais Workshop taught by Jae Gruenke. The workshop focused on optimal running form, and the inter-connected goings-on of our body. The goals of the class were simple, to improve your running form / efficiency, and to minimize running injuries in the process. The workshop consisted of three basic parts. The first part consisted of an introduction (this is where the robot and running photos came into play), followed by some pre-workshop running where we focused on our innate running habits. In the second part (the bulk of the seminar), Jae had us doing indoor exercises on range of movements. The vast majority of these exercises had us lying down on a mat, which was totally different than the high knees and skipping running drills so many of us learned in high school. Finally, we went back outside to run so we can test out the theories and exercises shown to us. The timing of the seminar was less than ideal. After a long week of work, the last thing I needed was to lie down and try to stay awake. Fortunately, the seminar moved quickly, and I didn t catch anyone dozing off. The seminar reminded me of the first time I did yoga, doing all of these strange exercises with patently lousy form. The difference was that there were no experts in the room, and hence all of us looked equally awkward doing the stretches.
Before writing this report, I wanted to test out the concepts taught to us on my Saturday hard workout and my Sunday long run. To my surprise, I used a few of the techniques on my Saturday fartlec, as the workshop gave me something to focus on throughout my workout. I only minimally thought about the workshop on my Sunday run, but that may have been due to the icy conditions of Rockefeller State Park. The workshop wasn t a quick fix, but it did bring a lot of things to my attention. It was an intersting Friday night indeed!