Today’s episode features running coach, biomechanist, and endurance athlete, Helen Hall. Helen is the author of “Even With Your Shoes On”, a comprehensive manual on teaching running in a natural manner based on the sensory capabilities of the human body. She is a minimalist ultra-distance runner, 6 times Ironman and credited with being the world’s first ‘barefoot’ Iron(wo)man. Helen is the owner of the Perpetual Forward Motion School of Efficient Running, as well as a running injury clinic. Helen uses the latest movement science and gait analysis technology to help people find solutions for their pain and injuries.

Helen is a level 4 Anatomy in Motion practitioner (former podcast guest Gary Ward’s system). Helen’s framework of building running technique based on sensory feedback, joint motion, and self-organization is unique and a breath of fresh air, given the lack of importance many coaching systems place on body awareness and natural learning. Even if you aren’t interested in running, the principles from Helen’s system carry over to sprinting, jumping and any other human movement that involves the gait cycle.

In the last five to ten years, many of my own ideas on what constitutes effective technical coaching have been reformulated, based on the sensory and self-organization capabilities of the human body. Helen’s book has been a capstone of sorts on this period of learning in my own life, so I was excited to get her on the show to talk about her approach to coaching.

On the show, we talk about how and why running shouldn’t be an injury-inducing form of exercise, as well as many points on Helen’s philosophy of improving running and human movement. Some specifics include the importance of awareness, why moving joints is superior to manual “muscle activation”, using lunge variations to determine glute contribution to running, as well as building running technique from a sagittal to frontal to transverse plane sequence, specifically addressing the role of posture and fixing “crossover” running.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster.com, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.

View more show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-180-helen-hall/