Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Friday, March 21, 2003 A few thoughts on running technique for O'Any orienteers have "great form"?In a comment a few days ago, Jeff W. wrote, "I have often wondered about this. It comes up all the time in cross country skiing. "He sure has great form!" Why? Because he is smooth or because he is efficiently using his resources to move from A to B?" I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone describe an orienteer as having great form in the woods. I can think of people being impressed with certain orienteers speed through the terrain. But, I can't immediately recall anyone talking about an orienteer's running technique. O' running that has left an impression I remember trying to hang on to Peter Gagarin as he ran down a rocky hillside at the Turkey Mountain area of West Point. I was impressed. Peter is a strong downhill runner. Some orienteers, very good ones, have really odd running form. Anders Tistad (formerly Friberg) had a very stiff looking form. He seemed to shuffle, almost waddle. But, he went fast. When I first saw Peter Jacobsson running, I wouldn't have picked him as a world class orienteer. He's very awkward looking, with feet that splay out as he runs. Peter has, if I remember correctly, won the first leg of a WOC relay. So he can move. From Jimmy Birklin's homepage Here is a short translation of a bit of an article from Birklin's homepage. It looks like the Swedish coach, Goran Andersson, wrote it: To improve his running economy, Jimmy should change some of his running sessions from long intervals to 45 - 15 intervals and aim his strength training to maximal strength for the calf, thigh and sitting muscles....The max strength training can be done in a gym, running while dragging a tire attached to him, hopping up hill, and maximum hill sprints for 6-8 seconds. Not thrashing Peter G. talks about running without "thrashing." That might be a good way to practice O' running technique. Run through the forest as smoothly as possible. Gradually increase the pace until you feel you're "thrashing." I suspect that if you practiced running just below thrashing, you could gradually increase your thrashing-threshold. That approach -- trying to find the point where you're running as fast as you can while staying in control -- is basically how I tried to improve my downhill running technique a few years ago. It seemed to work well. posted by Michael | 8:02 PM 
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