Can you feel the bounce?

I’ve worked with Joe Kelly for years now. In one of my books I document the first time I met him: I can’t remember how our conversation went, but he ended up telling me that I was running with the handbrake on. Or lots of handbrakes on, in fact.

It made so much sense. Every niggle, every stiffness, every point of malfunction was a little brake slowing me down. I could feel it. I would run like I was driving an old tractor along, the gears grinding, the engine revving, but with no real flow, no ease of movement.

Well, I’m still not exactly a primed sports car, but I flow a lot better these days, especially on trails. On Saturday I got together with Joe again for our first Natural Movement Day for Runners (a new spin on our old One-Day Explorations, as we used to call them - exploring the trails and our own movement).

I had planned to start and finish the day at the local train station in an effort to encourage the use of public transport, but that backfired when the trains went on strike and half the group had to pull out as a result. So in the end it was a small group of seven of us who gathered in the field by the deserted train station in Totnes.

I always worry about how people are going to take to “Joe’s stuff”, as I call it. Because people like being told what to do. They want to come along to a movement day and be told how to move. They want some easy-to-follow advice like hold your head up, run on your toes, swing your arms across your body, that sort of thing.

But I’ve learned over the years - from Joe Kelly, from Gary Ward, from Jae Gruenke, from Nigel Crompton - that good running form comes from within. That form follows function. That if your body works as it was designed to, you will automatically run well without thinking about it, because your whole system is designed to run.

If you try to mentally impose good running form on your body, on the other hand, by telling it to do what you think it should do, at best you won’t be able to keep it up for more than a few minutes, and at worst you’ll end up injured - which is what happened to me when I forced myself to run on my toes after reading Born to Run.

So Joe calls his stuff Finding Form, and over the course of the day he asks you to work it out for yourself. Tune in to what running feels like, he says, like some kind of running Bruce Lee. Can you feel the bounce? If not, slow down, be intentional, relax into it.

It can be hard for us to tune into our own movement like this, to be quiet enough to notice what is going on in our own bodies. I glance around the group, trying to spot anyone feeling a bit exasperated by the whole endeavour, and just wanting to be told what to do. I try to explain that this can take time, that you might not get it instantly.

“Why did we pay for it then?” one man jokes. Half jokes?

But I’ve done this enough to know that if you dial it back, slow down, stop pushing mindlessly on, but try to tune in to what it feels like when you run, when you make it mindful (or “mindless”, depending on how you see it), running can begin to flow in a new way.

Joe does give out some pointers. Imagine you’re playing the drums with your hands, he says. Feel your feet pushing back down into the ground. But they’re subtle cues, to play with, to explore. To feel. A mere starting point.

For me, who has done this before, a session with Joe is like a tuning fork, getting my body back into synch with itself. And it really helps. Since I met Joe in 2011 - 12 years ago - I’ve only had one injury, which was a back injury from playing football. In that time I’ve run over 20 marathons and ultra marathons. Which is not bad for someone who - before 2011 - spent half his running life injured.

If you can’t see Joe, what can I tell you in a few words that might help? Try running on trails, duck and weave around things, jump and climb over things, run slowly sometimes, try to make it feel smooth, bouncy, imagine you’re playing the drums. Other than that, you could check out these highly recommended online resources:

Joe Kelly’s online Finding Form course (forever in beta mode alas): barefootathlete.teachable.com/p/finding-form-beta

Jae Gruenke, a brilliant form expert who uses Feldenkrais to help runners: balancedrunner.com

Anatomy in Motion - the technique that cured me of the Achilles injury I got from forcing myself to run on my toes(!): findingcentre.co.uk

Run True - a great, easy-to-follow online course by coach Nigel Crompton, who shares much of the same outlook on running as Joe Kelly: learn.runtrue.org

Joe also recommends reading (his latest jams) Do Hard Things by Steve Magness and Out of Thin Air by Michael Crawley.