The Unicycle Drill described here is a very simple exercise designed to teach you what it feels like when you have properly setup the forward fall and are moving under its momentum rather than using the muscles in your legs and feet to push you forward. This is first practiced as a walking drill. However, at the end of this document is a description on how you can use this during your runs.

Introduction to Drill
When an unicyclist wants to move forward he doesn’t start by first pedaling the wheel, instead he leans forward slightly and begins a forward fall. Then he starts pedaling the wheel slightly behind his center of gravity to keep up with his forward fall. The wheel is not what’s moving him forward, it’s the momentum of his forward fall. He is just pedaling the wheel behind him to keep up so he doesn’t fall on his face. If he did
not lean forward to move but instead began by first pedaling the wheel, he would have fallen on his back.

The same principles are used in Chi Running. When you want to move forward you don’t start by moving your feet, instead you lean your entire aligned posture forward slightly from your ankles with limp lower legs and begin a forward fall. As you begin to move forward you start picking up your feet behind your center of gravity to keep up with your forward fall. If performed correctly your feet are not moving you forward; it’s the momentum of your forward fall that is moving you forward. You’re just moving your feet to keep up with the rest of your body so you don’t fall on your face. In fact while you are in the forward fall you feel like you cannot stop moving your feet! The feeling that you cannot stop moving your feet is what you use to determine if you have properly setup the forward fall and are using its momentum rather than using the muscles in your legs and feet to move forward.

Execution of Drill
There are three elements required to create the forward fall: (1) aligned posture; (2) lean; and (3) completely relaxed lower legs so there is no tension in the ankles. If you miss any one of the three elements then you cannot create the forward fall. The steps of the drill below are executed to demonstrate the importance of performing all three elements.

When instructed to align your posture in this drill, simply push up the sky with the crown of your head (to lengthen your spine and straighten your neck) and use your lower abdominal muscles to pull your belly button in towards your spine (to level your pelvis).

When instructed to lean your posture forward in this drill, put a finger on your lower abdominal muscles to better sense the location of your center and move it forward just slightly in front of your ankles so that your whole body weight is in front of your ankles. Leaning forward by focusing on moving your center in front of your ankles prevents you from bending at the hips when leaning, one of the most common mistakes made by beginner Chi Runners. Engaging your lower abdominals by pulling your belly button into your spine prevents you from bending at the waist when leaning forward.

Step 1 – Walking with aligned posture, relaxed lower legs but no lean
In this first part of the drill align your posture, do not lean, relax all the muscles in your lower legs and start walking forward with a very short stride length. Keep your mental focus into your lower legs and feet. After about 20 steps or so, try to stop moving your feet to stop your forward movement. You should be able to easily stop. Since you are not leaning forward, you are not properly falling forward and your feet are still responsible for your forward movement.

Step 2 – Walking with aligned posture, lean and tensed lower legs
In this next part of the drill align your posture, purposely add tension in the muscles in your lower legs so they are not relaxed. Lean your posture forward slightly and start walking forward with a very short stride length. Keep your mental focus into your lower legs and feet. After about 20 steps or so, try to stop moving your feet to stop your forward movement. You should be able to easily stop. Since you have tension in the lower legs you are not properly falling forward and your feet are still responsible for your forward movement.

Step 3 – Walking with aligned posture, lean and relaxed lower legs
In this last part of the drill align your posture, purposely add tension in the muscles in your lower legs so they are not relaxed. Lean your posture forward slightly and start walking forward with a very short stride length. Keep your mental focus into your lower legs and feet. After about 20 steps or so, completely release the tension in your lower legs. At this point, if done right, you will feel a sudden change in the feeling in your legs as you are now moving under the momentum of the forward fall. After another 20 steps or so keep your same angle of lean and try to stop moving your feet. You shouldn’t be able to if you are doing everything right because your legs and feet are not controlling your forward movement and they need to keep up with your forward fall or else you will fall on your face.

If this is not working properly for you at first, (1) ensure you are really releasing all tension in the lower legs and feet, (2) your posture is aligned; and (3) you don’t subconsciously decrease your angle of lean to come back upright when you try to stop your feet. You could even have a friend walk beside you with one hand on your shoulder to keep you from subconsciously decreasing your angle of lean.

Unicycle Drill while Running
If you want to use this during your runs, then while running with aligned posture, lean and relaxed lower legs, simply try to stop moving your feet. If you can, you are doing something wrong and you should check that your posture is truly aligned, your center is ion front of your ankles, and that you have completely relaxed lower legs and ankles.

If you can’t stop moving your feet then you know you are in the forward fall and using its momentum. Once you can get to this point your whole thinking should change. You should now realize that your feet are not required to move you forward and can now try to let go of any remaining tension in their legs and feet since its wasted energy.

The ankles form a hinge between your aligned posture and your feet. If the muscles in the lower legs and feet are not completely relaxed they tighten this hinge and resist the forward fall. The forward fall is facilitated by moving all your body weight in front of your ankles. The most efficient way to achieve this is with an aligned posture and very slight angle of lean.

The concept can be demonstrated using a broomstick. The straight shape of the broomstick represents your aligned posture. The hinge point between the base of the broomstick and the ground represents your ankle. If you can balance the broomstick perfectly vertical it will not move. However, if you lean it even slightly off center it will begin to move by falling.

It is more difficult to isolate and sense individual parts of your body while running, so it is far easier to first learn the forward fall in a static (non-running) state. The exercise described below is designed to help you better understand and learn the forward fall. Practice it until you are adept at falling forward with a minimal angle of lean.

Step 1: Stand against wall
Stand against a wall and ensure your heels, tailbone, back of the shoulder blades and back of your head are in contact with the wall. Keep your feet parallel with each other and your knees soft.

Step 2: Align your posture
Lengthen your spine and straighten your neck by pushing up the sky with the crown of your head. Now level your pelvis by using your lower abdominal muscles to pull you belly button inwards towards your spine. Leveling your pelvis moves the arch in your lower back closer to the wall.

Step 3: Lean forward by moving your center in front of your ankles
Put a finger on your lower abdominal muscles to better sense the location of your center and move it forward just slightly in front of your ankles so that your whole body (except for your heals) is no longer in contact with the wall. Leaning forward by focusing on moving your center in front of your ankles prevents you from bending at the hips when leaning, one of the most common mistakes made by beginner Chi Runners. Engaging your lower abdominals by pulling your belly button into your spine prevents you from bending at the waist when leaning forward.

Step 4: Relax the lower legs to unlock the ankles and fall forward
While leaning forward with your center in front of your ankles, relax your lower legs to unlock the ankles until you start to fall forward. Sense what your lower legs and ankles feel like when relaxed. As you get better and better at this, repeat the exercise with smaller and smaller angles of lean. The better you are at relaxing your lower legs and to unlock your ankles, the less angle of lean required to fall forward.

When performing the exercise above, convince yourself of the importance of the relationship between relaxed lower legs and ability to fall forward. Also try to get a sense of what it feels like when your lower legs are relaxed. When actually running, it is important to maintain this same very same level of relaxation in the lower legs.

If the muscles in your lower legs and muscles are relaxed you cannot push off on the balls of your feet. So here is a simple trick you can use to test whether or not the muscles in your lower legs and feet are relaxed. While standing, completely relax the muscles in your lower legs and feet. Now while keeping your lower legs and feet completely relaxed, try to lift your heels off the ground and you won’t be able. You need to use lower leg and feet muscles to push the balls of the feet into the ground in order to lift the heels off the ground.

Info and directions can be found at http://www.runeffortlessly.com/Lessons.html.

The goal of the complete session (approx. 8 weeks) is to teach the beginner fundamentals of the technique to allow you to run without using any of the muscles in the lower legs and feet to push you forward.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP_BWMrJ4pI

Chi Running is not based on muscle usage, instead its based on mental focus and technique. You use your mind to setup your body in a certain way and forward movement happens. You run totally from within both monitoring and controlling what your body is doing based on technique and positioning. For example, one of the biggest mental focuses is on relaxing all the parts of the body except for the lower abdominals to align your pelvis and engage your core.

When you Chi Run you are an associative runner. Your thoughts are totally focused on your running rather than dissociative, where you use techniques to distract your thoughts from running like listening to music on a portable MP3 player. Think of your mind as the microcomputer in a car engine that constantly monitors and controls the operation of the engine to ensure maximum performance and efficiency.

Does this sound scary to you? Don’t worry, a focused mind is actually more relaxed than an unfocused mind. Also keeping your mind busy thinking about your technique is a way to control it from fixating on destructive negative thoughts like how much farther you still have to go, how tired you may be or how hard the run is. The mind is a tool – if controlled and used properly it is an asset – If uncontrolled and allowed to think what it wants it can be a liability.

Body sensing is an essential skill for Chi Running. Body sensing is the ability for you to sense what is happening in different parts of your body. You use your mind to listen to a specific part of your body, determine how it is behaving, you make a change (if required) and then you listen again to see if the change was properly incorporated. You repeat this process repeatably when you Chi Run for the essential parts of your body.

An example of the use of body sensing is trying to relax the muscles in your lower legs. First you use your mind to sense the muscles in your lower legs separate from the rest of your body. If you sense any tension, you use your mind to send a message to the muscles in your lower legs to relax more. After you send the message you use your mind to listen again to see if the tension was properly released.

Learning how to body sense is new for most of us and takes time. But the more you practice it, the quicker you learn it. The best time to practice it is while you are not running. When sitting at your desk or on the couch or standing in line somewhere try sensing a certain part of your body and what is happening. For instance, sense if your calves are relaxed. To know what it feels like to do it right – know what it feels like to do it wrong. For example, completely tense your calves and sense what that feels like. Then try to completely relax them and feel the difference.

When you do develop the ability to body sense you are now your own best coach. You can sense if something is working or not in your body and you can affect changes in that area until you sense they resulted in positive change.

Practice body sensing whenever you can. Its a fantastic tool for all sports and other aspects of your life, not just Chi Running!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP_BWMrJ4pI

In Chi Running your momentum is created by falling forward rather than by using the muscles in your lower legs and feet to push you forward.

Whenever your feet contact the ground during running, the muscles in the lower legs and feet are first used to support your body weight. Then they are used to push your whole body weight forward from the ball of the foot. The amount of muscle effort required to just support your body weight is quite small to that required to push your body weight forward.

If you want to feel the difference just relax all the muscles in the lower legs from the knees down and simply pick up your lower legs and feet from the knees. Now run in place and notice how much more effort is required. This is the extra effort that is eliminated in Chi Running.

To fall forward you first align your posture so you can draw a straight line through the center of your shoulders, hips and ankles. Then you lean your whole posture forward from the ankles with completely relaxed lower legs.

The ankles form a hinge between your aligned posture and your feet. If the muscles in the lower legs and feet are not completely relaxed they tighten this hinge and resist the forward fall.

The concept can be demonstrated using a broomstick. The straight shape of the broomstick represents your aligned posture. The hinge point between the base of the broomstick and the ground represents your ankle. If you can balance the broomstick perfectly vertical it will not move. However, if you lean it slightly it will begin to move by falling.

Now imagine we add a foot to the broomstick. If there is any tension in the lower legs or foot this tension locks the hinge point at the base of the broomstick and the ground (your ankle) and resists the forward fall.

The muscles in your lower legs have to be completely relaxed throughout your whole stride. Any tension in your lower legs or feet resists the forward fall.

Running across sand can be used to visually demonstrate whether or not you use the muscles in your legs and feet to push you forward. If you only support your body weight without pushing forward you create footprints with even depression that result from even pressure throughout the bottom of the foot. If you push forward you’ll see the footprint deepen under the front of the foot resulting from pushing forward from the ball of the foot.

When Chi Running you concentrate on continuously recreating the conditions for the forward fall and forward movement happens as a result. Your concentration is on maintaining aligned posture, relaxed lower legs and feet and leaning your posture in front of your ankles.

Eliminating the use the muscles in you lower legs and feet to push you forward significantly reduces the amount of effort required to run, and significantly reduces the chance of lower leg injuries.

When running, the support phase of your stride occurs whenever one of your feet contacts the ground and supports your body weight. During the support phase you create the momentum of the forward fall by ensuring your posture is aligned and leaned in front of the ankle of the foot in contact with the ground. Provided there is no tension in the ankle, the forward momentum is created by the lean which moves all your body weight in front of the loose ankle. Your ankle serves as a hinge between your aligned posture and your foot. You want this hinge to operate freely without any resistance that would impede the forward fall and its momentum. This is only possible if the ankle is completely free of any tension. Tension is created by engaging the calf muscles or the muscles in the foot. Therefore to ensure there is no tension in the ankles all the muscles from the knee down must be completely relaxed. Imagine how may fewer running injuries you will fall victim to by not using the muscles in the lower legs!

Calf muscles and foot muscles are used to actively create movement of the foot. The term “active” is used to mean muscles are intentionally engaged to cause movement. The easiest way to ensure the calf and foot muscles are not actively used is to just visualize releasing all tension in the ankles. Another great visualization that helps avoid actively engaging calf or foot muscles is to pretend that you have no feet and you are running instead on your legs only. Remember the pirate “Long John Silver” who has a peg leg? Well visualize you are “Long John Chi Runner”? who has two peg legs :->

It is important to be conscious of your center when aligning your posture and leaning it forward to create the forward fall. Your center is situated between your belly button and pubic bone where the lower abdominals and pelvis are located.

You create the forward fall by aligning your posture and leaning it forward with completely relaxed ankles. The ankles serve as the hinge point between your aligned posture whenever your feet are in contact with the ground. The forward lean moves your body weight in front of your ankles to create the forward momentum. In order to ensure relaxed ankles, you must release all tension in the lower legs (balls of foot, calves, etc.).

A common mistake made when learning to lean your posture forward, is bending at the waist. Being conscious of your center is crucial to avoid this mistake.

You must be conscious of your center to engage the lower abdominals and keep the pelvis level through the different angles of lean. The greater the angle of lean, the greater the level of effort required to maintain a level pelvis. Your lower abdominals are the only muscles in the body that you intentionally engage, all other muscles should be relaxed.

When aligning your posture imagine there is a string with one end attached to your lower abdominals and the other end running up through your chin and attached to the crown of your head. Now whenever you push up the sky with the crown of the head to lengthen your spine and straighten your neck, imagine the string also pulls up on your lower abdominals to level the pelvis. This visualization helps you to align your posture in one step and to keep you constantly aware of your center.

When you bend at the waist your center actually moves backward while your upper body moves forward. To avoid this when leaning your posture forward feel your center and just focus on moving it in front of where your feet contact the ground. This will prevent you from moving your center backwards and bending at the waist.

Be conscious of your feet and ensure they only contact the ground behind your center. Ensure the lower legs and ankles are completely relaxed at all times. Use a very short stride length and ensure your feet contact the ground with a full foot strike without any push off. Visualize you are running on a bed of hot coals and you just want to only put your foot down long enough to support your body weight then immediately lift it off.

In Chi Running the arms are completely relaxed from the hands all the way up to the shoulder. They are also constantly bent at a 90 Degree angle and swing at the same cadence as your legs. Keep your shoulders relaxed and down and let your arms hang down from the shoulder socket.

This 90 Degree angle because it creates the shortest arm length, which also is the easiest length to swing. To emphasize the point try swinging straight arms (longest length) versus arms bent at 90 Degrees (shortest arms) and notice the difference in effort.

The arms swing at your side front to back with a slight angle inwards in front of you but never crossing your centerline. If they swing past your centerline, they create momentum in the sideways direction rather than to the front, which wastes energy.

You never swing your elbows further forward than your ribs. This throws your legs forward which can cause heel strike and also rotates the shoulders. You also never swing your wrists further back than your ribs.

Your arms swing like pendulums from the ball in the shoulder socket and as separate entities from your shoulders. This is to ensure your shoulders don’t swing with the forward and backward movement of the arms. In Chi Running your shoulders always point forward, and never rotate. If your shoulders rotate they reduce your stride length and you lose speed.

You swing you arms to the rear like you are elbowing someone behind you rather than swinging them to the front like you are punching someone in front of you. Once your arm is swung to the rear, just let it fall forward using gravity. Swinging their arms to the rear instead of forward will keep their shoulders stable and not rotating along with the arms. This helps stabilize everything above the midpoint of your spine. It’s everything below this midpoint that rotates when you run.

In Chi Running your legs and feet are only used to support your aligned posture when you run. The muscles in your legs and feet are not required to propel you down the road since you are creating the forward pull of gravity with your aligned posture and lean to achieve this propulsion.

Remember the exercise for the “Intro Blog”?

1. Stand up straight with good posture and completely relax all the muscles in your legs, including everything from the knees down and especially the ankles.
2. Now lean forward from your ankles ever so slightly and your body will start to fall forward.
3. If you continue to lean far enough you will eventually pick up one of your feet and place it on the ground a foot or two forward to keep you from falling on your face.

Note how you simply picked that foot up and put it down to support your body. You didn’t use any muscle in the legs or feet to move your body forward. What if you repeated the exercise above and instead of putting that first foot down and coming to a halt, you just put it down momentarily and started the forward fall again this time using your other foot for momentary support. If you continue from one foot to the other you are moving forward in a controlled fall using gravity, not the muscles in your legs and feet.

You want your feet to create the least amount of contact with the ground. The longer the feet are in contact with the ground the more of a “rooted” connection you make with the ground and the less gravity is able to pull you forward.

In ChiRunning you pick up your feet by first peeling your foot off the ground starting with the heel then ending with the toes. You then you lift your heel only high enough to clear the height of the opposite ankle. Each heel moves in a circular fashion over the opposite ankle with the same movement as if you were pedaling a bicycle with toes clips. This circular movement is directly below or slightly behind your hips since you are leaning. The whole time you are lifting your heels your lower legs, ankles and feet are completely limp and relaxed. If they are completely relaxed then your toes will naturally stay down when you lift your heel. This avoids dorsiflexing (toes up higher than heel) and heel striking.

Chi Running uses a mid-foot strike rather than forefoot strike or heel strike. A forefoot strike engages the ball of the foot and subsequently the calf muscle which we are trying to avoid. Try standing up on the balls of your feet and you’ll feel the calf muscle working. A heel strike is not energy efficient when you are trying to avoid muscle usage as every time your heel contacts the ground in front of you it is a momentary braking action.