Running

Light footed running, light as a feather, your feet find their own way, running is effortless, your style is efficient. Speeding up without cramping, training without muscle fatigue/soreness, without injuries, without excessive impact on your joints...

Whether you start running (again, after long periods of injury or not), or you want to improve your PR for 5km, you're in training for a marathon or you regularly run ultras: that effortless, light footed running is an ideal common to us all.

In reality running is an ordeal for many, it is suffering, hard work. Many runners are injured on a regular basis. What's going wrong?

• most injuries come from how we run
• we do too much rather than too little: too much muscle tension in the wrong places causes less efficient locomotion, less adaptable muscles and joints and more injuries
• we dive into a specific part (a foot, a hamstring) to solve problems
• we have a faulty image of how we run: our selfperception is limited. That's why we're not good at improving our technique. We don't think a lot about how we run - when we're injured, we just have the injury treated as well as possible.

How can the Alexander technique help?

• you learn to coordinate yourself as a whole, so your head, neck, back, arms, legs and feet can move in unison
• you learn what you don't have to do - so you prevent excessive muscle tension and stiffness
• in doing so you allow your breathing more space and your limbs are more free to react to the ground surface
• you experience what it is you are doing, and therefore what you can leave out for a more efficient style of running
• therefore you prevent injuries, instead of having to cure them, and running becomes fun and relaxing!

In the running workshops of Alexander Technique Haarlem you apply the principles of the Alexander technique to run more lightly and efficiently, thereby preventing injury.

From a participant:

"During the last kilometres of the Zeeland marathon I became emotional and had to cry because it was still going so easily because of the lightness of the Alexander technique.
The next day I could even watch the walking marathon without any physical discomfort. That surprised me too. Let as many people as possible get in contact with the Alexander technique. They deserve it! " - Tjeerd.

Barefoot running

If one development has been both hot and subject to a lot of debate over the last few years, it has been barefoot (or minimal) running. Running in bare feet is definitely not an automatic solution for all running problems, but it can be an important tool: the great advantage is that you get much more and more direct feedback on how you run; you feel where you absorb impact, notice how you roll over your feet, where there is friction with the ground. This makes it far easier to adapt your running technique.
Besides, but that's subjective, it feels great to run without shoes regularly...

That's why barefoot running regularly is a part of the Alexander Technique Haarlem workshops.

Running with Alexander Techniek Haarlem

On youtube there is an impression of running with the Alexander technique. Click here to watch it.