Advanced Yang Style
Tai Chi Chuan:
Tai Chi Theory and
Tai Chi Jing

It's easy to set aside much of what the Tarahumara Indians do and file it away as some genetic quirk or simply exaggeration, but to me it looks real and possible for the rest of us, too. I wouldn't call it magical even though I know running can be a truly spiritual experience, pushing people into new areas of perception as well as pushing the boundaries of physical experience. To me what the Tarahumara do seems based on something that's possible for the rest of us to acquire, and I remember a couple of times in my life when possibly I did reach that level of fitness. I lacked something else that the Tarahumara don't even have to think about -- technique.

In Tai Chi Chuan one of the basic concepts is that in the ancient days, people did things differently on a basic level. People breathed differently and people walked differently. People performed mechanical work using a different set of physical principles than we do today. Tai Chi enthusiasts learn the ancient set and then try to apply that to daily life as well as self defense. Tarahumara running resembles some very basic things I learned in Tai Chi and then set aside. Now I'm seeing how those principles fit . Maybe for once something odd that I've learned will turn out to be really useful.

This year what I'm noticing most about my own running is that in spite of the barefoot training I've fallen back into bad old habits in terms of foot posture. As my feet got tougher my running reverted to the heel-first style again, and that mostly worked out ok. The problem showed up when I did longer runs. The heel-first strides put more stress on my hips and I was back to the problems I started with, sciatic pain that at its worst made my legs go numb and inoperative temporarily.

Follow up:

Changing my stride to toe-first touchdowns this Spring made the pain go away. I'm not quite as fast as I was at the close of my running season last year, but I'm not far off the old pace. Now that the snow has melted I'm out working on this old puzzle one more time, because I really want to know what keeps these Tarahumara people going. For the most part they don't look terribly fast, and some of them don't even look like they're in great shape, but they run ultra-marathons like it's just a normal part of the day. To me a marathon distance was always a challenge even if I was hiking instead of running. The thought that it could be fun instead of crippling is fascinating.

Running toe-first, striking the ground with the ball of the foot nearly directly underneath you instead of kicking forward and landing on the heel out ahead of you, seems fundamental. If you've not done it before it feels totally wrong. Running this way initially slowed my pace, but I've learned to take shorter and faster steps and push back instead of reaching forward. I am doing better, but it's hard not to do the thing we're all accustomed to, and take most of the impact on the heel. On flat ground, when running in light huaraches, you can do that and not even notice, landing on the sole of the foot and taking impact partially on the heel. I'm convinced this is a major part of the problem in my running, and now I do have some evidence to back up my suspicions.

"The combination of the Achilles tendon and the arch stores 60J of energy and this gives a height of bounce of h = energy/mg = 60/700 = .086m which isn’t much for vertical jumping but probably makes a big effect in running." -- Ken Young, University of Washington Department of Physics.

In the old Tai Chi Chuan you learn jing, which according to tradition powers martial movements with the energy stored in ligaments and tendons, not muscle energy. Combining jing with muscular force amplifies power. If you want to play with such things yourself I recommend the book Advanced Yang Style Tai Chi Chaun: Tai Chi Theory and Tai Chi Jing by Dr. Yang Jwing Ming. Jing is a tricky movement to learn but it works great and opens the way to other more esoteric techniques. I've read that some Tai Chi adepts take up distance running in China, applying the old principles to that, but I haven't come across good explanations of how that's different and it probably isn't what is now promoted in the U.S. as "chi running."

Looking at videos of Tarahumara runners you see that the heel may touch down, but only lightly and only for part of the time the foot contacts the ground. As the foot presses down again the heel lifts. That stores energy in the arch of the foot and in the Achilles tendon. As the stride takes the runner forward, that elastic energy releases just before the ball of the foot leaves the ground. If the heel stays down through any part of that movement, the jing energy doesn't contribute. It's like a spring, it has to be compressed and released quickly, and it all happens in a part of the running step that's easy to ignore.

Cultivating the Ch'i:
The Secrets of Energy
and Vitality

For me it's still awkward and I'm finding it takes entirely new levels of strength in my calves, but the old Thirteen Postures training from Tai Chi Chuan definitely helps develop that strength. The posture called Push has both left and right forms and when held focuses the effort on exactly the right place in the calf of the trailing leg. You can feel it burning like a hot coal. Stuart Olson's book, Cultivating the Ch'i: The Secrets of Energy and Vitality, discusses the original thirteen postures training as well as an important training system for the development of chi power. Standing still might seem like the wrong way to learn running, but it develops strengths you won't acquire any other way.

No miracles yet, but after running a few times properly I'm seeing good changes, notably that the pain went away. Already I'm feeling like adding distance, and usually at this time of year I'm just trying to catch up to last season.