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Demand perfection of yourself and you’ll seldom attain it. Fear of making a mistake is the biggest single cause of making one. Relax — pursue excellence, not perfection.
Lloyd “Bud” Winter
Lloyd “Bud” Winter is one of the most successful track coaches in history. Over a 29-year coaching career from 1949 to 1970 at San Jose State College, his programs produced 37 world-record holders, 49 NCAA records and 27 Olympians. Incredible!
A big part of his program revolves around learning to stay relaxed under stressful circumstances. He developed his techniques during World War II. Bud taught pilots to remain relaxed in the face of heavy gunfire and other brutal wartime scenarios. Talk about stressful! He then transferred these principles from the battlefield to the world of track and field. He outlined all the techniques in his 1981 book Relax and Win, which luckily for me, was re-released in 2012 when I picked it up!
Believe it or not, Bud Winter has only one degree of separation from Usain Bolt and many other of Jamaica’s greatest sprinters. In 1966, one of Bud’s former athletes of Jamaican descent invited him to Jamaica to give a series of seminars on Sprinting. In the audience for the lecture was Glen Mills who went on to become Jamaica’s premier sprint coach. Starting in 2004, Mills coached Usain Bolt, and the rest of the story is history.
Watching Usain Bolt before and during his sprints embodies Bud Francis’ Relax and Win philosophy to a tee.
For the record, the other premier Jamaican sprint coach is Stephen Francis.
Although Bud’s focus was primarily on spriting, many of his cornerstone principles apply equally to endurance sports, distance runners and all athletes in general. In Relax and Win, Bud devotes eleven sections to relaxation in sports other than Track and Field. Bud was interested in knowledge from all disciples to help his athletes improve. For example, in 1963, Bud invited legendary endurance coach Arthur Lydiard to San Jose to lecture coaches and athletes. If the best sprint coach felt he could learn from an endurance coach, there no doubt we as endurance athletes can learn from one the great sprint coaches!
Rule #1
Let’s repeat Rule #1 again:
If you can’t Stay Loose, you’re Training too Hard
Some people are “wired tight.” You look at them, and you see the tension. If you’re like that, it’s ok, but you must do something about it. Get Relax and Win and follow the exercises in there for a few weeks to teach your body to let go. It’ll help you in all aspect of your life. This level of relaxation training is beyond the scope of this post. We are going to focus on what you can focus on while running.
There are three types of tension you need to be especially wary of:
- Tension in the Face
- Tightness in the Body
- Resistance in the Mind
Tension in the Face
Maintain Sleepy Eyes, Soft Lips and a Loose Jaw. If you can’t, slow down or cut the rep short.
The ability to maintain a relaxed demeanour on your face is crucial to your success. Watch any high-calibre runner. You’ll see all the runners with a fully relaxed face for the entire race – the final sprint being the exception. Runners with tension on their faces are the ones about to be dropped. The legendary Emil Zatopek is the anomaly whose face always mangled – a post on his is coming soon.
Here are three beneficial cues:
Sleepy Eyes. Perhaps the most powerful of the techniques. When you notice you’re tightening up, loosen your eyelids to look like you’re half asleep. Tension typically melts from your face, neck, shoulders and everywhere else when you do this. Leave your eyes open just enough to see where you are going.
Soft Lips. There are two parts: (1) relaxed cheeks and (2) relaxed mouth. If you scrunch your cheeks, which often happen when you start to breathe heavily out the mouth, your upper lip will stretch and feel tight. Also, when you’re running fast, you want to feel like you lower lip in bouncing up and down because it is completely relaxed. Even if you are breathing fast and heavy, keep your lips soft and kissable.
Loose Jaw. If you’re clenching your teeth, you need to loosen that right away. A tight jaw will disrupt your body’s innate gait reflexes. When you run, your body knows when to turn on and turn off muscles to ensure a smooth running gait. A tight Jaw tends to keep all your muscles tense for too long disrupting this fine balance. Muscle tension does not make you run fast. Predominantly loose muscles that fire at precisely the right moment makes you run fast.
During any running, if your face tightens, immediately apply Sleepy Eyes, Soft Lips, or Loose Jaw. If you can’t successfully eliminate the tension from your face, slow down or end the rep.
Tightness in the Body
Shoulders Down, Relaxed Feet and Ankles, and Loose Fists are musts if you want to run to at your best
Often tension in the face is accompanied by tightness in the body. So your go-to strategy should always first to relax the face. You’ll likely eliminate the tension in the body that way. But, if you continue to sense tension elsewhere in your body that is not directly involved in forward propulsion, aim to let it go.
Here are another three beneficial cues.
Shoulders Down. You can tell the function of a runner’s hips by looking at what is going on in the shoulders. If the shoulders raise, the hips are disconnected from your trunk figuratively. This disrupts your ability to produce forward momentum either through hip extension or hip flexion. If the shoulders go up, drop them down pronto!
Relaxed Feet and Ankles. Did you know what the muscles of your feet and lower legs contract before your foot strikes? The muscles of the foot and ankle are literary preparing your joints to absorb the landing and release energy as forward momentum. If you curl your toes, point your foot or pull up your foot it throws off this whole process. Let your feet and ankle do their own thing.
Loose Fists. Similar to your jaw, if you’re clenching your fists, all your muscle tends to hold onto tension for too long disrupting the contract/relax cycle. Imagine like you are carrying a tiny bird in your hand with its head just above your thumbs and forefinger. Don’t crush the bird!
Resistance in the Mind
There is a word for tension in the mind: “Resistance.” A term coined by author Steven Pressfield. If you want to get a handle on the tension you feel in your mind during runs, read his book The War of Art. The book is a short masterclass on how to overcome Resistance in all aspects of your life. It’ll help you’re running much more than you think. Especially if you feel your mind sabotages your body during runs. It is short read (or listen on Audible) and well worth time invested.
A key insight when it comes to overcoming Resistance is to know that your brain acts much like a spectator watching a race from the stands – the most important spectator watching!
Imagine yourself running “all-out.” You may picture yourself with great tension in your face and neck. Jaw clenched with your teeth showing. Arms stiff and hands in tight fists. Your breathing shallow, loud and fast. Your posture collapsed with head and shoulders drooped forward. Or maybe your low back, head and neck arched back and over-extended.
To any spectator watching, it is obvious you are in excruciating discomfort and cannot go harder. The spectator would surely think to themselves: “That person has cracked!” – “That person is cooked!” – or at the very least, “That person is at their limit!”
Your brain’s job is to ensure you never reach your physical limit. It acts to protect your body. It is constantly taking cues from your body to decide what to do next. If your brain sees your body mangled and your breathing shallow, then the only intelligent thing for it to do is to take measures to shut you down. Resistance begins. It may be negative self-talk, dread, questioning why you do this stupid sport at all. Not exactly helpful for those seeking athletic excellence.
Remove the Tension from your face and body. and it’ll keep you one step ahead of Resistance. If your Resistance is especially strong despite staying loose, you’re “wired a little too tight.” Get Relax and Win and follow the exercises.
Rules are made to be Broken
If you have any level of anti-conformist in you, from the start of this post, I’m sure you’ve been thinking to yourself that “Rules are made to be broken.”
I agree completely.
You are going to break Rule #1 repeatedly whether you like it or not. Remember Bud Winter’s quote from the beginning: “Demand perfection of yourself and you’ll seldom attain it. Fear of making a mistake is the biggest single cause of making one. Relax — pursue excellence, not perfection.”
Use Rule #1 to “pursue excellence” as follows:
In training, stay loose. When you notice you are tightening up, relax immediately. If you can’t: end the drill, shorten the rep, lengthen the rest – do something to make it slightly easier. You’re not doing yourself any favours training beyond your current capacity.
If you’re in a race scenario that’s different.
When you’re pushing your boundaries in a race, don’t think much. You’re better off allowing for a more automatic execution. Before the event, review over and over your race plan. Make sure you have a race plan – winging it never works. On race day, separate your “self” from your “body” and observe what happens – like your brain, your “self” is a spectator. Naturally, your body will fall back to what it did in training. So if you’ve trained well, you’ll set yourself up to Stay Loose in competition.
If your performance ends up being a disaster… great! There is much to learn. Debrief afterwards once you’ve created some distance from any initial emotional reaction to the performance, Breakdown what it is you need to improve. And improve it in a relaxed way!
With Rule #1, you have the means to ensure your Fast But Not Hard drills are done appropriate. Now, we’re ready to review Running Cues you can use to improve the quality of your technique which is tomorrow’s topic!