- We've come down to the coast
on the edge of Sant Jordi Mallorca
to catch up with ex-international runner,
turned pro triathlete, Emma Pallant.
Thanks for joining you today Emma.
- No way, it's thanks for having me.
- Well we are gonna be picking Emma's brains
on basically how to run fast.
And she has got five top tips on how to run like a pro.
(upbeat music)
Now Emma what is your first on your list?
- So, number one would definitely be your run technique.
So yeah, we all learned to bike, we all learned to swim.
But yeah, not many of us actually think about
how we're running and so I say number one,
technique is massively important.
- And where do you start with your technique,
how do you know if you're doing it wrong
or what you're doing wrong?
- So I think the first two major warning signs
are if you're getting injured,
or if your sessions are progressing
and your speeds just aren't.
Then yeah, there's normally something wrong with it,
you've got a dead spot in your running,
you're using the wrong muscles,
yeah you just need to break down your technique.
- [Interviewer] Any tips on that, if someone said,
identifies with being injured
or with not improving what their fitness is,
how do you identify the cause of that?
- Yeah, so the range is massive.
Like I've seen so many people from
the people I coached, just yeah,
just looking at people running outside.
There's so many different ways of,
'cause we're sitting on our major muscles
that we're meant to use for running.
We all compensate normally in a different way
if they're switched off.
So yeah, the first things is find out why.
So a million coaches out there,
but maybe look at the people that have a good technique
the people that are running well,
get them to analyse you, the people that know their stuff
like how do they run fast.
- Who have you learnt from as a runner,
who have you looked up to to learn techniques?
- Yeah, so as a runner I had a really bad knee injury,
I had knee surgery and I met Michelle Dillon
when I moved to triathlon and she basically
broke everything down, so taught me how to run again.
And yeah, it was tough, it was tough to relearn
totally new motor patterns.
- [Interviewer] I think that's really
encouraging people to hear,
that someone who's such a good runner as you,
you've actually broken it down
and almost started again, that's got to be encouraging
for a lot of age groupers out there.
- So tip number two would be get the right footwear.
So again there's such a range of shoes on the market
and for a good reason.
We all run differently and we all find something
more comfortable than others.
So I'd say take your time to block out a whole day maybe
and go to a running store, a proper running shop,
with a huge range and get on the treadmill
and run in each one 'til, maybe even 10 minutes,
make a session out of it, until you find something
that actually feels like a part of you.
For me it was Hokas.
I've moved through shoes and I finally found
what works for me.
You almost, like your biking shoes,
you feel part of the pedal.
The same thing, you want your shoes to feel
part of your feet really.
And take your time because if you're,
like shoes can be the simple thing between
getting injured and not getting injured
and maybe those ones are 60 quid more expensive,
but if it saves you 10 physio sessions,
then yeah, buy two pairs.
- Okay, onto point number three.
What have you got next?
- Point number three would be gym work.
So again like, we go back to swimming.
A lot of people will learn good habits,
good motor patterns, and strength work outside of the pool.
So land training.
The same thing with running.
If you can get the right muscles
that you need to fire up, if you can get the
muscles that are weak for you,
if you can get them strong and get the muscles
that you're overusing to relax,
you're ingraining good habits so that
when you run it will become easier to actually
ingrain the new habits.
- And you talked about earlier on
that we spend lot of time sitting,
so a lot is switched off posteriorly.
You do a bit of coaching yourself as well,
do you see most of your athletes,
it's the posterior chain that's not firing
and the front needs switching off or?
- Yeah, massively so, because at the end of the day
the glutes, they're the biggest muscle in our body.
And like you said, if we're switching them off
so much of the posterior chain,
you can't connect with the core, the centre around it,
if that's switched off you can't connect
the other parts of the chain.
So yeah, it's working throughout the whole range
and then again using something like yoga,
some recovery method to also help switch off
more of the chain that you are overloading.
- And what do you actually do in the gym,
what do you work on for your running style?
- Yeah, so I do a lot of glute work, hamstring work,
calf work, but more functional.
So you don't want the strength to come from the calves.
The running comes from the hips, not from the feet.
So yeah, it's making the lighter muscles functional
and the big gross kind of core muscles,
like your core and your glutes, making them the strong,
those the power work and velocity things
for like your speed, hamstring work.
- And I think again, like so many of us
are guilty of thinking, we've got to run, swim, cycle
and then that's all we've got time for
and if we've got time for another session
we'll do another run or we'll do another bike,
but it's easy to overlook that
because you don't necessarily see
the benefit straight away, do you?
- Yeah, definitely, and again it's looking to the future,
like do I wanna take two weeks off injured,
or knock five minutes off my run
to fire up the right muscles beforehand
and stretch off the right muscles afterwards.
And yeah, you've gotta, if something has to give,
gym work should be the last thing that drops.
And it is boring.
Take a mate along, put some good tunes on,
whatever makes it more interesting for you,
but yeah, do it, feel it, and vary it.
- That takes us on to point four, what have you got now?
- My top tip number four would be the flow.
So feel the flow of your running.
Yeah in this day and age we're very data driven.
Which can be great for some things.
But yeah sometimes it makes you too rigid.
So to get the feel, like when you're in the pool.
You don't want to fight the water,
you wanna feel it, you want everything in motion
and the same thing sometimes you can over force the running
so learning how to relax and get your flow.
I don't know, so many things work for different people,
like I use music, some people do the deep breathing.
But yeah, just learning sometimes just the feel of your body
that's the most powerful tool, your own feedback.
That's where you can just push yourself.
Sometimes even beyond limits that you thought you had.
- And I know that like, for you
you say just enjoy the running and relax,
and you're a very natural runner,
watching you run looks great
and you must enjoy it naturally.
But for someone who, running is their weakest
of the three disciplines, and they find it hard work,
how can they enjoy it,
how can they help to learn to enjoy it?
- Yeah, and I think that's massively
where technique comes in.
If your technique is good, and your strength,
we were born to run, we were made to run,
and yeah for me it's that time,
there's no session that I prefer more than
two and a half hours just me and my music
out in the sun and that should be it.
You should just feel at one with your body,
'cause it is, it's the body's most natural movement.
- I think a lot of people would enjoy running
a lot more if they had somewhere like Mallorca
to go running and do that two and a half run though.
- Yeah, quite possibly.
- Cool.
Well that brings us on to our final point Emma.
What is it?
- So my final tip would be have a variety.
So again we talked about that grey patch of training.
So that grey zone where you, if you do 60 minutes
all the time just everyday just a 60 minute run
then you get into plod mode to get to that same speed,
you're never gonna get faster
and you're not getting the most out of your sessions.
I'd say vary it, do your long runs,
do your long, really steady aerobic, good form work
and then do your hard intensity.
That point where you are accumulating lactic,
where you're learning to move the muscles on real fatigue.
And you do the two opposite, so you do your easy
really easy, and your hard really hard.
Then you'll see progressions.
It's very much like a race.
You can't get the best out of your race if you don't
learn to taper and be fresh for it
because you'll never be able to get to that
deep dark place if you've got
a little bit of fatigue in you.
- That's a really good point.
I think a lot of athletes and age groupers
are worried to run too slowly,
'cause you've only got a certain amount of runs
per week or a certain amount of runs in you
and doing that slow one you think kind of,
"Oh, well I'm wasting a run."
How slow do you do your slow ones
and how often do you put a slow run in, or an easy run?
- Yeah, so I learnt this when I was in Kenya,
our morning runs we'd go out on empty
and yeah, I was always loving it,
like thinking, dropping Africans.
But then you'd get annihilated.
In the evening session you'd get totally trashed.
And the same thing, like Michelle and Stu
sometimes will make me run the treadmill,
will make me run with them before a race
if I'm meant to be going steady,
or on a long run if I'm respecting the session
that comes the next day.
And it is, it's such a discipline and control.
Yeah, hands up, I don't always run as steady as I should.
But yeah, then I'll pay for it the next day
in the session that I won't hit the times
that I want to and yeah, just get that look
from Michelle like, yeah.
- It's okay to take it easy sometimes.
- Yeah, yeah, definitely.
- Awesome.
Emma, thank you so much.
Some really interesting and useful tips as well.
- Cheers, thanks for having me.
- Well, if you've enjoyed this and you want to catch
other GTM videos, just hit the globe to subscribe.
And if you want to see a video Mark did with Lucy Charles
on the top five swim tips to go faster, that's just here.
- And if you want to have a look at my bike,
the great BMC, just click here.
