{"id":1158,"date":"2012-07-26T15:10:40","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T22:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www2.nau.edu\/news-p\/wordpress\/?p=1158"},"modified":"2013-12-10T15:47:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T22:47:56","slug":"warm-up-for-olympic-running-with-viewing-tips-from-an-nau-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/warm-up-for-olympic-running-with-viewing-tips-from-an-nau-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"Warm up for Olympic running with viewing tips from an NAU expert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If anyone knows about running biomechanics, it&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>Eric Heins<\/strong>, NAU&#8217;s director of track and field and cross country. He&#8217;s won 10 Big Sky Coach of the Year awards. He&#8217;s trained\u00a0<a title=\"Plan to keep track of Olympic running? Let an NAU coach help you stay on pace\" href=\"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/plan-to-keep-track-of-olympic-running-let-an-nau-coach-help-you-stay-on-pace\/\">three runners who will compete\u00a0<\/a>for three different countries in this summer&#8217;s Olympic Games in London. He&#8217;s won national championships. He lives and breathes running.<\/p>\n<p>Before jetting off to London to watch the games in person, Heins offered some suggestions for those of us following the action from home. As you watch the track competitions, he suggests that you look for these indications of a runner&#8217;s efficiency:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Mid-foot strike:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cGood form is landing on the ball of the foot, right underneath the center of gravity,\u201d Heins said. \u201cWhen a runner starts to slow down, their foot is nearly out in front of the knee, landing on the heel.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Knee lift:<\/strong>\u00a0This should be a 90-degree angle from hips to knee. \u201cAs fatigue sets in, the knee gets lower,\u201d Heins said. \u201cWatch an athlete\u2019s knee lift early in the race and compare it with later.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Leg circle:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cWe teach our athletes that their trail leg should come back behind the hamstring with a high kick. The heel stays close to the hamstring, then comes down close to the opposite knee on the support leg. That\u2019s a nice little circle, or close to it.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you watch enough of the race, Heins said, you can see these mechanics start to fall apart. The TV cameras might make such subtleties difficult to spot, but you can pick them up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/warm-up-for-olympic-running-with-viewing-tips-from-an-nau-expert\/\">If anyone knows about running biomechanics, it&#8217;s\u00a0Eric Heins, NAU&#8217;s director of track and field and cross country. He&#8217;s won 10 Big Sky Coach of the Year awards. He&#8217;s trained\u00a0three runners who will compete\u00a0for three different countries in this summer&#8217;s Olympic Games in London. He&#8217;s won national championships. He lives and breathes running. Before jetting off&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":1159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}