Sports Performance

Bring Your Performance to the Next Level

By weeding out patterns of inefficiency and enhancing your abilities to direct yourself, your muscles, your force, how you move, breathe, and work – you can better tap your available sources of energy. This can result in both predictable and unexpected improvements in performance.

Click here to read a detailed case study of how the application of Radiant Running principles helped a talented college athlete overcome a pattern of injury and disappointment and return to competitive athletics.

Performance Coaching:

• Detailed video analysis that is sport or activity specific
• Body based training in how to focus your energy
• Training in optimal body use, general and specific
• Maximizing improvement with increases in effort
• Tapping into the power and flow in the body

Our work together will likely include core strengthening, gait analysis, and form coaching.

Free initial consultations and assessments. E-mail Douglas or call 303-499-2062 , for an appointment.

Body Knowing

Our bodies are the most sophisticated and valuable piece of equipment that we own. Within our reach is the ability to tap into its energetic potential. This can have a positive effect on virtually every area of our lives.

Radiant Running is an awareness / movement based therapeutic approach to performance, and injury prevention and rehabilitation, that teaches the body to move with its natural grace and potential: efficiently, fluidly, powerfully, and effortlessly.

Radiant Running teaches the basic principles that underlie movement within the context of your particular sport or daily life and work related activities. The sense of clarity, power, freedom of movement and ease that we associalte with our best atheletic moments is totally within our ability to learn and apply to our sport.

Practical Application for Runners

As a sport, running is notorious for producing a variety of injuries, and most runners will be injured or experience pain and injury at some point. Many more people will quit or avoid running altogether because of injury and the threat of damage to the joints. With its practical application of physics, biomechanics, and body use, Radiant Running virtually takes the pain and difficulty out of running making it accessible to many who have given up on it. Radiant Running also sets the stage for improved performance in the form of increased capacity for intensity and endurance training.

When teaching the basic principles of efficient movement to runners, Radiant Running takes into account body type, ability, current pain or injury (if applicable), and form. The goal is to take the pounding, pain and potential damage out of running, and turn it into a lifelong pursuit that is safe and promotes health, fitness, and personal achievement.

As a highly experienced and successful ultramarathoner myself, I offer specialized coaching for endurance athletics, including ultramarathon, biathlon, triathlon, multisports and extreme sports.

I am passionate about helping athletes in their 50s and 60s maintain their athletic performance. I also offer coaching for childrens sports performance. (Click here to see what people say about Radiant Running.)

Injury Straight Talk

The impact of injury on the passionate runner is huge! Injury can wreak havoc on your training schedule, or even worse, sideline you completely. But I have found that the chance of injury can be virtually elminated when you learn the basics of good running form and body use.

Most injury and running related chronic pain conditions are avoidable or reversible through efficient running. It’s all about learning how to do it, and it’s as teachable as learning to swing a golf club.

Often an injury is part of an equation – "A" plus "B" plus "C" equals pain. As an example: "A" might be excessive pounding, "B" might be the time factor such as 10 years, and "C" could be worn out running shoes. You start to have pain in your knee joint and your realize that your running shoes are worn out. So you buy new shoes and the symptoms go away. But if you add another 5 years of excessive wear and tear to the equation, new shoes might no longer help. At this point the excessive pounding in your form carries the equation into the pain. It is clearly in a runner’s best interest to address the inefficiencies in form to avoid discouraging limitations in the future.

While more traditional Physical Therapy protocol treats symptoms, and certainly has value in the resolution of injury, it doesn’t address the form issues that have resulted in the injury in the first place. Therefore this kind of approach won’t necessarily help prevent the recurrence of the same or related injury.

This is a chart of a few garden variety overuse injuries that are generated by repetitive use of the body as a result of sports training, competition. While certain traumatic injuries, such as a sprained ankle, also respond well to improved technique, the focus of this chart are injuries generated by poor technique or form. The chart relates injury in the first column, to form and body use in the second column, and to posture and structure in the third column.

Common Overuse Injury		Form and Body Use Problems		Posture and Structure Problems
Plantar fasciitis Generic foot pain		Holding tension in the feet. Gripping with the toes. Excessive ground impact. Excessive tension in the calves and hamstrings. Lack of full ground contact with the feet.		Anterior pelvic tilt, sway back posture.
Shins splints and lower leg stress fractures		Excessive tension in the calves. Rigidity in the ankles. Poor technique in downhill running. Tentative movement with resultant brittleness in the legs. Overuse of the calves for force production. Lack of full ground contact with the feet.		Muscle imbalance in the hips resulting in improper stabilizing at the ankle. Increased forces of pronation at foot strike as a result of internal rotation of the femur at the hip.
IT Band Syndrome		Failure to access the psoas in hip flexion, resulting in overuse of the accessory lateral hip flexors for force production – creating stress and contraction tightness in the TFL muscle.		Internal rotation of the femur. Bowing of the legs. Anterior pelvic tilt when running with resultant overuse of the lateral accessory hip flexors.
Common knee pain		Excessive pounding resulting from ground reaction overuse or excessive vertical displacement in the form. Non resilient muscle use, resulting in impacts going into the joints, over striding with concurrent breaking action at the knee with foot strike. Excessive forward bend at the waist, and bearing downward. Quadricep overuse.		Anterior pelvic tilt. Various muscle imbalance in the hips, pelvis and thighs that cause segmental nonalignment.
Achilles tendon problems		Overuse of the calf muscles to produce the forces of propulsion, i.e. overuse of bounce and toe off. Excessive toe striking having a detrimental effect over time.

I have also had success applying the Radiant Running approach to the following problems: tennis elbow, golfer elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, rotator cuff, Condromalacia Patella, meniscus injuries, sciatica, tarsal tunnel syndrome, Morton's Neuroma, bone spur, ankle sprains, plica syndrome, hip pain, groin pain, thoracic outlet syndrome, metatarsalgia, repetitive use injury, and exercise induced asthma, as well as musculoskeletal pain, soft tissue pain, knee pain, hip pain, ankle pain, and shoulder pain.

Douglas has been indispensable in helping several of our top national-caliber middle and distance runners overcome chronic running-related injuries, and achieve results far beyond what we thought possible. The way he works with athletes is comprehensive and creates lasting positive changes in their bio-mechanics, body awareness and mental attitude.

— Toby Jacober
Former University of Colorado Woman's Cross Country and Track Coach

Link of Interest: www.the-sports-arena.com/Multi-Sports/