OK, I say it often . . . that one thing or another is the most important thing about your running, but I mean it here. Learning to rotate your hips and your spine correctly is the absolute, bottom line, key to good running form. Yes, everything else is important too, but your hips and pelvis are where efficient running really happens.

I am going to make a HUGE generalization, but only because it is what I observe most often. Most men do not rotate their hips enough and most women rotate their hips without enough of a stabilizing force, making their hips swing too loosely. As I said, this is a generalization. There are also some men who are too loose and lots of women who are too tight in their pelvis. You need to Body Sense for yourself which one you are, but I wanted to make the generalization to give you a beginning point from which to decide if you are too loose or too tight in your hips.

When running correctly, the movement of the hips is very similar in men and women and the key to correcting the issue is very similar for both men and women or for those that are too tight or too loose. The key to correcting your hips is learning and practicing to engage your core muscles while running . . . and letting everything else relax. Doing it correctly is almost a yogic practice and requires the ability to Body Sense deeply. However, do not get frightened away by that statement. Every step you make toward engaging your core, primarily by leveling your pelvis, and relaxing everything else, will help improve your running. So you can be just a beginner at Body Sensing or at ChiRunning or at running at all, and you do not need to be a yogi to learn to rotate your hips correctly. But I can tell you this: the better you get at it; the more efficient a runner you will become. The better you get at ChiRunning, the closer you get to running almost entirely from the twist of your spine, which includes the rotation of your hips, and everything else just comes along for the ride.

First, let us take a look at the problem of being too tight in the hips and pelvis. If you are too tight in your pelvis, it's because you are over-using your gluteus, your quads, and your erector spine (the two big muscles running along your spine at the lower back). These are not the best muscles for stabilizing movement. They have other jobs to do. But when they are used incorrectly, they not only limit your movement, they get tired, worn out, sore and achy and they take up a lot of energy. And, all of that tightness in your spine and pelvis inhibits the flow of chi up and down your spine. A much more efficient way of stabilizing your movement is to level your pelvis by engaging your lower abs and your psoas, which are your strongest core muscles. You then need to do the work of relaxing all those poor, overused gluteus and lower back muscles.

With those of you who are too loose; you are not stable enough and the exaggerated movement of the pelvis causes inefficiency in your movement and can irritate your IT band. If your hips and pelvis are too loose, more often than not your pelvis will move laterally (side-to-side) when you run, rather than rotating around the axis of your spine. If you have seen me in classes you may remember my Mae West impersonation. Think of how a fashion model walks down the runway with exaggerated movement in her hips. That is an exaggeration of what I see in many people, but pretty accurate.

Because of their anatomical differences, there are reasons why men are too tight and women too loose in the hips. Women, with generally broader hips, require a strong core to stabilize their movement. Men, with generally narrower hips, do not rotate as much. And there are social and psychological factors that contribute as well. If women were to try to emulate the models of today, they would have no center at all, and if men were to emulate the image of the typical macho-man out of the movies, their hips would be like immovable rock.

So, what to do . . .

For both men and women, the place to start, as always, is with aligning your posture...that is number ONE. You need a straight axis around which to rotate your hips. The next thing you will need to do is to level your pelvis. See page 68 of the ChiRunning book and on the DVD go to: Choose a Lesson, then Lesson One: Posture Alignment.

Leveling your pelvis will allow your body to run much more efficiently, because you are engaging your core muscles and stabilizing your movement in the correct way. This allows all your other muscles to move freely as they should. But you need to Body Sense how to level your pelvis. Be sure to not use your gluteus to do it. Use your lower abdominals and gently pull up on your pubic bone. The lowest of the abdominal muscles is called the pyramidalis, which attaches to the public bone. If you cough, you will feel this muscle. It may be hard to find and feel at first, much less isolate the use of it, but it is worth it to practice finding it and using it. This is where you will practice being a yogi. When you use the pyramidalis and just your lower, deepest abdominal muscles to level your pelvis, while relaxing your gluteus and lower back muscles, you will change the structure of your body and improve all kinds of movement, not just running. It is especially good for men and women who suffer from lower back pain.

This is the practice of ChiRunning.

I know in my practice I can feel an internal expansion in my pelvis area when I engage my pyramidalis and lower abs and relax the muscles in my back and butt. And I can feel an amazing amount of energy come from that area when I am relaxed and sufficiently stable at the same time. The movement of my pelvis is loose and contained at the same time. I feel relaxed yet resilient. I am not exaggerating my movement, but I am not limiting it either. When you get this right you will be amazed at the energy saved from not being too loose and exaggerating your movement or too tight and restricting movement. Your running will change forever.

Here is a new exercise that is NOT in the book or DVD:

You know where to start . . . get that posture really well aligned. If you do not know what that means; you need to find it on page 63 of the book or, again, Lesson One under Choose a Lesson on the DVD. Your feet are parallel and shoulder width apart.

Now, level your pelvis (page 68 of the book, Lesson One of the DVD). Do not use those gluteus to hold it level.

Next, put your left foot behind you about one shoe length- directly back so your feet are still shoulder width apart. KEEP YOUR PELVIS LEVEL. That is one of the two main focuses of this exercise. Just keep going back to make sure your pelvis is level. You will be amazed at how quickly it disengages when you are not thinking about it.* Your weight is primarily on your forward (at this point right) foot, with some weight on the back foot.

Next, hold your arms horizontally, straight out to your sides, hands level with your shoulders. (Make a "T" with your arms and body.)

With your pelvis level, SLOWLY rotate your hips (the second main focus of the exercise). If you were looking straight down at your pelvis from a bird's-eye view, your pelvis would be rotating clockwise then counterclockwise, clockwise, then counterclockwise. Be sure to NOT rotate your upper body. That is why you are holding your arms out at your sides...to keep your shoulders facing forward while your hips are rotating (as they both should be when you are running). Then take a step back and do the same exercise with your weight supported on the other leg. Do this exercise regularly, starting with two minutes on each leg and working up to ten.

You do not have to hold your arms out the whole time, but start the exercise this way until you get the feel of rotating your pelvis without rotating your shoulders. When you get a feel for this movement you can bring your arms down and even put your fingers on the hip bones and encourage the movement, but not at the start.

The movement is actually originating at T12, L1 where your thoracic vertebrae meet your lumbar vertebrae. Your shoulders remain totally still, but the lower half of your body is rotating. If you are having a tough time with this, imagine the movement coming from your mid-spine and not your hips. That may help the movement come more easily.

Do this exercise as much as you can, eventually increasing the speed of the rotation to the speed of your cadence. You can use your metronome for this exercise as you do when you're running.

Even though the level pelvis is key to good running form, do not overdo practicing it at first or you will feel some discomfort and possibly pain in your back from overdoing. Remember: gradual progress. Take your time to make the needed changes to your form.

For those who are too loose, your focus will be on stabilizing your pelvis by leveling it. For those of you who are already too tight, your focus is on relaxing and loosening. But both require the engaged, core muscles utilized in the level pelvis.

For those of you with tight lower backs, think about letting energy drop right down from the top of your head, right out your tailbone to the ground to relax your lower back. Relaxing the lower back is possible, but again, takes practice, requires practicing your Body Sensing skills, and is enhanced with visualizations of letting energy fall down your back. As your abdominal muscles become stronger from holding your pelvis level, your lower back muscles will learn to relax.

In terms of injury-prevention, as you learn to rotate your pelvis you will be seriously reducing the impact to your knees. Each time your foot hits the ground, let your hip go back with your leg. This will absorb the shock of the road by allowing your leg to move in the same direction as the road is moving under you.

If this sounds like a lot of hard work, I can promise you, it is less work than trying to push and pull yourself down the road with overworked leg muscles. Learning how to rotate your hips correctly will make running a true pleasure and can make the ChiRunning promise of running effortlessly and injury-free a reality.

*I did not want to interrupt the flow of the exercise, but as an aside story, for the first six months of T'ai Chi class my teacher had to remind me constantly to level my pelvis. I would be in standing meditation and he would have to correct me on every round of the room he made throughout the class. It took a long while to get it. You too need to come back to this again and again.

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