I’ve been taking part in above over the last 8 weeks to go, with 2 more weeks left before it all finishes. I first came across Gary Ward on a WeMove podcast back in 2019, which in turn was around the time I was seeking out a connection between my right neck pain, movement and my body. This in turn led me to do a lot of work with Dominik Koch (https://www.decrypt-bodywork.com/ who is excellent).
Gary’s understanding & teaching around the body and movement is wonderful. I read his book What the Foot – which outlines his ideas and how he sees movement patterns play out in the body, creating conditions that can generate discomfort / over active / under active areas that lead to compensation and a reduction in what you have available. One of his key premises is that joints act and muscles react, which in its’ simplicity is brilliant, how our bones are positioned – our skeletal set up – has a direct influence over whether our muscles are then long (under tension) or short (under compression). This going one step beyond the purely muscular view of rehab / treatment for discomfort.
My next stage was to take and complete the Lower body & Upper body biomechanic courses. Clearly and sensibly laid out this helped build on my understanding of movement and the connectedness of how everything works in relationship to one another, from the way your head is positioned down to the movement in your feet.
At the beginning of this year I was considering what to do next with regards building on my knowledge gleaned from these two courses. One of the things that had been gnawing away at me was providing runners I coached with a more helpful opinion on injury, cause and suggested direction/focus to take to a more qualified person than I (so physio etc). I felt quite disempowered when being asked questions about what something was, what to do etc and wanted to bridge that lack of knowledge with a deeper understanding of the body. Initially I thought about re-doing both of the above courses (which I still intend to) as a good starting point, much like I find reading a book takes at least 2 goes to get something from it. At the point I was about to restart I received a general round robin email from Gary offering the course / mentorship, which was perfect timing and so I jumped at the chance to take part.
To date this has involved a weekly Zoom call, with anywhere from 20 to 25 people (all on the course) talking with Gary about whatever has come up that week. The spread of understanding and knowledge is really broad, from people my my beginning level through to experienced practitioners, who are well versed in Gary’s methodology and have been applying it for several years. Alongside this Gary has set up a forum, where you have the option to upload questions / feedback / images and pictures of of either where you are in your journey – or clients that you are working with. This has been super fascinating, as you get to watch someone assess a client, give their feedback on what they believe is the issue, draw up stick man to help reinforce what they believe. In turn Gary will then provide his own video commentary, supporting ideas, tweaking, making suggestions. To see this happen as a back and forth is really valuable. Looking at patterns in movement, problems, offered solutions, small movement clues, things that are missed, areas that are ignored.
I’ve taken the opportunity to explore my own movement – which has been a bit of a mystery tour. Uncovering a lack of movement in my spine & feet; making the connection between my jaw injury around 1993 and the resultant back / neck pain; observing and noticing the subtle movement differences in my body. It has helped join the dots for areas I was uncertain about and certainly made me aware of how much more I can learn. Two impacts have been noted running. Firstly foot work – pronating and supinating both feet has really helped relieve the discomfort in my left ankle. On the flip side, doing a lot of work to improve my spinal flexion and weight bearing caused a huge reaction in my right lower leg, leading me to think I had a stress fracture last Friday. A good lesson, as one thing changes it is opening up other areas to greater work than they were perviously used to (or protected from) and this can lead to pain. Previously I would have shied away from this and have. Now I see this as a chance to integrate with my running. As I let my body embed the new movements / patterns and give it permission to move into these spaces I can do so with a more gradual increase in load.
Only 2 weeks left on this journey and I intend to get as much out of this as possible.
