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The Relaxed Running podcast is a behind the scenes conversation with the best athletes, coaches and professionals in the world of distance running. From training, hydration and nutrition to racing and recovering, we learn from the best in the world.
Relaxed conversations which are packed with actionable takeaways to help you take your running performance up a notch. Save yourself years of guess work and learn from the people who are doing it at the highest level.
Lawrence van Lingen (00:00.142)
it'll block the Wi -Fi and I'll have no Wi -Fi. Okay, that is an option and then my Wi -Fi strength is not the greatest signal but sometimes when the weather is like this it just stops. Okay, and then we'll have exactly what we just had, a pause. Okay. Are you doing something to your computer on your end because you're flashing now?
Tyson (00:15.729)
Sure.
Tyson (00:20.881)
No, I'm not all I'm I've just I've I've hit record but is the actual screen flashing
Lawrence van Lingen (00:24.814)
Okay.
Yeah, it's just like, it's almost like you're switching something on and off. And then I've got like a little 68%, I presume the buffer. So you hit record. Okay. Yeah, I'm happy to, I mean, you know, the world that we're in, like words can be twisted and 10 can be sort of messed around. I'm kind of controversial on some things. I don't feel it's controversial, but people's livelihoods are caught up in techniques or procedures or...
Tyson (00:31.985)
Lawrence van Lingen (00:57.101)
You know, like they get very attached to a certain ideal. And so for me, I've got to sort of just be mindful of that and not get myself into too much trouble in terms of what I think should and shouldn't happen. But you can. Yeah. The only thing I don't really like talking too much about is is diet largely because I feel like if you're blessed enough to have a decision in what you can and can't eat, you know, I think
Tyson (01:07.313)
Is she?
Lawrence van Lingen (01:24.172)
just coming from a massive place of gratitude that you actually get to choose a type of diet because I've worked with athletes that only had one meal a day. You know what I mean? Like I just can't, I'm not that sympathetic to diet. Like and this diet and that and eating this over that. I'm like, just be fucking grateful that you actually can afford food. Okay. Because I've met with gold medalists that could only eat once a day. So I'm not like that sympathetic to, to when people get all like
Tyson (01:32.465)
Yeah.
Tyson (01:37.745)
Yeah.
Tyson (01:42.385)
Awesome man. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:53.099)
into the weeds on diet, you know? Okay, so, and people get aggro, you know, like, well, I don't know, like, you know, people get so attached to the story of being vegan and then, like, I don't know, we've got to be, I genuinely don't want to be grilled deeply on my thoughts on what we should and shouldn't be eating that much when I think it's much more important that we laugh around a dinner table and come together and have community and that we
Tyson (01:55.153)
No, that's completely fair, though.
Tyson (02:13.617)
It's.
Lawrence van Lingen (02:22.187)
respect and process our food properly. You know, like blocking your nose and eating a power shake or some berry from Amazon's not really where my head space is at all.
Tyson (02:31.249)
That's fair enough if I if I take the conversation in a way that is of zero interest to you feel free just to tell me I'll make sure I that's a great point. I'll make sure I keep the diet conversation out of it I mean I've had enough nutritionist on here to know that there's no consensus on What is the one best diet for all distance runners? So I mean I kind of share your Share your thoughts on the subject a little bit. I haven't thought of it from the perspective you just mentioned, but I mean
Lawrence van Lingen (02:40.299)
And then.
Lawrence van Lingen (02:48.457)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (02:59.473)
from the perspective of, okay, there's different horses for different courses. Yeah, I get that. Now that sounds, that sounds good, man. It is funny. You mentioned that, if you're happy just to roll into it now, we'll just, I'll edit the first part out and we'll just roll into it, huh? yeah, I liked your initial email to me when I invited you onto the podcast, you said, some of the things that I have to say perceived as controversial. Are you sure you want to get yourself involved? And I thought, well,
Lawrence van Lingen (03:10.921)
Yeah, yeah, let's go. Yeah, I'm ready. Yeah. Yeah, perfect.
Lawrence van Lingen (03:25.225)
Thank you.
Tyson (03:27.153)
That sounds like an interesting place to kickstart the conversation. Maybe you could tell me what's so controversial. Cause from my perspective, nothing seems overly controversial, but I know that running is a highly opinionated sport.
Lawrence van Lingen (03:33.262)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (03:39.465)
Yes, it's a highly opinionated sport and I think people, it's an area where we tend to have techniques and then we tend to attach value or earn money from a technique or a procedure. And so, you know, if someone bypasses what you think is really important or doesn't place emphasis on it or whatever, you know, that's when people get into trouble. I loved, you know, Portale did a podcast and
I mean, he's an extraordinary movement guru. And he said something that really stuck with me is, we humans should be humans first and just grateful that you are a human. And our humanity is really important. And then secondly, you're a human blessed enough to move because some humans aren't blessed enough to move. Some humans don't have four limbs. So, you know.
respecting and being grateful for the amount that you can move, the ability to move, even if it's hampered, it's extraordinarily more than some people. And then lastly, we all tend to be what we attach to ourselves. So like, you know, you're the relaxed runner, I'm the inner runner. But when you're, when you're, that's that, he calls it a dog man. A dog man is a good name if you, if you Google the definition of dog man. So I think it's really important that we unfortunately get ourselves attached to
to the third part of all of this. Like I'm the, you know, I'm the forefoot ultra runner, you know, and, you know, maybe it serves you better to run on with your whole foot, not just your forefoot. But if you're teaching that as a, you know, you teach that, that's your message, that's, you lose the ability to think clearly. And I think we should all hold knowledge lightly in our hands because facts do change and perceptions change and how we see the world and running changes. And it changes often.
quickly and a lot. So something you can be very, very sure about in five years time is not even relevant anymore. It's always been proven to be sort of less than value. Right. So I think along those lines, that's where the controversy comes in. And we have hashtags and Instagram and influences and various sayings that on the surface are true, but don't hold value later on. So I do.
Lawrence van Lingen (05:59.013)
In American running, the controversial bit would probably be there's a lot of emphasis on high cadence and turnover and I don't ever work directly on cadence or turnover. I watch it and we like to see it become healthy and appropriate, but I don't tell people your cadence should be this. Let's say, and then there's people that...
Tyson (06:18.705)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (06:23.012)
that are desperately working in the cadence. So that would be controversial, I would imagine. And then also where we get into trouble is I'm starting to... I think people think of running the way I work, which would be controversial to some, especially if your livelihood is caught up into it or you deeply invested in a process is I think that we intrinsically know how to run and our job is to reveal it and express it. And then we can protect it or enhance it.
And by doing that, we could add drill, we could add strength training to it. We can polish it up, right? Whereas I think there's a big narrative that if you do a lot of strength training and let's say drills, that will teach you how to run and then you can become a runner. And it certainly has happened and it does happen. It just doesn't happen with any sense of reliability. So I typically...
often when I work with people I'll say, let's, we need to ease off on strength training and drills and, which I think people find very, very controversial in order to, to find your proper running patterns. And once we have those, we can add back on. but a lot of what we do, I mean, you know, in running or thinking clearly or in problem solving is reducing things down, trying to work upstream. And then once you can fix things upstream, a lot of things fall into place below. But I feel like a lot of people end up.
and sort of downstream reacting all the time. And it's like a lot of drills aren't enough to teach you how to run, aren't enough to teach you foundational movements. And I just don't get in the world. I try not to get involved with reacting. I like to be proactive. So, but that, you know, if your livelihood is strength and someone says we need to back off on strength, well, you're not really going to find how to run through strength training. That can be a lot for some people.
So probably it's along those lines, you know, but there's, there are many ways to, I hate saying that because I love cats, but there's many ways to skin the cat. So, you know, you do you.
Tyson (08:24.945)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's, it's an interesting place to kickstart because that's been one of the standout features that I've noticed in nearly everything that you've had to say, whether it's a video that I'm watching or something that I'm reading, it seems that the running technique is an offshoot of something which is so much deeper than we often like to make it. I think, I mean, we can get into this later as well, but for, for the few people in the sport of distance running,
who are aware of the fact of the benefits of learning to run more efficiently with the way that they move. I think one of the go -tos is, okay, tell me what to do with my hands. Tell me what to do with my shoulders. Tell me how to hold my head. Do I run tall? Do I lean forward? And it is very much a prescription as to, okay, what do the best runners do? Does that mean I should do it? Whereas the angle that you come at it from is one which almost seems to have a spiritual component to it. It's like an expression of sort of like what you just.
Lawrence van Lingen (09:03.809)
Yeah.
Tyson (09:20.785)
touched on before, like a lot of us know how to run. We've just got to refine some of the things as we go along. Like sure, we can make little adaptions and things, but I'd never heard a technique coach take that approach to technique. Like I thought maybe you could talk to that for a little bit, cause it seems that something far deeper than just how you look when you run and the efficiency of how you move when you run is sort of driving the message that you share to athletes.
Lawrence van Lingen (09:46.72)
Yeah, well, let's explain this. So what I do think are hallmarks of healthy movement is our hips should extend first. And then that would imply when you're running that your knee goes behind your hip and then you straighten your leg. You sort of along those lines. It doesn't have to be perfect. Whereas I know it sounds weird, but you can hit the ground.
going backwards and shortening your hamstring, where you can pour the ground backwards, where you can... There's many ways, but basically hip extension base would mean the primary drive of your running comes from straightening your leg. Okay? If you get that right, it's remarkable how many things will fall into place. So that might help people immediately say, okay, this is what we're talking about when you're running, if you had to sort of define it. But I think for most people,
we lose how to run, we forget how to run. I think nature and nurture and whatever. Children often run with great mechanics fundamentally and overall. They might be a bit wonky, they might be a bit wobbly, but generally speaking, like if we look at things that I think are important in running, like do your shins, you know, your lower leg angle, is that pointing backwards and driving the earth backwards? And the answer is yes.
Do they have, are they stacked? Yes. And then there's a whole lot of sort of features that children have. And I know someone thought that, well, that's very romantic. That's like saying a two year old can squat better than an adult, but he's got different limb proportions. I mean, I'm talking about 10 or 12 year olds, right? Generally speaking, there's a lot that they do right that is very difficult to actually, or can be very difficult to get into adult running, back into adult running. So I think a lot of it is remembering or falling back to base neural patterns. I know it sounds crazy, but
When we work, the way I work is with, so one is I'll treat people manually with my hands. And I just sort of work around with fascia and nerves. But generally speaking, as you clear dysfunction out of a human being, the motor patterns change and the timing and the movement patterns change. And in someone that has very little health tension in their body, very few compensations, very few compensations, they tend to run way more healthier.
Lawrence van Lingen (12:09.373)
without ever cueing someone how to run, you can get them to run better and better and better by helping them overcome dysfunctional patterns in their body. And that's kind of how I work. And literally, I know it sounds crazy, but at the moment I don't cue people how to run. Like very, very, very few cues. I'll tell them posture. Like basically you want a head on top of shoulders, shoulders on top of hips. We want to not lean forward.
Tyson (12:21.361)
you
Lawrence van Lingen (12:37.404)
we probably want to shift forward because I think you should definitely be able to wiggle your toes when you're running. And in my mind, in America, like everyone's got opinions, right? But there's a guy who's really respected, wrote a book and says there's no difference between sprint biomechanics and running biomechanics. And like, I can't see that those are the same things. So generally speaking, we want to be able to wiggle our toes when we run because we need forefoot to rearfoot mobility. And
Other than that, I don't cue running really. I don't tell people what to do with their arms much more than that. I don't tell this angle, release this, do this. And I don't specifically give drills either. And it's remarkable the improvement and the change and the confidence that athletes can have in their running. And the end game of this is not my opinion or my agenda. The end game of this is to get an athlete to a space where they deeply and intrinsically trust their running.
That's the gender, that's the goal. And kind of I see what I do is we have a sort of a bit of a protocol that we go through. It doesn't have to be that way. You can teach people to run many different ways. And my job is to help them solve movement problems that are preventing them from expressing themselves when they run. So it's a very much a different way around from, you know, you can look at a run and say, well, this angle is wrong. Or, you know, if your elbow is up, drop your elbow. Or I don't know, you make...
some judgements about their running. And then you tell people, okay, you need to do this and this and the following. Like I don't, I try not to be reactionary at all. We're trying to, so a lot of the times like it actually drives some athlete. Well, now that I've got really good at this, it's, and my reputation is much bigger, it's easier. But it used to drive some athletes pretty crazy because they're like, you don't tell me enough. And I said, that looks amazing. Keep on keeping on.
And they're like, no, that's not helping. What must I think about when I run? Okay, we've got better at giving them tools and resources that they can think of. But often what we do notice is I'll acknowledge when something shifts and looks like they've held on. So like, let's say I'll say your breathing really looks so much better. The quality, the tone of the breathing looks better. Your neck looks relaxed. You're not using your accessory breathing muscles. What do you feel when you run? Did it feel better? What does it mean to you?
Lawrence van Lingen (14:59.769)
Okay, yes, and how does it make you feel? Do you feel confident? Do you like this? Is this something? And then if we all agree that this is something that's really positive and beneficial, then we welcome it in as a guest and we make it feel welcome and we acknowledge that we've done good. You know, this is a sensation. Motion and emotion is the same thing. You can't separate emotion and motion. You can't separate how you feel from how you run. And a lot of the time, the better you run,
the more simple running gets, it becomes less parts, less things to think about. You feel way more connected. And where this almost spiritual nature comes in is once you start running properly, is you start to realize, hang on, there's a whole other world. And you start to reframe how you see the world and often how the world sees you. So that's like maybe a summary. I hope.
Tyson (15:46.993)
Yeah, man, that's such a, it's such an interesting, inspiring perspective. I think the, like to narrow the conversation down to just technique is such an injustice to what it is that you actually speak about, especially in regards to what you were saying about the natural movement of so many kids. Like I haven't paid as much attention as what you have to the movement of kids when they run. But what I've noticed is my three year old boy, Charlie moves incredibly well. Like it's mind blowing so many.
people watching him run down at the park. And I'm not kidding. I reckon five or six different people who know my role as a running coach have said to me, you've started him early, huh? Like the truth is I've done less work with him than any of the other athletes that I work with as a whole. There's certainly, I mean, a lack of, there's very little tension. There's very little stress in his life and any stress that does exist in his life, it seems to be resolved.
Lawrence van Lingen (16:24.502)
Yeah.
Tyson (16:43.761)
fairly quickly with like a really honest scream or a punch or pushing his brother over or something. He doesn't seem to carry on to tension like so many of us do. So I was just interested to use that for the next question to ask. So you mentioned the natural movement of kids and you mentioned that as we get older, so much of that natural movement is lost or forgotten or not practiced. There's in my mind, a few things come to mind. Firstly, like ability to resolve stress or
Lawrence van Lingen (16:45.686)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (17:11.665)
or the honesty to resolve stress as a kid seems far more effective because we could actually be honest about the fact that we're furious and not to store it up. And then the other thing is, I mean, my boy is so active. There's very few moments in the day where he's actually sitting down for any extended time. There's a lot of natural movement, which would do, Edo Portell would be incredibly impressed with the range of motion that he has. And as you get older, you know, we start to sit down more. We're not as playful.
Lawrence van Lingen (17:18.933)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (17:33.109)
Yeah.
Tyson (17:41.617)
A lot of us don't handle stress as effectively as what we may be able to do. And as you said, like emotion and motion are very hard to separate. And that stands out to me. And so, I mean, flexibility, stress management, what else is going on in an adult's life that's impacting their ability to move as freely as what a child might?
Lawrence van Lingen (18:03.092)
Well, the controversial part would be, you can be over cued or you can be barking up the wrong tree, or you can be, you're moving in a certain way for a reason. You make a false assumption, you try and correct the reason and just suddenly you're going, okay, hang on a minute, like this can amplify and not reduce. And so that's why you've got to be so careful. But the sort of the general answer is basically a huge part of his environment.
I tell some athletes like, we're like pot plants, right? I can have patience because I don't know, they give me plants sometimes, right? Or plants. And I don't have green thumbs, I have human thumbs. And I'm like, God, please don't die. You know what I mean? But you can put a pot plant in one corner of the room and it dies and you can put it in another corner of the room and it makes it. Or it might not like this room, but I move it to the sunnier side of the house and it thrives. And I think environment is massive for humans and...
Tyson (18:47.825)
Hahaha
Lawrence van Lingen (19:02.611)
and in creating the right environment, which is, you know, three podcasts on its own is important. I think sitting in flexion play a massive role in terms of cycling and in terms of running. And I work a lot with triathletes and, you know, 100 % the bike massively influences how you run. And to sort of almost like not only negate, negate the, the bad that can come from cycling, but if you can
try with a triathlete, link the three sports across. So you can find the common movement patterns between the three sports that they start to complement and enhance each other. That's really where the money is. But generally speaking, cycling can really, really wreck your running. For people that don't know how to run and can't intrinsically run very well, a lot of them cross train on the bike or you get injured, you cross train on the bicycle. And I'm like, yeah, you might not want to do that unless you know how to antidote that. And then
And then trauma and emotional trauma, pain, all held in sort of flexion. There's a book called The Body Keeps the Score, which I haven't read and I don't know why, but I've seen some not great reviews about it by experts in pain. And so I'm a bit up in the air of that, but we do hold past traumas in our body and it does affect us and can hold us. I mean, like you can have the wind crushed out of your cells as a teenager and then go through life with that almost
that trauma in you. That would be an emotional trauma. You know, like my mom died when I was 11 and there's zero doubt in my mind that that affected massively how I developed as a teenager and how I moved and how I mean, basically, I'm obsessed with running because I couldn't run. Okay, clearly. So, you know, and then just the mechanical trauma, you know, like someone can like one of the big ones is like, because we sit so much, you know, you can fall on your tailbone and have a coccyx injury and have like
you know, basically pelvic floor spasm and high, high hip stabilizer or high hip rotator spasm. And your talent can just flood out of your body. And then that's that, you know, your movement patterns are affected for the rest of your life. Your autonomic nervous system is affected for the rest of your life. And it's just almost too frightening to think that one, you know, one amazing weekend snowboarding, which ended up going bad, can affect the talent for the rest of your life. You know, but it happens.
Tyson (21:29.837)
Yeah. I used to run with a guy who was an incredible junior talent. Like I think he ran about four minutes at age 17, possibly faster over 1500 meters. He moved, actually, I think he might've been 16, which here in Australia at the time was a pretty impressive time. I think any 16 year old, I think I was 19 when I ran under four minutes for the first time, but he, he got a stress fracture. And I remember before the stress fracture, he was one of the smoothest movies you could just look at. And you know how you can recognize efficiency.
Lawrence van Lingen (21:44.719)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (21:56.367)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (21:58.353)
Like you don't need to be necessarily trained to see Elliot Kipchoge or Hisham El -Gurouj move and say, something looks right about what it is that they're doing. But this guy was the same. You'd watch him and you're like, I know he's doing that right. And I remember it must've been maybe, I can't quite remember, say six weeks to three months was the break. And I don't know what changed specifically, but he came back and in his initial races, I was like, he doesn't look right. He looks, he doesn't look like he used to. He looks jolty and he looks awkward.
Lawrence van Lingen (22:04.079)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (22:24.59)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (22:27.569)
And it was, my, my old coach, Joe Carmody was very, very focused on technique. It was sort of my introduction to the importance of efficient movement before that, the age of 15, I'd never really heard it was all about training and diet and recovery, but nothing about technique. So I was very in tune or at least interested with the way people moved. And from that day 40 never really moved the same. He, he, I think he ran maybe three 45 or so.
Lawrence van Lingen (22:32.558)
Hmm.
Lawrence van Lingen (22:36.782)
Yeah.
Tyson (22:54.609)
in the end, but he never became the athlete that I think so many athletes or so many people around him knew that he could be. So it's interesting to hear you say, you know, an injury that throws you off like that can, can just drain talent from the body, but also seem to, it was like you'd forgotten, as you say, forgotten how to move.
Lawrence van Lingen (22:58.83)
Mm.
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (23:13.709)
Yeah. And so we've, you know, this interesting thought is, which this will segue into another sort of section is, if you're very talented, and if you have a gift and your gift happens to be running, you know, because for a lot of people it's not, you know, I don't think it was my gift. My gift might be helping people to run, but not actually running itself, right? But if you have a gift or a talent and a purpose, and I think you
People should live a life of purpose and should express their gifts because it makes it able to, a healthy way to sustain high performance is to start reframing how, how, what this all looks like, because that's how we hold onto this. Like it's one thing to get an athlete to world -class level. It's another thing to keep that sustainable. And once you start trying to get that sustainable, you start to realize like, I need to look at the world a little different. You know, so.
So that's a whole conversation in itself. But one of the things along that line is if you have a gift, you know, like Prefontaine's quote is something like to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. For me, the gift is not yours. You're a caretaker of the gift and it's bestowed upon you and your job is to express it, but it's not your gift. And if you can separate yourself from your gift, which is kind of like, you know, you know, portals, you're human, you move.
This at the end is not you. You know what I mean? Then I think you get to hold on and keep and nurture the gift longer. I think it's easy to fall back to that gift. But, you know, there's so many people trying so hard and so desperate and adding and and it's difficult. And I've got permission to talk about this, but, you know, there's a runner here in the US, Drew Hunter, who's kind of gone through the same thing. He's a phenom at 18 years and signed a pro contract at 18 years and he's been languishing for four.
really, really badly. It's amazing. He sort of turned that around and starting to basically, like he says, the amazing thing is I know. I was starting to doubt my talent. Was this real? Was I really that good? Could I be that good? He just couldn't express this talent that he had inside him. It was just getting worse and worse and worse. It wasn't even trending in the right direction.
Lawrence van Lingen (25:33.802)
And then to sort of be able to turn that around and start expressing that gift and to start realizing how special it is. And hopefully, I mean, it's still very, very early days, but hopefully from having it, losing it, the second time around, you have a hopefully a much healthier relationship to that gift. And then you're able to express it fully. But yeah, unfortunately, and like, you know, I work with Taylor Nurb and she's had so many injuries that have
radically affected what she could and couldn't do so many times. Like, she's so appreciative of being healthy and starting to trust her body. And she'll never ever squander that gift because it was there, but it was taken. It was there, but it was taken. So just start having that sense of appreciation. And then also it can be taken away from you in a moment. And then you realize like there's a lot of serendipitous, there's a lot of luck. And then I think once we start realizing this,
It's not just talent and hard work and skilled coaching. There's a massive component of luck because in a heartbeat it can be taken away from you for many, many reasons. You know, that's when I think you dissolve your ego and then you really start to have like a more sustainable relationship with your work, you know, and you realize it is a gift and it is your it's a privilege to be able to express it and it can always be removed at any second with this dangerous sort of narrative of, you know,
I'm gonna push through it, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna work hard, it takes this, that, the next stream, you must do it my way, your Instagram handle is, I know mine's in a runner, but you know what I mean? Like, you know, your whole identity is wrapped up in a runner. You know, the universe, I'd love to take that away from you and see, well, how do you feel now that you don't have your whole identity? Who are you? You know, that happens extraordinarily often. I mean, you're basically begging the universe to take your identity away from you.
Tyson (27:10.481)
Hehehehehe
Tyson (27:21.425)
Yeah, that's.
Lawrence van Lingen (27:29.703)
kind of challenging. I know it's a bit spiritual for some people but like you know you gotta wrap your identity into something the universe is gonna delight in taking it all away from you just so you can see what are you now and what do you got. You know if you behave well it'll be returned.
Tyson (27:34.417)
No, for sure.
Tyson (27:43.537)
Yeah, man, I've been. Yeah, I've been learning a lot about the hero's journey in recent years and what you're describing there sounds like a, the painful process that is known as that hero's journey going into the darkness and coming back with some tools that you were never going to be equipped with if you, if you hadn't made that voyage, but man to touch on drew Hunter, I followed the U S trials and, and was pumped. And it was a combination of like such excitement for him and such disappointment that he wasn't half a step.
Lawrence van Lingen (27:51.526)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (27:55.398)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (28:05.926)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (28:11.398)
Yeah.
Tyson (28:11.473)
But in terms of the the progress that that guy's made in recent years is I mean he was stealing all the attention from all the message boards Something's something's gone right. So what you've been working with him for a while
Lawrence van Lingen (28:24.166)
Yeah, just three months or so, very short. His rate of improvement is so phenomenal that it's so weak on week and so like we don't actually know. He doesn't even know what to expect when he races because he's just been progressing so fast. And he has another point that's really relevant, I feel is like, so I've been down to watch his group, the Tin Man, train three times. And some of them are sort of doing like...
Tyson (28:26.225)
Awesome.
Lawrence van Lingen (28:49.989)
getting on the Lawrence program, right? And doing some of the things, but not as much as you might think, right? But the squad's running has totally transformed and the transformation of their running happened in two weeks. And it's because one is, I mean, he's obviously a pivotal part of the squad. His running has changed so much and for the better and humans, we ape, we copy our environment. So that whole environment shifted the way he's running shifted his emotion, his trust, his confidence.
his mom, the coach, everyone. And so suddenly these this polarizing thing and you just seem like the whole group's running is improved. I mean, I went down there a week ago and I was like, this is literally miraculous. I got goosebumps just watching them run because it was phenomenal and that was a two week change. And I'm not directly working with with, let's say, Joey came seventh in the in the steeplechase. I mean, the dude's not running like he was a month ago. I can tell you that much.
You know, and so there is this group synergy in learning. And again, if you create the right environment and you have the right model models, and then, you know, we often see that this sort of the group dynamic, you know, if you've ever done workshops, there's a group synergy that starts to happen with this collective consciousness sort of snaps in. And you'll find often someone at the back of the room figures it out and it almost goes through the room like a domino, but it's from behind. Like how does someone that figures out a movement pattern behind you affect you on this side?
Tyson (30:11.185)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (30:14.916)
Generally speaking, once one person gets it in the room, everyone gets it, even if the eye of clothes is lying on the mat. So there's a cool bit of magic happening there at the moment.
Tyson (30:26.321)
That's amazing. Yeah. You made me think, I often try and decipher, I'm a standup comedian and I often try and figure out exactly what's going on in a room when you're killing. Because you can take one set to one night and bring the house down. It's electric. You can take that same set to another room and the environment's completely different. Like you're doing the same stuff and it's just not hitting. And yeah. And it's like in terms of environment, like I can't stop thinking about what you've said there. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (30:35.844)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (30:45.764)
Yeah, node land is totally different, right? Yeah.
Tyson (30:55.185)
You've moved the pot plant from one corner, whether it's Drew Hunter or me at a standup night or whatever athlete you want to refer to and moved it to another corner and something started to thrive. But I find that whole conversation around the particular energy shift in a room or in a group so fascinating because it's palpable, like especially in a standup. But for you to go back down to Tin Man and notice that even the athletes and families surrounding those that you're working with is different. I mean,
Lawrence van Lingen (31:00.962)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (31:09.922)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tyson (31:24.017)
I know for a fact that if my wife has confidence or loves what it is that I'm doing, it's almost as though I lean into that and get excited about myself and I can see that flourish a little more. Whereas if she's frowning at me and looking down and not happy, I go, okay, I'll either I'll scrap it, ignore it, pretend it didn't happen. So I can kind of see how people feed off that energy. That's fascinating. So what was the, I mean, you don't have to share too much or nothing if you don't want to, but.
Lawrence van Lingen (31:30.146)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (31:40.354)
Yeah.
Tyson (31:50.641)
What was the conversation with Drew? Because I know I remember him as like a 17, 18 year old kid flying. And then, I mean, no offense, just because there's been so many athletes coming through, I'd kind of forgotten about him until a week and a half ago.
Lawrence van Lingen (32:04.545)
So, you know, I don't want to tell his story too much, but when he came to me, he was basically having massive right side tension, pain when he was running, discomfort associated with breathing, tightening up, you know, he was really languishing last year. I mean, he just couldn't run. He kind of turned some kind of corner and was getting a little bit better. But he wanted basically just pain and discomfort out of his body was his primary goal. And he says that no one can help me. I've seen everyone.
like I've been to everyone and everyone's got an idea and a theory but I just got to tell you I'm kind of jaded because no one's helped me. You know and it was interesting he's like pain started to leave his body and function and form started to return and he started to find his own self back and it's it's you know it's a it's a very my life is an absolute privilege because I get to share so many of these these stories of helping people from no one can help me to
probably surpassing his previous best, you know, like a, like a liver, very blessed and, life to just be witnessed that would just be a part of those kinds of stories, you know? So yeah, he's totally transformed the way he runs, the way he thinks his relationship with running and it's extraordinary, you know, and, and, and much more to come. You know, the guys he ran in the, in the 10 K with have got 42nd PB's on him and you know, he just got there by grit. I mean, you know, like he, he just wanted it so bad, you know?
Tyson (33:18.801)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (33:31.679)
But he ain't sacrificing the gift, you know. So, but I think a year or two years of running the way he is running will start to compound in their confidence and believe. So I do believe he's going to go from strength to strength. He's going to run the 5000 tomorrow night in the heat and hopefully the finals and he gets a second bite of the apple maybe. But like I say, he's transformed so quickly and so fast, we actually don't know what he's capable of.
Tyson (34:00.273)
Yeah. I wonder how much.
Lawrence van Lingen (34:01.311)
And he ran after the 10k and said, how did you pull up in your K and he went for run the next day. He says, I feel shockingly good. And that's one of the really, I was like, yeah, well, those adjectives we like. But I think I'm a little worried. I always worried about those towns, not enough accommodation, rooms, people, like just like.
You can catch a bag like I don't know, man. I'm not getting my hopes up. You know what I mean? We'll see. We'll see how it rolls, you know, but I hope he has a good two races. But one of the interesting things is when you move really well, one is when you go from not running to running because I'm like to be frank and brutal and and get up some people's nostrils. Most of us don't run. We hop from foot.
Tyson (34:30.769)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
Lawrence van Lingen (34:55.677)
to foot and move forward. I wouldn't really call it running. I think the definition of running is when people go, this is sustainable. I trust and have confidence in this. And it reflects enough out with it. You can see, wow, that's different. That's they know what they're doing. Right. And a second part of that, because that often happens first, is when feet go quiet. When someone runs and they move so well that you don't actually hear impact.
then you know they've sort of started to master running. Those would be like the two steps you can run and then you master running. But what happens is you know the stress in your body lands differently and your recovery starts to change because it's just not as damaging. It just doesn't take as much out of you. And for people that have been running inefficiently or forcing it or having a big engine or trying hard, one of the big shocking things is like they have to reframe how hard they train or how hard they run because it doesn't feel like they're training. You know I worked with Jan Ferdinand and he says like Lawrence
I just don't feel like I've trained enough. I need to be beat up after training. And I said, you be careful because you're still getting the same dose of training. It's just not taking as much out of you. And you had a really hard time reconciling because you almost didn't feel like I've done enough work. Like if I'm not shattered after track session, did I push myself hard enough? Did I work hard enough? And I know it sounds bizarre, but one of the hardest things for athletes that are
The running is their gift and that was they're good at it, but they worked really, really hard, left no stone left unturned, you know, like did all the things and then like in triathlon, especially like you might be a really good swimmer and a biker, but you can't really run. You mean you're moving down the road fast and furiously, but it's not really running. When they do learn how to run, I mean, we see significant breakthroughs in world -class athletes that have won at the highest level. We see 90 second to two minute increases in their 10K and it happens quickly. It happens in three weeks. You know, Taylor Nibb.
probably knocked about 90 seconds of a 10K in three weeks. When that happens is the ability to say I'm now talented and I'm worthy and I have enough self -love and I don't have drama and issues and past trauma. And we talk about like what happens to us growing up and all the things that can happen to us and to be able to accept that I don't have to work as hard as others. This is easier. I don't have to do as much drills. I can reduce the amount of strength training I'm doing because it can be more on point. I don't have to do
Lawrence van Lingen (37:19.257)
You know, I don't need 45 minutes of phone rolling and activations and all of these things in order to run well. You know, and reframing and going from the hardest worker in the room to suddenly like, no, actually, I can step into my power and I'm talented and I deserve it. And I can promise you the hero's journey works like this. If you don't acknowledge and accept and receive that gift graciously, you're about to go on another hero's journey.
Tyson (37:34.097)
Yeah.
Tyson (37:45.361)
Yeah, that's so interesting.
Lawrence van Lingen (37:45.849)
There's an athlete in mind, I'm not going to mention their name, but they went through that. They didn't accept the gift and trust me, tried and worked hard and added things and went through purgatory because of it. And luckily they're out of it now. But you learn that gift or it will be forced upon you, sort of. You know, we never want to wish a hero's journey on anyone. It tends to be how it works.
Tyson (38:02.833)
Yeah.
Tyson (38:08.097)
Yeah, man, it's very interesting. So just out of curiosity, I can imagine that so many of the people listening to this are coming to the conversation from a technical perspective and the way that you discuss it. I mean, it makes so much sense, but I can just hear the lingering question, but I don't understand what's actually happening. It sounds as though it's a combination of psychology and movement. And as you said earlier, which I loved, you know, emotion and emotion are sort of difficult to disconnect. So
Lawrence van Lingen (38:25.209)
you
Tyson (38:37.041)
Like using Drew as an example, if you're happy to, like what do those first couple of meetings look like? Obviously we've talked about the fact that there was a, there was a lull in between the years of his junior career and where he's at now in terms of performance. And then he comes out in a, you know, in three months and starts just shaking up the U S Olympic trials over 10 K, which was mind blowing. how do you navigate the way through the tension and the pain and the discomfort? Because from, from my perspective, I go,
but we're not giving that many cues. I know you've got a lot of, and I'm so keen to get into your ropes and your backwards walking and so many of the fun stuff that of what you speak about and athletes that I coach have used and rave about. But just before we move on from Drew, like are you able to talk more to that? Cause it's just such a fascinating case.
Lawrence van Lingen (39:11.447)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (39:21.783)
but
Lawrence van Lingen (39:26.551)
I can tell you, no, it's not. I mean, this plays out so often. It's common. Drew got on the wrong... So we have... So again, we talk about extension based movement and hip extension, and we talk about flexion. We run on... This is a narrative, people. So again, people... This is when you start bumping up against your beliefs and anything that hurts... Anything that I say now that hurts you deep inside, you might want to write down.
and just think about because there's a reason it's hitting deep and hard. I think I'm going to take, sorry, my microphone, I think it's just died. Sorry about that. Okay, so you should be able to hear this loud and clear then. Let me just switch it. So you might have to edit this out.
Tyson (40:07.729)
your phone. Hey, you're coming through loud and clear, so don't stress, you still sound fine. Yeah, yeah, gotcha.
No, that's fine. 40 minutes. Yeah, no worries. I'll remember that. 40 minutes, I can never.
Lawrence van Lingen (40:19.765)
OK, cool. OK, where were we? So, OK, so you have flexion and you have extension. Typically, if you can move through extension primarily as the route driver of your running, it tends to land better with your nervous system. So your autonomic nervous system is sympathetic and parasympathetic, and one is fight or flight or a strong reaction or a need
you know, I need extra, which is totally acceptable. We want adrenaline to flow through our veins on race day. That's how we managed to lift our game. But you can't live in a state of fight or flight. And for people with, I'm very respectful that there are people that aren't world class and they were just runners and stuff. And you might be stuck in fours or free form, which is bowing down, sort of will freeze. And there's different sort of trauma responses, which is a whole very complicated world that I don't get too involved in, right?
On the other side, we have parasympathetic, which is rest and digest. And that's the balance between autonomic nervous system. And we want the two to be synergistic and work together. And the one complements the other one. And we want a healthy autonomic nervous system. What seems to happen is if you move from the center out,
My screen is frozen. Can you hear me?
Tyson (41:44.081)
that's okay. Do you know, hey, Lawrence, it'll still, and I can, I mean, this is just a little glitch. I can edit all this out. It's quite easy, but so long as your voice keeps coming through, it is going to keep recording your screen. And so just don't get caught picking your nose or anything. Cause you think, yeah. So if you're happy to just continue like this, we can. And I'll bet you in a couple of minutes, you'll just click back in, but yeah, just so you know, your, your screen and you will still be recorded. And it'll come out just fine.
Lawrence van Lingen (42:01.108)
Okay. Okay. Okay. We'll carry on.
Thank you.
Tyson (42:13.809)
even though you're frozen, I think it's just saving Wi -Fi.
Lawrence van Lingen (42:14.035)
Okay, so we have an autonomic nervous system. We want autonomic nervous system health. And a lot of what I do is to help you move in a way that is not antagonistic to your breathing. So movement and breath complement each other because that ensures that we'll have a healthy autonomic nervous system. And it seems to be playing out more and more. So I have more and more confidence in the statement that if you're running is hip extension based,
it brings along the parasympathetic nervous system along for the ride. And I'm more and more convinced that, generally speaking, a big picture is that flexion based movement cues are antagonistic to that and tend to amplify sympathetic, the sympathetic nervous system. And what I don't think is healthy is having someone wired and tied or in a constant state of sympathetic distress. And
I don't think it's sustainable and it can work for a certain period of time. But after a while, the cracks start to show and then we start to run into problems. And so for me, I try and help people run in a way that they'll be able to run for the rest of their life. And it's very much in terms of movement with your breath and movement in a way that is extension based or moving from the center out. And then that can be like in soccer, like if you watch like Ronaldo, they'll kick and then
you know, they sort of move from their chest and then their foot comes through late. That notion of sort of cracking a whip, like a small movement in the hip has an amplified movement in the foot. If you look at golfers, you know, like a novice golfer will whack with their hands and the best golfers in the world are sort of coming through and then their hands come through so late. It's extraordinary. It almost looks like they're bending space and time. We want that.
for me is the indefinable soft thing that you're talking about your friend that ran so well. When people do that, you take notice and say that's something special and I like it. It tends to be removing from the center out and the benefit of that is your parasympathetic nervous system likes it. So like working with triathletes, a lot of them are here, we're running on their forefoot, we're doing a lot of drills, hamstring drills, flexion drills, hip flexor drills.
Lawrence van Lingen (44:34.447)
You can get it on the wrong side of breathing patterns by doing core, too much core, inappropriate queuing. For me, very, very important, your diaphragm initiates breath and we don't want paradoxical or reciprocal breathing patterns. That's one of the first things I'll ever help an athlete with is make sure that their breathing is healthy. We can talk about that a little later. And so what happens is getting a healthy autonomic nervous system and
People will go from, I know this is like a bit of a weird analogy, but go from a rescue dog, which would be tight and hard. And if you'd rub them, they will be like pokey and firm. They'll probably bite you if you poke them. To a floofy puppy, their fascia starts to open up, their whole body starts to unwind and the whole, and that was kind of where Drew was at. He was a rescue dog. He was tight, guarded, defensive. And unfortunately, you know, you load.
Tyson (45:15.409)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (45:29.422)
People like that with stress, they tend to shut down more, not open up, which is certainly a narrative along these lines was happening in his running. You know, these are complex, intangible things. They can be tangible. I'm trying to explain something that's very complicated, simply in a way that's not antagonistic. So treatment, if I treat people, I mean, this is something you should dive into if you want controversy. You get a guy like Adam Meekins on the end, the sports vision, he says you shouldn't touch people when you treat them.
Tyson (45:45.169)
sure.
Lawrence van Lingen (45:59.181)
Well, I work with my hands and I can work without my hands. So but anyway, part of it is is releasing neural and neural tension or central nervous or spine tension. And you can do that with your hands when I don't. If I work with people remotely, we'll we'll tend to give them neural and neural unwinding. We'll try and unwind and sort of get the back of their neck posture to really stack well and try and start taking neural tension out and then put healthy breathing patterns into into them and then teach.
breathing patterns with movement. And it's just a basically a whole process of unlocking and trust. And generally speaking, as neural tension leaves your body muscles open up, the fascia behaves better, you get less trigger points, you don't need the foam roller kind of as much, you would be a narrative, you become more fluffy puppy, and you're able to down regulate more and heal. And we want to sort of see people sleeping better. You know, like I say, when I with the
with triathletes, a lot of them were insomniacs or so wired, I mean, it's extraordinarily wild. They were just in a constant state of flight and anxiety. And that's very, very common at WTCS level. You know, I would estimate more than half of the pro women's field are insomniacs or don't sleep or have breathing disorders or breathing pattern disorders or have very, very not great quality of life in terms of autonomic nervous system health.
Tyson (47:11.569)
Wow.
Lawrence van Lingen (47:21.613)
You know, the autonomic nervous system just pops up anyway. It's inflammation, it's your gut, it's your breathing, it's your sleep, it's your HRV, it's your recovery, it's your blood lactate curves. You know, it manifests in everyone in a different sort of way. And so basically, we see it as getting, you know, drew out of that. And then, you know, it's just a story of...
Working with your nervous system working with your body and that's where again the reframing and a lot of the time when you start to do it yet Your mental and emotional state changes that you know, I used to be a lifesaver You're Australian, right? It's life's whatever I've been to Australia to world life -saving championships Be to Mandy Beans, right? Yeah. Yeah in America, it's lifeguards, right? So I used to pull a lot of people out of the water and you know
Tyson (47:59.345)
yet you've nailed it.
yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (48:11.053)
You're calm and collected and relaxed. They are not. And they don't have options and they're making really bad decisions in the moment. I mean, they'll stand on their children's head to get air. You know, and it is interesting if you look at that as a massive shift in between a calm, relaxed, competent space and trapped fear of drowning, lack of air, options shutting down, I'm about to die, panicked and trapped.
Tyson (48:21.297)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (48:37.549)
You know, it's just two different worlds. And I know that's a very extreme example, but when people start relaxing their autonomic nervous system unwinds and they start to trust their body and their movement again and they, you know, you have often a very, very powerful mental and emotional reframing. When people's autonomic nervous system relaxes and heals, there's almost always a sense of like a spiritual shift that comes with it, which is, which is doesn't have to be, but it usually transpires.
Tyson (49:04.785)
Yeah, for sure. One thing that I often notice as well, and I'm not sure if this would be an exception to the rule, but I've heard it from a number of people is that running is the ultimate de -stressor. And so I've had experiences in my life where I've been going through like 2018, I'd lost a couple of, I'd lost a close friend and my nan who I was close with in a relatively short period of time. And I remember like looking back now, it's pretty easy to see that it was a period of grief, but at the time I was like, I think I'm, I think I'm depressed. I think I've gone through depression or whatever.
And I remember going out and doing hard efforts in running. And it was almost as though that was the release. And I was thinking about this when, you were speaking about the importance of movement in actually enjoying an activity or feeling as though you're going to another part of reality, because it was almost as though at that time in my life, that relatively difficult effort of, you know, 30 minutes, the standout memory to me is a half marathon. I ran.
Lawrence van Lingen (49:40.653)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (49:52.141)
Yeah.
Tyson (50:03.601)
here in 2017 or 2018, I can't remember. And I got to about 15 Ks in and I remember thinking, okay, I think I'm gonna be okay. Like there's a part of my brain that knows how to still be okay and happy and relaxed. And I was only able to sort of tap into that when I was actually moving. And I'll tell you that story just to ask is just like your running can be impacted by negative experience or negative emotion. I feel like I've noticed in my own life sometimes the running has
Lawrence van Lingen (50:16.173)
Please.
Tyson (50:32.561)
positively impacted my negative emotion and I've sort of finished the run in a more positive state than what I started the run.
Lawrence van Lingen (50:38.663)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that plays out all the time. And it's a chicken or egg. Like I tell people, it's a carousel. Doesn't matter where you hop on, just hop on. The two do affect it. I think, touching on that very importantly, exercise is the most powerful antioxidant and the most powerful anti -inflammatory in the world. Nothing beats it. Got all the health gurus telling, eat this, add that, Chimuk, ginger.
Tyson (50:47.345)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (51:02.31)
Generally speaking, if running is inflaming you, you're doing it really wrong because you're doing something that is incredibly powerful in terms of its healing and its ability to heal. And if exercise, if you're inflamed and you feel inflamed and everything is inflammatory and you need lots of things, you're probably not doing your exercise as well as you could because you're not tapping into something that's far more powerful than any horrible, apart from a cortisone pack.
you know, that you're taking. And yeah, and you know, the gift is if you run well, I think it amplifies what your experience is. I mean, you know, you're a good runner. Unfortunately, it can almost happen the other way around with you running against your body and you're running with flexion. And I think it can shut your worldview down. I think the endorphins and the positive aspects of running and, you know, for every downside, there's an upside. So, you know, it can, but it...
You know, you can have people that have very unhealthy relationships with running and it's very evident and anyone from outside can see it. So I'd be hesitant to say like just running, but yes, exercise, sport, moving, thinking on your feet. We think clear enough feet, we're more creative enough feet. One of the things I'm pretty passionate about is the more animated your spine is in your spinal engine, the more creative you become. And so people with a held spine have a rigid mind. Like, my God, I'm going to get into trouble here.
Stuart McGill, you know, and so much of people.
In this country, McGill basically wrote the textbooks for PT and for strength and conditioning and for everything we know. And, you know, there's the McGill big three. But he was like, you need a stiff spine. But that makes you guarded, defensive and reactionary. You know, you need a stiff spine to go to war. You don't need a stiff spine if you want neuroplasticity or creativity or you want to solve complex movements in the movement. You have to be dynamic and flexible and adaptable.
Tyson (52:45.297)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (53:05.926)
and you know, rigid spine, rigid mind, flexible spine, flexible mind. Those two for me are like absolutely synonymous. You know, you're really going to see someone with a round robes of spine, you know, be really creative and funny and, you know, take things lightly. That's just not, there's no world where that sort of happens, right? So it is extraordinary this world of, yeah, for sure move and how healing it can be and how
All the great thinkers of the world thought in their feet, like Darwin, I mean everyone. Beethoven walked two hours before he composed. I mean this is known. We study and you get taught anatomy and muscles and all of these things, but unfortunately we don't get to see how all of this fits in together as a big picture and how amazingly beautiful and complicated humans are.
Tyson (54:01.073)
Yeah, it's very true. I mean, it's been interesting the last couple of years and just how much this is a little bit of a pivot, but it's interesting to see how you can take an isolated conversation or an isolated idea. And if the institution says that that's the way it goes, people buy on pretty quickly, whether it's a doctor or a teacher or a coach or whatever. And I mean, here in Australia over the last couple of years, I thought was an interesting example, just when every professional in the world said that the only way through COVID is this.
And then now we have a look back a couple of years ago and we go, okay, well, it appears as though there might've been some other options that other countries tried that were also effective, but, and so the humility comes a little after the fact. And so, I mean, I really liked the idea that you can, the idea of just going to an expert or one expert for anything is a little less, I have a little less confidence in than what I did just a few years ago, because yeah, so often it seems that,
Lawrence van Lingen (54:38.694)
Yeah.
Tyson (54:59.249)
a lot of the time someone who's well trained or especially from an institutional sense is often just parroting what the people before them have said. So I always like when you get an independent thinker come through and I mean still speak to them, but not necessarily take everything they say as gospel.
Lawrence van Lingen (55:07.046)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (55:15.27)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, and again, like everything is actually true and the opposite of everything is also true. It's very difficult because we like to think in binary terms like right and wrong and this way or that way, you know, and again, to speaking to someone that they'd say, well, totally stuff spine and maybe I've rubbed you up the wrong way. Just remember any time what I say rankers or prickles you or gets under your skin.
There's an opportunity for growth and there's an opportunity for more and there's an opportunity to...
to become better at what you do or have a deeper sense of understanding. And because we have to, if we can't see the duality in things, we're in deep trouble. And, you know, I once had a decent, very respectful, but a pretty, we went at it conversation with a physio and I said to him at the end, okay, let's leave it here. We can pick this up later. And I said, you must understand. I understand what you know. I was trained and thought like you thought.
I maybe don't know the depth and the nuance and the mountainous that you know, but I understand your side of the story and I've worked like that for 10 years. But I choose not to. Again, you don't understand a thing that has come out of my mouth. Intellectually, you rationalizing, you forming arguments against it and why it wouldn't work. But you don't understand the duality of it. And you only understand something if you can live in both worlds, if you understand the duality.
And that's kind of like if you want to start, you know, I think in a professional that takes their profession seriously, you go through sort of some sort of journey where you first have to study and you have to respect the institution and the books and the textbooks. And you need to know the fundamentals really, really well. You know, like someone was saying, I mean, we're having a hard, I said, look, I could probably tell you exactly what every single joint and muscle in your body should do and how it should move.
Tyson (57:00.977)
Yes.
Lawrence van Lingen (57:10.694)
Once you know that, you can let go of it. You know what I mean? But you first have to know, you have to know and you have to practice and that's just it. Wherever you're at is good enough. But if you want to master your profession, then you're gonna have to start understanding dualities. And unfortunately, understanding dualities is the hardest, most difficult thing. It's harder than a divorce.
Tyson (57:22.705)
for sure.
Lawrence van Lingen (57:34.086)
And we are all very capable and mindful of this myself. We can build ourselves an ivory tower and it can be on a very slippery base and we start defending the tower. And it's impossible, almost impossible to tear your own tower down. But we have to, as curators of knowledge, as thought leaders, as influencers, as people that people come to for advice, you have to hold your knowledge lightly in your hand and you have to be able to also say what I am saying to this person might not be true.
Tyson (57:34.449)
channel.
Lawrence van Lingen (58:03.686)
or it might not be true for them. It's a very, very difficult space too because our brains are not wired that way.
Tyson (58:11.345)
For sure. I was just taking a mental note the next time I argue with my wife, I've got to have this approach. I've got to think about it. But here, right when the emotions creep in.
Lawrence van Lingen (58:17.51)
Tyson, Tyson, no, no, no, no, this is, I'm gonna give you guru advice now, it's really easy. Your wife is always right, okay? So, if you're right, if you're both right, she's right. If you're wrong and she's right, she's right. If she's wrong and you're right, she's right. And if you both make a bad decision, then the bad decision's yours.
Tyson (58:21.873)
I'm sorry.
Tyson (58:38.065)
Yeah, of course. Actually, it's funny you say that because that's what she often tells me, but I've just refused to, I've refused to buy into it. I'd been writing it down because I noticed it stiff in my spine when she said it.
Lawrence van Lingen (58:41.318)
you
Lawrence van Lingen (58:48.582)
Don't go quietly into the night, good man.
Tyson (58:52.977)
I'm gonna make sure I tell her not to listen to this podcast Yeah, I will for sure I will for sure hey Lawrence before before I let you go I was just I was curious because I think one of the things that when People hear your name or see you they often talk about are your ropes And if you haven't seen Lawrence online or if you haven't seen his ropes Make sure you go and check out the videos because they're very interesting. They're very fun
Lawrence van Lingen (58:58.278)
Edit this bit out.
Lawrence van Lingen (59:13.51)
Yes.
Tyson (59:19.825)
Can you just walk me through the ropes a little more or more specifically, are you able to walk through the audience what it is that you're doing?
Lawrence van Lingen (59:26.054)
Okay, so we have a protocol and I hate the word protocol, but we have something that works that gives structure to people so they can understand. So it's not all just like, my God, some spiritual, we want action and it really, really works. And it's sort of playing around and this is tongue in cheek, so please don't get upset people, but we call it like kind of the Holy Trinity at the moment, because it really, really is an effective archetype to create in order to sort of get going. And we use...
the flow rope and backward walking and then tire walking. And I'll quickly sort of take you through them. The flow rope, if you go online and Google flow rope, David Weck is who created the flow rope. And he's a sort of a mad genius scientist kind of guy. I'm using the flow rope very differently. We're using it to help for a couple of reasons. One is it helps people figure out anterior chain and posterior chain in their body.
And from a neurological point of view, so from your frontal lobe and your cerebellum, you can get stuck in a pattern of movement that's very, very difficult to shade. So we want to open the door to posterior chain movement. So a lot of people, because of all the flexion, because of trauma, because of whatever reasons, are almost incapable of moving in posterior chain dominant movements. And I don't view doing a deadlift as a posterior chain exercise. I think swinging of...
the flow rope backwards in a figure of eight is a posterior chain exercise. Or underhand, so it comes underneath from behind and then up and over your shoulder. And most people's dominant pattern is to chop down, like we're chopping wood, you want to swing the rope down. And the other difference from, let's say, work would be that we swing it slowly because it decompresses your spine and it kind of repatterns your fascia. Which athletes want to be tight and crisp and strong and they like kind of swing it fast. So that would be the difference there.
The other thing about the flow rope is you're always moving from the center out. So after a while, it makes your running very, very symmetrical. So your imbalances start to smooth out and you start to get the sense of moving from the center out. And it sort of brings a soft magic touch to your running that just takes a bit of time and process. And we can also teach people the shape and timing of running. So more head over foot and the timing of rope, head and foot at the same time, same time. So you're running sort of from base of support to base of support. So
Lawrence van Lingen (01:01:46.712)
It opens quite a lot of doors. I mean, Flow, we talked about Floris.
Gehrman, Flores Gehrman from Path Projects. And he's got an amazing podcast. You know, he he basically ran backwards and liberated some sort of trauma. And he had this profound emotional response, which he bravely put on YouTube. And he was just sobbing afterwards because he had kind of like yours, like this profound healing or spiritual sort of experience when he when he when he expressed these movements in his running is a way of saying it. So that's the flow.
The second part is backward walking and we use backward walking to help change the timing of running more from land and immediately get off the ground to sort of a land travel forward load and store elastic energy in your muscles and in your super shoes. OK. And then releasing it so we can teach that it gives your brain permission to have your heel on the ground longer. And it also lengthens out your Achilles.
and your hamstrings which prepares you for sort of tire walking. And also it's really, really good at giving you forefoot to rearfoot mobility. So it's fantastic for people. You come in and I treat you, I can assess your forefoot and your first met head and whether you've got a forefoot varus or not. For people that we work with remotely, we find backward walking on an incline drops your first met head and gives you forefoot to rearfoot mobility and basically corrects a forefoot varus.
Most of the time, not all of the time. So just please, let's not think of absolutes here. Never take anything I say absolutely. And I might change my mind next week and none of this will be true. Right? And then...
Tyson (01:03:26.693)
I thought you were going to say I might change my mind next week and it will all be true.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:03:30.741)
Okay. And then we use tire walking and we will walk on a treadmill with resistance bands as well. But basically what we're doing is we... And this is also something that like for me, I never teach anything to people quickly. So most, if we're going to work on any movement queue for running, we'll do it walking or stationary or in a safe, secure environment.
Tyson (01:03:31.761)
Ha ha ha.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:04:00.661)
and then we want to see it show up in the running. I'm not about to tell someone running down the road, I want you to think about this when you're running. It's running too quick, it's too many things going on, you've got too much stuff to process, it's very difficult to absorb that kind of knowledge. So mostly, not exclusively, we want to solve things slowly and then we'll see this in music. You learn your chord shape slowly, you learn your scales slowly, we learn penmanship slowly.
You're running the only sport in the world where like, no, mate, if you take more steps a minute, it's going to get better. More bad steps a minute, right? So so so tire walking is basically learning the shape of glute activation and the resistance of the tire really helps bring your glute max online and helps you figure out and pattern in your brain hip extension based gait and you learn it slowly. And if
Tyson (01:04:31.345)
Yeah.
Tyson (01:04:35.345)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:04:54.643)
Most people that do that magically transform them running and it happens quickly. It happens in about three weeks. And you don't. It's extraordinary. The positive change that happens and shows up in running and so much goodness that it would be sacrilege to try and tell them what they should and shouldn't be doing during that time. It is literally life changing. And and and kind of I know it sounds crazy, but my job when I work with athletes, I'll explain this is probably what we're going to do.
My job is to help you figure out what's blocking the awesome from unleashing. Because my job is to problem solve. I have so much confidence in doing that in terms of what it brings to the table for your running. Basically, I see my job as more if you're not responding, we need to know why. And are you walking in these ways appropriately? And then, yeah, and a lot of times is to sort of...
hold a space for the person so that they can step into it. Like, because literally for, it's not a lot of people want a spiritual response. Like they are desperately, there's a, there's a spirituality component to humans that is just sort of undeniable. Right. The problem is, is that at a certain level of mastery of movement, this does have a sort of a powerful mental and emotional change.
A lot of people are running to lose weight or for secondary reasons. It's not your primary purpose. You're not a drew hunter. It's not your, you're not put in this earth to run. I mean, we were born to run, but you know, it's not your true purpose. And so it's kind of a little difficult. So you might not have such a powerful sort of mental and emotional experience, but interestingly enough, like trying to help create the environment so that
Tyson (01:06:34.129)
So.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:06:47.888)
this transformation, people can reconcile it and have it healthy and nurturing. And it can be very, it can be very not traumatic. It's change. I mean, you know, let's say athletes will change their coaches because like you have a coach that's dogmatic. This is what you need to do. Blah, blah, blah. And suddenly it just doesn't make sense to the athlete. They're like, you know, this doesn't make sense to me. You know, you're accused of even like a
Like it doesn't land like you can't help me anymore. You know the nice thing about Drew is Drew's mom was one of the person that encouraged her to come see me him to come see me and she's all about all of this. So the coach the mom now in that squad it's easy because Drew's had a magical transformation the others are well I'll have some of that that's easy. When you're you know I mean if I walked into like Bertha Salazar's camp for some stage and then suddenly Galen Rapsack all like hey man no you just gotta open up and feel it you know.
Tyson (01:07:26.193)
Tyson (01:07:35.377)
Hehehehe, for sure.
Tyson (01:07:46.001)
Hahaha!
Lawrence van Lingen (01:07:46.415)
It's like, you might find, yeah, I'm like, gently in here, you know? So there can be quite a lot of, you know, so a lot of it is actually, believe it or not, is helping them understand and reframe and to be comfortable and to help them with like, that's a really positive response to running and we welcome that in. You know, so I know it sounds weird, but that's kind of the space that I...
Tyson (01:08:05.681)
Yeah. No, well said, man. No, it's, I mean, I've listened to you enough, but I feel like I'm coming from a position where I seem to lean towards the weird. And so maybe that's the reason I enjoy these conversations so much. But man, I feel like so many people are the same. You've definitely hit a nerve in a positive way. I say that you've hit a positive nerve with a lot of people around the world and seen some crazy results, man. So I'm, I'm cheering for your brother and I'm so grateful, man. Thanks for making the time to come on here.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:08:15.822)
Yeah, yeah. Awesome.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:08:23.918)
All right, good.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:08:31.246)
Thank you.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:08:35.086)
Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you. And yeah, it is nice. You know, like someone said, like you suddenly everywhere I look and I'm like, yeah, you know, like I've been in America 10 years. It's an overnight success. But yeah, at the moment, you know, I'm very blessed. There's a lot of good and going right. And, you know, at one stage I was almost starved for having examples of people that run really well. And yeah, at the moment we're sitting on a groundswell of movement of, and certainly in triathlon, the people that are moving well.
Tyson (01:08:46.033)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:09:04.878)
and moving in such a, I think, a healthy reframing of what can be sometimes harmful, frustrating or damaging. So I'm very, feel very grateful, blessed and privileged. And thank you for sharing. And if you ever need anything, just shout and let's make the world a better place one run at a time.
Tyson (01:09:17.905)
Yeah.
Tyson (01:09:24.209)
Hey, I love it. I love it, man. For anyone who's interested, I'll obviously have your website linked, but is there anything else that you'd like to tell people about courses, training, whatever else they might be interested in?
Lawrence van Lingen (01:09:35.116)
These are evergreen, so hopefully by the second half of 2024 after the Olympics I'll have a running workshop and an online course out there that will take you through. At the moment it's a little roughshod, so if you'd like you can join my community and we do breathing and movement classes and mobility classes and there's a lot of resources. Some people are finding it's not enough for them, which I apologize for, but we're working on it.
But yes, you can join on my community and that, or you just follow along on social media. I try and put quite a lot of resources and knowledge out there. And you can hurry slowly. You can just join along for the journey. And again, environment, community, and culture is so important. So I'm trying to create a community and culture and help reframe the way people view running. Because I think that's the hardest part and the most important part.
Tyson (01:10:26.865)
Yeah, awesome man. All right, we'll leave it there. I'll see you soon.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:10:29.612)
Okay, thank you, thank you, take care.
Tyson (01:10:32.305)
See you later everybody. Awesome man, I'll cut that off there. Hey Lawrence, that was awesome man. Thank you so much. That was a great chat.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:10:37.868)
All right, good.