Dinner with Frans Bosch & Ronald Klomp

Frans is an artist (to my left) who has had many professional exhibitions, his are is biomechanics and Ronald (second from right) is an exercise physiologist. They both teach at a Sport School that is roughly equivalent to our teacher colleges. Also joining us for dinner was Dick Lam,(right) he is a coach of youth and masters runners and works for A Film the distributors of the running DVD. (Go to wwww.gambetta.com/web specials for the running DVD) Frans Bosch has come up with a new interpretation of what the top sprinters are doing, he calls it positive running. I am not sure I can do it justice with a proper explanation at this time, because we touched on it briefly. Suffice to say he feels there is less of backside emphasis and more emphasis on hip position. This seems to be a logical extension of the ideas presented in their book. In our conversation they seemed to stress the role of coordination as a key element. The elastic ability is very important. They feel that stiffness is key and that it can be trained. Again unfortunately we did not get into more detail.

This was very stimulating visit. These guys are true forward thinkers and innovators. They have generated a lot of controversy with their ideas. I really think they are onto something. It is not a quantum change but it requires some lateral thinking to look at running the way they have looked at it. I am looking forward to a continuing dialogue with them and hopefully another opportunity to visit more at length and go out on the track and try some things and sit down and analyze video.