Darcy Norman, Truckee California

I have had another interesting adventure recently; I spent 5 days in
Truckee, California visiting a great physiotherapist - Darcy Norman of
Norman Kinetics (www.normankinetics.com). I met Darcy last September
at the Tigger Point Therapy (www.tptherapy.com) Ultimate 6 Clinic in
Seattle. I was fortunate enough to cross paths with him again
recently when I was training at the GTC in Pasadena.

I had never been to Truckee before. Actually, I had never been
anywhere in the Lake Tahoe area. I flew into Reno, Nevada and drove 30
min to get to Truckee. That area of the US is spectacular, and I had
a great time training and getting daily therapy after every training
session. Darcy is a real expert in running and cycling biomechanics.
He has been helping me understand how to run and ride with proper
mechanics, so that i use the right muscles. For me, that always
seems to boil down to me being able to fire my glutes properly. I
guess this makes sense when you consider that the glutes are one of
the biggest muscles in the body. Before I train, I now religiously do
running drills and movement preparation exercises to make sure my body
is all wired and firing properly.

You can read a lot more about this in Mark Verstegen's book Core
Performance or Core Performance for Endurance Athletes (Darcy wrote
the section on running biomechanics) or check out the website
www.coreperformance.com. Simply doing these simple exercises before
each workout has made a big difference in my training over the last
month.