Posture is everything. Run tall. Run straight. Run True. Form follows function and if we don’t have the capacity within our everyday posture then we take it into our running. I see so many runners sinking into their sagittal plane. Slumping. Look at any race as it passes you. These are invariably the runners at the back. They are also by default spending too long on the ground. They are prone to hamstring and Achilles problems, calf issues, shin pain. The movements that we do in the Run True programme eliminate these issues.

But do we know what straight is? I see this all the time when I put someone in zero drop shoes for the first time (shoes with no difference in height heel to forefoot. Most shoes have something of a ‘lift’ at the heel). They say they are leaning backwards. They’re not. Their feet are level, but they’ve spent so much time with heels elevated that their body has created a new normal.

And unfortunately, our thoughts of posture are inherited from a military perspective of posture – chest out, shoulders back, chin in. This creates rigidity. Good posture for runners means posture in fluid movement. Everything stacked in order that the body can move together as one integrated unit. The neck should be free of any tension, not pulling the head down towards the chest. Kit should sit naturally on top, balanced and allowing the spine to extend and the back to widen. Head should sit stacked over hips, over feet. Alignment gives us freedom and fluidity, not rigidity.

Modern living with sitting, driving, computers and mobile phones don’t help. This back to that race you were watching. Does it ever occur to you watching those runners come past that we are witnessing the descent of man?