What is NPR?

Let’s define what we mean by NPR. It’s the way you ran when you were a young child, the way animals run. Can you remember? Look at the way young children run fast leaning with arms swinging easily and legs flying back with bent knees, in a style that is unique to their physique, but perfectly natural and bio-mechanically efficient. It’s the way our ancestors evolved to run and it’s still in our genes. Of course over the years all of the physical and emotional events in our lives have imprinted themselves on our bodies resulting in tightness and stress often in those very joints that used to be free and loose. We may not be able to return to the perfect form of our childhood but we can take steps to get back to our own natural running form. That is NPR.

Born to Run

The impetus to change our running form started in 2005, when Daniel Lieberman, anthropology professor at Harvard University, gave a lecture from a study called “Born to Run” at the University of Calgary. Daniel Lieberman told the audience “Humans were born to run” according to two million year old fossil evidence. The study suggests humans left their tree dwelling ancestors behind because they developed into endurance runners. Lieberman identified a range of physical traits that suggest human beings evolved as distance runners. The adaptations helped them chase down prey and compete more effectively with the speedier carnivores on the open plains of Africa. The study notes that athletic humans can outrun horses and antelopes over extremely long distances. In parts of Africa this technique is still used today by hunters to exhaust their prey.