Running the Field: How My Dad Taught Me to Run Properly

When I was a kid, I ran like a Tour de France biker-without the bike. Every time I ran, I ran at an 80-degree angle. Finally, after a few years of watching me awkwardly scamper like a crooked-necked giraffe around the soccer field every Saturday, my dad stepped in.

"Ok, let me show you what you do," he said, pulling me into the living room after enduring yet another soccer game of observing me run in circles on the field like a headless chicken, unable to find the ball. I sat on the couch and watched as he walked to one end of the room, bent his torso so that the edge of his nose was parallel to the floor, then jogged to the other end of the room, his arms pumping back and forth like two horizontal pistons connected to a pipe.

"Now," he said, once he had finished, "this is how you should run." With great exaggeration, he lifted his chest into an upright position, pulled his shoulders back, and pointed to the clock on the wall directly in front of him.

"See?" he said. "I'm looking forward. I can tell you the time as I run." Then, he went through the motions of running across the room, moving so slowly it looked almost like bullet time in The Matrix. Making sure his upper body was not at an angle, he interchanged extending his right arm and left leg with his left arm and right leg.

"Do you see the difference?" he asked when he got to the end of the room. By this time my stomach hurt from laughing so much-he just looked so funny. I nodded. "Ok, your turn," he said.

I stood up, and walked over to him.

"All right," he said, as he crossed to the other side of the room. "I'm going to hold up some fingers, and while you run, you tell me how many fingers you see, ok?"

Two or three tries later, I was finally able to tell my dad that I saw four fingers. And for a while, this became our routine after my soccer games. Every Saturday, we would come home. Every Saturday, my dad would show me how I ran, then he would show me how I should run. And every Saturday, I practiced running while counting fingers.

It wasn't until a month or two later that I caught myself running funny. I was playing midfield in a soccer game, and as I was running towards the ball, I noticed that the grass seemed awfully close to my face. Then I looked up, and I realized I had been bent over while running. All this time I had never really known how I ran. I straightened up, and I have made a conscious effort to run properly ever since.

Each time I tell this story, my friends want to see how I used to run. And unfortunately for me, my dad has all my soccer games on videotape.