Power Posing and Running Form!

Power Posing and Running Form!

I listened to a great TED Talk by Amy Cuddy about power posing.  I’m not going to do the research justice but let me try to summarize.

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html

She knew that our body language affects the way other people react to us.  This has been studied and shown to be true.  She wanted to know if our body language affected us, the people doing the body language.

They set up a study to see how ‘power poses’ affected people.  Now what is a power pose?  They defined 5 poses that were either ‘weak’ poses or ‘Powerful’ poses.

You have seen these poses.  Any meeting you go to you will be able to look around the room and see the people who feel powerful down the people who are fearful.  The powerful poses are open and forward and upright.  The weak poses are closed and slouched and down.

The example of a power pose that will lock this in for you is the “Wonder Woman” pose.  Head up, legs spread, and hands on hips… you get the picture.  This is a pose that says “I am powerful!”  Conversely a weak pose is slouched down in the chair with your arms folded and hands covering you face.  This pose says “please don’t hit me with a stick!”

They had a group of test subjects do a weak or a strong power pose for 2 minutes.  They took a saliva sample before and after.  They then put them into a really stressful interview situation.

What were the results?  They had a totally unrelated group who knew nothing about the experiment view the interview and asked them who they would hire and who they would not.  100% said they’d hire the subjects who had done the 2 minute string pose and would not hire the weak pose subjects.

But – the knock your socks off results were in the body chemistry.  The candidates who did a 2 minute power pose had 20% more testosterone and 20% less cortisol.  The weak posers were reversed with less testosterone and more cortisol.  Testosterone makes you confident and ready to fight.  Cortisol is the stress hormone – the same hormone that you get in your system when your body is trying to cope with duress.

The bottom line is that the purely physical pose of the test subjects greatly influenced not only how they acted but their physical ability to act with confidence.

Think about this with your running form.  I bet running upright and confident – even if it is manufactured – causes you to run better.  I know it does for me.

So practice your power poses!