Surprise Teacher

I saw a program on NHK this morning. It's called Surprise Sensei, or Surprise Teacher.
What it does is that a well-known professional in a certain field walks up to a stranger and gives advice.
This morning the surprise teacher was two-time Olympic medalist Ms. Yumi Arimori.
She talked to three runners who were jogging around the Imperial Place.

The first runner she talked to was a beginner.
Her biggest concern was that she had never taken any lesson from anybody
ever since she took up jogging,
so she wasn't sure whether her running form was good or not.
Ms. Arimori's advice was simple.
She said, "Start with walking. Then slowly speed up. That's the best form."
What a great piece of advice! You don't have to be a genius to follow that advice.

The second runner shared her mental concern with Ms. Arimori.
The runner said, "Take a full marathon, for example,
especially with 5 more k or so remaining, pain often becomes unbearable,
and I don't know how to deal with that feeling."
Ms. Arimori's advice was this: "Always look on the bright side.
In your case, try to focus on the 37 k you have already covered,
and feel positive about it, instead of focusing on the remaining 5."
Again, her advice was simple, and can easily be put into practice.

The last runner she talked to was a male. He had had his right knee
seriously injured, and had even had it operated.
Though he is pain-free now, but somewhere in his mind he had a concern
that knee pain might be back again.
Ms. Arimori demonstrated the kind of running form
that tends to lead to knee injury.
It was a hopping kind of running form, and the landing shock is great.
She then demonstrated another running form that creates much smaller landing shock.
In other words, she showed by examples.

Although the concerns shared by all three runners were different,
all of them universal are to almost all runners.
So being a runner myself, I learned a lot from Ms. Arimori's advice.

Her advice was simple, easy to understand, and easily doable.
I thought she was a great surprise teacher.