Strength Training for Runners: What to Lift and What to Skip

You're listening to the Restoring Human Movement podcast. Thanks for joining the movement, movement. I'm Sebastian Gonzales, show curator and head clinician at Performance Play Sports Care in Southern California. This show's for active people, those who refuse to let pain and injury get in the way of their life and how they want to live it. Trails and trips, fields and courts, whatever moves you. Each episode features rotating host, expert guest, and real clinical conversations that help you move better and trust your body again. Here we go. All right, welcome back, listeners. This is Dr. Mandy Riehl, now Dr. Mandy Riehl, for those who have heard my name before.

Today, we have a very special guest. This is Jason Fitzgerald, coach, strength training extraordinaire in the running field. So, Jason, for those who don't know you, give us a little bit about yourself. Well, thanks, Mandy. Yeah, Jason Fitzgerald. I've been running for, good Lord, 27 years now, which kind of ages me a little bit. I think I'm pushing 28 years as a runner myself. I've been coaching since 2010, and I also host the Strength Running Podcast. Yeah, I really just try to help runners achieve their potential and get their performances where they want them to be, which is often not where they are.

But hopefully through conversations like this, we can help get runners over that hump and get them to where they want to be. Totally. Yeah, for those of you out there who found our podcast through kind of trying to run through an injury, fix an injury, this information today will be a really good bridge from, okay, I'm kind of sorting through the injury. Now what? How do I stay out of that? Of course, but what can strength training build for me apart from just, you know, fixing my foot pain, for example? So before we get started here, we're going to have a pretty general focus. So there's going to be a lot of information in here.

So I would recommend not skipping around too much because we may be referencing things that we talked about earlier in the podcast. So stick around through it all. We'll have great little takeaways at the end of the show. But we're going to go over a ton of fun stuff today. Well, Mandy, I also want to say, not only am I excited, I'm a little bit jealous that you probably have a bigger Monstera behind you than I do. It's taken some punishment over the years, but it's doing okay. It's about the size of covering up my map, so I'm not going to know what to do at that point. Yeah, mine is pushing seven or eight years old.

And it's also taken a little bit of abuse. It's not in the best position right now, but that's what you're going to have to deal with when you're dealing with a jungle vine in your office. Right, yeah. It's my only couple plants in here that haven't died yet with my little window. Cool. So Jason, you're in the strength training world. You are deep, deep in the strength training world for runners. As you mentioned earlier too, if you have not checked out the Strength Running Program podcast, go ahead and check that out after the episode. It's fantastic. But Jason, how did you come to realizing that strength is important?

Well, I came to it through a lot of trial and error. It was because I was hurt all the time. It really stemmed from my personal journey as a runner. Before I was a coach, I ran cross-country indoor and outdoor track throughout high school and again at the collegiate level. And I was a very injury-prone runner with Achilles tendinopathy and plantar fasciitis. You know, all kinds of different strains and SI joint problems and IT band syndrome. I mean, you name it, I've probably had the injury. And it wasn't until my first marathon. I ran the New York City Marathon and I realized afterward when I had started to, you know, try to return to running again after about a week off and I felt terrible.

And pretty soon I developed a case of ITBS that laid me out for about six months and I had to go to four physical therapists and I was just seeing all these different people and trying to leave no stone unturned on how to get past this injury. But then more importantly, not only just get healthy, but what do I do with my training after I get healthy so that I don't have to waste another six months sitting on my couch watching reruns of House because I'm just bored. I really just like to run and I want to get back out there and keep training. So it was a little bit of a process, you know, like I think at the very beginning of that whole journey for me, I started, you know, incorporating certain body weight, strength exercises, much more mobility work, doing some, you know, band work, medicine ball work, things like that, very running specific so that I could, you know, get strong in a way that runners care about and that would actually help me stay healthy.

And now that's evolved a little bit, you know, I still do a lot of that kind of work and I still prescribe it for my athletes as well that I coach and that I work with. But I'm also fully in recognition of how valuable weightlifting is in a gym. And yes, it's great for kind of building more durability, more resilience to injury, but in regards to your running economy and your performance and your body composition and all the other lovely things that we love about weightlifting, you know, there's a lot to love about it. And, you know, if you're any kind of performance-oriented runner, which doesn't mean that you're a professional or anything, it just means that, you know, you have some goals.

You want to run a certain distance. You want to break a certain time in, you know, a given distance. We have to start thinking much more strategically about your training. And I think strength training is so important. I don't even really call it cross-training. You know, it's just part of the training process that runners need to really achieve their best. So it was a very big journey for me. You know, at the beginning, I didn't even lift at all. I didn't do any strength work. I didn't think it was necessary. You know, I really was just 18 years old and could get away with a lot of, you know, You made it rubber.

Exactly. You know, I could just go to sleep at night and then any problem I was dealing with would be gone by morning, you know, to be 18 again. Right. So I think my youth masked a lot of the training errors I was making at the time. And now that I'm 42 years old, I really have to be thinking a lot more strategically about how I'm structuring my training. And, you know, coming from that college cross-country and track background, it has been very eye-opening coaching adult recreational runners over the last 16 years because, you know, they don't have the same kind of movement fluency that a lot of college athletes have.

And so we've got to build a lot of that into the training program so that, number one, they just feel much better on a day-to-day basis, but also they're building that resilience into the program. They're getting the results that they're looking for. They're getting injured less. They're staying healthy for longer. So, you know, I'm now someone who is such a big proponent of strength training. Now, look, that doesn't mean I love it. I'd rather be out there running a couple more miles. I mean, you know, I'll raise my hand. I'm a pure runner. Totally. Through and through. I don't like being in the weight room, but I understand that it allows me to do what I love to do.

And so now I make it a priority. Yeah, it's like going and, you know, buying shoes. It's not, I don't have a passion for shopping, but I need shoes, so I will go get shoes. But I know what you mean about the literacy. So just on the side for fun, I coach high school cross country and having them in the weight room once a week. You know, they're like 14-year-old kids, just the, you know, the kids who have been returning and doing all the other, maxing out their mileage and all that. But, you know, getting them on a hex bar for the first time ever. And they're growing, they barely know where their limbs are.

It's a very different coaching experience than, say, my patients who I'm transitioning out of care that have been lifting for 20 years already. It's a different type of education and a different type of, like, coaching, queuing situation. Yeah, I think it's really, it's always really interesting looking at different types of people in the weight room. And I'll never forget a conversation I had with a USA Weightlifting national coach who was talking about why runners should be lifting weights. And he said, yes, look, the weight is important, but a lot of what we're doing is simply a movement practice.

Yes. You know, we're working through bigger ranges of motion, different ranges of motion than we would typically get if we were only doing our run training. And, you know, for the adult who sits at a desk for eight hours a day or, you know, who isn't going to the playground and doing all kinds of, you know, weird and wacky movements with their toddlers all the time, like, you've got to build in some of this movement practice into your program. And so, you know, when you get your 40, 50, 60-year-old client in the weight room, you're probably going to notice that their limbs aren't all over the place.

They really aren't going anywhere. You know, they're not moving quite well at all. And so that's a big glaring red flag in my mind that we just need to do more of this. We need to get good at it. It's like someone who, you know, can barely run a mile without stopping. It's like, well, maybe we just need to do more aerobic development. Totally. Yeah, I see it with my patients, too. I don't know if you're familiar with attractor state models much, but for trying to change something biomechanically, part of the idea, instead of just thinking, this is perhaps controversial, so instead of just thinking, you know, run on your forefoot, increase cadence, that stuff can be useful.

But if you're trying to change it for, say, a 50-mile race, you're going to forget at some point those cues. If you're throwing up at an aid station and then trying to trot out of it, you're not going to be thinking about, like, okay, swing my arms. So part of the way that you can hack that, so to speak, is through attractor state models, which essentially says pattern a movement, load it, and then it'll stick better because you're overloading it. You're demanding more of that movement than you will in your sport. That means that it'll kind of settle into your body more naturally than if you were to just think about a form change.

But you have to have the load. You have to have a strength training with it. So super on board with everything you just said. I'm not sure if that was controversial. I've been saying some version of that for years. I think Dr. Mandy probably put that in just a smarter way than I would have said it. But yeah, I'm such a firm believer in that. Like, if you want to improve your running form, if you want to get more economical, sure, some cues can be generally helpful. But the best way to do that is to do the things in training that help you improve your form. You know, and there's very varied things.

Like, you could do hill strides or hill sprints. That's really good for your running economy and your overall form. So is just running a lot. You know, just practice running it. You know, at easy efforts. And, you know, heavier weightlifting is also a really wonderful way of building that kind of intra and intermuscle coordination that's really important when you want to get good running economy, which is probably the number one benefit of lifting for runners is that, you know, you just become a lot more economical at going from point A to point B. Yeah, for distance running, it's, your body takes the path of least resistance.

That is running economy, so to speak. It's, how little energy can I spend in order to move forward in a running fashion? And there's, you know, you can get really in the weeds in the science of it, as you obviously know, but for most people, it's, hey, I want to run a longer race or I want to run faster with the same amount of energy, right? You're trying to not have any gas left in the tank by the finish line. How can I get faster? Well, you get more efficient. And so, yes, training more, but having your running economy improve is like a, it's a total game changer, right? So for people who are just starting to get into running, obviously, both Jason and I are proponents of strength training, but getting more training in in general helps as long as you're doing it wisely.

And for those of you who have been in the game for a long time and you feel like you've plateaued and you know you have more there, but you can't access it, that's really where strength training can come in and give you an extra edge if you haven't done it before. Yeah, for sure. And I especially think that it's probably more important for the longer distances. So if you're a trail runner and you're getting into 50Ks or you're doing some of the longer ultra marathons, you know, the longer event is the more important running economy becomes. You know, if you want to become the next Josh Kerr and, you know, run a 341 mile, well, you know, you could almost focus on like your VO2 max and some of the other metrics of performance and kind of gut your way through a fast mile.

But when those inefficiencies are magnified for, you know, a hundred times the distance in a hundred mile ultra marathon, you know, you're really going to kind of see those weak links really be exposed. So, yeah, I mean, especially for injury prone runners, for those runners who you want to become more durable and build some resilience for those long races, I think it's a no-brainer. Totally. Yeah, on that note too, so, like I mentioned, a lot of people might be listening from a place of either currently having an injury or recovering from one. What's your philosophy on getting into strength training or continuing strength training when there is an injury going on concurrently?

I think you have to let pain be your guide. You know, I'm a big believer in just because you're injured doesn't mean that the training has to stop. You just have to train a little bit differently. So, even if you can't run at all, can you do some cycling? Can you get in the pool and do some aqua jogging or pool running? And that'll do a lot at maintaining your aerobic fitness. You know, and one of the problems that runners often have when they're injured is that they do do a lot of that cross training and they keep their aerobic system very topped up. They're still, you know, very fit, but they're just not used to any of the pounding of running because, you know, they're on a bike or they're in the pool.

And so what happens is they come back to running, say, one, two, three weeks later and they go do a long run or they do a hard workout or they do two hard workouts and a long run in a single week and because they just haven't been running for the last, like, 16 days or whatever it might have been, their body is so unaccustomed to the impact forces of running that they end up with some new injury or some new little niggle that kind of pops up. So strength training can kind of help, you know, keep your muscles ability to withstand some of those impact forces when you get back to your run training after, you know, you're healthy and your PT has cleared you to start running again.

And it also just is really good at kind of, you know, toughening up those connective tissues and making your joints a little bit more durable as well. So if you're injured, I almost think it's the best time to start strength training, you know, unless there's obviously, you know, clear pain that is preventing you from doing a particular movement or lifting, you know, a lot of weight or whatever the exercise might be, you know, so of course let pain be your guide. But, you know, when you're injured it is often the time to start a new healthier habit, you know, to kind of revamp your training in a little bit so that the next injury isn't as severe as this current one or you can sidestep the next injury.

And so if you're someone who hasn't been strength training at all and then you get this injury and you can't run for a little while, this to me is like the perfect time to start strength training as long as, you know, it's not causing any additional problems. You now have the time in your schedule, you're not running to focus on that, to make it a habit so that when you do start running again, you know, you can kind of maintain that habit over time. Totally. Yeah, and it's amazing what you can do modification-wise instead of saying, like I get a lot of nerve-mediated pain-injury folks who maybe they think they had plantar fasciitis that's there for five years, it turns out it's nerve-mediated, that sort of thing.

So there's, for me and my patient population, there's a lot of fear around deadlifting, for example. And it's like, I'm not going to deadlift, something's going to explode, I've had problems in the past. It's like, well, okay, a deadlift is a hinge. They're usually talking traditional deadlift, barbell or hex bar. Deadlifting, it's a hinge. What other hinges can we do that are not problematic? How can we load that up? How can we make that a stimulus without doing the exact thing that was causing your injury? And then when we're feeling better, obviously we work that back in. But there's so much variability and creativity and strength training.

It really doesn't have to just be, you must be on a barbell to do deadlifts. You must be doing back squats. There's lots of stuff out there that's kind of, in my opinion, clickbaity. But there's a whole lot more that you can do to create stimulus rather than just those straight traditional lifts. Yeah, this is why I kind of love lifting from like an academic perspective because it's so similar to running. You know, it's a very pure endeavor. You're just trying to get stronger. It's like running. You're just trying to get faster. And, you know, there's almost an infinite number of ways to modify any running workout or really any strength training workout, you know, by manipulating the exercise, the number of repetitions, the recovery, you know, the load that you're actually putting on yourself.

You know, so I always like to say, like, look, if plan A doesn't work, have a plan B and a plan CDEFG so that, you know, ultimately at the end of the day, you can still do something because almost always something is better than nothing. And I also think it's a wonderful opportunity to, you know, go see a physical therapist or a strength coach or hire a running coach. And it doesn't have to be like for the next six to 12 months or something very long term. You know, you could hire a trainer at a gym just to show you a couple exercise variations. And so maybe you only get one or two training sessions with a trainer or you only go to see a PT a couple times or you hire a running coach for like a month.

Even these very small investments, it's just enough to learn so that you can then apply it to your own training and you can, you know, have that knowledge forever. Totally. Yeah. I tell my patients, I'm like, my goal is to not see you again unless I run into you at a race. I tell my clients, I want you to fire me eventually. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. I'm like, well, maybe that's not a great business model, but you know, the ethos is the same. You should be creating autonomy. You should be go doing what you want to do and it's probably not sitting in my office or on my telehealth call and talking to me.

Right. But I'm curious, Jason, I'm sure you've done a ton of internet research on stuff, just keeping up on research. Have you seen anything without getting yourself in trouble? Have you seen anything that just feels ridiculous but has gotten really popular? Boy, you are trying to get me in trouble, aren't you? I'll hedge the emails for you. Yeah, I mean, like, I think there's a lot of ways that runners go about strength training that I think are sometimes counterproductive, sometimes just less productive than what an ideal kind of program might look like. I think one of the, I think two of the biggest misconceptions that I always cringe a little bit when I see runners doing this is they're in the gym and they're basically lifting for endurance because we're endurance runners, right?

So we go into the gym and we're like, well, I want more endurance. It's very logical. And so you're doing squats, you're doing maybe deadlifts or whatever the exercise might be, and you're doing like four or five sets of 20 repetitions. You're doing very high reps of fairly low weight and the idea is, you know, muscular endurance. But the problem is we get so much endurance stimulus from our running, we don't really have to worry about that in the weight room. Those are not our goals in the weight room. You know, we need to be developing power. We need to actually be getting stronger. We need to be developing, you know, a little bit of that kind of, you know, fast twitch responsiveness that you get from, you know, something like a plyometric exercise or even a more explosive Olympic lift or something like that.

So those are the real main goals that runners have in the weight room. You know, it's power, it's strength, you know, obviously it's movement patterns and coordination, but it's not endurance. And so when I see runners do that, I go, you know, first of all, something's better than nothing. I'm glad you're in the gym. I'm glad you're doing something. You're building the habit. But also, man, we're wasting 80% of our time in here. You know, our time would be much better spent doing heavier lifts for much less time. And, you know, the good news is that, you know, you don't have to be in the gym for like 75, 90 minutes.

Yeah, yeah. The great thing about running is that, you know, most of your time is going to be spent running. You could do a lot of damage on two 30 to 45 minute sessions a week in the gym. So that's probably the number one thing that I see that makes me, you know, kind of scratch my head a little bit. The other thing that tends to be very common among runners is they use strength training for social time. So they'll go to the gym and they'll take the shred class or they love their body bump, body pump class over here. And, you know, this is a similar but different problem. Not only do we not need to really work on endurance by doing very high reps of things, we also don't need to do things with very short rest and in like a circuit so that we're breathing really heavy, we're out of breath.

There's literally like a cardiovascular component to the strength training. You know, it's a metabolic type of a workout. This is similar to endurance. We get enough of that when we're running. So, again, I kind of see it as like, you know, a very fun waste of time. But, if you're going to waste time, you might as well have a great time doing it. But, if your goal is performance, if your goal is to build as much injury resilience as you want to, to build as much power or strength into your strength training program, there's better ways of doing it than taking all these kind of random classes, you know, or lifting for endurance.

The other major issue with all those classes is that it doesn't really leave enough opportunity for progressive overload. So, you're frequently doing very different things in these classes. And, it's sort of like if you had a different mileage level every week. There's good in consistency and a little bit of repetition in doing a little bit more than what you've done previously. That could be more weight, more miles, a longer workout. There's a lot of different ways of manipulating these variables. But, you do need some element of progressive overload if you want to become a better athlete. And, classes just aren't really an efficient way of doing that.

Totally. Yeah, for our total newbies on the podcast, can you explain in just simple terms what progressive overload means? Yeah, progressive overload means that you progressively have to give yourself a little bit more of a harder training stimulus over time. So, when you first start running, you might be running 15 or 20 miles a week and that feels somewhat challenging. Well, fast forward a year and you're training for a 10k, you might be running 30 miles a week. Fast forward two years, you might be running 45 miles a week. And so, over time, you've got to progressively overload your system with more stress so that you can adapt to that stress, get stronger, gain more endurance, and ultimately become a better runner.

In the weight room, that usually means more weight, but it can also just mean a little bit more consistency over time. It can mean a slightly longer workout over time. It's not always more, more. We can be more strategic about it, but generally speaking, overload does usually mean more of something. Yeah. Now for a quick pause before we keep going. Hey everybody, it's Sebastian. If what we've been describing in the show so far sounds very familiar and you've been dealing with some ache, pain or stiffness that keeps coming back no matter what you do and no matter what you try. We're offering a free discovery call today where we brainstorm with you what has been working for you, what hasn't been working, and we also try to unravel what is a critical part of the puzzle that you've actually been missing that's keeping you from full recovery and getting back to full activity.

The link's in the description. It only takes a few minutes to fill out the form. Okay, back to the show. On that note too, you don't adapt to anything unless you recover from it. You don't get stronger on the day that you go lift. You get stronger in the weeks afterwards as your body does all these processes to create muscle hypertrophy and all the good things we like. But with progressive overload, for those who have done some research on it and are like, all right, I'm super motivated, we're going to do it right now, there does have to be a time scale. So this is where our coach comes in really handy.

They will either push you if you're, you know, still hanging out on the 10-pound dumbbells for an RDL and they can also help rein it in to make sure that you're not totally overloading yourself. Progressive overload is an envelope where if you're within that and starting to push it a little bit, you're doing great. If you're totally like, all right, I went from a 100-pound deadlift to like 250 in four weeks, maybe you'll get away with that for a little bit, but not for long. I'm sure you saw that running-wise in the NCAA. Yeah, I mean, it's really easy as a runner just to go, well, I ran 50 miles last week, I'm going to run 55 miles next week and then 60 and then 65 and then you're hurt.

Yeah, and the beautiful Strava graph and yeah. Yeah, the Strava graph looks beautiful, but I mean, look, overload has to happen progressively. I think a lot of people forget that really important modifier at the beginning there. it's not just overload, it's progressive overload and that does mean gradually, methodically, it happens progressively. It doesn't happen all at once. It's not sudden overload. You know, I kind of cringe at a lot of these YouTuber influencers who like run marathons with no preparation. Like, oh my goodness. you're going to end up in the ER first off. Yeah, that's just like your kidneys, don't do that.

That's just dumb overload. Yeah, yeah, that's no progressive about that. That's just overload. Yeah, and I think it's such a strong stimulus that like you were saying about recovery, it's hard to recover from something that you never should be recovering from in the first place. Yes. So that's a really good kind of idea about recovery and overload is that you should never be giving yourself so much training that, you know, you've got to go into this like recovery, you know, black box and get on the foam roller and use your compression boots and sleep for 10 hours for a week and use every electrolyte product that exists and, you know, like recovery kind of happens by itself.

You know, get your sleep, stay hydrated. It's a natural process. Just make sure that, you know, if your coach told you to run 10 miles, you run about 10. You don't run 12 or 14 or 15 because, you know, that's where you're trying to recover from something that you were never really prepared to do in the first place. Totally. Yeah, there's a trap in that I felt really good through 10 miles. I know I can do more. Like, that's great. I want you to do more on the days that we're targeting. So there will be days if you're racing or you want to do an all-out effort that, yeah, you can feel really good through 10 miles and if your goal is to run a half marathon, awesome.

You got 3.1 miles to go. Go empty the tank. Now, the trap is on your, say, weekly long run. If you're doing 10 miles, you feel great. It's really tempting to be like, okay, I'm going to go further. Every now and again, totally. It's the joy of the sport. Absolutely do it within reason. Listen to your coach. If you can wiggle room a little, awesome. If you are really, really, really focusing on performance that may not be as warranted, depends on your goal in the sport. But, you know, doing the trap of like, the endorphins are flowing, I got my runners high, all of that, and then just doing an all-out effort on a day that you're not prepared for it and tapered for it and all that, that's how you end up in my office.

We don't want that. Okay. You know where I actually like to be a little bit more aggressive with overload is with cross-training because the injury risk is so much lower. And so, I'll do something like where I'll have my runners do a long run on a Saturday and then on Sunday, you know, they might wake up, they'll do a short, easy run and then they might do a weight training session. And the magic comes later on in the day. Now, this is for your runners who really care about performance. They want to improve. They want to be aggressive with their performance. They're looking for aggressive overload.

I like, I like a cycling or pool running session in the afternoon for 90 minutes or two hours. And it's almost like you're simulating back-to-back long runs. So you're getting this enormous aerobic stimulus on the weekend. But in a way that doesn't have the same injury risk, you know, I would, I'd be very confident in saying that most runners are not going to get hurt if they do a 90-minute bike ride every Sunday after a long run. You know, as long as they're not trying to keep up with, you know, the Tour de France riders or anything. Like, just keep it a zone two, you know, type of effort. But that's where you can be really aggressive.

You know, you don't have to go 40 minutes and then 45 minutes. I mean, you can kind of start with an hour bike ride and within a week or two you're up to 90 minutes and then you're up to two hours and then you can just ride for two hours keeping your heart rate in that zone two effort. And it's a wonderful way of giving yourself, you know, hours and hours of more aerobic development without the injury risk and the volume of it is somewhat aggressive compared to what you can do with running. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of us have friends doing triathlons or getting into cycling. I have a good friend who does duathlon, which is essentially, it's a triathlon without the swimming.

So he came as a runner. That's my kind of triathlon. He's like, this is great. He came up in cross country, right? High school, college, same kind of thing as you and I. He's like, I just don't want to swim. I'll do duathlon. But he can put in just stupid hours on the bike every week and then go for a trail run with us. And like, right, he's running some. He's getting enough stimulus for tissue tolerance to build. his fitness is fantastic. And it's not like he's doing that much running, but he can go, you know, put down a respectable 1500 on the track. He does for funsies. And, you know, it makes such a big difference when you're getting lower impact.

Now, I will say, I want to put an ass trick on the cross training thing. The one injury realm where this can get a little iffy is bone stress injuries. Not because you're going to create impact on, say, the stress fracture. Rather, because, you know, you're not doing much impact on a bike and you're not doing any impact if you're aqua jogging, but rather the metabolic component for it. So, bone stress injuries come often from an imbalance in energy in, energy out. There's a whole, for those of you on the podcast right now, there is a whole lot of episodes on this. I harp on it probably too much.

But if you are in an energy deficiency all the time, that equation isn't balancing out, then that's often where bone stress injuries are coming from. So, if you're like me and had a bone stress injury in the past and then just went super ham on the bike trying to have some aerobic fitness for when you get back to running, it can delay recovery. So, you do have to work with, one, someone who knows about energy deficiency in sport, relative energy deficiency in sport, or REDS is the formal term. and you need to be working with somebody who can understand why that injury came and then how to build back without you just ending up like on your six-week checkup and being like, oh, the fracture's still there.

Actually, you need six more weeks on the bike, right? So, you need to scale it some, but for almost all other injuries, yeah, go to town. You can go suffer. It is not your preferred method of suffering maybe on the bike or in the pool, but go for it. Yeah, I'm glad you said that because, yeah, bone stress injuries are pretty unique in that, you know, the hypothetical schedule that I just talked about with your long run on a Saturday and then an easy run on a Sunday morning with a weightlifting session and then a two-hour ride in the afternoon, that's a very dense training schedule. It's clearly for someone who has performance goals and is ready for that, but what I didn't mention is that you've got to be eating a lot of food to sustain this level of work.

I mean, you're basically... Yeah, it's a part-time job at that point. Yeah, so you're running a lot, you're lifting weights, you're cross-training. I mean, the energy demands for this kind of a schedule are really high, so you might as well not do it if you're going to underfuel. So the caveat to all, any training discussion is it's got to be well-fueled or you're going to dig yourself into that hole and it's going to take a lot to get out of it. Yeah, and the more research that comes out on it, you know, it's not, they used to call it the female athlete triad. It's certainly not exclusive to females and this is a problem in the lag and research getting too mainstream is a lot of male athletes get into relative energy deficiency and they're like, well, that's not a, that doesn't happen to men, right?

I'm not losing my period, so it doesn't happen. I pretend I don't see it and now I'm good. Yeah, we don't have that easy like warning signal that will clearly tell us if something's amiss. Totally. Now, I've had some of my like high schoolers who were doing sneaky mileage and not telling us get into trouble this way and like, okay, go ask, I don't treat them, right? I keep that separate but go ask your doctor to run some tests, like go get a ferritin check, all that fun stuff and then they come back and they're like, oh, my doctor doesn't believe in that. All right. I don't know how to go from there.

They don't believe in medicine. Yeah, yeah, like no, boys don't need iron checks. You're fine all the time. It's okay. Well, as someone who used to get in a couple sneaky miles every here and there when I was a high school and college runner, I love these kids. Yeah, oh yeah, I mean, how can you, how can you not, right? They can only cheat so much when we make them post on Strava and track their training though. It's not like, you know, when I was running in high school and for most of college for me, it was all Timex watches or nothing and you just go out and it's like, seems like 45 minutes, I think.

So you can get away with a lot. Oh man, oh, I could go for, yeah. Before carbon plated shoes, we've got our little waffles, that's it. Yeah, we call that BC, before carbon. BC. I love that. Oh, the kids will get a kick out of that. Yeah, no, it's different now, but, but yeah, going back, just the, the metabolic demand is not to be ignored and for training in general, as you're doing progressive overload, you need to progressively be eating more and that needs to be the case for men. That needs to be the case for if you are not in an eating disorder category that you can still under fuel. I think people get in the trap of thinking like, oh, well, I don't have body image.

your struggles. I don't have eating disorder struggles. Like, I can't be in this picture. I eat plenty. But if what you're eating is not calorie rich, it doesn't matter. Like, it's just, it's a straight equation. Energy in, energy out. So, whoever you, however you are medically, however you are training, you need to be putting the energy in in order to actually adapt to it. But, applies to all of this cross-training, running, and strength. 100%, yeah. I'm curious too, so I know, I know there's the protein craze going on. I see, I see my clear protein water stuff at the, at the store. What's your take on all that?

Where's your mind at with protein intake? Well, I, I had a protein shake earlier today. I mean, I'm a master's male, so I'm, I'm trying to get ahead of my declining ability to synthesize muscle protein. Look, I, I think it's important. I think distance runners are coming to the idea that it's more important than we previously thought, although it's still kind of a secondary macronutrient to carbohydrate for, for our training needs. You know, we obviously want to be fueling our training with carbs because that's what's going to give us the energy we need to actually execute the training. Protein is more for, not for fuel, but for recovery.

It's for rebuilding muscle tissue when it's been damaged. And, you know, that's historically kind of been the, the purview of bodybuilders, you know, because they're in the gym and they're doing a lot of lifting and that lifting damages their muscle fibers. They drink protein shakes, they eat steak, they do all those things and their muscles repair and they get a little bit bigger and you repeat that process and next thing you know, you're, you're Arnold. but distance runners are a little bit different in that we're not doing training that makes our muscles bigger. We're doing training that, that really just breaks down our muscle.

Um, I think anyone who has run the Boston Marathon or a downhill running race will understand that your muscles can get really, really sore after certain types of running. Uh, you know, I, I still have PTSD from track workouts in college when I would be wearing those little spikes. Yes. That are very different than the spikes we have today. Yes. And the first workout of the season, you know, your lower legs would all be torn up just because you're, you're not used to wearing such, such, you know, a small shoe that has zero support to it. And I, I do wish I was a little bit more intentional with protein back when I was, you know, running 85, 90 miles a week and doing really hard workouts and, and training at that high of a level.

Um, because I think, I think we just were, we're thinking about food, get in more food, you know, we're just, I, me and my friends were a bunch of dumb bros when we were 20 years old. And like, we would think to ourselves, the human body can only get full after about 15 minutes of eating. So you have a 15 minute window where you can eat as much as you possibly can. Yes. Yeah. We didn't have a, maybe our disordered eating was on the other side of the equation. We're just eating arguably better crappy food as we could get into our bodies. Right. But yeah, we, we didn't think about protein specifically as strategically as I would have liked to.

So yeah, I think it's important, you know, I think it's, it's more important for certain types of people. You know, I think the older you are, the more important protein is, but ultimately I'm, I'm probably more of a carb stand than anything just because that's, what's going to be more important for our performances. It's, it's probably more important for avoiding red ass than protein just because it, it is actually the fuel. Protein isn't a good fuel source. So yeah, look, it's important, but it's not everything. Totally. Yeah. Fully agree. People who are replacing carbs with protein. I don't love that.

Adding in. Great. I, I struggle with protein farts, so I'm still figuring that out, but I'm curious your take. I, I've heard a lot of, say like female runners between the ages of like 25 to 45, usually, that are scared of getting bulky and protein being part of that strength training, especially, that seems to be a fairly big barrier mentally for them to get, get started in it. What do you, how do you encounter that? What do you say to that? I would, I would sit down and be very honest about what it takes to build muscle as a woman because it is a little harder for a woman to build muscle than it is for a man to build muscle.

And if, if you're doing a couple things in your training, number one, you're running. It's gonna be really hard to put on muscle if you're, if you're doing any kind of, of real run training. And number two, you have to lift in a very specific way to build muscle. You have to be really focused on hypertrophy, on muscle growth. Whereas, if you're lifting the way a runner should, you're not gonna be in the gym four or five days a week. You're not going to be doing a lot of isolation exercises where, you know, you might do four or five, six exercises exclusively on your biceps. That's what bodybuilders do.

That's what you do when you're looking for growth. Runners aren't gonna really do any of that kind of, of lifting. And so, if you're not lifting with the goal of hypertrophy and you're doing all this run training, you know, it's gonna be virtually impossible to, to gain a lot of weight. I think your body composition can change a little bit. You might lose a couple pounds of fat, gain a couple pounds of muscle. You might end up being one, two, three pounds heavier just because muscle weighs more than fat. I just think that's a healthier body composition in that scenario and honestly, I would, I have to elevate health over performance and that's probably a better thing overall for that individual.

But, you know, I like to joke around a little bit and say, you know, this is sort of like the bodybuilder who thinks that if he goes for a 20-minute run a couple times a week, he's gonna like become a five-minute miler. Right, right. It's much more difficult than that. You have to be very strategic and methodical and patient over a long period of time. Now, you know, I spent about a year trying to lift weights in a way that would make me gain weight and granted, I'm in, I'm in my 40s, it's a little bit harder, but I am a guy, I'm taking creatine, I'm not running nearly as much as I used to. It's almost impossible.

I don't know if like my body has just been like, hey man, you've been running for decades, we're not gaining any weight, you're staying skinny your entire life, but it's so much harder than I think we give it credit. It's really hard to gain a lot of weight with weightlifting and so it's just one of those things where give me a year, be consistent and then, you know, if you turned into a bodybuilder, then fine, you can stop weightlifting, but if not, then let's keep on keeping on. Totally. Yeah, and those changes happen so slowly. Let's even say if you have some genetic predisposition to just put on crazy muscle mass, I don't even know if that's really a thing, so to speak, but even then, it happens so slowly that it's not like you're going to do some deadlifts and then next week you're going to be huge, right?

You can track it if you're worried about it, but you have to start. Like, there's a reason that you're asking about strength training. There's a reason that you're maybe talking to a coach about it. There's a ton of other benefits and if you're really scared about that, you can keep an eye on it. It's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen over the course of a few weeks, certainly, so, you know, there's a compromise there. Even if you're scared about it, it's not like a no, it will never happen. It's a, well, we can keep an eye on it, but it's probably not going to happen. Yeah, you can always dial it back.

I mean, just talking about how, you know, there's always a plan B, C, D, and E with any kind of training approach. You can always just lift a little bit less. You can always make your workouts shorter. You know, you can always dial it back so that you're not giving your body such a strong stimulus and you're not gaining weight as quickly. But, you know, I do think there's, there are some people who just gain weight easier than others in the weight room. Yeah, I mean, I remember reading an article about Alan Webb who is about my age and his coach was talking about how they needed to be careful with him in the weight room because he like picked up a 10-pound dumbbell and just gained a whole bunch of muscles.

Right. You know, like I just think there are just really hyper-responders to weight training and then there's people who are not hyper-responders. I'm probably that kind of person where I can lift, you know, pretty consistently, pretty regularly, try to get the protein I need and I'm just really not moving the needle on, you know, the circumference of my biceps and that's my personal prison I have to live in. Right. As you think of my great, great friend, he was actually a decathlete in college and his buddies used to make fun of him for having chicken legs, like his calves are real small and so he trained the hell out of them.

He still was training the hell out of him when I met him, you know, years after college and became friends with him and they just didn't move an inch. He got stronger but they were the same size visually so he, yeah, that's his personal prison for sure. Yeah, I mean, come on, he's a decathlete, he's the ultimate athlete. Yeah, I'm like, well, dude, your shoulders and lats and your fitness in general is great. Why do you care about your calves? It's no big deal. But yeah, well, cool. I like that perspective on, you know, it being really difficult to actually bulk out for most people. Island webs are not that common throughout the world so if you're listening and scared of it, it's probably, you're probably not in that picture of being a hyper responder and if you are, you'll know medium quickly but you should try strength training before you come to the conclusion that, oh, I'm going to bulk up.

Yeah, 100%. And I think being a hyper responder is a good thing. It means that you're physiologically primed to adapt to hard training. So if it's easy for you to put on weight in a weight room, it's probably easy for you to get faster as a runner just by kind of putting yourself through that same training process. So, you know, if you discover you're a hyper responder to weight lifting and you haven't really explored hard training as a runner, there's probably some parallels there and I would personally be excited just to explore what that might mean for my progress as a runner. Right. Yeah, it's like congratulations, you don't have to spend 45 minutes in the gym, you can spend 25 and go run more if you want, right?

That's a big leg up, I think. Yeah, I would love it. I wouldn't do 60-minute workouts like I have been doing. I'd probably be in and out of there in 30 because like I said, I don't even like weight lifting. Right, right, yeah, I really don't mind weight lifting but I'm a runner through and through so it's like, yeah, if I had that ability to just snap my fingers and be stronger like some of these people, I'd take that any day. But, well, cool. So, you mentioned a while back about isolation exercises. One of the things I often see is, say, runners coming into my office or like, okay, I have a high hamstring strain but I do so many hamstring exercises, like, why did this happen?

I'm curious your philosophy on, you know, compound lifts versus isolation versus, you know, time under tension. Can you give just a broad overview of what that looks like? Yeah, I'm a little bit agnostic. I think there's probably a place for all these different kinds of exercises. There's a time and a place for them as well. You know, my philosophy is when you're in the gym and you're lifting heavier weights, let's be a little bit more focused on the compound lifts. The isolation work is a little bit more for the bodybuilders. Now, of course, there might be a physical therapy reason. You might be doing a very specific set of exercises because you're predisposed to a certain injury or you have a certain imbalance or weakness that needs to be addressed.

And so, yes, let's do a little bit of isolation work there. But, generally speaking, most of our work in a gym I think should be compound lifts, multi-joint lifts. You know, we're really focused on more of a full-body type of stimulus with a little bit probably more of a focus on the lower body as runners. But then, of course, the flip side to that is you're only in the gym I think twice a week as a runner when you're training. Three times a week makes me a little nervous that you just might be carrying a little bit too much extra fatigue into your workouts and long runs. But, if you're lifting in the gym twice a week, that doesn't mean the other five days a week you don't really do anything.

I think there's a lot of value in doing, you know, 10 or 15 minutes of bodyweight work after your run on the other days. So you might be using an exercise band or a medicine ball or a very light implement like a kettlebell for example. But for the most part it's mostly bodyweight and that's where you can do a little bit more of the isolation work. You can pull from a physical therapy office and do a lot of the exercises that you might do there when you're being treated for an injury. I do different types of bridges different types of side leg raises and things like that that are frankly fairly easy but I think teach you a certain amount of control coordination understanding your body kind of feeling how your muscles fire and engage and activate.

I think that contributes to your you know kind of physical intelligence and that can help you stay healthy just better know your body. But I have this very kind of simple philosophy of let's sandwich our runs in between a dynamic warm-up and then some kind of strength or core workout afterwards. Now twice a week that's going to be your weight lifting workout in a gym but the other days of the week it might be as short as 10 minutes maybe it's as long as 20-ish minutes or so and you might be doing a lot of things taken from a physical therapy office or kind of working on some of the basic fundamentals.

You might be doing side planks and side leg raises. I know a lot of PTs make fun of clamshells because they don't really do too much. I like clamshells. They make me feel good. Now of course I'm doing some more advanced stuff too in the gym. That's the difference. That's the difference. But you know on the low intensity days yes I like to do some of the low intensity work because it just makes me feel good the rest of the day where you know if you don't do any of that kind of work after a run I think every runner's had that experience where they've run a workout or a long run they've come inside and they sit down and get distracted by their phone and then when they get up 30, 45, 60 minutes later it feels like they've aged 10 years.

Yeah. Right. My husband did this yesterday. He went and did it was kind of dumb but he went and ran up Mount Baldy down here in the San Gabriel mountains and he was not prepared for it but he's one of those people who was just like I don't know he could just do whatever and be fine but he ran up ran down they barely you know beat the sunset and immediately got in the car and drove like 90 minutes and he got in the door and was just like he just needed WD-40 and all his suffering and even today right on our little run he's like oh I feel great for about 10 minutes and then just bam just horrible it makes such a difference if you can move even just a little bit after your runs yeah and 100% I mean that is an extreme example running up a mountain 90 minutes in the car that's tough but it happens to a lot of trail runners because they will often drive somewhere to go do their big long run on the trails and then they get back in their car and so this is where if you can spend 10 minutes doing a whole bunch of drills mobility work some of those silly strength exercises that you know maybe aren't really getting you too much stronger but they're helping you activate your glute mead for example if you're doing those clamshells which is a muscle many runners have trouble activating and you do kind of that kind of stuff before you get in the car for that 90 minute drive home you're that is the WD-40 and then when you walk in the door you don't feel quite as aged because of it so I think there's a time and a place for it but you just can't ignore the high value work right it's sort of like saying you know does a 20 minute high zone one run do anything yeah it does but you also have to do the threshold work and the VO2 max work in proper doses to really see your potential yeah okay I like that just on that note too so for somebody who's focused on performance who has been say they've been strength training for a while they've been running for a while they got years under their belt and they're doing all of these things and they're let's say they're past I was guilty of this in my last 100k buildup but trying to get most mileage I can my strength training dropped off those little motions out of runs really dropped off more than I care to admit but how do you balance that where do you need to make sacrifices is it doing less weight on strength training is it doing it less frequently is it cutting some mileage out what do you number one it's probably a good idea to periodize your weight lifting just like your running is periodized so when you're four months out from a goal race your weight training might look a little basic it also might be taking a little bit longer it's almost like base training itself for running you're running higher mileage you're focusing on the long run you know maybe you're doing a lot of cross training you're building that big aerobic foundation the same thing is true in the gym we're building a foundation of strength and competency with different exercises so that later in the season when we're focusing on maybe more explosivity maybe we're focused on heavier weights we've built a foundation to then handle that now the good news is that when you're lifting heavy you're not going to be doing three sets of ten you might be doing like four sets of three which you know is not going to take as much time you know of course there's the recovery interval in between lifts which often takes more time than the lift itself so these training sessions can take a little bit of time but that's going to reduce the time that you're in the gym anyway is just because you're not lifting as much volume it's sort of like a taper you're going to maintain the intensity but drop the volume of your running and your weightlifting is going to be similar too so the volume is going to go down but you're going to maintain the intensity maybe the weight increases slightly so that's like strategy number one is making sure your strength is good enough so that you're focusing on what you need to focus at the right time and when you are in that competitive phase of training maybe you're running tune up races you're doing your longest long runs your biggest workouts your weightlifting is structured in a way to help you express that at your potential you know so it's not just you're in the gym for two hours a week and it's just making you tired it's really there to kind of make your running better it's to you know really prioritize your running and make it even more effective I think also we can take some miles out from your schedule to maintain the weightlifting you know even though you know I'm a running coach even though I don't even really like weightlifting that much it's still really going to help your running so much so that if your strength program is great I'd rather you maintain that and just run five miles a week less overall because you're getting so many benefits that an extra couple miles a week probably isn't going to cover you know there was a really interesting study that one of my podcast guests brought up recently which was if you were going to run another couple miles a week or jump rope for another like five minutes per week what is going to have a bigger impact on your race performances most runners would say the extra running but in fact studies show it's the jump rope because it's sort of like plyometrics you're getting a lot of stiffness in the Achilles and soleus muscles which really helps with running economy and you end up having better performances if you ran less and did jump rope for five minutes a week which is kind of crazy to think about it's jump rope how is that making us into better runners right but it's very similar to lifting weights to doing plyometrics to doing that kind of work that's going to improve your running economy so yeah I would sacrifice a little bit of running for the weight lifting provided the weight lifting is not just working hard for the sake of working hard right not broing out or any of that stuff no we don't need any of that we need to be very strategic we you know later in the season our weight lifting workouts maybe are only 30 40 minutes you know we're in we're out that obviously also includes the warm-up so it's not like 40 minutes of really hard work there's a warm-up there's some warm-up sets involved and so you know it's very strategic hard work totally yeah love it I see the people you know that get really into it and really passionate about the sport go really hard in both ways they go really hard on the mileage they're talking to their buddies about like yeah I put in 50 miles this week I'm gonna go for 55 next week and at the exact same time they're talking about like I got to one and a half times body weight on deadlifts and like I'm going for more it's like at the same time I don't know you know for performance clearly like you just said it has an effect of if you're doing too much performance goes down you might have to make some sacrifices there on mileage or on lifting intensity from my perspective the people who are really passionate about it and then do more on both aspects are either going to perform really well because they're just before they're going to get injured and they happen to get in the race this is the vast minority of people or they're going to end up having to see somebody like me because they've totally again you won't adapt unless you recover so I like the idea of sacrificing a little bit of mileage even though it feels counterintuitive just to keep all the strength systems topped up yeah and I'm usually the coach who's promoting high mileage as a training approach because it's really going to help your performances again caveated by doing it correctly methodically safely well fueled and all that but you do have to be careful when there's all this other stress in your life that could be weightlifting you know and if you want to bro out on your weightlifting and your mileage like there might be a time and a place where that's okay like are you 25 years old are you not running any races right now and you don't have a family and you can sleep nine hours a night maybe you're a great candidate for jacking up your mileage and your weight training efforts at the same time but you know for 95% of us we've got to be a little bit more strategic than that yeah can't throw shit at the wall and see what sticks as much yeah I miss being young enough where I could do that though right yeah I'm thankfully still in kind of the age where I can get away with that but more and more it's proving otherwise so enjoy it while you got it right yeah I'm glad I can do stupid shit now but I know it's not going to last long and I'm trying not to be too stupid about it I love it but awesome well this has been fantastic but Jason I want to ask just last question here if you could give beginners some key takeaways some advice they're listening to this podcast they're like all right I'm finally going to do it I'm going to start strength training what are a couple points that you would want them to start with I think at the beginning it's all about habit formation as you're doing the right thing then we can make that thing better over time more strategic more optimized over time so maybe most of our conversation today was on strength training and how to start this process there's a lot of noise out there I would love to see runners sandwich their runs so think of every run as kind of the inner part of a sandwich and before you go running you've got to do some kind of dynamic warm-up this is going to help you get in a little bit of strength work it's going to help you get in a little bit of mobility training and it's just going to help you feel better when you start your run and I think if you can give yourself let's say three to four weeks of being consistent with that you're not going to into your stride because you're doing some drills you're doing some snappy work and that's going to be really helpful and then after you finish a run you've got to do 10 to 15 or 20 minutes of strength training mobility work or core training and this kind of sets the stage for then all right I'm consistent with this what's the next step well the next step is getting into the gym lifting some heavier weights start really trying to build some strength then you can start trying to build some power and so it's you know you're kind of working up the ladder of advanced training strategies here but I every run in between a dynamic warm-up and some strength training and you don't have to reinvent the wheel either like there's you go on YouTube and just search dynamic warm-up for running and you'll get a 10 minute routine that's probably good enough you know I've created a whole bunch of routines like this that exist on the internet somewhere the standard warm-up the mattock warm-up as well are really good warm-up routines for runners and then after your run you know try to do some kind of strength work even just getting like a medicine ball and a couple exercise bands that you can have at home are really easy simple implements that can really make your strength training efforts a lot more productive so that would probably be like the number one strategy that I could offer to your injury rates probably going to go down you're going to improve your running economy and probably going to improve your performances too yeah for those of you out there that are injured right now you know that it helps injury but there are reasons to keep going with strength training and if you're feeling pretty good after your injury and you're like I'm good bye there are still reasons to continue your strength training just what Jason talked about it helps so many things but yeah get an adjustable kettlebell get a med ball you don't even need to go get a gold gym membership get a bucket full of sand from Home Depot but you know there's so many ways to slice it I think starting with those tips that Jason just went over can be totally life changing yeah 100% and when you're ready to get in the gym and start doing some fancy stuff you'll have the foundation of doing a whole lot of body weight stuff of using that kettlebell of using those bands and you'll have sort of like your base training for running you'll have this foundation of strength which will then allow you to do kind of the fancier stuff the real performance oriented stuff you know the things that you see didn't start doing that you know they started with some of the easier stuff first you know just like we can start running one mile before we run 20 you know we can start with some of the easier versions of strength training as well awesome yeah love it so Jason your podcast is out there if you're listening to our podcast you probably have listened to Jason's as well we're in awesome and then where else can our listeners find you and your resources yeah well strength running dot com is my home base that's where you'll find more info about the podcast we have a whole content library we also have different email courses if you want to sign up for like kind of a daily lesson on different topics that'll be dripped out to you slowly over time and I know since we were talking about strength training you can go to strength running dot com slash strength and get our strength training course which will give you an email a day on here's what to avoid you know some of those things that we talked about like lifting for endurance or taking a bunch of classes constantly at the gym and things like that so that you don't waste all your time in the gym because I think that's the hardest part right the hardest part is thinking you need to do some strength training and being a busy adult and then wasting three hours a week on something that's not actually going to make you into a better runner like I don't know for me like my goodness like my heart's beating faster I might be in zone one right now just thinking about it and so I want to stop struggling with injury and you want to get into strength training but you don't know how I'm here to help bridge the gap our kind of process is help you get out of pain put the systems in place for you to keep yourself topped up long term and hand you off to someone like Jason for that long term strength training so that again you don't see me again until we're based in research and all good so Jason thank you again for coming on the podcast this was a fantastic talk and really appreciate you coming on the show my pleasure Mandy thanks for a good chat all right take care all right let's see if anything in today's episode resonated with you visit the link in your podcast player there you'll find any free resource that we mentioned in the show any active people via telehealth across many states in the U.S.

at this point in fact we cover almost half of the population in the U.S. and we add more states every year thanks for listening subscribe to the show and we'll see you in the next one