HUB Life - Triathlon and Endurance Lifestyle
HUB Life - Triathlon and Endurance Lifestyle
#20 Maximizing Gains, Minimizing Pains: Successful Cross Training and Active Recovery to Make You a Better Runner
Ever wondered why you can't seem to break through your marathon times despite logging countless miles? Do you find yourself continually battling injuries? Then grab your headphones and get ready to revolutionize your training approach. This episode dives headfirst into the world of cross-training during marathon prep, debunking misconceptions and highlighting the vital role of active recovery.
Join us as we share our personal experiences and hard-earned knowledge about strategically timing strength-building workouts and cross-training sessions to optimize your performance. We uncover the secret power of swimming fitness, discuss the importance of periodization, and even get expert advice from Dr. Herring on why there's no such thing as a recovery run. We also challenge the status quo by discussing the risks of running too often and the importance of listening to your body to prevent injuries.
Finally, we round up with practical tips on body maintenance, including optimal timing for different types of runs, advice on hip extension exercises, and the benefits of swimming for recovery. Listen to valuable insights aimed at endurance athletes, casual runners, and everyone in between. Whether you're training for your first marathon or your fiftieth, you can't afford to miss this episode as it could be the key to unlocking your potential and improving your overall fitness. So tune in, and let's hit the ground running!
Key Run Specific Mobility:
- Cat/Cow Spinal Warm-up
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1JnDGL7H7Y&list=PLZO-mex6c7t1zkAK3D1F6Sj1LIlsbxiOq&index=11
- Thoracic Mobility:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uV2yHzTREE&list=PLZO-mex6c7t1zkAK3D1F6Sj1LIlsbxiOq&index=7
- Brettzel Stretch:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhrFHLyMs3g&list=PLZO-mex6c7t1zkAK3D1F6Sj1LIlsbxiOq&index=13
- Lie Leg Over Stretch
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3MDW1i_XIo&list=PLZO-mex6c7t1zkAK3D1F6Sj1LIlsbxiOq&index=3
- Thread Needle Exercise
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgff50NResE&list=PLZO-mex6c7t1zkAK3D1F6Sj1LIlsbxiOq&index=12
More Self Care Exercises on Active Recovery + Performance YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuGQ55rBwXshvOtKiOYJcWA
Welcome. I'm Dr Moose Herring, Orthopedic Sports Medicine Specialist.
Speaker 2:I'm Dr Rob Green, Sports Chiropractor, Coach, Trustee Sidekick. We are Lifetime Endurance Athletes. We are Eager Lab Rats.
Speaker 1:We are Maker of Many Mistakes. We are Family-focused sports medicine docs that are balancing family work and fitness and are enjoying the ride While we are sports medicine professionals. This podcast is not part of our professional responsibilities. No doctor, patient or coach-athlete relationship developed this podcast. We have no financial support from any outside resources. The only support we get is from our fantastic wives that sit back and look at us in complete dismay.
Speaker 2:Welcome to HubLife. Enjoy the show. All right, episode 20. Welcome back, man. How are you doing? Pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Another week it's awful, nasty and rainy out there, man, it's like you could.
Speaker 2:you can just swim outside in the parking lot if you wanted to Right Go.
Speaker 1:Feel you came through and ruined some long run plans. And Is that the name of the storm? Ophelia, that's hilarious Fockelstorm Ophelia.
Speaker 2:I said, wow, I don't actually didn't know the name of it, but I don't know what to think about it. At first I'm like that's a pretty good name for a storm.
Speaker 1:Ophelia. So it came. It's supposed to be bad today rainy wet windy.
Speaker 2:It's nice that they even wow we. It's a bummer. They canceled all the soccer games today, but we knew yesterday. So it's just, you get those rare. I mean as much as we go, go, go, go, go, go, go. It's nice sometimes just to have that like it's raining Saturday and Sunday. It's get stuff done. It's sort of chill out and recharge the battery this weekend it's supposed to be nice tomorrow.
Speaker 1:So no excuses. Oh, is it really? Oh, I just thought it was going to rain. Well, it's a blow through whatever that means. Well, cool.
Speaker 2:That's a good way to maybe end the weekend then, and then you got a big trip coming.
Speaker 1:Yep Heading, for. I've never, ever, taken two full weeks off, and so my wife and I are doing a two week trip. It's a great timing post crazy summer getting into the fall, it'd be nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, especially taking two weeks off and then not incorporating a race. It's pretty wild, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:I've been packing and I was like no wet suit, no speed suit, no nutrition. It's weird.
Speaker 2:Odd feeling, man Odd feeling.
Speaker 1:I'd rather be racing. Yeah, don't tell Livy.
Speaker 2:I'll deny everything. There's confidentiality here, except for the broadcasting component of it, exactly. But so what's been happening? Man, I know you kind of you knew a couple of cool things that were happening this past week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing, you know, I kind of. I kind of fall current events and at the Diamond League this week a woman from Ethiopia wrote the 5k world record 14 minutes 21 seconds 14, 20.
Speaker 2:You know it's funny because, as you like, you run 5k and you think about 5k. I'm like what pace is that? I'm like you never have to do that math.
Speaker 1:Well, I had to get on my phone to figure out what pace it was it's 452 pace. Holy crap For 5k you know it's on the track, but I mean that's amazing. So the next big barrier to fall will be sub 14 for women.
Speaker 2:That's great, that's so. That's so fast, it's ridiculous. Wow, gosh man.
Speaker 1:Ridiculous and there was some Iron man races. It's interesting to watch some of the Iron man races now because I think they're being very cautious with the swim. I was watching a buddy of mine this morning racing. He came out of the water in 12 minutes and he's a fantastic swimmer, but he's a swimmer, so I assume they had some water issues and shortened the swim. It's amazing too how, if the swim is shorter, how ridiculously fast they ride and run.
Speaker 2:I mean it's amazing Really, is you know not, if people, I think, realize that being swim fit helps you be bike fit, which helps you be run fit, and then that, because swimming is not the I mean it's intimidating for most, but it doesn't seem that crazy laborsome, but what an impact it has on your bike and your run. So it doesn't like racing to tell you that. But yeah, totally right man. So when people are kind of just going, oh, swim once or twice a week, not a big deal, it's like, well, swim helps you actively recover but also makes the other two sports that much better, right?
Speaker 1:So I think it's huge, so exciting times. Move, move in the fall. We've got some races coming up. A lot of people are focused on marathon training. A lot of people focus on late season halves and North Carolina halves half is coming up in women. That's a fantastic race. That's when is current assisted. It is so fast, it's a flat bike and flat run, so that's that's a great race.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got a couple athletes going to race. I remember you telling some stories of like don't you take a bus to T, to to the start, you take a bus.
Speaker 1:This could be a little frigid, yeah, so that's one of the coolest. I haven't been in. Any race you get on this open air bus I guess they use for it's like. It's more like a trolley than a bus and you, I froze going out. There I was, I was psyched to get to get in the 65 of water cause I was shivering, so bad from the bus ride, but but those are race stories.
Speaker 1:And well, wilmington's a great place, it's off, right, so beach. But it's you. You go from a point and you're you're with the current the whole time. Yeah, it is truly fun. I mean just fast, fast swim, you know, flat, fast bike and super, super flat run.
Speaker 2:So nice not to have to deal with the heat. We've been dealing with the heat all summer long. To have a race that usually I mean I'll probably jinx it, so everybody can email in and blame me for hot if it's hot weather, but generally speaking it's it's chilly.
Speaker 1:And that's the nice thing too is you're starting to wake up to 50 degree or 55 degree weather with a low dew point. It's just fantastic.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just such a game changer. It's like you you go out for a ride and you're like, oh, this is this is nice, it feels good yeah. So that's pretty cool, anything else, what else is? Going on, no, not much else, week to week being consistent, yeah, while the men's championships race is behind us and now the women's is coming up in a couple of weeks and you're truly racing Kona. So I'm kind of excited about that, but just still feels odd.
Speaker 2:This still feels a little strange, but but it'll be fun to see what those ladies do, and have the day of their own will be a pretty cool thing. That's fantastic yeah.
Speaker 1:So this week we're going to look at some things. We're still in our marathon training block on really all things not running, doing the small things, staying healthy, staying fit.
Speaker 2:Some people call it cross training and I think there's a lot of confusion, but that means yeah, I think it's a misleading word right, they think if, if you're not running there for it's cross training, right. And I don't know about you, but clinically I see a lot of people that end up injured or underperforming or just having issues with cross training. And then even when you start to kind of talk about it, they've got some misconceptions. And it's sometimes a challenging thing to get them to understand that. Like, how do you match your quote, unquote cross training with the workload that you're going through, especially when you're run specific, because run is such a such a you know it's tough on the body, so that act of recovery becomes even that much more important. And so, yeah, I thought it'd be kind of cool to like talk through and kind of see where we think it is and maybe get you to understand that like where your, your act of recovery and cross training can come in.
Speaker 1:Right. So if we're focused on marathon training, my sense is the the workouts with the most purpose during the week would be running workouts, and I think the athlete has to decide how many times they can run per week, right? So for me it's probably three to four, sometimes five. So if I'm truly run focused, when I lay out my plan I have to look at how many times I can run per week. That could be miles, that can be hours or a number. So those, each of those workouts has purpose, right? And then what do I have time left, given our family? First, work, second, training, third, what kind of timing do I have left?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then that timing I have left, that's the cross training time. Yeah, right. And in my mind I split cross training into two very different categories. Category number one is recovery. So so, so part of cross training to me means recovery. Part of cross training could be fitness, and that could be strength, it could be money, different things. But when I look at cross training I see one, how much time I have available, and two, it has to have two components recovery and fitness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. What do you mean by fitness? So what do you mean?
Speaker 1:So fitness on top of what running is. So that to me would be strength training. Yeah, that would mean to me riding, riding the trainer, riding the bike for fitness. That would mean swimming for fitness.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. So I think there is some work you can do. It's steady state and tempo on the bike and then swimming for endurance sake.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's not pounding on your legs.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And as I get older I can stand less pounding on my legs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And what do you what when you mean recovery? What do you, what do you mean by recovery?
Speaker 1:So, well, I use active recovery, and that that really is exactly the same thing. I, I absolutely love swimming, for I swim for recovery because, number one, it offloads your body, flip turns, make you stretch your back. Yeah, right, I do a lot of work with fins. Yeah, because I love dolphin kick streamline, because it stretches my hip flexors out. Yeah, and I do it nice and easy, nice, nice and gentle. But you know, swim for recovery, just nice. You know motion 2K to 3K, don't feel fatigue when I get out, but it's all just to loosen things up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but a key.
Speaker 1:A key part of that for me is swimming with fins really, really working on hip and ankle mobility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's not bad, you know it's. It's funny Any, any runners that get into swimming and and it's hard. If you've not been a swimmer, that you know. Getting in the water and just swimming is is challenging, but those that do, you can see the huge benefit of active recovery. You're getting a lot of aerobic fitness. You're also flushing a lot of the.
Speaker 2:You know the byproducts of the. You know run damage and build that you've got. So you get the best of both worlds. You keep cardiovascular fitness but you shed a lot of that run trauma that's in the body and that's, to me, kind of embodies the the goal of what cross training is. Right, you're trying to try to keep your aerobic fitness but let your musculoskeletal system repair and there's a lot of different ways to do that. But yeah, no, I think I'm gosh. Swimming is, to me, one of the best things and most injured runners end up doing aqua jogging or they do something in the water and and a lot of them end up keeping it part of their training because they start to see the value in the active recovery component of it. So, uh, water is just fantastic.
Speaker 1:So something, another component that active recovery is spinning on the bike and if you, if you, if, you have nice weather and you can. You can get out and spin on your gravel bike or spin on your road bike. So low impact hour, easy. I think it's that muscle motion helps to decrease low the impact, you see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's where you know, as we kind of circle back, um, like, I think running three to five times a week is is usually the depending on the athlete, depending on their history, and I think that's sort of the base minimum. We want to run in three and to me, and we can talk about it, but, um, I don't really think that there's a huge value in running over five. I think there's more risk than reward. Um, there's different ways to kind of look at it and depends on the athlete. But, um, I think that's a really good window.
Speaker 2:Um, and you talk about biking and this brings up a good point of like, well, what are you going to do on the bike? So you said it and you said it, you, you glazed over it because it's it's common sense to you, which is like hey, I'm spinning the bike, I'm going to gravel ride, I'm, I'm, I'm aerobic, but I'm not mashing it. We have a lot of people that cross train and they go to a cycle class or they're doing Tabata on the Peloton because they know biking is good cross training. And what is that? Are you actively recovering those muscles? Um, uh, so they can heal and regenerate, so you can get back to marathon training and a lot of times people are going too hard, right, so they might use a low impact, um, but they they forget that lower intensity side of it, um, and they're getting in the way. They're delaying their body's ability to heal. I think of it on the same line of view, but in marathon is like the marathon is the key, right? If you're really trained for marathon and everything needs to, you know match that, which is like you need to be recovering for your next training run to be able to make sure that marathon training is, is prioritized.
Speaker 2:So, um, you know, as we talk about strength timing, that strength really matters. And what are your goals without, if you're? You see people that do CrossFit once or twice a week in conjunction with their marathon training and that, to me, is is overlapping too much. Now. Now you've got muscle trauma, you go to run and those muscles are are inhibited from recovery. They're tired and now you want to, you want to work in them. We see a lot of injuries from that. So, cross chains, one of those things where we can talk about the mode of the sport, which is helpful. But can you bike too hard or can you bike, you know kind of an active recovery. Can you do strength that matches what you're trying to do, or can you over strength, like, how do you, how do you gauge that, do you? Is that something you consider when you, when you look at those?
Speaker 1:Sure, and I think that's that's why it's important to lay this out as figure out which days your, your crucial sessions are running yeah Right, and not not going to those, those, those crucial sessions so fatigued from lifting or cross training hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:So. So the way I have laid it out and it's not right for everybody is if you have an active recovery the day before, you're more likely to go in relatively rested for your purposeful run session. Right, and that's why I think it's important to lay out your week. And for me, I can't run purposefully Ironman I mean marathon training every single day. He, he, usually it's an every, it's an every every other day kind of thing. So on that, on that opposite day, it's going to be either I'm going to cross train as recovery or I'm going to try to build some strength stuff. Yeah, I do think you can build some strength on the bike safely by doing some harder intervals. Yeah, right, but you got to be aware that your run will be affected the next day.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I think running tired is okay as long as you understand you're, you know running tired. But I think that's why we one, we lay out our week. What are our run specific sessions? What are we going to do on the opposite days? Is our cross training going to be recovery based or is it going to be fitness based? Yeah, and, and we talked about recovery, swim is great, bike is great. You know, they're all kind of voodoo recoveries out there. We talked a bit earlier today about do you get in your compression boots, do you get in your cryo chamber, do you wear compression socks? I mean massage, all those things to me consider became me considered truly important recovery.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if it works for you, great, yeah. So if we move away from the recovery recovery part of cross training, now you go into the fitness part, what can add fitness to your specific goal? And our specific goal at this point in this podcast is marathon running. Yeah, so that fitness is not being able to run all out for 20 seconds, right? Yeah, that fitness is going to be able to run for three hours, for four hours, for five hours at a long, steady state.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. So how do you gain that fitness? Well, one, you got to run and two, you have to build strength of that running. And in my mind, so strength for for triathlon training for me is a lot of posterior chain strength. So for bike strength, right. So strength for running for me is more core strengthening. It's much more ab work, back work, balance, work right and less Post your chain word.
Speaker 2:Hmm, yeah, um, no, I don't disagree with that. It's, you know, there's, it's funny and you did. The first thing I think is really important is you, you mapped out, okay, how many days a week are we going to run and what days of those go, because timing really matters. There's, there's, there's analogy I love to use all the time. I might have used it at some point on this podcast, but I think of baking a cake.
Speaker 2:Um, I'm back when my wife and I first got married and we moved to Virginia and she had this, um, you know, this chocolate cake she always had for her birthday. And so I called her mom and her mom sent me a recipe and this is pre-YouTube. All that good stuff and, like all good mom recipes, came out of sheet of paper that's just sort of written out and I, um, I got all the ingredients and I was going to make it, I was going to surprise her and give her a little taste of home. And you know, I got all the ingredients, I put them all in together and I shoved it in the oven and a cake did not come out Right. It was all the right ingredients, but I had no concept at that time of like timing. Apparently you had to like mix some things together and whip those together and then mix other things and then melt this and then put in the timing. It was a factor. I was like sweet got all the I'm a good soldier put it in and and I even threw that cake out in the wild and the animals didn't even eat it. It was that bad. So you can have all the right ingredients but you can have the right wrong timing. So timing of the ingredients really matters.
Speaker 2:And one of the things you bring up I think is so key is like well, what days, what days are you going to run? And then, if we're going to just generalize and it's not great to generalize, but let's generalize for this purpose is like, let's say, I run in four days a week. It's not uncommon that you know your, your long runs, a quality session rates you're long, you got a long run, you got a quality run, which is is maybe some pacing work and depends on what you're doing and what your philosophy is, and you got your two base runs. So you got two base runs, a long run and a quality run, and I would tell you that a long run to me is quality. It means that you're kind of overstretching your boundaries, and you had mentioned it.
Speaker 2:Well, you go into your quality, whether it's speed or it's distance, and you want to be somewhat fresher for it, because you're trying to stretch your abilities. And then, because you stretch your abilities, you got to have some recovery on the back end of that. So, the day before and the day after Now, in those base runs, you're you're keeping your run durability or getting your run fitness, you're building the mitochondria, as we like to talk about, and so, as you, you map those out. Well, where are you going to put the strength? So, if you, if you have those four runs, where do you put your strength? Where do you put that?
Speaker 1:So, I'll do it pre-base run. Yeah, Cause I don't much, I don't, I don't much care if I'm fatigued on my base run. Yeah, Cause for me I I'll train my base for base run at heart rate. So if my my legs are super tired and my heart rate is X, that's my steady zone. If that's 30 seconds slower, that day, I don't care and you know I love that.
Speaker 2:Because what is that? What does that base run sort of feel like? Does that? To me it always feels like sort of the back end of that marathon. You're learning to run just a little bit. You're not running hard, but what's it like to run with muscular fatigue? Because that's what a marathon is You're, you're, you're aerobically fit and there's a lot of aerobic but there's a lot of muscle fatigue that goes into it. Every 15 minutes after two hours is significantly more muscle fatigue.
Speaker 2:And a great example is out of those of you've gone and cheered on friends at a marathon. I don't know about you Anytime I've done it. I've gotten home and be like dude, I feel like I did the marathon. I feel like I'm exhausted, like why do I didn't do the marathon? I'm just as tired and because you're on your feet, so you didn't do the aerobic capacity part of it, but you did the musculoskeletal load of just sort of standing. So you know, if you're doing it just before a base run, you're not compromising a hard run, you're not compromising a long run, you're in fact sort of enhancing you some of that psychological like what's it like to run with some fatigue and if you've got some base strength going into it, you're durable enough to withstand it. I think it's a brilliant place to put a timing of now. What if you did that same workout the day before your your maybe tempo workout? How would that?
Speaker 1:feel it's not going to go as well. No, and so it's not going to be a cake.
Speaker 2:It's not going to be a cake you want man.
Speaker 1:The cake is going to stink.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think exactly so, I think a good way to look at your base run. For for me, I'm trying to build strength right now, strength of running right, so I'll do my strength work after recovery type work outers or or even even even a bike workout that has some has some higher, higher power stuff and strength work. I'll do my base run the next day, fatigue yeah, and if I'm really working strength, I'll throw in hills during that base run. I will absolutely watch my max, max heart rate and sometimes that pace is slow, but that's, that's what it is, just training, right.
Speaker 2:Just training.
Speaker 1:But then you know, and also but before my long run, I'll make sure the day before my long run is easy, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a good day to do an easier ride right, get some aerobic fitness, let your legs sort of flush out. But if you go and do right, it's a cross training day. So if I go do cross fit and I do a whole bunch of stuff and I wasn't running it and you, there's nothing like crushing a workout. So I get the lure of like cross fit, which is wonderful, but you can't like choose one. You either want to do a lot of strength or you want to do marathon. Don't, don't money both.
Speaker 2:But we see, we see a lot of that where you're trying to push hard and you you kind of don't feel it right Because you feel empowered, I'm not sore, and you get all these things about. Like, when I'm not, I feel fine. I don't know what you're talking about, but realities you've. You've now pummeled those muscles it was calves and those quads for the next day. And and even if you're, even if you didn't feel it, it a lot of times it compromises that quality of that workout. Your injury risk goes up, your performance goes down quite often. So that timing really sort of matters.
Speaker 2:Or do you do a swim right? And here's one of the reasons I love the swim too is if you want to push harder in the swim. If you wanted to, you could absolutely do that. Your legs are recovering in the water, so your upper body's going through more, but your upper body's in active recovery. When you run, your arm swing is contributing, but it's it's lighter so. So timing really really matters in the modus sport, but not only in the modus sport, but the intensity that you use that. And if you, if you mistime it or you have this wrong concept of like, hey, it's not running, therefore I should be able to run better the next day, then you're getting in the way. And when you're marathon training, reality is nothing should get in the way of recovery for marathon training. Right, you should compliment it. It should be just that it should be a cross type of fitness or recovery, as you mentioned it, to make sure that it doesn't isn't disruptive to your run or or putting you at higher risk of injury.
Speaker 2:We see a lot, I see a ton of that. I just see so much of it because we think of like zone two for a lot of runners. Your triathletes are, and longer course athletes are generally better with it, but but most of the stuff out there is this hit style training and it's, it's sexier, it's fun. 45 minutes goes quicker when I'm doing a Tabata style workout on a, on a, on a Peloton, as opposed to, you know, doing a like zone two, maybe some odd hard work. That just sort of like, you know, invigorates my body but allows it to to recover and keeps my physical fitness. So it's, it's just, it's. It's challenging, because that word means so much to different people and you know we make assumptions that I don't think are always accurate for everybody.
Speaker 1:So, so, and as we said in the very beginning of the podcast, swim, swim. Fitness is endurance fitness.
Speaker 1:So, as we talked about these shorter swims with these, these, these races, people are lighten it up because of the load.
Speaker 1:So that tells you that swim fitness can lead to endurance fitness. Yeah, and one of the things that have been experimented and been a little bit is this oxygen advantage idea where your body, if you get used to higher carbon dioxide, your body can use oxygen better. But because if the increased, if you get used to more carbon dioxide in your blood, the acidity can go up and your ability to use oxygen is is higher. So so it's a one relatively low impact thing you can do in the water is breath holding drills so you can swim if you, if you can't do this at the Tukahaua, you can't do any underwater stuff because they'll scold you that you're holding your breath. But doing longer full lap swims with with no breath, where you're not hypoxic but getting uncomfortable, can increase your body's tolerance to CO2. Yeah, and that can be a way as active recovery that your overall train your body and that's. That's another session where you're not exhausted but it's uncomfortable a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and do this hypoxic sessions, where every 50 meters you go, you breathe every three stroke and every 50 meters then you breathe seven or five and then seven and I can mess with it. That's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1:But don't do it alone in the pool. Do it with, do it, do it with a lifeguard there.
Speaker 2:We are.
Speaker 1:We are not saying hold your breath in the pool till you pass out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, swimming again, another promotion for swimming is not just because we're triathletes, but something, and running into this every once in a while and it's different. It's different for different people. So, especially for, like, younger people are you may be trying to get their mileage up, up, up, up up, but you see a lot of people that try to run six and seven days a week and do it sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but for most of us, I would say for most of us, myself included quite honestly I look at it. Saying anything over five is sort of like why? Right, well, I've got my recovery runs, I'm not running super hard, but if you've got, if you've got, your two base miles, your long run, and you've got your, your quality run, and then you got some like easier recovery runs built into there, and it's okay.
Speaker 2:What's the goal of a recovery run? Right, the goal of recovery run is to keep your aerobic fitness, but let your body heal. Right, you're not really looking. You should be getting enough durability, I would say, with the four to five runs a week, but that's six and seven. The one is is every time you take a step, every time you're running, and that you get that eccentric impact, which is the catching of body weight. It's three times your body weight and you might take 80 steps per minute if you have a slower cadence, or 90 steps per minute on each leg. So you three times your body weight times, let's say 85 times however many minutes you're going to run, that's a lot of damage to the system. So even though you're going a little bit slower, there's a lot of muscle damage to it. So if your goal for that workout, if your intent we always talk about what's your intent for that workout if your intent is I want to stay fit but I want to recover from my run, then why are you doing it like that? Why don't you get in the water and be aerobic without the musculoskeletal impact? And it actually without getting in the vortex of performance enhancing drugs. But what's one of the biggest things, and really so the main thing, a performance enhancing drug does, is it aids in recovery? Right, it's not so much to help you perform better, it's to help you recover faster so you can perform better. And one of the best ways you can actively to recover faster and to shorten that recovery is active range of motion that doesn't traumatize the tissue. Well, that's swimming. So now you're in the water and you're swimming, you're getting the aerobic fitness that you wanted with your recovery run. But you don't have that three times your body weight to the muscle system. So why not get the aerobic fitness and not have that load? You're fresher, you recovered faster. It's a performance enhancer. You're recovering faster.
Speaker 2:So the next day before you go for your long run, or the day after your long run, or the day after your hard run, if you swim I don't know how many times, I think we talk about this often I'll swim on Monday, the day after a long run on Sunday. There's plenty of times on Monday I'm like I don't want to get in that water, right, and you get out of the water like man. I feel so much better. It helps me recover from my Tuesday workout. So that swim helped me recover from Sunday's long run to my Tuesday base run and I felt a lot better If I would have gone and done a 45 minute Peloton class and done some like interval stuff. That was sort of like felt good and you know Ally loves my spirit coach and I felt like psychologically much better, which, by the way, if you do Peloton, take some of her classes. It just makes you feel psychological. Just don't do it the day before a hard workout.
Speaker 2:But if you do that harder, that harder bike that next day, that that Tuesday run is oftentimes compromised. So if you're not, if you're not actively recovering, then you're compromising it. And to me, if you're going to run as an active recovery and you're running really, really frequent, there's just more benefits. And you'll see that a lot with elite runners who get injured have to Aqua jog and they Aqua jog and they're psychologically worried about how well they perform. I remember there's a reference of a few elite level runners and and they come out and they run better than they ever have and they realized that they had this underlying fatigue that the water let them shed off. So there's huge value in that.
Speaker 2:So if you're doing recovery runs and you're running seven days a week, I would just make you think about that a little bit and say what, if your true intent is to recover, then then I would say that there's maybe a better way. And it feels counterintuitive. Because what's the best way to get better at running? You run right, but at some point, if you're running frequently, that might actually kind of get in the way. And if you, if you try it out, you might be shocked at what you find in your quality of workouts and your growth happens a lot quicker. Why? Because you're recovering faster and your body can then perform a little bit better the next way. So, long story, short sort of get out of your own way right, let your body heal, so this is a huge pet peeve of mine.
Speaker 1:There is no such thing as a recovery run.
Speaker 2:I totally agree with that man. I totally agree with that no such thing as recovery?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I see people in my clinic every day, yeah, every day, and say, oh, I only run four times a week, but I do two recovery runs. That's six the load when you run and when you recovery run you are fatigued, yeah, so if your muscles are, if you think you're going to go out and run 16 on Saturday and you're going to do a quote recovery run on Sunday, oh God, that makes my, your muscles, your quads in your hamstrings are so fatigued. All of that force, four times your body weight, is going to your articular cartilage. So don't bitch to me that your articular cartilage is gone. Yeah, and you do. You run correctly.
Speaker 1:There is no such thing as a recovery run, because our muscles are there to decrease the load to the articular cartilage. Yeah, right, yeah, and the articular cartilage is the surface in your knee joints and your ankle joints and in your back that make it nice and smooth. And when that breaks down, your, your, your ability to run and train and race are compromised. So in my mind and it blows my head off when people say I do a recovery run, and I say, what do you mean by recovery run? I said, well, after my long run. I'll run easy. You're still running, right, yep. Okay. So you're running with super fatigued muscles, yep, and damaged muscles and damaged muscles. So where does that force go? I'm running easy. Oh, that force is going to the articular cartilage. So when you're 60 and you have terrible arthritis in your knee we were talking about a knee replacement your running days are over.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So when we're talking about active recovery, running should not even be in the discussion. Right In my mind I see it every day. There are people that are sad they can't run like they used to because it's improper use of the word recovery. And if you come to me and say, well, I can recovery run, that's great, but when you're 60, you should come back to me. Let me know how those recovery runs are going.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's. There is such a thing as a recovery run.
Speaker 2:Man, it feels so good for you to say that I don't. We've never really sort of talked about that. We have, but like, not to that clarity of like. I couldn't agree with that more. And to get people to see that, and we throw these numbers out, but they're really pretty clear. It's anywhere from three to five times your body weight and if so the muscle can't do it.
Speaker 2:Well, who's next in line, the joints doing it? And, as Dr Henry says, that you're not unwinding that man, and that is cumulative and it might be invisible. And somebody goes in and they get an x-ray by you and say, hey, you're 45 years old and you got a moderate amount of joint loss in your knee and that they go huh, like that's a lot at that age and it didn't happen overnight. That happened cumulatively, right, and over eight to 10 years that happened. You know it's not one bad run and it's not suck it up buttercup and a lot of times it's asymptomatic until one day it starts to become bone on bone and it ain't no asymptomatic anymore and there's no unwinding that. So for your long-term health, that recovery, run is, is and it's so I don't think of the recovery.
Speaker 2:I agree with you, but like and I like the way you say it, Maybe maybe I've just got to adopt that like, cut it when they start to say it, but I still, I still think I do. It is really hard clinically to get people to see that, cause they're like no, no, no, no, no, I'm running so slow, it's not a big deal, and you're like dude, seriously, man, you're, it's about the eight that getting life and beyond it's going to catch up with you. It just doesn't make sense to me. And yeah, they're really. I mean, it comes simply to and I've never said that, but I'm going to now there ain't no such thing as a recovery run. It's just not like that for your body and it's landing in your joints. That's causing damage and that's that's a long term quality of life problem, man.
Speaker 1:And most of these fleet, feet, feet, feet, feet runners. You know I can. I can name off 10 right here. There's tons and tons of people that in in in Richmond that are age group runners that are old like me, who aren't going to be running much longer.
Speaker 1:I have to modify what they do because they're a tickular cart with something we cannot fix is damaged. So if you're a 630 marathon pace, you know person and your recovery run, you're running nine minute miles, cause you're running with, with a group that's slower, and you're talking and you're happy. You're likely going to be a heel striking person. So the weight across the body may even be higher, as you're, as you're midfoot striking at a higher cadence with less time of your foot on, on, on on the ground. So recovery run should be taken out of our vocabulary, cause it's not. You are adding a cumulative force to your joints. Yeah, that's all you're doing. Yeah, so active recovery. So if we're talking about non, we can talk about how much you can run. Everybody's talking how much you can run. Rob's right, four or five times a week is great, but you should not think about recovery run. Damn you should. You should spend your bike, go for a walk. It can be a recovery walk cause it's cause it's it's left in pack.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but recovery run should be. A should be taken out of the English language.
Speaker 2:Dude I? I here's. I want to just give a little bit of clarity to this. This is what's your specialty. I do orthopedics. Yeah. What do you specialize in? I do knees and shoulder, are you so your, your area of expertise, in your area of everyday work, is the knee and the shoulder Right and what? What do you? Who do you?
Speaker 1:treat, I treat endurance athletes quick, cause they they see them out there suffering too.
Speaker 2:Wow. So so you're, you're. You're an orthopedic surgeon specializing in knee and shoulder, treating endurance athletes talking about this. There's no recovery run. So, as you're nodding your head and shaking your head and trying to say that like and rationalize why this isn't the right way, spend a day with Dr Herring in clinic and watch the fit people coming into his clinic and watch the different, the different types of tissues and and that's why it's such a passion.
Speaker 2:We see this every single day. It's not in theory, man, it's not, I mean, and I can just hear the people sort of like moaning in the car that are like doing it. And that's not me. Like I've been running, I've been doing this for years, I've been doing this for years and there's no problem. Like right, that's.
Speaker 2:The problem is that you don't feel it. But like, when you start to look at your right, that that if, when, that, when that articulate cartilage gets hurt, your body's breaking it down and slowly breaking down, it is just decaying. It's like a, it's like a rusty joint man of a hinge of a door or something that is just slowly and you're just using the door. You think there's no problem until all of a sudden, one day, that hinge is like struggling to hold on and you wonder what happened and what day did that happen, like it wasn't that day. So so you see this every single day. This is incredible advice. We I see a clinic from repetitive strength. I mean, at some point I'll see him be like you got to go see Dr Herring. I can't help you. Yeah, um, but um that's your world.
Speaker 1:It's amazing to me because it is a truly repetitive load. It's like bending a paper. I tell people every day. It's like bending a paperclip you bend it, you bend it, you bend it. Ah, it's still good, it still works. You bend it, you bend it, you bend it. Ah, it's changing colors a little bit. You bend it some more, pow, yeah, it breaks. Well, guess what? There is no cure for arthritis. Yeah, and the, the, the look in people's eyes is like they've seen a ghost. When you say I can't help you, yeah, cause you have arthritis in your knee. We are now forcing you to, to, to modify what you do in life. Yeah, you can, you can run a little bit, but you that? That order is under the bridge is gone.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You now have arthritis, Right yeah. And so most people can tolerate four or five times a week. If you can't, you can't. But you're an idiot If you think your recovery running is one good for your articular cartilage and good for your body is not yeah.
Speaker 2:Or even good, then, on top of it, it's a lose, lose, or your performance. It's not this give and take your, your. If your intent is to actively recover, to be better for your next training session, and your thought is to do it through a run, it is not an intelligent way to do it. It's a lose, lose, um, and we just can't emphasize that enough. So, as we talk about your periodization, we talk about, you know, active recovery and cross training. Um, I mean, that's why it's so important. I mean it's, it's, it's recovery and performance, right. So it's going to help you enhance your recovery. It's going to help you, um, get to the goals that you want and if, if you're doing it, um, you know again, some of these just sort of like these.
Speaker 2:I mean there can be different philosophies within it, but there's just some guardrails that we want to put in place that try to protect you from you, and I'm telling you it's, it's coming from, it's coming from love and and, yes, some frustration, because we want to help people.
Speaker 2:We want you doing this for life, we want you to perform well and, and those recovery runs are or more times than not, and I, I man, we see it all day, every day, I see training plans that have it scheduled into it and they just make me like, just discount anything that, wherever that plan comes from, and merely discount kind of any that that is a source, because it's one of the most destructive things you could do for your body.
Speaker 2:So, as we talk about active recovery, just start to look at that and start to you know, have an honest assessment and and see it from our eyes, especially see it from Dr Herring's eyes. I mean, you see us all day and and, man, that's a, that's a, that's a crappy message to give somebody, because we know it's a, it's a lifestyle, it's not, it's not a, you know, it's not a hobby, it's a lifestyle, it's part of what keeps us sane, keeps us happy, and it can be a death sentence to um, to your quality of life, as as you get older, and it's everything that you did earlier that shows up later and and that message sucks. So so, man, you know be, be, be very mindful of it, so we'll circle back.
Speaker 1:So I mean, so we talked about again to review if you lay out your week, your runs have purpose, right. You have a couple of base runs, you have a marathon pacing or harder run and you have a longer run. They'll have purpose, and then we're trying to build fitness right Along that. So what kind of strength work should I be doing, Cause in, in my sense, and what I'm thinking about when? When I watch people at the end of the marathon their core is shot, they're leaning forward, they're they're waddling, or me, I'm leaning forward and I'm waddling. Um, it's less post your chain bike power strength and it's more core endurance.
Speaker 2:I'm going to push back on that one a little bit. Right. So, right, the glued and the hamstring don't do a lot during the run, right, they don't. It's mostly quad calf, low back, um, and that's. That's that wear pattern that we see, um.
Speaker 2:But there was, there was something and I heard a long time ago and I thought it was just so beautifully put when the leg is connected to the ground, when it's your three to five times your body weight, glute is in charge, glutes in charge of that stability. When the leg is in the air, core is in charge. So when the leg is cemented down into the ground, that glute should be really stabilizing the femur. The most right, um, core is included with it. But I am by far a bigger advocate for the glute right, especially the glute max. Right, not, there's three glute muscles. Glute max is your big butt muscle on the backside and then you've got your lateral glute me and glute men, um, and you say you're post your chain because it's your hamstring, your glute and, um, you know you're not focused on that much. I would argue that that's crazy important that you actually focus on that, because the run is pushing into those quads so much that if in your hip flexor can oftentimes get excessively tight and if your hip flexor is excessively tight from the day to day grind that the running is doing and burning that area, if you will, it is blocking your hip extension. Not only is it blocking your hip extension, it's also blocking how well your core, your core now you got me saying it your glute can fire, right, so the old, my glutes don't fire, but like your glutes are fine, they're just out of, like it's not a, it's not a 50, 50 sort of thing, it's like a 60, 40 thing. And the CEO, if that single leg support is the glute and it's not able to do its job?
Speaker 2:Core is important and your core should be strong, but you know that is not nearly as incredibly important as that glute max which. So when it's strength, I would I would kind of clump mobility into that too. You need to make sure your quasi hip flexors are are flexible. You need to make sure that your glute and your hamstring are online, because they tend to go offline on you. Um, and then what ends up happening is you end up using your low back for hip extension more so than anything else. When your low back is tight. Guess what happens next in line, your core gets diminished. So you can see these objective gains in core strength.
Speaker 2:I hear core all the time. Core, core, core, core, core. It's we hear in clinic, in my soapbox and I'm sure my associates I've driven them crazy with this. I'm like get off a core, right, I'm not, I'm not poo pooing it's, it's next in line. It's crazy important. But you're neglecting the glute. And before we even get to the glute, do you have hip extension? Do you have hip extension from your hip flexor? So if we get into strength training right, if I'm trying to counter, match the grind of of of running and you want to act of recovery, stretch your quads and your hip flexors, activate your glute and your hamstring and bring in core with that a little bit. So that means so that means you know every night if we're going to bed, do sideline quads and stretch your quads, stretch your hip flexor, make sure your leg is in extension, not just pulling your heel to your back, pulling your heel to your butt with your knee out in front of you.
Speaker 1:Make sure your hip is in extension.
Speaker 2:Make sure your hip is in extension. Yeah, so you're, I'm sorry. Yeah so you're. You're needing extension. You're flexing your knee but as you sort of like, if you do that quad stretch, we pull your heel towards your butt. Instead of going heel towards your butt, try to pull that leg sort of backwards, so the knee is going behind the hip, the hips actually going into extension.
Speaker 1:So is that easier laying on your stomach.
Speaker 2:Tremendously easier. Well, so this is where we're going to get a little, probably a little too confusing, and so it's easier. On the side. We do have maneuver called the bretzel Um, but that's one that has done kind of um on your side, because you, when you're on your side, you're able to take that leg and start to bring it backwards, and if you're laying on your side, you're not fighting um with gravity. If you're laying on your stomach, your hip is in neutral, If you're lucky, and then you're trying to bring your heel towards your butt. I want it less about your heel towards your butt and more about your knee behind your hip Extension. Okay, so when you're sideline, you're allowed to get that knee backwards. If you're on the floor and you're laying face down, the knee is stuck, so that way you're neutral and that, honestly, most people are pretty tight there because they can barely get to neutral Um.
Speaker 1:So it gets it's complicated and I probably made this more complicated than it needs to be here it's hard to talk about without visuals, yeah, right, but if you, if you think about it, so your hip flexion, your hip, hip, hip flexion is when your knee comes forward forward right, and your hip extension is when your knee, when your hip, goes backwards right Think of your toe off face Right. So if you're standing tall, your hip extension is at zero, right, if you're standing up, your hip extension is a back. In theory, yes. So if we're talking about hip extension, we're trying to bring our thigh posterior or backwards from that position, 100% Right. So we're not stretching our hip flexor unless our thigh muscle is coming behind our hip.
Speaker 2:And to make it a little bit muddier, because I always over, probably overcomplicate it like you said, you're standing there and you're stacked and you're neutral. The problem is there's a lot of people that can't even get neutral. So while they're standing neutral, their pelvis is tilted forward, so they're already extension in their low back. So if you look up muscles so as P-S-O-A-S and rectus fem and rectus febrius, and you look up stretches for those two muscles, you'll probably find some YouTube stuff. But be mindful that when that if, as Dr Hanning mentions, as that leg is going behind the torso, or the knees going behind the torso, or think of like, as you're striding, the leg going behind you, if that hip is not extending, who's next in line? Your low back is going to take that extension. So mobility is really really important. Stretch your quads, stretch your hip flexors, stretch your low back out a little bit, but you've got to be able to get that flexibility before you even get the glute to fire. And then a lot of times when that hip flexor and the hip extensor aren't in coordination, it ends up in the low back and you feel weak. And what do the runners do when they're weak? They focus on core, because we core, core, core. What's the different core work?
Speaker 2:I see a lot of really strong core people who have great strong cores, who who think that they need more because they're running feels like it's kind of a bit weak and it's a lot of times because their hip flexor and the quads are tight and it presents itself as weakness, especially as they get further on in the run or the race or the long, long run or even the fast run which takes more hip extension. They're being blocked. So so, yeah, when we look at strength, I would argue that the glute is crazy important. Make sure you have hip flexor flexibility, then you can access the glute and then bring core along for the ride. But I hear that all the time and I hate to push back too much, but it's.
Speaker 2:I see people just focusing on core and core. Here's the deal. Core is important on the swing face of it. Right, it is in charge. It doesn't mean that it's not. It's not part of the, it's part of the corporation. But the CEO of that corporation is the glute when the legs connected to the ground and the CEO of that corporation is the core when the leg is in swing face.
Speaker 1:Right. So should I be doing heavy weight stuff training for a marathon, or should I be doing three sets of 12 to 15?
Speaker 2:That's a, that's a. You know right what do we say. It depends, right.
Speaker 1:So, in general, a 35 to 55 year old athlete should they be lifting heavy or should they be doing three sets of 12?
Speaker 2:You know I'll give you an answer and then I'll see what you think, cause you may have a totally counter thing to it. The answer is it sort of depends cause what? What's your? What's your strength background? Going into, did you do some preparation and going into? Are you introducing strength for the first time, right? So if you're introducing strength for the first time, don't start to go heavy while you're marathon training. But if you've done some prep work, as as we like to think about, you're getting ready for the storm and setting up that foundation, that I think once a week it's appropriate to go sort of a modest like I want the weight I don't want.
Speaker 2:What do endurance athletes tend to do? They tend to pick up a weight and make it an aerobic activity. What does a string person do? They tend to make an aerobic activity a power activity. So I still would want it to be heavy. But think about what's happening with the run. You are beating up your calves. You're beating up your quads right, with all that loading that we talked about, your gluten, your hamstring are not being engaged as much as those other muscles, so they start to get out of balance. So I like to have a heavier load not overwhelming. Maybe three sets of something that gives you 12 to 15 reps, that you feel pretty tired and the weight feels heavy, but it's not like you're trying to. You know one more rep, sort of thing. And it should have more of a domination towards your glutes and your hamstrings and your adductors and your outside parts of your hip, because the quads are getting calves are getting fried Right. And then you can do stuff like yeah, let's work some squats, but let's do a box squat instead of a traditional squat. And a box squat, if you look at it, aims at the glute a little bit more, as opposed to driving the knee forward, the sort of knees over toes. So I like to see box squats. I like to see deadlifts right. A deadlift is in that single leg stance phase right, just like a runner is mid stance, when the peak is the highest, but it's emphasizing movement to the glute and the hamstring. That's a great exercise and you can make those harder by making those single leg right, because what is running it's a series of single leg supports. You're never in double. So if you have the capabilities now, if you're bastardizing a single leg deadlift and you can barely hold anything, well, it's evidence that you need some help. But number two, like don't try to do that in your strength days. And then what is? Every now you're compromised for that next run. So we like to see box squats, we like to see single leg deadlifts or double leg deadlifts. Here's my favorite right. It's the almost two exact opposites.
Speaker 2:I cannot stand forward lunges for an endurance athlete, right, I can't stand it. Why? Because you're driving that knee forward. You're eccentrically loading it. You talked about that cartilage. The muscles are fatigued. You're lunging forward. Who's catching that?
Speaker 2:You want to see a cool picture? Get a picture of you at the next race in single leg stance and look at how rippled your quad is. Right, because it's working like a dog. So now you're standing and stepping forward and you're training. Well, I'm training my run muscles. I'm like, well, you're training run muscles. When you're running, man, you're beating them up. Now you're just pummeling them into more with more of that eccentric load. So I can't stand forward lunges and they go. Man, you must hate lunges. You know, I love lunges. Do reverse lunges. So now you're coming at it from behind. Guess what? The quad's still working, but you're not catching that body weight.
Speaker 2:And oh, the quad's working, but we're dominating more of the posterior chain that you kind of said maybe we don't pay attention to. I would argue we need to pay attention to it because it doesn't get all that conditioned, it's not working as hard. Therefore, the heavier load needs to match that part of it. Because I'm trying there's being stronger on paper. This is a kind of a debatable subject. Maybe I don't want to get too stimulated. Being stronger doesn't make you a better runner, right? Being stronger can make you a more durable runner, which can make you run more and tolerate more running.
Speaker 2:And as we get older, we tend to get weaker and decondition. So as we get older, it's important to make sure that we stay strong and we stay balanced. And as we get older we heal slower, so our quad and our calves heal a little bit slower, our posterior chain deconditions a little bit faster, and so we got to do more proactive things to keep that even. But it's not run specific training, it's inverting that wear pattern instead of driving forward. So love reverse lunges.
Speaker 2:So, to sum up, this crazy tangent box squats, deadlifts, reverse lunges, side lunges, monster planks, front planks, side planks, core work, dead bug right. So, yes, core work, dead bugs in there. We got some side plank work but not 15 different ways to do plank off contest. When I see people doing anterior front plank and it's like, well, you know what you impressed me. Let's see how long you can hold a lateral plank. And usually they can hold a front plank for five minutes and they can hold a lateral plank for maybe 25 seconds and that's a bigger deal.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's my sort of strength. It should be heavy but it should be isolated towards some muscles. And guess what, when you go for that base run the next day I was giggle about this because I just said that they don't work a ton, they get deconditioned. And I still laugh out loud and kind of say to myself I'm like, well, apparently they do something right, because I go to run and I can feel that fatigue in there and you can feel the workload that they're doing. But the quad and the calf, which are supposed to be protecting those joints that you talked about, are fresher for it and you're more balanced and more durable and better at single leg support.
Speaker 1:I think that's super. So I think you laid it out very well where you should be able to do three sets of 12 to 15. We're not working toward heavy, heavy, heavy sets of four to six, right.
Speaker 2:No, yeah.
Speaker 1:You lay out the exercises well, I think. So forward lunges put a ridiculous amount of force across your patella femoral joint and that is used as the early indicator, the early breakdown joint. A million females and what most people who do forward lunges not so well, they slam down on their knee and so you damage that patella femoral joint and then you load it at 90 by stepping forward and I'll agree with you, it's a lose, lose exercise.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that thing, that's very good. Here's something to think about. How about plyometrics? Just that on purpose.
Speaker 2:Yes, I.
Speaker 1:Want to be able to do box jumps and squat jumps because I hear it's gonna make me fast. I want some fast twitch fibers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what? There's an inverse correlation between endurance running and vertical Jumping right, and there's a reason for that because your body only does sort of what it needs and to me and Right, this evidence of like there's not value in that climate. There's hot, there's more risk than reward. As somebody who Just went through kind of, I was just in a group setting and and did some plyo work I knew was better, but it was just that was part of the masses, but I Just stay away from it You're doing single-leg plyometric every time you're going for a run and it's got no, it's got no value for long course endurance running.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're a speed skater and you need it, or your or your 5k person and you're like you know what, every time we get the last like 200 meters, I just don't have the power that other people do and I wish I could be a little bit more competitive. There's some, some, some sprinting power stuff to it, but we're not doing that in door in endurance. So, and now you're adding what do you say? Three to five times your body weight when you're running. Well, this is now 10 plus times your body weight, right, and that's that's just.
Speaker 2:Now you're putting more pressure into the same thing. You're trying to recover and it's all risk and Zero reward other than in your brain. And there's nothing more pathetic than watching an endurance athlete Try to do a sky jump, because we don't have vertical. There's no vertical and you can work on it. Sure, spend time working on it. There's no value for what you're doing. It's a waste of time if your goal is to be that of a runner, and not only is it wasting your time, it's up your ante for a risk of an injury.
Speaker 1:So it's big risk for a care injury, especially muscle injury. Yeah, because when you do plyometric work box jumps, squat jumps it's eccentric load across a muscle. And let's define what's eccentric load. So eccentric load is when you're loading the muscle while it's elongating.
Speaker 2:Yeah right.
Speaker 1:So if you're gonna so, so if you a normal bicep curl, the muscle is shortening as you're doing, as you're playing force right, and eccentric load means the muscle is, is, is, is is elongating. Why you're applying the force? Yeah, and we do that. We essentially load when we run, yeah, but if you're gonna box, jump and squat jump, your chance of a muscle tendon tear You've escalated that tenfold because eccentric muscle force is the highest force you can put across a muscle and the most Damaging and maybe the easiest way to know what that is is think about any time you're catching body weight.
Speaker 2:It's not when you jump to go up, it's when you land to come down. That muscle is lengthening to slow you down and that is where the tears, that's where you tear in a kill. You've ever watched a sprinter on a track and they, they tear a hamstring, they fall on their face. They fall on their face because it happens in the air and that leg is supposed to catch them. It's tearing on the eccentric phase of it, when it's going from the concentric into the eccentric and that thing tears and that leg can't catch him and it looks like somebody shot him right, looks like a sniper hit him. So that's where, right a pitcher, when your Shoulder, or though the the pitcher doesn't tear their rotator cuff. When they throw the ball, they tear the rotator cuff when they've let go of the ball, right that deceleration forces of it. So simply, it's when you catch that body weight. So it's lengthening and it's the most damaging, it's the most disruptive. It's when you're gonna. You hurt your Achilles, you're soleus and all those muscles are already doing a lot of workload and you're putting them at a high, high, high, high risk for zero value. To use an endurance runner, right, right, zero value.
Speaker 2:And you could argue all you want about plyometrics and power, and when it comes in during surrounding, it doesn't it's, it doesn't hold water. I mean, unless there's a specific reason. If somebody's a high, elite level runner and they're having a hard time with maybe some closing sprinting speed, then most of those, even when they strengthen it, that's not, it's not in alignment with their, their muscle fiber Sort of allotment, if you will, and so you go. Yeah, you want to win that race. Don't wait for the 200 meters. You gotta, you gotta get it from a mile out. Right, that's when you got it. If you're with somebody who can help sprint you, you're better start from, you know, a quarter of a mile to A mile out start early.
Speaker 1:Yeah, other other things we should be thinking about non running things for, for cross printing, for marathon.
Speaker 2:You know that's a good question. I mean, maybe answer that back with More of like, the idea of like, let's give you a fishing pole in the than the fish. And so the whole idea is can you, can you just actively recover and can you be ready for the next day? View the muscles right, the calves, the quads, hip flexors, low back when you train. View them like they have yellow caution tape on Right. So if they have yellow caution tape, which means like, hey, they can do a little bit, just beware, don't, don't step firmly on this thing. They're delicate right now, they, right, they haven't healed totally. So any cross training needs to know that those are under yellow caution tape and then the other stuff is not. So We've recommended like, hey, string, train and try to hit the muscles that aren't under yellow caution tape Right. Try to make sure that you're not doing plyometrics, which is putting more load into something with yellow caution tape. You know, swim, because, guess what, you're moving everything and it's gonna help that yellow caution tape like turn back into normal tissue quicker.
Speaker 1:So anything you do good endurance training, endurance, yeah.
Speaker 2:breathing training and kick with fins it will just kills your leg, yeah totally, and you can swim harder because it's your upper body, right, your upper body is working harder. Look at the physiology of Olympians are always a nice way to go wonder what muscles work. Well, look at the Olympians and you'll see a magnification of the muscles that work. Look at the upper body of a swimmer right, it's really big, because that's where most of work is going. Their legs aren't jacked like a Olympic cyclist, so you can swim pretty hard. But just think about your body, like when you're running, when your marathon training, your goal is to let those yellow, those areas of yellow caution tape, heal, regenerate, so you don't get in the way. So you can be creative, right, create your own list. Go, put a piece of paper down and start to maybe make two columns, right, make a column that you know like here's the don'ts Don't do this right, don't do play, and we'll get you started. Don't do play metrics, right, don't do play metrics. Don't do recovery, don't do recovery runs, don't do forward lunges. And then you can start to make other ones of yours of like when you Maybe overdo something, and then start to make your duelist. Well, what could I do? Well, I could swim. Right, dr, I made a great Recommendation go for a walk right, because now it's one and a half times your body weight, it's it's less of it and easier aerobic walk.
Speaker 2:Go swimming, do Cycling, but do a lower intensity cycling, because cycling is just pushing down on a pedal and it's it's jamming your quad. Now we talked about eccentric load. That's why cycling you can. That's a concentric load. You can do a lot more muscle trauma and not feel the effects like you do from running, but now you're putting more muscle trauma into your quad and your calf, which is what you're trying to recover. So there's a, there's a time and a place to be able to put some intensity stuff in. So I would say that, like, as you think about it, create that list so you can start to put your your Desires and and make it fun. Right. If, if, if, swimming makes you go bananas and you hate swimming, we said all this wonderful stuff was swimming. Don't go swimming, right, do something else, be creative, do something fun, but, like, stop doubling down on tissues that need to be ready for your next training session right.
Speaker 1:And and also this will evolve over time right yeah, your ability to withstand strength training and cycling training and Combination of those, and how much can you run will evolve over time. Yeah right and we know that as you get older, you may not be able to sustain the run volume, you may not be able to sustain the run intensity and your recovery may be longer. Yeah and and that's recovery, both before your purposeful marathon training run and after Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's why what you brought before, we can do the same things. It just takes us a little bit longer to recover. So the things that you do to help it recover matter more. So not only can you maybe you can't do as much but it but you, you can Do, you control the controllables, you can do more active recovery and, quite honestly, if you haven't, once you start to do it, because you're sort of force, your hands forced to do it, because you want to do stuff For life and you want to be able to perform you almost look back and go, well, crap, I wish I would have known that back then. Because not only are you helping yourself recover faster, you're starting to see your ability to perform better and you're, like I wish, like those elite athletes that have, and professional athletes I've gotten hurt and been forced in the water and they come out and psychologically, like I lost all my fitness and you know I'm maybe not gonna run as fast. I wonder if I can get back, if I just get back to where I was and they come back into their sport and they've adopted some of this cross-training stuff into it and they run faster than they ever have before, right, right, and it's evolved because those, those old days of like more, more, more, more, more or just it's just. It sounds good on paper, right, runners run to get better at running and that's sport. Specificity is very true, but it starts to become diminishing in returns at some point.
Speaker 2:So not only is this active recovery you know, great to reduce injuries, it also increases your performance. It's not only something we have to do. Is we get older, we're four hands forced if we want to do a suffer life. But when you commit to it, you, if you haven't done it earlier, you're gonna have seen the benefits and wish you would have done it now. If you're younger, you can do more hard days, right, so you can still do more hard days, but the active recovery is important. If you're listening to this, like start to think about it because like hey, as you know, maybe some old man advice from us is like, yeah, I wish I would have known them, what I know now, and that's one of them and do some reading and listen to some of your Favorite professional athletes of when they've been hurt and how maybe the cross training has actually helped them and how many people Keep that part of their training. I think that knowledge creates a lot of power.
Speaker 1:Like that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all day, every day, man, I'm telling you you're, you've seen the knees every single day, don't you so?
Speaker 1:sad. Yeah so sad to tell people I can't help you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd love to help you Love cuz.
Speaker 1:I would love for you to be able to run, but I can't help you do that space is gone, and and then you know what?
Speaker 2:then they get frustrated and then maybe they go to somewhere else and they get some crappy care, and it just you, just I just want to get in front of them and and try to keep them from from doing things that are breaking down their body. Man, it's, it's. It's not about now, it's about now, but it's also about the future too, and yeah, so what do you? What do you think?
Speaker 1:sum it up I think it's good. I think so Marathon focus is run focus. Yeah Right, and we can't run. You should not run every single day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so there's, there's crucial points you can do that can help your marathon fitness and can help you as as your overall fitness. We talk about those and in my mind we have a we have cross-train, that is active recovery, and we have cross-train, that's fitness, and I and I, and I think we sum that up, yeah Good, you know, no recovery runs.
Speaker 2:Stretch your quads, your hip flexors, get your glutes, your hamstrings online. Work on a little bit of single leg support. You know, focus on your runs, active recovery in between. Find your mode. Make sure you don't get in the way. There's yellow caution tape on the things that have been overused and and you'll find yourself. You know, you might question a little bit to where you're, like, maybe I didn't work hard enough. You're used to working harder and then you go and you run a PR and then you're in, right, that's, that's when people really buy in.
Speaker 2:It's one thing to to like, in theory, get this stuff, but to experience it and you know, just at that sort of high level, you know, if you take a little bit of a trust fall and you do it, and even during your training, you'll start to see that you're hitting different times and that you maybe weren't available to you before. You're running faster and and then you really buy in. So it's about you, it's not about us, but you were passionate about this stuff, cause we see it all day, every day in clinic, and you wish you could just. You wish you could just help them help themselves, and sometimes it's it's hard because it's it's rooted in love. Man, you, you want to get better and you want to perform and you want to like you're. You've got these big stretch, lofty goals and you're willing to do the work. Just train smarter, right. So maintenance is key. Body maintenance, man Maintenance is key.
Speaker 1:So it takes more and more maintenance, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:It does, and it's that you know I hate generic things that old like train smart, train smarter, not harder, and I usually kind of follow up with like no, train smart. So you know how to train hard. Right, so you can still have the best of both worlds just actually recover and you can train hard.
Speaker 1:You can put in those ridiculously hard sessions. Those are fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's what you do before those sessions and after those sessions to allow you to come back and do those hard sessions again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you'll see more growth in those, in those sessions that you had before. And you know what else. You'll stay out of our offices. How about that?
Speaker 1:We won't have that talk. I can't help you.
Speaker 2:I can't help, you're not special.
Speaker 1:Your mama said you're special, but I disagree. I said I will finish with one kind of funny story. So four, that's not probably five weeks ago we were trail running and I was having since I had my stretch fracture, I've had, I have some hip flex issues on my left side and I can ride like a champ. I have no pain. I thought why? Cause I'm sitting in that flex position right and running I'd be getting more and more stiff. And so I have started working, as you have instructed me, on my hip flexor flex. I mean extensor flexibility and it's gotten gotten gotten a whole lot. I'm doing it twice a day. I'm doing the pretzel stretch looked that up. I'm doing that. It's helping a ton running more efficient, running faster. But the other thing that dawned on me the other day is I am a right-sided breather when I swim.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So every time when I swim I've swam since I was five years old I breathed to the right, I don't breathe to the left, and I have realized because my left hip flexor has gotten tight right my, my overall extension when I swim was getting shorter and shorter and shorter, shorter and shorter, shorter and shorter. So as that extension has gotten shorter, now my opposite side is coming across the middle, which affects your ability to swim straight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, working on run. Fitness and hip flexor has now got me focused on swim alignment and I can work on my hip flexor flexibility in the water by doing doing doing swim drills by really reaching out with my left arm. Yeah so it makes a difference.
Speaker 2:The kinetic chain's amazing. We you know what it makes me think of too. I should have mentioned earlier. I do have some. We have some videos with our active chiropractic recovery and performance. We'll put that up. We've got the bretzel, we've got some other run mobility stretches and some activations that we'll put up there in case you want to see in the show notes. That way you can take a look, see what matches for you. But yeah, no, it's, it's amazing and it's a. It's a blind spot for most people because it you don't feel it. You feel it in other places, right, and and myself I struggle with hip flexibility into extension. Hip flexor flexibility is something to always stay on.
Speaker 1:Right. So I think, I think that's crucial and it's. It's fun, though, cause there's always something you can be working on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Even if you're hurt, or even if you're, you're not I mean if you're run specific or triathlon specific or bike specific there's always stuff you can focus on. If you spend a short period of time focused on that and lose sight of the big, you know the big, the big giant picture, it's effective, yeah.
Speaker 2:What fun would it be if there wasn't something to work on.
Speaker 1:Lessons from the knuckleheads.
Speaker 2:So I got a a lesson from knucklehead See what you think and how you do this. But, um, we talked a little bit about stretching and stretching your quads or hip flexors. There's never a bad day to stretch your calves and your feet, um. But one of the things we see a lot is that when we stretch right, we've got that mentality of like, like more is better, or like stretch really, um, aggressively, or man, I want to feel that thing. Yeah, when you stretch right, we reference a, a, a study all the time of you know there, if you, the average person, if you stretch at about a three out of 10 effort level, uh, over six weeks we'll see a 21% gain of range of motion, right, and same group, if you stretch at an eight out of 10 level, which most people do, like, oh man, that's a big stretch Don't have those same gains and actually have actually have more aggravation.
Speaker 2:So if you, if you look at the bretzel or some of the stretches that we put up today in the show notes, and you want to start stretching, don't attack the stretch with like man, I feel it Set like seven out of 10, that really sort of intense level the man did you stretch it Like yeah, I really worked it. You want to get very kind of just work smoothly into the stretch. Feel that maybe three to maybe five out of 10 stretch and just hold it. And we use paraththyl like breathing is a great cue to use all time. Where you breathe, in like I'd say on a four count and out on an eight counter, in on a three count and out on a six count, get that down regulation breathing to where it cues your sympathetic nervous system, cause initially your muscles going to fight when you stretch it. And if you use that um breathing cue, the muscle sort of relaxes and that three out of 10 sort of effort.
Speaker 2:And if you just hold it there, watch what happens and hold it for a minute and in that 60 seconds watch it evolve, because you'll notice that the stretch really sort of opens up to a new stretch Maybe you haven't experienced before and it feels like noticeably different and quite a bit more therapeutic. So if you're going to add stretching in lessons from knuckleheads, don't, don't push hard into a stretch. Don't think more stretch equals better return. It's actually. It will aggravate you more and help you. And then you'd be like this podcast is horrible, right, my knee is killing me from trying to like work into hip extension. So I would say that, like stretch, hold it for a three to five out of 10 efforts, um, and hold it for a minute and make sure that you feel better afterwards, make sure you don't feel worse afterwards, um, and that's a much better way to stretch than going hot and heavy.
Speaker 1:And should you hold that stretch for a minute, do you repeat it? Do you do it twice a day? Do you do it three times a day?
Speaker 2:So in that same study, right, so it the takeaways and stretching is kind of funny, it's. It's a bit all over the board, but there's some some core things to know. That study was could you do it? For if we saw that 21% gain of range of motion, can we do it once a day, five days a week for six weeks? Right? So the takeaways are frequency, right. So you know, consistency is king. Do it at least once a day.
Speaker 2:And how tight are you? Are you excessively tight? And we grade that by actual range of motion, not just how tight you feel. But if you notice that you, like, can't really move all that great, um, do it at least once a day. Maybe add an extra second or third one If you've got a little bit of time that day. If you've ever done a stretch and held it this way and you've done two or three sets of the same stretch, you'll see that the second and third one is noticeably different and better, right? So if you struggle with significant tightness, then that's a really smart thing to do. So the takeaways are if you need an increase in range of motion, do it every day. Try not to miss a day, right.
Speaker 2:And then we get into maintenance stretching, which is like when you've got adequate range of motion, um, then you um, just do it every once in a while to to keep what you got, um, and then do two or three sets, depending on on what your need and what your needs are, uh, and and get evaluated by a professional, right, great, one of our core principles test, don't guess. Right, we want to see at least 10 degrees of hip extension, right, arguably a little bit more depending on the runner. Do you have plus five degrees of hip uh extension, which means you can't even get to neutral? We see that a lot, right, um, so get great, to go to, you know, um, a sports car, to a physical therapist, to a doc, somebody who measures that stuff for you and doesn't just give you this like, uh, you're tight, and be like, well, how tight.
Speaker 2:What does that mean? What does that mean, right, do you have, you know, 20 degrees of hip extension? Do you have, you know, a plus five degrees of hip extension? Do you have, you know, thoracic rotation? That's a limited so. So test, don't guess. But when you do get into mobility, and if you look at some of these exercises that we give you, you start with just making sure it feels like a mile to a very low, moderate amount of pressure, and you'll find that that stretches significantly better. Do a few sets If you find that it's super tight. Experiment a little bit right, so that way you can make it yours. So how do you find?
Speaker 1:three out of 10?, that's the hard part.
Speaker 2:So well, I'd ask you. So I've got an answer to you, but I don't know it's pertinent for everybody how, if I were to say, hey, uh, dr Herring, I want you to, you know, do the breath, so I want you to feel maybe that three out of 10.
Speaker 1:And I have a hard time with that because we we used to judge. Well, we still do. We used to judge pain on a scale of one to 10. It's not great. It's not great, yeah, and and and. Then your training peaks. Every single workout says judge your effort from zero to 10. Yeah, 90% of mine are five or six or seven. If it's hard, it's an eight or nine. It's hard, as you haven't instructed me six weeks ago, good, and I was doing it. Go to a three or four. I go to a point where it starts to feel tight and I try to hold it for, for, for, for a minute.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But does that mean a three? I have a hard time with with with quantifying what three to five is.
Speaker 2:You know it's funny Cause my my first answer is the clinical answer. So what we do in clinic is we we take somebody to the end range and we take them to the stretch we want to feel and we go how's that feel to you? Give me a grade, zero to 10 and they'll tell us what that grade is. Pain grade Uh, the attention.
Speaker 2:Like zero is no stretch and 10 is like the most amount of stretch you can ever feel, so not even the pain scale, but just sort of that region.
Speaker 2:And when we get there then we'll ask them like, how's that feel to you? And so it's their subjective value, and some it usually lands somewhere in between a three or five. So now we've calibrated them. So when you stretch it should sort of feel like this so, but that's a hands-on approach, right? So then if we're going to give it to somebody who doesn't have that, there's a couple of different ways that we'll tell them. Instead of zero to 10, mild, moderate or a severe amount of stretch right, that makes it a little bit easier and go hey, you want to be on the mild to on the lower part of like a moderate amount of stretch. It's just not that, it's not too crazy. So that's the subjective part of it. The objective part of it is get in the stretch that we're talking about, take it to where it stops and you start to maybe feel a stretch and take it one click further, maybe two clicks further.
Speaker 1:Right, it's just a little bit on the other side.
Speaker 2:You're on the edge of your ability, you're not hammering into your ability, and I think that those are two good gauges. Right, be on the mild to mild, moderate amount of tension and then sort of the objective side of it is, take it to the end where you sort of like, as you go to do the stretch, don't, don't get it into a stretch and be like that's an end range. Once you start to feel like it's starting to stretch, that's the beginning. Just go and click into that. Don't go a big, big step into it and then hold it for a minute and just hold it. Now here's the interesting part If you hold it and that that goes away and you feel like you don't have a stretch anymore, take it one click further, right, right.
Speaker 1:So you're just a loosen up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're just a click on the other side of where you feel it, you're not four clicks into it. Usually we get to the stretch and we go four clicks into it and we think that that's where the stretch is. So that's a way that we'll help people gauge it. But a trick in our clinic is we sort of look at when we give them our mobility phase, we go through a mobility phase and we do a muscle activation phase, when we sort of look at stretching like a, you know a three tiered the first time they get it they're beginners, the second time they get it they're novices, and the third time they get their stretches they start to become more advanced because they're starting to get the art form of how to stretch it. It's not easy, but those would be kind of two ways if you're going to drew it on your own and then at the end of the day, air on the side of caution, right, don't push super hard.
Speaker 1:I think that's super helpful because that for the stretch of three out of ten is hard. But if you go to the point where you can't go any more and you go a little bit more, that I can think about Right.
Speaker 2:Well, not to where you can't go. Well, you say that I know what you mean, but they'll and people interpret that Go to where you can't go any more and then go further. Don't go to where you can't go any more. Go to where you can freely go until you start to feel the stretch. That's. That's where you're going to start Now. You're going to go. Click on that. Don't go to where you can't go any more and then go one click further, cause the next click that you feel is not going to be the click that you want to feel, and that's a lesson from a knucklehead. I really, I really like that today. I think it's so important when we look at marathon training that we learn to how to actively recover. You know we've got a lot of stuff at hub training centercom, as well as on Instagram and Facebook. We'll put up some of the exercises and things like that in our show notes. But you know, very simply, I mean, when it looks at recovery, like, how do you simplify it in like a 30 seconds or less?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. So look at your weekly plan or monthly plan. Every single workout should have a purpose. You have your run workouts and you have your non run workouts, and Hemo has we've said. Your non run run workouts can be active recovery or strength and fitness. Yeah, take care of yourself Totally, man.
Speaker 2:Let your body heal it does. Your body does amazing things. Just give it the space to do it. Make sure that you're not trying to train the house down, that you're recovering and watch your performance go up, your injury rates go down and your longevity improve. So, um, yeah, I think it's wonderful. So, and you're off, uh, so you're off to do never, never land. So, um, we may have a podcast. Um, uh, we'll figure it out. I don't know if we. It feels weird not doing it with you, man, it's week to week, yeah, so we'll kind of figure it out, but, um, you may not hear for a week or two. We may have, I may put one out, um, uh, next week. But we appreciate you being with us. Check us out. Send us an email, hello, at hubtrainingcentercom. Any feedback we'd love to hear from you. And, as Moose would say, when you come to a fork in the road, go uphill.