Episode 470: Strength for Endurance | Jason Fitzgerald
Jason Fitzgerald is a life long runner, and host of The Strength Running Podcast. In this episode, we discuss if Truett Hanes can reach the Olympic Trials Marathon Qualifying time of 2:16, the increase in strength athletes embracing running, the role of strength in running, and the rise in popularity of muscular endurance and fatigue resistance training strategies.
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Timestamps:
Timestamps:
00:00 Episode Teaser
01:06 Podcast Introduction and Announcements
02:59 Interview with Jason: Running and Coaching Insights
03:40 Truett Hanes: From Pull-Ups to Marathons
07:35 Genetics and Elite Running
10:15 Training Strategies for Marathon Success
13:22 The Role of Genetics in Running Performance
21:30 Strength Training and Running
29:27 The Evolution of Running Shoes
36:23 Transitioning to Super Shoes
38:09 Avoiding Injuries with Super Shoes
40:58 Strength Training for Runners
46:11 Building a Strength Training Habit
58:06 Exploring Different Strength Movements
01:03:54 Muscular Endurance Training
01:15:56 Conclusion and Where to Find More
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Alright, Jason, thanks for kicking off the start of my 2026 podcast recording. I'm excited to have you on and chat about a bunch of different stuff. Yeah, it should be fun, Zach. Thanks for having me. Hopefully we can start 2026 off with a bang. Yeah, I think so. I think it's gonna be an exciting year.
So I've got a lot of topics I want to chat with you that range in a little bit behind just like your own running experiences, just your philosophy with running and how you use it with coaching people and creating educational material on your podcast and online and some stuff within all of that.
But maybe we kick something off with or kick things off with a little bit more of a fun topic. Truet Hanes. So let's go. This was fun. I think this has probably just popped up in the last couple of days with the new year and Truett's just been someone who's been kind of fun to follow the last year because.
A lot of people listening to this will probably be familiar, but he broke the world record for pullups, which [00:01:00] seems directionally different from marathon running. But it was a 24 hour record, so you do get that kinda endurance. Just, I gotta be dialed in for a long period of time, type of focus.
But he switched directions after that and just started like really focusing on running and had quite a bit of success. I think he ran a 2 25 on a downhill marathon course and like a 2 29 high at CIM, which I think surprised a lot of people 'cause he put that goal out on the table pretty early in the year and then got it, but then followed that up quickly by saying, okay, my next goal is now to run an Olympic trials qualifying time.
So running online, running grabbed that and went a bunch of different ways with it. Because I think there's two, there's like two camps. One is oh, this is a natural progression for him. And then there's another camp that's yeah, that next 10, 12 minutes is gonna be incredibly difficult to get compared to the big chunks of time he was able to take off.[00:02:00]
What are your thoughts? Has he got any shot at it? Is this a, is zero chance or above zero chance for Truet? Look, I'm someone who wants to see him succeed because I think it's good for the sport. I think he's bringing a lot of eyeballs to the marathon and really to what almost a non runner can do.
Someone who didn't have this lengthy, extensive background in running and all of a sudden they're running sub two 30 marathons. I think that's incredibly inspiring. You know, and he was running a lot of marathons in jeans, which wouldn't be my first choice of a tire for a marathon. But again, it's bringing attention to the sport.
So I think it's cool, you know, to improve in running. Exponentially harder the faster that you get. So I would say that going from a three hour marathon to a two 30 marathon, that's easier than going from a two 30 to a two 18, even though we're talking about 30 minutes on one side and [00:03:00] 12 minutes on the other.
The faster you get, the harder it is to keep chopping time off of your personal best. So on the one hand, I want him to be successful, but on the other hand I think it's going to be almost impossible for him to run. OTQ of two 16 in the marathon, because I don't think it's a natural progression, you know, that, I think that's the conversation that a lot of folks are having that oh, he has taken so much time off of his marathon, he's getting to these very competitive levels.
He's gonna not really have any issue taking another, you know, we could say nine minutes if you want to compare it to the downhill time, or maybe about 13 minutes, if you compare it to his flat CIM pr, that's an eternity. And I think the difference between a two 16 marathoner and a two 30 marathoner, you know, it's like the difference between me and you, Zach it's a chasm.
There is a very wide gap in performance. And it's not, you know, 13 minutes between two 16 and two [00:04:00] 19 is not the same as 13 minutes bet, comparing three 30 to 3 43. So I'm very cautious about saying he's gonna be able to do that. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I find interesting too is there is this sort of thing where he didn't really take running seriously at all until this last year, but he did run, it wasn't like he was just like only doing strength sports.
I think one of the, I guess it's like a funny story is his dad who made him do cross country cam made him do cross country and he didn't really want to do it though. He hated running. So you do get that conversation of if we're looking at Olympic trials, we are getting to just a genetic capability.
We're getting to that range where it's like all the hard work in the world isn't gonna turn. An NFL offense lineman into an Olympic trials marathoner. You're gonna need some genetic gifts to probably get down to that. And then the question becomes, how much of that do you need versus just putting in the [00:05:00] work to continually improve.
And then having that day where you finally just connect all the dots. And I find this one to be really interesting with him because I do think if you look at, I don't know what his high school times were like, but it looks like he was on jv, his junior and senior year for cross country in what I think was a pretty small school.
So that would suggest he wasn't like running fast times with no training. And in the middle school, high school age, a lot of times you can maybe tease out natural ability versus training, improved pace or training induced improvements because nobody at that level really has a tremendous amount of training under their belt.
So maybe he doesn't have the genetic predisposition to run something at a trial because he didn't run. Like a state caliber time in high school with no training. I don't know. I have a hard time balancing it with my teaching background too. 'cause I do know there are kids who, when you get above about 800 meters, they just aren't gonna try.
They're just not gonna try. So it's like [00:06:00] they may have the ability, but they're so deterred by that distance component that they don't even really put their true natural ability on display at any point. Yeah. You know, I think you're completely right about the whole genetics part of this. You know, if you want to run an elite level time, you have to have elite level genetics and it's just a, you know, the draw of the lottery, you know, and choosing your parents and making sure that you have those gifts.
You know, no amount of hard work is gonna make your average person into a 2 0 5 marathoner. It just doesn't work. You know, it reminds me of, you know, a PhD, Chris Napier who does a lot of research on super shoes. Said on my podcast, and he said, you can't continuously adapt to something in perpetuity.
You know, this idea that, you know, we were talking about minimalism and the craze of minimal issues back around 2010. And he said, you know, you can't just adapt to barefoot running and then all of a sudden you're capable of running a hundred miles a week with all [00:07:00] your workouts and races in no shoes at all.
You can't get to that point. And I think the same is true here. The same analogy works. You can't just work harder and expect to become an elite runner. You know, that element of genetics is going to play a role. And, you know, it's just one of those things where you know, the other thing that I think has to be discussed when we talk about Truitt is the fact that, you know, if he wanted to run a two 16 marathon, he might need to take some time away from the marathon and work on his speed.
'cause I'm not sure if he has. The motor, you know, the actual wheels underneath them to support the speed that a two 16 marathon really depends on, you know, if you can't run, you know, a really fast mile or 5K, you probably don't have the VO two max and running economy and literally the speed underneath you to support the speed required for a two 16 marathon.
You know, I always think in terms of equivalent [00:08:00] performances, you're never gonna run like a two 16 marathon, but then only be able to run a five minute mile. You know, you're going to have roughly equivalent performances across most distances. And of course that's gonna fall apart a little bit on the extremes.
You know, your hundred meter time might not be very relevant. Your hundred mile time might not be super relevant to, you know, your 5K time. But for the most part, you know, he's gonna have to have some pretty good middle distance times. And you know, if I were advising him and he really wanted those two 16s, I might say, let's spend 12 to 18 months.
Really working on those middle distance times. Let's drive up your running economy, let's drive up your VO two max. Let's just focus on personal bests across a whole variety of distances from, you know, 800 meters all the way up to 10 K. And that I think from a developmental perspective would be really effective at helping him get further along this road.
I don't know if he'll ever get to the destination, but I think it would help him get closer. [00:09:00] Yeah. You preempted my next question beautifully there. I was gonna ask you if it were you, how would you go about this goal? Because I guess when I first read that, maybe it was just all the New Year's resolutions and the yearly reports that you see at this time of year, but I guess my third, my mind immediately went to that was his target this year.
And I think he's, I think he's not closing that door of being like, Hey, there's a scenario here where by December of 2026, I have a trials qualifying time. But I guess he never necessarily didn't necessarily say that was. The end all be all. And if he doesn't get it, he's moving on to something else.
I think it could possibly be a multi-year project for him, but that kind of got my wheel spinning. How would I do that? And I think you're a hundred percent right for somebody who hasn't done a lot of racing as their primary kind of target event, starting with some 5K, 10 k, half marathon training this year would maybe put himself in a really good position to launch the Marathon Trials project, so to speak, in the beginning of next year.
I, [00:10:00] I really would like that scenario just to see what he can do in some of those other distances. And then also I think that's probably puts him in the best position for all those reasons that you said. Yeah. You know, like me, I always like to look at the example of some of the best runners in the world and almost to the person.
Every really good marathoner first had a pretty good middle distance career. And that's the typical progression. You know, everyone likes to talk about Elliot Kipchoge. You know, the only sub two marathoner, you know, the almost a world record holder, he is the goat. People don't realize he's also one of the top 10 fastest 3000 meter runners of all time.
Yeah. And so he's had this incredible middle distance career before he ever went to the marathon, which I would argue paved the way for him becoming one of the greatest marathoners to ever live. And so I would, you know, I think this is just an issue of development. So it's honestly how I coach [00:11:00] runners who want to be good at the marathon.
I look at their other race times. You know, if you've never focused on a 5K, that's where a lot of your improvement is going to come from. And so if I were, you know, coaching, trusting or advising him in some capacity, yeah, we would talk about focusing on the 5K, 10 K, somewhere in those distances. I'd want to know what his running volume was.
If we can't increase it a lot, maybe we can rely a lot on some cross training. You know, I would really just want to. I would like to build an enormous base. We probably can't do that with 140 miles a week. He probably doesn't have the experience and the history to get his mileage up that far. But, you know, can we do another four or five, six hours of, you know, zone one, two, maybe three aerobic cross training every week?
That to me is a really good avenue for, you know, building the aerobic system in a very safe way, while at the same time we're focusing on speed for the running portion of his training. That would [00:12:00] be, you know, one of the starting off points. But you know, honestly, one of the ways in which I've had success with a lot of runners is.
Talking through their training history and just figuring out what they haven't really been focusing on in the last one to two years and whatever they haven't been focusing on, that's what we're gonna start injecting a little bit more of into their training. 'cause it probably represents an area of underdevelopment that has the potential to provide a lot more stimulus and improvement for future progress.
Yeah, not a hundred percent agree with that. I think that's always a fun way to look at things. Is it almost becoming something where it's you know, where are the holes that haven't been touched on? That's probably gonna drive the most progress in terms of what we're gonna get in the short term. If they have a lot of training history and then also.
When you go back to maybe some of the stuff that they had been doing more, also have some higher ceilings to, to strive for versus butting up against an artificially low one because of those spots that just didn't get hit. So true. [00:13:00] True. It is interesting with respect to volume too. 'cause I think he ran almost 5,000 miles last year, so he was hitting some pretty high volume.
But that might just suggest that he can tolerate a lot of that in a fairly quick amount of time. It could also suggest that maybe we'll start seeing some injuries or some fatigue that maybe is from ramping in quickly. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see one way or the other. I'm sure he'll be putting on a show, so yeah.
So if he is running that much, maybe volume isn't like the lever to pull to, to get him to a whole nother level of performance. So maybe I wouldn't add a whole bunch of other cross training. You know, if he's running 5,000 miles a year, my God I tried so hard to run. 3,500 miles a year when I was competitively training and racing, and I couldn't get up there because of my injury history.
So that is a lot of mileage and you know, for me, I don't know if that's the lever to pull, you know, he's also a pretty big dude if my memory is correct. You know, maybe [00:14:00] he has a little bit of upper body weight to lose if he's okay with that. I know a lot of guys probably aren't, but if he's okay, you know, maybe losing five or 10 pounds.
You know, that might be five seconds a mile on his marathon. Yeah. Yeah. And it's gonna come down to seconds per mile for him at some point. So it is interesting. Yeah, that's also just an interesting variable in general too, because when he started his marathon training back in early 2025, I think he was like 180 pounds and I think he got down into the mid to low one fifties by the end of it.
So he probably did get quite a bit of progress from that first one in early 2025 to the last one he ran at, ran at CIM just by shedding some of that upper body muscle that he had put on prior to taking on the marathon stuff. But maybe, yeah, maybe there's a little bit more to squeeze outta that for him.
He still certainly looks. Big and strong compared to most Olympic trials marathoners. For sure, yeah. You [00:15:00] look at Truett next to the Olympic trials marathon field and he does look a little bit out of place. Yeah. And you know, there's this truism in all sports like sports select for a certain body type.
You know, uhhuh, sumo wrestlers are gonna look different than world class marathoners. And part of that is, you know, your body adapting to the work. And part of that is, you know, the right body kind of choosing the right sport. Not to say that you can't sumo wrestle if you look like me or you know, run if you're a little bit bigger, but, you know, at those really high level performance levels, you know, you have to start thinking about that.
And so he does probably have a little bit of progress if he has, you know, that upper body mass that he could afford to lose. Probably doesn't want to look like you know, your typical skinny runner like me, but might be necessary for performance. Yeah I do find it really interesting if it would be a case where he'd be standing on the Olympic trials marathon starting line looking [00:16:00] substantially stronger than the rest of the group there.
It'd almost be, do you remember when Noah DTI did that? 10. He had that breakout like track 10, I think it was a track 10 k. And he, I mean he looked every bit like a 10 K runner, but he had the long hair sunglasses, a backwards hat on, so he kinda stood out compared to everyone else that were, had the speed cuts, the jersey tucked in and no hat on.
Oh yeah. It was like, who let this guy into this Olympic trials 10 K. Like he, he belongs at Burning Man. Yeah. Yeah. And I say that as someone who has met Noah. I love Noah. Nothing against Noah, but he did look a little out of place. I found that hilarious. It was awesome. I think if we do have a muscular true at Hanes on the starting line of the trials marathon, you know, it, it might open up the sport to more Jim Bros who might think, Hey, I could actually be quite successful and still maintain, you know, the muscles that I've worked so hard for.
So maybe it'll be a good thing for the sport. Yeah. [00:17:00] Yeah, absolutely. And I think just that general trend, I'd be curious what you've seen with just the people that you've engaged with online when you're doing educational stuff, people reaching out for coaching and advice and stuff like that. If you've seen a shifting in the type of person that has come to you in the last few years.
'cause I know for me, like when the David Goggins of the world and the campaigns of the world started popping up and deciding, Hey, you know what? You know we're non-traditional runners, but we can do these 200 mile races. I started getting a lot more inquiries from people in those environments that those guys were typically hanging around in.
And it did open up the sport to a whole new group of people who otherwise would've maybe not considered it. So have you been seeing much of that on your side? Yeah, there does seem to be a little bit more interest in running from people who come from, you know, a strength training background, people who come from, you know, just other athletic types of backgrounds who now want to, you know, see what they can do [00:18:00] in running or run their first marathon.
I've seen a lot of folks who used Hyrox as a jumping off point into the sport of running. And then, you know, Hyrox is this very interesting race. I look at it almost similar to the demands of a half marathon with a whole bunch of crocs, maybe CrossFit inspired types of exercise thrown in there too.
So it is very challenging aerobic. Endeavor. And so you get a lot of you know, quote unquote gym bros who are like, yeah, I'm gonna do Hyrox And then they realize that, oh my God, my aerobic system is just not up for eight by a thousand at, you know, a pretty hard intensity with all of these metabolic types of strength or other types of exercise thrown in the middle as this giant circuit.
And all of a sudden, yeah, they're reaching out to running coaches so that they can improve their performance over this. So yeah, I have seen people come from a variety of different backgrounds, you know, whether it's strength, whether it's Hyrox, whether it's just people who, you [00:19:00] know, play pickup basketball and I think they're inspired by people who aren't.
Traditional runners doing either long distance races or getting into the marathon, you know, performing really well in the marathon, like Truett. And I think it's just great for the sport. It really opens it up to people who, you know they think the sport is all, you know, guys like me run around in one inch, split leg shorts.
Yeah. And, you know, I'm here to say anyone can wear the one inch split leg shorts and you know, they're for everyone. Right on. I love it. Yeah it's fun to see, it's fun to see the sport grow and open up to, you know, different communities and people with different interests. And I think too, just having someone like Truet come in and have a lot of success can probably lighten a little bit of that mindset around, you know, running has to be this catabolic sport to, and to some degree it is, like we were talking about before where like the, your body is going to try to optimize within what you're putting it through.
But as you know, it's like the sport of running has had its fair share of history with body [00:20:00] weight issues and things like that too. So I think just like generally speaking, we get outside of elite Olympic performances and things like that. People just know hey, you know, I don't have to try to look like an Olympic marathoner to run a really strong race and get really close to my genetic potential within the framework.
That works well for me from a lifestyle standpoint. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think one of the problems with running is that. The images of runners that the public sees and especially men, are not images that men often want to look like. Yeah. Right. Let's be honest here. Yeah. Runners are typically very skinny, you know, and I'm talking about at the elite level, you know, the pictures that we see at the Olympics and the world championships and things like that.
You know, when you look at the starting line of the trials marathon, you're like, oh, I don't know if I want to look like those guys because they, it looks like they can't do seven pushups, and that is a problem. So I do really [00:21:00] like more muscular guys getting into the sport because it shows it's not just for us really skinny dudes.
It's for everyone. Cool. Awesome. I do want to rewind a little bit and hop into some stuff, maybe a little bit more specific to you and. There's some, I think, fun topics within this where you've been recording the Strength Running podcast now for right around nine years. So you were what, I guess most people would call an early adopter to the podcast platform.
You were, I can't imagine there were a lot of running specific podcasts out when you first launched the Strength Running podcast. Surprisingly, there were. And, oh, were there. I thought I was late to the game. I was like, oh, there's already enough podcasts. I can't, I don't want to jump on the bandwagon.
I feel like I'm just doing the popular thing right now. But yeah, so probably a good lesson here is it's never too late to start. 'cause you might actually be early and it just feels like you're late. But yeah, I am gonna be [00:22:00] celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Strength Running podcast later this year.
I think at the very end of October. We are getting up to close to 450 episodes at this point. And you're, you'll actually be getting published on the show for the second time this week, the week that we're recording, Zach. So I'm excited about that. I'm also starting 2026 off the right way. And yeah, it's been a journey.
You know, I did not treat the podcast the same way that I do now. When I first started it, you know, when I first started the podcast, I was really focused on two pieces of content a week for the most part. And that might be an article, a video, or a podcast recording. And now it's more of its own separate standalone thing.
And so it gets one episode a week in perpetuity. It's a weekly show. Yeah, it's been a wild ride. I don't think I wanted to start a podcast, almost like I didn't want to start a blog back in 2010, but I realized this was one of the things [00:23:00] that you have to do if you want to. You know, teach on the internet for the, for lack of a better phrase, reach runners.
I think it's a wonderful way to have interesting conversations, and now it is probably the most fun that I have with all the different types of content that I create. I probably enjoy the podcast more than anything. I just love having these in depth conversations, learning more about the training process and what, you know, different subject matter experts and elite runners are doing with their training.
I've always been super interested in training theory and physiology and exercise science, so it's a wonderful way for me to scratch my own itch at the same time as hopefully giving runners some of the resources they need to build better training for themselves. Yeah, and I think it's just something that's cool.
You, you get to a certain point where your podcast is performing well and just as well. Like, as a piece of that process, you end up getting better access [00:24:00] to, you know, guests that really have the answers that you're trying to, or the answers to the questions that you're trying to ask at a very professional level a lot of times.
So I think it's just really cool to be able to go in and talk to someone who's really in the lab or in the field as a coach and producing some really cool stuff and be able to get into the nuance of it a little bit versus just what we see fly out on the short form stuff on social media.
Yeah I, my podcast is definitely an answer to some of the short form stuff that, you know, look, I enjoy consuming myself a little bit and I produce a little bit of it, but at the end of the day, man, I'm such a long form guy. I love podcasts, I love movies. I love Hardcore History, which is five hour long podcast episodes.
It's basically an audio book. And so I really love it. And to your point about getting access to the people who can answer your questions, you know, that really hit home for me earlier last year when I was having a conversation with [00:25:00] Phil s Skiba. Phil s Skiba is one of the exercise scientists who worked on Nike's breaking two projects.
And so he helped with, you know, some of the training methodology and other aspects of how Kip Jage was going to run a sub two marathon. And it was almost like in the middle of the conversation, I'm sitting there thinking to myself, having this very out of body moment, like you are talking to one of the sub two physiologists.
This is so cool. How did you get here? This is awesome. This is like my dream job. So yeah, I'm having a great time and yeah, it connects me with people like Phil, people like you, Zach. So it's a dream come true. Yeah, it's awesome. I think the, you mentioned the super shoe stuff and that was something where I really leaned on the podcast a little bit with trying to get answers to things or really try to unpack that world because when when I switched to doing no shoe sponsorship last year, I had like this opportunity to try anything I wanted to.[00:26:00]
And some of it was like you see so much online about efficiency and how this shoe's gonna perform versus that shoe and things like that. And I had both Jeff Burns and Dustin Chopper on the podcast. You do a lot of that research and it was fun to talk to those guys and really figure out the marketing from the actual results.
And then one thing that kind of stood out to me, there was a couple, one was that you know, you. You get a lot of the marketing in the shoe world around okay, this shoe's gonna be for 5K, 10 K, this shoe's gonna be maybe like a marathon or something like that. And one thing Dustin told me, he is you know what?
He's like when I get people in the lab and we test for efficiency, really the questions we're asking is, or we're trying to answer is, what pace are you targeting for the race you're trying to train? 'cause that's, we're gonna want to find the most efficient shoe at that pace for you. And then from there it's just a question of can you tolerate that shoe for the duration of the event?
So if I have somebody who's doing a marathon, but for whatever reason they're more efficient in the shoe that's marketed towards [00:27:00] 5K, 10 k, as long as they can handle that shoe for the full marathon, it's like that's the one they want. That one I thought was really interesting. The other was like the foam durability too, where I remember when super shoes first came out, it was like, oh, you can't get much miles outta this.
And that kind of got maybe catapulted further when Adidas launched their Evo Pro series where it was. Oh, this shoe works for one race and it's $500. And I remember asking Dustin about that and he's now I think there's a lot more durability with those foams than maybe people think where he would test a pair of I'm, I can't remember which Nike it was, but is there Zoom X foam?
And it had the exact same efficiency at 400 miles as it did at the first time he wore it. So there's just a lot of cool stuff within that where when you start talking to those, the people who are really in the lab with it, you can find out some cool, interesting things. Yeah, my God, don't throw away your super shoes then, right?
No kidding. You can wear them a lot longer than you think. Yeah, I think that stuff is super interesting, especially the way in which shoes are [00:28:00] marketed. You know, if a shoe is built for, say the 5K, but you're gonna run a 10 k or a half marathon at a pace that. Would otherwise, you know, be considered a 5K pace for someone else that might be the right shoe for you.
And so targeting a shoe based on an event distance, unless it's like a 100 meter or 100 mile race, the extremes. I think that's a really interesting way to think about super shoes or really any racing shoe because isn't it more about the pace than the actual distance that it's built for?
Yeah. And you do get a stability component in there for sure, especially when you get to those longer distances where the efficiency and stability tend to contradict each other a little bit. So you get like the, probably the best example in the market right now is the Puma Fast R three, which is just a blazing fast shoe, but it had to give up some stability to get that fast.
[00:29:00] So it may not be the shoe for everybody if they can't make it for themselves. 26.2 miles in that shoe. But if you can, and we know some people do then that might be the ticket for you to get a little bit of extra progress out of it. Yeah. I think the biggest thing to remember about Super Shoes is that there's no free lunch there, there is some extra stress that you're gonna be experiencing in these shoes.
And maybe extra stress isn't the right way to put it. It's just different stress. And they do just behave and act in a different way than normal shoes. And yeah I had this conversation with Chris Napier. I've also had Jeff Burns on my podcast. He's brilliant. Just talking about some of the, you know, the trade-offs that you get.
Yeah. There, and I think that's a helpful way of thinking about things. Trade-offs. Yes. It's faster. Yes. It's gonna return more energy. You know, maybe the foam is. Reducing some of the force that you are experiencing through your legs, but you might be experiencing [00:30:00] more force at the ankle or for the plantar fascia, for example.
And so being a little more gradual with how you are working the shoe into your rotation and finding a shoe that, that personally feels good. I'm a big believer in just that subjective feeling of this shoe feels good on me. It, you know, I feel competent running workouts or long runs in this shoe.
So that's probably a good shoe for you. Those are just some considerations with super shoes. I know from, for myself personally, I grew up Zach in the area of minimalism . Most of my races were in Nike waffles and I really struggled moving up to the longer road racing distances when I started running them because I came from this cross country and track background.
And, you know, we always wanted to find the lightest shoe that we could find. And you know, I remember. My 10 K personal best is from Franklin Park in Massachusetts, this kind of famed cross country course. And I remember this race because I was wearing the Nike streak Zoom [00:31:00] xcs. You can look this shoe up.
It's basically a slipper. I have no idea how I ran 6.2 miles, you know, at whatever pace that I was running. I don't know, 5, 5 20 or something in these tiny little shoes. And then I tried to go onto the roads and I really struggled finding a shoe that gave me the support that I needed that wasn't a trainer.
And so now I try to run in super shoes and I feel like I'm on this very squishy jello mold and I can never find stability because of my background with the more stable, more minimal issue. So I'm one of these people that struggles a little bit with super shoes personally. And I need something that has a little bit of a good base to it to feel a little bit more stable.
Yeah, that's a really interesting point and it gets into a broader topic that we can hit on too, which is just the strength work and strength component to running and programming, things like that. But the shoe transition from minimalist essentially maximalist with the super shoes is a [00:32:00] pretty stark difference where I look at just like shoe lineups, and it's there used to be a place for a minimalist shoe, essentially on almost every catalog because you'd have a racing flat, which you could argue is basically a minimalist shoe for most cases now, it's like your racing shoes are gonna be stacked up as high as you can get away with for the most part.
So it's the opposite end of the spectrum. And like you, I explored the minimalist stuff. I like to think I took it to its logical conclusion by getting up to a hundred miles. And like I, I think the lightest shoe I wore is like 3.9 ounces. Just. Basically a thin strip of rubber under your foot.
And I don't know, like it was just like I, when you said like switching over to the, or wearing like super shoes now you feel maybe a little bit more of a variance than someone else is going to, that weren't playing around with as much low profile stuff at one point. And I definitely did have a little bit of a transition when I started wearing those shoes where my hamstrings, I had never had hamstring issues in my [00:33:00] entire life.
And then all of a sudden I started to have to pay attention to that. And yeah, just like the relative wobbliness that you're gonna get in that versus a lower profile shoe. Thankfully I'd moved away from like real true minimalist shoes before the super shoe. So it wasn't like a total zero to a hundred in terms of shoe variance, but it was enough where I definitely noticed the difference.
When you said I took the super shoes to their logical conclusion I thought you were gonna say a stress fracture. Yeah. I didn't actually ever get any. I actually look back at that and I do wonder if I just had some relative strengths within that world of just lower leg durability for one reason or another, because I've never had a stress fracture in the lower leg.
I've had a couple sacral stress fractures, but that was prior, or that, that was after I was doing more of the minimalist stuff. But yeah, it was, you know, I did a ton of miles in those types of shoes, so I would've, I had a lot of friends who would run in, who would get stress fractures just from racing flats, [00:34:00] wearing them periodically versus exclusively.
I dunno, maybe I dodged a bullet. Maybe that was just a relative strength for me, or who knows. Yeah, you just might be like, particularly suited for more minimal minimalist shoes perhaps. Whereas, you know, some people might be more suited to the maximalist approach. So just go to show different shoes for different people.
Yeah. And it is just one of those things because I think we talk about the injuries with different footwear and things like that, whether it be. Stress fractures from a minimal issue or hamstring issues from a super shoe and that sort of stuff. But what doesn't get talked about as often is the people who got away from injuries because of this.
And I think you do see that with the super shoes too, where there were people who were chronically getting injured and then for whatever reason, with the advent of some of these new foams, now all of a sudden they're consistently able to hit higher mileage than they were able to do in the past and stay more injury resistant than they had before.
So there's that [00:35:00] whole side of it too. Yeah. You know, it just goes to show, like whenever I'm asked, are super shoes a good idea to wear for my workouts? Maybe my long runs for races? It depends, right? Like some runners are gonna be high responders to super shoes. Some runners may not really experience too much of an effect on their performances and some runners might really dislike it and they don't like the feeling.
It doesn't really work for them. And so from a performance perspective, you're gonna have people all over the map. And I think the same is true for injuries. Some runners are actually gonna be a little bit more protected by super shoes. Some runners might not see an effect, while others might be a little bit more at risk of certain injuries.
So yeah, like it's one of these things where there are no clear cut answers on, you know, whether or not it's going to work for you or you're gonna feel good about it. But yeah that's where the experimentation comes in and I think working to find what works for [00:36:00] you individually, not listening to, you know, whatever the shoe marketing is or whatever your buddy at Run club says is probably the best option.
Yeah, no doubt. I do want to dive into strength work a bit here, and maybe we start with just since that's a component of your podcast and interest of yours, let's just rewind back. Because that's one thing I noticed really shift within my running career where early on strength work was viewed as this thing where it was like, you know what, if you have time to get in the gym and do strength work, you're probably better off just doing more of what you were doing before, like more running and get your volume up, get, you know, more training quality in there and things like that.
And I think the running community really did view strength work a lot as just not just something that was neutral, but like detrimental to like your progress from a performance standpoint. And that started to shift towards where I think people started recognizing that there's definitely [00:37:00] a value add to it, to the degree where having some sort of strength program or some structure around that is, is probably in your best interest.
Was there a moment in time where you had an aha moment within that? Or were you always into strength work as an endurance athlete? No, I was definitely not always into strength work. And to be honest, Zach I'm getting this reputation as like the strength training running coach. I don't even really like strength training.
I would rather be out running. The only reason I'm such a proponent of strength training is because, one, I understand the benefits of it almost reluctantly. And number two, it just allows runners to do more of what they love, which is running. You know, I'm a big fan of any training, invention, intervention that makes your running more productive, that lowers your injury risk, that makes you into a better runner.
You know, I was someone that didn't really lift at all, but my aha moment was a very serious IT band injury after my first marathon. So I ran the New York City Marathon in 2008. Felt good during the race, [00:38:00] you know, up until I completely hit the wall at mile 20 in the most cliched performance you can imagine.
But it was after the race where, you know, I took about a week off and I started running a little bit after the marathon and I wasn't doing anything long or difficult, but my IT band started to hurt. And this just progressed into such a severe injury that I didn't run for about six months.
I went to see four physical therapists who weren't really resolving the injury very much. And part of this aha moment for me was in the education process because yeah, I saw four physical therapists and, you know, in between sitting on the couch feeling bad for myself 'cause I wasn't running, I was trying to figure out.
Why is this injury happening? What can I do to resolve it? And this was at a time when there wasn't a lot of content out on the internet. And so I was really searching and trying to find these little bits and pieces that did exist. But, you know, part of this aha moment was [00:39:00] me starting to do some of the things that I learned from the physical therapists, some of the things that I learned, you know, through my own research.
And I put it all together into this kind of, you know, somewhat newer approach to my training. And I got healthy. I eventually went and ran a faster marathon and I didn't get hurt afterwards or during any part of the process. And so I started realizing that a certain amount of strength work is preventative.
It helps you stay healthy. And it also just makes your running better. You know, you're gonna feel a little bit more capable, you're gonna be able to absorb a little bit more training. You know, I like to think of strength training as armor. It protects you a little bit from the impact of training, the stress of training.
And, you know, then I became a believer and it went from. Let's do mostly body weight stuff, you know, a lot of the things that you'll do in a PTs office. And then that gradually morphed into my current approach, which does include heavier weight lifting in the gym, a little bit more focus on explosivity and power, [00:40:00] some of the things that you might need at the end of a race when you're trying to sprint and kick hard to have a good closing, you know, segment of the race.
And so it's been this full circle moment for me. Like I remember in high school one of my friends telling me to lift weights and I was like, I don't need that. My legs get plenty of exercise through running. And now on the complete opposite where, you know, let's do some strength training every week.
You know, we're not bodybuilders. We don't need to be in the gym four or five days a week, but, you know, a good two day a week strength habit in the gym is probably a really good idea for most runners. Yeah, it's a really interesting topic when you start getting into the, like the stages of acceptance, I'll call it, which is okay, I should probably be doing some strength work too, okay, now I'm committing to dedicating say, two days a week to strength work.
What do I actually do with that time and with the different potential options that you could do with it. And you get all the debates around just should you lift heavy, should you [00:41:00] lift compounds? Should you do single leg stuff, lighter stuff, body weight stuff. And then you can get into the world like plyometrics and muscular endurance routines and things like that.
Do you have a, do you have a general starting point for people when they're getting into it as to l let's see what we should do first just to get you exposed to this and then have an order of how you go about those different types of strength work throughout the course of their development.
Yeah I think a really good place to start is number one, we have to recognize that building the habit of strength training is really important for runners. Mostly because runners by and large don't really want to strength train. Hopefully with the true Hanes of the world coming into the sport, we can change that a little bit.
But, you know, through my coaching experience over the last 15 years, most runners don't want to spend a lot of time in the weight room. You know, I'd say maybe 20% of my athletes have a good gym habit and I love that. But if you're new to strength training and you're not sure where to start I think one of the easiest things to do is just [00:42:00] let's.
Do some sort of, you know, body weight strength or even core routine or workout after each one of our runs. And it acts as a cool down, it acts to build that habit. I think it's really helpful to think of runners not as just endurance runners, but as athletes that specialize in running. And so that opens the door to doing other forms of exercise.
And I know it's a little bit semantics and sure we're runners, but, you know, but this way of thinking about ourselves I think could be really helpful because it then opens that, that the floodgates to strength training, mobility, plyometrics, you know, cycling, doing some cross training, whatever that might look like, and really thinking of yourself as a more well-rounded athlete rather than someone that only runs and that's their only form of exercise.
And so if you can get into the habit of doing like a 10 to 15 minute body weight strength session after each one of your runs where you're doing some [00:43:00] basic stuff like bridges and side planks and you know, maybe some single leg squats, maybe you're focusing on hips and glutes with, you know, some good side lying leg raises, some clamshells.
You know, those kinds of fairly simple exercises that you might find in a physical therapy office. That's the starting point that I would often suggest because it's this type of work. It isn't really high effort. The hardest part about this is simply committing to the time requirement. You know, you're not gonna, you know, deadlifting your max one rep Max is very different than doing a 45 second plank.
And so I found the body weight stuff to be a really good entry point into strength training. It builds confidence, it builds that skill of adherence to strength training over time so that you can stay consistent with it. 'cause just like running, you know, you can go on one 20 mile run. And that's probably not really gonna do very much, but it's the whole body of work that's [00:44:00] important, just like with strength training.
So let's get into that habit. Let's do it consistently and regularly. And you know, I have this very simple concept of sandwiching. You run in between a dynamic warmup where you might be doing some flexibility movements. You might be doing some light strength work. Maybe you do a series of lunges with some leg swings, you can throw in a couple other exercises, then you're ready for your run.
After the run, you do that 10 or 15 minute body weight strength work. And so this is a really nice way of building a little extra strength, a little extra mobility. You'll build some extra proprioception and coordination and athleticism into your training as well. And then when you're ready for it, you can take the next step, which is actually getting into a gym and doing some heavier weight lifting.
And like I mentioned before, two days a week, 45 to 60 minutes max, you could, I'm a big fan of focusing on the compound movements, you know, like squats and deadlifts maybe some overhead presses, you know, all the [00:45:00] variations of those exercises. And there exist many of them. That's a really good starting place for most runners.
Just to build a habit and to get what I think are like the main benefits of strength training, which are probably improving your running economy and making you more resilient to the stresses of running. That was really well said. I love it too, because I think it is one of those things where when strength work first started getting popular within running or advisable within running, there was this kind of back and forth conversation about you, you take the average runner and throw 'em in a gym, they're gonna probably gravitate towards the high repetition, low volume stuff because that's what they know more or less.
And then there's pushback on that. It's you, why would you be piling on more of what you're already doing? You want to focus on heavier compound movements and things like that. But the counter to that then becomes that's maybe a little bit of a higher level. Then what's gonna be a good starting point for someone who's never done strength work before in their life or hasn't done strike work in [00:46:00] years, if not decades.
So having I love what you said about fir first, let's just get in the habit so that we make sure that when we do progress within this consistency's already gonna be part of the process that's already locked in. And then what we do with that time can evolve as you learn more and can get yourself in a position where maybe doing some heavier compound lifts is something that's approachable and isn't gonna be a scenario where trying to solve a problem creates the problem itself by creating an injury because you don't have good form or know what you're doing when you're picking up heavier weights relative to what you can do.
Yeah, for sure. And I'm a big believer too, in, you know, like when it comes to most training decisions, like I'm a moderate I rarely take extreme positions. And you know, I think. You can structure strength training in a wide variety of ways and still get really great results. You know, my, my position is mostly that strength training should be periodized, much like our running plan, you know, if you're 16 weeks out from [00:47:00] a race, you know what you're doing in the gym should look different than when you are one week out from the race.
Just like your workouts are gonna look a lot different at different points of the season. And so I think there's a place for, you know, doing your three sets of 10, you know, basic lifting, general strength, your building that, that strength foundation. This is like base training for running, you know, you're doing.
Either no workouts or aerobic workouts. You're just doing strides, focusing on volume. You know, maybe you're working on a weakness here and there, but it's pretty general. And then as you get closer to your race, you can do more specific aspects of training. We can do the same thing in the weight room and, you know, pull in some of the more advanced types of lifting later on in the season, like heavier lifts, you know, maybe we're doing some sort of power movement or explosive exercise.
I do think tricks are a form of strength training. It's almost like a little bit of a hybrid between a drill and a strength exercise. But, [00:48:00] you know, putting in some p PIOs to make you more efficient to help translate some of your strength into speed. This is where I think we should be cautious.
'cause I think PIOs have a high risk of injury just 'cause they're explosive. It's really easy to do too many of them. So this is why I like to have a coach or a trainer, someone with you to really watch your form, make sure you're doing them right and to not program too many of those PIOs.
And then as you know, get into the later points of your season and you're doing some heavier lifts, you're doing more of the explosive work and plyometrics, this is where you have to reduce the volume. You know, just like you're not gonna do 20 miles at mile race pace, that is a funny workout.
You know, you're not gonna do, you know, three sets of 10 at your three rep max effort, you know, like that, that, that doesn't make any sense. And so you've gotta cut the volume down while you're focusing on the intensity so that you're not taking away from your running. Because at the end of the day, we are runners.
We're specializing in running, and anything that we're doing [00:49:00] in the gym should be a supplement to our running. It should make our running better. And so if you're finding that. You're so sore from lifting that you can't go for a run or you can't hit the paces that you should be hitting on a workout because you're just fatigued or sore from lifting.
Then we need to either dial back the weight or the volume of the weightlifting sessions so that we're not interfering with running, because at the end of the day, our sports specific exercise running is the most important thing. So as long as you're prioritizing, running and, you know, working through some sort of strategic approach to your weightlifting, then you're probably good to go.
Yeah. Yeah, I love that and I think one of the rules I've given myself is whenever I shift to a different type of strength work, whether it be doing the heavier compound stuff, the three sets of 10, like you mentioned, or switching to do more plyometrics than I had been, if it's been like a few weeks or in some cases months since I've really focused on that input, I just do a third of [00:50:00] whatever I've done.
At the, in the past. So if that's three sets of 10, I'm doing one set of 10. And then that gives me an opportunity to assess that next day or in that next four, eight hours, is there anything that's standing out that feels a little bit behind the other stuff? Or am I noticing any soreness? And, you know, it kinda gives you a little bit of a baseline to build up from versus going in and doing that three by 10 right away.
And then the next day you wake up and you're like, I just feel like I ran a marathon. Yeah. I think that's the best approach especially because I think it's really easy to overdo the first training session in the gym after a long break. I remember specifically when I first started lifting regularly, I went to the gym and I did a 30 minute workout.
I even overdid that 30 minute strength workout and it was a full body strength session. It wasn't like I was focusing on one or two muscle groups in 30 minutes, and for three or four days I could barely move around. My mobility was so [00:51:00] impacted, and so from that one experience, I have really tried to, you know, reinforce the lesson that if it's your first time in the gym or if first time back after, you know, three, four plus weeks, just do a tiny amount of what you think you're gonna do it.
It's almost like that first run back after a road marathon where you think you're recovered, but let's just run, you know, an easy couple miles. And it's almost like a diagnostic run. We're just seeing what is going on with our body. Is our body gonna be responsive to running? Are we going to expose any.
Hotspots or niggles or really sore areas that we weren't really able to tease out when we're just walking around and going to the grocery store on a day-to-day basis. And so that first weightlifting workout, I think, needs to be very much like that. It's almost a diagnostic session. We're just trying to see how our body responds to it.
So the goal isn't to build fitness, to build strength, anything like that. It's almost just a little bit of detective work. Let me [00:52:00] do this little tiny workout, see how my body responds to it, and then I can build on it, you know, three days later or so. Yeah. Yeah. I always find it to be something where if starting gradual isn't a good option or isn't an option, I have on the table, I have a timeline issue versus a.
I am behind the issue. So I think a lot of times I try to build a long enough timeline where there's just plenty of room to explore a little bit within just like where your starting point is and where you want to be, so that if that ends up being a little bit longer, it doesn't become consequential in terms of getting done what you want to before whatever goal race you're training for.
Yeah. And you know, Zach, you just said something really interesting. You said explore. I think the gym is a wonderful place for runners to explore. So instead of following a formal program, I'm saying this as someone who sells a formal weightlifting program. Yeah. I also think there's value in exploration in figuring out how your body responds to different [00:53:00] movements.
Different types of exercises, single leg work, you know, isolating smaller muscles and just seeing how that affects you. Because if you're exploring not just strength, but also different movement patterns, you're gonna expose some strengths, some weaknesses. You're gonna learn more about yourself as an athlete.
I don't know. I have a question for you, Zach. Do you explore like this in the weight room? Because I know, I certainly do. I follow a general pattern, but then I also throw in a couple random things just to get my body into a unique position. I just want to, you know, feel a little bit different.
I don't know what I think I'm. It's almost like I'm in a library browsing random books. Yeah. The same idea except physically. Yeah. No it is something I, this is one of my favorite parts about training is, I like the structure and I like having, you know, the support of, okay, here's where I'm at, this is where I'm gonna get if I do these inputs.
But I also do a little bit more of okay, let's go figure something out or solve a problem that I maybe don't even know that's there yet. [00:54:00] And a recent example of that is I started to like to implement more plyometric type movements into my training to start this year. And I actually felt pretty decent about a lot of the forward movement type stuff.
Single leg hops and just jump squats or even jump split squat type things. That stuff all felt reasonably in a good spot relative to just where I was, my starting point would be and where I want to be. The lateral stuff that had a little more explosiveness to it, I was like. Oh yeah, you don't play pickup basketball anymore, or you don't go outside and do things that require a lot of that sharp lateral movement.
So just going in the gym and just playing around with a little bit of some different plyometric movements really showcase to me that was a pinch point in terms of something I'd want to both be mindful of that I don't do too much too soon for the reasons we talked about before, because I probably am very at risk of injury if I go in and just start doing like hundreds of side skips and things like that.
But it is something that I want to improve and I want to [00:55:00] make sure it's not a weak point for me with the training that's coming up too. Yeah, I think I like doing that sort of stuff and trying out different movement patterns and different ways of loading it too, just to see where my strengths and weaknesses are and how I might want to focus on those.
Zach, I don't think you're alone in lacking a little bit of lateral strength or stability as a distance runner that's probably. Every runner's main weakness. I might venture to say, and it's funny you mention that because I was just on a nature walk with my kids on Sunday. I had a big Friday, Saturday and was feeling beat up, so I didn't run on a Sunday, instead I went for a nature walk later in the day.
But on that nature walk, I started doing some sort of lateral, almost like the defense drill with basketball. I used to be a basketball player before I was a runner. Sounds like you are too. We need to do some pickup balls sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. And I started doing some of these lateral movements and immediately discovered the weakness, the, almost, not a weakness, but more of a lack of [00:56:00] coordination doing that movement that I used to, as a basketball player, feel very comfortable doing.
'cause you know, you're playing defense almost every day and, you know, you're just engaged in that very specific movement pattern on a regular basis. And then you start running and you're never engaged in that movement pattern unless you're doing lateral lunges or something like that.
You just don't get that stimulus. So I'm not surprised to hear it. I'm in the same boat as you and it's probably a good area to focus on for pretty much every runner. Yeah. It, you just, what you described is perfect too. It's almost like you go through those movements and there's, it's like this.
Weird life transition of just this used to just happen intuitively. Like I didn't even think about it. It was like my brain didn't even have to fire consciously to move in this direction, and now I have to actually focus on doing it in order to reconnect with that and make that intuitive again.
And yeah, I mean you, you're out there on the basketball court playing when you're younger and it's just you just, you move [00:57:00] laterally because that's what you gotta do to get to where you're supposed to be. And now it's okay, I've gotta really think about, okay, how am I gonna land when I do this?
And is it gonna hurt or is it gonna feel good? Yeah. And you know, I think it offers this really good avenue for exploration in the weight room because you can work on the things that we don't work on as runners. And we can think about planes of motion here. And so we can think about the frontal plane of motion, which is that side to side or the transverse plane of motion where we're rotating.
So I think the gym is a great place to add inside to side movements. Movements that include some sort of rotation to almost provide a little bit of a counterbalance between, you know, the very sagittal plane front to back motion that we typically engage in with running. Where, you know, let's be honest, it's a fairly one dimensional sport.
You know, we're running straight ahead as fast as we can, that's the sport. Of course there's some other things involved a little bit, but the movement patterns [00:58:00] are pretty limited in running. And so whenever we can expose ourselves to other movement patterns through dynamic flexibility movements that we might do as a warmup.
Drills, plyometrics, strength training, forms of cross training. I think those are probably the five biggest ways that we can help ourselves be better athletes, not just better runners. Yeah, no, that makes sense. One, one topic that I wanted to chat about, maybe we can end on this one, is within ultra running, more so on the trails, but the trails dominate ultra running.
So a broader topic within the sport is these muscular endurance training workouts that I would put in the same category of, okay, you're going into a gym and you're doing a strength workout versus you're doing another running style workout and things like that. And I know you've had Scott Johnston on your podcast a couple times and he's really popularized this partly because he's coached some phenomenal runners who've had a lot of success just [00:59:00] in general, but also recently with Ruth Crofton winning UTMB and.
I think he co-authored his book about that, introducing this to the ultra running world with Killian Joney. And then Tom Evans, also the male UTMB winner this year, is coached by him. So they're using this routine and their training and it's been really cool between your podcast and a few others that Scott's getting out and talking about his coaching philosophy, his background, and the why behind these muscular endurance routines.
So I would just love to hear your take on what is like a muscular endurance routine and where's the value add to that? And maybe a third question, if you don't mind, is there gonna be a variance for someone like myself who's running more on the road in the track type of stuff versus these mountain runners who are going to be going up steep 30% incline stuff when it comes to the need or the desire to do a routine like that?
Yeah, great [01:00:00] questions. I think it's really interesting kind of the moment that we're in as we learn more about, you know, muscular endurance and physiological resilience and, you know, they're basically trying to answer the question, like, how do you fall apart less at the end of a race? There's always going to be some sort of decline, especially if you're pushing yourself.
So how do you limit that decline? And, you know, I think muscular endurance is best thought of as like local fatigue. So it's literally fatigue in the muscles. You know, it's not aerobic fatigue, it's not brain fog or neuromuscular kind of issues that you might experience. It's really when your legs start failing you at the end of a race.
And I think anyone who's run a marathon, maybe a half marathon, but probably a marathon or longer gets to that point where you just start falling apart. You know, your legs are. Not turning over underneath you and muscular endurance workouts try [01:01:00] to address that problem. They try to address the decline in performance that you experience at the end of a race.
So how do we do that? There, there's a lot of different strategies, some, a little bit more effective than others, you know? I think anything that is very specific to the demands that you're going to experience on race day is going to build muscular endurance. So if you're getting ready for, you know, a very hilly hundred mile ultra, and you don't want to fall apart at the end of it, you know, you could do a hard hill session.
Then your cool down could include, you know, some more uptempo, steadier, paced running, which is gonna mimic the very demands of say, a Leadville 100 Mile Ultra. You can also do things in the weight room, you know, where you're gonna be targeting the very same muscles that you're going to be working. You know, I think generally just getting stronger is going to be helpful.
But if you want to get really specific, you know, I'll borrow a workout from David Roche, who I know you've talked to. He does his mountain legs routine [01:02:00] mountain. Yeah. Which is basically, yeah, it's just a series of like single leg squats that he does for a certain period of time. I'm not sure if he focuses on a certain number of repetitions.
It's more, you know, do it for a minute or two. And the idea is to fry your legs. Like you just do it in a quick uptempo fashion so that you just experience a tremendous amount of fatigue. And it's that stimulus which is going to be helpful at preventing the breakdown later on in a race.
Another way to do it is to utilize, you know, the repeated bout effect with downhill running where, you know, this is probably the most damaging form of running that runners can do. Anyone who's done a Revel race probably experienced this, where if you're running fast downhill, especially on a road, you're just experiencing so many eccentric muscle contractions that contribute to muscular damage that you know, this is literally why you are experiencing that kind of local fatigue at the end of a race.[01:03:00]
And so giving yourself a very strong muscle breakdown stimulus is actually a good thing in training. So doing. You know, let's say you're training for a marathon and you want more muscular endurance, you don't want to fade after mile 20 like I did in my first marathon. So you might do like a 20 mile long run where the last two to six miles, depending on your ability, are at your, say, goal marathon pace.
So it's a little bit faster than what you're currently capable of, but it's down a certain grade. And so you're, the point is to beat up your legs a little bit. The point is impact, and I know that sounds a little weird, it's like the thing that we often try to avoid as runners, but it's also the signal that tells your body to get more resilient to, to prevent some of that local breakdown that occurs.
So I think it's really interesting and, you know, for any runner who might be quite unquote fast, but they [01:04:00] struggle in longer races like a marathon with. You know, finishing strong with breaking down in the final 10 K, which I know is very common. And in hindsight, this was the kind of runner that I was, and it shouldn't be too surprising.
You know, I'm a cross country and track guy who tried to do longer road races, struggled a little bit in the marathon. It admittedly wasn't my favorite distance, but I was struggling from a lack of muscular endurance, a lack of, you know, we also could say physiological resilience. I just started deteriorating way too quickly at the end of that race compared with my abilities and say a five, excuse me, a 5K.
And you know, there's a lot of things we can do. It's often now considered, you know, I love this topic because it's like the fourth training metric that really matters. You know, there's a running economy, there's lactate threshold, there's VO two max, and then there's your ability to withstand the deterioration of those things.
And it's partly about muscular endurance. Yeah, like I think it's a really interesting avenue for [01:05:00] improvement because it's basically a metric of durability. And I think most adult runners, that's probably where a lot of their weaknesses lie, is in that durability factor. So if we can increase a little bit of muscular endurance, we're gonna improve our performances substantially.
'cause we're just not gonna be falling apart at the end of races. Yeah. Yeah. The thing that really caught my attention with it was when Scott was talking about just the difference between global fatigue and that very specific fatigue localized fatigue. And I was like, you know, that makes sense because if my limiter in adding more training, adaptation stressors is just everything that goes into going out for another run then, but not going and doing some of these.
Muscular endurance routines, then it's almost not a question of, oh, if this is cool, but it's not as direct as something else, so do something else. If something else is no longer on the table for me, for one reason or the other, but that is, [01:06:00] you know, that's a net, a net positive. So I think there's probably gonna be a fair bit of individualization within that, but I thought that was a really interesting way to kinda interpret what he was saying or maybe the reasoning behind some of that sort of stuff.
Yeah, like the way I think about it too is it's a relatively high risk thing to do, especially if you're doing the downhill running. If you're doing the really specific workouts, which are just going to be difficult just by their very nature of being specific. Some of the, you know, the mountain legs that David Roche really likes.
I don't really consider those too risky, but a lot of the other forms of building muscular endurance can be quite risky, but at the same time, they don't really take any extra time. So for, you know, the runner who, who might be training for a marathon, who wants more muscular endurance so that they don't decline as much at the end of that marathon, it might be hard to go from say, 40 or 50 miles a week to 70 or 80 miles a week.
They might not have the schedule for that, but [01:07:00] could they do two or three very strategic marathon pace long runs where they're ending down a hard down decline? I think that's a valid training swap. You know, you're not doing the things that take a lot of extra time that you may not be able to do.
But if you're strategic, you can throw in, you know, these really smaller bouts of. You know, we'll call it a workout stimulus that has these outsize rewards. You know, things like, you know, I think a heavy lifting workout has outsize rewards based on the time investment. You know, a 10 mile easy run. The value there isn't if you can do it a hundred times in a row, right?
It's a big global workload over time. Whereas these individual downhill sessions or, you know, a big long run with like 12 miles at gold marathon pace, maybe on varied terrain, those things, are a really strong stimulus that you [01:08:00] don't need a lot of. So I think we should differentiate between the two types of stimuluses that, that you could potentially get.
You know, the ones that are great that don't take any extra time are just restructuring a workout, but that do have relatively high risk first, something like mountain legs, which, you know, does take some extra time, but has very little, you know, injury risk for the runner. You know, you're probably not gonna get hurt doing a bunch of single leg squats off the back of your car holding onto the door.
You know that, yeah, you're probably safe, but, you know, a big downhill session has a pretty high risk of injury. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point too. You have the injury risk of just downhill running and then also doing quality at the back end of something that's fatiguing.
You're just running up against your body's ability to withstand that to some degree which is always an interesting consideration just in general, but. With these things as well. So the other thing I always think about too is just having enough flavor in the training to make it exciting.
And this is definitely gonna be a little bit more on the individual side of things, [01:09:00] but, you know, going in and doing like the mountain legs type stuff or the one I'll do is it'll be like box steps jump squats, forward lunges and split jumping, split squats are the four that I'll do. And sometimes it's just fun to do that.
It's like it's different. It's a little bit new at times if I'm bringing it in after not doing it for a while and just keeping training exciting enough where you're reaching the fatigue tolerance you have with enough flavor that it's still fun. 'cause at the end of the day, we've got so many different activities we could be doing other than running.
Might as well make it as fun as possible within reason. Yeah I think about that too, us learning about some of these new kinds of training approaches or ways of structuring things. It just gives runners a new little wrinkle to add to the training process, a new additional way of prompting, adaptations, and driving additional progress.
So I think it's super exciting. Cool. [01:10:00] Awesome, Jason. It's been a lot of fun chatting with you about all these different topics. Before I let you go though, I want to make sure that you can share with the listeners where they can find you and anything you want to let them know about. Oh, thanks. Strength running.com is my home base.
That's where you can find our blog, our training courses. The Strength Running podcast is also I'd say actually very similar to yours, Zach. It's a more training and science oriented podcast. I like to think of my listener as a pro runner and I want to surround them with. Other pro runners and sports psychologists and PTs and strength coaches and running coaches and all the support staff that might enable an elite level performance.
I want to bring that to the recreational runner. So that's the kind of podcast that I have. I hope it's interesting to some and of course there's the strength running YouTube channel where I give a little bit more bite-sized training advice and often try to film it out in the mountains of Colorado here, where, you know, at [01:11:00] least we can have a fun background.
Yeah, you got a great background over in Colorado, cool. Awesome, Jason. Thanks a bunch for coming on. We'll have to have you back down the road and dive into some more topics. Yeah, thanks man. This was super fun. I loved geeking out on all these training topics, which is right up my alley.
And it was a blast having you on my podcast, which will be live, I think when this episode goes live. Yeah, we'll be able to, hopefully we can convince a few people to listen to both of them. Yeah. I know they're gonna be sick of us probably a little bit, but I know I made that joke offline to you. I hope you're not sick of it because we talked.
They can get a three hour experience if they want. I love it. Thanks a lot Zach. I appreciate it. Yeah, take care.