Jason Fitzgerald is not only the host of the Strength Running Podcast, he is also a 2:39 marathoner, author, blog writer & running coach! With his thirst for running knowledge, Jason has spent years researching the best advice on running programs, biomechanics & optimal performance. It was a blast to have Jason on to pick his brain on the best running program for you! We discuss the general components that should be in a running program, common mistakes runners make when preparing for a race, secret tips to run faster & reach any running goal. Search The Strength Running Podcast wherever you listen Also click on the link below for Jason's: Website: https://strengthrunning.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JasonFitz1 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strengthrunning Insta: https://www.instagram.com/jasonfitz1/ To follow the podcast joint the facebook group Becoming a smarter runner click on the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/833137020455347/?ref=group_header To find Brodie on instagram head to: https://www.instagram.com/brodie.sharpe/ To work with Brodie Sharpe at The Running Breakthrough Clinic visit: https://breakthroughrunning.physio/
Expand your running knowledge, identify running misconceptions and become a faster, healthier, SMARTER runner. Let Brodie Sharpe become your new running guide as he teaches you powerful injury insights from his many years as a physiotherapist while also interviewing the best running gurus in the world. This is ideal for injured runners & runners looking for injury prevention and elevated performance. So, take full advantage by starting at season 1 where Brodie teaches you THE TOP PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME ANY RUNNING INJURY and let’s begin your run smarter journey.
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On today's episode, how can I boost my running program with Jason Fitzgerald? Welcome to the Run Smarter podcast, the podcast helping you overcome your current and future running injuries by educating and transforming you into a healthier, stronger and smarter runner. My name is Brodie Sharp. I am the guy to reach out to when you finally decided enough is enough with your persistent running injuries. physiotherapist, the owner of the Breakthrough Running Clinic and your podcast host. I'm excited to bring you today's lesson and to add to your ever-growing running knowledge. Let's work together to overcome your running injuries, getting you to that starting line and finishing strong. So let's take it away. We have a juggernaut in the running podcast world on the show today. He is Jason Fitzgerald. He is the host of the strength running podcast. If you haven't listened to it, uh, he's a great guy by way of background. He is a running coach. He is also a two hour and 39 minute marathoner. So, you know, he is a top athlete and also wears many hats in the attempt to educate you as best he can. He has his own website. He has blogs. He is an author. One of his books is running for health and happiness. He's helped thousands of runners through coaching and through his podcast and just so many different avenues. So it's great to get the opportunity to have a talk with Jason today. We talk about the running programs and whether people need running programs, who needs running programs, what it should consist of. And just the little tweaking here and there, what to do if you want to run faster, common mistakes runners have when building up for a race. I picked his brain a little bit on what he thinks the most effective taper is for individuals. And we also have a listener question in. I didn't put this one out on social media, I wanted to allow the opportunity just for the course members to reach out and submit their questions. And Kiri Price. Uh, submitted a question and just pull up the email now. Um, there's so many varying thoughts out there on how and when is the best to implement strength training into your weekly schedule for optimal benefit. If you are training for a marathon, would you schedule the strength days on running days or rest days? And would you run first or strength train first if you had to do them together in one day? and she also has a little bit of an added on question, just more bang for a buck. I've always thought 20, 30 minutes, two to three times a week is fine. I'd love to know what your thoughts are if training for a marathon. So thanks, Kiri, for submitting that. In the future, I will be asking questions to the general population as well. So I will be asking questions to the course members, the current course members. as well as the general social media, but the course members will have priority when it comes to getting their answers on the podcast. So without further ado, I think we just jump straight into it. Here is our interview with Jason. Today, we have the topic of how I can boost my running program. And so I'm really excited. Your knowledge is phenomenal going through your website. listening to your podcast for a very long time now. So I just want to start by saying welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here and I'm so glad to be talking to another podcaster, uh, who happens to listen to my own. That's just so fascinating. Yeah. Big fan. Um, can we start off with just talking about your career and where it's kind of evolved and what you're mainly focusing on in the moment? Sure. Happy to. Yeah. My career as a runner started. almost inadvertently, I tried out for the cross country team as a freshman in high school, because I thought I could high jump like it was like track and field. But I quickly realized every day we were just going out for a run. And I realized, oh, there's no field events at all in cross country. So, you know, I was the kid in middle school who during track and field week avoided all of the running events because I just didn't like running at all. But once I started running a little bit, I really fell in love. with the aspect of improvement that you get as a runner. If you put in the work, you start seeing that you're able to run a little bit more, you're able to run faster, your personal bests start to get even faster. And that just to me was so exciting. And it felt like I had a lot of control. And so once I stuck with the first couple early weeks of cross country as a freshman, I got hooked. And I ran cross country indoor track and outdoor track for all four years of high school. I then went to university and spent four years also running cross country and track. And I never really stopped. You know, I graduated, I kept running. I kept, you know, getting more interested in other events, you know, things like triathlon, duathlon. I've run trail races. The very end of my college career, I started getting into the steeplechase, which was just a crazy event to run if anybody listening has the opportunity to run a steeplechase track event. definitely take advantage of that opportunity because it's a really fun, just very different type of running event. But the coaching side of things is where, I've always just loved the training side of running. I like understanding why we're doing certain workouts. I like knowing the whys behind everything, the exercise physiology and the science behind things. And so I was always asking my coach a lot of questions and he certainly... didn't love that all the time when we should have been doing a workout. But you know, it allowed me to learn a lot. And then I really started reading, you know, all the training books that are out there to really get a firm understanding of, you know, the training process and training theory and biomechanics and all those different topics. And then, you know, I got my coaching certification through USA track and field, which is the governing body for the sport here in the United States. And yeah, I've been coaching since 2010 with virtual clients, actually had quite a few clients from Australia. And it's just been an amazing experience working with runners all around the world, helping them with all the different goals that they have. And, you know, as a coach, my whole philosophy is let's get you to be able to accomplish your running goals. I'm not someone who, you know, only works with really fast runners. I don't work with just beginners. I have wide variety of athletes that I work with. And I find that to be more rewarding just because I get to really, uh, interact with different types of athletes and at different points in their whole journey. So yeah, I'm really excited about, uh, being here on the podcast to talk about some of the things I've learned over the years. Fantastic. And I love hearing someone who, who loves the science and loves educating themselves and wanting to know more and wanting to invest in their own knowledge. And. Like I say, the books that you invest in, it's really good to build on your knowledge. You might think like a lot of people get really comfortable with their knowledge base once they become a coach or become a health professional, but it's one to continue to strive beyond that and continue to learn. And it seems like you're a big student of that and take on that philosophy. I'm going to start off with just a very generic question. Should everyone have some sort of running program? That's a good question. I think that most runners should be following some type of training plan or running program most of the time. So I know that's kind of a mealy mouth answer there, but coaches are always saying, well, it depends. So if you're training for a race, then yes, I think you should be following a training plan. And then there's certain categories of people who might not fit that. Someone like... a collegiate level track and field coach or, you know, one of the authors of these running books that we're talking very highly about, they probably don't have to follow a plan because in their head, they have a really good idea of exactly what they're doing and how they're progressing and how their training is periodized, you know, and they can almost feel that as they go through the training cycle. But for most runners, you know, that's just not really something that they know too much about or that they really want to do. Um, in most of the things that I hear from my athletes is, you know, they don't want to do all the research. They don't want to read 25 running books. They just want to be told what to do so that they can do what they actually want to do, which is run faster, reach a new distance milestone. So you know, I think if you're a performance oriented runner, which basically means you have some sort of performance oriented goal, you know, running your first marathon is a performance oriented goal or even your first half marathon, uh, whatever the distance might be. or if you would like to run a certain time in a race, if you're going for a Boston qualifying marathon, or if you're trying to break the four hour mark in the marathon, those are definitely situations where you need to have a plan because if you don't have a plan, it's really difficult for you to progress and improve over time. So I do think most people should have a plan if they're training for a race. If you're not training for a race, and let's say you're in between seasons, you just ran your gold marathon or You know, you've run, you've just run your first half marathon. You know, I think then at that point, it's a good idea to take a little bit of time off, you know, take four days, seven days, 10 days, something along those lines, just so that you're physically and mentally recharged. So when you come back to training, you know, you've, you've fully recovered both physically and mentally, uh, and you can really attack your, your next training cycle with vigor. Um, and, and that of course means, you know, the four to 10 days or so off running completely. But then of course, let's have two, three, six weeks maybe of just unstructured, mostly easy running where, you know, you're gradually building your mileage up to what you had been doing previously, but you're not following a strict plan. You know, you're kind of just getting back into the swing of things. And I think that easy period of unstructured running that isn't super planned out, that kind of comes in between your more formal training seasons is really valuable from. a motivation perspective. So you're not constantly, you know, progressing and trying to do more and trying to run faster, but it's just a really nice way to keep yourself of running, maintain your fitness, but also maintain that drive to keep training really hard. Yeah. You answered that really nicely and summed it up to like the performance oriented, uh, athlete, if you, it's not necessarily if you want to run faster or run further or prepare for a race. Like I think most of the runners out there have that goal. Um, but also if you want to, um, be stronger, become more resilient, have a bigger buffer like those sorts of things, which can impact on injury prevention as well. I think the vast, vast majority of athletes can fall into that category. And so having a plan would set you up for success as well. So I really liked the way you summed that up and answered that you have on your website that you focus mainly on these. results oriented programs when working with athletes, could you maybe just explain the process that you have and how it might look for an individual? Yeah, that's an interesting question because it totally depends, right? It just depends on what your goal might be. It might depend on where you're at in your running life, in your journey. There's a big difference between someone who has a year of running experience and someone who has a decade of running experience. So You know, the results oriented aspect of my coaching is really just a nod to the goals that my athletes have and me working tirelessly to help them achieve those goals. Um, there's a lot of running programs out there that aren't actually focused on helping you achieve a goal. They're more just focused on, on some other metric. You know, there's some programs that are saying, Oh, you're, you can get faster by, you know, running at a low heart rate for, you know, a crazy amount of time. You know, you can just go run a lot of miles at a very low heart rate. You have to keep your heart rate under that threshold at all times. And at some point in the future, three months from now, six months from now, you'll be a better runner. Well, that, that kind of an approach is not really used by anybody in the running industry or the running community. You know, there's no university track or cross country programs that are training like that. There are no elite runners that are training like that. No running club that has competitive runners is training like that. And so I think When we talk about results oriented training, it's really about proper training It's about training the proper way if you were to hire a coach, you know, you go to a university you become an elite runner Let's just say you wake up with some incredible genetic talent, you know, how would you train? You know, how are the how are the Olympians training the national? champions training and you know, we pretty much understand training at this point. Of course, there's some differences of opinion on the edges, but you know, the main principles are the same. You pick out almost any running book and the training plans are not going to be, you know, crazily different. You know, they're mostly going to follow the running community's best practices for training. And, uh, I think that's what I want to be really clear about is the fact that, you know, there is no strength running method. There is no, you know, sort of, proprietary copyrighted protocol that I have that helps runners achieve their goals. We just really focus on the fundamentals. We don't waste time chasing shiny red balls and fads and things that are just distractions. We focus on those basics because that really is the foundation that all your goals are going to be accomplished on. Brilliant. take the question in a slightly different direction. If you had an athlete come in and they are training, they wanna train for a marathon and they want a running program, what information would you like to know in order to tailor it for the individual? I know you briefly just mentioned on experience, like one year compared to 10 years. Is there any other information that you find crucial to tailor that program for someone? Yeah, so I do write a lot of custom. programs for runners who have some sort of goal. You know, I tailor them really to almost any goal, anything from weight loss to building a big base to running a fast race, whatever distance it might be. And certainly the information I need from the athlete really determines how the training plan looks. So a couple of the big things that I look for is, number one, I wanna know what you've been doing recently. because really we always have to start where you're currently at. If you're running 25 kilometers a week, I'm not gonna write you a plan where you start at 40 kilometers a week. You're just not gonna be ready for that. So you always have to start your training kind of where you're currently able to. And that means I need to know, what's your weekly mileage at? What is your current long run? What's the average been over the last month or so? What kind of faster training sessions have you been doing? Any workouts, any structured, formal, faster workouts that you've run during the week? What is your injury history? Are you someone who's never been hurt or do you get hurt every couple months? Do you do any strength training or other types of cross training, aerobic cross training like aqua jogging, pool running, cycling, things like that? And then I wanna know, what are your goals? What are you hoping to accomplish? Uh, have you ever been coached before? What do you like? What didn't you like? And so I'm really looking for, you know, a really full, um, uh, kind of picture of the athlete so that I can tailor a program to, uh, their current strengths and their weaknesses and their goals. Awesome. I think, uh, people learn by mistakes also. And for your career of seeing thousands of runners, um, probably prior to seeing you and making mistakes and then finding that they need a coach and coming to you. Are there any mistakes that you see, uh, people make or common mistakes that you see athletes make when preparing for a race? Oh yeah. Where do I start? Go through the list. Yeah. There's a lot of mistakes that runners make. I think, you know, the fact that I've written so many custom training plans is, is really a, an interesting window into. how runners approach the sport of running. Because, like I mentioned, I asked for all this information before I write up a custom plan. And I think I have like 22 or 23 questions on here. I'm actually looking at it right now. They're not numbered, but there is basically a page and a half of questions. And it's really important for me to understand where they're at, how they think about running. And through that questionnaire that they fill out, I get to see what they've been doing. And so a lot of runners are simply not running enough. You know, they're running, you know, 20 kilometers a week, 30 kilometers a week. And I think if you want to improve and get better, the number one way to do that is to simply run more. So try to run, you know, 60, 70, 80 kilometers a week. Once you start getting up to about 80 kilometers a week, that's what I would consider a pretty good, relatively competitive mileage level. And so... Um, that's a big issue because I find a lot of runners stick to low mileage levels and they stick to it for years. And then they wonder why they don't improve. It's like, well, you've been running the same amount for years and years and years. Your body has already adapted to that. It has adjusted to that. And it's not really giving the athlete the stress it needs to continue getting better and getting faster and gaining endurance. So not running enough is a, is a huge mistake. The other big mistake I see is that runners aren't doing any faster workouts. You know, so many runners write to me like, Oh, I'm not running anything fast. I just kind of go out there and I run easy for 30 minutes or an hour, you know, a couple of times a week. And I wonder why I'm not getting any faster at these distances. And it's one of those issues where, you know, if you don't train fast, you're never going to be able to race fast. And so a good starting point is to simply start doing one faster workout a week. And something like a fart lick is really simple to do. You can do time-based repetitions where maybe you do something like six times a minute at a hard effort, and you take a two-minute really easy jog in between. So it's essentially a minute on and two minutes off. You're running the whole time, but you're really varying your pace. And then once you get comfortable with those kind of workouts, you can really transition to some of the more advanced complex workouts. And I'd say maybe the final big mistake that I see a lot of runners making is not, uh, focusing on strength training. And I'm kind of the running coach that is also known for talking a lot about strength training, but I don't really even consider strength training, cross training. I consider it a part of the training process. If you want to get better, you have to do some strength training. So the, the strength work is really going to help athletes, uh, with so many different things. I mean, if, if. runners understood all of the amazing benefits that strength training gives them. I'm sure most runners would be in the gym a couple times a week. You know, things like improving your form and your efficiency, helping you actually be able to run faster. You know, you can recruit more muscle fibers and sprint faster at the end of the race. And it helps you protect yourself against injuries. So you're gonna have stronger muscles, connective tissues and bones, and that's all gonna help guard you against all of the repetitive stress of running. And there's a lot of repetitive stress with running. I mean, that's what running is, right? We're kind of just, uh, experiencing a lot of impact force with every step we take. And so it's really important for us to be strong so that we can be fast. Yeah. It's a, it's such a good summary. And if the listener was to take one thing away, it'd be to listen to that last five minutes. It's run more run fast and be strong. And I think. If I was to see an athlete who gets injured or struggling with results and they could have a look at those three key components, they're probably missing out majorly missing out on one and sometimes two of those components. And so to be a really, really great generic all round runner, I think it's, it's music to my ears when you talk about those three components. When you are mentioning that fourth. Yeah, of course. Go for it. I'd like to add a fourth because I think, you know, while those three things are definitely the big three. And if you want to improve, if you want to improve your injury resilience, then you've got to focus on those. But at the same time, another thing that I noticed a lot of runners think about, and this is more the runner psychology. This is the mindset piece of things. But a lot of runners think that, okay, I need to run more, I need to run faster, I need to get in the gym and do weightlifting. I'm just a recreational runner. I don't want to do all those things or, you know, I'm going to do those things, but it seems super intimidating. You know, if I miss a workout one week, then... you know, I just get, I'm going to get down on myself. And so I think a big thing that runners need to really ingrain in their mindset is the fact that you don't have to be perfect all the time. And you can really, you know, be inconsistent every once in a while, even though I say that consistency is the secret spots of successful running. It's okay to miss a day here and there. It's okay to, you know, not do a workout exactly as planned. And so, uh, I think what I'm trying to say is runners can be kind to themselves and not hold themselves to an impossible standard, while also expecting a lot from themselves and expecting to try to run a little bit more every other week, for example. You're going to be consistent with a workout. You're going to do your strength work. But at the same time, let's not pretend that we're all elite runners and that we're being paid to do this. Let's have fun with it. Let's not worry if we're not 100% on everything all the time. And above all, just enjoy yourself because after all, this is kind of a hobby, right? Yeah. And people love it so much. So a lot of times when they get down on themselves, they lose that passion. So remember back why you're running and keep, keep loving and keep enjoying it. I will add also the, um, recovery component of it and making sure that if you're running more, running fast, running strong, you're also respecting how. The recovery phase is when you get stronger and when you get fitter. So a lot of people can tend to abuse that, you know, those type A personalities is just go, go and don't respect the recovery phase and possibly one or two rest days here and there. As well as sleep and nutrition is really, really important. If someone's running 80 Ks a week and thanks for converting to the kilometers. Can you suggest a frequency of people running five, six, seven days a week? Yeah, that's probably a good way to structure that amount of mileage. 80k a week, 50 miles a week, you're going to be running, if you run every day, you're going to be running seven miles or about 11, 12 kilometers. And I think for a lot of runners, that's pretty doable. if they work up to it gradually. And you can see how if you run more days per week, you can spread out the mileage a little bit more. So it's actually less stressful to run every day as opposed to, you know, I'm gonna try to get in 80 kilometers a week in five days of running, you know? And then all of a sudden, you're basically running 16K every day. And that becomes more challenging, much more challenging than running a less amount of mileage over more days. But I think once you start getting up to 70, 80 kilometers a week. Yeah, you need to be running probably at least five days a week. Yeah, very good. And if we're looking at the generic kind of program, there's a lot of different opinions when it comes to how to tape off for someone when they're preparing for a race. And I do hear mixed messages and I guess I'm waiting to hear that it depends, but if there's an individual who Like maybe I should say, do people respond differently to a different taper strategy and do you have a preference as to how you like to taper someone prior to a race? Yeah. Um, very interesting question. Yes. People will respond differently to tapering. You know, some runners love to taper. Some runners get the taper crazies and they think that, you know, as soon as they start cutting their mileage back a little bit, they have lost fitness. Um, And so, yeah, I mean, it does depend on the athlete a little bit. It does depend on the race that you're training for. So I'll typically use a two week taper for most of my runners. If they're training for a much longer event, it might be a slightly longer taper, just so that they're not carrying any fatigue into, you know, say a hundred mile ultra marathon. or something that's very challenging and where you really need to make sure that you're fully rested and not carrying fatigue into that race. But yeah, generally speaking, I like a two week taper where you're essentially maintaining your intensity but cutting back on the mileage. And it is interesting right now, there's been some, I don't know if studies is the right word, but people talking more about taper in a... a different way and talking about, well, do we have to cut back on the mileage so much? And so, you know, that's interesting. And I don't think that's really become mainstream very much. You know, a classic taper very much cuts down on the mileage. And so, you know, if anyone listening to this is like, oh, I'm not going to taper for my next race, I would definitely encourage it because you're certainly going to be a little bit more tired if you don't taper. And that's really what the goal of a taper is, is to maintain your fitness, but don't lose anything. and stay sharp for the race so that you feel responsive, you feel quick and fast, but with none of the fatigue that you often experience in the middle of a training cycle. When you're running the higher mileage, the workouts are really challenging, the long runs are long, there's so much going on that you're tired all the time, and some of your runs are gonna be a little bit sluggish, and that's fine, that's part of the training process, but you don't wanna feel sluggish two days before your goal race. Because that just means, you know, you're probably going to be carrying some fatigue into the race itself. So, uh, I think two weeks is plenty, but, um, you know, occasionally go a little longer for some of the longer distance folks. Okay. And would age or experience, uh, have a factor? I don't think age would really have a factor. Maybe I would do a slightly longer taper for, you know, someone who might be in their 60s or later, just because, you know, they recover and adapt to training at a slower rate. So we have to take that into consideration and, you know, maybe give them a little bit more time to recover from those peak weeks and really feel 100% recovered and, you know, not so tired. Experience might actually work the other direction. So the more experienced you are, the less likely you may need to taper, or you might just need a shorter taper. Because I know a lot of runners who, you know, just don't really need to taper very much to run fast. You know, they might be running, you know, something like 120 kilometers in a week, and then they only taper a little bit down to 100 kilometers a week. So in the grand scheme of things, that's not a huge taper, but You know, for these athletes is just enough. Um, but I think for most runners are more traditional tapers is likely appropriate. Yeah, I'll totally agree with that. And I think, uh, I do like testing and tweaking a lot of things. If you find a taper that suits well to you, um, keep that foundation, keep that two week tape and then maybe tweak a few things here and there, maybe, um, elevate your mileage. Like if you're. cutting down say, you know, 60, 70, 60, 50% of your mileage, maybe try and fluctuate those variables a little bit and see how you feel. But, um, yeah, sometimes just on race day, you have a good day or you have a bad day and that could be to like nutrition, weather mindset, all that kind of thing, and people attribute it to, I just didn't tape it properly. And it's very hard to, um, break it down and work out what components actually helped you and what components might not have helped you. But yeah, still a really big fan of testing and tweaking those sort of things. We did mention strength and being strong. And I did have a question come in around strength days and when to schedule your strength sessions. Do you have a preference whether you can have that strength session on the running day or during a rest day? So I don't really have a preference. I think both are schedules that work really well for runners. I kind of, it does depend on, you know, how many days off that you have per week. And it depends on how comfortable you are with weightlifting. And, you know, kind of like your, your either talent level or your ability to do a lot of work. And what I mean by that is, you know, there are some runners who can't fathom doing a long run and then getting in the gym to do some heavy weightlifting. that is just way too much work in one day. And I would agree with that. It is a lot of work. It is more challenging to put your weightlifting days on your two harder running days per week. But that I think is one of the more optimal schedules. So let's say you have a weekly workout during the week and then you have a long run on the weekend. Those are two great days to do your weightlifting. And this is really polarizing your training very well, making your hard days really hard. but then it also makes your easy days even easier. So if you have a recovery day where you're only running 6K or a short distance like that, you don't have to go into the gym and do a bunch of heavy squats or deadlifts or something like that. You can really just focus on recovery on those easy days. But then when it does come to working hard, doing your long run, your faster workout, then you can get in the gym and do that work. And that really... Helps spur a lot of adaptations and forces you to conserve energy and lift when you're tired and recruit more muscle fibers There's there's a lot of good things that happen there But I also recognize that is that it is challenging and so if you can't do that you won't do that then it's fine There's still other schedules that work really well And and I do like maybe the next day after your workout or long run So let's say your workouts on Wednesday you do your long run on Saturday you know, maybe a Thursday, Sunday lifting schedule works really well. And, you know, if you're lifting on a day where you're not running, um, you know, I'm okay with that as long as you also have another day where you're not doing anything. So let's maintain at least one pure true recovery day in your schedule where you're doing nothing, uh, no exercise, no formal workouts, no formal running weightlifting, anything like that. And so I think that two a day schedule works really well. But I also think it's important to note that what I'm talking about is weight lifting in a gym, or if you have a great home gym, you can do it there. But this is barbell training, working with dumbbells, lifting heavy weight. This is not doing pushups and planks and side planks and those kinds of body weight exercises. The way that I like to see my runners structure their strength training is two of those more challenging weightlifting days in the gym. And then on your other days when you go running, let's finish up the run with about 10 to 20 minutes of much easier body weight, strength, or core work, or even mobility work. So there's a big difference in the type of stuff we do in the gym, and then the type of things that we'll do at home, just doing body weight exercises, or even using an easy implement, something like a resistance band, or a medicine ball. So I like this because when you're in the gym, you get a much stronger stimulus for improving your running economy, for your ability to generate force, improving your power, and actually getting stronger. But when you're at home and you're doing a lot of those body weight exercises, a lot of those exercises are taken from the world of physical therapy. And so... you know, if you're not injured, it's still a great idea to do a lot of those types of exercises because instead of doing it as rehab to get healthy from an injury, instead we're doing it as prehab. So we're going to do it before you ever get hurt to helpfully, hopefully prevent your next injury. So I think there's a real strong injury prevention stimulus with the body weight strength work, more runner specific types of exercises. Um, and I have a lot of routines on the strength running website. for these kinds of routines. Everything from the ITV rehab routine to the standard core routine, the gauntlet plank workout. These are all very runner specific routines that take from the worlds of physical therapy. But if you're going to the gym, let's focus on the basics, the squats, the presses, the deadlifts and all the variations of those exercises. But I think this kind of a schedule that we're talking about now is optimal. Because there's a lot of strength work included, but it, you know, it comes after you're running. You're only in the gym two days a week. You don't have to go three days. Uh, and then your other strength work you do at home, you know, it's 10 to 20 minutes. It's not a really long workout. And in this schedule really does benefit, uh, runners. Fantastic. And great for clearing that up. The difference in like your definition of weightlifting. Cause some people might be like, yeah, I'm doing my strength training, but they see it in a totally different light. And so the frequency, it seems like you're appreciating maybe about, uh, twice a week for strength training. Yeah. I think twice a week for the, the weightlifting in the gym. And then the other days that you're running can be body weight strength training, which is a lot easier. Okay. If someone was to have a, uh, a weightlifting session in the gym and based on their schedule and they want to have one complete rest day per week and they can only fit in, uh, well, Yeah, they can only squeeze in a weight lifting session and a running session in one day. Would you recommend that they do their strength training before or after their run? You definitely want to do your strength work after your run, just because as runners, we always want to really prioritize our sport specific exercise first. And that's running. You know, if you try to do a workout after you've been in the gym, your workout is going to suffer. Uh, I'd rather you be a little tired and not be able to lift as much in the gym. because you're tired from the workout, because that's in the best interests of your running. If you were a strength athlete, a power lifter or something like that, and you were trying to cut weight, you'd probably run a little bit after you're lifting, because you really wanted to be able to lift as much as you could, you didn't wanna be fatigued at all. And so you can see how two different athletes would structure it two very different ways. And that's because we always just wanna do our primary form of exercise first. Yeah. And I think it's also a safer approach as well. You don't really want to have a big strength session and then try and run and it be like the biomechanics might change slightly. If something's a muscle group is a bit more fatigued than another than what you're used to when you're running. And from an injury standpoint, if you alter those biomechanics slightly, uh, or if one muscle group is a lot more fatigued than other muscle groups, you might be setting yourself up for a bit of a risk for injury. And so it's a very safe approach if you had to prioritize one or the other. So glad we could clear that up. That up. Um, yeah. Do you have any, sorry, Brody, I was going to say, I like that because, you know, you're absolutely right. If you did a big lifting session and then you go for a running, uh, go for a run, you know, what are you, you're a little tired and that's exactly what happens when you're tired, your form deteriorates a little bit, you become less economical. And it's through those inefficient. movement patterns when you're tired, that's when the injuries really start cropping up. But you know, the only flip side of that, one of the things I wanted to add to was, you know, if you did a hard workout and then get on the gym to do some heavy squats and deadlifts, you know, there's enhanced injury risk right there as well. And so I think it's really critical to know that even though we're talking about, you know, trying to lift heavy weight in the gym, you know, maybe heavier than you think you ought to as a runner. that doesn't necessarily mean that all of a sudden you're a power lifter now. So I think one of the strength coaches that I worked with a while back, you know, he really ingrained in me this idea that it's not about how much you lift. It's about the movement itself. You are really training coordination under resistance rather than just trying to lift as much weight as you can. So, Runners don't think you have to be lifting crazy amounts of weight. You should challenge yourself, but at the same time, when in doubt, take a little bit of weight off, keep yourself healthy and really focus on great form when you're lifting. Yeah. And I know you're a fan of like runners, educating runners to make smart decisions. And I think throughout the week, you might be tweaking the intensity of your run or the intensity of your weight sessions. based on what you have planned for the later on in the day and the next day. And let's just say you have a really hard intense run on that day and you plan to do a strength session later on, maybe just dial down the intensity of the weight session later on that day. And you can still get the full benefits, but recognizing that you combining two really hard sessions, um, might be the smarter decision for you and take you away from that injury risk, um, zone you could say. Would you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. Tone down the weight lifting, because again, I mean, it's just there to supplement your running and to make your running better. You don't have to, you know, go crazy with the weight. And this also goes back to runners, let's be kind to ourselves. You know, you don't have to make your weight lifting perfect. You should make your lifting form perfect, but you don't have to always be progressing in terms of weight and always lifting more, doing more repetitions or sets. You can tone things down if you're tired and that's just fine. Yeah. Fantastic. Um, I really want to ask you this question for those who have already like a really big base, uh, in their running, but they want to perform faster or they, let's just say they've done a couple of marathons before and they want to get a better time, um, what would you suggest in terms of tweaking their program in order to start seeing some benefits in increasing their running speed? Yeah. So I would first, uh, want to define what a really big base meant. Um, cause their definition of big base might be a little bit different from mine. So I might say, well, we're going to keep building that base. Uh, or if I just think they have, you know, if I, you know, if they've been running, you know, a hundred kilometers a week for six weeks, you know, maybe it's time now to start doing some harder workouts and, you know, really focus on more race specific types of workouts, you know, for whatever they're training for. But the way that I would approach this is almost the way that I would approach it for any runner, whether or not they had a big base, I would kind of look at a hierarchy of training adjustments that we could make and see, you know, where's the low hanging fruit that they could start doing some things and start seeing immediate benefits, you know, what are the things that we're going to start doing, but you know, there aren't really immediate benefits. It's more something that's going to benefit you three months from now, six months from now, a year from now. And so I think running more. you know, increasing the mileage is one of the best ways to get faster. And so that's always one of the first things that I look for. And so, you know, we kind of can go back to those mistakes that we talked about. Is this person running a lot? Okay. If the answer is yes, are they consistently doing a faster workout? If the answer is no, then let's start doing that. If the answer is yes, then I want to know, well, what, what have those workouts been, are they appropriate for not only you in your fitness level, but are they appropriate for the race that you're training for? And then I would look at, you know, are you running strides or accelerations after a couple of your runs per week? And these are simply, it's just a way for you to practice running fast in a very kind of low stress environment. So you finish an easy run, you do a couple of hundred meter strides where you just accelerate to about 95% of your max speed and then you decelerate to a stop. So it's a very controlled kind of an almost sprint. They're very fundamental. You'll see high school freshmen running them. You'll see elite runners doing them. Young runners, old runners, everyone in between. So I think strides are really fundamental. Yeah, and then I would just continue looking at different aspects of their program. Are you, is this person dealing with a lot of injuries? Okay, so now let's build in some more injury prevention type work into their program so that they can stay healthy and get in more training, which is gonna make you a better runner. Are they doing any strength training? Maybe they're doing bodyweight work, but they're not getting in the gym. Maybe they're, it's just very sporadic, it's not structured, and so we can make it more structured and more consistent. The other thing that we could potentially look at is just looking at their race history. You know, for example, I just started working with a runner who is really interested in running fast half marathons, and so he basically runs three or four half marathons a year, but that's really it. And I told them you would be very well served by getting faster in the 5K and the 10K distances because that speed does help you get faster in other events. You have to essentially run equivalent performances from event to event to event. And if you never race the 5K or you're solely focused on the marathon, then you're only doing the same type of training most of the time. You're doing marathon training or you're doing half marathon training. We should vary our race goals from season to season so that we can vary our training. It keeps things interesting mentally and psychologically, but it also helps us do different types of workouts so that we can continue pushing the envelope, continue adapting to these new stresses and getting better. So that was kind of a long answer to say, we'd look at a lot of different things for this hypothetical athlete. and we would take the next logical step where it is appropriate, whether that's mileage, workouts, speed work, injury prevention, strength training, or even cross training. You know, if you're running 80 kilometers a week, then you're doing it in five days, and you would rather run more, but say you're injury prone, well, maybe we can add in an hour pool running session on one of those days, and then, you know, a bike ride over the weekend. on the other day that you typically take off. So cross training is another way that you could, you know, take your aerobic fitness to a new level in a way that, you know, doesn't really present too much of an injury risk. So there's so many options available. And I think that's one of the reasons why I love running so much is that no matter who you are, there are probably avenues for improvement. Yeah. And just to summarize, you're essentially saying, let's take a really good snapshot and history of the runner and their running history and let's. work on their weak links and whether that be, um, their base, whether it be their fast sessions, whether it be cross training, strength sessions, that kind of stuff. And I think it's good for runners to also know that to get faster, sometimes it might have to be increasing your mileage and whether that be slow runs. If you're doing say 50 K maybe increasing to safely increasing to 70 or 80 K per week, even if it's the bulk of that is. Slow running. But that can still increase your speed. So I think a lot of people need to be made aware of that. Um, have you seen that a lot, um, in your experience building up a bigger base helps with performance? A hundred percent. It is, it is literally the number one way for most runners to get faster is to simply run more and, and just like you said, Brody, yes, we're going to be running mostly easy mileage. You know, if you're running 50 K a week and you want to run 60 K a week, know, it's going to take four weeks, five weeks, six weeks to get there. If you do it very slowly and gradually to allow your body to recover and adapt to that new workload. Um, but yeah, it should definitely make an athlete faster because, you know, I mean, running is a sport where just like anything else, the more you do it, the better you get. And so running more weekly mileage. is going to make you more economical and efficient. It builds more mitochondria in your muscles, which are really like the energy factories of your muscles. And that does improve your general endurance. And it just builds like a bigger base, a bigger foundation, a bigger, improves your ability to do more things. So a good example of this is that, there's a lot of workouts where you have to be able to run, a solid 15, 16 kilometers just to be able to do the workout. It's a long workout. And if you haven't first built up the general mileage levels and the ability to run 15 or 16 kilometers at an easy effort, you're never gonna be able to do those more challenging workouts. And so yeah, the increase in weekly mileage really does help the athlete, not just with general endurance, but it kind of paves the way for the more advanced workouts and longer sessions that can come. when this runner does become more advanced. Yeah, and I'll highlight that the athlete does need to be patient. Like you said, it is a bit of a process. And if, as a runner, if you don't trust yourself or know how to safely progress, that's where the benefits of having a coach can come in, where they can tell you the intensities and the frequencies and the buildup and how long that should take in a safe environment. So it gives the runner a bit of confidence that they're doing the right thing. And avoiding that high risk of injury because doing too much too soon is the biggest way that, well the most common way people do get injured. We're about to wrap up Jason. Do we have any other maybe take home messages for a runner that we haven't really touched on? Well, I have mentioned this briefly, but I've long said that consistency is the secret sauce to successful running. And I will encourage any runner. to really make consistency a goal. And what I mean by that is, you know, let's consistently run, but let's also be consistent with the training process. Let's be consistent with our strength training. Let's be consistent with doing a long run most weekends. Let's be consistent with every aspect of our training so that we can keep improving and adapting and reaching new levels of performance. Because I think the, The kind of mantra or mindset of a lot of runners is I'll train hard when I'm getting ready for that marathon, but then if I don't have anything to train for, I'm just going to fall back to 20K a week of just super easy running. And so there's always this mentality of falling back to a very low mileage level, not doing any workouts, not really doing a long run whenever you're not training for a race. I always felt it very liberating when I didn't have any races on the schedule because then I could just devote all my time to training. So I'd be running more and really just adding in the cross training and the strength training and the strides and drills and all the other stuff that is part of a good running program. I'd be doing that much more consistently when I didn't have a race because I don't know, I just, I had more time and I had the willingness to do it. So I would encourage runners to really value consistency and to make it a goal. Yeah, that's a great take home message for to finish things up. Your social media handles and all the internet blog stuff that you have going on. I'll write down your Twitter, Instagram handles, your own Facebook as well, your website to your blogs and your programs like you discussed. anywhere else I should include in the show notes for people to reach out? Uh, besides the strength running podcast, that's pretty much my, my home base online is strength running.com. But yeah, besides that in the podcast, you can find me on social. Yeah, definitely listen to the podcast. If you haven't already, I've been listening for a very, very long time. You've got a huge catalog to go through and a lot of brilliant insight with a lot of the episodes. So if you haven't already go onto the podcast and have a listen. Jason, thanks for coming on, sharing your knowledge. I love that you're just serving runners in so many different ways. And I've even listened to a few of your YouTube channels where you're reviewing books and everything like that. Um, so many different ways and so much information that people can go to and you've created that platform, you've created that avenue. So thanks for doing that and serving runners in so many different ways. It seems like you are a massive student of the game. asking questions, reading books, and just trying to build on your science base and your knowledge. And it's really, really nice to see it. I resonate with that as well, trying to build as much as I know and trying to talk to people like you to gain knowledge. And one of the benefits of having this podcast is talking to people like you. I did see on one of your blogs, um, it was around injury prevention, like the guide to injury prevention or something. And the number one tip that you had in there was to start training smarter. I'm like, yes, he gets it. Like, We have that same ethos and that same philosophy around, you just need to train smart. And that's one of the biggest messages and takeaways I want the runners to know is to start making smart decisions, but it comes with education, the right type of education to start with and you're being a big component of that. So thanks for sharing your knowledge and thanks for coming onto the podcast today. Well, Brody, I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. And, you know, I like to say that knowledge is a competitive advantage. So if you want to become a good runner, understand the sport a little bit more and you'll make much smarter training decisions, which will definitely make you into a faster, just better runner. So Brody, thanks so much. It really enjoyed our conversation today. And I hope to connect with some listeners of your podcast. Thanks for listening to another episode of the running smarter podcast. I hope you can see the impact this content will have on your future running. If you want to continue expanding your knowledge, please subscribe to the podcast and keep listening. If you want to learn quicker, jump into the Facebook group titled Become a Smarter Runner. If you want tailored education and physio rehab, you can personally work with me at brea Thank you so much once again, and remember, knowledge is power.