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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, I'm answering all of your run smarter questions. Welcome to the only podcast delivering and deciphering the latest running research to help you run smarter. My name is Brody. I'm an online physiotherapist treating runners all over the world, but I'm also an advert runner who just like you have been through vicious injury cycles and when searching for answers, struggled to decipher between common myths and real evidence-based guidance. But this podcast is changing that. So join me as a run smarter scholar and raise your running IQ so we can break through the injury cycles and achieve running feats you never thought possible. Okay, Run Smarter Scholars. Thank you for all of your questions you have submitted. I put the call out on, if you are on my email list, you would have seen that I have asked for the questions also on the Facebook group. yeah, flood of questions have come in. trying to cover as much as can on this episode and you know, questions still continue to come in. So hopefully I get to your question, but I plan on this being a two-part up. So Q &A is for this week and also next week. So let's see how much we can get through. I've sort of prepared for about seven or eight questions on this episode. First one comes in from Sharif who says, hi Brody, Wada has banned beats just like caffeine. What evidence is there to suggest its performance booster? Lots of info, but it must be obvious to ban it. Upon reading this question, I had no idea. And so what I'm doing at this stage, if I don't have any idea, is I'm asking the run smarter AI assistant because it does gather the latest running research and I thought I'd put this one through the filter. And so I just put in what can you find on beetroot and performance and it found a very interesting paper that I'll go through now. And I'll just read it out. It says that beetroot supplementation has gained attention for its potential benefits on athletic performance, particularly in the context of endurance sports. Here's a summary of the findings related to beetroot and performance. One, muscle recovery. Beetroot supplementation appears to positively influence recovery from exercise induced muscle damage. In a study involving ultra endurance runners, those who consumed beetroot experienced less oxidative damage to lipids and proteins compared to those who did not consume beetroot. Especially the antioxidant enzyme called glutathione peroxidase activity was significantly higher in the beetroot group 24 and 48 hours post race indicating enhanced recovery. So muscle recovery is number one. Number two is oxidative stress protection. The study provided evidence that beetroot consumption helped mitigate oxidative stress markers, which can accumulate during intense physical activity. Runners who ingest beetroot showed lower levels of oxidative markers at the finish and after the race. Number three, muscular strength loss. Interestingly, the consumption of beetroot was linked to a reduction in muscular strength loss post exercise. The findings suggested that the beetroot group did not experience significant strength declines compared to those who did not consume it as measured by a squat jump test. The AI assistant also said there's contradictory results. While some studies show beneficial effects on beetroot, Others have reported mixed results indicating that the efficacy may vary depending on the individual, the type of exercise and the timing and dosage of beetroot consumption. In certain events such as marathons, beetroot supplementation did not always demonstrate a recovery benefit. Overall, beetroot shows promising potential in aiding athletic performance and recovery, potentially in endurance athletes. But further research is needed to clarify its effectiveness. across different sports and supplementation strategies. As always, the AI system provides hyperlinked references. And so it found the paper that it was referring to. And for those database members that are a part of this, if you want to go searching for this, the title is, is there a role of beetroot consumption on the recovery of oxidative stress and muscle damage in ultra endurance runners? If you don't want to type that whole thing in, you could just do what I did and just type in the question about and it should find this paper straight away. So you can go check out the full PDF there with the graphs on baseline, the squat jump test, all the levels that they did at baseline, at the finish line 24, 48 hours afterwards, all of that is there for you to check out. So I'm glad that the AI assistant came to my rescue for this particular question, which I didn't know much about and now I do. So thank you very much for your question. As you may well know by now, this AI assistant, is an AI chat bot where you can ask it all the questions and it just gathers all the content that I have created through the podcast, through the books that I've written, the online courses that I've done, and also all of the research papers I've gathered over the years. It will use all of that content to provide you with helpful answers. And if you have been a member recently, you'll know that the AI assistant has come up with an upgrade similar to chat TBT. It now has a chat search history where you can go back to your previously. asked questions, reiterate, and just build upon a thread that you have on a certain topic. So very excited to bring you those updates and hopefully you're enjoying it as well. You can sign up if you aren't a member already, or if you want to just learn more about it, you can go to the link in the show notes. Next question comes in from Dominic who says, hi Brody, I would like to ask how to tackle when one foot points downwards in the swing phase while the other points outwards. Are there any drills or exercises you would recommend? Okay, so during the swing phase, let's just say on the right foot, the toes are pointing down. Whereas the swing phase on the left foot, the toes are pointing outwards or vice versa is my understanding of it. Okay. Are there any drills that we would recommend? I would first, my first inkling is, okay, how important is it to actually change that way you move through space? There might be a good reason. You might have, you know, reoccurring injuries that are relating for that change. But if it's just the swing phase and there's no real changes during the loading phase, it might just be an innocent variation from right to left that we might not need to be concerned about. It's probably not affecting your performance too much. So just keep in mind that no runner is perfectly symmetrical. I mean, I've seen professional runners watching like marathons on TV that have, you know, quite obvious differences from right to left. Let's just say like their arm swing is completely different or their trunk swing or something like that. No, no one's really perfectly symmetrical. And you know, maybe just for aesthetics, maybe you don't like looking that way when you run, maybe that's a reason to change. But if you're not necessarily getting injured because of those changes, then there might not be warrant for change. we need to ask that first of all, if you do find warrant for change, so let's just say you have made the association a link to being susceptible to a particular injury with these discrepancies or asymmetrical movement patterns, then we need an assessment. I highly recommend you go to a health professional, particularly a running health professional that can look at the tests, strength, power, mobility, flexibility, all that sort of stuff to see why is it actually, where is the difference? Why can't you lift your foot up higher? Why can't you, why is your toes turning out on the other side? Because just for example, let's say for the toes pointing down, it could be an ankle mobility issue, or it could be an ankle dorsiflexion strength issue. And we don't know unless we go and test. And once we find the answers, that will then help drive what we need to do. If your toes are pointing outwards, that could be like a hip mobility issue. It could be a hip strength issue. And we might not even need to worry about the foot. And so once we found these interventions, or once we found these causes behind it, then we come up with the intervention. For example, if we just said, okay, your foot drops, and let's just give you some ankle dorsiflexion strengthening exercises, but it's not due to strength, it's actually due to poor mobility of the ankle, then we're treating the wrong thing. You're not gonna see any improvements. So that's what I would recommend above all else if you do find that there is warrant for change. But the other thing is just you could try to consciously lift your toes up or pick your toes up higher. You could consciously try not turning your foot out. If you do have the coordination to make that adjustment and to see if that helps you over time, you could have someone film you or you could run on a treadmill with a mirror in front of you. And you can just kind of have a look and play around with if you can consciously make the change or make the adjustment so that it looks more equal right to left. And then with enough repetition, see if that's efficient for you. that might be a change. mean, some people, mean, myself included in the past, have consciously changed how I run. I was cutting my foot in or like my crossover step with was too narrow, or actually was crossing over. So my right foot was crossing over my left a lot. And I believe I was getting injured quite a lot from that. My wear and tear on the outside of my shoe, it was just chewing through. the outside of my shoe like right under my little toe. And I was going through shoes every couple of months. But I was also picking up little injuries around my foot, the inside of my ankle, some ITB stuff. And I was just like, maybe I need to change. So I actually consciously widened my step width and felt a bit awkward for a couple of weeks, but got used to it. Now that's just how I run. And so can be done. if we find that there is a warrant for change. Like I say, I was injured, I was chewing through my shoes. So I decided that was a warrant for change, but I'd been running, you know, my whole life with that. So it did take a bit of time to get used to and make that correction. Okay, next question comes in from Carol who says, hi Brody, do runners need to have two pairs or more of running shoes? I have read that rotating your running shoes reduces wear and tear on. Before I run out and buy a second pair of running shoes, I'm dying to know if having two pairs of running shoes in rotation will reduce my risk of injury. Thanks for all you do to help me run smarter. Thanks for your question, Carol. This may have been prompted from a recent email that I've sent to you, Run Smarter Scholars. If you're not on my email list, always feel free to jump on. There's a link in the show notes. I send out. summaries of running research papers that are quite practical and help you run smarter. So you can join the list if you're not on that already. The study, the paper title that I released recently, the title was Can parallel use of different running shoes decrease running related injury risk? And it was a, design of the study, it was a 22 week prospective study. that had and followed 264 recreational runners. The study followed these runners for five months, tracking their training habits, their injuries and their shoe use. runners who used, this is what the key findings were, runners who used more than one pair of running shoes had a 39 % lower risk of injury. They also had a lower risk of injury if they were doing other sports like swimming and cycling. And so why the mechanism behind it or the belief of why they're finding these results is that most of these injuries that runners get are repetitive or overuse injuries. It's doing the same thing, the same movement, the same loading pattern over and over and over again without variation or recovery. so theoretically rotating different types of shoes will change the loads on your body. and will in theory reduce your risk of picking up these obvious injuries because while sure similar loading patterns might happen in different types of shoes, the load is slightly different. Might be slightly different to your calf, Achilles, your knee, your hip. We know that different features in the shoe may not lower your overall load on the body step by step, but it would change how much. load is applied to different areas of the body. So back to your question, Carol, do you need two pairs of shoes? I say it would be worth a try if you're one to be getting injured. If you're injury prone, I would suggest either getting two pairs of shoes or consider something else in your training schedule. Maybe try some cross training if we're following the advice from this paper as well. But it'd also be pending the injury type. of injury you're getting as to what shoe you might need. This is where it gets a bit nuanced and I've done other podcasts in the past. Matt Klein was one who comes to mind. I think the title of the episode was using shoes as tools, using your running shoes as tools or something like that. The different features of a running shoe can help benefit you in different ways. So if someone was constantly getting a calf or Achilles issue, and they have like a zero drop shoe, they might benefit from rotating with a different type of shoe that has a higher heel drop or a greater difference between the heel off the ground and your midfoot off the ground. Cause if you have a zero drop shoe, your heel might be one centimeter off the ground with a sole and your forefoot might be one centimeter off the ground. It is a zero drop shoe. the zero difference between the forefoot and the heel. Whereas, you know, a standard running shoe might be an eight to 12 mil drop in the shoe. And that can subtly take load away from the calf and the Achilles and the plantar fascia, maybe, and move it somewhere else distributed somewhere sometimes more towards the knee, sometimes more towards the hip. But that's maybe what we want. Maybe if you're constantly getting overloaded, issues in the calf and the Achilles, then we might spend a couple of runs per week diverting that force away from that structure. Therefore minimizing the risk of an overload injury. Similar if you have like patellofemoral pain or pain around the kneecap. Maybe we try doing more of a minimalist shoe. I mean, there's so many options we can pick we could like, you know, try increasing your cadence, try lowering your speed, try avoiding hills like There's a lot of elements that we could do, but if we're just narrowing in on the intervention of changing your shoes, there has been some research to show that a minimalist shoe, zero drop, tends to take some load away from the patellofemoral joint. And so if you're constantly getting patellofemoral pain, that might be a good option to rotate out a shoe that diverts that force away. However, like we say, may redirect some of that load to the calf and the Achilles and we want to make sure that the calf and the Achilles can handle that load. Otherwise we develop another injury. And so if we do decide to go out, buy new shoes, buy shoes that are different to vary up these loads, we want to make sure those shoes are comfortable first and foremost. But secondly, if we transition into using those shoes, we want to transition carefully, make sure that we're only running for say 10 minutes in this new shoe. see how it feels, then 15, 20, 30 minutes and just listen to your body along the way. Then once we've reached a volume in that shoe that you're comfortable with, then you can just continue rotating in and out those two different types of shoes. Carol, you also mentioned earlier that in the question that you've read that rotating shoes reduces wear and tear on them. I guess that's just a mileage point of view. Like if you of rotating your shoes and you're less mileage in them. So yes, they will last longer. They won't last longer in terms of Ks, but they will last longer in terms of months, because you're not spending as long in them. Next question that comes in is from Ben who says, hey Brody, I've been wondering the best way to include additional strength training for my overall body health and longevity. I'm currently running Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, and strength training on Monday, Wednesday, with Friday being a rest day. I tried to include another strength day at the back end of an easy run, but I really struggle for time. At the moment, I'm doing three sets of 10 pushups after my runs, but I'd like something to be more focused. Interested to know your thoughts on this and what type of exercises you think provide max benefit given I can't really fit another full workout into my schedule. Thanks. Well, thanks for your question, Ben. I'm happy to help you out as best I can. There's... I guess a few avenues that we could take, but if I was to come up with, I guess, my best one based on the information I know about you, I would say to do your upper body stuff still on the strength days. So you're doing your strength on Monday and Wednesday. You're already at the gym or you're already like surrounded by the weights, might as well use that. Try to be as efficient as we can in those times just to squeeze in a couple of upper body exercises just to help. What I would suggest, and this is what I typically do, is just superset a upper body exercise when you do your lower leg exercises. What is a superset? A superset is adding in or cycling through or rotating through different exercises during sort of like the rest period while you're resting a muscle group. So you might do squats where you primarily work your quads and your glutes and your back. and then you have to do one set and you have to have a rest period after that to which you might decide to pick up some weights and do some bicep curls while you wait. And I say this because you will have to have a rest period. A lot of people go to the gym, they do three sets of 10 and they rest for about 30 to 60 seconds in between sets and then they go again. If you've listened to any... episode on strength training on the Run Smarter podcast, you know that to reap the benefits of running, we do need to lift heavy. And usually around three sets of six to eight, or four sets of six, three sets of eight would be a good dosage. If, if that weight is really challenging in that rep range, we're kind of hitting a good mark. If you are really experienced in the gym, you might even want to do less. You might want to do like four sets of four. or four sets of five at really, really heavy weights to reap good benefits into your running. However, if you're lifting so heavy, and you should be lifting that heavy, you do need rest. That rest comes in waves of three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, like sometimes my exercises, the rest period is like six to seven minutes, purely because I need that recovery to get a better set and to not have this accumulation of fatigue that... generates into the second set and then more fatigue that generates into the third set and then the third set is my hardest set of them all. I prefer to have enough rest where my third set feels the same as my first set in terms of quality, power, force that I can produce. So a lot of rest is required. And therefore, in order to be efficient in the gym, you want to supplement it by doing another muscle group. rather than just sitting there twiddling my thumbs for six, seven minutes and then going again. So that's what I would recommend. See if we can be as efficient in that time. And in terms of what upper body exercises I would recommend, I guess you can just do them once a week. I guess if you're doing two strength sessions per week, strength one, you could do pushups and like a bent over row. So you're working. with your pushups, you're primarily working your chest and your triceps. With a bent over row, you're mainly working your biceps and your back, I guess you could say. So getting a good rotation of muscle groups there. And then for your next day or the second strength day that you have, you could do like a shoulder press and a lat pull down. I don't know if you're doing these at home or if you have a lat pull down machine or something, but that would... B, useful or chin ups, I guess, would work the same muscles. So shoulder press where you're holding dumbbells up at your shoulders, then you're pushing them up towards the ceiling. That would cover shoulders, that would cover lats when you're doing your lat pull down. So those four exercises, you've got your push pull in these different directions. That would cover most things, I would say, if we're trying to be as efficient as possible. Next question we have comes in from Emma who says, Hi Brody, I'm a 47 year old female. My 10k PB is 41 minutes 58 seconds. Very impressive, well done Emma. And I set this just three years ago at age 44. Even more impressive, well done. A few weeks after that race, I moved from the UK to the US and whilst initially I still ran well, my running has since fallen off a cliff. Every run feels hard. and my former pace is a distant dream. I don't know if it's age, menopause, a changed environment or something else entirely. I want to know if there's any light at the end of the tunnel. Any advice would be extremely welcome. Sorry to hear about your experiences, Emma. I'll try my best to help out. I'd say many runners experience similar challenges as they age. Performance can fluctuate. Like you've mentioned or alluded to, the... there's probably several factors at play. Environmental changes, emotional stresses, hormonal shifts, and of course, aging. But let me try to provide some insights. If you are a member of the database and the AI assistant, I highly recommend you go to check out a paper titled The Physiology and Biomechanics of the Master Runner. It's very thorough, very practical. some good illustrations to show what happens as we age for the masters athlete, the masters runner and exactly the expected declines and how we can mitigate these expected declines. So first of all, we have age. It seems that as we age, there's a decline in cardiovascular function, in muscle strength, in overall running biomechanics. We have, in your case, potentially some environmental changes, maybe there's a change in climate change in humidity or the terrain. I don't know, maybe you have allergies to a particular area that you haven't necessarily picked up on yet or toxins, I don't know. When there's a change in environment, there's plenty of things that could not be picked up that could lead to things feeling harder, more fatigue, that sort of stuff. And as you mentioned as well, there might be some hormone changes, menopause, And if you're experiencing menopausal symptoms, they can affect your energy levels, your motivation, your recovery times. Recommended, like I'm not gonna go giving advice around this topic, but probably seek medical advice if you're finding that it is impacting your performance or you do have some energy deficits and you might want to investigate some potential remedies for the fluctuations in hormones. But I can advise a few things around training and the running side of things. One might be some training adjustments. Like if you're noticing that every run is feeling hard, you mentioned in your question that every run feels hard. It's probably worth re-evaluating and adjusting if required. So like we obviously want to make sure we're looking at your intensity distribution. This is what zones of intensity you are hitting and what percentage throughout a given week. And we want to avoid a sort of gray zone of intensity. So we tend to find benefit from those who spend the majority of their time at a very, very easy intensity. If we want to put a, some might call it a zone two training. Some might say like a two or three out of 10 intensity for using like a, an RPE scale and If 80 % of our time is spent at that low intensity, then that gives us fresh legs to pick up the pace and actually run harder on our harder days. But also that intensity distribution gives us freedom to build up our mileage safely and successfully trying to offset the risk of injury as much as possible. How can we build up our volume? Cause we know when you build up your weekly volume, successfully and do that week by week, month by month, that leads to better performances for races and PBs and that sort of stuff. How we can do that safely is by the bulk majority of your training being at a very low intensity. And so if every run feels hard, we might need to adjust that intensity. The gray zone of intensity is that people find themselves in is they have an easy run scheduled. It feels too easy, so they're running a little bit faster. The last five, 10 minutes of their run, they're like, okay, let me just push a little pace at the end. And their effort just goes upwards, meaning that their recovery, you require a lot longer to recover. And you're not as fresh when you have to do your faster runs. So your faster runs are slower, your slow runs are faster. And we just meet in the middle, this gray zone of intensity where we just get stuck. We don't really... make much gains. When people start running slower, they start running faster. It's just a phenomenon we see all the time. And so maybe reevaluating that, maybe your slow run now might have to be slower than what it was a few years ago. That's why we use effort. That's why we use heart rate zones. That's why we use power zones just to make sure that we're hitting the desired effect. The other thing we can do, I don't know about you Emma, but some advice would be around strength training. We know as runners get older, well, as we all get older, it's harder and harder to maintain muscle mass, it's harder and harder to maintain muscle strength, muscle power, all those sorts of things. And we want to be powerful, we want to be strong when it comes to running performances. And so strength training is a good way to counteract some of the declines in muscle and bone health. So that might be something if that area is lacking. I also say just like, you know, shift your focus, focus on smaller goals rather than being like a 10 K PB. Let me just try to keep hitting my 10 K PB. Maybe you come out with fresh eyes and for the next six months, you just focus on, you know, the squatting heavier or sleeping longer or getting better quality sleep or focusing on shorter sprints rather than longer PB, 5 K, 10 K, that sort of stuff. Maybe the focus is let me try to run for 40 minutes and keep it below this heart rate Maybe that's a goal that you focus on. Let me try to run slower because that is a skill after all The last thing I'd kind of say is Try not to compare yourself to past you because like we say as we do get older there is a shift and a change in our performance and Well, yes, it is nice to be like, okay, I ran my PB at age 44. You can't be at age 54 and expect to try to get the same times. And so maybe if you are competing in races down the track, maybe it's rather comparing you to 10 years ago you maybe compare you to other people in your age group. So we're sort of offsetting the or we're sort of allowing for the effects of aging, comparing yourself. I don't really like comparing myself to others, but that might be something that you might want to focus on. Just listen to the body as well. Monitor your response to various changes. If you just do decide to add some more strength training, if you do decide to adjust your intensity distribution, just keep reassessing and see what works for you. We have a question that comes in from Lindy who says, hi Brody, I would love to know what causes hip drop when running. and possible strengthening exercises to fix it. Okay, so what is a hip drop? If you are running, and let's just say you land with your right foot and the right foot transitions directly underneath you, in that phase when the right foot is directly underneath your body, we are looking at how the distance that your left hip travels towards the ground. This is a hip drop. It's more excessive in others and has been linked to injury. There's some work from Chris Brammer, who's looked at injured runners and non injured runners on a treadmill where the injured runners could still run symptom free. So it's not like they're compensating because of pain in the moment. And then looked at how they run compared to non injured runners. And there was a significant hip drop in the injured group compared to the non injured group. that study design does have its limitations. It would be nice to have a whole bunch of non injured runners, see how they run, then follow them up for six, 12 months and see which one's got injured and then look back and look at their hip drop. But that's the best one I can draw conclusions from. But that's what a hip drop is. The likely causes of a hip drop might be some trunk or glute weakness, primarily. Primarily the glute medius, the glute muscle that's typically on the side, it is responsible for holding you up when you stand on one leg, it's responsible for holding your hips level when you stand and hop and all that sort of stuff. And so what are some potential causes? Yes, weakness might be there, but some other causes might be like your running cadence, how many steps you take per minute, that might be a little bit on the lower end. And so you're kind of hitting the ground harder, you're moving. Your vertical displacement as you run might be a bit, the amplitude might be higher, so you're traveling up and down quite a lot or a greater amplitude. We find that with people with a lower cadence. You might have a narrow or a crossover step width, as I said that I've had in the past, that might contribute to some hip drop. And maybe it's just like a tendon stiffness issue. We like our tendons and our muscles being stiff because it's able to produce power and force more efficiently. we can move through space more efficiently. Like a stiff spring is very efficient, but some people tend to just have less stiff tendons. Rather than strength, I'm talking about stiffness, that could potentially be a cause. But what can we do about it? If we suspect that it's a weakness issue, and we suspect that it's a glute medius weakness issue, you can try and do some exercises. To the best of my knowledge, it's very, very hard to correct a hip drop. My views on this has slightly changed, but for the past decade, the evidence seems to suggest that you could strengthen up someone, you do all these strength exercises, but they still pretty much run the same, very hard to change how someone runs. They feel better and they get less injured because they're stronger and they can withstand more loads, but how they move through space doesn't really change. There's been a few papers that have come out that have sort of change my position or slightly change my narrative on this, but I'm still not yet to be fully convinced that you can change a lot. But nonetheless, let's just work on that theory. And even if we can't change how much your hip drops, if you do get pain, and we build up your strength, you're going to get better anyway, you're gonna feel better. And so glute medius exercises, I dislike side lying hip abduction or side lying leg lifts or clam shells. I think they are overly prescribed and I don't really think it hits the mark in terms of what load is required to transition into running. I mean, there's so much force that goes through your glute medius when you run, when you plant your foot on the ground through the high ground reaction forces and your... Glute medius needs to hold on for dear life to keep your pelvis stable. That is a lot of force. If we do clam shells and we do side lying hip abductions, it's not really hitting the mark. Well, it's nowhere near the mark. And so if you do start with these exercises, that's fine, but we eventually want to continue progressing and progressing and progressing to meet the demands of running. Some of the exercises I like, which I'm kind of contradicting myself because this is relatively low level. but I do like crab walks as an exercise. So you have your band around your knees or your ankles and you take very small steps, but wide steps. You start with your knees and your feet very wide apart and you're taking very small steps to really burn the glute medius. I guess more of a glute medius activation exercise. I typically go with 10 steps to the right, then 10 steps to the left, then you have a rest. You do that three times and find a tension, a banded. tension that is tight enough that by the end of 10 steps to the right 10 steps to the left, are significantly burning through your glute medius, the outside of your hips. And so that's a typical like level one exercise, I would say. But when ready, I transition people into an exercise called hip hitches or hip hikes. And this is the bane of my existence this exercise because especially as an online therapist, it's such a foreign exercise that it's hard to get right, but really good exercise once you do get it right. If you can imagine standing on let's start from the floor, if you've got both feet on the floor, we keep both our knees straight, both our legs straight, and we just lift one leg, let's say the left leg, the left hip hitches up towards the ceiling. And in the process, the stance leg, that right leg, the right glute is activating and lifting your body up towards the ceiling. So your left foot hovers off the ground by like half an inch. Then we come back down just to slightly tap, slightly like you've got a marshmallow under your heels, slightly squash that marshmallow. And then we go back up to the ceiling. Then we go back down. This is hip hikes or hip hitches. And within a couple of reps, you should notice the glute media start working. And this is where this exercise becomes quite tricky because a lot of people have a lot of cheating movements or compensation movements and they don't really feel the glute working that well. And so that's when we need to come up with other strategies, drive through the heel, make sure we're tall, make sure we're not laterally shifting, all that sort of stuff. But you might also see it typically with the foot, the stance leg, that stance foot off the ground by a couple of inches by like a a weight plate or some books or just like keeping you hovering a couple of inches off the ground so that you have a bit more room for the swinging leg or the open chain side to move up and down a little bit more. But once you can get the right fatigue pattern and once you can activate that properly, then I like adding weight. So let's say we're standing on our right leg, we're working our right leg. We are hovering the left leg and moving that up and down a couple of inches. We're holding onto like a dumbbell or a kettlebell in the left hand. And we now have a heavier body that the glute medius needs to pick up and push up towards the ceiling. And I've had my issues with glute medius stuff in the past and I've done some hip hikes and I got up to, I don't know, holding onto maybe 25, 30 kilo dumbbells or kettlebells and doing three sets of 10. And it is such a tough exercise. My glutes were... really, really working by the end of it. And so we can see how this is obviously a lot better than side lying leg lifts or clam shells and is starting to slightly bridge the gap to our demands of running. But then we can focus on some more jumping based stuff, some more hopping based stuff, trying to keep like a really nice powerful rhythm. So like jump rope where you jump 10 times, then you might do five, on the right, five hops on the right, five hops on the left and trying to keep a nice stiff spring. So not only are we trying to work on strength, but now we're working on neuromuscular retraining or control or stiffness or power or whatever you want to call it. And so that can slightly transition into the skill of running and become a bit more efficient and theoretically, hopefully maybe reduce your hip drop. But it doesn't necessarily need to be about strength. I know that some people might just correct their cadence. If their cadence is too low and they're a bit more inefficient with their running style, research has shown that if you increase your cadence by five to 10%, increases the activation around the hips and therefore would help reduce the amount of hip drop. So if someone does have a hip drop, but they also have a low cadence, I would work on that first because it's an easier, you'd much rather just work a couple of sessions on increasing your cadence. getting more efficient, having less hip drop than spending months building up hip strength. So, so I would need to pick out patient, but hopefully you found that answer helpful, Lindy. The last one I wanted to answer today comes from Scott who says, Hi Brody, I'm interested in your opinion on the peptide BPC 157. It's a peptide, not a steroid or performance enhancing drug. I have no idea if it's banned by water or anything. but it's supposed to accelerate healing and recovery of injured people. More specifically injuries of tendons, ligaments and joints. It's my understanding that it's widely used by pro sports athletes and strength athletes to help them through injury. Where would one source something like this? If the claims are true, surely it would be a game changer for injured runners. Do you think it's worth pursuing? Okay, again, similar to our first question. Sorry, Scott, I don't. really know much about this one. I had to look it up and it said that BPC157 is a small protein fragment, a peptide, that's found naturally in your stomach and scientists have isolated it from a protein in the stomach lining and studied it to see if it could help heal the body faster. So what are the proposed benefits? This is me just researching. BPC157 is often called a healing peptide. because of its potential effects on tendon and ligament healing, gut repair, joint and muscle recovery, and nerve regeneration. I couldn't find much research on this. So I thought I would ask Dr. Alex Nelson. He is very proficient in tendon rehab. He has an amazing Instagram that you need to check out. It is at training underscore with underscore tendinopathy, training with tendinopathy. Dr. Alex Nelson. will be the account that you'll find and if you want to learn more. And he sent me this voice memo. Hey, what's up Brody? I appreciate you reaching out, man. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of good information for you here just because there's a lot left still to be learned in my opinion. Most of the studies that I've seen on this are on animals. And so I just don't know what conclusions we can draw from it. And The other thing is I just don't know about which brand is best and what dose is best and if oral or injectables are better. So there's just a lot of information that we don't know yet. And to me, I haven't seen research that guides my answer to well here. And a lot of the experience with some of the clients I've worked with or people I've talked to is pretty mixed. Like some people feel like it really works well and then other people. feel like it didn't work well at all and it did nothing for them. But again, there's a lot of variety in the methods and the dosage that people took. So, yeah, I'm still looking into it. I just don't have a solid direction that I can offer people right now with it. I'm sorry for probably not being too helpful here. So thanks again to everyone for submitting your questions. I do love doing these Q &A, so I'll endeavor to do more of these in the... future but we still have part two to go next week so I look forward to bring you that episode next week. If you are looking for more resources to run smarter or you'd like to jump on a free 20 minute injury chat with me then click on the resources link in the show notes. There you'll find a link to schedule a call plus free resources like my very popular injury prevention five day course. You'll also find the Run Smarter book and ways you can access my ever growing treasure trove of running research papers. Thanks once again for joining me and well done on prioritizing your running wisdom.