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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 letβs begin your run smarter journey.
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On today's episode, I am releasing a previously recorded patron AMA. Welcome to the only podcast delivering and deciphering the latest running research to help you run smarter. My name is Brodie. 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. Good week. you enjoyed Jared's interview last week. already getting some great feedback from you and the early release and that sort of stuff. I want to do something a little bit different. I know I have um a few questions, posts and everything in the app itself. um Firstly, I wanted to mention Kimmy's question about altitude training. Uh, she wants to know like the positive effects, how high should we do altitude training? If there is some effects, if so for how long? Um, I'm not too sure it's outside of my realm. So I'm going to have to look for a professional to kind of get in, but it's an idea of mine to, um, have a guest come onto the main podcast to talk about those sorts of things. hopefully Kimmy, um, just hang tight. I know your question's there, I'll get to it with a trying to find the best guest. And also Karen asked a question about the best way to fuel, including the gels, the fuels, other fluids, the chews and that sort of stuff. And also about sodium. Again, outside of my realm, I'm not a dietician. The only knowledge I have about nutrition, hydration, dietetics and all that sort of stuff comes from the guests of the podcast, really. um I would maybe direct you to Andy Blow and the conversation I had with him on the main feed. He had a really good, he talked really well about the hydration and sodium and fueling and that sort of stuff for a race. So if you just go into any, oh, what you could do is go to the Run Smarter app, go into podcasts. And then in there, there's a chapter category of episodes about nutrition. And you can just go through all the dietitians that I've talked to Andy blows podcast episode will be in there as well. And you can just see if that starts generating or answering a few of your questions. But I did Karen want to address another question that you asked. And it was, is it better to improve your running performance by doing a run walk or doing run walk intervals? or doing a nonstop continuous run slowly. And so I thought this was a great question and something that's well within my wheelhouse to answer. And then I'll get to a few other questions I've got. Well, I've got two of Rebecca's questions about balancing flare ups with potential injury flare ups with the risk of progressing and those sorts of things. And also about your PES answering inquiry. So I'll get to those but Let's talk about this run, walk or continuous run. What's better? How can you get better? There's a few things that need to consider and I've wrote down one, two, three, four, five, six kind of domains to see which one might be more beneficial for you to do a run, walk or to do something that's more continuous. The first thing we want to consider is your level of experience or the amount of time that the time off you've had from running and We want to work out if you can just increase your safely. um If we do, if we want to build out that mileage, we need to do it sensibly. And if you have had a long time off running, a run walk program will be the safest for you to do it and build a bigger mileage safely. We essentially want to find out the best way to build the base of a pyramid. So if you have, if you build out your aerobic base, and you can do that successfully and you do that week by week, month by month and slowly build your mileage. You're filling out the base of that pyramid and then you can be safer when you start working in speed, when you start working in like intervals and long runs and races and all those sorts of things, you have a bigger base. Because Karen, you said one of the questions was like, what's a better way to improve? The best way you can improve is by being consistent, by doing more than what you did the week prior, and by doing it without getting injured. And so we need to consider these things. How much time have you had off? How much experience have you had? Because if it's less experience or a lot of time off running, we're going to tend towards the run walk stuff um rather than the continuous stuff. Cause if it is the continuous stuff, you might get more fatigued towards the end of that continuous stuff and running fatigued, you know, generates loads, unnecessary loads and that sort of stuff. can also consider what else you're doing. So if someone's a new runner, they don't have a lot of experience. Well, what's their experience like with other things other than running? So sports, cross training, gym, do you do gym classes? If someone is relatively strong and they've that's Another way to fill up that base of that pyramid. So we might consider if someone does have no experience with running, has apologies. I usually put my phone on silent, but I forgot to do that this time. Um, when it comes to someone who hasn't had much experience in the gym, but has say does CrossFit as a, uh, regularly does CrossFit. would say, know what, we could probably start some continuous running. Running is a little bit of running is into CrossFit and you know, they're going to be strong. So something I would consider. Compare that to someone who's sedentary, maybe a little bit overweight, no experience with running. We would definitely get them on a run walk plan. Usually they gravitate towards like a couch to 5k or something like that. um So we are trying to do the safest thing possible, trying to build up your volume as safe as possible and there's no risk. in starting more conservative, stay more conservative just to see how your body tolerates it. um That's always always going to be a safe option, which runners don't usually take the safe, sensible option. But experience and time off running is one um pillar in that decision making process. But the other thing is your effort levels. We do know if you're not familiar with the 80 20 rule, it's just a Universal rule to demonstrate that 80 % of your entire weekly volume should be dedicated to slow, easy running, leaving 20 % to push into the harder efforts. That 80 % should be at a two or three out of 10 effort level. If continuous running is increasing that effort level, we might be skewing that ratio. My sister's a good example. um She goes for a run really slow and, but even, even though she is running really slow, if she does a continuous run by the end of it, she's at a five, six, seven out of 10 effort level. So we can, I always recommend if, if those effort levels start getting up quite high, we might be skewing our weekly volume away from that 80, 20, and maybe getting towards 50, 50, which puts us in like a risk of injury. So my advice would be, hey, we could just do some continuous stuff to start with, but then just do some walk runs at the end. Whereas for me, on the other hand, if I go for a continuous run and I run for say eight kilometres and my pace is my slow of six minutes per kilometre, I feel like my effort level stays at a three the entire time. So I probably wouldn't need to result back to a walk run plan. my effort levels or my ratio is staying at 80 20. Cause I would do intervals once or twice a week. And then, you know, a walk run plan probably isn't as warranted when it comes to the, scenario. But again, we need to factor in effort levels when it comes to terrain, when it comes to the heat or the weather or humidity, where it comes to sleep um or what You know, your body might be sore, stiff, tight. Sometimes I do run walks. Sometimes if I'm not feeling my best and sometimes my calves might be sore or my back might be stiff or it might be really warm. um I can do some walk runs. make that decision to do that. So that's the second sort of category I have effort levels. We want to make sure that we're factoring the effort levels to decide whether we do the continuous running or the walk run. Injuries, injuries is another one. Are you currently managing injuries or are you currently encountering niggles popping up here and there? If you're constantly injured and you have niggles that constantly pop up, you might want to consider walk runs. maybe it is back to what we talked about before, maybe you're unintentionally skewing that 80-20 ratio and it's turning more into 60-40 or 50-50 without you realizing because towards the end, the effort level is getting quite high. So if those effort levels are quite high and that ratio is being skewed, it increases your risk of injury. And so if those injuries keep popping up, and those niggles keep occurring for whatever particular reason, then if you are a continuous runner, maybe consider doing some run walks a couple of times a week. We also have repetition type of injuries. There's sort of three categories of injuries. One is load. So if you overload it, you're going to get injured. There's range of movement. If you push a structure through range that it doesn't like, that's going to lead into an injury. Less likely to do with running related injuries. Think of like a shoulder when it comes to like a baseball pitch where it cocks back and does a really awkward range of movement as it takes off. um But then there's repetition. There's doing the same thing over and over and over again. That structure can become irritated. ITB syndrome is a classic example of this where The ITB kind of rubs along the outside of the knee for lack of a better term, but if done in that same angle, that same range of movement, that same load, thousands of times, it can get irritated. And this is where run walks can come in really, really well. If there's someone who has a history of ITB syndrome, if you do a bout of two minutes of running, And then uh there's that repetition that starts up a couple of thousand times. You might then do a walk and change that repetition because you move slightly differently, the angle slightly different, the load is slightly different and gives it some reprieve. And so if you're one who is prone to having ITB syndrome, maybe squeezing in a couple of run walks per week might be warranted. You can still do the continuous stuff, but you you might want to justify doing some run walks a couple of times a week. I found other injuries to be very beneficial with doing run walks, shin splints, sometimes some tendinopathies, but if someone is injured and returning back to running, my preference is to start them on run walks because they do get that reprieve. It sort of stretches out the load a little bit and avoids that constant repetition. The other thing is fatigue. So, where you talked about experience and you're all like time off running, effort levels, injuries. Now we're talking about fatigue. Like I say, running fatigue, if you are running in a fatigued state, that can heighten your risk of injury. We hit the ground harder, we can't absorb the load like we used to, the muscles aren't as fresh, the tendons aren't as stiff and efficient, and we absorb the load differently. which as a result, we accumulate load quicker. And so what run walks can do, can be really helpful for is, you know, keep you a little bit fresh for longer so that you're running less time in a fatigued state. And if you do notice on a continuous run, if you are, if it is getting hotter or your effort levels are shooting up more than what you thought, finish with a walk run and you're not going to be running a sloppy, you're going to keep your efficiency and sometimes that one or two minutes of a walk is enough to restore a lot of those efficient running mechanics. So again, um this is what's going to help preserve a lot of your running, this going to make you more successful week on week, month on month. um The other thing that we need to consider is probably enjoyment. and what you would adhere to and be more consistent with. If you enjoy doing the long runs, maybe stick to the long runs. If you hate doing run walks, then maybe we would consider doing more of the continuous stuff, but we just have to be very careful with how we manage that. ah But I would say that give it a go. I'd say if you if if you say you hate run walks, and you've never actually tried it, I would suggest trying it. ah But we do want to sort of gravitate more to what you enjoy. If you enjoy leads to being more consistent. If you're more consistent leads to better performance. So as a blanket statement, you want to sort of gravitate towards those unless like I say, you're injured or your effort levels are too high. We're getting these niggles here and there, we might need to reevaluate those things. So from an overall performance perspective, to answer your question, Karen, because it was all about, you quite, I might have gone on a couple of tangents, but your question was, Which one's better, continuous or run walks? What's going to give me the best results? Your best results are going to be what you can successfully do week by week, month by month, how you can consistently build upon that mileage, whether that's run walks, whether that's continuous stuff. If you can do so and build up and build up and build up without breaking down and you do it consistently without injury, you're going to get better. Put in the miles, put in the consistency, that's where you go. But at least this might open the conversation to allowing some run walks here and there might be a couple of days a week might be just at the end of a continuous run. Factor all these things in to justify what you decide to do. And if you've never tried run walks before, give it a go because that is my, that's my tip. I've seen so many clients hate it, think they hate it, give it a try and then they end up loving it. So. Yeah, that'd be my advice. When it comes to run walks, like, um you know, one minute run two minute walk would be probably the most conservative ratio that I would try. And then I flip the ratio. So once you can tolerate one minute running two minutes walking, I flip it and do two minutes of running one minute of walking. And I usually like to keep that ratio all the way up until you've done about 10 rounds. So by the time you've done, so you might start at five rounds, but then you build and build and build until you get to 10 rounds. 10 rounds is 20 minutes of running in like a 30 minute session. If we're doing two, one, one off, um then I, you know, I play around with it, but then that can, that two minutes of running can turn into three minutes, can turn into four minutes. And then we build upon that, but you want to sort of establish a good base before you. work your way up that because that can the running volume can accumulate quite high once you go from two minutes of running to three, four, five minutes of running, et cetera. I'll just finish by saying, um, you don't have to decide one or the other. Ahead of time. If you, you can decide to do a continuous run or walk run in the moment, you might decide to do a distance or you might decide to do a duration, but how much of that you've run, how much of that you walk. You can have the plan initially of doing it continuous, but then decide to do some walking intervals in the moment based on a whole variety of factors. So just bear that in mind. Okay. Thanks for your question, Karen. We have the two questions coming in from Rebecca. First one she asks when balancing the fine line between a flare up and a potential injury, how do you know when it's time to back off or forgo a race to avoid a substantial negative impact on my training? Good question, Rebecca. um First of all, based on the might be misinterpreting the question, but if you are preparing for a race, because you're asking about forgoing a race, if you're preparing for a race, and you're not sure how you would go if it might, if you're risking the flare up or you're risky risking a setback of your injury, I'd probably say you're not ready for a race because you should be going in with a lot of confidence. Um, and that confidence is restored and built up in your training. So only because I'm a little bit, um, biased towards not racing, but I do understand a lot of runners love racing. It's like their passion, but I've just seen so many runners. jump back into races way too quickly. so because I see that so often and it flares up their symptoms and they're even more bummed out than when they started and they're, you know, um, cursing at themselves for making that decision in the first place, because I see that multiple times a week, I'm always going to be like, don't race, let's just wait until you're really ready. I'll answer this question with a little bit more substance. Um, in your training, If you want to do a race, we need to consider all elements and get really, really good at those elements. Take your time. We don't need to rush into races, but if there is a race that you do have or you want to do, we need to consider, how fast will you be going or expected to go in that race? What's the terrain like? Obviously what's the distance? And then we prepare ourselves in our training very gradually, very sensibly with enough time. We have the patience. Let's build out those things. And as you do that, you're going to build confidence along the way. And then you can sign up for that exact race without any worry because you've done that in training or you've done something very similar in training. And we know the tissue capacity can handle it. We know that your confidence levels are through the roof because you've done it something similar before. And that's going to be the best thing. And on race day, if you run faster than what you were expecting, um and there is an elevation in symptoms it will not last long whatsoever it will not be a major factor maybe it's a little bit sore maybe for 24 hours only because you've pushed a little bit beyond your expectations and there is a mild flare up but because you've built it built out the tolerance within your training it's only just a little hiccup a little mild increase and therefore it's only a very mild flare up or set back and then you're back into training a couple of days later. Don't rush into races. Build up your confidence in your training, build up your capacity in your training, sort of mimic the race. If you've never done speed work or if you haven't done a lot of speed work in your training, if you haven't built out a larger volume, then you're probably not ready for races. Build that base of the pyramid first. Races should be the tip of the pyramid. Okay, um but also oh Appreciate your trainings, appreciate the running without races. Uh, this is what I try to really get across to runners. Some runners have wrapped up in this identity. Sorry, Rebecca, this isn't you, but some people have runners that they've wrapped up their identity in. I am a marathoner. I race three times per year. I get better every single year. This is what I do. This is, I get medals. I, um, celebrate with my friends, I train for races with my run club, they wrap their identity into these races. You don't have to, you know, revolve around races. There are other things you can do. um Just appreciate the training, appreciate being able to run, appreciate the fresh air, the sounds of the birds, the feeling you get in your lungs and your heart and your legs when you go out for a training run. Appreciate that you can do those things because when you're injured and you can't run, you're to be like, man, I wish I appreciated the fact that I actually could run rather than just when I could run being disappointed that I couldn't race, practice appreciation. the other thing that I'll finish on is that back to Rebecca's question of how do I know the fine line between a flare up, risk of injury and actually progressing or um ramping up my training. I would say that you still want to appreciate symptoms. We all know the symptoms. We want to make sure there's mild symptoms during, but then returns back to baseline quickly. That's in the short term knows that that's an acceptable bout of exercise that you can tolerate. But if you feel like you're sort of pushing the boundaries too much and the symptoms are a little bit more elevated and you're not sure if you're, know, maybe testing out the limits a little bit too much, that will be revealed over a longer period. So over a period of weeks, sometimes months, because you want to be seeing noticeable improvements over a long period of time. If you're not seeing a noticeable improvement in your injury over a long period of time, something needs to change. Maybe you are pushing yourself a little bit too much. Maybe you are flirting too much with that line between progress, adaptation and injury. Just bear that in mind. Maybe it's less, maybe need to emphasize the recovery side of things more than the training load side of things. It's all about a fine balance. Thanks for that, Rebecca. I'll get to your other question. Rebecca asks, I've been rehabbing a knee strain on my own for many months. It continues to get worse. I've listened to the Pez Encerine podcast and seems to be mostly accurate with my, what I'm experiencing. Is it better to seek a professional physio or a doctor to ask and determine if it's bursitis? I am tired of unsuccessful rehab attempts. Thank you, Brody. Okay, thanks for your question, Rebecca. If you are obviously like what I was talking about before, if you notice it's getting worse, we wanna see long-term improvements. And if it's not a long-term improvement, we need to change something that might be a diagnosis, that might be changes in your... your management, identifying what might be aggravating the symptoms, those sorts of things. Um, what I will say if you're tossing up between a physio or a doctor or a Cairo or an osteo, uh, seek someone that you trust. You know, I have a bias to suggesting a physio or a physical therapist, but I know there's some dodgy physios out there. I know there are some great. Cairo's I've talked with some great Cairo's on the podcast. Um, I know there's some great doctors, sports doctors, um but it all has to come down to someone you trust. If you don't have anyone that you trust, try someone new and see if once meeting them, once going through their consult, um see if they have the knowledge, try to find someone who, know, straight away you can usually guess or get a sense of this is someone that I believe in trust who has good knowledge and um has a good ethos around this injury management. Because when it comes to a diagnosis, they'll help explain things really well. They'll sort of lay out an action plan. They'll lay out the long-term solution rather than just short-term fixes. here's some stretches or here's a massage. Away you go. You should feel better. or someone says, says, oh, you can't run. shouldn't be running, running's bad for your knees. Like, you know, those sorts of things that pop up all the time. If you get that kind of sense, you know, unfortunately you've wasted a consult, but we want to try and find someone who's local that you do trust. You can keep going back to you. Cause as runners, unfortunately we get injured a lot and we're constantly pushing our capabilities. So having someone to fall back on is a good idea. um Yeah. So you can maybe ask around, ask for advice, ask other runners for recommendations, maybe search online to see if someone does have, um, experience with runners or good knowledge in the space. Um, and then if you go to their consult and during the consult, write down all your questions beforehand, ask all the stupid questions because the stupid questions are what actually helps reveal or gives you a better understanding. If they say something really, um, blasΓ© and something that's a little bit cryptic or has a lot of jargon or doesn't really make sense, ask for clarifying questions. Keep asking until you have a good understanding because sometimes continuing to ask, even if it's a stupid question, can sometimes help reveal if they aren't really on top of their own advice that they're giving, um, or doesn't have real sound justification. Or they may be just really used to talking in medical terms and medical jargon and all you need to do is just ask question again. And then they just explain it in a way that you finally get an understanding and that helps build trust and builds understanding about your rehab and injury. So keep asking the stupid questions. I love stupid questions. um I should stop calling them stupid questions. Should I? Anyway. um And make sure you get the answer. Make sure you get an answer that you understand. Hopefully. you find a health professional that does somewhat follow the principles of the podcast in relation to, um you know, finding rehab exercises that does promote long-term solutions in terms of not just relying on passive modalities like massage and um stretches or dry needling or shockwave or injections and all those sorts of things. Sometimes they have their place. but most the time they are short term and we want to balance the short term with the long term solutions. And hopefully they can follow or give you a course of action. And when you start that course of action, give you like that rehab plan, you need to see benefit. It needs to be effective. And so sometimes that treatment plan, if effective means you're heading in the right direction. But if it's not effective, You need to make sure that they have contingencies in place. Instead of just doing the same thing over and over. I've had a lot of clients come to me and say, my health professional gave me these exercises and I've just been on the same exercises for six months and not getting any better. That's a flag to say, you know what, maybe it's best to see someone else. um Or maybe you need to communicate to them. Maybe you haven't communicated to them yet that you're not seeing the results. you're after and if they sort of talk down to you and say no this is part of the process um I doubt that you should see a noticeable improvement week by week if anything like every two weeks month by month that sort of stuff if you're any better in six months um yeah big flag so I know Rebecca I can't I don't want to say you know go seek a physio and then the physio not really be that helpful um or say go see a doctor and that doctor not be helpful. It's really about there's some good doctors. There's some doctors that really don't understand running injuries, vice versa with physio and other health professionals. So ask around, ask recommendations. um If you're still not satisfied, seek a second opinion or um ask for recommendations. That's, guess the best advice that I can possibly give. um So best of luck with that, Rebecca. Let me know how you go and hopefully You other listeners have enjoyed um this conversation because hopefully that answer helps spark a lot of thinking for you, for other injuries and for other scenarios that you find yourself in. 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 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 prioritising your running wisdom.