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The Physio insights Podcast by Runeasi
Welcome to The Physio Insights Podcast by Runeasi, your trusted space for real conversations at the intersection of science and sport.
Every two weeks, we sit down with passionate clinicians, biomechanists, and rehab experts to share the insights, tools, and stories shaping the future of running performance, injury recovery, and movement science.
🔍 Created for physical therapists, gait geeks, and rehab specialists who care deeply about helping athletes move better, faster, and stronger.
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Welcome to the Physio Insights podcast presented by Runeasi. I'll be your host, doctor Jimmy Picard. I'm a physical therapist, running coach, and team member here at Runeasi. On this show, we have real conversations with leading experts, digging into how we recover from injuries, train smarter, and use data to better guide care. Whether you're a clinician, coach, or an athlete, we're here to explore what really matters in rehab and performance.
Jimmy:Let's dive in.
Jimmy:Dan Cleather, welcome to the Physio Insights podcast. It's great to have you here.
Dan:Thank you so much for having me on. It's exciting.
Jimmy:Of course. Yeah. I've been really excited to kinda get you on the podcast. I've been a big fan of yours for a long time, probably starting with maybe when you came out with your little black book of training wisdom. Yeah.
Jimmy:You've been quite prolific. Recently, you've released the practice of change, which is what I would like to focus on talking about with you today. But before we dive in, for the listeners who don't know who you are, do you mind giving a quick introduction?
Dan:Yeah. So an academic. I work at St. Mary's University, and we have at St. Mary's University a suite of kind of programs in strength and conditioning.
Dan:So, you know, my day job is to teach strength and conditioning coaches. Before that, I I was a strength and conditioning coach. So I worked for the English Institute of Sport. And prior to that, yeah, I kind of learned my trade in the American collegiate system, so I did a master's in in Long Beach and and kind of worked in in weight rooms there.
Jimmy:So I had Dan John on the podcast not too long ago, and he mentioned that the two of you worked together at some point. Where was that?
Dan:Dan came and worked for Saint Mary's, so we were lucky enough to be able to employ him as a knife jump lecturer.
Jimmy:Yeah.
Dan:So kind of MSc program, we have a summer on-site. Throughout the year, it's online, but then each summer, all the staff and all the students come together at Saint Mary's, and Dan joined us for that for four or five years, and it it was awesome.
Jimmy:How closely did you get did you two work together?
Dan:Like, we're we're close. We've done a lot of work together. I think we just kind of get on really well. Dan, if you're listening, I'm so sorry if I misrepresent our relationship.
Jimmy:No. That's awesome. I sounds like a little bit of a dream team out there during that time. That would be awesome to see you guys together because both of you, I I look up to in the strength and conditioning world. So that's really awesome you guys kinda had that time together.
Dan:You know, I I was a bit starstruck when, you know, like, being able to work with Dan because he's been a big influence on me. So it was, you know, fit in the pub and talk about training and life and
Jimmy:Yeah. And the two of you have a lot of similarities. I'm sure there's some differences, but like both of you in the strength conditioning world, both of you are pretty prolific writing lots of books. I feel like every time I turn around, there's a new book coming out. You just released the the demystifying weightlifting one.
Jimmy:I feel like I interviewed Dan John for a book that had released and you already had like another one that was coming out. So like, did you guys bond over the the craft of writing as well?
Dan:Yeah. I I think so. I mean, Dan's more prolific than I am. I think Dan averages about three books a year. Like, it's insane.
Jimmy:It is. Yeah. Where did writing become a part of, like, life or, like, what made you start writing?
Dan:Like, as an academic, you write. I I really didn't ever think about my readers for the black book, you know. Like, I just felt I had something to say, and I wanted to write it down and kind of, like, I had kind of, like, my vision of the training world in my mind, you know, and I wanted to get it on paper. And so that's kind of what my motivation was, and it was only towards right towards the end of that journey, and I was at a conference and talking to a colleague, and, you know, he was kinda like, do you want people to read it? Kinda like the penny dropped.
Dan:And I was kinda like, yeah, that that would be nice. Yeah. Like, I started off, yeah, like, I I was writing for me. Mhmm. And then now, you know, there's some writing projects which are much more for me, you know, and some writing projects which are much more, I guess, commercially orientated.
Jimmy:Mhmm. When you say writing for me, does that mean helping you clarify your thoughts, get stuff out on paper, thinking, like, learning? What do yeah. What do you mean by that?
Dan:What I mean by that, some some of my books are very, very easy for me to write because, you know, like, you you asked me before you came on, like, you know, that you wanted to talk about why I'm prolific if I if if I am, and, you know, the the reason why I can be is just the the messages in books are things that, like, I've been teaching for years and years and years, so I already know the story. So kind of things like the Force book or the Weightlifting Demystified book, like, they're really, really easy for me to write because I know exactly what I wanna say.
Jimmy:The Weightlifting Demystified one, I could see that in the writing because it's almost as if you are coaching the reader. You're just teaching, and I'm sure it's it's it's like being in the weight room with you.
Dan:I've had, like, a a student contact me and go, like, he's reading it, and it just feels like being in a lecture with me, you know, having flashbacks to the same lectures I've I've given, and and that's exactly where all that content comes from. I want to get those things out there, but I wouldn't describe that writing as that's not writing for me. You know, so to answer your question, like, the writing for me that excites me is kind of when I'm writing things where I'm learning things. Again, we talked about, like, the OCD book, you know, so, like, my confessional memoir of my mind, like, is very much for me and, you know, like, it's a personal journey to put it out there. That's what I mean by kind of the difference between more for me or more commercially focused.
Jimmy:To go back to the the waitlisting demystified book, my background is in running and endurance sports, but I've tried in the past to, like, figure out doing things like a hang clean or a snatch and never I've read books on it, never felt like I could understand what to do. And the way that you simplified everything in that book, I felt like I was immediately able to go pick up a barbell and try this stuff. And I was really surprised to see how easily it clicked with some very simple things that you're reading on paper without a coach there with me. And so, yeah, thank you for putting that out there because it's been fun. I'm now snatching a couple times a week and trying to get that movement clean, and it's been fun to to explore a a new avenue for fitness for me.
Dan:That's well, that makes me really happy for thank you for that feedback. You know, like, that's Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what that book's for. So, it's great to hear it.
Dan:It you know, like, you've had a good experience with it. Like.
Jimmy:Yeah. Awesome. Alright. So with the practice of change, where does that book fall into for you or for for the audience?
Dan:That one's an interesting one because at the start of it, like, I just felt that that book was me trying to consolidate some different threads of writing. So, like, in particular, it was kind of like, you know, I wrote the black book eight years ago and force. You know, I I wanted to kind of, like, consolidate those two messages. So that's what what I kind of started doing. But then, as you do sometimes when you're writing, I did discover some things that I didn't realize as I was writing it.
Dan:And in the end, kind of the you know, like, in the end, I think it became a book that was more for me because it kind of also kind of allowed, you know, my kind of life philosophies come in to to understand how much kind of how I'm latterly trying to live my life is also similar to how I believe training works. To answer the question, at the start, it was kind of a pretty commercial project, but by the end, it felt quite a personal book.
Jimmy:Yeah. I would say that comes through because the book feels more philosophy than training. There's I don't know, like, your life philosophy, but it seems more like this yin and yang. There's a lot of pairs and, like, this and that together throughout the whole book. I don't know if that's intentional, but I feel like one thing that I picked up as I was reading it, yeah, it was just like, there's all these these pairs, these things you're pairing together, skill and capacity, stress and recovery, fatigue and freshness, progress and patience, accumulation, intensification.
Jimmy:It's just like a bunch of pairs. Is that intentional throughout the book?
Dan:I I agree with the characterization, and I didn't know that that's where you know, it's a really good example of something I learned as I was doing, and that I was overjoyed when I realized it, but it it wasn't something that I thought was gonna happen at the outset. But it's a great example of of how kind of as I saw all of these pair, you know, pairs, you know, appearing in the writing and then realized, well, that's what it like, it it it's that in in training. It's like accumulation and intensification. You you but you can't intense the the seed of intensifying is that you've accumulated something and and vice versa. So kind of like it it just you know, it wasn't my intent to to have that strong theme at the start, but, yeah, when it emerged, I was overjoyed about it.
Jimmy:I enjoyed it as well. I thought it because, like I said, it reads very philosophical, and it's it makes it more interesting to read and to hear your thought process and how you think about it. And before we go too much deeper into the book, can we go back to just like the book itself? It's called The Practice of Change, and it's essentially like a philosophy book on training. Is that how you would describe it?
Jimmy:I don't
Dan:know if that's how I'd describe it, but I think it's a fair description.
Jimmy:How how would you describe it then?
Dan:I I guess the description is fair. Like, I I mean, I I would kind of call it a Taoist description of training theory or or something that, you know, and and by saying Taoist, that's inherently Yeah. I think it's an attempt to describe one way in which training can work, but that is quite different to kind of the dominant paradigm of what makes training work. So kind of like the the key message being that, you know, training is a cooperation with your body, not an attempt to kind of beat your body into submission, you know, bend your body to your will.
Jimmy:Throughout the book, you use the analogy of like a conversation, and the training is like more like a dialogue with the body and less of a monologue. I think that's what you're referring to as like a dominant paradigm and training is like not to get too far down the road, but the fatigue is like the goal. We're constantly pushing, pushing, pushing. And this book really like emphasizes that or challenges that idea, I guess I should say.
Dan:I think it's rooted in one thing that I didn't say in my background is before I got got into training, like, I studied maths. And, you know, although I don't really feel like a mathematician anymore, kind of one thing that that did is this thinking from first principles and and kind of thinking about what what what are your axioms and building up the edifice of your knowledge from from from the foundation, you know, which is still very much how I think. And if we're thinking about training and building up from kind of, well, what's fundamental and then layering up your rules on top of that, for me, always, what's fundamental to getting better is that you need to be consistent and that kind of everything flows from that. But as you know, kind of, you know, it's my belief that the number one error that people make in training is that they accept that consistency is important, but then they behave in a way that completely prejudices their consistency. Like, people acknowledge that consistency is important, but then, you know, do all these things that aren't consistent with that don't agree with that principle.
Dan:So kind of for me, the book is kind of, well, you know, if you truly believe, you know, that the most important thing is your consistency, the way that you train, you know, the most effective way to train then that follows from that is is this, that kind of, well, we cooperate with our body and, you know, like, do things that make it easy for us to be consistent.
Jimmy:So the cardinal role of training is is consistency. Then in the book, also go on to say like the corollary to that is don't do things that make it harder to be consistent. I wish I would have read or somebody would have told me that twenty years ago when I was like training at a high level because yes, I understood that consistency was important, but then I would go out, just crush myself every day. And you talk a lot about training for the next day. And that's the goal is like not training for today, you're training for tomorrow.
Jimmy:I think you say it in a much cleaner, elegant way, but that's essentially what you're saying. So from there with like consistency being, it sounds like, yeah, this is something you see and you're teaching. How do you in a world where fatigue seems to be the measure of whether a workout was good or bad, How do you help the athlete understand this?
Dan:I mean, there's a big difference between working with, you know, with athlete populations and and, you know, general populations. With an athlete population, I always viewed my job as being more about pulling them back. Whereas I think most people envisage the job of a coach is to, you know, encourage people to greater efforts. Like, with professional athlete, like, they know how to give a a greater effort. Like, the problem is pulling them back for the they don't do that when it's not appropriate.
Dan:And and I think kind of the way you can most effectively learn that is in the weight room. People in the weight room very often, they they come in and they, you know, they train at the same intensity day after day, week after week, and they don't go anywhere. And as soon as you pull them back and put them onto kind of like a wave loading progression, where for a few weeks, they're like lifting way below what they would normally do. So starting at a load that absolutely trivially easy for them and then, you know, incrementing it week on week so it's the, I don't know, maybe week three or week four, they path, you know, around where they would normally train and then continuing up. It's my experience that with athletes who who always train moderately, it's revelatory for them to have that progression.
Dan:And it makes them really, really uncomfortable for three weeks because they're like, I'm not doing anything. Mhmm. And you really have to hold their hand through that of like, I know, it's fine, you know, but then suddenly in week three or week four, they're lifting what used to be hard, and in week five or week six, they're, you know, they're close to doing PB numbers, you know, without effort. And unlike for a certain type of athlete who trains in a certain type of way, like, it's really easy to give them that experience. And and it's things like, you know, like the same thing with squatting.
Dan:You know, I I remember kind of doing it with, you know, like, you can very quickly get kind of people to, like, okay, they're squatting PB numbers just because they thought it'd light and and, you know, and and build up. And so kind of to answer the question of, okay, well, how do you take athletes to understand that message? You know, I feel weight room is quite a nice controlled experiment where you can just show them and and show them really quickly.
Jimmy:Yeah. It brings up another theme from the book, which is this idea of, like, patience and waiting for these, like, invisible changes. I think you have a quote around that. Like, is the goal is like patience, let this stuff happen, not overdoing it. Where it seems like you made me think of my sister who's she's strength trains on her own, but just like kind of hard all the time, almost like regularly going to failure and plateau.
Jimmy:And she's just like constantly kind of dissatisfied with where she's going. But it takes a certain level of like faith and trust to do what you're saying. When you have a coach like yourself telling you to do it, that's one thing. But when it it just seems to intuitively make more sense to just double down and try harder in that situation.
Dan:No. No. Yeah. I get it. And it's very easy to glibly say train light.
Dan:Like, it's quite another thing to to do it. And even when you know what works, like, it's still hard to rein yourself in sometimes, especially if you're someone who likes training or who likes the feeling of giving effort, you know, which often the case when you're talking about athletes. You know, like, it's definitely a leap of faith.
Jimmy:Again, I think it's nice when you have a a coach, but then it's it's also does seem like you and Dan John kinda are on the same page there with you see his his program easy strength with kinda talks about what you just described a little bit. It's like, have you have you done Dan John's Easy Pro Easy Strength program? Yeah. Your thoughts on it?
Dan:I think it's genius because it it and it works in people who are who are quite well trained, you know, who are well trained as well, like, and it work. It's very, very sustainable. I I love that program.
Jimmy:It sounds similar to what you just described, which is just backing them up. It's keeping it easy, and then you see these numbers come up. But even that, it gets tempting. Like, I've done it a handful of times, and even that gets tempting to make it hard.
Dan:The only thing that, you know, like, the the only difference, you know, or or, you know, the in the approach in the approach I'm describing is, like, what easy strength is very, very auto regulated. So it very much is, like, it should feel easy all the time. Like, wave loading, you will kind of start very light and it should be very easily, but then towards the end of wave, you know, it's permissible to kind of, like, for it to be or it's permissible through the wave that the intensity of the effort goes up, and it and it does so in a in a more sort of linear way. I still don't think when you're doing a wave loading program, you should be grinding at the end. That seems counterproductive, depends on the goal, but, like, you know, you want to minimize the amount of grinding.
Dan:The the thing I like about wave loading is I do think the body gets into a state where it's adapting. It's riding the wave. It's improving, and and kind of like there's some sort of logic to kind of you know, it feels like if there's a constant incremental progression that your, you know, like, your body kind of goes with that. And, you know, like, I I you know, that's a little bit different to the principle of easy strength where that there, it's just it's very much focused on the consistency argument and and the making it feel really good. And I and I'm not kind of suggesting one is better than the other because I don't think that.
Dan:I think they're both, you know, very effective ways to train, but that's where I would see the kind of, you know, the the difference between those two approaches.
Jimmy:So with my, like, physical therapy background or physio background, it makes me think about how I interact with patients regarding exercise prescription. We're always, especially on the first visit, somebody is coming back from an injury or has pain. We're always trying to like come in below their capacity and start pretty low just to get some small wins under their belt and slowly start to build them up. But it's almost the tendency, I think right now in the physio world is like, we're trying to encourage. I think historically we've under dosed a lot of patients.
Jimmy:Now we're like recognizing that the intensity matters and we probably need to get them to be lifting heavier, but we can't start there. And I think that's a mistake. It's like we still have to come in pretty low under their capacity and do kind of this, what you're describing as wave loading and just slowly building them up and causing those adaptations that we want to occur. And yeah, the way you write about it, where it's just being patient and you you you have some yeah. How do you describe the coach's job in that in that situation where you are just sitting back and teaching the client to be patient?
Dan:I would describe it like you're holding them back and and giving them reassurance that they're what they are doing is productive because it will feel like they're not being productive because, you know, the whole everything on social media and everywhere else tells them that they're not gonna get better unless they're, you know, destroyed after the workout. Even with a coach and you have the coaches of authority saying, look, you're fine. You'll get better. Like, they'll still won't believe you, but hopefully, you help them stay the course until they, you know, they see it themselves. But I I absolutely agree with what you were saying before about kind of, like, when you start working with someone, you have to come in under their capacity.
Dan:Super important to give your your body the opportunity to start, you know, adapting without immediately being in, you know, in alarm, you know, not without immediately having to deal with a huge amount of stress straight away, but also in terms of the kind of and and this very much overlaps with kind of like Dan John's writing and ideas. If you get a patient or a client or an athlete, and on day one, you batter the hell out of them, then then that's what something that's really going to make it much less likely they come back, and I e make it much less likely they'll be consistent. Whereas if you train underneath their capacity and if the session is really, really easy, then they will probably, you know, experience that their body just feels a bit better tuned up at the end of it, you know, so they they leave the session feeling amazing, which means that they're much much more likely to come back. So kind of like in terms of building positive habits and promoting the consistency, like, and again, this is where it's driven by, well, what's the fundamental principle? Well, you know, be consistent.
Dan:Well, yeah, like starting underneath your Let's say we're doing a wave loading program, we're doing bench, and we're gonna increment by two and a half kilos every week, and people are always kind of like very nervous about, you know, how low, you know, I might want you to start. So like, let's say I want you to start benching at eighty kilos and you feel like it should be eighty five, You kinda like, yeah, like, you know, in absolute terms or percentage terms, that's quite a big difference. But it's still only two weeks, you know, and in the global scheme of things, that's isn't it?
Jimmy:I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor Runeasi. Runeasi is a running and jumping analysis tool that helps provide objective data on things like impact loading, dynamic stability, and symmetry. I've been using it in the clinic for the past three years and I love how easy it is to add to my evaluations. Not only that, but it backs up my clinical reasoning and helps me with my decision making process when I'm doing exercise prescription. So if you're a physical therapist or running coach, head on over to Runeasi and book a demo.
Jimmy:If you're lucky, it will be with me.
Jimmy:In the book, we've talked a lot here about capacity and building capacity and these the adaptations that follow. The other side of training you talk about in the book is skill. Can you talk about that for a little bit?
Dan:I feel like a dominant paradigm by which we describe training is very physiologically based, so it's kind of very weightlifting not weightlifting, like bodybuilding based, you know, from the endurance sports, kind of like thinking about the physiology, so thinking about what the tangible adaptations are and creating fatigue and stress and the, you know, the response to that. But all of that ignores the fact that we can still improve at things simply by doing them a lot, and and that fatigue doesn't need to be present at all for you to get better at some things. And, you know, so in the book, I think, you know, one of the examples I give is of of a pianist. Like, if you're learning to play the piano, like, you get better by practicing, but the the mechanism of that improvement is not that things are being broken down, you know, like it's not a creation of fatigue, like it is a completely different mechanism of learning, and that when we're thinking about training, we need to be thinking about that mechanism as well. And that mechanism, you know, the piano playing is an extreme example, but that mechanism is in terms of like getting your nervous system better at performing and using the capacities that you have.
Dan:But if we only ever think about training in terms of applying stress and adaptation, then we're missing, you know, the other half of the coin of what's going on when we're training and getting better at things.
Jimmy:It seems like different sports or different crafts or place different values here. And for me, with my endurance running background, we focus primarily on building capacity, on getting tired, on going on long runs, pushing that stuff. And we maybe we did some like drill work or something like that, where we were thinking this is improving the skill. But I recently started rowing and rowing is what seems like they put a more emphasis on the skill of the stroke and the catch and all of this. And so it for me, it was like a big shift in like, oh, this stuff is important.
Jimmy:I I can understand it with rowing because I'm coming at it fresh with no understanding of the sport. With running, do you see, like, for distance runners, like, how do distance runners adopt that mindset of, like, building or working on skills with running?
Dan:Skilled practice doesn't have to be, you know, like, there's always a blend between or often a blend between skills and capacities in in in what what in what you're doing, you know, for kind of like when you're running, you know, hard sessions, you know, although you're, you know, getting yourself tired, you're also clearly should be focusing on the skill of running. I kind of view it as in in weight training, what like, we talk a lot about greasing the groove. So kind of like, you know, going into the weight room and and lifting light barbells and trying to do it really well and make it feel really good. Like, for for me, it's one aspect of the skill training. But also the same as the for the sessions, kind of like lifting a very heavy barbell well is also skill training.
Dan:I think in endurance running Mhmm. All of the short, you know, the the slower running is your opportunity to grease the groove, you know, and to restore, like, okay, I I feel battered. I'm tired. I feel terrible. I go out and I toe tap so that I feel like myself again running.
Dan:You know, like, that to me is kind of analogous to kind of being in the boat and really focusing on on what you're doing technically without having too much of a kind of performance focus. With a highly physiological sport like running, like, it is harder to say, okay, well, you know, here is the skill component because it is so physiological. And and although there are kind of like, yes, you can you can do drills and things which are clearly very, very skill focused, I think it's just more kind of a recognition that, you know, in every session that you're doing, you're still executing your skill, and, you know, some of your attention, you know, should be directed to to running better.
Jimmy:It's almost a a mindset shift on those easy days, which are always hard for endurance athletes, I think, to accept. They always just wanna run hard, at least I did when I was competing. And shifting that focus away from the performance, like you said, or the outcome or the pace or whatever. And then shifting that focus towards feeling fresh, feeling good, feeling smooth with the mechanics of the of the run. It's probably similar to like taking your strength athlete and dropping them down to that super lightweight.
Jimmy:They're not gonna like it at first, but if you can get them to do it, they will most likely see the benefit down the road.
Dan:And and, like, it's interesting when you look at, you know, very, very good strength athletes because they spend a whole you know, often they will spend a huge amount of time with very lightweight. You know, I I remember being in a weightlifting competition twenty years ago, and a very, very good strength conditioning coach called Tommy Ewell, who's also he was a British record holder in the snatch. I was snatching kind of, like, half what he was doing. But he spent more time warming up with 40 kilos than I did, which I was very struck by at the time.
Jimmy:I think it's in your weightlifting book you talk about I think it was personal. It was you spending a lot of time practicing with like 50 kilos and doing most of your training with 50 kilos, and then you like set a PR or something. Is that is that story right?
Dan:When I did my best ever snatch, it yeah. It was off. Yeah. I hadn't really gone heavy at all. I'd just done a whole bunch of very light volume.
Dan:I mean, I'm not an elite weightlifter, but I'm very far from elite weightlifter. But, you know, it does make the point of kind of, you know, how greasing the groove at a comparatively low weight and getting very skillful can still lead to higher end performance.
Jimmy:So that kind of goes to this top of this idea of like fatigue is not the goal. Sometimes freshness is like we should be thinking about freshness. In the book, you you briefly touch on the concepts or like the ideas around recovery and how some of the gadgets around recovery can send the wrong signal to people where it's that we can rush the process a little bit if we're doing these extra things to speed up recovery. Can you speak on that?
Dan:Yeah. So if if we go back to the if we're in the kind of like physiological realm, and we're talking about kind of improving capacity and and how and what the mechanism of that is, it's the player stress. The body goes through an alarm phase where kind of performance drops and then rebounds and supercompensates, and and and you build you know, come back at a higher level. But part of that process, it is that alarm process and the physiological events that occur that provide the stimulus for for the the ultimate adaptation. And kind of what recovery modalities tend to be focused on is removing, reducing that alarm phase.
Dan:So if we kind of like kind of don't get a sore afterwards. But some of those things will be effective at blunting the alarm phase, but in blunting the alarm phase, you're also blunting the stimulus to adaptation. So kind of what those things do is they, you know, get you know, hopefully, if you recover better, you're able to train again earlier or with more, you know, or with more quality, but at the same time, you you you know, the the cost of that has been, well, you didn't make the most of the training stimulus that you had. So I think kind of, you know, the so so when do you use those? Well, you use those when kind of it's attractive to have more training sessions, and so that then for me, that would be it's when you want to practice more.
Dan:You know? So so it's where, like, your your your focus isn't on getting an adaptation. You it's on doing that over and over again and training your nervous system. Or, and probably the more the more kind of common use where there there's definitely a role for those, is when you're competing. And so you, you know, you you just you don't care about the stimulus.
Dan:You just want to be ready to go again. So, you know, the Tour de France is on at the moment. Yeah. Like, you know, like, they they're they're not trying to, like you know, they they're trying to win. You know?
Dan:Like, they they don't care about the the training stimulus from the 180 kilometers they rode today. They want be ready to ride another 180 kilometers tomorrow.
Jimmy:So so there's a time and a place for them. I'll the quote I I found the quote from your book that I and I really liked it because it it reminds me a lot about some of the issues around modalities in physio, but the quote is the mindset that these gadgets reinforce can be corrosive. The belief that we can engineer progress without patients. And I think I see that a lot in the physio world with some of our modalities where you think it's going to be the quick fix to your injury. We stick a needle in there, do something and it's going to like be the quick fix and it's to let you, you don't have to worry about doing all this stuff that actually causes the body to adapt, evolve, change.
Jimmy:And, yeah, the way you worded that, there's the how it can be corrosive, that mindset. Like, I really believe in that.
Dan:You know, like, it's it's really hard to kind of accept that sometimes. I I mean, like, at the moment, I'm trying, you know, for the last six months, I've been trying really hard to cut body fat. But, you know, like, the the good example there of, like, again, you can't, you know, there's a physiological limit to how much fat I can burn every day. You know, for, you know, like, I I could I have a, you know, like, if I have more in my body, like if my caloric deficit is more than a thousand calories, I can't lose more than a thousand calories of fat per day. You know?
Dan:So I can't go any faster than that. Like, it's not possible. Like, you know, if if I don't eat, you know, if I have a 3,000 calorie deficit, I don't lose any more fat than with my thousand calorie deficit. Like, you know, like, it's not physiologically possible for me too. You know?
Dan:And and those sorts of those biological limits to to progress, you know, are are there all over the place. And we we need to accept those and then work with those.
Jimmy:Yeah. No. It's very true. I think when when Dan was on the podcast, he was joking about what he say. He's like, he he looked much thinner than some of the pictures I'd seen of him, and he said he had lost a bunch of weight and said, what did he say?
Jimmy:It's like, lost one pound a month for four years or something like that. It's just this is like slow, slow, process. And that's how real change occurs. So I guess one thing as I read your book, I almost wondered like if as if we if you took your book and we replaced all the times you said training with rehab, would everything still be true? Do you have a thought on that?
Jimmy:I know you're not a physio, but like, what do you think about that?
Dan:Would be uncomfortable saying yes or no without, like, going through it all and checking every you know? Like but from a rehab perspective, like, you know, I I would say a lot of the time, you know, you're you're seeking or you're you're seeking change, and you Change. Yeah. You know, like, you you you will be seeking it through the two kind of mechanisms of change that I described, so either adaptation or changes in in skill. So I would imagine that, yeah, most of the messages there are are similar.
Dan:I I guess kind of, you know, there there's some caveats that, like, clearly pain, you know, plays plays a role, you know, in rehab where, you know Sure. Mentioned in the book, and equally the risk of reinjury or, you know, isn't really talked about in the book. So, you know, there are some important omissions that would need to be kind of, like, factored into that sort of philosophy. But, you know, in terms of kind of the, you know, like that's a book about how you affect change in a healthy body, you know, and so I think there's a lot of meat there that would apply to rehab, it's just that, you know, there's some other things going on in rehab as well.
Jimmy:For sure. Yeah. I thought it I thought it was interesting, and I think I do think from like a physical therapist, if they pick up this book and they read it, will see a lot of these messages will resonate with them, and I think it will help the physical therapist, at
Jimmy:least for
Jimmy:me it made me more confident in some of my decision making where it's like, oh, here is a coach telling us we need to be patient, we need to stop focusing on chasing fatigue, like all these problems that I see lead to injury. I can now look at this book and this could point to, oh, this is these are you violated these principles here in your training and that's why you ended up here. You didn't focus on staying consistent, you focused on chasing fatigue, not chasing freshness. Yeah. So I would love like, I think every physical therapist who works with athletes, they should read this book.
Jimmy:Go buy it. Dan, I'd like to kind of wrap up here. Is there anything for or where can where can the listeners find you?
Dan:I'm most active on Instagram, so my handle is Dan Kleber. My books are on Amazon or or or on my website, dankleber.com. So I guess those are the main places to find me.
Jimmy:Yeah. We didn't even talk about it, but you have a whole book on strength training for endurance athletes. So like, again, if you're a PT and you work with a lot of the listeners or PT's working with runners, if you work with runners, check that book out too. But I think if you're gonna buy two of Dan's books, get the practice of change and the strength training for endurance athletes. Alright, Dan, well, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast.
Jimmy:It's great to chat with you. I hope you have a great rest of your day.
Dan:Yeah, you too. Thanks so much for having me again.
Jimmy:That's it for today on the Physio Insights podcast presented by Runeasi. Would you like to share an interesting case, insight, or have a thought about the podcast? Comment below and don't forget to follow us for more episodes.