Trang Nguyen is a Physiotherapist, Strength & Conditioning coach and host of the Athlete's Garage podcast. Trang has a particular interest working with endurance athletes at the end-stage of rehab. So today, we dive into ways you can implement or tweak your S&C sessions for optimization. Firstly, we discuss what a typical gym week would look like for a recreational runner, including frequency, intensity and exercise examples. Second, Trang focuses in on exercise dosages. Including sets, reps and the concept of periodization when preparing for a marathon. Next, we dive into what a runner should be 'feeling' during a particular set. This covers muscle activation, levels of muscle 'fatigue' and the answer might surprise you. Lastly, we answer a listener question around the best 'minimalism home S&C kit' and end with Trang's final 3 tips to optimize your S&C sessions. Here is the article referenced in the podcast: Muscle damage and muscle remodeling: No pain, Go gain? You can also find Trang at The Athlete's garage podcast, or you can click here to find her instagram. If you would like to support the podcast, participate in Q&As & access bonus material sign up for $5US per month at our patreon page For Brodie's running blogs, podcast episodes and online courses visit our Run Smarter Website To follow the podcast joint the facebook group Becoming a smarter runner To find Brodie's running information on instagram @runsmarterseries
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On today's episode, optimizing strength and conditioning into your week with Trang Yuen. Welcome to the Run Smarter podcast. The podcast helping you overcome your current and future running injuries by educating and transforming you into a healthier, stronger, smarter runner. If you're like me, running is life. But more often than not, injuries disrupt this lifestyle. And once you are injured, you're looking for answers and met with bad advice and conflicting messages circulating the running community. The world shouldn't be like this. You deserve to run injury free and have access to the right information. That's why I've made it my mission to bring clarity and control to every runner. My name is Brodie Sharp. I am a physiotherapist, a former chronic injury sufferer, and your podcast host. I am excited that you have found this podcast and by default become the Run Smarter Scholar. So let's work together to overcome your injury, restore your confidence and start spreading the right information back into your running community. So let's begin today's lesson. We have covered so much on today's episode. Strength and conditioning seems to be a really popular topic and so I just try and keep delivering, trying to tweak the topic a little bit more and when I'm good mates with Trang, we've been following her on social media for a couple of years now, probably about a couple of years and... When I was just chatting with her, she kind of specializes or has this niche in kind of end, high end strength and conditioning. Like if you want to improve your performance and yeah, you'll see in a second when she talks about her background and her career, she has, um, she does work with those lead athletes, focus on endurance athletes, but then works with anyone under the sun. And because she loves that, that end stage, strength and conditioning. It'd really be nice to get her insight into how to optimize your strength and conditioning throughout the week. I think by this stage, hopefully you know that strength and conditioning is good for any runner, any endurance runner to help improve performance. And if you are injured, we definitely know what strength and conditioning can do for rehab. So If you are injured or not injured, you're going to take so much away from today. We're going to look at how to integrate it within your week, how far away or how we can integrate it in with your running sessions, whether we should do it further apart, if so, how many hours, if so, what days, what exact exercises Trang recommends, what dosages she recommends, and then just a few couple of ways you can tweak your program. If you're doing a strength training two or three times a week to improve your running performance. She has some excellent insight in just ways you can tweak things here and there to optimize and get better performance, which is what a lot of us are trying to achieve. If you're not familiar with Trang Nguyen, you can find her on social media, her Instagram and Facebook handles, The Motion Mechanic. She also has a podcast, The Athlete's Garage. I highly recommend. If you really love her topics, And you really love her insight and this whole thing around strength and conditioning. Please find that podcast there without further ado, let's bring on trying you in. Trying you in. I am pumped to get you on to discuss strength and conditioning. I think I've had a couple of strength conditioning episodes in the past, but it seems that when it comes to the Facebook followers and people who follow me on social media, they're constantly asking questions around strength training and trying to get some clarity because everyone has like a slightly different take. And I love your work and love the message you're giving out and the quality, the value that you're delivering. So yeah, thanks for coming on to the Run Smarter podcast. Thanks Brody. Thanks for having me on. I'm also super excited to talk about this topic. I mean, it's a big, big topic of mine that I love to talk about, but also, like you said, I'm always talking about strength conditioning on social media. And then I think that I've said something like 30 times, but then there's still going to be people. who hasn't, who haven't seen it. So yeah, definitely always great to recap and to talk about it more. Yeah, absolutely. Reiterate a lot of messages. Uh, let's start with your background. If people aren't familiar with you, can you talk about your, um, your qualifications, your career and this kind of strength and conditioning interests that you have? Yeah, for sure. So, Hey everyone, I'm Trang. I started off at the, if we go back right to the start, I actually started off as a personal trainer and I was a personal trainer even before. I was a physiotherapist. So I worked as a personal trainer right through uni while studying, did my masters of physiotherapy. And then when I graduated, I started doing kind of both, doing physiotherapy and personal training. Then from there went into strength and conditioning, which is, I guess, kind of like one area of personal training, maybe an expansion of it, where I started to actually niche a little bit more into endurance athletes, because that's... what I do, that's what I enjoy, that's what I'm interested in. So yeah, now I do a combination of both, working with endurance athletes, like so runners predominantly, some triathletes to help them with their injuries, help them with their strength conditioning. But I also really consider myself quite broad in what I do because I have a really, really big interest in psychology as well. So looking at that side of things to help with high performance. And I'm actually going back to uni in two weeks time now for the first time in a while. So we'll see how we go. And I'm actually gonna do a master's of nutrition. So yeah, I consider myself working in quite a broad way to help people achieve high performance and really achieve their potential. It seems like you're delving into a lot of different areas that help compliment one another. And yeah, the mindset and psychology, that psychological side of things is definitely a big factor if you're working with elite performers or endurance athletes. And then the seems like the nutrition side is just a perfect combination. So well done for continuing to boost your knowledge in different areas. And I'm gonna start off with a good question. It's kind of gonna be hard to answer with a generic answer, but for a non injured recreational runner looking to increase their performance, like I know a lot of recreational runners, that's what the goal that they have is to increase their performance. How would you typically what would you typically consider a strength and conditioning program to look like or how it can weave into their general week so they can still increase performance but still maintain their same running mileage? I know the question is gonna be, it depends for a lot of people and their goals and stuff, but just typically, what would you might expect to have as that strength and conditioning weaves into their week? Yeah, so. It's, this is probably good to start by framing that strength and conditioning. It's a great part of a runner's program. And I think as time goes on over the years, runners assigned to become more aware that strength and conditioning is an important part of an overall training program and showing the initiative is there to compliment the running. So it's there as an adjunct to the endurance training to help in runners achieve all the different attributes that will help them thrive. and perform even better as a runner. It's there to kind of work on all the missing links or all of the areas that endurance might miss out on. It's really filling those gaps and really develop a runner as a whole. So definitely in a runner's program, depending on where they're at, their focus should definitely be on running, but then what could be good to add on is about two to three times a week of strength and conditioning training. So depending on your experience levels, but anywhere between two to three times a week, sometimes once a week when it comes to like closer to race time and stuff, but we can talk about periodization later. But yeah, two to three times a week is pretty supported by the evidence to actually elicit strength gains and to be able to have an effect on performance in runners. So generally two to three times a week. In terms of timing, this is a really important topic the strength and conditioning and endurance training, there's a bit of an interference effect and you can't really lie, they're very different to each other. So endurance, it's like relatively low intensity for long duration and strength and conditioning, it's high intensity for very short duration. So they work different things, they lead to different adaptations. So there's a bit of interference effects where they contradict each other a little bit, but the benefits of strength and conditioning outweighs that interference effect. So you wanna time your session so that they're not too close to each other because you don't wanna send the body mixed signals in one like isolated session and confuse the body in what adaptations the body should be going through. So you wanna separate the sessions as far as possible. And the general suggestions are, and this has been suggested by Schumann and Rodestad in the textbook, Concurrent Strength and Aerobic Training. 2019, you should be waiting at least eight hours after endurance session to do strength training if possible, because after eight hours, the strength, the strength gains and the performance in that strength session is at baseline and it's at its kind of max. But if you were to do the strength training within eight hours of endurance session, so less than eight hours gap, then the performance and the strength adaptations actually reduced and they actually inhibited a little bit. So try and wait at least eight hours and that kind of works well because people probably will train in the morning before work and maybe another session after work so that you can separate those sessions. And then after a strength training session, aim to wait at least 24 hours before you do a high intensity endurance session, just because you want to kind of like have enough recovery, be fresh before you do a high intensity endurance session and perform well, do it at your max, get good. adaptation from that. And that's been, that's been highlighted by Ronestad in a paper in 2018. But yeah, like kind of two to three times a week, separate the sessions as much as possible. And definitely if you're new to strength training, I'd really recommend just starting light and focusing on technique. Because strength and conditioning, it's meant to be adjunct to endurance. And if you go too heavy, and you pull up with two much soreness and that's only going to impede on your endurance sessions. So start light and try not to get too much sore so that you can't actually continue to have consistency in your program. Okay. And I love this because I'm going to have the topic of this show being optimizing strength and conditioning into your week. And that's a perfect example of how you can optimize it. If you have the availability and you have the time to separate those, um, and have that eight hours away from your endurance training. then you're gonna reap the full benefits because you're not gonna have that interference effect and the body isn't gonna be confused of where the adaptations can take place. And then we're splitting off those sessions throughout the week, two or three times and still implementing that with the running. If someone doesn't have that time availability where they can split off and do those, split off that eight hours, I guess. if they had a non-running day, they could replace the strength and conditioning in there. And that obviously diminishes that interference effect. But if someone is time poor and they've got a family and they've got a full-time job and they can't separate those two or three strength sessions a week, if you do it within that eight hours, are you still getting the benefits of strength and conditioning, but just not to the same effect? Yeah, yeah. Like you'll still be able to get some sort of progress, especially if you're new to strength conditioning. Like you'll probably touch away and you'll already start to, you know, you'll get adaptations, you know, it just might not be as much as if you had separated even more. But yeah, depending on your training program, like marathon runners are running most days of the week, if not every day of the week, sometimes twice a day, right? So then there's just not that much space in the week anymore to separate the sessions and have the luxury. of doing strength training on its own. So then yeah, you can kind of pair it up and then have it within that eight hour window, maybe pair it up with an easy endurance session so that you're not super duper fatigued. If you were to do a speed track session and then do strength conditioning within eight hours and yeah, you'll find that your performance will be diminished significantly. So try and like match it up so that You can kind of still have energy to focus on the strength and conditioning, and if it's an easy recovery run, then it's kind of like, yeah, you'll be able to still fit that in, in that eight hours. Perfect. Perfect example. And a really good answer, because I think trying to get a lot of recreational runners to do strength training is a bit of a barrier because sometimes they don't like doing strength training. And if you were to say that they need to be eight hours away to get full benefit, they might just have a. Oh, no, I can't do that. I don't have the time. Then they're not going to do it in the first place. And I think just encouraging them to get started and everyone has their easy running days. So that's a perfect example. Most people should have their recovery days. So then we can tie in really well with, um, your strength and conditioning. If you don't have the eight hour window, you can work in that, that within the same kind of workouts and you still receive the same benefits. So that's a really nice answer. And I'm actually impressed with. the Facebook group members and people who are contacting me and reaching out because I once thought that a lot of runners are very hesitant to do strength and conditioning, but I'm now getting a lot of runners recognizing the benefits and they're doing like either some home stuff or heading to the gym when they can and recognizing that it is, like you said, a complimentary thing to enhance their running because they love their running. They want to reduce their risk of injury. They want to perform and they just recognize the strength and conditioning an important factor for that. So that was great. What would you think, in your opinion, are the must haves within the program? Like if you were to have a runner to say, yeah, I'm doing my strength and conditioning throughout the week to increase my running performance, what's like a checklist that you want to have to make sure that they're optimizing their sessions? Yeah, so first and foremost, I'd be looking at... exercises that work the relevant muscle groups or the specific muscle groups that are used in running. So of course, the must haves are definitely leg exercises because we wanna be strengthening the legs to improve performance and then to make sure that they're strong enough to tolerate the forces of running and to manage injury and all those things. So the four main muscle groups using running would be the quads, the glutes, the hamstrings, and the calves. So I'll... make sure that there are exercises for all four of those muscle groups. There are a few great exercises, I say squats and lunges where they're working, like a few of those muscle groups in one exercise. So it becomes more bang for your buck. It becomes more efficient, which is awesome. But yeah, definitely those four muscle groups. Carves especially, they're the muscle group that work the hardest out of all of them again. So make sure you've got, you know, a decent amount of calves in your training. And then on top of that, the core as well, the core isn't really a primary force developer in running. You're not using your core to push off the grounds or anything, but it also has a really big role in kind of being the stem of how your body moves. You've got your limbs, your legs, they kind of come off the torso and the torso is like that central kind of grounding point of your entire body as you're running along. So you really want to have some sort of. core exercises in your training program as well. This is anecdotal. I've found that doing core has really helped my running in that I feel stronger. Like I feel like there's more kind of power when I'm running. So that's anecdotal, but I think a lot of runners say that as well. On top of that, doing strength exercises is gonna be really important, obviously strength and conditioning. So going heavy, working on your pure brute strength. So... being able to produce large amounts of force, but also doing some power exercises, some plyometric exercises. So not just like how much force you can produce, but how quickly can you produce that force and plyometric exercises where you're like jumping, you're hopping, and you're working on that springiness in your ankles, that springiness in your calves, and you're able to kind of be light and springy on your feet is really big for runners. So yeah, a few, a few must haves pretty much leg exercises, core exercises, and a few variations in, in how you do the exercises. Okay, fantastic. And when it comes to the core, I think when it comes to the exercises, like for a specific exercise, you did mention squats, you did mention lunges. Um, for calves, I think. You know, does, can it be just weighted calf raises? Does it need to be anything specifically? And what are your core exercise suggestions? Because if people say, work out the core, we want to have some like really practical takeaways. So what might be some examples of that? Yeah, true. You don't want to, um, like send the message to do like 200 sit-ups every day, um, as the most, uh, the most specific form of core exercise for runners. So when it comes to calves, um, doing like heel raises or calf raises, however you want to call them is a good way to go. There's two variations that you'd want to do. So heel raises with a straight knee, so a straight leg, and that's going to target more the gastrocnemius, which is kind of the upper part, the bulky part of the calf that you see in runners. And that's really kind of important to do. So you can kind of do that standing against the wall. I usually face into the wall, put a couple of fingers on the wall so I'm not leaning on the wall. and then just go up and down on the ball of my foot, heel up and down, nice slow reps, roughly two seconds up, two seconds down. So that's one variation. And the other variation is actually doing heel raises with a bent knee. So I'm sure like this has been covered before, but it's like, it's something that you still can get forgotten about, doing calf raises with a bent knee to then target the soleus part of the calf, which is kind of the lower part of the calf that you would look at on the leg. So with a bent knee, you can still do that against the wall. So you do the exact same thing with a slightly bent knee. Or if you have the luxury of like having, you know, equipment or heavy weights, then you can kind of just sit in a chair and then when you're sitting your knees bent, put a heavy weight on your knee and then go up and down from there. I don't know if this is actually evidence-based, but I find that if you can kind of hit at least a third of your body weight, or work up to a third of your body weight in those single leg bent seated calf raises, then that's a good way to go to actually be able to develop good strength in your calves. So yeah, pretty much heel raises do both variations over the week. And then when it comes to core exercises, I'm a fan of plank variations because it's a stability exercise in that your core is working to resist external forces. which is kind of what we do in running. In running, we're not actually using our torso to produce movement directly, but it's actually working to kind of be a stable base for the limbs to work off. So you want the torso or the core muscles, like the ab muscles, even your lower back muscles, your obliques, some people might even kind of talk about the hip muscles as part of the core, to be that strong, stable, I guess, center of your body. anti kind of anti movement like stability exercise, so plank variations. So plank, side plank and there's so many ways you can progress those plank exercises as well. So you can do plank with like hip dips or plank with leg raises, plank with arm raises, bird dog, like different ways to progress plank exercises. Also a fan of cable or band core exercises to really mimic what we do in running. So in running, when we're swinging our arms, there is actually a bit of torso rotation and our torso or our core muscles have to kind of counteract that rotation so that you're not excessively rotating. You're still kind of having that strong, like kind of a controlled way of rotation, right? So with a cable or a band, if you're at home, you can kind of get some bands. You can do like palloff press. and then variations of a palaf press. If you Google palaf press, you'll be able to find videos on it. It's essentially an anti-rotation exercise. And then you can do kind of like oblique, banded oblique twists where you're holding the bands or the cable and you're rotating. So then you're also working that rotation aspects, which is really specific to running. Great, fantastic examples there. And before we move on, you did mention strength and making sure that our- Our goal for a lot of these lower leg exercises should be heavy. Uh, the strength component. Most people do know the rep ranges and the differences between the two, but I'll come up with an example. So some people might go with really lightweight and they're able to do more repetitions. And they might do three sets of 15, 20, 25. Sometimes if they do body weight, sometimes it gets up to 25, 30. And that's what we call like a high rep range. but if we work our way to the other side of the scale and really increase the weight, we can have a lower rep range where you can do say 10, 11, 12 reps and then you're really struggling through 13, 14, and then can get even heavier and you can really struggle through six, seven, eight reps and that could be a totally different focus. So they're kind of the differences between the two. Where should you think someone... If who wants to increase running performance should land. If they're doing their squats and lunges, what sort of rep ranges and number of sets are you recommending? Yeah. So according to the evidence, anywhere under 15 reps is considered strength and is actually, um, effective for runners. So even if you do a set of 15 reps where you get to the 15th rep and you know, you're, you're pretty much done. You don't have that much more of the tank to keep going for heaps more. Then that's actually still going to be effective. for performance improvements through improving your running economy, so improving your efficiency when you're running. Personally, in my programming that I give clients, I've actually found even going to the lower end of that range is even still very effective. So even doing less than 10 reps, you know, eight reps, anywhere between your five to eight reps is still really good. Reason for that is just when you're going heavier, weight, lower reps, then you're starting to... work the central nervous system that little bit more, and you're not fatiguing the peripheral systems as much. So imagine kind of doing a set of five reps, like that's heavy, and a set of 15 reps, that's still pretty heavy for those 15 reps. You're not going to be fatiguing, you know, the peripheral systems, like the peripheral nervous system, the muscles as much doing five reps, it's just purely because it's less reps. So you're not work fatiguing that system as much, and then you're not kind of, I guess, Yeah. Pre fatiguing the muscles that is going to, um, inhibit, or it's going to actually impede on the subsequent running sessions, whether it's that evening or the next day. Um, so I find that doing high weight, lower reps, even low in that range is good to avoid that interference effect and, um, still get really good strength gains that way. Yeah. And in my experience as well, I did, um, about 18 months of CrossFit and we were working on heavier sort of stuff. It took me about. four months to get the right technique before I started trying to lift heavy. But I noticed the same thing. If I tried to do say like a five rep max, my legs were like, if I was doing a squat, my legs weren't feeling like they were burning, but I just couldn't do another set. And yeah, it's, it was a totally different experience from what I'm used to. Like usually you feel the burn and the burn gets too much or the lactic acid or whatever that peripheral sort of fatigue would be, would get too much that I couldn't do another rep. But I just didn't have the power. I just lost power and didn't know where that loss in power was coming from. If someone is working in that really low rep range, so the five to eight, is that what they only should be working in or should they be moving in and out? Maybe like one day doing something in the higher rep ranges, then going back to five to eights. Um, what would you recommend? Yeah. I reckon like never any like set rules on, on rep ranges, because it's going to change over time. It's going to change for different exercises as well. Like for some reason I find that for core exercises, like some of the ones I just mentioned before, like planks for example, they work well when you do it, like you do a bit more of an endurance aspect to it. So like hold it for time instead of reps even. So hold it for 30, 40, 50, 60 seconds. And that works well. And then it's totally gonna depend on the training phase as well. Cause like. I mean, runners don't officially have an off season, but if say, if you don't have any races coming up, you might have a bit more luxury of time and kind of the space to work on your strength and work on technique. And then you might be able to do like higher reps. And then maybe towards like getting closer to races, you might go to lower reps and just like kind of conserve your energy almost like don't spend too much time working and doing too many reps. So. Yeah, and lighter, lighter weight at the start, especially for beginners, right? Like when you're learning technique, you want to be able to have that practice. You want to have that skill practice. And the more reps you do, the more ingrained that movement pattern is going to become. So then if you're like learning a new exercise, maybe doing five reps isn't enough. Maybe you want to do eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, but it's a relatively light weight because you're learning that exercise, not to build strength strictly. but more as a movement, like a skill acquisition focus in those sets. So yeah, it totally would change. Yeah. And it's a nice segue into my next question around if someone was preparing for a marathon and they wanted to perform and they recognize the importance of strength and conditioning. Is there any general guidelines in terms of how often they should be training at the start of their marathon preparation? And as we get closer to that race day, Should we be changing the frequency? Should we be changing the intensity of our strength and conditioning? And, um, yeah, as we want to prepare as best we can for that race. Hmm. So this is, um, this would be what we, um, I mentioned before as like periodization, which is kind of like changing, you know, the program throughout the year, depending on races to make sure that the runner or you as a runner, you peak at the right time. It's kind of like, I always use AFL as an example. So, you know, if you're in Australia, you'll get this, but AFL has a very clear off season. It's got a clear pre-season. It's got a clear like in season, then final season, right? Or like kind of finals stages. So then the athletes are all going to be training in specific ways over those phases to peak at their final season or final stage. So when it comes to marathon running, and this is a good example, or even like ultra where runners are doing so much running and this is where they're running for most days of the week, if not every day. Um, so pretty much you'd want to start, you know, if off season, right, even before they start their marathon program, they might be doing two to three sessions a week, um, and then as you go through marathon training, um, season, I find that, uh, like you can still kind of fit in maybe two sessions a week. You don't need to be doing three anymore. Uh, depends, I guess, depends how long your sessions are and things like that. But true is a still. still is a really good number to continue to develop strength. And then as you get, as you continue to get even closer to marathon the competition and the race, it's going to become less about the strength conditioning and it's going to become more about the running. So at that point, you can periodize the strength training and then maybe drop back on the frequency, the volume, so that you're kind of maintaining rather than developing strength. So you might then drop down to once a week, close up to your marathon training. The problem with stopping strength and conditioning completely, which is what some runners ask, is that just like anything, if you stop running for a month, you find that you go backwards pretty fast and you actually lose a lot of that fitness. And that's just the way our body works. We need that constant stimulus to continue to either maintain or progress. So if you were to stop for the whole marathon training block, which can be 16 weeks, maybe 20 weeks, then you will lose those benefits. So it is important to still do strength conditioning throughout the training block, but just drop back on volume, drop back on frequency so that you allow yourself adequate recovery for your running. I'd still maintain intensity, like still do heavy reps, still kind of work yourself. So you're still stimulating your muscles. Um, but just don't do as much volume, don't do as many reps sets, training sessions, and then that's going to allow you space to recover and focus on your writing. I think it's encouraging for a lot of runs to know that you do have to work hard to gain strength. Like most people know that's where, why we have to do it two, three times a week. But a lot of people will be encouraged that even if you just peg it back to once a week, you're just maintaining the strength that you've gained. You're not losing anything. And that might be, um, Yeah. Encouraging enough for people just to be consistent and keep up with that once a week, because you know, it works. You work hard to build up your level of fitness. You work hard to build the levels of strength and running fitness and anything to lose that fitness. You want to try and hold onto that, that hard work that you've put in. So once a week is very good. Would you recommend dropping down to once a week, like six weeks before the marathon or like even closer, what, what timeframe should we be backing off? Yeah, I reckon around that, um, kind of timeframe is good. Everyone does things differently. Like I know some runners who are still doing twice a week, right up to their marathon, but they were then not doing, you know, such heavy leg work. They were maybe focusing more on their core or their upper body, maybe just like kind of some lighter legs, but yeah, I think kind of dropping between four to six weeks out from marathon. So once a week is a good idea. The only, um, and this is also from anecdotal experience. If you drop back to once a week too early, then you might get to the point where you're like maintaining strength, but you're still kind of like, you're just on the borderline of maintaining. So once a week, you get to that one session a week, and then you do these sessions because your body's less used to it because you're doing it only once a week, you're pulling up even more sore from your strength training sessions. I don't know if you've found this Brody, but like I definitely did when I was doing once a week, I think I did once a week for maybe like six months once, but every session I was just pulling up. super sore and it was kind of putting me out of action almost for up to two days afterwards. So then I found it was actually the consistency in terms of not pulling up as sore and being able to run every day after was actually better when I was doing two sessions a week. What's your experience been with that? Yeah. I think every time that I do a strength session and if I introduce something new I'm sore for days and it's, I don't know if I experienced Dom's more than the regular person, but I'm knocked out for, um, two or three days. If I just started doing weighted lunges, maybe like maybe five weeks ago, I'm like, yeah, let me start working on strength and conditioning. So I got some heavier weights to start doing lunges and my quads and my hamstrings and my glutes were sore for probably four or five days. And if I was to do that once a week, I think I would probably not adapt as quickly. And now I'm. I've been making sure I'm doing that twice a week. And I even just realized three days ago, I bumped up my weights to like considerable amounts because I wasn't getting the same amount of doms and I'm still doing twice a week, but still working at a higher weight and I'm not getting the same amount of doms. Um, so I guess I'm adapting quicker and which is the perfect, like the perfect realization when it comes to optimizing strength and conditioning, the topic of this podcast, but, um, trying to optimize you just adapting quicker and you're getting stronger quicker. So that when it comes to that top part of the, I guess, when you're preparing for the race, you're looking at that top performance. When you back off, you've got a bigger buffer and you're kind of stronger and you've, um, you've adapted more to that strength and performance. So I guess that's yeah, in my experience as well, it makes a total, total sense that you would try and build up that frequency. And then. If you. have if you back off to once a session and you finish, you back off to that one session with a massive buffer and you're just a lot stronger, you're not going to decline. You're not going to decondition at the same rate. Makes a ton of sense. And I wanna challenge you with a question. If someone is already doing all this, if someone is a runner and they're doing it twice a week and they're doing their squats, lunges, calf raises at a good rep range, but they still want to tweak their performance. They still want this like specialist knowledge just to try and get a little bit more of an advantage and optimize their strength, just a little bit more. Do you have any recommendations of how they can slightly tweak their program in order to receive benefits? Yeah, this is actually a fun question almost because in terms of strength conditioning, the foundations are important, right? Like doing the foundational strength, doing foundation exercises, working on your base, but then the fun comes in when someone's already doing that for a while and then you start to get creative with the program a little bit more and start to progress in some more fun ways. You don't have to get to the point, by the way, it's probably worth pointing out. You don't have to get to the point where you're like, squatting on a Swiss ball while juggling some balls and balancing like a weight on your head or anything like that. You don't need to get that fancy because then that becomes no longer that... specific and effective for what you're trying to do. All those Instagram videos and all those TikTok videos of like, do I need to get to that stage? Yeah, here we are saying you don't have to. But I think the first one is one I already mentioned. And I know you've spoken about this in previous episodes as well, is if you're already doing strength training, just make sure you're doing some power exercises and some plyometric exercises as well. Because if you're missing one of those three, then that's a very, I guess, obvious or it's a very good way to start to progress or tweak your training program more. So just like to, I guess, to summarize real quick, power exercises is doing the concentric phase, like doing the contraction phase fast rather than slow. So with a squat, for example, you go down, you come up, on the way up is when you're contracting your muscles, right? That's when you're working. On the way down, you're still working, but you're assisted by gravity. So it's going up, that's generally the harder phase. So for strength, you might do relatively heavy weight, you go down and up at a consistent speed. For power, you'll just drop the weight a little bit so that you go down and then on the way up, you explode up as fast as you can. Now you're working on your rate of force development, how fast you can produce that force. And then plyometrics is kind of that stretch shortening cycle that I mentioned before, like working on the springiness. So doing jumping, doing hopping continuously. Think of skip rope, where you're kind of just like springing like just on the ground, like kind of just like skip, skip and continuing to spring up and down and working on the stiffness of your muscles and tendons. So making sure that you're doing all three of those. Some other areas are... Um, kind of varying up your tempo. So slowing it down, increasing the speed or even, and even adding an isometric pause, um, in the rep. So like think of a squat where you grow down and instead of just going down and straight back up, you might hold at the bottom for two seconds. Now that's an isometric pause and that's that increases time under tension. It forces you to brace, um, kind of your core muscles even harder. Cause you're at that bottom. that kind of the dark spot at the bottom for even longer. So that's a really good way to challenge the body more. You can even reduce the stability of the exercise. So imagine doing a squat on the ground versus doing a squat on like a surface that's a little bit unstable, right? Suddenly your ankles have to work harder because all those ankle muscles have to overcome kind of an unstable ground. Like, and by unstable ground, I'm thinking of maybe like a BOSU. ball or like even think about standing on a trampoline, right? The ground's moving underneath you. So then your ankle muscles have to suddenly work harder. Therefore your leg muscles have to work a little bit harder. Therefore your core muscles have to suddenly start working a lot of harder. And there's a lot of different ways you can reduce stability. You can go from double leg to single leg. So instead of doing a double leg squat, we've got two feet on the ground. You go do a single leg squat where now you've only got one leg on the ground. And we know that standing on a one leg is less stable. It's. harder to balance than two legs. And then that's also going to be more specific to running because in running, we're always only on one leg at a time, you can even change your weight positioning. And that's going to reduce stability. So think about doing a squat with the weight on your chest, the weight is close to your body. That's cool. It's it's, it's stable in a way, or as stable as it gets, because the weight is as close as it can get to your center of mass. But imagine holding the weight out in front of you with your arms completely outstretched or the weight above your head now. And then now you've got your arms involved and your core has to work even harder. I always use the example of shopping bags. Like think about the last time you went to the grocery shops, you had two heavy shopping bags. You're gonna hold them right by your sides because it's closer to your center of mass. It feels lighter when it's closer to you. No one's walking around and I'm this... I guess this is a podcast. You might not be able to see me, but no one's walking around at the shops with their white, like with their shopping bags, with their arms outstretched, you know, to the side, um, with their shoulders at 90 degrees, because that's gonna, it's going to feel heavier. The core has to work harder. Um, so yeah, putting the weight further away from you set of mass is a good one. And I might add one more. If, if anyone's on the ball already doing all those things, something else has just changed the type of weight that you're you're using. So a dumbbell, for example, is a certain type of weight where on the way down, you're assisted by gravity, on the way up, you've got to kind of it's going to overcome gravity. And then it's kind of like a relatively constant resistance. But if you use like bands, and you do the exact same exercise that you use bands instead, then on the way up, so think about of a band when it stretches, the more it stretches, the harder it is to continue to stretch it. So then the resistance is going to change through the range of motion, which is going to challenge you in different ranges of motion, which is a good way to train your body to be strong in different ranges of motion, right? So with a, think of a bicep curl, I think this might be easier to envision. Bicep curl with a dumbbell, probably the bottom half is the hardest. So from you go when you go from the bottom to halfway with the dumbbells the hardest and the top half is a little bit easier just because like the lever arm starts to get shorter as your forearm kind of curls up. But with a band, the bottom half is gonna be easier because the band isn't even stretched that much yet. And then as you continue to curl up to the top, it's the top half that's going to be more challenging. So then you just kind of like filling in those gaps once again, like you're feeling in. Um, the areas that you might not have been working with a standard dumbbell. And then now you're working strength in different ranges of emotion. So a few different tips there. Yeah, tons, tons. And I want to unpack a couple of them because that just the reiteration could be really impactful for the listener. So I think tempo is something that people don't consider when it comes to if they're doing squats, lunges, that kind of thing. Um, deadlifts would be another good one, but When it comes to adapting muscles and tendons for producing force and just the tendon adaptation, I think that slow eccentric phase that you're talking about followed by a fast concentric phase has been shown, like when you talk about that rate of development, shown to adapt the tendons and the muscles a lot quicker. So perfect for runners who have to constantly have that force production. So it might just be as simple as... slowing down that eccentric phase. If we're thinking of a deadlift when the weights, when the bars still at the hips, if you did, when you're going down in the deadlift phase, slowing that down a little bit more, maybe by a couple of seconds, but then on the up phase, trying to make sure that there's a little bit quicker and there's a little bit more power involved in that, and that might involve reducing the weights to start with and then working on a bit of power to see that the body can adapt because if you do that same amount of weight that you usually deadlift and you try and do it a bit quicker. that is an enormous ton of load that you're probably not used to. So just be careful with it. So that's just a really nice little tweak that someone can do is just changing their, their down phase and their up phase. And then you also mentioned the single leg stuff. And I always recommend someone have incorporate some kind of single leg work so that they can isolate or identify if there's any differences from right to left. And I think if people do a lot of double leg stuff, if they do a lot of double leg, say squats, They can get away with a few like weak links or any like missing. Um, yeah, a few, like a weak knee or a stiff ankle or something. They get away with it, but there's nowhere to hide. Once you go into single leg or once you go into barefoot single leg and like there's really nowhere to hide, they can work out, Oh, actually I have poor control. Like I'm losing balance all over the place on my left. Whereas my right feels a lot more stable or I feel like I have more power on the left, I can do so many more reps and I feel like I have that. Um, that control where it's just not, it's not existing on the other side. That can just be, uh, that can highlight a lot of, um, weak links for a runner. So always important that we do some sort of single leg work. Very important. And then that pause that you're talking about at the end or halfway through that movement. So if we're doing a squat at the very bottom of the squat, I think when people go through the movement, they don't recognize the importance of like. If they don't pause, they kind of have like a little bounce or a little recoil that makes that coming up a lot easier. Whereas if you try and do say a pushup where you start at the top and then you quickly do a pushup. If you try and do that same thing where you don't have that recoil at the bottom and you go all the way down, you pause for a second then you come back up, you find your muscles working so much harder because they need to regain that momentum. And that can be just a little tweak that you can do in order for the muscles to work harder. So really love those tips. We were talking last week when, after I was interviewed on your podcast and you were mentioning something around the feel of a muscle and whether we should be feeling for burn or we should be feeling for a muscle activation and you had a really nice take on it and a really nice, I want to hear your opinion and share it with everyone else. When we're doing our workouts and we're doing our squats and lunges and calf raises, what's their ideal aim? What should we be recognizing? Should we be feeling? exhausted by the end, should we be feeling a muscle burn? What are you educating your clients to feel during the exercise? Yeah, this is probably a good one to talk about because this is going to be real practical to remember for runners doing their strength training. A common question that I get when I actually start with a new client is, I haven't been getting super sore after my sessions, like is the strength training working? Am I even getting stronger if I'm not getting sore? And the answer to that is you don't actually need to be getting sore. You don't even necessarily need to be feeling the muscles burn. Like you said before, Brody, like when you're doing lower reps, you might not even feel that burn. Like if you do an exercise for 20 reps, by the end it's like burning, right? But if you do, you know, five to eight reps, you might not even feel that burn. So then, you know, the question is, what are you even looking for when you're doing these exercises? So first and foremost, the main thing that I would look at is good, clean technique and controlled movements. So clean technique, make sure your technique is kind of controlled. You're not really bouncing or trying to kind of, yes, spring up and you're not kind of all over the place. And this is where it gets a bit more complicated because sometimes it's really hard to learn technique and get it looked at when you're doing it on your own. But that's gonna be the most important thing. Because if you're doing good technique and you're doing the movement in a controlled way, then you will be, whether you feel it or not at the time, the muscles will be working. Sometimes you don't even feel the muscles at the time, but then the next day you actually feel the domes. And that's just an example of showing you that you might not even need to feel it at the time for that muscle to be working. And sometimes like, yeah, sometimes you might not even feel the muscle working, but you're still able to do the movement. Like think about doing a squat. If you're doing a squat, You go all the way down, you go all the way up. You don't feel the quads working, but you had to get up, right? So the muscle had to work to get you to overcome that weight. And same goes for any other exercise, whether it's like planking, kind of hip bridges, calf raises, if you're doing it, then the muscle is going to be working. The other thing to look out for is just the fact that total workload, so the total amounts of sets and reps that you do times the weight that you do, is going to be the biggest factor for how much strength you gain. There was a really good study that I actually looked at when I was like studying and like at uni that looked at two training groups. One training group did eight weeks of training with an initial kind of damaging bout of exercise. So they purposely tried to cause muscle damage. The other group did eight weeks of training But in the three weeks prior to those eight weeks, they slowly built up and it was like a slow, gradual ramp up protocol. So over the eight weeks, both training groups did the exact same amounts and total workload of training, but one did damaging exercise and the other one did non damaging exercise. And by damaging, I mean muscle damage. So in terms of like the structure, there would be damage to like the... you know, extracellular matrix, there'll be damage to the muscle fibers, there'll be leakage of inflammatory, like proteins and cells like into the blood. And then they feel that burn, they feel the muscle soreness. So that's what I guess we term as muscle damaging type exercise. And that usually comes from doing your high reps, like going to failure, like really smashing yourself, right? But at the end of the eight weeks, like the surprise, surprisingly almost, both groups achieved the exact same amount of strength and both groups achieved the exact same amount of muscle hypertrophy, so muscle growth in size. So that just shows that what was previously believed to be the mechanism for strength, like muscle damage, getting sore, like burning muscles is not actually the mechanism for muscle strength, because both groups achieved the exact same results, but one group did it more slowly without getting super sore and the other one got really sore. So... Yeah, class, really good example. If anyone's interested, the paper's called Flan, not called Flan, it's by Flan et al. It's from 2011. I can't remember the exact name of it. We can put it in the show notes if you guys are interested. Something about, yeah, no pain, no gain. I remember that was in the title. But yeah, you don't have to necessarily be super sore. You don't have to feel the muscles burn. You don't have to smash yourself and go to failure. But you can still definitely get strong. And like- we were saying before, because you guys are runners and running is your focus and you, and you want to have enough energy left over for running. You should try to actually not be getting super sore after your strength sessions. Good point. Very good point. Um, we did mention plyometric exercises and I just want to have a quick answer, maybe two or three examples of your favorite plyometric exercises. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Um, pro go jumps slash pro go hops. So kind of like skip rope, like just like constantly jumping. I think that's a really good starting point because it's relatively, like it's not really maximal. It's not, it's like kind of a relatively safe one to start with. And then I also like depth jumps or depth hops. So that's where you start on a step or you start on a box and you jump down. And then when you hit the ground, you bounce straight back up again. So then you go, you do an initial jump and then there's a rebound jump as well. And the main thing you're looking for is how much time you actually spend on the ground. You wanna spend as minimal time on the ground as possible. And then on the rebound jump, you want to get as high as possible. So two different things that you're looking at. I reckon those two are two classic ones that I give and there's variations to each of those as well because you can start to vary the height. You can start to even use weights. You can start to add kind of multi-directional plyometrics. I can start to jump or hop forwards, um, jump or hop sideways. And yet there's still, there's so many different variations of those. So those are the two main ones I'd use. Great. And I think even if people are doing this at home, I think like a skipping rope is nice just to have that constant, um, recoil and you know, in that skipping action, which is working the calves, which we have already illustrated is very important as well. Um, from the, from a listener, Steve, he asks if you can't get to the gym at the moment, um, and you wanted to start some strength and conditioning at home, what, in your opinion, what is the most efficient minimalist starter kit that someone can have at home where they can reap the benefits of strength and conditioning without having to buy a whole bunch of equipment? Um, what would be your advice? What would be your opinion as just like a minimalist starter kit? This is a real relevant question. I don't know if Steve was it. Yep. I don't know if Steve's in Melbourne, but this is so relevant because over the last six months gyms have been closed. Um, due to the pandemic that we in gyms are opening again soon, which is very exciting, um, but yet we've all had to really deal with not having the, the abundance of equipment that a gym would provide. So for beginners and most runners, you can, if you're training from home, like you can actually make do with not even that much equipment. because look around the home and you'll find that you have different things that you can play with. I always say a backpack with textbooks inside of it, you can easily build up a decent 10 kilogram, 15, 20 kilogram weight already. I know I've always got heavy 15 kilogram rice bags at home. So there are ways that you can kind of like get creative at home. If you do have a bit of like, if you do have a budget to get some equipment, the first thing I'd suggest is micro bands. So like kind of the small loop bands or resistance bands like the big loop bands. They are so versatile, they're light, they're portable. You can bring them out to the playgrounds. You can kind of take them on a plane even. They're so great to use. And they're in terms of financial investment, they're one of the most like kind of easy ones that you can get. If you even have a little bit more of a budget, the next step would probably be, I reckon, adjustable dumbbells. A whole set of dumbbells from zero, not zero kilograms, that'd be air, but one kilogram up to 20 kilograms. That can be, oh, like a lot of weight, a lot of space required, a lot of money required. But dumbbells these days, you can actually get adjustable ones where you have one dumbbell, you can actually adjust the weight and... change it from anywhere between, you know, four kilograms up to 20 kilograms. I've got those at home. You, you just got two dumbbells, but they're adjustable. Um, they're a bit cheaper. They're more kind of tight, um, space like efficient. They're not taking up a ton of space. So that would be the next one I'd go for after the bands, but I'd go bands first. They're super good. Yeah. And if the overall goal is for strength, like obviously with the bands, you don't have a lot of weight, but you can get Some, like I said, a backpack books and that sort of things, but bands can be really nice for power as well. They can, if you get a whole bunch of bands, make sure they're strong enough. But if you do say crab walks or like jumps with a band around the knees or ankles and that kind of thing, that integrates a lot of power, which is the, another component that we need in our strength and conditioning anyway. And yeah, I love if we're going on the minimalist side of things, just adjustable weights. because once you have some dumbbells, you can use that for so many different things. You can use it for lunges, calf rates, or squats. And yeah, you've just got them, they tuck away. Regarding space, it's not like gym equipment where you have taking up a lot of space. It could be tucked away really neat and nice. So perfect, yeah. And we mentioned skipping ropes as well. Yes, skipping rope's a good one. And yeah, like I think because we've been in Melbourne with this lockdown, like you can get really creative without weight. So I mentioned that before, but some examples are kind of doing like single leg exercise, like single leg squat, single leg hip bridges are pretty challenging without that much weight. Even like Nordic curl, like reverse Nordic curl, like the Copenhagen adductor exercise. I know these, I'm just rambling off names, but if you Google them, then these real, they're like relatively advanced exercises that you can do without weight. So yeah, heaps of ways to get creative. Yeah, very nice. We've covered so much. We've looked at like the frequency, intensity, what we should be including within our strength and conditioning, our must haves. We've looked at like periodization when preparing for a race, examples of the particular exercises. I wanted to challenge your expertise one more time and come up with your, in your opinion, If a recreational runner wants to optimize their strength and conditioning, perfect for the title of this episode. If there's something we haven't discussed on the podcast just yet, or if you want to reiterate one that we've already discussed, cause I know I've covered so much. What are your final three tips to help optimize strength and conditioning for a recreational runner? Yeah. So. because we're talking about optimizing strength, conditioning, and we've already spoken about so much today. I'm going to kind of leave all the really obvious ones like on the table. And then I might talk about like some other ways you can really kind of step up your strength, conditioning game. So the obvious ones would be like, you know, be consistent, have good technique, thought slide them in there. But actually, the first one is one I've already mentioned. And I really want to kind of emphasize that is through heavy strength training. So heavy strength training, high weight, low reps, but Also make sure you're doing at least some plyometrics and like a bonus is doing power exercises as well. Think of it as three separate categories. If you can be doing all three kind of spread across the week then you're gonna really be covering all the basis for your strength. The next one would be to challenge your body and movement. Instead of just doing straight line exercises like instead of just doing squats or lunges hip bridges, calf raises, where you're facing forwards and you're moving forwards and backwards or down and up, that's sagittal plane, so straight line, start to add some multi-directional exercises like side to side. So in the frontal plane, like side lunges, crab walks, you know, hip abduction exercises, hip adduction exercises. So where you're going side to side, which is also an important part of... improving kind of the 3D strength of your body and the stability from all directions. So that's side to side, but also maybe some rotational exercises as well. I mentioned rotation through the core or the torso before during running. So make sure you're doing some rotation, like what like Russian twists, band oblique twists. You can kind of do like rotations, like with a medicine ball, kind of throwing it rotating through the torso, that's an power exercise as well. You can do yeah, power press, which is anti-rotation and even just do two in one. So you can do squats, lunges, and maybe at the top of each rep or at the bottom of each rep, before you go on to the next rep, add a rotation through the torso, keep your hips square, but twist your torso to the left and the right, and then you're getting two in one. So yeah, instead of just doing satatural plane exercises, do multi-directional exercises in multiple planes of movement. And the last one, one we haven't really spoken about so much today. Um, but I know has been covered before, um, on the podcast. I'm sure, um, Brody will be able to point you to which episode would be the basis of this, but really focus on targeted strength training and going into range. So you're getting strong in all ranges of movement and kind of do that almost in place of, um, excessive stretching and foam rolling and letting go of the idea that you have to do so much of that. where targeted strength training into range can be just as beneficial for the same benefits, but more effective because you're getting multiple, like multiple benefits out of it. Like you're getting strength and flexibility out of these exercises, getting stability out of these exercises. Whereas say for stretching, you might only be getting flexibility, but not the other things. So it's just like more effective, more bang for your buck. But yeah, I know we haven't spoken too much about stretching, foam rolling today, but I know, yeah, in previous episodes, you probably would have covered that. Yeah, absolutely. And you've nailed it. Like if we're going through our exercises through range, then we're improving our flexibility and like our functional movements and, uh, yeah, you it's bang for your buck because you're addressing your strength at the same time. Brilliant. That's a perfect way of ending the podcast. And, and before we go, and if people are loving what you're saying, and I highly recommend people go into your podcast and your social media accounts. Can you just maybe give them a bit of direction where they go for the Athletes Garage podcast, where they can find it and your other social media handles? Yeah, for sure. So the easiest place to get me or find me where I'm most active is on Instagram generally. So the at the motion mechanics, so all the one word, the motion mechanic. And then Facebook's the same name. You can send me an email if you'd like, if you've got any specific questions and that's trang at them And yet, like Brody mentioned, I've got a podcast as well called the Athlete's Garage. And yeah, keep your eye out because Brody, I did interview Brody last week. So we did a really great episode as well on that. But yeah, a few places if you do wanna get in touch. All of those will be in the show notes and I will add in that. a couple of the papers that you mentioned in the show notes as well. If people want to go check those out, um, trying, thank you very much for coming on. It was very insightful. I've learned a ton and I, I just know that the audience has as well on a topic that is quite confusing for some and, uh, just trying to find out if they are feeling like they're in control, just tweaks on how they can optimize. So it was a perfect episode. Thanks for coming on. Thanks Brody had a lot of fun. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Run Smarter Podcast. Hope you can see the impact this content has on your future running. If you appreciate the mission this podcast is creating, it would mean a lot to me if you submit a rating and review. If you want to continue expanding your knowledge, please subscribe to the podcast and get instant notifications when a new episode comes out. If you want to learn quicker, then join our Facebook group by searching the podcast title. If you want to take your learning to the next step, including injury prevention principles, injury specific insights and modules to boost your running performance, then head to our website by searching runsmarter.online and jump into our Run Smarter Online course. Once again, thank you for listening and becoming a Run Smarter Scholar and remember, knowledge is power.