Running Rewire With Jay Dicharry

Finn Melanson [00:00:13]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finna Lanson, and this is the Run to the Top podcast, The podcast dedicated to making you a better runner with each and every episode. You're created and produced by the expert team of coaches at runnersconnectdot net where you can find the best running information on the Internet as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budging. Running biomechanics expert, Jay DeSherry, returns to the show today to talk about the upcoming new edition, stay tuned, of his popular book, Running Rewired. In this particular conversation, we talk about why we all need to be students of our sport, the specific skills you should have in your running toolbox, why you need inputs and not just recovery to improve the way you're moving, why too much, too fast, too soon isn't the only pathway to injury, the cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages of building muscle memory to move better, and the relative importance of prehab, precision, and performance workouts. I found Jay to be a very interesting, engaging, and generously informative guest, so be sure to tune in. And if you're interested in checking out the latest edition of running rewired, stay tuned for its release very soon. Jade and Sherry, it is a pleasure to have you on the show.

Finn Melanson [00:01:36]: How are you doing today?

Guest [00:01:38]: Good morning. Thanks for having me. Good to be here. I have

Finn Melanson [00:01:40]: a lot of questions for you. You have the second edition of running rewired out, which is why we're here today to kinda celebrate. It's a excellent read. I was just telling you offline. I'm gonna go get the physical copy as soon as I can because I need it's a book that you wanna mark up and return to again and again over your kinda running life. The first question I have for you was something I came across a few chapters in, and you make the point that most of the research to date has been focused on injury prevention and less on running performance. I'm sure this is maybe a subjective answer, but what's what do you see as the reason for that?

Guest [00:02:18]: It's a lot of things. Right? Like, when you look at the world of research, it's gotta be paid by somebody. And so, there are entities out there donating money to try and make us all faster. So, you know, when you look at, you know, research on, you know, why somebody might get a tendon injury, right, or why someone might get a bone stress injury, those have payment methods. So, a lot of it's due to go back to payer sources. And, yeah, that that that's the bulk of things. Right?

Finn Melanson [00:02:47]: Wow. And so what Why might that be changing? Like, are there other just different ways to kind of pitch research, or are people getting just more, like, clever in those arenas? Or because you said there there is there is a change happening. Right?

Guest [00:03:00]: There is a change happening for sure. I mean, I think there's there's a lot of things happening. It's just like everything in business has shifted. Right? A lot of things have changed from research standpoint. There used to be kind of the central, like, powerhouse of money you'd apply to, like, NIH that would have, which is National Institute of Health, which has a a big pot of money, right, to do to do work. And, getting access to those funds has been harder and harder and harder. So, you've seen a lot of people had to be creative. And, also, a lot of universities have, you know, established these kinda, like, different pilot funds or different type of transdisciplinary, research programs, which allow you to get access to funds for some pilot projects and more advanced projects that have some other nontraditional funding methods.

Guest [00:03:40]: So that there there's a push out direction for sure. And, yeah, we're trying to see how we can push the needle. Right? And, I love you. Joe Friel is, you know, obviously, a name probably everybody's familiar with. And, yeah, I think I I love a quote. He he said I wanted to talk of his, I don't know, 20 years ago, and he said, you know, research proves what won yesterday. And and I love that quote. Right? Because there's some truth to that.

Guest [00:04:03]: Right? We're we're trying to find out why some things work and why some things don't work. But more importantly, like, how does it work for you? Right? Because this is another reality that, you know, when you look at research, the research studies run on a bunch of college kids who are under you know, and and their professors basically say, hey. You need an extra point your on your midterm if you come be a subject in my study, or it's run on a group of elites that are in some type of training program. Right? And you're likely neither. So, you know, when we we look at who research applies to, that's really, really important. Right? So, one of the things I tell my own students, is research guides your thought process. It doesn't tell you how to treat your individual patient. It doesn't tell you how to treat your individual athlete.

Guest [00:04:45]: So it's a framework. Right? I think that we're constantly looking how can we evolve this framework to do better for each person.

Finn Melanson [00:04:51]: I had never heard that quote before. Research proves what won yesterday. That's awesome. It also makes me wonder too, like well, there's a couple of things I wanna say. But the first is, you you know, we are in this era where, because everybody can be a content creator, it's hard to distinguish fact from fiction, what's reliable, what isn't. But at the same time, if we are totally just, like, bound to the literature review and, again, like what you said, what worked yesterday, you're not necessarily able to experiment with the things that I have to imagine are gonna become a part of the research 5, 10, 15 years from now. So there's that that interesting kinda, like, straddling of, what's been proven and being a little bit experimental.

Guest [00:05:34]: Yeah. Yeah. This is really interesting. Right? Like, when you look at, like you said, everybody everybody's an expert these days. And and and I'm all for trying new things. Right? There's a few problems in here though. What athletes do is they typically have something that they do. It's some type of training methodology.

Guest [00:05:54]: Right. At the end of the season, they look at what happened and go, okay, this worked. Right. And if it worked, they don't want to touch anything. Right. They don't want to change one single thing. If it didn't work, they get nervous on how to approach things. Right? And so then you've got, you know, a lot of people saying, oh, listen to your body.

Guest [00:06:11]: That's great in, in context. Right. But in reality, runners don't know how to listen to their body. No athletes do. Right. It's like, how do you monitor things really? Right. And so you can say, oh, look at my heart rate variability with my my Garmin watch. And, yeah, that that's nice.

Guest [00:06:24]: But, like, what are you really looking at? And can you actually get an objective framework to make yourself almost a little scale, like, okay, I'm trying some new type of program, but I'm 2 months in, did I make myself a Likert scale right. To go 1 through 5 and go is, you know, what's changing. Right. How do I feel after each run? How's my, it's like most of us aren't doing this. Right. So it's tough to get people to find a framework to look at self evaluation. And, and that's tough. I mean, don't get me wrong.

Guest [00:06:53]: It's tough for everybody, but when you lack the ability to monitor these things at an individual level and to be a dork hat for, you know, put my dork hat on for a second, This is this is the world I live in. Right? This is I do work with a lot of these people who are constantly tweaking and monitoring things, and we do have fancy tools in the lab to monitor. You know, what's the rate of force development look like when you change your methodology in this way. Right? How's your recovery going? And and and really look at these things at a nuance level. And so, you know, that that's a lot of things I do I I try to do in this book. It's like, you know, we said whatever one side of the world we have research. On the other side of the world, we've got, you know, social media people. And then we need to have some guidelines in the middle to take things and make them actionable.

Guest [00:07:33]: And and that's the whole goal of this. Right? It's like theory is great, and one research study is nice, and it kinda spikes your interest. But if you can get a framework to apply some things, that's when you can really start to make yourself better.

Finn Melanson [00:07:45]: One last question in this in this area. So we're we're recording this in early to mid March. So by the time this comes out, this this point will kinda probably be moot. But I'm thinking of alternative ways to fund research, and one of them that comes to mind, it may or may not be valid, is, like, the Nike breaking 2 project, which is sort of like that privately funded in the field type experiment. What's going on right now, if you're if you're aware, is Lululemon has this event going on called Further, where they're taking the, whatever, the 8 to 10 females on their athlete roster, and they're doing this 6 day event out in Palm Springs. And while these runners, these athletes are, you know, trying to break, like, 48 hour records and 6 day records and 24 hour records, The Lululemon science team, coaching team there has all these monitors attached and very similar to Breaking 2. Right? And they're hopefully gonna try to get a glimpse into, you know, a wider body of literature around, you know, female athletic performance. Do you find those types of events, in addition to being these amazing, you know, marketing opportunities for the brands, are these legitimate places to go and extract, you know, meaningful interpretations of what could work for a wider population?

Guest [00:08:57]: For a wider population, no. Because, again, you're looking with you you're working with a highly tuned, you know, cohort. Right? So, that that does not transfer well to the average person. And and let's just give you an example here. Right? Like, when you look at the null hypothesis, right, if you said an athlete's coming into some aspect of a program, it's obviously look at running right now. So, you know, you would hope that you've got a solid background of aerobic development, anaerobic development, a solid development of, you know, techniques and strategies to work on bone health, to optimize tendon, robustness, to optimize muscular strength and power. Right? And like, then you work on how can I dial all these things up, right, to make them better? The reality is most of us don't. Right? The reality is most of us sit in office chair for the vast majority of our day, and then we basically put our shoes on and we go pin it and we drive ourselves on the ground every single day.

Guest [00:09:51]: And then we wonder why we're not improving. Right? And and and things start crumbling. So it it's it's tough to to say that you've done all the work to put yourself in a in a similar situation to the elites. I've worked with these programs for a long time. I've worked with Red Bull on different projects and, you know, these these projects are great. They're super fun, and they're great ways to push the needle. But to take these things and and find multiple lessons we can transfer, it's tough.

Finn Melanson [00:10:16]: Yeah. In the book, you say that we all need to be students of the sport. And, you know, this line kinda made me think because I'm not you know, even though I've been running for almost a decade now, I'm not always sure what running tests so what what thinking of ourselves as students, what does running test?

Guest [00:10:38]: Yeah. So, you know, it's kinda like driving your car, and you're basically going down the road. But instead of, like, you know, being in the appropriate gear, you're always revving your engine to redline over and over and over again. Right? And so you're just you're running hot. And I think that's the the the problem that that develops with running. Running's a wonderful physiological cardiovascular exercise. It's awesome. It's not the best exercise to optimize the parts of your body.

Guest [00:11:11]: And, and, you know, runners don't get hurt because they get tired. Right? It's not, it's like your heart hurts. You know, runners get hurt because all of those parts that we talk about aren't optimized. Runners get hurt because the skills they bring into their sport aren't really refined. And I'm the guy that you guys call when, you know, w when things are going wrong and you don't call me in, you know, you don't call me in February when you say, hey. I like to develop a nice solid plan for the rest of my season to make sure I can be durable. Right? You call me a week before your peak event of the year and say, oh, my shin hurts and my back hurts, and I've also got this other weird thing in my knee. And it's too late.

Guest [00:11:51]: Right? Like, I I can't I I can't work miracles in a in a day. And so, you know, when you say what is running tests, running's a bigger test of who you are. And I I wanna make sure that, you know, those of you listening, we need to focus on you. Right? And and you isn't just your heart rate. It isn't just your tempo pace, your VO two max. You were a person, and you've got multiple parts in your body. You've got multiple skills that we bring into the sport of running. And I really wanna try and help you refine those so that you can do all the things you wanna do.

Guest [00:12:20]: And and and let me say this truly. I believe every single person listening to this and those of you not listening to this can make yourself better. You can become more robust. You can become more durable. Can you prevent running injuries a 100%? No, no one can. Right. That's, that's not possible. But can you make can you can you level the playing field a whole lot better? Yeah.

Finn Melanson [00:12:39]: Yeah. One of the quotes you have in the book, you say virtually every runner I've ever met would be better served shortening a run or even dropping that run entirely and adding some skill work in. So what are some of the skills that runners need to have in their toolbox? And in in that answer, maybe maybe distinguish between, like, the runners like myself who probably do the same run over and over again versus, like, the deliberate practice that you need to incorporate in.

Guest [00:13:03]: Yeah. So let let's look at your running for a second to try and make this simple answer. If, if you're most of you listening to this probably don't do the same run every day at the same pace. I would think there's probably some variation in your program, right? You probably do a long, slow run, right. To work on cardiovascular and economy. You probably do some tempo sessions to work on lactate buffering. You probably do some VO 2 max work to work on capacity work. Right? So you run different paces to work on different energy systems.

Guest [00:13:38]: Right? So simple. Okay. There's a reason we do different pace work when we train well, while the heart lungs are pumping, right. You're asking your body to move you through space. Right. And so we look at what running requires, run, requires you to have some postural control, meaning you have to keep your upper body stacked over your lower body. Running requires you to have some rotational control. Right? Because while we run forward, there's a lot of spiral, motion that occurs through the foot, through the hip, and through the trunk.

Guest [00:14:07]: Right? And so we have to control and coordinate that. And And then running requires us to have the ability to really drive back behind us. Right. So when we talk about, you know, People talk about running form and say, what's the best form, right? Well, there's no best form for everyone. Right? I think for a while, people are saying that we have to land 4 foot. We have to do this, and that's kind of those discussions have gone away, thankfully. But, you know, running requires us to absorb energy and to basically store the energy into our springs and then push back off again. And so we wanna do a good job at harnessing elastic energy and then using it to project ourselves forward.

Guest [00:14:41]: And there is some technique that comes with that. Right? And so, you have to be able to swing your body swing your leg in front of your body and then swing your leg behind your body without compromising the alignment integrity of the parts above. And so kind of going back to posture. Right? And so now we talk about there's no perfect posture, but there is some aspect of postural control as it relates to economy. We fatigue. Everyone gets tired. Right? And so, we wanna make sure that we show up with the, you know, the durability, right, to keep our upper body stacked over lower body. Because if if we said, look, you're gonna have, you know, worse running economy at the end of a race, that that's not helpful.

Guest [00:15:17]: Right? Like, why don't we train to keep your body prime to maintain upper body stack of a lower body so you're not working harder towards the end of the race? So these are the type of things we look at. And and the reality is they're all intertwined. Right? So we have to look at what we do from a, again, possible standpoint, from rotational control standpoint, and from a a a propulsion standpoint. Right? And those three things we can look at isolation. We discussed these detail in the book, but they all kinda compound on each other and you can help all 3 of them together, by building a better chassis.

Finn Melanson [00:15:45]: This is kind of a weird question, but, like, was there ever a point in, like, any runner's life where they actually did have the perfect form? Like, a lot of people will reference, like, the childhood, like a like a kid knows just, like, intuitively the perfect running form. Have we all been capable of, like, this or experienced this perfect running form at certain at a certain point in life and then, like, just, like, the demands of whatever a certain training block or years of running kind of, diminished that or sort of corrupted that?

Guest [00:16:15]: Yeah. I think definitely. Yes. I mean and and this is one of the things too. There's this picture that circulates online. Right? It's got it's like a toddler. Right? And toddlers have huge heads and tiny bodies. And a toddler is squatting down.

Guest [00:16:27]: A bunch of people on social media said, oh, you should squat like a toddler because they have perfect form. Well, a toddler looks nothing like an adult. Right? Like, that's not even a close comparison in terms of body distribution and and everything else. So you can't squat like a toddler. It doesn't work. So we evolve. Right? And it's one thing to to to point out here. So do most kids tend to have better running form than adults? I'd say yes, they do.

Guest [00:16:50]: And and there's a few reasons behind that. I'm not talking about toddlers. Right? But I'm talking about more, like, let's say from the 7 to 12 range. Right? Before we we go through adolescence and body goes through lots of changes. And so there's a few things here as kids, you do a lot of different stuff, right? You're you're, you're playing, you're experimenting, you're climbing trees. You're in multiple different sports, right? Like you're out just screwing around a lot of time. And so your body goes through more variable type movement, right? Just does. And as we age, we get in scenarios where we're sitting at a desk all day long and then we go there's less variability.

Guest [00:17:32]: And so, you know, one of the things we see is we, we lose a lot of that movement skill. And you know, it's interesting to me, you talk about, you know, what is it? How do those things shift? It's very, very interesting to me to work with runners in their, let's say post collegiate timeframe who ran in middle school and ran in high school versus runners who did other sports in middle school and high school. And the movement skill, those other, you know, the non traditional runners take in their running later is shocking. It really is like they've got much more body awareness, much more intuitive control. Right.

Finn Melanson [00:18:13]: Interesting.

Guest [00:18:14]: And it's because they've done more varied things. They've built a lot of these skill sets intuitively for their sport. Right? And and and not to say that people say, what's the perfect sport to put my kid in? A variety. The answer is yes. All of them. Right? Like, and people say, oh, how about gymnastics? Gymnastics is great, but it had some problems too. Right? So the more things we can expose ourselves to at a younger age, the more skill sets we build for everything in life later on.

Finn Melanson [00:18:37]: There's this well, first of all, that's awesome. That that makes me feel validated because I I grew up playing baseball, basketball, football, and then got into running in my late twenties. I still feel like I have a lot to work on, but that is kind of a a cool historical footnote that I I can work from. There's this graphic that I see in the that I saw in the book that really impressed me. It was like the it was the one where it's like, this is what you you you what you see when you run, and this is what your body sees when you run. It kind of, like, really reveals, like, the real load of running. And then, obviously, a lot of the book is dedicated to, like, focusing more on inputs and improving the way you move and strength training and mobility. And before we kinda get into the x's and o's of that, do you feel like this this prescription for how to be a better runner and how to progress is something that is becoming more widely accepted? Are there still a lot of credible people in academia and and in the coaching world who are saying, like, just run more.

Finn Melanson [00:19:33]: All the other things are like a distraction. What are your thoughts there?

Guest [00:19:36]: Yeah. So, a few things here. Number 1, you know, when you look at let's look at reality first. Right? So a lot of people think, have been told, running's low loads apply for a long period of time. I could not call a bigger bullshit on that. I'm gonna say that word. But, so when you look at running let's just talk about the graph real quick or the picture. You know, you've got between roughly 2 and a half times body weight applied to your body every single stride of every single run.

Guest [00:20:05]: Right? Like, let that sink in for a second. And those of you who have a hard time framing this, let me frame it this way. If I said do a single leg squat on one leg, you could do that. Right? One time body weight. Now if I say put 1 and a half times your body weight on an Olympic bar, stick it on your back, and do a squat with that much weight, No one in here can actually really do that. Okay. A few of you might like literally 2. It's quite hard.

Guest [00:20:35]: And And people are like, wait a second, then how do I run? And let's get that in a second. But that's how much mechanical load is in your body parts. Every single stride. Like, you're asking a ton of of work from your body. And your body can show up to do that. Right? It does. And the reason you can do that, by the way, is because half the, effort you use to run comes from muscular, contraction and half comes from storing and releasing energy in your elastic, tissues, which are your tendons. Right? So that's how you can actually run.

Guest [00:21:01]: But I just I I put that out there just to show that running is not low loads applied for a short a long period of time. It's high loads apply for a long period of time. So if we use that as our kind of approach, let's prep the body for that. Right? So, we've gotta put that in in in context. Right? So the next thing, you know, you talk about pushback. Yes. You know, there's tons of pushback on everything. Right? So well, okay.

Guest [00:21:21]: That's this is a waste of time and different things. But the reality is if you, if I looked at how do I optimize my body parts, and this is one of the new chapters I put in the book by the way. And I just go ahead and say this. If you ask people like myself who study biomechanics and you ask other researchers who study tissue development. Right? And you said, what's the best way to optimize my tissues? Right? What's the best way to build stronger muscles, to build better tendons, to build more robust bones? Not one single researcher in this in any cohort anywhere would say, go run. Right? Running is not bad, but it's not the best way to build better tissues. Right? So if you said, what is the best way to build better tissues? We've got research on that. Right? And and and we know how to do these things, and that's why I tried to kinda really make more accessible and more actionable, in the second edition is that, like, we can actually do these things.

Guest [00:22:12]: We can build better parts. Right? And if you wanna build better tone better bone, here's some strategies. If If you wanna build better tendon, here's some strategies. Right? It's not just lifting, you know, certain amount of weight. It's actually thinking about how you're lifting the weight. Right? So it's not just about sets and reps, but speed of motion matters. We look at tendon versus bone, right? Plyometrics. Aren't just for explosiveness.

Guest [00:22:33]: They're also really relevant for bone health. So it's like we try to, I try to take this and kind of crack this egg open a little bit more and give people context. Right. And that that's what we have to look at. Right. You look at, again, a research study is done in isolation. I need to figure out how does it fit into a framework for you as a running athlete. Right? That's what I'm looking to do.

Guest [00:22:51]: And and so that that that's the approach I'm trying to take to help people

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Guest [00:25:42]: Let's say that louder for the folks in the back. Just to be clear, a profound yes. Okay. Yeah. We need to build other skills. I always joke. I I ask I I beg high school coaches all over the country. I'm like, please play basketball, ultimate Frisbee, soccer, something with your kids once a week.

Guest [00:26:03]: Right? They'll get aerobic development with some aerobic sprints in. Right? They'll do some multidirectional things. It's like, it's a no brainer. It's and it also, guess what? It's fun. Right. And so adults, like I know some people just want to get their running and I know life is busy, but if you can find a way to do some varied stuff in here, like you have no idea how long that goes. Right. And so, yes, we wanna find a way to be more multidimensional athletes versus 1 dimensional.

Finn Melanson [00:26:31]: Yeah. I so like I said, I played baseball, basketball, football pretty significantly 10 years ago. I am currently terrified to step back into those sports because I've just had this, like, single plane of movement for the last 10 years. I feel like if I took one step onto a football field, I would, like, tear an ACL, and it'd be over for me. But, But, you know, one of the other things you say in the book which which struck me is, you know, how recovery has been trending as the key to being a resilient athlete, but you say better recovery doesn't fix your imbalances. It's this passive act, and and you need inputs. You need inputs to be a better runner to improve the way you're moving. Talk about that more because recovery is really a big thing right now.

Guest [00:27:13]: Totally. And it's, you know, it's it's it's just interesting. Right? It feels like you have to recover from your exercise. Right? Like, I I I do point, just put this out there. I do research for different companies. Right? And companies say, is this product to help me with recovery? And first thing I say, what do you mean by recovery? Because I don't want you to get sued. Right? If you say recovery, you have to give me some biomarker. Right? Some what are we measuring to measure recovery? Right? Like, oh, we can just measure, you know, whatever.

Guest [00:27:39]: Right? And then it's talking about random stuff. It's like, that's not recovery. Right? So the industry has a really poor understanding of what recovery is, okay, first of all. So, you know, you've got shoes that say it can help with recovery. Well okay. You're actually saying you're gonna lower, cortisol stress levels by putting on different shoes? Like, are you really saying that? Because that doesn't happen. Right? Are you really saying that this device that you can stick on you and apply pressure to your body, via, you know, a foam roll or a massage gun can improve, you know, again, blood markers and biometrics, that doesn't happen. Right? So, this is a really tough discussion to have, but but let let's let's just try and crack them all we can.

Guest [00:28:19]: If you laid in bed all day, your body would not get a positive stimulus to make positive changes. Right? Like, that doesn't happen. Right? So you have to give your body some type of stimulus to get your body to try and do something to build better tissue. Right? And so when you look at recovery, yes, we have to be able to recover between workouts, but there's an overemphasis on, again, peg the needle. Right? Drive the heart rate as high as you possibly can. Drive the weekly volume as high as you can. And then, you know, do all these other things. Yes.

Guest [00:28:50]: Sleep is important. 100%. Right? Sleep helps more than anything. I mean, you've read all you probably heard all different studies. You know, sleep helps about 200% more than anything else out there in terms of apply this thing to me, wear this thing, eat this thing, take this pill, whatever. Right? So, you know, how about we approach this as, how can I build a better strategy to approach a sport of running? Right? What type of positive things can I do to get my body to build a better system? Right. And from a rewiring perspective, right. From a skill and strategy perspective and from a durability perspective, both.

Guest [00:29:25]: Right? And so that's why I wanna equip runners with, right, the knowledge to actually make things better and give you a framework to say, hey. Let's not just worry about peg the needle and recovering and peg the needle to recover. Let's talk about how can we dial up the right things at the right time and and give you that longevity. Right? Everybody here loves to run. I want you to keep doing this for a long time. Right? And and and that takes more than just working at a certain heart rate for a certain miles per week.

Finn Melanson [00:29:51]: I think this is really key because in, you know, a lot of coaches and athletes like myself, the big thing we have been taught, at least in recent years, has been don't ramp up too quickly. Like, everything associated with injury risk is all about, like, the too much, too fast, too soon mantra, like, really hold back. But, like, what you're explaining is you could be the most disciplined, like, progressive overload type runner. You could be the smartest runner in the world in that sense. Be really reserved, and you can still get hurt.

Guest [00:30:19]: 100%. I mean yeah. I mean, for for every for every person I've worked with personally who, you know, you say don't do too much too fast too soon, I've seen someone who actually has a really nice linear ramp up. Right? And they do get hurt. Right. So, and, and a lot of this comes back to, again, it's, it's the capacity portion, right? So you're gradually increasing your volume. Right. And we think, oh, my bones will adapt.

Guest [00:30:40]: Well, guess what? Running is the one of the most boring things in the world for bone. Running does not I mean, I'm a lot of people are like, oh, I don't this guy's crazy. It's not me. This is the research. Running is barely better than swimming and cycling in terms of building bone health. It's just not a good level of stress to build those tissues. Right? So if you're somebody who's dealt with multiple stress fractures, right, you're thinking, oh, I'm gonna, you know, I got cleared to run again. I'm gonna build my ramp up back again.

Guest [00:31:10]: Right. And you get a stress fracture again.

Finn Melanson [00:31:12]: Yep.

Guest [00:31:12]: And you're in this I I I can't tell me how many runners I've worked with 3 and 4 and 5 stress fractures. Right. And so we have a bigger problem here. Right. And, and some of this might get into eating issues you had as a younger child, might get into activity issues. You had a younger child might deal with, you know, an an endocrine problem. Right? So there's other things to look at there. Right? You might be a master's runner, and you're saying, okay.

Guest [00:31:31]: I've I keep getting this chronic Achilles tendinopathy. Right? It won't get better. Well, again, increasing that volume nice and linearly is not the fix to optimize that tendon health. Right. You have to take a step back and say, how do I really do that? So, we're trying to figure out what's the rate limiting step.

Finn Melanson [00:31:49]: Maybe starting to get slightly more tactical. You know, one of the points to make in the book is that runners need to understand mobility hardware problems and mobility software problems. So what are those and what are the distinct distinctions between the hardware and the software there?

Guest [00:32:06]: Yeah. So, let's use an example here, and and I I go through in the book. I'm happy to share this. So, let's say you're somebody who has, like, you're like, I mean, my my ankle feels stiff. Right? And so Yeah. The traditional, you know, thing has been, oh, my ankle's stiff. I need to stretch my calves. Right? There's kind of that we just jump right to that.

Guest [00:32:23]: And if you know, when I look at mobility problems, right, mobility doesn't mean you have mobility problem doesn't mean you automatically default to stretching. Right? You have to find out why something won't move. So let's use a classic example of, I want to get more motion out of my ankle. Okay. So if you're the kind of person who finds a wall, it could be your house, your car, whatever, and you put your hands there and you sink into a stretch to stretch your calf. Right? Let's say you feel, tightness in front of your ankle as you're stretching. Okay? That's called a joint block. Right? Basically, it means that the as you as you, try and take your shin and glide it over your foot, You should have some roll and glide that occurs of those two bones.

Guest [00:33:04]: It's called arthrokinematic motion. Okay. And so if you find that there is a pinch in front of your ankle, if you're doing this, stretching is actually worthless. It will not do anything. You have to do something to actually work on getting the joint to roll and glide. Right? That's a completely different and and we can do this. Right? We can make these things better for sure. But that requires you to do some type of either manual work with local physio or I I show you a few little tricks in the book, to try and get you to take allow that joint to roll and glide better.

Guest [00:33:33]: That's an arthrokinetic limitation, and we do certain type of strategies to fix that type of problem. We can also have you bend forward, right. And you can actually feel just a nice gentle stretch in the back of the calf. And that's somebody who you know, this is you go to the amusement park. Right? And it says, you must be this tall to ride this ride. And, yes, you either have that much, you know, height or you don't. Right? So you you may you may have some shortened, you know, calf musculature or Achilles' length, right, from a history of whatever you've done. Right? That might be the case.

Guest [00:34:05]: You might have a situation where you actually can move your your leg forward just fine I'm sorry. Back up for a second. And and that person would treat that with stretching, by the way. Right? So if if you have a a short muscle, we treat that with stretching. Right? So that is one approach. It's valid. Most people don't really have that, but that is an approach you can do. Some people might say, Hey, I do a good job, with foam rolling.

Guest [00:34:26]: Right. I love my massage gun. Right. That that loosens up my calves. This is interesting too. You know, when you look at your body, right, the collagen, which is all the individual fibers that our body's made of, is 10 times stronger than the tensile strength of steel. Okay? You're probably not strong enough with your massage gun or your foam roller to literally destroy oscillating pressure with a massage gun, right, to basically try and, and cause a change in neurophysiologic tone. So your your muscles have a certain amount of tone to them.

Guest [00:35:06]: Right? And and that type of soft tissue work is is to tell your body, hey. Stand down and relax. Right? So it's decreasing that tone. That's why you, quote, feel looser. Right? Or Does that work?

Finn Melanson [00:35:19]: Is that never an intended effect?

Guest [00:35:21]: Yeah. So, again, like, it it and some people may say, I don't care why it works. I just wanna know if it works. And so to answer your question, all those type of things do work. They can basically down regulate the resting tone of your body. They can help people move more fluidly. Right. And so, if you're somebody, let's talk about reality.

Guest [00:35:36]: Right? So a lot of people, you know, some people are in the morning. Right? But some people like, you know, they're at a desk all day and they're doing nothing. Right. And they basically take their massage guns out and they basically, you know, hit themselves up in certain locations for 5 minutes, and then they go for a run. Right? And so you've been in one stack position all day long, and that might be a great, like, wake up for your nervous system to say, hey. Like, let's get, right, in a in a more fluid state of movement. And that's a great thing to do. Right? But that's not how you treat short muscle.

Guest [00:36:01]: That's not how you treat a joint block. Right. So they work for people who've got, like, movement fluidity issues. Right. And then you've got people who say, okay, well, I have to do dynamic stretching. Right? Well, dynamic stretching is not what I call stretching. So let's be clear on this. And I mean to make this a semantics argument, but if you say stretch to me, you're saying I need to increase the length of my tissue.

Guest [00:36:25]: And to get dorky for those of you familiar with this, when your muscles' fibers when you when you break those up and look at them under a microscope, right, you have individual muscle fibers attached to things called z line. Right? And that that makes up what's called a sarcomere. And so when I say I'm actually trying to stretch muscle, we're saying, if I look at you at the start of a program, you've never stretched before, right? In a certain muscle. And then I actually have you stretch. And if I have you stretch for, you know, 30 seconds. Right? And then over, you know, let's say 4 weeks and you say, I feel better. Right? If I look at that under under a micrograph, right, we look at the distance of those sarcomeres. Have they changed in length? They don't change in length.

Guest [00:37:06]: Right? You may feel better doing those little 20, 32nd stretches.

Finn Melanson [00:37:10]: Yeah.

Guest [00:37:10]: But that's because, again, you're teasing down the tone in your neuromuscular system to say, hey. Let me move a little bit more easy. And that's real. Right? You can't separate your nervous system from your body. Right? Like, you can have the strongest calves in the whole world, but you can't you you have to think about what your nervous system's doing. So dynamic stretching does work. But when we look at, again, stretching, what the true definition of stretching is, research shows we have to apply a certain amount of mechanical dosage and mechanical loads as tissues to get those tissues to actually increase in length. Right? And that length, right, is 3 to 5 minutes, 4 to 6 days a week for about 10 weeks.

Guest [00:37:46]: That's the dosage that we need to actually see tissues truly elongate. And I'm not saying that everyone listening to this needs to stretch. In fact, I would say most of you don't need to stretch, but if you, if, if you are in a situation where your tissues have become short for some reason, right, maybe you've been in a walking boot for 6 weeks. Right? Because you've had some type of stress fracture in your foot. Right? And things have adapted and become shorter. That's somebody might have to stretch. But, you know, when we look at the concept of mobility work, I hope we made the argument here that all mobility work isn't the same. Right? And and stretching has not been shown to be effective in global injury prevention, programs.

Guest [00:38:22]: Right? But let's talk about a chronic abatation. Most people, again, do nothing and then they run. Right. And so they're carrying a body. Who's got a lot of tightness in terms of especially like hip mobility. Right. And so, so for those people, dynamic hip mobility may be enough. You may be able to do some simple little, kind of hip opening drills, and that's kind of doubling that nervous system and letting you access your hip motion, which is awesome.

Guest [00:38:46]: Some of you may try those drills and say, actually, you don't feel any better. For those people to say, you know what? We probably do need to put some true stretching type work to let you access more hip mobility. Right? So and I tried to make these things accessible with with test and retest in the book. You can find out which one of those people you are. Interesting.

Finn Melanson [00:39:03]: Okay. I know I'm I'm bouncing all over the place here, but there's just a couple of other categories I wanna get to. Another part of the book I found really interesting was the stages of building muscle memory. As you're on this plan to move better, you've got the cognitive stage, associative stage, and the autonomous stage. Can you briefly explain those 3?

Guest [00:39:23]: Yeah. So let let's let's take this into context. Right. Just real simple. So let's say you've been running your whole life and someone says, Hey, do this form cue. Right? Let let let's say, actually have a slide I teach with, which I love. Right? So I just told a runner, do me a favor, push more out the backside. Right? So open or open up your stride is a, is a term we hear a lot.

Guest [00:39:47]: Right? And so that's a wonderful cue. If you know how to separate out your hip control from your spine control, because all I did was to, I have a video of this one runner. Right. And then I say, I said, I told her, open up your stride. And she increased her pushing off behind her body. She increased her propulsion phase, but she did it by hyperextending her low back every single stride. She didn't change her hip mechanics at all. Right? So when you hear something, your everything we do as as athletes is our best compensation.

Guest [00:40:20]: Right? We're basically saying, your coaches do this. Like, okay. I'll try that. Right? And your body says, based upon the certain amount of movement awareness I have and strength I have and tissue length I have, I'm gonna try and do what that person just told me. And then we see to see how that plays out. Right. We just see what kind of like result we get. Right.

Guest [00:40:39]: And so we look at, and some people may say, oh, well, that, that was negative. So form cues don't work. It's stupid to change my running form. I'm gonna say no. We don't use form cues until we know how to speak the same language. Right? So if you're gonna go on a trip, we have to understand some basic framework of how to speak the language of the country you're going to so you can communicate. So we look at building new skill. It takes effort to build new skill.

Guest [00:41:02]: Right? If I say that I want you to work on opening up your hip, like, wait a second. What do you mean by opening up my hip? Right? So and I'm gonna say, Fin, I want you to main I'm first of all, I'm gonna talk about how to stack your upper body or your lower body. Right? I'm gonna teach you how to find access to some hip muscles. I'm gonna teach you how to coordinate that. So can I move my hip behind my body? And you may say, wow. This is taking a lot of effort in my brain to have to think really hard. Right? And so, yes, anytime you learn new skill, we know, and this is all the motor learning research shows that it takes more effort to do these things. So your movement quality, right, costs more effort.

Guest [00:41:36]: So those of you who are trying something new on a run sometimes, you're like, I only have to think about these things every single stride. That's why. Right? And so what happens is the more we practice something, the more it becomes a little bit more a little bit more automatic. Right? So let break these down to phases. Right? We we're trying to teach you how to separate out your hip. Right? Let's go back to our example 4. And we may find that, you know what? You actually don't do a very nothing personal as I'm as I'm asking you to drive your hip and extension, you keep arching your back. So I'm going to say, you know what, Finn? I'm gonna actually do the same thing.

Guest [00:42:09]: I'm gonna put a foam roller between you and the wall, right, between your chest and the wall. So you can see that every time you extend your hip, if you try to arch your back, that foam bone is going to fall out. Right. It's literally not going to be there. So I have to give you some type of constraint to practice that movement. Eventually you go, oh, wait a second. Okay. Now I can sense the difference between my hip and my spine.

Guest [00:42:29]: Right. I understand the difference with those. And then now I can take the foam roller away. And so now you've got some movement awareness. Right? And you can you have something to draw back on. And I can now say, okay, Finn, do me a favor. Let's try something else. Right? A a one level higher up exercise.

Guest [00:42:43]: And you're trying to recall the things we just talked about. Right? That thing you felt. Right? Not things we talk about, things you can feel as an athlete and bring those in equation. And let's say you do a good job on a few reps, then you kinda fall apart. I'm like, hey. Let's think about one little cue. I might give you a cue of, you know, push with your butt versus push with your back. Right? And you go, okay.

Guest [00:43:01]: That makes sense for me. I'm like, hey, Finn. Do me a favor. As you run over the next week, right, I just want you to think about that one cue. Push with your butt versus push with your back. Right? And so that kind of gets kinda triggers you into that state where you kinda remember those things as you're running. And after a while, that motion now becomes automatic. Right? And so now you know and you've learned how to push with your hip versus arching your back.

Guest [00:43:25]: And that becomes automatic with thousands of repetitions. Right? It doesn't happen overnight. But I will say, as we talked before, those of you who've done more different sports in the past, you do have more body wears to call from, so it happens a lot quicker in those folks. Those of you who didn't do anything and came in a running with kind of a one sport background or no sport background, it's gonna take a little more time. But guess what? Neuroplasticity is amazing. Anybody can learn new skills. Right? It takes some time and effort, but you can all get better at this. Again, there's tons of motor learning research on this.

Guest [00:43:56]: We can all get better at improving our movement quality. So, wherever you are, you can always get better. And some people say, oh, do the pros do this? Yeah. I don't know any pros out there who say I'm I'm good enough. Right? I'm fine. That that doesn't happen. Right? Everyone's trying to push a needle.

Finn Melanson [00:44:11]: I I was taking mental notes there because, you know, I have that exact problem where I arch the back, in an effort with hip extension. That's good. I know we've kind of been expressing the virtues of strength training and, you know, other things outside running, but you, you also say in the book, don't believe everything you hear about strength training. Why is that the case? Yeah.

Guest [00:44:32]: So a lot of runners have been told, you know, that strength training is going to make me bulky. Right? It's gonna be bulk up, and I'm gonna gain extra weight. And and and let's let's kinda put this aside for a second. The reason most of you are going to, quote, bulk up, right, is because you a ton of volume, right, and because you have a huge calorie surplus, which allows you to build lots of muscle mass. As runners, you're burning a lot of calories every day in your runs. And 2, the volume we're talking about is not near high enough to really make you into a quote, bodybuilder. Right? So, that that's one thing to think about. So I did that that's why I look at it all the time.

Guest [00:45:09]: If I'm carrying extra weight, I'm gonna slow down. You're not gonna slow down. And if you did gain 1 pound of lean body mass, guess what? That lean body mass is doing something. Right? It's actually pushing down hard on the ground so you can get more, you know, stride length out of every single every step. Right? And what's that transferring to? Free speed. Right. So, that that's one thing. And then we get into, you know, the types of strength training you're doing.

Guest [00:45:34]: Right. Unfortunately, you know, yeah, we're we're trying to make things accessible and use language, but, you know, you have to look at what's happening. The industry is saying, you know, do you do core training? Well, core training means what for runners? How long do I hold a plank? Right? That that's what we default to. And I don't have any of my runners doing planks ever. Okay. The reason why is planks are static. Running is not static. Right? We've we talked about their skills.

Guest [00:45:56]: I have to look at, can I keep my posture aligned, which is kinda under the the the realm of core, but also can I get counter rotation of upper body and lower body? Can I get my leg to swing behind me without arching my back? Those are skills. So if I'm gonna say, let's dedicate time to core training, I wanna have you doing things where we're moving and building that skill awareness. Right? That's more of what I call I break things in the book down in terms of precision versus performance, and you can use every term that you like personally. I it doesn't matter to me, but you have to look at precision things are building skill awareness. We're not talking about heavy loads. Those might be body weight or even less than body weight loads that we're trying to do to build that awareness. Right. But then we look at performance training.

Guest [00:46:36]: We need to break things into some different categories here. We've got what we typically think of strength training, which is put weight in a bar and move it back and forth. Right? But then we have to look at how fast does that movement occur. Right? Do you start to slow down too much during your movements? If so, that weight you pick is probably too heavy. Right? If you're looking at plyometrics, we have to look at how fast can you move. Most runners do plyometrics horribly wrong. Right? You try and pick something way too high to jump off of. And when you come down, you're double bouncing on the ground.

Guest [00:47:04]: Right? Like, the quality of your movement matters. And and let me be clear. The quality of movement can make or break that that whole, like, category of things you're putting in. Right? So I put a lot of detail on look. If we're talking about getting off the ground on a plyometric, I need you in contact to ground less than 0.1 seconds. So do me a favor. I want you to get your stopwatch, and I want you to get in the start stop button and hit it real quick. I want you to literally do this.

Guest [00:47:30]: I want you to see how quick point one second is. Cause if you're doing plyometrics and you're jumping up and you're coming. So on the way up, and I make this point in the book, if you're jumping up on a box and let's just use a curb. Okay. To start with. Right? Yep. So if you jump up on a curb, which is like 6 to 8 inches, depending on where you are, right, by code, and you jump So you can take your time jumping up top. I tell my runners sometimes, when you jump up on a on your curb or your box, take a bite of your burrito.

Guest [00:47:54]: Relax. Eat. Okay. That's fine. If you jump up, there's not much load because your your body weight is actually, is is less low when you come jump up. When you come back down to the ground, right, I need you to get off the ground in less than 0.1 second. And if you can't do that, the box is too high. Okay.

Guest [00:48:12]: And the reason why is plyometrics, you need to get off the ground very, very quickly for those goals to actually transfer into your running. Right. So, and and some people say, oh, I how many plyos do you? I did 300 plyos yesterday. That's one way too much. If you're doing 300 plyos, I guarantee you, you are a sloth. Right? You're you're not gonna move in quick enough. Right? So we have to distill down strength training into, precision type work. Right? So body awareness type work and then performance work and that performance work needs to be split into what speeds of movement are we trying to do to build strength and what speeds the movement for power.

Guest [00:48:49]: Right? And then we we manipulate those throughout the season. Right? So that that that's how we it's like just like you manipulate your cardiovascular training. Right? You do more base work at certain times this season. We do more, you know, more, VO two max work at the certain times this season. Right? We're always in flux trying to optimize us for key races throughout the year. Same thing with your body. Right? So we have to movement skills kinda go all year long, but there are certain times a year to ramp up that power type work and certain times you're gonna ramp down the power type work. This stuff is hard.

Guest [00:49:15]: Right? It asks a lot of you. And we have to look at it again. How can I approach my running as a well rounded athlete?

Finn Melanson [00:49:22]: Maybe one more question before we go, and this is sort of, yeah. I don't I don't know how much this can be can be rooted. In fact, it might require some guessing on your part. I would also qualify it by saying it has maybe more to do with the upper echelons of the sport. But in your opinion, how much longevity in the sport, especially for pro athletes, has been restricted or undermined by poor choices in the quality of movement over long periods of time versus the natural aging process?

Guest [00:49:54]: That's a very open ended question. Alright. I know there's a lot

Finn Melanson [00:49:58]: of conductivity involved in the answer because there's a lot we don't know. Right? But Totally. How would you how would you approach it?

Guest [00:50:03]: Yeah. I would say, I I would say yes, there's a lot of people who are exiting running earlier than they could because they're not coming with adequate preparation. And this is interesting though. If you've exited, you can make a comeback, right? So again, the reason why a lot of people are exiting running with aches and pains is not because your heart's tired. Right. It's because your body can't take people say I can't take the impact anymore. The impact isn't the issue. Right? The the re the reality is you're showing up with a body that can't stabilize your your stride fast enough.

Guest [00:50:46]: Right? You want to run X number of miles. Well, guess what? You have to have X number of jumps, single leg jumps. Right. And so I have to basically help you find a way to come back into the system and say, wait a second. Let's look at stability, right? Let's look at control. Let's look at strength. Can your quads actually stabilize your knee fast enough? That's the question to ask, not my knees can't take the pounding. Right? My foot and ankle hurt.

Guest [00:51:12]: Well, yeah, because you're showing up with as we age, our tissues get more brittle. It's reality. Right? And so, you know, a lot of those tendons around the ankle complex. Right? Your shins are hurting you. Your posterior tip is hurting you because you don't have good rear foot on forefoot control. Can we rebuild that? The answer is resounding yes. Okay. So, I would say there is always a path back into what you wanna do.

Guest [00:51:34]: And the reality is if you wanna improve those things, more running won't make those parts better. Right? So, yes, we can do things to improve who has access to running. Right? And then the other question is, can you get better? Yes, we can. Right? And I'm gonna hint on something that I went into a lot more detail in the book here. But a lot of people say, you know, as we age, our metabolism slows down and we we get slower. Right? And we and some studies have come out showing, oh, well, as we age, things happen to our stride. Well, let's not look at those in a bubble. Let's look at those holistically.

Guest [00:52:07]: Right? So what we know is as we age, we do, if we don't strength train, we do lose lean body mass. And if we don't strength train, we lose that lean body mass, our caloric knee intake needs, right? How much food you have taken a day goes down. Right. And so the reason you're seeing a lot of changes in your body as you age, like I'm gaining more weight and I don't feel as good in my form and my form is changing. Right. Are not because you're an older runner there because you're not coming in with that strength capacity. Right. Optimized.

Guest [00:52:41]: And guess what? There are studies to show that even men in their nineties, okay. Can increase lean body mass, right? This is not, this is not taboo. This is real. Right? So my point in the book was trying to say, look, instead of approaching it as I'm getting older and slower, and to be fair, you're not gonna run as fast. You did when you were 20. Right? If if you're if you're 45, but you can you can definitely flatten the curve a lot by taking steps to improve that strength and power resilience, right, as we're training to keep thing to keep being opaque as far as you can. Right? So and that requires, again, some well rounded preparation. Right? And I make the point in the book actually where there's some some scenarios where I try and take some of the plans in the book and make them more specific to each category.

Guest [00:53:22]: Right? So if you're a newer runner, kinda start here. Right? If you're a high school runner, here. For a master's runner, you might you know, you're the person who if there's anybody who absolutely needs more time, in in strength and power work, it's you. Right? It's it's it's it's you for sure. And, you know, I I shared a quote there by Frank Shorter. You know what I mean? I think everybody knows his name. You know? And I heard him present one time at a conference I host every year, and, you know, I love this quote. He's like, you know, I love the weight room.

Guest [00:53:49]: He's like, I'm over 50 now, and my times aren't getting faster. But guess what? I could see progress in the weight room. And as athletes, we all wanna see progression. Right? Everybody wants to see things get better. Right? And if and instead of just approaches as running, approaches as me, approaches as you. Right? What is your body doing? And and you can get better at certain things. And that's where the fun stuff comes. Right? Like, I I think that, you know, we all get our kicks off seeing our our splits after a run.

Guest [00:54:12]: That's cool. But, like, what may be cool if we got our kick seeing lots of improvement in our body? And I wanna kind of, you know, take your attention upon different things because if you're just looking at, you know, your weekly mileage and your splits, man, it's a narrow You could beat yourself up pretty easily. Right? So if you look at things holistically, I think you'll get a lot more out this this sport and this game of life.

Finn Melanson [00:54:34]: Excellent. Last last question for you. So I read the book cover to cover. It was excellent. It left me inspired, and it gave me more knowledge, which, I think is always a great takeaway anytime you read a book. But one thing I always struggle with, and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there listening to this that struggle with this too, is executing on this newfound knowledge. And I have found, and I've wrestled with this for years, at the end of the day, I need a lot of hand holding. Like, I need coaches.

Finn Melanson [00:55:03]: I need strength trainers. I need to have people walk me through best practices until it's until we get to that autonomous stage. Who are the j de Sherries in my local communities that I should be working with? Like, is it a strength trainer? Is it a specific type of strength trainer? Is it a certain type of physio? Like, if people are looking for the hand holding experts in their communities, what are the titles they should be looking for on Google and, you know, working with on a daily basis in, like, Salt Lake City, Utah?

Guest [00:55:29]: Yeah. It's a great question. So alright. I'm gonna put this out there. I I would say if you actually do want some local, I would, a, contact your local running club, right, and find out who people are working with. You're looking for some type of, kind of, you know, not just a, I'm not going to call anybody out like maybe getting this chain, right? Because looking at some sort of like boutique fitness studio, right? So, here in Bend, Oregon, for a number of years, we actually used to host these performance running classes. Right? We actually had levels. We had, like, a level 1 and a level 2.

Guest [00:55:58]: Right? So level 1 was more movement awareness. Right? We let you come in and build some movement skill and wouldn't let you in level 2 until you've done level 1. Right? Because we what we see level 2, now we're at a higher level. Right? So we've unlocked some some cheat codes. Right? And we're and we're kinda building on that those patterns. So everything's always progressive. So I would say to ask your folks locally. There's a number of I'm a physical therapist, obviously.

Guest [00:56:19]: Number of physical therapists kinda move in this realm, right, in the performance realm. So, you know, ask your, local, your run club, hey. Who's the gurus in my local community? Right? And then how and then call them up and say, hey. Do you have any kind of, you know, prehab type programs? Right? Or or you have anything going on that we can look at? But let me backtrack even more. What I want every single person to do, I want you to take a blank piece of paper. Don't use an app. I want you to take a piece of paper and and I want you to draw out a blank calendar grid. Right? And I want you to spend the time, put Monday through Friday, and draw out a month.

Guest [00:56:53]: Right? And I want you right now on this calendar. I want you to find time to put in 2 days a week that you're going to add in some precision type work, which is I go through these workouts in the book. Right. And they take 10 to 12 minutes. Right? And that's gonna be your kind of pre run warm up. Most of you in spending 20 minutes doing stretches anyway, it's not worth your time most likely. Right? Spend that time working on your precision work, okay, before your runs. It's a dynamic warm up.

Guest [00:57:18]: You can do it right before. You can do it in the morning, whatever you fits in for you. Right? And then 1 to 2 days a week, I want you to find a time on that calendar right now. And I want you to mark in performance workout. And I want you to block that right now. And I want you to basically stick to that and hold yourself accountable. Right. Make time for this.

Guest [00:57:36]: And you'll see results like shocking. Like I I've I said this in the book and I'm gonna say this right now. I have never put an athlete on a strength and power program and had them come back after a bunch of months and say, this is a waste of my time. Everybody's like, I cannot believe how much better I feel. Right? Because again, you are doing the right things to get the right results. And, and that takes time. It takes planning, but if you can, and just put that piece of paper on your bathroom mirror, right. And every morning, go, okay, Tomorrow, I need to fit this in.

Guest [00:58:06]: Right? Like, hold yourself accountable for these things. And I I think that's the bigger thing is being consistent. Right? You don't have to re break the window. You don't have to find out, you know, 25 podcasts and body body hacking. Right? Like, be consistent with the right things.

Finn Melanson [00:58:20]: Jay, this has been, an extremely informative conversation. Thank you so much for your generosity. Thank you so much for writing the second edition of this book called Running Rewired. We will link to it in the show notes. Yeah. Just thank you so much.

Guest [00:58:32]: Fin, thanks for having me, and I wish the best of luck to all of you out there.

Finn Melanson [00:58:50]: Thanks for listening to the Run to the Top podcast. I'm your host, Finn Melanson. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on Instagram at wasatchfin and the rest of our team at Runners Connect. Also consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Apple Podcast Players. And lastly, by going to runnersconnect.netback/podcast. Until next time. Happy trading.