You’ve undoubtedly heard about the benefits of yoga for runners. It increases flexibility, improves power and strength, and can help keep you healthy and mentally focused for your important races.
But how the heck do you implement it in your training? Should you do it after hard runs, easy runs, what type of yoga should you do, what about hot yoga, and is it just another one of “little things” you need to make time for?
Whew, that was a lot of questions.
Luckily, we landed a coveted interview with the foremost experts on yoga for runners and athletes, Sage Rountree.
Sage is an internationally renowned Yoga teacher and writer for athletes. Her students range from casual runners to Olympians and she’s written for RunnersWorld, Endurance Magazine and USA Triathlon. To say she’s an expert doesn’t do her experience and depth of knowledge justice.
We’re very excited to have Sage on our show today to teach you everything you need to know about adding yoga to your training. Here’s a brief recap of what we covered:
- The different types of yoga and how each can, and should, be implemented within your training. For example, hot yoga is great for the off season, but restorative yoga is more beneficial in the last few weeks of your training.
- Just like strength work, yoga needs to compliment your running schedule and progress as you get closer to your goal race. Sage outlines exactly what your yoga schedule should look like during the off season, at the start of your training, and during the taper.
- Sage discusses the specific yoga poses and styles that can help compliment your weaknesses, from increasing hip flexibility to increasing power and strength.
- Sage’s three favorite routines for runners who are short on time and only have 10-15 minutes available for yoga.
Personally, I learned a ton and I can’t wait to implement yoga into my training routine. Please let us know if you plan to add yoga into your training after hearing this interview.
As always, help us continue to bring on awesome guests to the show. If you liked what you heard in this episode please take a moment to leave me a honest rating and review on iTunes by clicking here.
Finally, if you want to ask your own questions to our future guests, follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We will post opportunities for questions as soon as we schedule the interview.
Watch this week’s show now
Download the podcast version here
Links and resources mentioned in this interview:
Streaming Yoga routines with Sage
The Athlete’s Pocket Guide to Yoga (Great for 10-15 min routines)
Read the Transcript
Jeff: Hi, everybody! Welcome back to the Runners Connect Run to the Top podcast. I’m really excited that you’ve decided to join us whether be in your car, on your run, or listening on to computer.
On today show, we’re going to talk about how to integrate yoga into your training. As our expert guest, we have on with as today Sage Rountree. To those of you who don’t know Sage is an internationally renowned yoga teacher and a rider for athletes and runners. Her students range for casual runners to Olympians and she’s written for Runner’s World, Endurance magazine and USA Triathlon. She also has a few books that will bring up in the interview.
Sage today is going to talk about the different types of yoga and how you can implement each into your training for the best results. She’s also going to talk about how yoga needs to complement your running schedule and progress just like a strength training train plan would as you get closer to your race. We’re also going to discuss specific yoga poses and styles that can help compliment your weaknesses from increasing hips flexibility to increasing power and strength. Sage is also going to share with us her three favourite routines for runners, especially for those who are short on time and only have 10 to 15 minutes for yoga.
Before we get started with the show, I just want to make a couple quick notes. The first is if you want to access any of the resources from this podcast you can visit the resource page at runnersconnect.net/rc13 if you have any questions please feel free to post them in the comment section of that post and either Sage or myself will definitely try to get back to you as soon as possible. For those of you who are listening, if you ever want to ask your own questions to our guest follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/onlinerunningcoach or twitter our handle is @runners_connect. If you follow as there will post our interviews or schedule with our next guest and you can have your opportunity to ask them any question that you had. Finally, if you enjoy this podcast please take time to vote for it on iTune and give us a better rating it helps increase our exposure and actually help to give us access to better and bigger guest. So with all that said lets go ahead and get started with our show for today. Thank you, Sage for taking the time out of your day to chat with us.
Sage: I’m delighted to be here, Jeff.
Jeff: Awesome! Let’s get started in and talk a little bit about yourself and kind of your background in training or I should say running at sport and fitness in general, and how yoga kind of came in to your life.
Sage: Right, like many people I found yoga really kind of mystical and intimidating and in the first class I went to had a really negative experience and end up hating it.
Jeff: Wow!
Sage: In part because it was really hard it was much harder than it look like it was going to be from the other side of the glass of the gym. We have the poses for a long time I was shaking, there was Sanskrit it was just very intimidating. I walked out of the room thinking, “No I’m not going to do that anymore”, but then I told myself, “Well, if you have that stronger reaction to something maybe you need to investigate it a little bit more. I went back the next week and the next week there was a sub for the class. The sub had us touch each other and I was totally turned off by the concept of partner yoga and having to touch somebody’s feet who I didn’t know. It was really gross I said, “That’s it! I’m not going anymore”. Year two went by and I was pregnant with my older daughter and I went to pre-natal yoga which is really happy experience because everybody is in the same boat. They’re pregnant. They’re loser because of the hormones. It’s just a really nice community feeling. In fact, the teacher for pre-natal yoga was the sub who had us touch each other’s feet.
Jeff: Okay
Sage: Except in pre-natal yoga that’s wonderful because somebody’s touching your feet. It was a shift for me. I was in a different space in my life. I was ready to be opened to the practice. Then when my daughter was about one I was training for marathon and taught, “Oh! Things are hurting, I felt really good when I was in yoga”. I went back to yoga and that’s the time that really stuck.
It came to me concurrently training for the marathon and I knew that it was going to be helpful. I don’t think I realized exactly how helpful it was going to be mentally during the race. I knew it was going to be physically helpful because it was making my body feel better, but it came to me some really useful coping tools and awareness tools and breathing tools that I deployed to get back to that race.
Jeff: Yeah, that’s amazing that you came from really kind of hating it for the first couple of times. I’ll share with you the first time I did yoga was a very similar experience. I had gone out on a pretty hard long run and then I went to the health club and I was like, “Oh! Yoga is very–” I was like, “Oh! This is very easy. It’s very stretchy. I’m a pretty good athlete”. I went in and it was absolutely killer. I was kind of like, “Wow! I’m not doing this again”. It was kind of like hard for me to get started again so it’s funny that you had that experience and I’m sure so many of the listeners of this podcaster probably had the same experience and are kind of like, “How this is actually fit in?” So I’m glad that you can share their– exactly how they’re feeling like that.
Sage: Right! And there are a lot of barriers to getting an athlete in to class. Not only is it– oh! It’s going to be– turns out to be too hard or conversely it turns out to feel like its too easy and then it feels boring. I think that that’s really more about the athlete than about the practice, but yeah it takes work to take an easier gentle yoga class and stay present. That’s actually quite hard, but then like you said we wonder how it suppose to fit with our training. That’s a big question.
And the more serious you are about your running, the more serious you want to be about finding a practice of yoga that compliments it instead of just wearing you down more.
Jeff: Yeah, so let’s talk about a little bit about that now. I think probably the best place to start and tell me if I’m wrong is kind of the different applications of yoga. You said there are different practices, is that the best place to start in terms of trying to figure out what will work best for you in your training?
Sage: Absolutely, it’s tough since across North America we use a lot of different charms to meet different style. Let me first teach you the caveat that folks just need to go and try this out for themselves. Ultimately, it’s a question of trial and error.
I think sometimes I use an analogy that finding the right class for you is kind of like finding the right running shoe. Some of us are going to need a more supportive shoe and move on a style that’s really alignments specific, that’s going to have a lot of hands on adjustments. A lot of explicit instructions in class and then others are going to do find a minimalist shoe and they just want to go to a class so teachers’ calling out the poses or the pace is different or the length of the class is a little bit shorter, there are more or less spirituality. I mean there’s a whole range of shoes.
Even within a certain brand, the various models need different, so you could find a style of the goods that works for you, but you need to also find the right teacher for you. Then you combine all of that with your personal schedule and your training it gets kind of complicated.
Jeff: Yeah, I can see that.
Sage: Yeah, a principle that I use for poses [inaudible 00:07:03] first stop if they’re new to yoga. It would be great to get them in the beginner’s class, something that’s call yoga 101 or intro to yoga or yoga for complete beginners. Know though that if you go to a beginner class at like a gentle kind of studio, that’s going to be very different from what I went to a beginner class at a Hot Yoga Studio. It’s going to be more physically rigorous. An introduction is really nice way in.
The off season is also a good time to be doing the sampling because you don’t want to add something really new as you get closer to your peak events. Now is the right time of the year here in North America to go and check out these various styles and approaches. If you’re looking to build strength, there are two ways one is to go to a class call power yoga and the other is to go to an alignment class it’s going to have longer holds in the poses and it can be surprisingly strength building and tough, but that’s what I found in my first class. Like I said, we are going in to the poses and then felt like the teacher forgot that we were there– he did. He just doing in on purpose, but it was really tough to hold poses for a long time. That’s not something that we’re use to doing in running since we’re always [inaudible 00:08:12] through the stride cycle.
Jeff: Right
Sage: Power Yoga for strength or longer holds of the standing poses for strength and then as we get closer to whatever training cycle we’re getting into. Like you’re getting up your 16 week marathon build, and you kind of want to start to dial that back a little bit and go to stretches that are focus more on flexibility. Or good classes that are focus more on flexibility and stretching. Used to be called gentle [inaudible 00:08:42] or have some description in the class description of spending a lot of time on the mats on the floor.
Jeff: Okay
Sage: Then as you get closer still to your peak event like in the started the taper you really want to dial back the intensity even more and that’s where a super gentle class is good. Meditation class is a really wonderful, and many time during the training cycle, but especially as you starting to tune up your mental focus for the race. We have kind of this– see I got the x– its inverse proportion so when you’re running is not too intense then you can let the intensity of yoga be high, but as your volume is coming up you want to pull back on the intensity of the yoga, so that there’s balance.
Jeff: Right
Sage: Yoga can be a fantastic tool for balance for the runner if it’s applied right. If you [inaudible 00:09:33] splitting heat and a lot of power yoga and four or five sessions a week on top of running 50 or 60 miles a week something’s going to give.
Jeff: Right, that’s a lot of work.
Sage: Ahmm
Jeff: Definitely, you mentioned that there like different studios have different styles in terms of how aggressive or how are thing going to be. Is there a way to tell like if I was an athlete trying to doing yoga for the first time, is there a way should I—is there something you can ask when you call? It’s like how’s the best phrase that kind of question?
Sage: Absolutely, I will call studio owners. I love it when I get calls like this and Studio Managers love to help you find the right class for you. So call and say, you know I’m an athlete in training. I’m running a lot and I’ve got a marathon coming up in four months. I’m looking for class that will help me stretch my hips or strengthen my lower legs or whatever your usual reason for. Then the Manager, the owner can probably talk you through a little bit better, but even just looking at the name of the studio if it has the word power in it [inaudible 00:10:34] for helping with power. If it has words like Kripalu which is a nice kind of more gentle student directed style of yoga or Iyengar is going to be more about alignment and probably longer holds of poses. If it’s got hot or heat or warm anywhere in the title you know that’s going to be a more challenging rigorous practices.
Jeff: Right, first of all, I’m actually curious is to with the hot yoga’s and warm yoga’s and stuff. What is the primary benefit? What is the difference that people are looking for that?
Sage: It is design to create more of a challenge and to increase your flexibility. On that end I definitely have some reservations about the practice. If you live in Minnesota and you’re not running any particularly difficult race or even long run until September or October go for it, go check it out try it.
I already living in a very warm climate and running a lot and you got a peak event in two months or one month I will be a little bit more ready for—to send you to hot yoga. Hot could be anything from like 85 degrees which is normal to 105 degrees or even more.
Jeff: Wow!
Sage: Yeah, and of course somebody who is decommissioned and looking for a kind of provocative transformative experience, the heat can be an amazing thing, it can be a revelation to get into the room and stare in the mirror and watch the sweat coming down. To be told, hold it! Hold it! You can do it and that’s a great feeling, but as runners we know that feeling ideally from our workouts. You are doing three hard workouts a week. One is hills and one is temple and one is a long run or maybe even more. Then also you’re doing core training and you’re adding hot yoga that’s a whole lot of stress on body at once. I think that we’re getting enough of the provocative stress from our running. You’re getting enough of the provocative stress in your running then you need to run a little bit harder. It’s faster in your race, it depends of course what your goals are. The other idea behind the heat is to increase your flexibility as I said, that it’s kind of a false sense of flexibility [inaudible 00:13:00] it loosens you up so much that it can be easy to overstretch and you don’t want that as runner. There is a really common yoga injury where we stretch too far into the high hamstring attachment at the sitting bone.
You get this kind of pain right where the tendon matches meets up with the sitting bone and it’s kind of a niggly feeling.
Jeff: I’ve had it before so I know. I think it’s called high hamstring tendon apathy.
Sage: Yeah, it’s a common running injury and like a drastic pace changes can overstretch that tendon but, it’s really easy to overstretch it. In forward bends and especially in the heat it takes a long time to heal as you probably find out.
Jeff: Oh! Yes
Sage: Unfortunately, ironically perhaps like something that you could just stretch out if you just went a little bit further that you’re going to get a release, but in fact the problem is that you’ve already overdone it. I worry about injuries like that [inaudible 00:13:56]. As long as you’re maintaining this inverse proportion, I think that hot and warm yoga has its place.
Jeff: I mean I think that’s awesome and I appreciate your honesty about where it fits in into training and where it may not work because I do actually hear so many athletes say they do the hot yoga. First from my perspective, I didn’t realize just how hard it was, but it makes total sense it’s like training in the heat it’s going to be x times harder. You really need to figure out where it fits in overall scope of your training.
Sage: Exactly and we have to think about the big picture like you staying about goals. And you know why people like the hot yoga? Because it’s intense and I love intensity.
Jeff: Right
Sage: Okay, another way I kind of get into that same head space you can get into towards the end of your 40 minutes tempo or whatever. Ultimately, if we keep piling stress on the body without balancing it with rest then something is going to break down.
Jeff: Right, right now make a total sense, kind of keeping going with the theme of integrating any with your training. Do you suggest somebody do yoga after their easy days or follow a harder like the hard days hard principle, where you have a hard workout so go and do your yoga because that’s another stress?
Sage: It totally depends on the athlete and how long they have been practicing and exactly what kind of yoga they’re working on. So there are millions factors that could adjust that, but in general I’d rather make the hard days hard and the easy days easy. If you had a hard workout just that a short, but semi-rigorous yoga session after, might be a better use of your time than spacing it so that everyday has a kind of a medium hard effort in it. So that we get more of the peaks and valleys because that’s where adaptation occurs is having the down time. But you’re going to do restorative yoga which I totally recommend to all of your podcast listeners, fantastic! Then that could go on any day. It’s very, very relaxing it could go on your off day, it could go on a hard day as a balance within a period of the day itself. It depends how rigorous the yoga is.
Jeff: Right, now that makes sense, but I think it’s good for athletes to know that they should keep their harder sessions on their workout days and then on the easy days use the restorative yoga. Talk a little bit about what the– I guess restorative yoga in general I know that it’s you’re huge fan of it. A little bit more about kind of what it is, what kind of poses and stuff or what’s the difference between that and other types?
Sage: In restorative yoga you never stand up. You spend the whole 60, 75, 90 minutes two hours if you’re lucky. Down on the ground, covered in blankets, lying on pillows with the sandbag on your eyes and soft music playing maybe candle light, the teacher will come and tuck your blanket in around you, it’s fantastic! The goal is restoration rather than building flexibility, so none of the poses should even feel that much like a stretch. There are some where you maybe in the supportive backbend and you feel a nice opening in your chest which is nice for everybody who spends time in a chair and for runners.
Jeff: Hands joggers.
Sage: Or cyclist too had their hands on the handle bars. There may be a light stretch in a pose like that, but the goal is to calm the nervous system rather than to create a specific physical change in the body other than relaxation. It’s a good way to jumpstart your recovery athletic recovery, and to find balance between the doing of workouts and the being of just relaxing on the mat.
Jeff: Now, that’s great and I think it probably speaks to a larger connection between the mental connection between training hard and the physical part of it and the mental connection, seems like it’s really trying to fuse that and so you’re not getting to far with getting– I’ve always had the problem I know a lot of athletes I coach do they’re just always thinking about their training and always thinking about their recovery and it gets overwhelming. It sounds this is the good way to just kind of relax and let things kind of go the wrong way. A little bit for at least an hour or two.
Sage: Exactly and there’s something about going to the studio and having the minimal instruction align your pillow this way, let me check that blanket around you. Yeah, it can become easier to relax more deeply than you would if you were just sitting on the couch watching the ball game. It’s really taking from time out and I think in that way it helps to balance the stress of training a little bit more.
There’s a spiel that I usually give, the goal that we’re looking for is to find balance because all injuries especially running injuries are going to come from some kind of imbalance in the body. Like you sprain your ankle because you lose your balance in space and you fall down. You’re looking help with that by strengthening your core and your lower leg and your sense appropio section where you are in space. Then there’s also– there needs to be a balance in the body itself front to back, side to side, top to bottom. If you’re having some knee issues and maybe coming from the hip you need to be balanced in the strength of the hips, in the strength found in the leg, into the lower leg. But then ultimately over training or burn out issues like mental injuries come from that imbalance between work and rest. Between always as you say thinking about your workouts and tracking your workouts online and looking up other people’s times on Athlinks and whatever obsessive compulsive behaviour that you might engage in. It’s all about doing and adding more stress. Practices [inaudible 00:19:32] yoga to balance that so that we can feel more balance as people and ultimately your family is going to appreciate that too. [Inaudible 00:19:41] as an athlete if you don’t burn out.
Jeff: Right, right, now that makes a lot of sense definitely. We talk a little bit about the different types of routines. How does your– as an athlete and obviously loves and appreciates yoga, what is your weekly or monthly routine look like with yoga? Are you going to different sessions everyday in terms of the purpose? I know you teach now and obviously doing some other stuff. Talk a little bit about how things working in your training.
Sage: Sure, so right now for example on I’m just kind of working my base up for a trail marathon in 50k in the spring. I’ve got I’m running six days I’ve got two days that are really easy, one day that’s long. And then often I work at the studio on weekend teaching teacher’s training or taking workshops. Run long on Friday do something really mellow at home on Friday. Saturday go in after sugar run and may spend the whole weekend in us [inaudible 00:20:41] in a practice [inaudible 00:20:42] things.
Teaching is a little bit different from practicing yourself, it’s kind of more physically rigorous because you don’t get warmed up in the same way and sometimes you just have to let something out to show to your students. I take Sunday off. I go a little longer harder on Mondays and Wednesdays and on those days I do Pilates class actually on Mondays and teach. On Tuesdays, I’ll do power yoga class which is actually kind of like a double Miami after the Pilates very core focused I decided to take that. On Wednesdays’, I will do something at home sometimes with weights I’ll definitely focus on core stuff and then just kind of feel my way around my hips and see how they’re feelings that’s like a home practice day. Thursdays is again I teach and then I take a class either power class or another core focus class and come back to Friday. I started my week with the long run [inaudible 00:21:38] my favourite. It’s a combination of things. There are some days that are more stretch focus like I would stretch after my long run, stretching the course of the weekend, stretching on Wednesdays and Thursdays at home. And then also combining some core focus stuff and some power yoga.
Jeff: Makes sense, we’ve talked a lot about or you talked a lot about flexibility on one hand and power on the other and building strength. I think the common concept with most people when I think about yoga is its all flexibility. It’s all stretching, but you’ve talked and then I understand that there are the power elements too and there are strength element into it. How does that actually work and can you expand a little bit more on that concept of how yoga is producing power? This question actually comes from one of our readers Carlisia Campos who’s an instructor I was telling them or telling her it’s not about the stretching it’s about the power.
Sage: Right and I would say it’s about the balance between the power and flexibility. This is the one reference in the yoga sutra which is the combination of kind of spiritual [inaudible 00:22:46] are seminal text in yoga. The only thing it says about the poses is that the poses are to have a balance between strength and flexibility. Though the whole physical practice is design to find that balance between strength and flexibility so that we can sit on the floor to [inaudible 00:23:03] and meditate. Because that’s how we get enlightenment does not necessary to the poses, but sometimes it can happen that way, but really it’s getting ourselves comfortable sitting. So the power comes in core strength that will get the spines supported so you can sit. Then happily in a lot of the standing poses also hips strength which is major for runners.
Jeff: Absolutely
Sage: And finding, yeah a balance between the strength in the glutes, the strength in the lower leg, the strength in the quads, in the front, in the hamstring and in the back and kind of finding a happy medium between all of those. In this the yoga can be really good for injury prevention although it’s kind of tough to prove on negative [inaudible 00:23:45] prevented an injury but, it can really help to ward off things like knee issues [inaudible 00:23:51] although the lower leg stuff just like showing up the core and the hips. Then there’s also some leg strength stuff involve depends on the style of the yoga, because if you’re going to a longer hold in an alignment class that’s going to be more isometric strength. You’re just going into a pose and holding it, but then other styles like power yoga or isotonic and you’re coming in and out of poses like lunges and squats over and over and over again. Happily again there it’s got really good benefit for runners.
Jeff: Right, right that makes a lot of sense I appreciate you extending on that a little bit because like I said I kind of knew that there was a power element involve, but obviously the name, but I didn’t realized kind of exactly how. Along those lines and you know something we didn’t talk about when maybe we should started with was talk a little bit about the history of yoga. I know we see it as the spiritual practice in a sense. What’s the history and how are things evolve during the years?
Sage: It has evolved from being kind of exoteric almost secret practice for connection with God, connection with the universe into a workout. Maybe it’s devolved instead of evolve, but that’s a shift that happen primarily starting in 20th century with the introduction of a lot more physical poses. The traditional yoga text describe only a very few poses. Almost every single one of those is a sitting pose. As I said, the idea of the poses themselves is to get us ready to sit in meditation. So those texts are basically just describing good ways to sit for meditation. In the 20th century, there was this kind of mash up hybridization of a gymnastics and calisthenics with a yoga practice and there are some fascinating recent books about how these all tide into. British colonialism then Indian nationalism, it’s really cool history, but so there was introduction of a lot of gymnastics and calisthenics to the spiritual practice. If anybody goes to a good class you instantly see like, “Oh! Yeah there is kind of system for connection with the universe through the physical body” and we know that as runners.
Jeff: Right
Sage: You won’t be running if we didn’t feel like there was something more to it than just running. You’re just taking the time to be out in nature and look around that is yoga that is connection, right there. The poses themselves the physical routines are all pretty recent innovations in the system of yoga.
Jeff: Know that makes a lot of sense I like that you connected it to running because right running we see as such a physical thing, but anybody that’s ran for a long time knows that it can be very spiritual even if you’re not a spiritual person.
Sage: Yeah
Jeff: That’s cool I’ve never put that connection together so I hope– I appreciate it so I got my nugget of my wisdom today.
Sage: Awesome!
Jeff: Moving on to like more specific workouts, for athletes who are pretty busy and don’t have a lot of time. What kind of routines would you recommend if they only have five or ten minutes after a run? What kind of poses and routines would you recommend that they working to and are most effective?
Sage: A nice play to alternate it would be to do a strength focus practice. As you were saying like keep the heart with the heart, a strength focus practice on your hard days and a flexibility focus practice on your easy days, or you can alternate it if found that the opposite actually worked better for you. For strength practice, some squats and lunges like we see in Sun Salutations are really good and you can learn Sun Salutations online or for many good teachers around. It helps to learn them from somebody in person so that she or he can tweak your alignment and make sure that you’re keeping yourself safe, but that’s five-ten minutes right there. Really helps strength and you can highlights or imposes in the Sun Salutations for strength namely the plank position just to stop [inaudible 00:27:57] moving down to kind of halfway down push up and then share pose which is like standing squat. As of now that would be a strength practice.
A flexibility practice to make your way around your hips, make sure that you get something that stretch the front of the hips the hip flexors, the outer hips [inaudible 00:28:15] the back of the hips, your hamstrings and then something for your inner thighs as well. This could be a series of lunges. This could be a series of seated forward folds. Stuff that you do on your back and there’s– the possibilities are endless of course for what you could do for flexibility. Also, a little bit for the lower legs are nice. I think a squat or kneeling or half squat, half kneeling which is all really nice. Since we are in my office and I thought my books here [inaudible 00:28:45]
Jeff: Perfect! Please do, please do.
Sage: This is my book “The Athlete’s Pocket Guide to Yoga”
Jeff: Okay
Sage: Which is exactly as you say like, Oh? What if I had 10 or 15 minutes after my run what would I like to do? This will take you through like here are some lunges that you might like to do after your run. Just a reference, it’s spiral bound so it can lie flat on the mat and folks can take a look at that and be inspired to practice this routine and maybe develop their own routines based on their individual needs.
Jeff: Awesome! I appreciate you’re sharing that, and for those who are listening in the podcast and watching the video we’re going to throw up a link on our site to Sage’s book and the one that she mentioned “The Pocket Guide to Yoga” and then the “Runners Guide to Yoga” as well. If you want to visit it– its runnersconnect.net/rc14 or you can visit Sage’s website which I believe is– why you don’t say it in case I get it wrong.
Sage: It’s sagerountree.com
Jeff: Okay, I thought so.
Sage: And technically there’s no d in Rountree, but if you add a d it would kick you over there too.
Jeff: Okay, you picked both names smartly.
Sage: Yeah, well I didn’t pick them. I should have said it at the beginning. I know it sounds like I pick them, but my parents picked Sage and my husband’s family way back in the day must have picked the Rountree. It works out very nicely as a yoga name, but if folks see I made it up I didn’t.
Jeff: It’s very funny and actually missing the d is something that I actually didn’t realize until I reread your book and I was like, “Wait! There is no d in there” I was like, “Oh!” I didn’t realize I’m sure you get it all the time.
Sage: It’s tricky it’s like Thomson without a p, it’s from rowan tree, rowan tree is a kind of a holly bush. In England, they still spell it with a wr and wf.
Jeff: Very neat, cool! See now we learn a little bit another thing today. Again, we talked a little bit about your books– talk a little bit about your practice in North Carolina and kind of how that works.
Sage: Sure, I have a pair of studios in Central North Carolina I live in Carrboro which is Chapel Hill, North Carolina so we have the studio called The Carrboro Yoga Company and the studio in Durham which is up down the road The Durham Yoga Company. I teach yoga for athletes there. I teach online as well because we record some of my classes at Carrboro yoga and those streams at yogavibes.com. They are pretty runners specific classes and that they drill down to the point where it’s like, this is a practice where to help with your hip flexors, or this is a practice to help with your shoulders or your lower legs. So that’s a nice resource I think for folks. I work with some of the teams at Carolina at University of North Carolina in Chapel Hills [inaudible 00:31:21] and I do some writing as well. The books that we’ve even talking about, but then also my writing for Runner’s World and I write a blog for Yoga Journal. Just kind of the flipside instead of targeting the runners specifically this is kind of on the other end of spectrum.
Jeff: That’s very cool and I think having the streaming video is pretty cool. People can follow you on and hopefully get some benefit out of it.
Sage: That’s great! And I have a small set of athletes that I coach in ultra running and mountain biking.
Jeff: Oh, great! So talk a little bit about your favourite like I guess you call series of poses or routines. What, your kind of favourite to go through?
Sage: It depends on what I’m going to do, but it’s like people ask me this a lot. What are the top 10 poses? What are the top three poses? What’s the number one pose? The number one pose you can count them down from one on is legs up the wall which is lying down on your back with your legs up the wall. Have a wall or your hamstrings are so tight that you can’t actually lie on your back with your hips flex to 90 degrees. You can put your calves unto the top of the coffee table or the sofa cushion and then you’ve got this kind of 90 degrees at the back of the knees and 90 degrees at the front of the hips. It’s great for restoration and recovery and for draining some of the fluid that accumulates in your legs, either because of the long run or a day on your feet or travel. That is number one and if you stretch your arms up to the side like you’re doing it– you’re also giving a chest stretch. That’s the best you can get your hamstring stretch, you can get your chest stretch, but mostly it gives you an opportunity to slow down.
Jeff: Right, now that’s interesting we used to do that all the time in college and high school between races because you’ve raced twice sometimes on the same day. Who knew all along that I was doing yoga?
Sage: It’s great, so that’s the number one. Another one that’s very useful for athletes in the re-run is downward facing dog which is the upside down V where you got your hands and your feet on the floor and your hips up in the air because it stretch pretty much the whole backline of your body. The back of your back, the back of your hips, the back of your legs including all the way down into the calves [inaudible 00:33:36] tucked again in tunes that’s a nice one as well. Also, it’s an inversion you got your head down under your heart which is interesting for your brain too. [Inaudible 00:33:48] perceptual challenge a different orientation [inaudible 00:33:51] back on to the floor I like lunges for athletes. I saw it on Twitter somebody had said how do I get into my hip clutches in my hamstring if I just have just a few minutes? And the answer is you come to a lunge. A lunge on the floor, back knee down, front knee just over the front ankle and hold there for a little while if you lean your chest forward you’re getting in your hamstring. If you lift your chest up and maybe even tuck your tailbone under a little you’re getting into your hip [inaudible 00:34:17]. Or you could shift kind of forward and back from the lunge forward to like runners lunge or you getting into a hamstring stretch and that’s a really nice pair.
We need flexibility through that range of lunges because that’s our stride right there, so we need to be able to lift our hands high enough and we need to be able to let our leg come out behind us so that’s a good one too. There’s a lot of stuff you can do just from that simple lunge position to work around your hips like if you put your left knee forward your right hand could be down on the floor, left hand comes could come to your left knee and you could twist and then helps get you a deeper into that outer left hip [inaudible 00:34:52] giving a twist to your spine, that’s a good one too.
Jeff: Yeah, I say that.
Sage: That’s top three.
Jeff: Nah! That’s great I mean I’m sure like I said you probably get that question all the time so I’m glad I have it already to go you’re like here we go.
Sage: Those were my three today.
Jeff: Now, that’s cool, the question I didn’t ask you in the pre-interview one of the things that I was actually curious about now after listening to this a little bit of this, what’s your take on what we call dynamic flexibility with active stretching and kind of that theory where holding poses and holding stretches for a long period of time is actually not good for the muscles?
Sage: The idea is that it’s diminishing the contraction of strength for a little while.
Jeff: Correct!
Sage: Yeah, so if you are a high jumper then that would make a lot of sense. If you’re going to run 90 minutes– it probably doesn’t make an ounce of difference.
Jeff: Okay
Sage: That said, yeah sure let’s do dynamic before and static after and it works out really nicely. As we said, some schools of yoga or some styles of yoga are really dynamic anyway like moving through salutations is dynamic.
Jeff: Okay
Sage: And then holding each of the constituent poses of the Sun Salutations will be static if you stay in there, five breaths, 10 breaths, 15 breaths. Like moving in and out with the breath is in of itself is a dynamic warm up which is nice.
Jeff: Right, right. Now, that make total sense and I didn’t mean to just throw it out there, but I kind of figured that you’d had it before.
Sage: It’s great, yeah sure lets– since that’s what the researches thing right now sure let’s do that, that’s good. Like before static after, I just don’t think unless you’re truly like a sprinter like [inaudible 00:36:29] kind of guy that’s going to actually diminish your speed because running is not in that sense of power sport except for a very, very short distances.
Jeff: Right, right now make a total sense. Along those lines you mentioned holding for five, 10, 15 breaths probably depends on what the purpose is, but it’s very general idea of how long you want to hold the pose?
Sage: Yes, yeah it depends on what your intention is for the pose, but getting the muscles to release in the hopes of increasing your flexibility a hold of somewhere between five to 15 breaths is probably enough.
Jeff: Okay
Sage: It will take you if you’re breathing medium slow like between 30 and 90 seconds, after about 90 seconds the muscle is done what’s it’s going to do. If you want to target the fascia system which is the connective tissue, it wraps around and shoots through the muscles then the longer hold maybe an order. There’s a style of yoga called Yin Yoga that goes for long hold of poses. By long I mean like two minute, four minutes, six minutes and a deep lunge on the floor.
Jeff: Wow!
Sage: And that, it’s just like hot yoga is a mental endurance experience and therefore very appealing I think to runners.
Jeff: Right, right! Now, that makes sense, but yeah that’s good to know I guess kind of the basic of most of the routine of what you’re doing, something specialize would be in that range. Now, it’s great to know. Well, Sage that’s all the questions I had today and again if we’re going to throw the links to your books as well as your practice and the videos so people can follow you along. Again, thank you so much for taking the time today to meet with us and I feel that I’ve learned so much and I know probably our listeners as well so thank you.
Sage: Thank you, Jeff. It was crazy talking to you.
Jeff: Thanks! Thank you, Sage I cut the interview off the air so that was awesome. I hope I mentioned everything that—
Sage: That’s wonderful!
Jeff: Okay, great! So this is going to go up let’s see December 19 so next Wednesday.I’ll shoot you an e-mail sometime early next week when everything is formatted when I get the video of and all of the posts and everything like that so you can just make sure that everything was good. And we’ll throw up the links to your books and your sites and stuff like that. Hopefully, drives a lot of traffic and just exposes you to even more people.
Sage: Great! Wonderful!
Jeff: Awesome!
Sage: Thanks so much!
Jeff: Well, thank you.
Sage: Have a great day!
Jeff: You too and will talk to you—
