362: Tips to Become a More Efficient Runner

In episode 362 of our Real Life Runners Podcast, we discuss how to become more efficient runners by focusing on three key areas: maintaining consistency, incorporating strength and mobility work, and ensuring proper recovery. We address common misconceptions influenced by social media, emphasizing that short-term hacks and shortcuts are less effective than consistent, sustained effort. We advocate for balanced training that includes easy running, strength training, mobility, and regular recovery, highlighting the importance of nutrition and hydration for optimal performance. This episode aims to provide practical and sustainable strategies to help you improve your running efficiency and overall fitness.

00:37 The Myth of Quick Fixes

02:00 Consistency Over Shortcuts

04:25 Understanding Running Efficiency

30:18 Prioritizing Variety vs. Progress in Workouts

30:54 Consistency in Strength Training

31:50 Efficiency Through Routine

33:53 Understanding Rest and Easy Days

39:08 Mental Shifts for Better Recovery

39:59 Balancing Running and Strength Training

47:29 Fueling and Nutrition for Optimal Performance

51:50 The Role of Supplements

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Transcript

Angie: 0:00

This is the real life runners podcast, episode number 362, how to become a more efficient runner. What's up runners. Welcome to the show today. We're talking all about how to become a more efficient runner so that you can stop wasting your time. With things that don't help and that don't matter and that don't move the needle don't allow you to see progress that you want to see so that you can spend your time doing the things that actually matter that actually lead to both short term and long term progress because right now out in social media and in the world that we're living in people seemingly are obsessed with hacks and shortcuts and trying to make things work way faster than they're supposed to. They think that they should be working and try to get to the end goal before. I don't know anybody else or before they are the amount of time that they think that they need

Kevin: 1:15

social media loves a good before and after, like the, with not necessarily the truth of the timeline in between these two pictures, like I went for couch to five K in an hour and a half, you know, like couch to marathon and three weeks, like these are not things that actually happened, but you can put pictures.

Angie: 1:31

Yeah. And there's so many people out there trying to teach you the latest trick or hack to get you. Faster results. And so today we really want to break it down and talk about three of the biggest things that we think are the keys to becoming a more efficient runner so that again, you can stop wasting your time with things that don't work and focus your time and your energy and your effort on things that will actually move you forward.

Kevin: 1:58

Yeah, which is a great way to go. And this is the thing is because so many people are focused on the hacks, it seems like that's the way to get ahead faster. But I think over the course of a couple of months, definitely over the course of a full year, the more efficient runner is not the one who's trying to take continuous shortcuts. That don't actually ever get to the goal. The more efficient runner is the one who maintains the consistency.

Angie: 2:22

Oh, you're giving them the spoiler alert ahead of time, because this is one of the things that we see so many times is there's so many runners out there that are just bouncing from workout to workout or race to race because they look interesting or challenging or fun. And there's definitely a place for that, right? We don't like your training should not be boring all the time. There needs to be an element of fun and challenge and variety. In your training, because that will lead to the consistency that Kevin's talking about and consistency is the number one thing that's going to lead to improvement. So when you start adding in all of these other random things into the mix, it becomes too complicated and becomes harder to follow, which then leads to more difficulty with that consistency. So, a lot of times people are mistaking variety for consistency and they're mistaking soreness for improvement. Well, as, as long as I'm changing things up, then I'm going to be getting better result or as long as I'm feeling sore, that means that I'm improving. And in reality, that is not the case.

Kevin: 3:25

No, like there's, there's. There's hints of truth, there's shades of truth within those statements that variety will possibly help with consistency, but it doesn't have to. You could go out and have a very, very boring training regimen and get in really, really good shape.

Angie: 3:39

And variety will also lead to improvements in a lot of cases. Yes. But if you're constantly jumping from one thing to another and not allowing things to take effect and not allowing your body to get the full benefits of a certain way of training, then you're really going to. Almost be working against yourself, but maybe not all the way to that effect But at a minimum you're probably going to be plateauing and not seeing the progress that you want

Kevin: 4:04

We're certainly not seeing the the rapid progress like everyone's like if like just if i'm always pushing if i'm always changing things up I'm gonna just get Continuous exponential growth and that's just not how your body adapts to things. It's it's not capable of Continuous exponential growth you you have to have that that time for for pause periodically where then you can grow after that move

Angie: 4:24

All right. So what are we talking about when we talk about running? Efficiently or what does it mean to be a more efficient runner? basically It's doing the things that are actually going to move you forward and not doing the things that don't really matter. And I think that there's so much of that right now because the shiny objects and the things that you can put into a 90 second reel on Instagram or on TikTok, that's what grabs people's attentions. And so people want to see, or they like seeing, people that are doing the ice baths, or taking this special supplement, or using the massage gun, or this soft tissue scraper. You know, oh, if I just use this every day, it just makes, makes me never get injured. I just always feel good and I never get injured. And when people distill it down to that kind of, uh, simplicity, it's not the full truth. And, and I'm all for making training simple. And that's really kind of the point of this episode is helping to break this down into a really simple way for you to see sustainable progress and to become a more efficient runner so that you can make the progress that you want to make. But when you see, like, I mean, one of the trends out there right now is people that are filming themselves doing one exercise. And I almost fell into this trap because I was like, Oh, well, this is clearly getting clicks and likes and comments. Like people are definitely responding to this, but it's this, this Trend that I've seen across the fitness industry where the, um, the person, you know, on the Instagram account will film themselves doing one exercise. It'll say something to the effect of POV. You start doing this one exercise and all of your knee pain goes away, right? And it's like, Oh my gosh, well, that's what I should start doing. And in reality, it's not that one exercise that's going to fix you. It's that exercise combined with a couple of other things, but people are trying to boil it down to that one thing. And then all of a sudden you're seeing this one thing and that one thing and that exercise, and it's so weird how that same influencer, that same coach has. 10 different POVs on their Instagram feed that say this one exercise will fix your knee pain and they're all different exercises.

Kevin: 6:42

Yeah, because it's that routine of 10 exercises that is fixing the routine and then heaven forbid we go to the one who suggested this supplement will in fact fix your knee pain or magically improve you and then just click the link. We're shockingly that influencer is getting a little money back from them back.

Angie: 6:59

So it never comes down to one thing All right, that's why your training system is so important. It's never just your training plan by itself It's never just one exercise that you add into your training that will make a big difference All of the difference in the whole world. It's not just one supplement that you'd start taking that magically fixes your knee pain. There's never one thing. It's a full picture. You are a full human. You need to look at yourself more holistically. And so that's what we're going to break down today. And by looking at the three things that we're going to talk about today, you are going to see how focusing on these three things and kind of basically ignoring a lot of the rest of the stuff out there. You're going to make a lot of progress and you're going to save a lot of time in the process and be more efficient with your progress.

Kevin: 7:44

Yeah. You don't need to waste time and things don't need to get overcomplicated. Cause like you said, there's this one exercise fixes the knee, but then you Check out the next reel and the next reel and the next reel and suddenly your exercise routine got fairly complicated pretty quickly,

Angie: 7:57

right? Or what if it's that one for the knee and then one for the hip and then one for the foot when in reality you could? Just do an exercise routine that kind of hits all of those joints and Stabilizes and strengthens all of those joints in a more effective way Effective and efficient way.

Kevin: 8:12

Yeah. Okay. So let's, let's get ourselves going in here. I think one of the big mistakes that we're kind of, we're talking around here is trying to improve everything at once of really, I, I want to get all of the results and I would like them right now. I want the results immediately. And so I'm going to train to run farther and faster and like all of the things simultaneously. And so. is not actually going to lead to broad improvement because you're trying to do too many things at once. It's more likely to lead to injury because maybe doing one of those things stretches you a little bit and doing another one stretches you a little bit more but doing them all basically sets you up to be training completely over your head which is a danger zone to train in.

Angie: 8:54

Yeah, it's like if you're trying to juggle, like the physical act of juggling, we often talk about juggling all the things that are going on in our life, but if we're actually thinking about trying to juggle, you're going to be much more effective if you start out with two balls, right? Or even just one. Well, if you start out with, if you actually have ever tried to learn how to juggle, which I did at one point in time, and I got up to three balls for about, I could juggle three balls for maybe. 20 seconds, maybe, maybe a little bit less, which was pretty darn good for me. I was pretty proud of myself, but whenever you look up a video on YouTube or something like that to teach you how to juggle, you start by just tossing one ball and catching it, tossing one ball and catching it. And then you start with two and you're like, well, this isn't really juggling though, but you have to master one and then two before you can move to three, four, five. You try to go straight to juggling five balls at the same time. I would guess that most everyone would just drop all five.

Kevin: 9:50

Yeah, no, that's, that's the problem is it immediately got way too hard. Like you need to have some of the basis to it, but the basic things don't look cool. If you want to be juggling, you want to be juggling. You don't want to be throwing one ball up in the air to the same hand. That's not exciting. That's not fun. No

Angie: 10:07

one wants to see that.

Kevin: 10:08

Oh, watch this cool thing. I'm going to put it on Instagram. I'm gonna make a great reel of me throwing a soccer ball. single ball up and down in to my right hand. Like that's not exciting. No,

Angie: 10:16

but we do like the progression videos where you start with that and then go, you see someone progress from one to two to three to four to five. And all of a sudden they're doing like 10 balls out in the air and you're like, Oh my gosh, that's amazing. And for us, it took. 30 to 60 seconds to watch them, but how long did it take them to actually learn how to do that?

Kevin: 10:35

Oh yeah, time is weird on that because the progression video took 30 seconds, but it took them nine months. Right,

Angie: 10:41

exactly. And

Kevin: 10:42

suddenly they got flaming chainsaws and it looks super cool, but you're like, oh, but that's right. They started with a single tennis ball. And that's not as fun. So we want to skip that part, but that's where you need to be. You need to start wherever you actually are. And here's the thing, training to run long distances is not exactly the most exciting prospect because the best way to do it is to go run long distances.

Angie: 11:09

Yeah, and this was like my big thing when I first started running as I found it so boring.

Kevin: 11:14

Right, and that's part of why you started running with more people. When I first got into it, I had a cross country team. There was a hundred of us. So, you immediately had people and it makes it a lot more interesting. If you can't find the interest in the long running You need to have the other people around you to make it a more interesting process

Angie: 11:32

or something else like the I actually didn't go Straight to running with other people you first started me with interval training Which was much more mentally and physically stimulating for me and it made those long runs It broke them up in a way that they weren't as boring.

Kevin: 11:47

Right. As long as you kind of adhere to the idea that you still have to keep things somewhat easy, because almost everything that we should be doing is the complete opposite of training over your head. You should be training really, really easy. Almost all the time and if as you were doing you kind of got bored with long slow run So I was like, okay Well, we'll mix it up and we'll do some like some little medium effort surges in the middle of it And I spaced them out enough and had enough recovery that it was still overall an easy day but I But for you mentally, it was like, Oh, but after I do this boring, easy 10 minutes, I get to mix it up with these like two minutes of medium. And I'm sitting there as your coach of like, sure, just keep it medium. And then do four minutes easy in between your two minutes medium. And to me, I'm like, this is still an easy run.

Angie: 12:34

Yeah. And it worked better for me.

Kevin: 12:36

Yes. So, you know, that's, that's the thing is, you've got to find something that is exciting enough for you to do, but is also still nice and easy because that's really the best setup to success and the best setup to like improving your like, your running efficiency also to like making your body work really well is by running really nice and easy all the time.

Angie: 12:58

Well, not all the time. It is important for us to be putting in harder efforts, but it's just important for them to be placed in a Conscious and intentional way I think is a good way to say this I think it's really important for us to do harder efforts and for some people that's going to include Sprint types of training like doing hard efforts some of it's going to be medium but If we're doing harder efforts and incorporating that in our training, we shouldn't also be trying to increase our mileage at the same time. And that's what a lot of people do is that they're trying to work on both because they think that that's going to be more efficient. Well, if I just try to run. Longer and faster if I'm if I push my mileage and also just push myself a little bit harder with speed That's gonna be the best way and the fastest way for me to get faster because ultimately I just want to be a faster Runner, I want to be able to run faster. I want to be able to run longer So if I just keep pushing myself harder That's going to be the more efficient way for me to get there.

Kevin: 13:56

Yes, and if I just start by juggling 5 balls, that's going to be the fastest way for me to be able to juggle 5 balls. I'll just start with 5. But that's not. All you end up doing is dropping all of them, all the time. And while you can try to push yourself to a harder level and increase your mileage, It's not going to last very long. It's sort of like the kid who's like, I'm going to juggle five. And you see this, this small kid do this every once in a while. Hey mom, watch this. And they throw all five up in the air. They don't catch any of them, but for us, for a split second, it looks like they're juggling five. And that's kind of what happens when you over train and you're pushing both speed and mileage for a brief period of time It looks like you're improving, but honestly, you're just barely juggling You've just got them all up in the air and at some point they're gonna crash.

Angie: 14:43

Yeah it's just a matter of when I think for a lot of people and Some people can last longer and that basically goes back to your foundation coming into it So that's If we're going like continuing with this juggling example, um, someone that has good hand eye coordination, say someone that's played baseball or softball growing up as a kid, they are probably going to pick up juggling faster than someone who has decreased hand eye coordination or just never had that level of coordination or maybe played soccer as a kid because there's just a higher level of hand eye coordination. That foundation that will lead to better juggling skills. So you have a running foundation, or if you have some sort of athletic foundation where maybe you played a different sport before you got into running and you have that muscle memory, or you have a certain level of endurance buildup, you know, we have soccer players join the cross country team all the time and they've never run cross country before. They've never, a lot of them have never even run three miles before at a given time. But because they have been playing soccer since they were five years old, they already have this natural level of endurance built up. So they take to cross country a lot quicker than someone who's never played any sort of sport in their life.

Kevin: 15:58

Yeah, no, that's a really good example. I'm not sure how I picked up juggling relatively quickly, given, given that metaphor continuation,

Angie: 16:04

the other, you're actually a better juggler than I am. But I think that's a lot of it's because I haven't actually tried to take the time to learn it.

Kevin: 16:11

I still like to just kind of. Juggle random things. Well,

Angie: 16:14

but here's, here's the thing, right? Here's another funny. Correlation. Um, I get too frustrated with having to do the two balls. I want to go straight to the three, right? That's kind of like my running journey too, is like, I wanted to just jump into the speed work because the slow, easy stuff was too boring, which surprise, surprise, I'm not a master juggler right now because I never stuck with it. I never was consistent with the easy, boring stuff that would have led me to. Develop the skill to do three, four or five balls.

Kevin: 16:44

Well, and here's the other thing is I never really wanted to be able to juggle a huge amount of things. I just wanted to get really good at juggling three. Like I never really had the desire to be like, I can juggle four. And now look at me juggle like six bowling pins. Like that was not really my desire. I wanted to be efficient at juggling three. Cause that looked like a neat little like party trick and I can do three. I can't, I have no shot at four cause I've never really tried to put the effort forth

Angie: 17:06

because it's a different. Like, uh, skill set, right? Or like, not like a strategy. Not really. No, no. You just add another one in? Kind of. Oh, okay.

Kevin: 17:15

All right. Um, but kind of related to this, we got to pull off the metaphor for a second here, but related to this whole idea of pushing ourselves is, well, hard days are important, hard days should also not kill us. Like we make some of our best gains when we push just a little beyond our current capabilities because then our body is able to say like, Whoa, that was a little bit too much and it's able to build back stronger. Right.

Angie: 17:37

But you didn't break it down so much that it needs a ton of time to recover.

Kevin: 17:41

Right. Like that's the worst. Oh, I went so hard. I'm passed out on the driveway and I can't, I'm going to crawl back into the house. Good luck getting out the next day. And we started the podcast with one of the best ways to be a better runner is the consistency. And if all you do is grind yourself into like a fine little powder by the end of your run, your consistency is going to be so far off because it's going to be super hard day followed by a couple of off days, super hard day followed by a couple of off days. And that is not the efficient way to improve yourself. The consistent day upon day. That's where most of it needs to be Easy. And even when you go hard, it should not be hard to the point of, I cannot breathe anymore. Like it should be a doable heart. If you're doing like repetitions of something, you should be able to finish the workout and say, I could do one or two repetitions if I really had to. So I'm done with the workout now. Like there should always be a little bit left and that's how you can continue to move forward. But people like to say, Oh, look at this incredible workout that I did. And that means, Oh, they push themselves a little bit too hard because it seems like a cooler workout, but in reality it's not the efficient way to train. The efficient way to train is staying somewhat within your own capabilities.

Angie: 18:55

I mean, this reminds me of the tortoise and the hare, right? Like everybody wants to be the hare and race to the tortoise. Finish line because they think if I if I run faster, then I'll get there faster and in reality It's the tortoise that wins out because they just make those small Incremental gains time after time after time same thing with the stock market really, you know compounding interest when you it doesn't look like a lot In the beginning it looks like tiny in the beginning, then all of a sudden, when you're years and years down the road, all of it starts to pay off.

Kevin: 19:24

Yeah. I like your tortoise and hare comparison. I, I had a concept on this one of comparing this to how I trained when I was in college. I was neither the tortoise nor the hare. I literally just tried to hang on to the back of the hare for as long as possible. That was my training approach. So everything was over my head. Everything was too much and it did not lead to great long term success.

Angie: 19:45

Right. That's great. So when it comes to your running, the best way for you to run more efficiently is to train from where you are, make most of your running feel easy, make some of your running feel hard and. Make sure that you're also still having fun in the process, I think is a good way to,

Kevin: 20:02

yeah, we covered a lot inside of that little topic there. Yeah. Excellent work.

Angie: 20:05

All right. Number two, the second thing that you need to do, if you want to become a more efficient runner is not run every day. I mean. You might argue with me on that one, but it's not that it's, it's not that you can't run every day, but it's that you need to do strength training and mobility. And sometimes it's a good idea for you to not run if you are limited on time so that you can get in your strength training and your mobility work. Because so many people just want to go out and just run, just run more, run faster, increase my intensity, increase my volume. And it leads to burning out. It leads to injury. It leads to inconsistency because we need to have strength as the foundation for all of our training strength and mobility are two of the most important things that so many runners neglect that you need to have. If you want to become a more efficient runner.

Kevin: 20:59

All right, so we can debate whether you should be able to run every day and in our third topic of, of the outline here, but for strength, I'm with you. You have to get in strength and mobility. It is, it is true foundation, like the, the strength of your body, especially really, All the, everything except your arms and legs, your core, everything in your torso, allows your limbs to move fluidly as you run down the street. I've watched people, without great core strength, try to sprint, and their arms and legs are flailing in every direction because they don't have enough stability to just stand on one leg. Just to stand on one leg, and now they're trying to sprint, which is leaping incredibly quickly from one leg to the other. And so in order to maintain this balance, because this is the person that if you said just stand on one leg and put your arms out, they'd be windmilling all over the place, well now they're trying to do that while sprinting. And they're still windmilling all over the place, but their legs are also windmilling all over the place. That's just a setup for injury. Like, you can't increase intensity unless you have the, the strength of your core to actually allow you to run in a smooth, economical fashion. You're gonna be using muscles that shouldn't be used, you're gonna be flailing things in directions that they're not supposed to be going, and it's just setting you, yourself up for an injury. Whether you go too fast or too far.

Angie: 22:25

Right. And this is really where running form comes in. And oftentimes on the podcast, we talk about strength and mobility. And the reason that strength and mobility are so important for you as a runner is to help your running form become more efficient. So essentially, when you think about running, running is jumping from one leg to another over and over and over again. And when you land on one leg, Basically, all of the muscles, not all of the muscles, but the muscles in that leg have to turn on to help stabilize your body from just collapsing. So, and then the other leg is swinging through, so the muscles on the other side need to be propelling that leg forward, which a lot of that is momentum and other things as well. But, All of this to say that when your muscles are stronger, you're going to have a stable base. And so your, your body's not going to be flopping side to side. Your hips are going to be more stable. Your knee is going to be more stable. So there's less wasted motion. And when there's less wasted motion, there's less wasted energy. And so if you're not wasting energy by just trying to stabilize your body with every single step, you're going to have more energy, which is going to allow you to run longer and run faster. And this is where a lot of people that think, well, if I just run more than my running muscles will get stronger and I'll just keep Making progress and I'll just keep, you know, my body will learn how to stabilize itself as I keep doing this and that is true to a certain extent, but then it's also not true at all because you need to, you need to definitely make sure that you have the proper amount of mobility available. So like if you have stiffness or limitations in any of your joints that are involved in running, that's going to lead to compensation. If you have a lack of mobility, then other joints and other tissues are going to be taking up that stress and maybe they're not supposed to be doing that job. A lot of times that's what happens and so those muscles or those joints are getting overstressed and again, all of this is just becoming very wasted and less efficient.

Kevin: 24:35

Yeah, and the lack of strength and lack of mobility, I think, kind of really work hand in hand on this one because when you have Insufficient amount of strength in a certain area your body tries to compensate by tightening that area up And so then things aren't moving as smoothly or through the proper range of motion that they're needing Because your body's like well, we can't let things move too much Because this area is too weak. So we're going to restrict the amount of motion. And now you feel like extra tight as you try and run. And you're like, well, this doesn't even feel comfortable. And this is going to set you up to a lack of consistency because it's not enjoyable. Everything feels slightly uncomfortable. And so, you know, you talk about how you can kind of just keep progressing that your body will sort of get strong enough. It, it's not. If you just kind of run a little bit more, I think that you can safely run a little bit more from one week to the next because your cardio will keep up with you. You'll be able to slowly increase your gains in cardio and be able to kind of ramp up your mileage from one week to the next, but eventually you're going to come up to your strength limit. And that's why all the, the training plans that are out there, that's like train for a marathon first, start with running 12, then 13, then 14, then 15 miles. If your body's not strong enough to hit 15, it's not going to magically get there in a month just because you added one extra mile per week. Cardio wise, you'll be fine, but your strength might just not be there.

Angie: 26:00

Well, and that's why so many people that train for marathons in that way get hurt because they don't allow their bodies and their strength to catch up with their cardio and with their, Endurance, right? And they think, Oh, I just need to build endurance. When in most cases, if you talk to a lot of people, the reason that they're having a hard time increasing their distance is often some sort of pain, right? And that's usually what limits most people. It's not usually the breathing. Sometimes it is, don't get me wrong. Right. But there are some people that feel like after I get to a certain point, like I I'm out of breath and that, that's not Um, likelihood you're probably pushing too hard. So go back to the first thing that we talked about, um, in this episode and make your runs easy, slow them down more, and you're, you're going to see a very notable jump in your endurance. But the problem when, with a lot of people, when they try to start increasing mileage is pain because the muscles aren't strong enough or the muscles aren't doing the right job. And that's part of it too. And that's how we become more efficient runners. Is by training our muscles, not only by helping doing exercises to strengthen them, but also teaching them how to turn on and turn off at the appropriate time. And this is where running form drills and these kinds of things come into play because they teach your body how to move more efficiently. When you learn how to move more efficiently, you're wasting less energy and so you have more energy and to run faster and longer. Yeah.

Kevin: 27:24

Yeah. I mean, the, the. Benefit of running drills is a super huge one here because they go like your, your cadence on running drills is super quick and it's because you're not worried about running. You're worried about kind of the speed of it. It gains the muscle coordination that allows you to do all the other running. Like if you can coordinatedly skip with like really quick feet, like bounce off. Uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Like you're, you're landing your turnover. Turnover is the word I'm looking for. If you can skip with very quick turnover, running is going to feel a whole heck of a lot nicer, because you've allowed your muscles to all work in this smooth, coordinated fashion. It's rowing the boat together, is the analogy you love to use so often.

Angie: 28:06

Yeah, or pivot. Or

Kevin: 28:08

pivoting. Lifting the couch is

Angie: 28:10

often where I go to on that one. But I think that's a really important point as well that you make there, is When your muscles when everything is working more efficiently, it's not just when we talk about strength training and mobility work. Yes, your muscles are actually getting stronger when you're doing strength exercises. But part of the other benefit of strength training is that coordination is teaching your body when to have those muscles turn on and when to have them turn off. And there's messages that get sent from the brain down to the muscles. It's called the neuromuscular disorder. Communication or connection. And when we strength train and when we do drills and these types of things, we're strengthening the connection and the communication between the brain and the muscles. So things turn on more quickly. It doesn't take. As long to kind of trigger that response in the body. Does that make sense?

Kevin: 29:00

Yes. And we don't get that neuromuscular adaptation when we're just out on long, easy runs. And so people are like, Oh, well, then I'll just run really hard. And you're like, okay, but you don't have the strength foundation to run really hard. If you try and run hard without the strength, yes, it is going to try and create this neuromuscular adaptation. It's going to be better at sending the signals, but you don't have the core strength. So you're running with really awkward form and you're setting yourself up for injury.

Angie: 29:27

Well, and this is the other reason why, when we talked earlier about, Variety, right? People are always like, I need variety. I need to mix it up. We need to do muscle confusion. That's another big, another big term out there that people like to throw around, which again is not efficient. The best way for you to get stronger is to do the same exercises week after week after week in a four to eight week training block. That's why I kind of default to a six week, four to six weeks. You want to do the same. Exercises. And can that get boring? Yeah. But will it make you more efficient? Will you get better results? Yes. So are you willing to be a little bit bored and not do a different workout every single day? If it's going to give you better results? That's a question that you have to ask yourself, right? So what's more important? And you can answer however you want. No judgment at all. What's more important? Is variety more important to you and doing a different workout every day? Or is your progress more important to you? Because if so, you should do the same strength workout for at least four weeks in a row, both, you know, so say you're doing two days a week of strength training or three days a week of strength training, I mean, Tuesday, all Tuesdays look the same, all Thursdays look the same and say Saturdays look the same, right? Like you have to make sure you're still hitting all the major muscles. I'm not saying you have to do the exact same workout. Strength workout every single time that you strength train, but that cycle needs to look the same. So like, for example, the way that we do it in, um, inside the Real Life Runners Academy, there's usually two to three workouts depending on the goal of that training cycle, two to three strength workouts per week. And so, um, Tuesday is more of like a full body type of workout, and Thursday is more of a core type of, or, of workout. Or, um, Tuesday might be more lower body, uh, Thursday might be more upper body. Like there's a couple, you know, there's a bunch of different circuits that I've created in there. But essentially you're doing those same two or three circuits every single week for four to six weeks straight. You

Kevin: 31:30

also don't have to overthink it. Like every Tuesday is just the same thing and that's fine. All of my Mondays are basically the same run. All of my Sundays are basically the same run. Maybe it's slightly longer, slightly shorter, but they're all the same thing and you get in really good shape. It doesn't have to be crazy variety. Don't mistake variety for consistency.

Angie: 31:50

Well, and also that Really improves your efficiency as well. Like you become a more efficient runner when you know exactly what you're doing every day,

Kevin: 31:58

you don't have

Angie: 31:59

to think about it. You don't have to research it. You don't have to look up the new workout on YouTube and waste time looking up these workouts. When you have a plan that tells you exactly what you need to do every day.

Kevin: 32:08

Yeah, a hundred percent. So that's, that's strength and mobility. I think, do you have anything else in the world of strength and mobility? I have so much

Angie: 32:14

that I want to cover, but I think that. Um, maybe next week we'll do a part two and kind of go a little bit deeper into running form because I think that running efficiently has a lot to do with running form. And I think we'll do a little bit of a deeper dive on that next week or some other time in June,

Kevin: 32:31

perhaps two weeks, one, one to two weeks from now, we're going to deep dive into running form. That's going to be an excellent. So look forward to that one. All

Angie: 32:37

right, let's go to number three.

Kevin: 32:39

Recovery actually allows you to reap the benefits of whatever workouts you've put in so you can continue to build fitness.

Angie: 32:47

So to be, how to become a more efficient runner, part three is make sure you are adding in enough recovery to your week.

Kevin: 32:55

Which seems like it's not going to be efficient. Like if I want to continue to improve I need to continue to hit workouts and that's that's the chat. That's the catch That's where people get caught up. The mistake is well, I have to keep putting more things in I need the next workout and that workout was say a level 7 So my next workout has to be just a little bit harder than that one in the next one has to be a little bit Harder than that one and it doesn't you might get a little bit of short term gains But but you cannot continuously ignore the recovery process. It's not going to work very well. It's going to eventually crumble down on you. This is like pushing too hard all the time. If you, if you never recover, even if it's a lot of what seems like easy, easy days, if there's not enough recovery built in and we'll cover all the varieties of what recovery means, if there's not enough recovery for you, then easy days suddenly start feeling like medium days. Medium days start feeling like hard days and now you're trying to juggle five balls simultaneously.

Angie: 33:53

Okay. So what are we talking about when it comes to recovery? Recovery includes rest days and a rest day means that you don't do any running or any sort of hard workout. You can go out for a walk. You can be active. It does not mean that you have to lie on the couch all day long, right? You can still be an active human, but it means that you're not doing anything strenuous. So that also includes. things like yard work or, um, home projects or something like that, that could be considered physically demanding. A rest day does not include any physically demanding activities, even if it's outside of your normal running and workout schedule.

Kevin: 34:31

Yes, if you're, if you're breathing hard for extended periods of time, that's a workout and that is no longer a rest day. Yeah, whatever it is.

Angie: 34:38

So those are number one rest days. Number two are easy days. So it's when training feels easy. So this would be like a level two type of recovery run. Or a run walk or something like that when you're going out and you're running for a certain amount of time and it feels Easy another example for an easy day for some people might be yoga or doing some mobility work for me That's definitely a more easy day for Kevin He likes to tell me that yoga is not an easy day and that it's a more strenuous day for him

Kevin: 35:05

super strenuous day for Me

Angie: 35:07

so it really depends on you as an individual and how does it feel easy? That's the best way to determine if it's an easy day is Does this work out or does this activity, whatever you're doing, does it feel easy in your body?

Kevin: 35:18

I like, I like watching you do yoga on my rest days. That's, that's how I like to bring yoga into my life. Also in the world of recovery, proper sleep, making sure that you were getting enough sleep and nutrition, making sure that you were getting enough. food into your body. If you skimp on any of these things, the easy days, the rest days, the sleep, the nutrition, any of them is going to hamper your ability to improve efficiently. You're just going to slow the process down because you're not actually going to gain the benefits from whatever workouts you're doing. Whatever the workout is, whether it's a variety of things, it can like a continuous, the same workout again and again, you're not going to get the benefits from them if you don't allow the recovery.

Angie: 35:59

All right. So this just kind of made me think about that saying two steps forward, one step back, like people often throw that out there as soon as I start making progress, something happens to set me back. And what I want you to think about when it comes to recovery is kind of the opposite. It's one step backward and then two steps forward. So kind of like reversing that because during your harder workouts, you are actually breaking your body down. And you are actually taking a step backward. In your level of fitness in your level of strength, all of that, and when you recover, that's going to allow you to take that extra step ahead. So when you're working out, you're actually taking a step backward. And then with the proper rest and recovery, you're going Um, either stepping right back up to where you were, or if you do recovery more effectively, more efficiently, you can step one step ahead. It might be a little step. It might be a bigger step depending on what's going on there, but you want to make sure you're taking one step backward and then two steps forward.

Kevin: 36:59

Yes, I agree with that. I like that one. Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, I just kind

Angie: 37:02

of came up with it right now.

Kevin: 37:04

I'd put it more based off of instead of like one step forward, one step back. Cause that seems that it's, it's like an even balance here. It's, it's percentages and your, your fitness is dropping just a little bit when you work out really hard. So you want to make sure that you cover all of the aspects of recovery so that when you grow back, you can grow back to above your previous starting point. So, you know, if you continuously. Lose a percent and gain one and a half percent. You're gonna grow a lot over time But it's gonna look really really small at the beginning and that's that's where people get caught up in Coming back or in starting off running the beginning is it doesn't look like you're improving very quickly because you're you're not Improving very quickly, but after a few months of consistency, man, have you made some giant leaps,

Angie: 37:49

right? especially if you look backwards and I think that Oftentimes we actually can see some decent wins in the beginning, and then we expect that those wins are just going to continue like that. And then the better we get in shape, the harder it is, I think, to make progress. And the more we want to start switching things up and changing things because we want to see those big gains that we had at the beginning. I think that's what happens for a lot of people. And, uh, It's important for us to know that depending on your current fitness level or your current level of experience or your chronological age and like other things going on in your life, you might need more rest days or more easy days than someone else. And so it might not feel like you're being productive, but you actually are. And I think it's very important. So much of this is mental and we have this idea that we need to be doing something in order to be productive. I will be the first one to raise my hand super high in the air because I, this is one of those beliefs that is very well ingrained in me of like, I need to be doing something in order to be productive or in order to make things worthwhile or to be worthy, which is all a bunch of baloney. And actually it is during the rest that. You build back up that you actually gain the benefits, especially when it comes to working out. And so This can be really hard for those of us that have that mentality of like I need to be doing something Actively doing something in order for me to feel productive for me to feel like I'm moving forward and it's really hard I think to get on board with I actually need to rest more and I need to just take it easy more and That is a huge mental shift that can make a really big physical difference

Kevin: 39:33

All right So what is your suggestion there because I have a thought on people that are really like You Really locked in on that. I have to be, I have to be doing something on a continuous basis. All right.

Angie: 39:44

Tell me your thought and then I'll give you mine.

Kevin: 39:46

Walk.

Angie: 39:46

Yeah. I mean, that's what I've done recently. Actually, I have been incorporating more walking much more like on my strength days when I'm not running, I will go out and I will take a longer walk on my strength days.

Kevin: 39:59

This relates right to what we've got here is You may or may not be able to put strength training and running on the same day. It depends on how hard you're pushing on strength. It depends on your, your comfort with, with running your ability to tune into what an easy run is, because if you're just getting into it, Most runs don't necessarily feel easy. Even the ones that you're like, that was about as easy as I could do. I put some walking breaks into it and I still feel kind of tired. It might not be a great idea to combine strength and running. If you're just getting into strength training, if you've been pushing this off for a while, and maybe this was finally the episode that you're like, all right, fine, I'm doing it. Strength training the first few times that you're going in there and legitimately doing strength training. You're going to be sore and you might not want to go run that day, but if you're like, but my strength training didn't take as long as my run normally takes, I, I need to be able to put in the workout

Angie: 40:54

need.

Kevin: 40:55

Yeah. I, it has to happen,

Angie: 40:57

right? Like I need to spend 45 minutes at the gym or an hour at the gym. This is how much time I spend there.

Kevin: 41:01

Right? One. You could either just try and shift that mindset, or two, walk, I think is, is the safest way. If you can't shift your mind quickly, just walk.

Angie: 41:11

And how funny is it that it's, mindset shifting seems so much harder than an actual physical activity.

Kevin: 41:19

I don't want to change my mind. I'd rather go for 30 minutes.

Angie: 41:22

It's true though. I think for so, so many of us, I know that like, I, I, I get it. Like I'm a coach, I've done so much work, you know, when it comes to psychology and mental training and personal development and, um, you know, getting patients better results and all sorts of things. And there's such a huge mental component, but that does not mean it's easy. Like in theory, it is like, Oh, just start thinking something else or just choose a different thought. But. It is definitely not that easy, especially when. It is very deeply ingrained. It is a deeply held belief that you might not even know that you have.

Kevin: 41:55

Right, and habits are difficult to break. So if you have a habit of running six days out of the week, and now you're going to start incorporating a strength routine, and you're super sore after you did the strength thing, you're like, okay, but I still have to get my run in. And you don't. You don't have to. You could just tell yourself, no, I don't. But that's going to think about you. Feel super, super awkward because you've built that habit and habits are hard to change. So my suggestion is if you can't come around to flipping your mindset quickly, Replace the run with a walk. You're still in the shoes. You're still out and doing the thing. You're still spending the time, but you're going to actually allow your body enough recovery, and then you might even be able to enjoy a snack and take in some nutrition during the, during the walk.

Angie: 42:36

Yeah. Or if you're someone that is normally used to running faster. Maybe a run walk. Maybe it's too much for you right now, especially if at the beginning of all of this to go from a run all the way to a walk, maybe you just start a run walk so that you're running easy for a couple of minutes and then you take a walking break for a couple of minutes and then so that you're still getting a little bit of running in but not as much as you would on a normal run day.

Kevin: 43:01

Yes, excellent. So I think that was a nice way that we covered whether you're allowed to run every day or you have to take an off day.

Angie: 43:08

Oh wait, I mean, did we actually, we didn't actually cover that topic though.

Kevin: 43:13

All right. So I think that, I think a weekly rest day is important. I don't think that it's mandatory. I think that depending on how your schedule works out, and this is where I think that we're still going to be on, on the same page with each other. If you look at your schedule and you're like, all right, normally I take either Saturday or Sunday off, but. But I'm looking at what's coming on Monday and Tuesday and it does not fit my schedule. Monday is not going to be a run day. I think it's okay if you end up running seven days in a row and you run through the weekend even though one of those days is normally off for you.

Angie: 43:47

Okay, so you're talking about seven days in a row but then would you take the eighth day off?

Kevin: 43:52

Right.

Angie: 43:52

Okay. So, but that's not, to me, that's not the same thing as running every day. Like there are people out there that need to run quote unquote, need to run every single day because then they think that they, that's the way for them to make progress. Like we've had clients where it's been very difficult to convince them to take an off day.

Kevin: 44:11

We have some streakers on the team actually. And I fundamentally disagree with the concept, but of running streaks. Yes, but I. I love that client dearly. Very special person. Um, and we've got on board of, okay, to continue the streak, whatever it is, when your feet, when you need your quote unquote off day, because to me, this is still an off day. It's going to be a 10 to 15 minute run, walk, mile. And that's what we've accepted and compromised as an off day. So it's a run walk? Yeah. Right. Sometimes, sometimes it's a run. Sometimes, but it's a mile and that's become the off day. And I, I still Is it

Angie: 44:52

ever just a walk?

Kevin: 44:53

Nnnnno. Okay. No,

Angie: 44:55

it

Kevin: 44:56

is not.

Angie: 44:58

And

Kevin: 44:59

I, and here's the thing. We all have to come up with whatever makes, makes sense for us. Yeah. And. end. For some people, they've got to go out and they do whatever the thing is every day because the run streak matters to them. And people that have created a run streak have a value to it. And I'm not going to tell anybody that that, that value is not important. If you've created the importance of the run streak, whatever it is, if you are going to continue the run streak through like surgery, we may have an issue.

Angie: 45:32

Right. Because then it's a matter of. What's really good for you or not, right? Like if it's a thing with actual health implications, it's a different story. I mean, I agree. I don't, I inherently disagree also with run streaks because I think that they, for a lot of people, that's kind of the point, right? Is like, I love if there's something that can help you like obtain or, um, established consistency, but it's very much. That fine line and as long as you're thinking about it the right way, that's the key because a lot of people will slide into that all or nothing mentality of like, if I just miss one day, then everything has gone wrong and it's all, all my progress is wasted. Like people get very bent out of shape. And if you're, So it is kind of a fine line to walk. I will say that I, I typically don't recommend run, run streaks.

Kevin: 46:30

I had one going for a while and then

Angie: 46:32

I

Kevin: 46:33

stopped and it did not phase me when I stopped. I thought it was, I thought it was going to like really make me feel uncomfortable and it, it didn't.

Angie: 46:42

And I think that it's also like, I like to move my body every day. It's just something that makes my body feel better. If I sit around and don't do much during the day, I noticed that my body is more stiff and more sore. I like daily movement, but again, that doesn't mean I have to get in a workout, a quote unquote workout every day. And I think that's the difference. No, at that point, I usually

Kevin: 47:00

suggest that you do yoga so I can watch. All right. So I think that we've, we've covered and do generally have agreement on running every single day. Neither one of us agree that you should run every day, but sometimes some exceptions have to be made that you end up. Getting seven days of running during the week, not at a, at a nowhere. Like if you're running consistently six days every once in a while, it's going to be a seventh, but then you fit in like an extra weird off day on a different day because it fits your schedule.

Angie: 47:29

All right. So let's move on to talking a little bit about fueling and nutrition and hydration, because all of those things also play a role when it comes to the amount of recovery that you're getting. Because. I'm just touching on this. We're not going in details again. Maybe this is part three of our series. Like maybe this is going to be, maybe this is going to be like a running efficiently series where we can go into some more details, but as a general overview, no matter what you do, however, whatever level you are currently training at, if you are not fueling your body for the activities that you're doing, you're not going to get the results plain and simple. And this is a very, very important thing. Key and crucial principle that we've even been trying to teach our young daughters, you know, like, The, our kids are 11 and 14. And so they're kind of getting into that adolescent teenage, those teenage years. Things are interesting in a lot of different ways. And I don't want my kids to have any sort of complexes around food. I may be failing at that. I don't know, because I do want them to eat healthy, but really the, the approach that we've been taking with them is helping them figure out how to fuel their body and nourish their body. More effectively so that they feel good. And that's really what I like to focus on is do you feel good? Right? Like one of our daughters, actually, both of them are very sensitive to heat. And if they don't take in enough water and enough electrolytes, it can, they get really bad headaches. And so if that is the case, Making you feel bad. What can we do to help not make that happen? Right? And that's where fueling comes in. Same thing with our running. If you are putting in the work, but you're not fueling your body, that stinks because then you're not going to get the results. It's so, so, so important to give your body the building blocks that it needs to build back stronger during that recovery period.

Kevin: 49:23

Right. And at no point in time during any of that, did you talk about macro nutrients? Like it's important that you take in a sufficient amount of fuel and it needs to be a sufficient amount for the activities that you're putting forth. It starts with daily nutrition. Your daily nutrition is the most important thing that on a regular consistent day in day out basis, you are eating food. That's really, that's what it comes down to. It's not like, well, I'm not running today, so I'm going to eat less today. No, you need to, you need to eat on a regular basis, consistent, good food. And then you need to be sure that you're drinking enough water on a regular, consistent day in, day out basis.

Angie: 50:01

Yeah. And there's people that are like, oh, I'm too busy. I forgot to eat lunch or I forgot to bring lunch with me. So I'm just going to like grab something. This. All of that affects you, right? And that's just really what we want you to understand, is that your food choices affect the way that you feel and the way that you perform. And so, eat whatever way you want. As long as it makes your body feel good, and if your body's not feeling good, and if you're not getting the results, that's one of the first places that I like to look, is really at your nutrition. Because I think that this is a place where there's, again, so much information out there, so many shiny objects, so many new diets or supplements or all of these things out there that claim to be, The key to better recovery or to better performance when in reality, they're just shiny objects. And if you just ate more food or ate higher quality food, got more of a variety of nutrients and things that your body needs, you would probably be making more money. better progress. I

Kevin: 50:59

mean, some of them are shiny objects. Some of them are small pills and some of them are like green shakes. They're not all shiny. Some of them are green. Um, but yeah, so daily nutrition, like what you're eating throughout the entire day matters. Hydration matters all the time and mid workout fueling, which is usually connected to the shiny object. Like what are you having? Right before, right after, or even during the workout. Mid workout fueling really only matters if the workouts are super long or strenuous. Like if you're going over an hour or pushing really hard or both, then mid workout fueling matters.

Angie: 51:31

But it can help no matter how long your workout is.

Kevin: 51:33

Also true. But it's not a magic bullet that there is only one possible way to fuel during the workout or right after the workout. There's just not, there are lots of healthy, successful ways to fuel before, during, and after, as long as you are overall getting in enough fuel.

Angie: 51:50

Yeah. And you might need a supplement, right? I'm not sitting here telling you that all supplementation is bad because a lot of our, the way that our food. Is processed nowadays. Like we're just definitely not enough time for us to go into the food industry and those kinds of maybe part three, maybe or four. Like, so, but yes. Um, so you might need a supplement, right? There's a lot of vitamins that a lot of people and athletes are deficient in. I know that. I take, uh, a daily multivitamin. I take vitamin D because I've been vitamin D deficient for years, for decades, basically, um, because of the way that my body processes vitamin D or, and it's funny because I live in Florida, so I get plenty of sunlight. Um, and I also take an iron supplement because of other, you know, health issues that I have. Female issues that makes me iron deficient sometimes, especially at a certain time of the month. I don't know if that's TMI for you, but I want to be real with you guys to help you understand that not all supplementation is bad. Like sometimes supplements are really good and I, when I was anemic and I, before I realized that I had an iron deficiency, I felt tired all the time. My workouts felt awful. It didn't matter what I was eating. I did not have enough iron in my body. So there was not. Oxygen getting to my working muscles, right? Like I couldn't have corrected people might argue with me and and say that I could have corrected it by diet But my iron deficiency was too significant to correct by diet alone And so I needed to have an extra supplement because that's going to help replenish the red blood cells in my body and to help strengthen those red blood cells, but a topic for another time. So not all supplements are bad. Just make sure that you are also doing the things like drinking enough water, making sure you're fueling your body well in order to give your body the building blocks for recovering and from building back stronger after your workouts. And if that does include some supplementation, that's okay too.

Kevin: 53:44

Excellent. Just

Angie: 53:44

don't rely on it.

Kevin: 53:45

Alright, on your, on your building blocks, that's my metaphor here, is if you're trying to build a wall, you can't just keep bringing bricks. Eventually, you're gonna run out of mortar. So, you can't just keep throwing workouts at yourself and be like, well, if I just keep doing the workouts, I'm going to do great. No, no, no. You have to focus. Fuel the workouts. You have to provide fuel before and after and possibly during. You need the mortar, otherwise you just have a pile of bricks. You didn't actually create a wall. Throwing workout after workout after workout does not do anything. It just creates a giant pile of bricks, which might be what your muscles start feeling like if you don't ever fuel them appropriately.

Angie: 54:21

Good one. Thank you. Way to hook that in there. All right, so Again, this was hopefully a general overview at the three main ways for you to become a more efficient runner and it looks like we're going to be creating some more episodes to go into. Some more details about these three areas.

Kevin: 54:39

It's like the summer movie industry now. We're just gonna start creating sequels

Angie: 54:43

But it's good though And I think that it is important and it is going to be I think we do need to do an episode like on supplementation because it is like there are supplements out there that have good research behind them that have been shown to improve your performance as a supplement though not as a replacement for Right. Exactly. All right, you guys, if you found this episode helpful, please leave us a review over on Apple podcasts, share it with a friend. Word of mouth is really the best way, um, to help that you could help us grow this podcast so that we can help more runners to feel better and to achieve their, their running goals and to also just become stronger in their life in general. So as always, thanks for being here. This is the Real Life Runners Podcast episode number 362. Now get out there and run your life.