Real Life Runners with Angie and Kevin Brown
Angie and Kevin Brown are here to help real life runners to improve their running and their life through conversations about training, mindset, nutrition, health and wellness, family, and all the crazy things that life throws at us. The lessons that we learn from running can carry over into all aspects of our life, and we are here to explore those connections through current research, our experiences, and stories from real people out on the roads and trails, so that you can become a physically and mentally stronger runner and achieve the goals that matter to you. We are Kevin and Angie Brown, husband and wife, mom and dad, coaches, and runners. Angie holds her doctorate degree in physical therapy and uses running as part of her integrated fitness routine. Kevin is a marathoner who has been coaching runners for over a decade. Together, we want to help make running more accessible to more people, so that more people can gain the benefits of being a Real Life Runner.
Real Life Runners with Angie and Kevin Brown
370: Small Details, Big Impact
What are small details that don’t take a lot of time but make a big difference when done over time? Today we are talking about those things. We draw an analogy to deep cleaning our house, relating it to how small changes and consistent habits in training can significantly impact performance over time. We discuss the integration of mobility work, fueling correctly, and incorporating strides into a workout routine. These 'unsexy' details, though seemingly minor, are crucial for long-term improvement and overall well-being. We encourage you to embrace these small actions to enhance your running results and feeling of wellness.
01:11 Unsexy Details
05:07 The Big Rocks and Small Details Metaphor
06:56 Small Changes with Big Impacts
08:57 The Role of Mobility and Strength
13:36 Incorporating Drills and Mobility into Your Routine
18:52 The Importance of Consistency and Habit Stacking
21:22 The Compound Effect of Small Actions
34:35 The Power of Small Acts in Training and Life
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Welcome to the real life runners podcast, episode number 370.
Angie:Today we're talking about some of those little details that often tend to get ignored or skipped or sometimes we don't even think about because they don't make a huge impact on our training that we can see right away. But today we want to talk about how ignoring or omitting some of those details can really start to add up over time. So we want to talk about what you need to include in your training plan. You want to make sure, um, if you're not doing these things, you want to start to add some of these things in. And if These things are in your plan. Make sure that you're not skipping them on a regular basis because you are going to notice the fallout later down the road. So if you're wondering what those things are, stay tuned. What's up runners. Welcome to the show today. Kevin did the outline for this podcast and he named it unsexy details because this Podcast was inspired by cleaning our house. And yesterday we were doing some cleaning around the house cause we are taking a trip and I personally like to come home to a clean house, you know, if, especially when you're gone, it's always nice to come home, but if you come home to a dirty house, it's kind of like, Oh, now I got to clean, right? So I, I'm the kind of person that does like to kind of clean up before the trip. So we were doing some things around the house and Kevin was doing some of the cleaning that. Often gets neglected. So come kind of some, uh, um, the things that people would call deep cleaning maybe. Um, and when I walked out, I was working on something laundry or vacuuming or something. And Kevin was dusting the fan and I was like, Oh, heck yes. We are dusting fans around here today. That is, that is. The level that we're going to,
Kevin:well, I have to dust the fan. I'm the only person over five, three in the house. So dusting fans is my job, but, um, you're more focused on making sure that things are cleaned on a regular basis. And so since I'm the one that does fans, they don't always. Get dusted on a weekly or monthly basis. They sometimes it happens a couple
Angie:times a year. Would you sure?
Kevin:You know when clusters of dust start falling from them, then you got to dust the fans But that's that's what sort of inspired this episode You were not vacuuming because I was dusting because the vacuum had died, right?
Angie:I was not vacuuming. What was I working on yesterday? I don't know, but I was cleaning our bathroom.
Kevin:That's why I was dusting everything because The vacuum had died. So I was going around and dusting all of the places that you can't really reach, but you know, you should still dust,
Angie:but you can't see them like on a regular basis.
Kevin:Right. The top of a fan blade. Yeah. No one's looking at that. The top of picture frames that are high enough that we can't see the top of the frame. They still need to get dusted. They still have this buildup of stuff on them. Mm-Hmm. But it's real easy to ignore them and be like, well, everything. looks clean. And I think that there's similar aspects in different parts of our training that we can be like, well, everything looks like it's fine. And so it, I'm sure my training plan is going smoothly.
Angie:Yeah. And I think that this is important for us to think about. And I, and I love that you kind of pulled that in here because It's the truth. We oftentimes think about the bigger things in our training plan. Well, I'm doing my runs, I'm getting my strength training in, so I'm good. And we sometimes neglect some of those smaller details that if they keep getting neglected, that That dust and that grime is going to build up in those areas, and it's going to affect how you feel and how you perform. It's just not going to affect it on a daily or a weekly basis, and I think that that's where the big thing comes in here is, it's not these things that you just, you notice all the time.
Kevin:Yeah, but it is still some stuff that is clearly going to have impacts on you. And some of it, if you're not adding these details to it, it's really low hanging fruit, like it's easy to do. It does not take me a long amount of time to go dust the fan. It's just. Also remarkably easy to ignore and that's the kind of stuff that we're covering here.
Angie:Yeah. There's only a couple of fans in the house. So even if we did, if you did those on a regular basis, it would take you what? 10 minutes to do all of the fans in the whole house. So it doesn't have to take a crazy amount of time. It's the same thing. With the things that we're going to be talking about today. These are not huge things that you need to be adding into your plan. You know, a lot of times we talk about those really big pieces that we can't leave out of our training plan. These are the little pieces that will not only help you perform better, but will also help you feel better. And they don't take a lot of time. They don't take a lot of effort, and it's just going to make your whole experience and just the way that your body feels in general, so much better.
Kevin:Alright, so I think we had a, an episode, I don't know, a hundred, two hundred episodes ago where we talked about putting the large rocks in first. There's a whole story about it, about like, the professor takes out a big glass jar and then puts big rocks in and he's like, is it full? And all the students are like, yeah, it's full. And then he takes like pebbles and he puts them in. He's like, now is it full? And they're like, uh, yeah. And then he takes out like sand and he pours it in and you just keep putting smaller and smaller things, but it wouldn't work if you started with the sand first. You have to put. The big rocks in first. We had a whole podcast on this. This is sort of like, well, yes, in that like metaphor of life. You have to make sure that you're able to take care of the big rocks that they have to fit in first. But imagine that your body is this glass jar. If your step one is to just start dropping big giant rocks in the bottom of it, the jar is going to crack. Okay, it actually is not the worst idea to start with a small layer of sand. Don't fill it up with tiny details. Don't spend your entire life chasing the 1%. Oh, maybe this thing is the magic fix. It's not. You have to focus on the big rocks, but there is some small details that will in fact matter. If you line the jar with a little sand at the bottom before you drop in your big rock, it's not cracking.
Angie:Well, and or you can put it in a lot more gently. You don't have to drop it in. You can just gently place the rock into the jar. And I think that that's one of the things that we sometimes get wrong too, right? Because oftentimes when we want to get in better shape or we want to kind of do these big things, we just jump in feet first. Dup two feet first and we're like, okay, great. I'm going to go from not working out at all to train for a marathon. Right. So I'm going to slam that first rock back into that jar. And that's when things start to crack.
Kevin:Yeah. The ever popular couch to marathon training plan or, you know, January at the gym. Um, so this leads perfectly into the first point of. There are some small changes that you can make to your training routine that are actually going to have some pretty decent, broad reaching impact. Before you start trying to put the rock back in, is you don't have to make huge changes. Like, you don't have to be like, well, I've been running 10 miles a week, I should probably start running 30 if I want to start training for that marathon. It all needs to be Small little steps and you know, the thing with running, running is a very impact sport. And so there are physical limitations on how much your body is going to let you do. So one of the things that people try and do when they're like, Oh, I want to make some improvements is they look at how many more miles they can put in. They look at increasing the intensity of their runs. Those are like the two big, clear, giant rocks that you can look at and be like, All right, these are my main two levers that I can pull. I can put more miles and I can put more intensity, but both of those are going to put more beat up on your body. Okay. So with running being such an impact sport, it's different than cycling. Like you can drastically increase the volume in cycling because it's not going to beat your body up as much as the pounding that running does. So people think, okay, well, I'm just going to start adding in some extra miles, miles, and that's going to have some big impact. What if instead of adding 10 to 15 minutes of running onto all the end of your runs, what if you spent that time and took care of your body instead of beating it up with a, you know, 10 to 15 extra minutes of running? What if you started like some mobility work, some running drills, some dynamic stretching routine that you've worked out? And really help that mobility kind of be a cool down at the end of your run that helps you transition into this sort of recovery phase post workout. That could also have huge benefits for you without having to think, alright, well my only tool here is to increase my mileage or increase intensity.
Angie:Yeah. And I mean, you said one of the magic words over there for me, which is mobility. You know, we really need to think about our body as a whole. And I think sometimes as runners, we get so focused, hyper focused even on the mileage or the paces or the distance, well, distances and mileage are the same thing, unless you're in the, uh, the other parts of the world that use kilometers. But we think about the distance and the speeds and the time that we're out there. And we forget about some of these. Levers that Kevin's talking about that can have a massive impact on the way that we both perform and more importantly I would argue the way that we feel because kind of going back like as Runners, it can be sometimes easy to Start to focus just on the numbers. Like we get into running because we want to get stronger. We want to, um, challenge ourselves. We want to get healthier. There's lots of different reasons that we first, first start running. And then we realized, Oh, look at all these numbers that I can. Focus on and look at all these numbers that I can track and work to improve and we start to Look at those numbers and sometimes we can get overly focused on those numbers and just think okay Well if I want to run longer That means I just need to spend more time running or I just need to get faster because if I can run faster Then I can cover more distance in the same amount of time And if your body is not prepared for that training load that you want to actually get Add to it. That's going to lead to injury. And that's why over 80 percent of runners end up injured at some point in their running career because they're applying a training load to their body that their body's not ready to handle yet. And that's really what some of these smaller details can help to do is to help prepare your body for injury. to accept a bigger training load so that if you do want to add distance or add speed, your body's not going to get injured in the process. And so we need to do things like mobility work and strength work to help Build a stronger foundation so that our body's better prepared to do some of those things that we want to do
Kevin:All right, so in the whole idea of mobility and strength training I I think depending on how that strength training looks it can actually slide into the world of mobility work like if you put calf raises or Step ups at the end of your run You could argue that that's somewhat, uh, that is strength work. Like you're definitely putting some exercise, but if you put like body weight, calf raises and body weight, step ups onto like not a crazy tall bench, you're gaining some strength out of this, some like underlying foundational strength that you don't have, like you could do that. Essentially every time you go run you could close your run out with step ups or calf raises or both as part of a Mobility routine even more so than like strength. It wouldn't replace an actual strength workout It could just be this extra thing that you add on to just say Not like raise the ceiling of strength but but raise the floor is really what you're doing with that by putting the strength in on a regular basis and And I mean step ups that's It's definitely going to help improve your cat, your like hip mobility. I, I know at the end of some runs, I'm like, Ooh, I'm not sure if I could step up onto that bench. Even it's like, it's a foot and a half off the ground and I'm like, Ooh, but I don't think I've got the movement in my hip to do it. I got the strength to do it, but I'm not sure my hip will swing all the way that much.
Angie:Yeah. So I think that a lot of times strength exercises can be used as mobility exercises. It's really, again, about the load that we're. Um, choosing to do those exercises with and load is both weight slash resistance and repetitions. So the number of repetitions is that that adds up into your training load and also the amount of weight that you're trying to push. So if you're doing a body weight exercise and when I say body weight, it means no weight at all. It just, it just means just the weight of your body that I wanted to clarify because I use that term in one of my classes this week and Um, one of my, um, clients thought that I meant when, when I said start with body weight, she thought that I meant like start with lifting the amount of weight that she currently weighs. So like, she's like, I weigh 60 kilograms, I, I'm currently squatting, you know, 55 or whatever it is. And I was like, no, no, no, no, that's not what I meant at all. You know, I meant. Just squat without any added weight, just the weight that's already on your body. Okay. So that's what I mean when I, when we say body weight exercises. So things like step ups, like Kevin said, um, calf raises. I mean, we can go into mobility types of drill, uh, exercises as well, but running drills are a great thing to incorporate after a run or both or before a run. And these only take about five minutes. This is the thing that's so important. It's one of, you know, when we are, what we're going to be talking about in today's episode does not take a lot of extra time. And if you are someone that's crunched on time. It is going to be more beneficial for you to stop your run five minutes earlier so that you can get in a couple of mobility drills or some running drills rather than trying to get every last minute out on your run.
Kevin:But it's all a matter of where you're moving minutes. Like I've been increasing my miles and trying to make sure that I can continue doing drills after most of my runs. You don't have to refine drills and be like, well, I do running drills on Wednesdays. Like it doesn't have, you could put running drills after all of your runs. There's no overdoing it on running drills. Like it's, it's different than we've talked about, like mobility versus flexibility. There are people that are like hyper mobile mobility drills, like running drills, marching and butt kicks and stuff like that is not going to overdo it for you.
Angie:Well, and most people are not going to be spending an hour doing these things.
Kevin:That's the thing is. You're putting this in as like a little five minute routine afterwards. And I've been trying to figure out, all right, where can I just gain five minutes from this, like, do I need to wake up five minutes earlier? Because that could send me down a path that I don't really like where I start losing sleep. Like, but. But if I wake up five minutes earlier, but I also go to bed five minutes earlier, it's all coming out in the wash. And it's only five minutes. And that's why it's easy to move the schedule around. Like I could add in mobility and increase my run by a little bit without having to be like, well, now I don't have time for my mobility drills because it's just a few minutes that you're able to move things around.
Angie:Right. And again, I like to go back to it. This is more about. Are more than just performance. Yes, adding in mobility and drills and these kinds of things will help your performance, but it's also just going to help your body feel better on a daily basis, especially if you're someone that goes out for a workout and then sits at a desk all day long, adding immobility is extremely important. And I would argue that you could even, well, I shouldn't say. Okay. So what I do want to say is yes, the five minutes of mobility after a run is, is important to kind of help your body cool down and kickstart some of those adaptations that you want your body to make. I also think that we can find five minutes at multiple other times during our day that we can add in some of these very basic mobility types of drills or strength maintenance types of exercises to help you. Help improve the stiffness, help improve our overall strength and mobility. It helps to wake up like ourselves just on a regular basis to move and change position. Like these are all just really good things to help our body feel better. As a whole, because if you feel better and if your body's able to just move more, move more smoothly, you're going to be able to run better as well.
Kevin:I would argue that most people listening to this could find five to ten minutes or five minutes twice during their workday that they could put in for Mobility drills.
Angie:Multiple times per day.
Kevin:Because the people that you're working with already think of you as that weird runner. So if you add in mobility drills in the middle of your day, no one is going to give it a second thought. They've already established that you're the weird one. If I started marching from my classroom to the front office to go make copies, no one would question it at all.
Angie:I mean, they would. They would definitely judge you.
Kevin:I mean they're high school students, I don't think my co workers would give me a lot of judgment. Oh, okay. The high school students are judging me 24, um, not 24 7, but from the moment I step on campus. That's how they're From 7 3. Yes, that is how they are programmed. Yeah. So, yeah, that's what it is.
Angie:But we can all find little times of our day where we can just stand up and sit down five to ten times. Like, I know, like you said, people might look at you kind of funny the first couple of times that you do it, but then they'll just be like, yep, she's doing her thing again. And you know what? You'd probably inspire other people to start doing some of those things too. Like, Because people are going to probably ask you like if you live or if you work in like an office or a cubicle where multiple people are seeing you and what you're doing on a daily basis or on a hourly basis, people are going to probably ask you what's going on and you can just say, Oh, like I'm just, I'm standing up and sitting down because it helps my knees feel better. It helps my hips feel better. It helps my lower back feel better. Guess what? You might see a couple of those people starting to do those same things too, because chances are they're probably you next time. stiff and sore and, you know, maybe feeling like they should be moving a little bit more too. So not only can you be helping yourself, you could be helping other people. And for those of us that work at home, which tends to be a greater. Percentage of the population now Nobody's judging you except your dog and your dog just wants to love you. Anyway,
Kevin:yeah, they're gonna lick you regardless Hopefully your co workers are not doing that. My dog's
Angie:gonna be like is it time for a walk?
Kevin:Yeah, now you said the word and now this is gonna make it difficult for the whole rest of the podcast She's
Angie:still asleep over there. We're good.
Kevin:All right, perfect So in this whole idea of these small things that we can do one of the other things I wanted to cover is You People sometimes will either stay in a routine and not really make changes, or they'll make such drastic changes that they're not sustainable. And we're talking about adding in 5 to 10 minutes of mobility. If you really want to start increasing your mileage, Then that's a, that's a place to go also, but you don't have to make giant increases. It needs to be a slow increase in, in mileage and intensity and whatever you're doing. That doesn't seem like it's making a big difference at first because it will, like, it's going to start making a big difference. You just need a long enough timeline to see it. Like the, the classic metaphor of this is start investing money early. Like what's the saying in investing? The best time to invest with. Five years ago, and the second best time is now like as as early as you can get invested The longer money can be invested in whatever the thing is and the more growth that you can get So if you really do want to start increasing mileage start small start with small little increments Don't go from I'm running through my 30 minutes and now suddenly I have to be doing 45 and the next week I'm at 60. And like, no, no, no, that's way too fast of a ramp up. Make it nice and easy so that it is sustainable. And then at the end of a year, look back and see how massive of gains you've already made.
Angie:Yeah. Another example that I think about is drinking water, you know, like it's one of those things that drinking water, I mean, I think that. Um, I can tell a difference when I drink water, when I'm well hydrated and not, um, well hydrated, especially, um, like on a daily basis, like if I don't drink enough water, I sometimes get headaches, right? So there is that immediate effect and there is that immediate payoff of drinking water and helping my body feel better. But it's compounded over time for sure, because if we are chronically dehydrated, there's a lot of issues that can develop, you know, a lot more joint stiffness, a lot of, um, Other issues in the body that can be caused by chronic dehydration. So even though it might not be something that we notice if we're slightly deficient on water on a daily basis, it is something that can add up over time.
Kevin:Yeah. And that's the issue is it's such a slight dehydration. I mean, it's South Florida over the summer, so I guarantee that I'm at least slightly dehydrated right now, but I can't notice it. Like I've been drinking a ton of water this morning after my long run. And I, I feel. Pretty good, but I'm sure that I'm still slightly dehydrated and if I didn't continue to drink water for the rest of the day I would start noticing this issue tomorrow and the next day and the next day it would continue, you know Taking me towards a negative path which kind of leads into the second point here is these sort of unsexy acts add up like if you are skipping out on small details of your training plan or You're skipping out on small details of like an overall healthy lifestyle like this drinking enough water throughout the day, it's going to lead to soreness and fatigue. Eventually, that's going to add up and lead to possible actual injury. You're just, you're going to fall short of what is potential inside of you, and running is not going to feel great all the time if you just kind of keep skipping out on little details, like, that don't seem super apparent. Like, you know, Uh, cleaning up the fan or, you know, dusting the top of the shelves. It's tough to see those, but we still have to put them into our lives. We still have to take care of ourselves throughout the entire day.
Angie:Yeah, because we don't see the immediate fallout if we don't do it, right? Like if we don't do a strength session, it's not like you get weaker that day or even that week. It's going to take some time for you to notice. Some of those strength losses and strength losses can actually come kind of quickly, especially as we get older You're gonna notice decreases in strength more quickly if you stop doing your strength workouts we're gonna also notice decreases in our speed if we Stop doing higher in speed work as well but We don't see those things right away, right? And so it's easy to sometimes skip them or neglect them. And then once we start it, sometimes we get into the habit of skipping those things. And that's where it becomes problematic,
Kevin:right? You can get in the habit, but here's the thing with, with strength and running, like, you know, that you've got a training routine. If you've got some general plan laid out in front of you, it should have running days and strength days at a minimum. And if you're like, Oh, I just, I wasn't feeling it. So I skipped that run or I missed that strength. The, you know, it, you know, that you missed that. There are some other details that don't necessarily make it onto all the training plans, because if you put in all of the different activities that you could include in a training plan, it looks like you have 50 things to do that day. And it's like, well, it goes back to what we were talking about, about mobility. You could put certain mobility drills onto. Every single workout day whether it's a run day or a strength day You could have mobility added in there, but your schedule is gonna look crazy overwhelming So, you know, it's like when, when we tell the girls, well, we need you to clean the bathroom. You could list out all of the steps, but then it looks massively overwhelming. The same thing works with a training plan. There are some obvious things that should go on there about like your miles and how much strength training you're going to put in there. But there's some background stuff, fueling your body appropriately, working on some mobility drills, strides. Some plans have strides clearly put on there, but you could add strides a few times during the week Even if they're not listed on the day It's going to have this big benefit to you Even if it's not directly listed on the plan because it doesn't take up a huge amount of time So maybe it doesn't seem worth it worthwhile to list.
Angie:Yeah. So I do think that it is helpful to list these things out for yourself. And we talked about that in last week's episode of looking at all of the little pieces and making that full list and taking stock of all the different variables that can affect your training and then kind of figuring out. What variables you want to change or keep the same or edit or enhance, like, so if you, if you missed, um, actually this episode is going to come out a couple of weeks after that, but I think it's episode number three 67, go back and listen to that episode where we talk about training variables, um, and the difference between changes and enhancements, but when you're kind of at the beginning, it can be really helpful to list all of these things out. Like you, um, yeah. Um, talked about asking the girls to clean the bathroom when they were younger and learning how to, to do that task, I did have to list every single step. You know, I had to remind them that they needed to clean the mirror and you have to use this spray with a paper towel to clean the mirror. And if you, then you have to clean the counter and you have to use this spray with a cloth or a paper towel to clean the counter. And then you have to do the toilet and then there's the bathtub and like, these are the sprays that you use and these are the different. Cloths or paper towels that you use and you had to I had to list out and give them a lot of details at the beginning and now You know, the one, the older one always tends to, to do the bathroom because that's the, the chore that she doesn't mind as much as all the other chores. And so when she does it now, she knows all those steps. I don't have to remind her every single time of all of the little details because all of that is kind of wrapped up in go, please go clean the bathroom. And so when we think about, please go out and go, Do your run. It doesn't necessarily mean just go out and run. It means go out and warm up, which could be an easy jog plus five minutes of some hip swings and dynamic mobility work. And then you go out for your run like that can just be something that Gets tacked on to what you're already doing. It doesn't have to be this additional thing in your mind. It's just like, Oh, well, this has just become a part of my run, or this has just become a part of what I do before my speed workout,
Kevin:right? What's the term out of atomic habits is habit stacking. Yes. All right, so I started and I know that if I'm going to go for my run, I tie my shoes and the thing that I do right after I tie my shoes is I do this set of hip swings. Like maybe that's just that's how the routine goes. If you want to put mobility work on the back end of a run, You know that when you finish your run, now I'm going to push this button on my, on my watch, and then I'm going to hold on. I finished my run at the mailbox in front of my house, and then I use the mailbox for support as I do a set of hip swings, or I now am going to go from the mailbox to that tree, and I'm going to do this set of running drills. It's it just naturally follows. It's the next thing. It's how you sort of conclude the running exercise instead of having this giant break. You just put it right there and and you start stacking your habits together.
Angie:Yeah, and it can be something really simple. Like instead of ending your run and then walking to your front door, you can do high marches to your front door or you can do butt kicks to your front door. Like I know again, Mhm. Accept the fact that your neighbors already think that you are the crazy runner and they're like, what is this person doing? They're just gonna like shrug their shoulders. Maybe you'll give them a little giggle and that's it That's a beautiful thing.
Kevin:Or maybe they'll, you know, start running and if they do, then recommend this podcast to them. That's what I was going to say earlier. If, if you are doing sit to stand in the middle of your office and somebody starts joining you, definitely recommend the podcast because they're going to fit into the community perfectly.
Angie:Exactly. So we understand that adding some of these things in is going to make a difference. And it's one of those things that you're not going to see right away. Most likely. But I mean, I would say that you are going to start feeling better pretty quickly. Like you are, once you start doing mobility work, you are going to notice the difference within like a week or two. It doesn't have to be this long thing that you're like, Oh, here I am just like stacking the bricks and I'm not going to feel the benefits of this for like another year, you're going to start, like, if you add in some new things, you are going to start feeling. The benefits, if you skip out on things, I think it's, it is going to paint on what you're skipping. It might be a little bit longer for you to start to see some of the negative consequences, but they will show up. The question is, will you recognize them when they start to show up? Because sometimes if we are something, if we are someone that is constantly ignoring mobility. We might not think about, Oh, it's because I'm not doing my drills or I'm not doing my mobility. It could show up in your body just as soreness or as stiffness. If you're not someone that has a habit yet of fueling right after your workout and starting to put food into your body to refuel yourself, that might start showing up as fatigue. So it's like some of these signs that show up, they might be. You might not realize that that's what's actually leading to you feeling that way. It might just be like, Oh, well, it just must be that I'm getting older, right? Like, Oh, I'm starting to be more sore and more stiff because I'm getting older. Is it that or is it because you've actually been skipping out on your mobility work?
Kevin:Right. Cause if, if you're sore after a run and this compounds, like they all are connected to each other. If you're pushing your run too much so that you're sore afterwards, then you're not doing mobility work. That soreness is going to easily lead to stiffness because you're not getting in the mobility work afterwards. And then you compound that with not fueling appropriately. So your body's not building back correctly. You're going to feel super stiff, sore and fatigued when you head out on your next run. And you're going to be like, Oh man, I pushed it too hard. Right. And maybe your conclusion stops there. Like, oh, I pushed too hard. The super trendy thing right now, everybody needs to be running L2. Like, that's what everybody's pushing on the social media. And so that's where your brain is going to go of, I pushed it too hard. Maybe you pushed it just fine. And you would have felt okay if you did some mobility work and you started eating afterwards. Like, those are some good things to look at also. Like, Maybe you did fuel afterwards, but because of the intensity of your run or the length of your run, whatever the load was, which if you want to go back towards like strength training, maybe the load was so much that even though you fueled, you didn't fuel enough. You know, this goes kind of connected to hydration. It's if you chronically are slightly under fueled that is going to exponentially grow also exponentially decay I think is probably a better term
Angie:Yeah And that's such a good point too because a lot of times if you are someone that has not Fueled and then you listen to the podcast and you're like, okay, I'm gonna try fueling and then you Eat something, you know, before your run, after the run, whatever, you know, you think that we're recommending to you and that's what you do. And then you don't really feel a big difference. You're going, Oh, see, it didn't work. And like Kevin said, it could be, maybe you just didn't give yourself enough. Maybe you didn't refuel with the right amount. food for you. You know, maybe you didn't give yourself enough protein. Maybe you didn't give yourself enough carbohydrates, depending on what it is that you're putting into your body afterwards. It's not necessarily that the fuel and the concept didn't work. It could just be the way that you did it didn't. Give you that immediate benefit. And again, that doesn't mean that it's not working. It could just be one of those things that if you did it for a week, maybe you would feel more of a benefit, or if you did it for two weeks, you would feel a lot better afterwards too.
Kevin:Right. And we're not saying that fueling afterwards or mobility afterwards is suddenly going to make you never feel tired the next day. Like if you're pushing yourself, you're going to get fatigued. You're going to feel sore, but that soreness won't lead to chronic stiffness. And then. When you're stiff, the response does not need to be like, Oh, I'm super, super stiff. I should move less. Like I know that I've done this, especially when I was younger, I get super, super stiff after like a hard track workout. And I'd walk like Frankenstein for like an hour afterwards. That's not helping anything like that. The more you can be back to normal movements or. Honestly, probably exaggerated movements. Like walking with your, your knees locked out is not helping anything. Marching is probably going to be more beneficial. And, oh man, does that sound like a terrible idea? Like finish a marathon. I just want to lay there on the ground for a little while, but marching would probably actually make my body feel better. 30 minutes later.
Angie:And definitely the next day,
Kevin:certainly the next day. Yeah. I don't think that there was a whole lot of moving post a hundred, but I probably would have felt better if I had to move a little bit.
Angie:Well, and that's why I made you eat also. And that's why we stopped at the Waffle House at four o'clock in the morning to get food for you after the hundred. Because you didn't want to eat that much food at that time of day, right? Like you just wanted to be done and go to bed. I
Kevin:really did. Right.
Angie:And you also like wanted to shower, but also just wanted to like lay down in the bed, right? These are also. Little things that are really important that show up that, you know, can affect how you feel the next day, right? It's
Kevin:really helpful to have a crew,
Angie:but like, that's why it was so important for me to get food into you because I knew that you would very likely feel a lot worse the next day if we didn't kickstart that repair process, because literally all you did for 21 hours straight was break your body down,
Kevin:right? So food was awesome. And at that point it, Really didn't even matter what it was it needed to be massive quantities of calories going into me And it tasted way better than it probably should have it was it was excellent But you know, it's it's these small things, you know, it's not a huge thing to say All right, when I finish my run, I'm gonna get some fuel in my body within 30 minutes rather than Wait an hour and a half, like try and fuel yourself in that closer time window. And that's going to have a huge impact on how you feel the next day.
Angie:Yeah. I like to think about this as a marriage. Like, what do you think is going to make a stronger marriage? Is it going to be those little acts of love around the house every day, like cleaning the fan? Or is it going to be that one big showy act of love per year where the husband puts on a tuxedo and brings home roses and, you know, shouts from the rooftops, like Which one's going to make a stronger marriage. And, um, you know, maybe people are going to have a different opinion than me on this, but for me, it's for sure those little act of love around the house every single day, it's the little times that Kevin just comes and gives me a kiss on the cheek or, you know, puts his hand on my, on my back as he's walking by, like it's just those very small details that added up makes me feel extremely. Loved and secure in our relationship with each other. It's not like, and you're, Kevin's just not the, a big showy kind of person anyway, but if you neglected all the little things and just did that one thing, I mean, I definitely wouldn't feel, I don't think that we would have the marriage that we have right now.
Kevin:It would be very, very different. Like, it's sort of like, oh wow, my, my love. Spikes on that day and then basically kind of tapers off for the next 364 waiting for the next giant spike like that's not a good way to do to take care of your body on a regular basis, right?
Angie:And I mean, the fun, those big acts are fun sometimes, but they're not sustainable. That's not like something that is. Normal for every day of the of the year or even, you know, on a weekly basis, like there's just regular life that we need to do. And it's the same thing with our training. These are just little things that we need to include so that our body keeps moving better, feeling better, and we're able to continue to do. The things that we want to do,
Kevin:right? So again, just to highlight some of these small little things that you can do mobility work before or after or both during your workout or whether it's a run or a strength fueling during and after your run, but also just. fueling on a regular basis, making sure that you are continuously getting in good quality food and at appropriate quantities for the activities that you're doing. And then one of the other ones that they put in here is is strides. Rather than worry about like these very carefully laid out speed workouts, putting in some high level, very fast strides. Does not take a long period of time. It takes a few minutes at the end of your run. You do that one to two times a week, and it is amazing what you can do to maintain your high level speed, which then trickles down to all of your runs. Like you're able to make your easy run feel drastically easier by doing strides a couple of times a week, if you really push the strides.
Angie:Yeah. So the, your unsexy details are not actually that unsexy, unsexy. They're very. Um, important and actually can help you feel stronger and sexier as you get older. Excellent. And that we unsexy are sexy.
Kevin:Perfect.
Angie:Alright you guys, thanks for joining us today. If you found this episode helpful, please leave us a review, share it with a friend, and don't forget to hit follow on whatever podcast player you prefer to make sure that you catch all of our newest episodes when they come out. Thanks for joining us.
This has been the real life runners podcast, episode number 370. Now get out there and run your life.