371: Avoid Symptom Squashing: Learn to Interpret Your Body's Signs

In Episode 371 of the Real Life Runners podcast, we discuss how our body's symptoms and signs, like pain and discomfort, are often messages that need to be interpreted rather than squashed or ignored. We explore how to distinguish between soreness and pain, the importance of understanding your body's signals, and the various factors including training practices, lifestyle, and mental stress that can influence these symptoms. We emphasize the need for proper recovery, nutrition, and stress management and advocate a more mindful and holistic approach to health and wellness. We share personal experiences, practical tips, and a checklist to help you identify and address the root causes of your symptoms.

03:08 The Problem with Symptom Squashing

11:36 Understanding Pain and Discomfort

22:39 Identifying the Root Causes

24:38 Understanding the Big Picture

25:53 Impact of Real Life on Training

27:18 Training Load and Recovery

35:28 Importance of Nutrition

39:37 Managing Stress and Anxiety

43:10 Recognizing Body Signals

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Transcript

Angie: 0:01

Welcome to the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 371. Today, we're talking about symptoms and signs that our body gives us on a regular basis and how so many of us are just wired to, when we have some sort of symptom like pain or discomfort, our tendency is to just squash it and try to cover it up and treat the symptom and how that can actually prevent us from getting to the root of the problem. So today, we're going to talk about how Symptoms and things that you experience in your body are signs from your body, how to interpret them, what they're trying to tell you and what you should do about them. So if that sounds interesting, stay tuned. What's up runners. Welcome to the show today. I am just going to go ahead and give you a little disclaimer that there may be a chance, a very high chance that I'm going to go on At least one rant on this podcast today.

Kevin: 1:16

And I will also probably make an offhand joke somewhere following one of those rants. I feel like both of these are coming in high.

Angie: 1:22

Both of these are very high likelihood chances. If you are a betting person, I said, go ahead and place your bets right now.

Kevin: 1:29

Excellent. Put them down.

Angie: 1:31

So, um, Um, let me think about where this idea came from. So we're just sitting down together today for the first time in, in a few weeks. I know that we've had the podcast going for the last few weeks, but we haven't actually recorded a podcast together since I think the end of June or the very beginning of July. Beginning of

Kevin: 1:50

July.

Angie: 1:51

Basically a month because we prerecorded. We were out of town on vacation. Um, we went out to California to visit family out there and we spent, um, about a week in Tahoe, which was absolutely gorgeous. And then, uh, I came home for two days and then flew out again to Nebraska to, um, work on a retreat with a good friend of mine. Um, she runs a, uh, A retreat for teenage girls and we teach them all about like mental performance and mental health and um, I've been involved with her for the last three years in the retreat and so we had that last week. So it's been a whirlwind. You

Kevin: 2:24

being gone for a week was not good for my mental health. I just, I laid around and just sobbed.

Angie: 2:28

Sobbing.

Kevin: 2:29

Yeah.

Angie: 2:29

Well, you don't sleep well.

Kevin: 2:30

No, but I was also just sick the entire time. It was actually kind of beneficial that you weren't here because I was not sleeping well. It was, it was best that you were not.

Angie: 2:38

Yeah. So it's been a bit of a whirlwind. So we're actually just sitting down in front of the microphone together for a little while. And I actually came up with this idea for this podcast before the vacation. I didn't outline the whole thing until today, but, um, there was definitely things I think Thank you. podcast episodes or other things that I was listening to that kind of triggered this idea for me and kind of brought me back to why I started this podcast and why I started this business in the first place. And that is this idea of symptom squashing. So I, I don't know what the final title for this podcast will be once I release it, but the idea here is that we love to just squash our symptoms and how that oftentimes is not a good idea because Symptoms are the way that our body communicates with us, and it's really important to learn how to interpret those signs if we want to live strong and healthy lives and Avoid injury and avoid, um, disability and those kinds of things. It's really important for us to start to read those signs and also listen to what our bodies are telling us on a daily basis.

Kevin: 3:42

Yeah. And I mean, most of this is going to be from like a physical aspect of like, what kind of actual sensations are you getting in your body? But there's, there's emotions also of, which is definitely symptoms squashing of I've got these, these feelings that I don't want to deal with. So I can squash those also. With a run. Yes.

Angie: 3:58

Right. Like it's, it's definitely one of the. Reasons that people run or like go out and run harder because they have a

Kevin: 4:04

hundred miles.

Angie: 4:05

Yeah.

Kevin: 4:06

Uh, good one. Good

Angie: 4:07

one. So, uh, So, if you've been listening for a while, you know that I have a doctorate in physical therapy and I've been a physical therapist for over 17 years now. And one of the reasons, you know, I loved being a physical therapist. I loved working with all of my patients and, um, being able to help people to improve their, their health. But, one of the things that. What I quickly realized when working in traditional PT is that our medical system is broken and our medical system is not designed to promote health. It is designed to treat symptoms and oftentimes ignores the root causes. Unless you have a really good practitioner, there are great doctors out there, there are great physical therapists, right? There are great doctors. some fantastic medical practitioners out there that really do take the time and try to help their patients get to the root cause. So please don't hear, this is not a blanket statement about every single medical practitioner out there, but unfortunately the way that insurance is and the amount of time that, um, medical practitioners are able to spend with their patients because of insurance regulations and trying to get so many patients in. There's so many people that need help nowadays. It really does lead to a lot of just symptom treating. You know, you go to one doctor and they give you a medication to treat one thing and then it causes side effects. And then you go to a different doctor and they give you a medication to treat the side effects of the first medication and it ends up into this, this vicious cycle. And I think that. You know, doctors and nurses, they're overworked and they get paid the way that our medical system is literally set up is that doctors get paid to see more patients, not to keep those patients healthy. And this was one thing that I think always kind of took my patients aback when I said this to them, because I would tell them. When we were getting close to their discharge date that I hope that I never saw them again. Some of them would kind of look at me like, what? And I'm like, no, don't get me wrong. I would love for you to come and visit me and say hello if you're in the area. But I, My job as a PT, like I feel like if, if you are constantly coming back to me for the same problem that I did not do my job well, right? I, I want you to leave my office knowing what, what had happened, what happened to you, what was wrong, how to treat it, how to fix it. And when those things, if they do pop up again in the future, you'll have enough knowledge. To treat them yourself right like that's part of my job. I believe was to educate my patients and empower my patients with the correct exercises and tools to be able to Treat those things if they were to pop up again and not necessarily need professional medical attention,

Kevin: 6:52

right? Which is why you liked some of the more active population that you worked with because they would then Be able to sort of overcome whatever the the pain and the issue was that they were dealing with They could treat that and they knew that if that came back they could Exactly what to do with it, but it allowed them to lead a very active lifestyle that then might possibly create a slight other issue And so that was not the worst reason to come back and see you because then you have to figure out Okay, well, my knee doesn't bother me anymore But now I've got this small pain in like my lower back or something totally that seemed unrelated of like, all right I, my knees better and so I did this cool trail run and I fell and I dislocated my shoulder and now I'm back in physical therapy.

Angie: 7:31

Okay, right. But the issue that I had was when I was getting the same patients for the same conditions every single year. It's like they would come in because Medicare has a cap on how much physical therapy any patient needs. Patient can have during a year or at least they did when I was working in the clinic. I bet things may have changed I know I haven't been in the clinic for a few years now But it was really frustrating to me because they would use up their you know 17 visits or whatever and then they say okay, I'll see you next year and I'm like no That's not the point, you know, but a lot of these people they really did Use PT as even a social hour, you know, because they didn't have a lot going on. And so they did come to PT, which I just found really sad. Like, I don't want you to use me for your social activity for, you know, just coming back and getting your, your, your yearly tune up. I want you to be out there living an active life that you love, you know, like not spending your days looking forward to coming to physical therapy. You know, I just, I don't see. The benefit in that personally and so that was really why I created this business to focus on wellness because I realized that I mean, this is just my number that I made up in my head, but I would guess that probably 95 90 to 95 percent of all chronic conditions that people are facing today could be changed and prevented by a few lifestyle choices earlier in their life. And that's really what kind of set me on this mission of trying to help educate people in how to become a better runner, how to use running as a way to improve your health, how to not feel like, you know, Running is just something that breaks you down. It's something that can really make you stronger and that can build you up both mentally and physically. And to show people that there is no age limit on running and on physical fitness and wellness, and that you can make these choices for, you know. All of the decades of your life.

Kevin: 9:32

Yeah. I mean, you pointed out that you can make it for all the decades, but that's also part of why I got into coaching in the first place. Like, I love trying to coach like the, the high school kids that are really trying to push themselves to the limits and see like, can I go win a state champion championship? But like the other kids that are like, I've never done sports before. And I feel like I should come up with something that I could have some level of consistency with so that I can actually live a healthy. lifestyle. Like we've had parents that are like, man, I really wish that I had done cross country when I was in high school because I think that I would have probably run for decades following it. And they just, they never got into that athletic rhythm. And then they were trying to get into it in their forties and fifties. And you can't, you certainly, you could start running whenever you want. It's just, there's, there's a level of inertia that you have to overcome to become a brand new runner in later decades. And it's totally doable.

Angie: 10:26

Yeah, of course it is. And I think that that's really important. I mean, obviously it matters. What kind of coach you have also, right? And that's why I really like the perspective that we take is, you know, everyone's welcome on our cross country team. As long as you have a goal, it doesn't have to be the same goal. The your, your goal does not have to be running a PR in every single race or making it to the state championship. If that's not, doesn't feel right and aligned with you. It could be, I just want to get healthier. I want to get stronger. I want to make some friends. And As long as you have a goal, then we're going to help you get there. You know, that is really our goal is to help make running a positive activity in whatever way possible that we can do that so that we can create lifelong runners that will have, you know, health benefits for the rest of their life. And even if there's someone that. Um, starts it in high school and then kind of gets away with it, gets away from it. Um, they'll come back to it later on in life, you know, and I think that that happens a lot. You know, I know that happens like with religion and other things, right? We can, it can also happen with running and physical activity.

Kevin: 11:31

Yes. And sometimes you have kids and then you have to go back to it.

Angie: 11:34

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So going back to this idea of like symptom squashing and. And this, you know, what is our body trying to tell us? What if instead of like when symptoms like pain or discomfort, when those things pop up, you know, the tendency that a lot of people have is like, Oh, just pop an Advil or just do a quick ice bath or a massage gun and just try to get rid of that symptom. Try to get rid of that discomfort. But what if we started to look at our symptoms like pain or fatigue as a gift? To help us build stronger and healthier bodies rather than something that we just need to relieve, right? I think that oftentimes we think of these when these symptoms pop up We're like, how do I get rid of it? Like the the focus immediately is on get rid of it What if we were like, huh? What is this trying to tell me? What if the first approach that we took was? curiosity instead of Let's squash it really fast.

Kevin: 12:38

Yeah. Which is so against most of what the environment around us is. If anything feels uncomfortable, we come up with some way of making it go away. You know, if, if your ankle hurts, throw some ice on it. If it still hurts, throw some ice on it, have a bandaid, go get a massage. Like how quickly can I dissipate the feeling of discomfort if, and there are times where that is appropriate, but if you finish a hard workout and your muscles are sore, That's what was supposed to happen. And your goal should not really be how quickly can I make this, this feeling of discomfort go away because you're actually gaining a benefit of your body, feeling that uncomfortableness, recognizing that you pushed yourself really hard and being like, Whoa, that was a lot. Now I need to adapt so that I can handle that workload. And if, but we just try and squash it as quick as possible.

Angie: 13:32

Yeah. And I think that this is. Something that really running teaches us to do on a natural or on a, an overall basis, right? It's like getting comfortable with discomfort. Running is not usually comfort. And there's been so much talk on the internet lately about. L2 and easy effort level. Right. That's the zone

Kevin: 13:51

to run. Right.

Angie: 13:52

The zone to training, right? Make sure everything feels easy. That's not true. Like you guys know that we talk about easy running here on the podcast. We have for years, we talked about easy running before easy running was cool. And in zone two training was cool here, but. That's not the full picture, right? Running is going to be uncomfortable sometimes if you want to get better, right? If you're someone that just wants to like go out and run easy all the time, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you're someone that wants to improve, if you want to get faster, if you want to improve your endurance and be able to run longer, if you want to challenge yourself with running, that's fine. it's going to be uncomfortable. Like discomfort is part of the process. And so being able to start to learn how to tolerate discomfort more and not just get rid of it. And then also kind of take it one step further, which, which is what we want to do in this podcast today is start to interpret Those signals from the body, right? Is this just a normal soreness and discomfort from my workout? Or is this something else? Because what I want you to understand. Is that symptoms are signals from the body and so often we just try to relieve the pain or the discomfort without Getting the message like your body The symptoms and the feelings that you have that is the way that your body is Communicating with you and if we just try to jump in and squash those symptoms as quickly as possible or try to relieve them oftentimes it leads to Worsening pain or just like putting band aids on the problem and masking the problem without actually getting to the root cause. We're just going to like try to keep it at bay and keep it at arm's length as long as possible. And oftentimes when we do that, like sometimes it works, you know, it really does. But other times it will end up just like that problem. If we don't get to the root cause of it, it's just going to start to fester and linger and get worse. And then it's going to. Turn into a bigger problem if we don't deal with it.

Kevin: 15:55

Yeah I mean if you're trying to put a band aid on it This becomes like the whack a mole game of well I I was able to deal with that problem with a little bit of ice But then it caused this soreness and I took an Advil But then it causes this soreness and you're not actually dealing with the first issue that came up That was probably the foundation piece That was probably what was causing all of the pain overall because you just you know Ignored the first one you found a way to make the first one be a little bit quieter It's like if there's a hole in a dam trying to put bubble gum to fix the hole That's not actually gonna fix anything there might be a temporary patch on there But the problem of an actual crack an actual hole in the big concrete dam Gums not fixing it like popping an Advil is not actually fixing it Fixing the issue. It's just pretending that the issue isn't there. Advil is not a good long term solution. It's just, it's just not

Angie: 16:48

right. Advil is an anti inflammatory and it, while it can decrease that immediate inflammation, if there is a problem, what's causing the inflammation. That's the question that we need to be asking is what is causing that information or inflammation, because pain is a sign that something is off in the body. So we need to learn how to interpret that. body is giving us. And what I want you to do here, there's three things that I want you to look at. Like when you're trying to figure out what's going on in your body, if there's discomfort, you're going to look at three things. You're going to look at the quality, the intensity, and the duration. Okay? So when we're looking, is this pain that I should be concerned about, or is this just soreness? So soreness, Again, quality of the, of the discomfort, intensity, and duration. Okay, so, if it's soreness, you might want to ask yourself, like, Did you just have a hard workout right because soreness is normal for a couple of days following a hard workout So if it's soreness the quality is going to be basically sore and achy the intensity is gonna vary Okay, so on a scale of one to ten Or zero to 10, how sore are you? That's going to vary based on the workout that you did, based on how good of shape you're already in. Like if you, if you are brand new to getting back into an exercise routine versus somebody that's been working out for five years and you do the same workout, that level of soreness is going to be different.

Kevin: 18:13

Yeah. If you throw in a brand new workout, even if you're in really good shape, you throw something new at yourself. You mentioned that we were in California. It's something I'm running up and down Hills and running down Hills is not something that I have experienced with. I'm not the best

Angie: 18:27

recently, recent experience with

Kevin: 18:29

of running. quickly downhills and that just shreds your quads, especially if you're not used to it. I've been running a long time and in pretty good shape, but running fast downhills, man, I was sore the next day.

Angie: 18:42

So, but the soreness, if it's just soreness and it's not pain, that soreness is really only going to last one or two days. Okay. That's called DOMS, D O M S, which is the delayed onset muscle soreness. Okay. Okay. So. Delayed onset of muscle soreness lasts about one or two days, sometimes up to three. If it's lasting more than that, then it's a more of an area of concern. Okay. So that's kind of soreness wrapped up. Whereas pain, when we look at the quality, intensity, and duration of pain, the quality can be. kind of all over the place. The quality of the pain can be soreness and achiness. It could also be sharp, shooting, stabbing, burning. There's lots of different types of pain or quality of pain. Um, the intensity also, that's going to vary on a scale of zero to 10 with how intense that pain is based on a lot of different factors. And then the duration, again, that's going to last more than a couple of days. Okay. So if it's like one to two days, it's most likely the Muscle soreness. You probably just overdid it in the workout. The body needed to adapt to it. If it's lasting more than three or four days, then you could have actually done some tissue damage with whatever it was.

Kevin: 19:52

Okay. So I've got a question for the doctor here. Okay. Um, I've been, I've been told probably by you and other coaches and whatnot, that if it's sore and you try to exercise that the exercise generally helps it feel better.

Angie: 20:07

It depends on the intensity of the exercise.

Kevin: 20:09

Yes. Right, but if it's sore and you do something that's generally relative to you, easy and relaxing. Yes. Movement. The movement itself should make things better. Yes. Whereas pain. Pain. Any movement, gentle movement is still going to be rather uncomfortable.

Angie: 20:25

Yeah, yes, I would agree with that. Like movement in general tends to help soreness and tends to improve soreness because you are, you know, basically you're moving those tissues, you're moving fluids around, you're getting the fluids to kind of flush those tissues out. Because, um, The delayed onset of muscle soreness, while there is some tissue damage, some, some micro damage to those tissues that you might be feeling, there's also just a buildup of byproducts and waste products that you're tending to flush out as well.

Kevin: 20:53

Whereas pain, if there's actual damage, continuing to exercise is just going to be painful.

Angie: 20:57

Exactly, exactly. So, um, and then really the, one of the big differences is the, is the duration here, right? Cause if you listen to what I just said about quality intensity, sore and achy, and then intensity varies, that's Basically the same for both of them. So it's really starts to look at the duration. Um, the other thing is If you have the, that quality of pain that is sharp, stabbing, shooting, burning, those are, that's not typical soreness. Okay, that's going to be more indicative of an actual injury and of pain that you're looking at there.

Kevin: 21:28

Yeah, I, cause that's always, I've heard you talk to so many people and that's one of your first questions is how would you describe the pain? And as soon as they go to a stabbing pain, it's like, all right, well, you're going to need to take a couple of days rest. Right. And that, it doesn't mean that you have to shut down running. for the next month, but you're going to actually have to take some time to recover. And maybe that's, that's just exercise. It's not weight bearing. You, you just, you shouldn't be running, but you might be able to get by on it like an exercise bike, but you're going to need to actually take some time away from impactful exercise because something is something underlying is damaged.

Angie: 22:03

Exactly. And there are cases that doing some cross training can actually be more beneficial than complete rest in some cases, especially

Kevin: 22:12

for your sanity.

Angie: 22:13

Yes, exactly. Which matters a lot, right? Um, so once you kind of have that idea of what's causing this, is this pain versus soreness? You know, then you can start to look a little bit more into it and say, okay, now I know that this is pain or now I know that, you know, something is off here. Why is this happening? And this is where we're going to start to look at the underlying cause or causes of what's happening. Because if you say, say you have a headache, right? And you have a headache. That headache might be caused by dehydration, but if you just pop an Advil and squash that symptom, you might not ever figure that out. But then you start to say, okay, well, is this happening frequently, right? Like, is this new or is this a repeat symptom? If you're getting a headache every day, every day, it's time to look deeper. Like what else is going on here? Right? Like you don't want to just be popping Advil is every single day just to deal with your headache.

Kevin: 23:07

I go for a run every afternoon and about 45 minutes after my run, I get this weird headache. Like, well, yeah, you're not drinking enough. Yeah. Like that's really what it is because you recognize that pattern or maybe you, you never were getting these headaches, but now suddenly there's a heat wave that came over and. And you're still exercising the same way that you were. That's dehydration that kind of like subtly came in there. You're like, no, no, no. I'm still drinking plenty of water. I just, I didn't change anything in my exercise, exercise routine. Yes, you did. It got a whole heck of a lot hotter.

Angie: 23:38

Yeah. You didn't change anything, but the outside weather conditions did change and you staying the same actually made things worse because you didn't adapt to the environment. The circumstances that were presented to you.

Kevin: 23:50

Yes. Which I think is, is really what we're diving into here. Finding what those underlying causes are. You've got it laid out. I don't want to jump ahead and skip something.

Angie: 23:57

You're so funny. So basically the, kind of the overarching principle here, when we look at trying to find the root cause of what's going on, I want you to understand that. In all likelihood, it's all related. Okay. You are not an island. Like running is not an island just because something is going wrong, quote unquote, wrong with your running. You're not getting the results that you want in your running. Or you have a headache every day. Like there's other things that are contributing to that. You are one human, and there are so many different factors at play here. So this is where it gets really, you know, Exciting, if you wanna look at it that way. Some people would say, this is where it gets really confusing and complicated. I say it is kind of like a little puzzle that we can figure out where we can just get curious and say, okay, what's going on here? Because what is happening outside in your real life is going to affect your training and what is going on in your training is going to affect how you feel in your real life every day. So it's really important for us to look at the big picture here, and that's why I've created. This little checklist of the three areas that I like usually take people through. So when I have a client. I mean, this is one of the things that we do every week on our weekly coaching calls. You know, I'll have a client get on that wants some coaching help and coaching advice and they'll say that, you know, I've got this new thing that's popped up and I'll kind of say, okay, well let's go through the checklist. Let's figure out what's going on here. And I'll kind of run them through this little checklist to kind of figure out what, what What has changed or what hasn't changed that maybe needed to change that's now leading to this new symptom.

Kevin: 25:36

Right. Because it's always a mysterious symptom that just popped up out of nowhere and it's never out of nowhere. There's something you just need appropriate questions to find what that thing is. And you've got a really nice little checklist here of various things that you can knock out. But, uh, you had a great line and I want to repeat it because you wrote it down and it was, it was brilliant. What's going on in your real life. Affects how you feel in your training and what is going on in your training affects how you feel in your real life It's a it's a loop and both of them continuously feed into the other one and you're like no No, I see how my life could affect my training But yeah, your training will also affect your life if you go out and you have a bad run to start your day You might not be able to fully separate that from how the rest of your day goes that might start you off not Feeling great about the rest of your day you go out and you crush like a

Angie: 26:26

Both physically and mentally.

Kevin: 26:27

Physically and mentally. You go out and you crush a speed workout in the beginning of the day, you might be on a mental high, but physically exhausted for the rest of that day, and you're trying to figure out, how do I go through my normal life, trying to balance, like, those two things of, I feel physically tired, but mentally I'm fine. I'm firing on all cylinders here. It's a really weird setup and everything affects everything else.

Angie: 26:50

Yeah. And like, maybe you start off on that high. I know this has definitely happened to me. Like when you crush a really hard workout and you're like, heck yeah. You know, like in the morning and then all of a sudden you get to the afternoon and you're like falling asleep at your desk and you're like, Oh my gosh, why am I so tired? And it's like, well, you just had a really hard workout and your body is spent, especially If you didn't fuel yourself well afterwards, which we're going to get into now. Yes, that

Kevin: 27:16

is on the checklist. All right, let's go.

Angie: 27:18

So if, if you're not feeling, so if your body's giving you some sort of sign or symptom, right? So let's say it's pain. Let's say it's fatigue. Something's going on here. I always start with like, what's going on with your training. So I broke this up into three categories, mind, body, and lifestyle. Now, usually since I. Often I'm talking to runners that they like always want to go to their training first. Okay, fine. Let's go to training first. So I'll jump ahead to body. So like I said, it's mind, body, and lifestyle. So I'll first I'll say, okay, what's going on with your training? What are you doing in your training? Have you increased your mileage recently? Are you doing your mobility work and your drills? Are you skipping your strength training? Have you recently increased your load? I'll kind of have them get a big picture of like what's going on in your With the body and with your training, you know, and that includes your running, your strength work, your mobility work. Are you skipping things that you kind of quote unquote should be incorporating? Are you, you know, Increasing. Are you adding extra workouts? Because I, I have athletes that do that too, right? They, they look at their training plan and they're like, this isn't enough. And then they add in extra sessions and I gently remind them that that's not following the plan. So like, have you increased that training load or are you skipping out on some of those important pieces that are going to help your body move better and feel better?

Kevin: 28:42

Yeah. And when you're working with people, like, like you suggest inside of our academy on like coaching calls, that's one thing because they're generally following a plan that, that we guided them towards finding in the first place. But I'm sure we've got plenty of listeners who do not necessarily have one of these plans. And you might be looking at finding workouts off of social media and being like, Oh no, no, I just, I'm just. Following these several different people and I'm doing their workouts now suddenly you have an intense workout of the day seven out of seven days Yeah,

Angie: 29:12

or they're following random strength programs on YouTube without any sort of rhyme reason or progression to them Right, like it

Kevin: 29:20

was the progression

Angie: 29:21

yeah, the progression is a big issue and it's also an issue when you just have this mindset of Well, if it feels hard, then it's doing the right thing. And that is definitely not the case. Um, there's plenty, there are plenty of strength workouts out there that if you do them, they're actually going to hurt you rather than help you. Um, and you know, there are people out there on, on the internet that will tell you differently. They'll say any strength workout is a good strength workout. And you know, any exercise that you do consistently is a good thing for you. And that's fine. Kinda, right? Unless you have certain goals, right? Like if you are, if your singular goal is I just want to be strong and healthy, then for the most part, you know, like maybe not strong, but if I just want to like be pretty healthy and, you know, kind of avoid, Health problems, then yes, moving your body in different ways is very important. If you have a more specific health goal, if your goal is a race, if your goal is, um, you know, building muscle mass, decreasing fat, like certain body compositions, like there are very specific exercises. I shouldn't say very specific, but there are definitely categories of exercises that you need to be training in. on a regular basis for the best results, right? Like bone density is another one, you know, that I've been really focused on lately because so many women, I mean, we start losing bone density after the age of 30, right? And like, it even accelerates even more after menopause. So bone density is a major issue. That's why. Leads to major quality of life issues in women that end up with osteoporosis and then stress fractures and compression fractures in their spine leads to all sorts of problems and disabilities. So our bone density is something that's really, really important. There are very specific ways that you need to train in order to improve bone density. Swimming is not one of them, right? Swimming is not a load bearing activity. Swimming is a great exercise. Swimming is great for your heart. It's great for your cardiovascular system. It's great for your, your breathing and your lungs. It is not good for bone density because there's no impact involved, right? In order to improve your bone density, you need impact. That's why running, walking, plyometrics, jump training. Way better strength training way better for building your bone density. So what is the goal? You know, if you have a specific goal, there are definitely exercises and there are ways of training that are more effective than others. Yes. That was a little mini rant. It was a

Kevin: 31:54

good mini rant. I want to, I want to kind of branch towards the Olympics because you look at the Olympic swimmers and you're like, their bodies are, they're, they're Just they're huge. They're shredded. There's muscle on top of muscle on top of muscle. And you're like, uh, you're telling me that swimming didn't do that to them. It's like, um, follow their training. Yeah, they spend hours in the pool, but there's plenty of what they do. What is called dry land training, which is a huge, there's plyometrics. There's an enormous amount of time spent in the gym doing a huge amount of strength training. Like those muscles on top of muscles did not come from slowly swimming back and forth from

Angie: 32:32

swimming.

Kevin: 32:33

Certainly not swimming Z2.

Angie: 32:35

Yeah, definitely not like, and swimming is great, right? It definitely builds muscle and, and all of that, but they're, they're doing other things for sure.

Kevin: 32:43

Definitely doing other things.

Angie: 32:44

So that's kind of the checklist that I use for kind of what's going on with body. So after body, then we go into, okay, well, how has, how let's go into lifestyle. Okay. So whenever we're training, we're breaking the body down, especially during our hard workouts. And when we're recovering, that's when our body builds back stronger. So I then ask them, how are you, how is your recovery Ben? Right? Like, are you getting enough sleep? Are you stacking too many hard days or too many hard workouts together? Are you giving your body the recovery that it needs to actually gain the benefits from those hard workouts? Right? Because so many times we as athletes, we as runners, we're like, Good about getting this the hard stuff in like we're okay pushing ourselves and a lot of us have a harder time Actually resting and recovering and allowing our body the time it needs to build back stronger and that recovery time Increases as we get older We don't bounce back as quickly as we did in our 20s when we are in our 50s our 60s Like our body just needs more recovery time in order to gain those benefits and to not break down

Kevin: 33:52

Right. So you're focused on making sure that you're getting enough recovery, but to kind of combine recovery with the body system that we just talked about there, you still have to push yourself. Like this goes back to, to Z2 and I don't want to go off on too big of a rant myself, but the whole push for Z2 training is driving me nuts as though that's the magic cure for everything. Like you have to also push yourself.

Angie: 34:15

Yeah. You have to run hard if you want to get faster.

Kevin: 34:17

Like the reason why the super elite athletes are able to get away with. Amazing huge amounts of Z2 training is because their training load is so enormous that if 10 percent of it is spent outside of Z2 That's hours if you're training for three or four hours a week and you only spend 10 percent of it outside of Z2 You're spending minutes and that's that's a huge difference between you know besides the genetic phenomenons that are Olympic quality athletes like there, you have to push yourself, but then you have to make sure that you're getting enough recovery so that you're ready for the next time of pushing yourself. And that's where rest days and some easier running comes into into account. Easier running cross training is a good thing for recovery also, but it's recovery to get you ready for the next time that you are going to strenuously push yourself. It's not just recovery for the sake of recovery and then another easy run. Like recovery preps you for the next really hard effort.

Angie: 35:15

Yeah, exactly. And then the next thing, the next area of lifestyle that you want to look at. So inside of lifestyle, I look at recovery and then I look at nutrition because these are basically two sides of the same coin, right? How has your nutrition been? Are you. Refueling or are you fueling before and are you refueling after your workouts? Are you getting enough protein and carbohydrates? Are you hydrating? Well, these are all really really important pieces that are going to determine how you feel because if you are breaking yourself down And you are working out really hard, and you're not getting enough routine Nutrition. If you're not getting adequate nutrition, okay, enough protein, enough carbohydrates, enough calories, your body is going to break down because what happens if you don't give your body the fuel that it needs, it starts breaking itself down. Your body will start to eat away at your muscles. Go first, right? Like your body will start breaking down muscle tissue. As fuel because it's saying, okay, in the reason this happens is because muscle tissue is the most Uh, metabolically, it requires the most metabolic, let's see, the most metabolically active tissue, right? So it requires the most amount of energy just to maintain, right? Muscle requires more energy to maintain. So if you're not giving your body enough fuel and enough energy, It your body's like, Oh, I better start to break some of this down because I'm not getting enough. So it actually starts to break down some of that muscle to help reduce the metabolic requirement that your body needs on a daily basis,

Kevin: 36:51

which is unfortunate because a lot of people pull back on their appropriate levels of fuel, hoping that the body is going to then magically just burn through all of the excess fat,

Angie: 37:00

right? They want to burn fat. It ends up being that they're actually burning through muscle,

Kevin: 37:04

which is just a tragic double whammy, which is not at all what most people are going for in the first place, right?

Angie: 37:09

Because the more lean muscle mass that we have, the more fat that we burn, right? So we really want to be doing things to build our lean muscle and making sure that we're fueling our body appropriately. And this is where, you know, sometimes I'll tell people, I'm like, You need to eat more and then you will lose weight and it doesn't make any sense because for years and years and years and all the diet culture will tell you calories in calories out and you need to be in a calorie deficit if you want to lose weight, but sometimes people's calorie deficits are way too drastic. Um, uh, if you actually want to lose weight, you should only be looking at, you should be shooting for a calorie deficit on a daily basis of 100 to 200 calories, which is not that much, right? Like this is. A couple of almonds, if you think about it, right. But if you go, if you're trying to shoot for like, Oh, I'm just going to go 500 to a thousand calorie deficit, your body's just going to go into breakdown mode. Like your body does not, it's not going to build itself up when the deficit is that drastic. But that's another topic for another day.

Kevin: 38:10

But that you did highlight that the more lean muscle mass that you have on you, and this is why your body tries to get rid of it is because. Okay. The extra lean muscle is literally burning through calories, so as long as you can continue fueling those muscles, they will continue burning the calories. So it's, it's a calorie deficit by continuing to burn at a high enough level. If you don't fuel the fire, it can't keep burning.

Angie: 38:36

That's part of the issue. It is, and this is especially important for women, um, especially women in perimenopause and menopause. It's like. People are always like, Oh, well, they don't want to eat carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are like that, that fuel starter. The, um, what's it called? Like, what do you put on the fire before

Kevin: 38:52

Tinder?

Angie: 38:52

No, no, not Tinder. There's like the, the stuff that you shoot, like the gas, it's not gasoline,

Kevin: 38:57

lighter

Angie: 38:58

fluid, lighter fluid. That's, that's the word I'm looking for. A hundred

Kevin: 39:00

percent how your dad started a barbecue. Wasn't it?

Angie: 39:03

Yeah, isn't that how you do it?

Kevin: 39:05

I usually try to not use lighter fluid around what we're eating. Yeah,

Angie: 39:08

we don't have lighter fluid. No, we do

Kevin: 39:09

not use lighter fluid when we're stirring.

Angie: 39:11

But that's what, that's the carbohydrate, right? It's kind of like that spark that you need to start burning more fat. So, um, anyway, that's another topic. I clearly I don't do the grilling around around here. That's Kevin's job. So that's good. There

Kevin: 39:25

you go. All

Angie: 39:25

right. So that's, so now we talked about kind of our body and our lifestyle. And again, we're going through this checklist of like, what is my body trying to tell me here? Like when those symptoms are popping up, what is this checklist? What is my body trying to tell me? Okay, and after we look at body and lifestyle, we look at our mind, which is stress and anxiety and all the, all of the sentences running through our mind on any given day, right? Like what is causing stress in my life? And this goes back to that sentence that we talked about earlier about how your real life affects your training and your training affects your real life. You know, am I managing my stress well? How are my anxiety levels? Am I worried about something? Is there a lot of things going on in my life outside of running? Because that is going to have a huge effect on how you feel. And like we said before, a lot of people try to use running and use their workouts to try to handle and manage their stress levels, thinking that this is going to help Decrease my stress. If I work out really, really hard, it's going to help decrease my stress. And while it can provide a little bit of mental relief in some cases, what we need you to understand is that stress is stress. So whether it's a physical stress, a mental stress, an emotional stress, The body still responds to stress in the same way. Okay, the same hormones are released regardless of what type of stress it is. And when your stress hormones are high, your body, again, is in fat storage mode. It is in breakdown mode. It is not in build up, you know, strong muscle like let's, you know, Get stronger and improve our endurance mode, right? We're more in that fight or flight with like, let's let's get everything mobilized Let's store fat just in case we don't have fuel later on like there's it's the mode that we don't want to be in All the time.

Kevin: 41:10

Yeah, it's it's just not a friendly place to live and it's this anxiety thing and We're at the start of the school year, so we're getting new kids to the cross country team. These are high school kids at the beginning of a new school year. Stress levels are through the roof with that population, plus you're dealing with just a herd of adolescents and hormones doing things that they shouldn't be doing. But it happens to us at all ages, at all levels, also is Whatever is happening in your life and sometimes like you said people use running as a stress relief Which is lovely if you can be like I've got this sort of problem I've been dealing with in my life and during the course of a run you can just sort of let it bounce around in your Head, sometimes you can get on the other side of a run and you can It feels better. You found your way through the problem, and so you were able to get in some nice exercise, and you figured out an answer to the problem, so there's no longer a stress there. The issue is when you're like, Oh, my life is feeling so stressful, so I'm just going to go work out really, really hard. And at the end of the workout, it didn't relieve any of the emotional stress that you have either. You just literally took an hour to work out. did this huge physical stress to your body and all of the mental and emotional stress is still sitting there waiting for you on the other side of it. And I'm not saying that, that running is actually therapy. I'm saying if you have like minor thing like this sort of problem that you're just trying to figure out, how do I work my way through this? Sometimes an easy run without headphones, that could be the time that you don't listen to our podcast. Otherwise a podcast all the time, give us five stars, tell your friends. It's amazing. But sometimes just some quiet times and that rhythmic pounding of your foot on the ground is a good way to work through minor problems. It's not a good way to replace therapy because those problems are still going to be there at the end of the run and now you're going to be tired. So you're trying to deal with stress on top of physical stress and that is, that is a tough combination.

Angie: 43:09

Right. And so, you know, When you're, when you have these symptoms that are popping up, whether it's pain or fatigue or something else, looking at the stress level in your life, like what else is going on that might be affecting me here is a really important thing to do. And then once you kind of go through that checklist, you kind of find, okay, like here's, here's are the things that are going on. What is my body trying to tell me? You pick one. And you try to improve it and you see how your body responds, right? So if you realize, okay, I haven't been doing a really good job fueling myself before my workouts or, or, or after my workouts. I'm going to work on that and let's see if this improves, um, you know, this symptom that I'm feeling. Let's, let's see if I have a little bit more energy on my runs. Let's see if I have a little bit more energy throughout my day. Right. Or you, um, are getting that little twinge in your knee. If like for me, sometimes that's just like a little sign that I need new shoes, right? Like there's a certain spot in my knee that I'll start to feel a little twingy. And I'll say, one of my first questions is, am I ready for new shoes? Right. And oftentimes if I just replace my shoes, the The twinge goes away and we're good to go, right? But that's again, it pops up instead of me popping an Advil or putting ice on it or like scheduling a massage. It's like, okay, what's going on here? It's that first question of like, what's happening? You know, what is my body trying to tell me here? You know, there's a little, uh, Achiness in the knee. Okay. Maybe I haven't been doing my mobility work. Maybe I need to, yeah, maybe I need to kind of jump in and make sure that I'm doing a proper warmup before my runs or the proper cool down afterwards to make sure I'm getting in that mobility work.

Kevin: 44:43

Yeah. I mean, that, that was a huge thing for me for literally the first entire half of this year is I've thrown in. A whole longer extra mobility routine on the start of all of my runs. I didn't use to do a mobility routine before I did an easy run before it was like, ah, I'm just going to head out the door and get in a little thing. Like I could wake up and still be half asleep when I hit go on my watch. And now I've got a mobility routine that I do so that. My knees feel okay, and my hips feel okay, and everything is still working correctly. It's, it's not a massive routine, and I've, I've now made it to a point that I was so good with my mobility routine that I only need it on days where I'm going to be pushing myself. That I can wake up, and if it's an easy run, I, I am back to a point where I can get out of bed and start to run. Start going for a run, but I know that if I have a couple of spots on there's a spot on my knee There's a spot on my hip that if those things start lighting up that the mobility routine will probably take care of that as a good First step.

Angie: 45:44

Yeah, and especially the sooner rather than later, right? like if you start to Recognize it and you start to get really good at understanding your body and reading the signs that your body is giving you and you're like Oh, okay. I remember this. I'm gonna get this thing in you can you know Essentially handle it before it turns into something bigger. And that's really the goal of this podcast and really everything that we teach you guys with all of our, you know, free resources, those of you that are in the academy, like our goal is to help empower you with the tools necessary to start to recognize when these things are becoming an issue and what you can do about it. And if you need help or support or a coach that will help remind you of these things or help take you through this checklist and kind of look at things a little differently, because. You know, we've got tons of experience and decades of coaching athletes, athletes and being runners ourselves and being a physical therapist and all sorts of stuff. Then come, come join the academy. Come join the team. We would love to help you and be your coaches and to support you, um, and helping you to feel your best and understand how to, you know, make these, these tweaks in your training to help you feel better. So anything else you want to add?

Kevin: 46:49

I don't think you went on that big of a, of a rant at any point in time.

Angie: 46:52

No,

Kevin: 46:53

you almost set me off on Z2.

Angie: 46:55

Oh, I mean, we could go on a Z2 rant, we could go on a medical system rant. I mean, that was like, I mean, that's my biggest thing is like the medical system, but we're not going to, we're already at 40, 45 minutes here. No, no, no. I

Kevin: 47:06

think, I think we did an excellent job of wrapping everything up and neither one of us got too agitated. Yes.

Angie: 47:11

Um, all right. So thank you guys for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please screenshot it, share it on social media, share it to a friend that you feel, um, it might be helpful for, because our goal is just to help more runners. Yeah. To feel good and to run their life and to achieve their goals and to feel amazing in the process. So if you haven't left us a review yet, please do so and share with your friends. Um, also. If you are someone that's interested in sprint training in perimenopause and menopause and beyond, I've created a new resource so you can go check it out over at realliferunners. com forward slash sprint. Um, you'll just have to put, put in your name and your email address and that Brand new free guide will be emailed right over to you. And it talks all about the benefits of sprint training, especially if you are in perimenopause and menopause, if you are a man and you are not in perimenopause and menopause, this, this will also benefit you because sprint training, um, pretty much for anyone over 40 is a good idea, um, because of the various benefits that it has listed in the guide, you know, improve cardiovascular health, bone density, lean muscle mass, all sorts of good stuff. So. Even if you're not a woman, this guide is for you as well. So if you want to check that out, head over to realliferunners. com forward slash sprint, um, and grab your free copy today. And as always, thanks for joining us. This has been the real life runners podcast episode number 371. Now get out there and run your life.