374: Sprint Training and Myths of Zone 2

In episode 374 of the Real Life Runners Podcast, we explore the popular concept of zone two training and dispel common myths around it. We explain why solely relying on zone two is not sufficient for improving running performance. The episode delves into the importance of integrating various effort levels, particularly sprint training, which brings numerous benefits, such as increased muscle recruitment, improved endurance, and better fat burning, especially for women in perimenopause and menopause. Practical tips on safely incorporating sprint training into your routine, the significance of a thorough warm-up, and appropriate recovery strategies are also discussed.

01:33 Defining Zone Two Training

03:25 The Blurry Lines of Training Zones

06:10 Simplifying Training Zones

14:18 The Importance of Sprint Training

21:56 Sprint Training for Women in Perimenopause and Menopause

26:30 The Benefits of Sprint Training

26:55 Balancing Sprint and Zone 2 Training

28:36 Incorporating Sprint Training Safely

33:59 Mental and Physical Hurdles of Sprint Training

41:11 Effective Warm-Up Techniques

45:01 Starting Your Sprint Training Routine

46:58 The Importance of Cool Down and Recovery

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Transcript

Angie: 0:00

Welcome to the Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 374. There's been a lot of talk about zone two training, and today we wanted to dig into some of the myths surrounding zone two training and why that is not the full answer and not the full story when it comes to improving as a runner. So if you're interested in what you need to be doing instead of, or in addition to zone two training, stay tuned. What's up runners. Welcome to the show today. How are ya? I hope you guys are all doing well out there and we just want to say thank you for tuning in to another episode of this podcast. This is episode number 374, which is wild to me, that we have a guest. We've been doing this for almost six years now, let's see 2000, no, almost seven years now. Our seven year anniversary is coming up, um, at the end of September, which is super cool. And today we wanted to talk about one of those topics that we've seen floating around social media, all about zone two training. And you guys know, if you have listened to our podcast, we are advocates of easy running and we are advocates of level two, easy running. And so. First, let's talk about what is the difference between level two running and zone two training, because I've gotten that question a lot. So we're going to talk about that. And we're going to talk about how zone two is not the full story. You know, there's a lot of people out there advocating saying you need to be doing So much of your training in zone two, all of your training needs to be in zone two, or, you know, 90%, 80%, 80, 20 rule, all these things, right? There's all these things that people are talking about and some of these things we've talked about in the podcast but We also want to talk about some of the other things that people often neglect to talk about in addition to the zone Two training so jump in here Kev. Well, can you please explain to us? What is the What exactly is a zone two training? Let's start there.

Kevin: 2:18

Uh, zone two training depends on who you're talking to. So, uh, most social media accounts that are like proclaiming the greatness of zone two, um, can't answer that question. But the, the answer is it depends on how you line up. you are running intensities. If you are like a professional physiologist, exercise scientist, there are only three zones. One, two, and three. That's not zone two training because that's too hard. Zone two training that everybody's talking about online is if you train in a five intensity model. Zone one, two, three, four, five. Five is really fast, one is super duper easy, and two is just a little bit above that. Which is a great place to put a good amount of your training. You should not put. All of your training there because that's where you should not put all of your training in any zone.

Angie: 3:10

Yeah. So when we talk about L2 or level two training in our academy and with our clients, how does this compare to what we talk about? Because this has been a question that we've gotten from our clients and then also other people that follow us on social media.

Kevin: 3:25

Okay. So this is where it actually starts to get a little bit blurry and um, social media doesn't like blurriness. They like zone to keep it easy. do all of your stuff at easy and that's not really how this goes so here at real life runners we like 10 different levels of running and so if you divide that up evenly that suggests that level 2 would be in zone 1 like level 1 and 2 would both be down in in zone 1 and then 3 and 4 would be in zone 2 and It'd be okay to put a whole bunch of you running at level three and four, but we've talked about this on, I couldn't even tell you how many podcasts that so many people, when they head out running, run at level five, that they do all their running at level five. And one of the big things that we've been pushing for, Almost seven years on this podcast is that you should slow it down a little bit and bring yourself more towards level two And then people slow it down. They're like, no, no, you can actually take it down easier than that And so there is some benefit to this whole idea of take it easy run zone, too but Zone two is actually above what we would refer to as as L2 Which is good for some people if you don't have a huge amount of volume over your week But if you have a large amount of volume you need a lot of your running to actually go easier than zone two

Angie: 4:47

Yeah, and I think this is where it does get confusing for people and the majority of the people I mean Where you are in your running journey is going to depend a lot on the different benefits that you are going to get from the different levels. So, yes, when we say L2, that would be technically in zone 1, but if we're being honest, like, even if we start off at a level 2, oftentimes by the end of the run, because of fatigue, because of heat, because of other things, we're usually 3 or 4.

Kevin: 5:17

And this is part of my whole concern with this whole idea of zones, is it's not like your body flips from one zone to the next, and you get completely different benefits during the first 10 minutes of your run, and other completely untouched black and white, you can clearly see a distinction between the benefits of the next 10 minutes of your run, and then you ramp up the intensity a little bit more, and totally different, unconnected, It's a Venn diagram between all of the benefits of all the different zones. And even the whole idea of what it is that delineates the difference between One and two and two and three and all the different zones is a lot more of a blurry line than Social media would like it to be like if you to ask exercise physiologists who are doing research in it They will admit that it is a blurry line between zone one and two and two and three

Angie: 6:10

Yeah, and I think that, you know, we could even simplify it even more because I really like the way that exercise physiologists look at it with just the three zones, because that's how we coach all of our runners to start figuring out their effort levels is don't start with 10 zones or don't think about Start with 10 levels. Start with three. Try to find easy, medium, and hard. And that's around an L2, around an L5, and around an L8. Like, that's kind of what we help people to start with when we're starting to figure out what the heck are these things. Our effort levels anyway, how do I base my runs around an effort level? How do I tune into my body and check in and see how am I feeling right now? How hard does this feel on any given day? And so that's the reason that. Levels 8 are the ones that we start with, with all of our athletes, which really fall more into that zone 3 level that exercise physiologists use, and I really love the simplicity of that. And to be honest, most runners don't need to really go beyond that. If you do the majority of your running in those three zones, you don't ever have to worry about the rest of the levels in the zones.

Kevin: 7:22

No, not with any super precision. Like you really don't. Most everyday athletes can have those three zones from exercise physiology that is easy, medium and hard. And you're like, Oh, but then like, if I, if I'm feeling good on a day, but it's supposed to be an easy run within, you can go a little bit faster and you're still going to be in your easy zone. We break it down into like 10 different levels, but. Exercise physiologists would call levels one, two, three, four. All easy. Yeah. And so if you're feeling a little better and you're like, oh, I'm gonna pick it up a little bit, but so it was more like a three outta 10, maybe even a four outta 10 exercise physiology says that's still easy. Yeah. And you can go off and do that. We suggest that if it's supposed to be easy and really recovering because. You just did something hard or you're prepping to do something hard that you want to keep it super, super easy. The whole idea that you could just do all of your training in zone 2 that social media suggests, 1. Suggests that zone 2 is a more precise area, and 2. Skips the benefits of zone 1 and 3, 4, and

Angie: 8:29

5. Yeah, and I think that you just pointed out a pretty interesting thing that, Nobody on social media talks about, which is zone one, you know, like somehow, cause everyone's like, Oh yeah, you have to do most of your training easy in zone two. Well, what the heck is zone one then? You know, like, does that mean that we should just come and there are people that will tell you, you should completely avoid zone one because there's no benefits. That's a lie. There's lots of benefits, especially for women in perimenopause and menopause, like walking, especially what fast walking or uphill walking or walking with a weighted vest is shown to have a lot of benefits. And a lot of that training would probably fall into zone one. If we're looking at the heart rate model.

Kevin: 9:07

I mean, if you go off of a heart rate model and you start walking up a hill with a weighted vest, you're probably nicely sliding into zone two.

Angie: 9:14

Possibly. It depends on your level of fitness. It

Kevin: 9:16

completely depends on your level of fitness, but there are plenty of benefits of zone one. I've seen people post things that suggest that you should really focus on zone two because you cannot run too easy. I'm like, but you said zone two. If you can't run too easy, it's not a good idea. If you go easy enough, aren't you falling into zone one and then not in zone two? It made no sense to me. So they ignore the benefits of, of one. I

Angie: 9:41

mean, if they think that you can't like run too slow, then maybe they're thinking zone one is just running and, or sorry, just walking. And that does it like zone two, automatic, like running automatically will put you in zone two, even, even at an easy pace. Okay. I see. Maybe that's what they're thinking.

Kevin: 9:57

Possibly that's the angle they're going from. But again, that is, drastically dependent on the person and their level of fitness. Like it, there's a huge dependency on how fast somebody can run.

Angie: 10:08

Yeah. And you know, there are a lot of benefits of zone two training and we've done episodes in the past about easy running and 80 20 running. So go back and listen to some of, and go find some of those, you know, past episodes that we've done. We also have. Blogs and articles on the website about it. You can go check those out over at realliferunners. com. And yes, there's two L's. People always ask me that. Like when I give them my email address and our website, they're like two L's. And I'm like, yes, real life. They're two separate words. There's two L's there. So yes. You can check out lots of benefits on that But like we mentioned at the beginning of the episode L2 or zone 2 is not the full picture and if you are just going out and running at an easy pace at zone 2 On every single run you're gonna get very good at running in zone 2 But it's not actually going to make you faster. You might notice that your zone 2 pace is Improves a little bit. But if you're looking at race times, especially if you're trying to get faster for a race, um, or like just your pace in general, you're really, you're going to get to a point where it might improve a little bit. And then you're going to plateau because if you never run fast, You're not going to get faster. So you can't think, Oh yeah, run slow to get fast. As long as I do all of my training in zone two, I'm going to get faster. You're, you're neglecting the part that's actually going to help you get faster.

Kevin: 11:30

Right. You can improve your running efficiency. And if you think of this, like, like a car engine doing a bunch of running in zone two will in fact make the engine of your body. burn through fuel in a more efficient manner. Okay. The problem is if you drove a car to maximize your fuel efficiency and the car could literally like transform the way that your body can transform to improve efficiency, you would take your car and slowly turn it into a compact, remarkably fuel efficient car. Which would be great if all of your driving simply required you to like drive around town with maximum fuel efficiency. But if at any point in time you wanted to take that little teeny super fuel efficient car on a road trip and pack in a whole bunch of luggage and get on the highway and go for a while, now you don't have the right vehicle. And if all you're doing is just trying to figure out how do I make my, my body's engine run as efficient as possible, now It's not preparing it for all things like you need to be able to address all sorts of different angles. You've got to make sure that your vehicle is fully loaded.

Angie: 12:40

Yeah. So I'm interested with the analogy that you just used because you said if you wanted to get onto the highway, then you wouldn't be in the right vehicle. But I was kind of thinking of it in a different way. I was thinking that the most fuel efficient way is basically to be at like 55 miles per hour on cruise control, you know, just going down the highway. So that would be the more fuel efficient way versus like going around town where you have to speed up and slow down and like make these starts and stops that to me would be more like the sprint training, which isn't as efficient. Like you're not burning fuel as efficiently, but it actually gets you there. It gives you a better workout and it'll get you in shape faster.

Kevin: 13:20

Yeah. Okay. I'm, I'm with you on that. That makes sense.

Angie: 13:23

Does that make sense? I don't know. Like, I'm trying to like figure out your analogy versus the way that I was kind of thinking about it in my head. I

Kevin: 13:28

mean, the extreme version of, of what you just said is the opposite of what you would want to do with your super fuel efficient car is go drag race.

Angie: 13:35

Exactly.

Kevin: 13:35

Like that's not going to go well for you because you've just tried to figure out how can I take my car and run it at a nice speed. It's easy speed and never go up and down off that speed.

Angie: 13:43

Correct. And that's kind of my, my point is like if you are doing all of your training at that zone too, and then all of a sudden you want to run a 5k and your, your goal is to really push on the gas and try to keep that gas into the orange zone as often, uh, like, you know, where you're basically right, riding that line. Okay. You're going to burn out a lot faster.

Kevin: 14:02

Because your body doesn't know what to do with that. Like you're remarkably efficient, but your brain has never dealt with pain. And so, yeah, zone two has a lot of hold that holdups of just doing zone two.

Angie: 14:13

Yeah. So what should we do instead of zone two or in addition to zone two? And this is where sprint training comes in and that's really what we wanted to. Kind of focus on and highlight in today's episode. Yes, there is a place for moderate or medium running that L5 running. But a lot of times people already know that because that's kind of the default that a lot of people go into is when they go out and run, they go at a level five. So a lot of the times when we start working with clients, we have to help people learn how to slow down and we have to learn or teach people how to speed up because they've already been doing a lot of their running at that zone five or that level five.

Kevin: 14:52

Right. If you think of training like a bell curve, most people come in with a giant amount of training right in the middle and really falling off and how much they're doing on either end. And so when we first get new clients, we essentially try and invert the bell and be like, all right, let's try and remove some running from the middle and slow down a bunch of your running so that you can also then speed up some of your running. And Once, once you've been working with somebody for a while and really started to establish all the different zones, there's benefits of spending time in all of them, because you really should train all of the zones. Like all of your different ways of running is sort of like the spice cabinet in the kitchen. You want. Like, you want to be able to put some flavor on things besides just salt. If that's the only option that you have, it's going to be real difficult to create a whole bunch of different flavors.

Angie: 15:42

You need garlic. I mean, my life would not be the same if we didn't have garlic.

Kevin: 15:46

Mine either.

Angie: 15:47

Yes, exactly. Um, so, um, Zone two is very important and we're not trying to tell you not to do zone two training or not to do level two training. That is very important, okay? We also want to encourage you to try different levels like zone three. Five or sprint training, like level eight, nine, 10. So what the heck are we talking about when it comes to sprint training? Sprint training is running at maximal intensity for a very short period of time, because your body cannot. Actually sprint for much more than about 30 seconds, right? You can go hard if you're at like a level eight or nine, you can sustain that for a couple of minutes, depending on your fitness level. But if you are at an all out 10, or even an 10, which is a supra maximal effort, which is a lot of, you know, if you're reading literature and research studies on sprint training, and that's what they refer to as supra maximal training, which is like above maximum training, which, you know, um, That just reminds me of spinal tap. Oh,

Kevin: 16:50

straight to spinal tap. This one goes to 11. This

Angie: 16:52

one goes to 11. But like, what, let's, let's talk about the, the physical benefits of sprinting in general. Why don't you address that and then I can go into like some of the new research that I've been looking into with as far as women goes. Okay.

Kevin: 17:04

So physical benefits of, of sprint training. And for this we're referring to sprint training as things in the ballpark of 30 seconds, plus or minus a little bit, but Right.

Angie: 17:15

Level eight to 10.

Kevin: 17:16

Yes. Okay, but even more like up towards 10. Yes, rather than yes on the the easier like like Eight is hard, but sprint training, more like actually putting it to 10, where you're running form literally changes because you are, you're going from running fast to running as fast as you can. So what this has to do, because you're going so fast. It will automatically boost muscle recruitment because in order to continue to go faster, you have to get more of your muscles on board. It's kind of similar to going to the gym and starting to lift heavy weights is if you want to propel yourself forward. forward. Like speed, the expression of speed is just taking the power in your body and combining it with coordination so that you're moving your limbs appropriately. So that power is getting expressed in forward movement at a great velocity. So the big things that you're getting out of sprint training is muscle recruitment, which goes hand in hand with increasing your power output. And you're also getting overall physical coordination. All of these come together. And because you've increased your power at the highest level, that sort of pushes your ceiling all the way up. You also naturally lift the floor. If your highest level, if running 10 suddenly you can make that go louder. And this is going to go right to spinal tap. If you can make 10 louder, if you can make 10 Faster than all of your other zones also slide up level two, just gets a little bit faster as well,

Angie: 18:53

right? So what I just want to kind of go back and talk about what muscle recruitment is because you know That's a scientific term that we like to throw around but here I really fronters We also want to make sure that everyone understands what the heck we're talking about. So

Kevin: 19:07

sorry, it's like bedtime talk here

Angie: 19:10

Bedtime talk

Kevin: 19:11

in a muscle recruitment and you know Get all the, you know, biogenesis of mitochondria pillow

Angie: 19:18

pillow talk and in the brown household. So muscle recruitment, basically when we talk about that, you have lots of different muscle fibers. So in any given muscle, let's just talk about your quadriceps, which are the muscles on the front of your thigh. There are several muscles. So there's four main muscles. That's why it's The quadriceps, there's four main muscles. And within those muscles, there are muscle fibers and there are hundreds, maybe thousands of muscle fibers in every single muscle. And so when we talk about muscle recruitment, it's like. Getting more muscles fibers to fire all at the same time. And that's where the coordination part comes in is all at the same time. So when you contract a muscle, you're not contracting every single muscle fiber. Most likely, when you do sprint training, when you do heavy lifting, you are improving how many muscle fibers are firing. So the more muscle fibers that you get to fire, the stronger that contraction. And the more power you're able to output.

Kevin: 20:20

It's like rowing a boat. If you've got 20 people in a boat, they all have an oar and the coxswain up at the front says stroke and only three people actually put their oar in the water. You're not going very fast, but improving coordination gets all of the guys to actually put the oar in the water and pull through. And in the case of a muscle fiber actually contract their individual fibers.

Angie: 20:41

Right. So this is very helpful, especially when it comes to speed. You can understand that if you are having more muscle fibers that are contracting and your muscle fibers are contracting in a more coordinated fashion, where they're all turning on and turning off at the same time, because that doesn't always happen. That's that doesn't just happen automatically. This is one of the things that sets elite athletes apart from. The rest of us is they have their their muscles are trained in such a way that they are so efficient with their muscle contractions that they can Um, put out such a greater force with their muscles, which makes them faster, which makes them able to jump higher, which makes them able to perform and compete at the level that they're able to do. So

Kevin: 21:26

yeah, I mean the, the power output of elite level sprinters is ridiculous. The length of a stride of someone doing the a hundred meters is so huge. The amount of ground that they eat up with one step is absolutely phenomenal.

Angie: 21:40

It's probably longer than mine.

Kevin: 21:42

It's a little bit longer than yours. It's like the length of like three of your steps. At

Angie: 21:47

least I know I take very small steps. That's definitely something I can improve upon. So that's one of the reasons that we want to do sprint training now. When it comes to women in perimenopause and menopause, sprint training becomes even more beneficial. And this is because of the loss of estrogen and progesterone, but specifically estrogen that we experienced during this time period. Estrogen is an anabolic hormone. It helps us to build more muscle. It helps us to retain our muscle mass, and it helps us, um, with our blood sugar. It helps improve insulin sensitivity. There's a lot of different roles that estrogen plays in the body. And as we lose estrogen during this time, why I'm like saying it funny, estrogen, like I'm having a hard time saying estrogen tonight,

Kevin: 22:35

estrogen.

Angie: 22:37

So as we lose estrogen during this time, we need to basically help. Make up for the jobs that estrogen used to do in the body Through our training and through our lifestyle choices. So sprint training Checks a lot of those boxes. So So sprint training can help us to improve our endurance. It helps to improve our power by improving the muscle recruitment like we just talked about. It also helps to improve our body's ability to use oxygen, which means that we're burning more fat. So this is one of the really pesky symptoms that a lot of women experience in perimenopause is increased belly fat specifically. The way that sprint training can help with that is. When you build lean muscle, okay, and sprint training does help to improve lean muscle mass. It also helps to burn more fat because there's this afterburn effect when it comes to sprint training. So when we're going really hard, basically what happens when we run at a maximal intensity, our body is not burning fat during that time. It is just burning the sugar that's available in our blood. That's why sprint training is for a very short intensity because There's a limited amount of blood, uh, of sugar in the blood. So basically when we do sprint training, we help to clear out our blood of all of the free floating blood sugar, which estrogen used to do. So we have to basically help our body kind of clear out that blood sugar. That also helps to improve our insulin sensitivity because there's less blood sugar floating around in the bloodstream. Now. After that exercise is done, we essentially used up all of that energy and we didn't have enough oxygen. So we create what's called an oxygen debt or epoch. And so when we're resting, our body basically has to make up that debt. And that's when we can burn more fat at rest, because when we're resting, our body now has access to the oxygen so we can actually burn through the fat. We can start to metabolize some of that fat to kind of make up for the energy that we use earlier during the sprint training or during the heavy lifting.

Kevin: 24:49

This is excellent that you're bringing all this information, because I only know this as Once you pass the age of 30, men's testosterone starts to fade and therefore men develop a beer belly whether or not they've ever had a beer before in their life. But your testosterone drops. Testosterone is an anabolic steroid and it does Anabolic

Angie: 25:08

hormone.

Kevin: 25:09

Anabolic hormone. And it does so much of these same things.

Angie: 25:12

But it is a steroid hormone as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin: 25:15

Because they're in kind of the same category.

Angie: 25:17

Right. Well, there are certain there are different types of hormones. Yes. And testosterone is a steroid hormone. It's the type that Like, people think of steroids as like, you know, something that you inject yourself with, but steroid, that's just a term for the, a different type of hormone in the body.

Kevin: 25:30

Yeah. It's been a few years since I left the biology classroom. I used to have all the terms much smoother at this one, but there was so much done to figure out how men could figure out how not to develop a beer belly and just not as much research on the other half of the population, which is. Tragically misplaced on, as most exercise research is.

Angie: 25:53

Yes, that's true. And so now we're starting to study this population even more. And we are seeing that sprint training is very beneficial, not only for lean muscle mass and fat oxidation or fat burning. It's also improves endurance. Like there was a study done on postmenopausal women and it had them go through a series of sprint training where they were, it was on a bike. It was a total of 20 minutes. They went. Eight seconds really hard at like 85 percent of their max heart rate, and then they recovered for 12 seconds, and they did that back and forth for 20 minutes, and they found a 12 percent increase in their aerobic fitness. After doing this for eight weeks, it was three times a week for eight weeks. They found a 12 percent improvement in their overall aerobic fitness. So by sprint training, not only are you burning more fat, you're, you know, improving your muscle recruitment, your power output, all these different things. You're also improving your endurance, which if you're listening to this podcast, chances are you are an endurance athlete that wants to run, you know, 5k or more,

Kevin: 26:55

right? So here's, here's the issue that tends to then crop up in a whole bunch of. Uh, you know, runfluencers is, you just pointed out a whole bunch of benefits of sprint training. But at the start, we were pointing out I'm not

Angie: 27:07

even done yet.

Kevin: 27:08

I know, but at the start we start, we're pointing out a whole bunch of benefits of zone 2 training. And so everybody says, oh, well zone 2 is the thing. And then the counterbalance to that is, oh, well sprint training is the thing. thing. And I want to go back to the whole suggestion that your your training program is like a spice cabinet. You can use more than one at a time. You're allowed to have a variety of spices in there. And that's never how the research things go. It's always like, this is what happened to the endurance when someone was sprinting versus someone doing real low level, This is what happened when they were doing just zone two training versus no training. It's like, well, yes, the person who's zone two trained got better. The person who sprint trained got better, but there's never the good study of what happens when you put it all together. Do them head to head, do they compound, do they add on top of each other is like one plus one, two, or is one plus one, one and a half. Or is one plus one three? Like, how do these things mix when they go together?

Angie: 28:10

Yeah. And that's where I think that it all comes down and you're kind of jumping ahead to like the summary of the episode, but sprint training is important. And zone two training is important. Like it's important for you to have a mixture of different effort levels in your training. Um, you know, today we're just kind of focusing a little bit more on. Um, more on the benefits of sprint training because it's something that isn't talked about as much. And I think that part of the hesitation of, of talking about sprint training, especially in the older population, especially in runners over 40 or post menopausal or, you know, pre, uh, peri and post menopausal women is that sprint training, because it is high intensity, it does come with a higher risk for injury. And as a physical therapist, it's very important for me to. Remind you of that as well. Like, I don't want you to just go out and be like, Oh, Angie and Kevin said that sprint training is the best. Now I'm going to go do that all the time. You know, that is not the point of this episode. The point is to start to consider adding in some sprint training. If you aren't doing that already, you know, adding in some higher intensity. trainings and higher effort levels into your training on a weekly basis can greatly benefit you, but you have to do so in a very safe and controlled manner. Like you don't want to just jump in and start doing sprint training three times a week because that's what You know one of the people on social media or the book that you're reading told you to do You know, I've been doing a lot of research That is the recommendation sprint training two to three times a week for women in perimenopause and postmenopause You can't just jump into that if you haven't been doing That kind of training for a while, like you're, you're probably going to get hurt.

Kevin: 29:51

I mean, that's like suggesting that you could train for a marathon. That's like suggesting there's a couched marathon training of like, well, you should be doing 50 to 70 miles a week. If you're currently at zero, I guess you better get to 50. Like there's, there's a process of getting there. But are there some more benefits that you wanted to highlight? You, you talked about.

Angie: 30:08

for bringing me back. So yes, it helps to improve blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, endurance, power, uh, helps to burn more fat at rest. It also helps to increase and strengthen your number of mitochondria. And if you remember. Level two does that also, right? So this is the thing. A lot of these things can do have similar benefits, but again, it's going to depend on what phase of life you're in, what phase of training you're in, how much experience you have. You know, if you've been doing a lot of zone two training, there's a benefit of switching things up as well. Like your body getting new stimuli, your body's going to make different adaptations. So maybe you've been doing a lot of zone two training, throwing in and sprinkling in some sprint training can really benefit you. So those mitochondria. Those are the powerhouse of the cells that's going to help you create, like, um, to, uh, not, not create more energy, but, um, convert more energy, convert more food to energy, more efficiently. Uh, sprint training also increases your human growth hormone, which can decrease with age. So again, there's a lot of these, um, I don't want to say anti aging benefits because it's not that we don't want to age. We are, we're, we want to age, we want to age powerfully, you know, they're, they're powerfully aging benefits, right? There's been a lot of info out there about cortisol and the danger of the dangers of cortisol and how you know We're all living in this very stressed out state with high levels of cortisol cortisol is a good hormone in our body when It, when it's like, uh, appropriately, I don't want to say used appropriately, but when it's being like released and, and cycled appropriately in the body, like cortisol has a natural cycle in the body. The problem is when it stays elevated because it has natural, like highs and lows throughout our day. And, and that's a good thing, but if it stays chronically elevated, that's an issue. And so. Sprint training can help to counteract cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone that a lot of people know help to, um, helps to increase the storage of body fat. So again, this is counteracting that. So it's going to help us burn through some of that fat, especially the visceral fat, like the fat in the belly around the organs, which is the more, is, That's the type of fat that increases your risk for chronic disease, so that's really good. It helps to stimulate a thing called BDNF, Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor, which helps to improve your brain health, your memory, brain fog, all of those things. So, it really helps. Sprint training is really good. a beautiful way that we as women in this phase of our lives can help to essentially make up for some of the losses that we're experiencing because due to the loss of estrogen like we cannot Change the fact that we are losing estrogen in our body. Yes, there are supplemental forms of estrogen. There's hormone therapy We're not getting into that in this episode but beyond that there's a lot of lifestyle and training modifications that we can make so that we can essentially kind of make up some of the the ground that we're losing with the loss of estrogen and like still get some of these benefits that estrogen used to give us.

Kevin: 33:21

Right. Is that making

Angie: 33:21

sense? I

Kevin: 33:22

mean, I'm completely with you. And I do feel as though a large amount of our listening audience is, is from the female side, but for, for male listeners, sprint training also has massive benefits. I don't have the research to the level that you do, but the loss of testosterone also gets counterbalanced by sprint training. And so we get to the point of why aren't we doing more of it? Like what is it that's holding us back? Like you said, Hey, maybe we shouldn't just jump all the way into it. And we do have a couple of suggestions of how to get into it, but what's holding us all back? Like why aren't more people going out and sprinting?

Angie: 33:59

Cause it's really hard.

Kevin: 34:01

Okay. I believe that's the number one answer.

Angie: 34:03

Right? Like it's hard to go out. Like when you know that you have to go out and run really hard, like that is a major mental hurdle that a lot of people have a hard time getting over.

Kevin: 34:13

That's why it's called running hard. Like you literally have to run hard. It's going to be hard. That's it's right there. It's going

Angie: 34:19

to be uncomfortable

Kevin: 34:20

and there's no getting around it. And it's not like, well, all right, those people improve their endurance after eight weeks of that training. But the sprint part of their training was still difficult. It was still uncomfortable. And it was. You know, on the border of painful as they were doing it.

Angie: 34:35

Yeah, and the way that I like to do this, um, and kind of, Talk to myself around this, knowing that it's going to be painful is that it's only going to last for a really short time, though. Like, the workouts are shorter, the sprint intervals themselves are way shorter. So, yes, it is something that is uncomfortable, but that discomfort is short lived, which I like to remind myself.

Kevin: 34:57

I mean, it's drastically short lived if you're used to doing interval training of doing, like, Mile repeats like there's a big difference between sprinting for 30 ish seconds plus or minus Versus mile repeats, which is a pain that just keeps burning. It just keeps going

Angie: 35:13

just keeps on giving Clark

Kevin: 35:15

There you go. Perfect. Okay, so I think that's one of the biggest things holding us back is is It's uncomfortable and you know, it's going to be uncomfortable before you even start.

Angie: 35:23

Yeah. Another place would be because they're not really sure what to do or how to start. And they're afraid of getting hurt. You know, like I already mentioned, like sprint training is hard on the body and it does increase, like there is an increased risk of injury. If you don't warm up properly, that's a really big thing. So it's like, well, what do I do? You know, do I just go to a track? Like a lot of people think that they have to go to a track in order to do sprint workouts.

Kevin: 35:48

No, that's required. Yeah. You have to have spikes and go to a track that there's the two main requirements, but you, you don't, and we're going to get into, uh, in just a second here. Wait, like, how do we actually get into it? But the third one. I came up with, and I don't know how many people fall into this one. You might have negative connotations with sprint training. If you were part of like a ball sport athlete and coach made you do sprints as punishment for something going wrong in the sport, you know, like it was soccer and somebody missed a penalty kick or it was volleyball and somebody missed a serve tennis and somebody served into the net

Angie: 36:24

suicides in basketball. They're literally called suicides. Yes.

Kevin: 36:28

Like, all of these sports had some sort of punishment associated with sprinting. One, I've watched the various athletes at our high school do these quote unquote sprints. They're not. They're death marches. Like, you're literally just dragging the body back and forth, and no one's getting the benefit of a sprint workout out of it. And two, that is putting in your head that sprinting is awful. And it just feels like nothing but misery, and I'm gonna be It hating it for the rest of my life. And I think that's holding people back also.

Angie: 36:57

Yeah. But what instead, if we thought about it as little kids, like little kids sprint everywhere they go, they have no speed modulation or like understanding of pacing themselves. Like if you watch a little kid run, it's the best thing ever. Cause they just go off and they run as fast as they can until they can't run anymore and then they take a walking break or maybe they like lie down for a little while and then they do it again. You know, like. What if instead of thinking of sprint training as punishment, we thought of the joy of running really fast when we were kids because that was fun for all of us.

Kevin: 37:31

Yeah. I mean, every year we get to, uh, put on the kid's mile at the 5k run that the high school that we're at, um, runs. So we run the 5k and then we head out to the track because, you know, have to be at a track and we start the kid's mile and we get all sorts of ages. And they call it the kids fun run one mile, but there are some little kids out there and you get a ribbon, you get a participation ribbon when you cross it and there are some really little kids and it's like they're going to do a whole lap and that's what they're going to do. Yeah. And it doesn't matter if they're doing one, two, four laps, they all take off at absolute full sprint. And some of them sprint for the opening five to 10 seconds. And then they're walking very quickly and. And then they'll sprint a little bit on the backstretch and then they'll walk a little bit. But by the time they're coming around the track and they see the finish line, full sprint again. And it never occurs to them that they could have paced themselves and run the entire thing because that's not the fun way to do it.

Angie: 38:24

Yeah, the fun, that's also fun to watch the cross country kids sometimes do that. Like the freshmen that have never, learned pacing before, you know, that they, uh, they'll, they'll learn pretty quickly when they, when they come to cross country and start running that way. I,

Kevin: 38:39

that is less fun knowing that a kid sprinted the opening a hundred meters and still has three miles to go. I feel that pain. Yeah.

Angie: 38:46

It's not, yeah. That's not what we encourage, but, but it is like, they learn quickly. We'll we'll say, we'll put it that way. Right. So there are mental hurdles. There are also physical hurdles around sprint training, and this is why it's really important for you to meet yourself where you are and not just jump into, you know, a lot of sprint training. Multiple times per week, like your training load matters and your sprint load matters here. And this is why these workouts, especially if when you're getting started, they need to be really short workouts and they don't need to be attached to a longer workout. So it's not, you don't have to go out and get like the Four miles in and then do sprint training. Like those are different, uh, not forces, um, demands on the body and that those are going to lead to different adaptations. So it's actually better if you do your endurance training on a different day versus your sprint and power training in your heavy lifting, because you're asking your body to do two different things and to tap into two different systems. And it's not going to be, you're not going to get the best results if you try to combine these two things.

Kevin: 39:49

Okay, excellent. So how how do we get going other than ease in, I think is one of the biggest ones. And that's that's my first point here is start small. Okay, some of these workouts that you put in the study, like they sound demanding, like eight seconds on 12 seconds off for 20 minutes does not sound like something that I would like to sign up for as part of a research program. That seems like Like a big workout. So start small, start with something that you can wrap your head around and you don't want to have to be like laying on the floor the whole next day. One of the next ones is really make sure that you are warming your body up. Okay. I like to put in some moderate efforts into a bunch of my runs as part of, you know, ways to play with speed and I'll run the opening mile and then I'll ramp up for a little bit and then I'll go back down for a little bit. Okay. That opening easy mile is my warmup, but if I'm go to a full sprint workout, the warmup is completely different. Okay. I'm used to working with high school sprint athletes during track season. Their warmup is 30 to 40 minutes of jogging and drills and, and, you know, uh, active stretching and the dynamic stretching all sorts of stuff before they get into their actual workout. Can you mention some idea of like what type of, of activities we definitely want to make sure we put into a warmup?

Angie: 41:11

Um, so some of the ones that I like to do are hip swings. That's a really good one because One of the things that you need to understand when it comes to sprint training is that your hips specifically are going to be going through a much greater range of motion versus when you're running at like a level two or zone two pace. Like there's less range of motion needed in really all of your joints, hips, knees, and ankles. Um, but specifically in your hips, like when you're sprinting, you need to have a lot more hip flexion, which is like bringing the knee up in front of you and hip extension, which is kicking the leg back behind you. So I think that hip swings are a must, um, both forward, backward and side to side to kind of loosen that hip up. I really love runner's lunges. This is Especially like a dynamic runner's lunge. I like to add a twist in there. Um, I think that doing running drills are really helpful to warm up for sprints. So like marching, butt kicks, skipping, um, those types of like little, uh, skips are really good because, um, the plyometrics kind of helps your body get ready for that. Like, um, that springiness that we're asking, you know, our muscles and our tendons to have for sprint training, it's a higher level of force. So like little jumps and bounds are really helpful. So you could even just do some like, um, bouncing kind of like a jump rope in place or a single leg jump rope, um, where you're just kind of like bouncing on one foot just to kind of get the, the springy action of your, Muscles in your tendons working.

Kevin: 42:40

All right, and that's a really nice, thorough warm up. Then we get to the actual workout itself. And the key thing on this guy of, you know, we've talked about Did

Angie: 42:50

you also mention like a nice, easy walk or jog before that?

Kevin: 42:54

Well, you're not going to want to go. I did not. Okay. You're not going to want to go.

Angie: 42:58

You don't want to just get into like hip swings and those kinds of things and then go straight into sprinting. So I like to start with like an easy five to 10 minute, like walk or easy jog, then do those drills and then get into the sprint workout.

Kevin: 43:11

Right. And I mean, this is the thing is you're just gradually ramping up the effort that your body is doing. So you could start with a walk. into an easy jog into some drills like marching and butt kicks, turn that into some skipping. Everything's getting progressively more intense and more quick moving. By the time you get skipping, you're, you're getting that quick turnover, but you're not trying to put out the same power that a sprint does, but your muscles are used to that quick reaction. And now you're ready to actually do a workout. When you're working out, you want to. Limit the overall exercise load. Okay. So if you're like, well, I've been doing a whole bunch of zone two training. I do some moderate training, but you haven't touched any sort of sprint training. You don't want to do a ton like the whole workout itself would take, what would you suggest? Probably 10 minutes. And a lot of that is going to be the recovery off of this. Because when you're sprinting, you want to make sure that you are getting the two to three times recovery of what your sprint is. So if you sprint for like 20 seconds, you're going to want to recover for like 40 to 60 seconds. So you get a big time to recover so that when you sprint again, you can actually recruit the muscle fibers. To go again. Otherwise your muscle fiber, everything's going to be too tired to make the connection and get a full sprint.

Angie: 44:30

Yeah. And I think that that's one of the mistakes that a lot of people make is like, they don't take the recovery because they have it in their head that they need to be running for a certain amount of time and understanding that when you're doing a sprint workout, the majority of your time is going to spend resting and recovering from the sprint. So it's like a very short and hard sprint and then either a walk or even just like a standing around kind of like. Staying ready and staying loose and allowing your body to recover and catch your breath so that you're ready to go again for the next interval. So a great way to get started with sprint training is to do hill sprints and to do hill repeats because hill sprints very quickly increase the intensity with which you're running. Like you're, you know, if you're running, even at the same time, same pace that you're running at like a medium tempo run. If you do that on a hill, automatically your effort level is going to be way higher, right? So sprinting up a hill is automatically going to increase that effort level and it's also going to reduce the impact on your joints. So sprinting can be tough on your joints, on your muscles. When you're going up a hill, that actually reduces the impact. So hill training is a really good way to start with this. So a good workout would be like sprinting up a hill as fast as you can for about 30 seconds and then walking back down for about two to two and a half minutes.

Kevin: 45:47

Well, I mean, just easily walk back down to the start. Like, don't worry that you've got to get back to the bottom in a certain amount of time, because. Running down a hill is going to increase your impact. So you really want to make sure that you are just nicely walking back down the hill because running up, it reduces, don't counter the reduced impact by then jogging down the hill and doing all this jarring motion. Also, when you sprint, your body is naturally going to lean forward more and some people have difficulty figuring out how to lean forward. They tend to lean at the waist rather than lean from the ankles. If you're running up a hill, you naturally lean into it with. proper form. Your body naturally leans forward, but it leans forward from all the way down at your ankles rather than just bend over at the waist. If you're running up a fairly steep hill and bending at the waist, you're going to scrape your forehead on the ground. So you bend correctly, which is good. You can start there with reduced impact. A better chance of improving your form. So then if you move to flat ground, your body is used to, Oh, I have this natural lean when I go this fast and it will help you reduce the impacts of running on flat ground because you're running with smoother form based off of practicing on the incline.

Angie: 46:57

Exactly. So, and then the, the final thing you're going to want to remember is that you need to, you should incorporate a cool down. Okay? You don't want to just go from sprinting to like, okay, let's go jump in the shower now. Like it's important to take your body through a nice cool down where you allow your heart rate to come back down to baseline slowly. So that might be, you know, You know, uh, a walk mostly like when you're done with the sprint workout, you're probably not going to want to easy jog. Um, maybe you do, maybe that's, you know, just, again, depends on your fitness level and where you are. Um, but it could just be a walk and then it could be going through some of those. The same exercises that you use for your warm up. You can also use for your cool down. You can also start to incorporate some static stretching during your cool down. You know, we talk have talked about stretching in the past as well, but this would be a good time to do some static stretching. If you like static stretching, like there's, you know, not a ton of benefits of static stretching. You get lots of benefits with dynamic stretching, but if you're someone that likes to just sit and stretch and hold a stretch for an extended period of time, this would be a good time to do that. So taking your body through a cool down is going to help. Like it's going to help your, your nervous system come down. It's going to help your circulation kind of get back to normal. Your blood pressure, get back to normal on a more gradual basis, which is especially important for us as we get older.

Kevin: 48:17

Excellent. And then in that whole idea of bring yourself into recovery mode. Um, one just gradually bring yourself down allows your body to not freak out. It just says, okay, oh, we're done with the hard workout. Now I want to move into recovery mode, which helps align your hormones. But during that recovery, during the time I've finished working out, you want to get protein into your body. Like you really want to make sure that after. Pushing yourself because all workouts are going to break down your muscle a little bit. Sprint workouts are definitely going to break it down. If the goal of this, as you pointed out before, is increase in lean muscle mass, you have to make sure that you have protein on board within that the windows. Again, it's a gray area, 30 to 60 minutes. Would you agree with that one? Yes. So 30 to 60 minutes, you want a good amount of protein on board with some carbohydrates so that you're not just putting protein on board, but you have the carbohydrates to act as the energy source to actually use the protein to build muscle.

Angie: 49:16

Yeah, I mean, carbohydrates and protein are both important after a workout, especially a tough one. Protein is more important, especially for women. Um, when you get in, uh, About 30 grams of pro that you're trying to shoot for aim for about 30 grams of protein after a hard workout within 30 to 60 minutes after the finish of that workout, that actually helps to extend your recovery window. So then you have more time to kind of get those carbohydrates and things in, but yes, you're, you're definitely going to want to refuel with both.

Kevin: 49:44

All right. So I think we've covered a whole heck of a lot of sprint training. We've talked about the benefits of zone two training. I think one of the things is we're, we're not. Runfluencers, I mean hopefully we are influencing people in the world of running, but we're not going to do it to the level of You should only do this type of training because the answer is you need to do all the training Anybody that tells you that zone 2 is the one and only thing that you should do is Wrong, they're just they're proclaiming Too much of a black and white and running has gray areas. Your appropriate training plan should incorporate a variety of efforts. Sprint training has a place in all and everybody's exercise program.

Angie: 50:27

Especially as we get older and our natural hormone levels start to decrease, we can really make up for some of those things that those hormones used to do by sprint training and by, you know, the, the way that we choose to structure our training plan, which is a mixture of different effort levels and sprints are one of them. So hopefully you guys found this helpful. If you did, please leave us a review over on Apple podcasts or Spotify, um, or share it with a friend. And if you have a friend that could benefit from this podcast, please Hit that share button, share it on social media and help us to spread the word. And also, um, if you would like a guide, a PDF guide about sprint training, I made a brand new guide. So you can head over to realliferunners. com forward slash sprint, and you can grab that free guide that I created for you guys. And if you have any questions, come, come find us over on social and ask us questions. In the DMS. And as always, thanks for spending this time with us today. This has been the real life runners podcast episode number 374. Now get out there and run your life.