384: Heavy Lifting for Runners

In episode 384 of the Real Life Runners Podcast, the focus is on the importance of heavy lifting for runners. The episode challenges the traditional belief that runners should stick to high repetitions and low weights, highlighting heavy lifting's role in improving strength, endurance, and body composition. We discuss the benefits of heavy lifting, debunk myths about getting bulky, and provide practical advice on how runners can incorporate heavy lifting into their routines. The episode underscores the importance of a balanced approach to training and emphasizes activity-specific functional exercises for overall performance and injury prevention.

01:08 The Importance of Strength Training

04:07 Common Misconceptions About Lifting

09:44 The Big Three Exercises

15:01 Benefits of Heavy Lifting

19:27 Muscle Fiber Recruitment and Coordination

23:21 Benefits of Heavy Lifting for Runners

25:06 Strength Training for Women in Midlife

27:38 Functional Training for Runners

35:06 Balancing Strength and Speed Training

37:35 The Importance of Recovery

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Transcript

Angie: 2:06

Welcome to the Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 384. Today, we're talking about heavy lifting for runners. So if you are a runner that thinks that you need to be doing high repetitions and low weights, you need to listen to this episode today. We're going to talk about why, what heavy lifting is, why it's so important and how you can start incorporating it into your weekly routine. So stay tuned. What's up runners. Welcome to the podcast today. A couple of weeks ago, I did a solo episode all about the importance of hip strength for runners. And apparently this is just in the same, the vein I've gotten. I want to talk about lifting. Lifting is on my brain. You always

Kevin: 3:08

love talking about lifting. Let's be honest.

Angie: 3:10

I do. I also like talking about running. Of course. I just think that lifting is one of those things that runners sometimes underestimate the importance of. And so I very much see it as part of my duty as a physical therapist and as a running coach and as a woman in her forties and helping other women and men in their forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, to run strong, to really continue to talk about why heavy lifting is so important so that people will start to incorporate it. And I think that the message is starting to get out there. I know that it definitely is within our. Clients like inside of our the real life runners academy. We've got so many of our clients that Never liked lifting and would come into the academy wanting to improve their running. And after enough of hearing me say it on the podcast and on our coaching calls, a lot of them have really started to embrace strength training and specifically lifting in general, and they're Actually starting to really enjoy it, which makes my little heart so happy.

Kevin: 4:16

If you've been pretty against lifting for a while, and this is the same thing with most athletic endeavors, if you've been really against like speed training, higher end speed training, you've been really against doing a long run. You used to be really against doing a long tempo run. If you're really against something and then you start doing it, you can start to see some solid improvements. And when you start to see the improvements, it makes that activity immediately more enjoyable because that it's actually worthwhile, even though those improvements might be quick at first and then not quite as rapid after the first couple of months. You're like, all right, but I saw the improvements. I did see that there was a gain by doing this, so it is worthwhile.

Angie: 4:57

Yeah, I definitely agree with that because that's one of the things that I keep hearing on our weekly coaching calls is how much better they're feeling already just after even just a few weeks of starting to implement more strength training or heavier weights. They're already starting to see. Decreased pain. Obviously, there's that period of time at the beginning where you're a little sore and you notice a little bit, your muscles talking to you when you're getting up and down off the toilet, but you're sorry at the beginning, of course, anytime you start a new activity or anytime you're changing your training load. Some soreness can be expected, but so many of our clients are getting such quick benefits within the first few weeks of just overall feeling better on their runs, having more strength and endurance for their daily activities, not feeling as much discomfort and achiness, like with stairs or getting out of chairs or just like random things like that around the house, which is so cool to see it. It's like one of those things I've been telling, but you can hear the same thing over and over again. But until you actually. Decide, okay, you know what? I've heard this enough. I'm going to try it out I'm going to give it a chance and then you start to implement that thing and actually see What kind of a benefit that can play in your life? It's sometimes hard to Adopt or you know get your butt in gear and I really also want to comment Like I know you want to you're about to come in here But like you just said something about when you're really against something and I don't think that You Runners in general are against lifting. They just don't really know what to do because running seems so much more simple. Like you go out and you run. And I think that's what a lot of what attracts a lot of people to running in the first place is that you don't really have to figure it out. And then they start to get into a P a point where they start to get competitive either with other people or with themselves. And they want to improve their speed or improve their endurance and start to run longer or faster. And that's when they realized that running and improving at running, improving your running performance might not be as easy and as simple as they thought it was.

Kevin: 7:05

So then a lot of runners still, if they get excited about the running, they start looking up different running workouts, different types of workouts. Maybe I'll stretch my long run. I'll start doing, you just start throwing out all sorts of running jargon of level two and, Lactate threshold and vo2 max and all these things that you search the internet and they're like, oh, here's the key workout And it turns out that putting them all together into an actual cohesive plan is the key workout But you see all these different new things that you can try within the world of running The problem is that a lot of people try all these things Without really being strong enough to get to them. They're like I've been running for a year So clearly I have the base built I've built my running base But you might not have built the strength foundation that you need in order to add as much speed as you want in order to add You know the really high end speed that you're looking for or really start ramping up the distance on a long run Because that requires some actual strength in the muscles like running is physically demanding. Most people are like, it's just going out and running. It's like walking, but a little bit faster. It's not at all like walking, but faster. It's a completely different movement. It is such a greater amount of forces going through all of your bones and joints and everything running is very physically demanding and requires a huge amount of muscle coordination. So it really. Needs you to go in and actually increase your strength. And as a runner, in order to increase your strength, it requires heavy lifting. Like I still remember in high school where, we're talking mid nineties where it was like, we'd go to the weight room and hold the really light weights in our hand and just do arm running motion. As the coach would time out like 30 seconds and then it would ramp up the time interval over the course of the season so that we could hold them for longer. I was holding two and a halves. I don't know what that's doing.

Angie: 9:00

Not much, but that was what a lot of coaches did because they didn't really understand it. And the, they were thinking, okay as runners, we need to build endurance. And so we need to slow down. do lighter weights and just hold them for longer periods of time or do more repetitions because that will build muscle endurance, which is somewhat true. But as an endurance runner, you're already working on the endurance of your muscles. And so you really don't need to focus on Muscle endurance training during lifting. You, that's why heavy lifting is so much more important for runners because it actually changes the stimulus that you're putting onto your muscles in a very beneficial way.

Kevin: 9:43

Yes. I heard this on a podcast, I don't know, several months back where someone was talking about literally that exact routine because they had done the same thing. You hold really light weights in your hand and you just swing your arms rapidly for a minute. And they're like, but that's not building endurance. Like, how is swinging your arms for a minute going to somehow increase your endurance better than the 45 minute run that you just did?

Angie: 10:04

Exactly. And that's it seems ludicrous when you're like, Oh, I can do this for a minute. So that's going to help me in my two hour half marathon.

Kevin: 10:12

Exactly. It's just not. So like you said, you need a different way, a different type of stimulus when you're doing strength training. And that's where really legit heavy lifting comes in. Now, as someone who's not big into the strength training, I like to go out and run. I lean on you for the advice of what am I doing when I'm heavy lifting? What exercises am I doing? What does that actually mean? So what. What actually is heavy lifting? I'm

Angie: 10:39

so glad you asked, Kevin. And this is really the goal of this episode is to make this less scary for you as a runner. Because like I said, I don't think that many people are against heavy lifting or against strength training in general. It's just that they don't understand what it is, what they're supposed to be doing, how to incorporate it. And our goal is to really help have this podcast episode, really start to shed some light on those areas so that you can walk away from today's episode with a lot more clarity, understanding what it is, why it's important and how you should start to incorporate it. And if you want further help, if you want actual plans that you don't have to figure out on your own, that's where the Real Life Learners Academy comes in, we have All of our strength, all of our training plans for both races and non race goals all include all of the strength training exercises, all the mobility exercises, all incorporated into one cohesive plan so that you don't have to figure this out on your own. So if you do want help with that, head over to our website, realliferunners. com forward slash academy that you'll get the information there. But let's dive in. So you just asked what is heavy lifting? And I think that Even this idea of heavy lifting gets misinterpreted by a lot of people, because a lot of people say, okay I have to lift heavy. That means I just have to go to the gym. And I have to lift as heavy as I possibly can for all of my exercises. And that is not true. That could not be further from the truth. It's actually one of the biggest mistakes that I see in heavy lifting. Because if people start to look into this, they say, Oh, five sets of, or five reps. Five sets of five, right? So it's five sets of five repetitions of those exercises. And so they try to lift as heavy as they can for every single exercise that they do. And that's a really good way to get injured. So when I think of heavy lifting, it's not that you're trying to go out and max out on every single exercise. I like, I tell my runners to focus on the big three. So there's certain movement patterns that are very important for us to understand as runners and really just as humans in general. And so one of them is a vertical force. We want to increase the power in our vertical force. So that would be a squat because a squat, we're going up and down. The second one is a deadlift, which is a hinging motion. Okay. So that's where you're bending at the waist, at the hips in that hinge like motion, and then the third is a chest press. So it's, we're looking at the upper body, a pressing motion. There's a couple others. So that those are the big three for me. Some people talk about the big five, which also includes pull ups, which is like the back exercise and then some as a PT, it's very important for us to also focus on stabilization and Rotational exercises because we want to be hitting all three plans in motion, but we're going to get into that later in the episode So heavy lifting the way that I like to define it, especially for runners, especially to try to keep it as simple as possible We are not Bodybuilders, you know if you're listening to this podcast more than likely you are not a bodybuilder or trying to enter a bodybuilding competition I know we have had some of those people in the past and that's totally fine for you Lifting is a little bit different. You have a much different goal than most runners. So for runners and for the majority of the population, the big three is really going to serve you well. So that's, again, that's squats, deadlifts, and chest press. And those are the three that we really want to lift heavier on, when we're talking about low repetitions and heavier weights, right?

Kevin: 14:12

So why. chest press for runners because that's a lot of upper body. And I would think that, and this one you've converted me on this one. I'm like as a runner, you got to really, you might not need to do leg exercises because you're already running so much that your legs should be strong. But that's not true. We can't already do that. Talked about that a little bit that in order to really build the strength, you have to actually lift heavy, not just do repetitive things like a thousand calf raises. So I get the idea of squats and deadlifts, but why chest press? Why are we focusing on the upper body at all?

Angie: 14:44

Running is a full body exercise. And so that's one of the reasons I also like so chest press is going to help to build the strength in the front of your body. So your pecs, your arms, like you're pushing basically, right? It's a push. And that's why I also to focus on the pulling side of things too. And strengthening the upper back,

Kevin: 15:05

which is like a row

Angie: 15:06

or a pull up. Okay. Or a lap pull down or a lap pull over. So I love to incorporate those as well. And I think that we should be lifting a little bit heavier in those. So I the big four quite honestly, but If you look at like body building websites or strength coaches and stuff out there, it's usually the big three or the big five. I like the big four because it's then you get the push and the pull in the upper body, which is really important because your back muscles are super important for you to help maintain upright posture during running.

Kevin: 15:33

Okay. So that makes sense to me. I like that. I've always thought that you needed to be on front and back on the upper body. And I was trying to figure out why you were going with chest, but you really were just trying to simplify down.

Angie: 15:43

I was trying to simplify down and also because chest press bench press basically is typically one of the bigger, like when you look at traditional weightlifting and Olympic type of lifting, you're going to look more at chest press. There's not really like a back like a pull for Olympic lifting and really heavy lifting. And so that's why. The traditional heavy lifting those are really the big three that most lifters focus on. Okay.

Kevin: 16:09

That makes more sense. Because of the Olympics. So the way, yeah. Competition lifting, chest press in competition. You see it in the NFL combine. How many reps can you do a 225? It's one of those standard lifts.

Angie: 16:19

Exactly. And it is important for runners. I, but that's why I like to balance it out with the back muscles of the row and the poles, because it's really, running is that full body activity. And when you're. The reason that the upper body is also very important is because of your diaphragm and because of your breathing because as an endurance athlete It's very important for you to have good breath control and a strong diaphragm Because your diaphragm is a muscle and that can fatigue as well And so by working on chest press and working on the strength of the muscles in your trunk both on the front and the back You're helping to support your diaphragm as well, which is obviously just very important for us as runners,

Kevin: 16:58

right? So if it's helping to support the diaphragm and helping to prevent side stitches or abdominal cramps, send me up, that seems like a big win.

Angie: 17:05

There you go. So in addition to that, why is heavy lifting so important for runners? Going back to what you were, what we were saying before, there was this myth of like high repetition, low weights, because that was a way to build endurance. And we don't want to get bulky. We were told that type of strength training was going to help us tone our muscles, right? Which turns out was one big fat lie. You can't actually just tone your muscles. That's not how it works. It's important for us to lift heavy so that we can build strength in general. And by lifting heavier, we're changing the stimulus that we're applying to the muscles. We get plenty of endurance training with our running. But one other big thing that I want to say that's a big myth is that running doesn't actually make you stronger. Running improves your endurance. Running improves your cardiovascular ability, like you're the strength of your heart, which is also a muscle. But running after a certain point doesn't actually strengthen your muscles. And that's really what we need. Heavy lifting to come in and actually strengthen those muscles in a way that's going to help support us as runners.

Kevin: 18:10

I want to Call back on this. It doesn't get you bulky because I've been following your strength style routines for a couple of years now And I've easily put on 75 just straight pounds of pure muscle.

Angie: 18:20

That's all the testosterone. That's just flowing through your blood Oh, it's

Kevin: 18:23

the steroids. That's

Angie: 18:25

Say steroids, I said test natural testosterone

Kevin: 18:30

Yeah, no, I mean I've I flipped over and really changed the style of lifting and really gone big on trying to put on muscle mass and it's difficult when you're running a large amount of miles. Like it's they counter each other, right? Like it's hard to bulk up if you are running a certain amount of miles because your body just doesn't have enough fuel to do all of the things simultaneously. It has enough fuel to get you stronger, to build muscle, but not enough to build this huge, you. Extra mass of you.

Angie: 18:59

The mechanisms are slightly different in the body. And so that's why oftentimes if you are running longer distances, it is difficult for people to get bulky. And that's why they tell people that if your goal is to build bulk, like if you are going into a, like a bodybuilding type of competition where the goal is muscle hypertrophy or like bigger muscles, you should really minimize cardio or keep the cardio more to walking, definitely to eliminate running if you're in. In that case.

Kevin: 19:26

Cause it like, if I remember correctly, it literally stops the big, the growth of big sized muscles.

Angie: 19:31

It doesn't necessarily it's just different. Like it's, it, there are different mechanisms and different pathways in the body. And going back to the comment that you made also about you don't have enough flexibility. Like calories to do both. Like you just have to eat a massive amount. And if you're already like for you as an example, you are training for an ultra marathon, you're training for a hundred miles. So you already need to take in a massive amounts of calories. So for you to try to build muscle on top of that, like the amount of calories that you would have to eat in a day would be. Astronomical, like you would like your you physically would have to train yourself to be able to take in so many more calories that you just probably couldn't do it unless you're just eating very highly processed, super calorie dense food all the times, which then has its own health consequences,

Kevin: 20:18

right? So it's really it's between the body's actual like Methods it's using the systems that uses to build muscle and the calorie load that would be required. You're just you're not bulking up Like it's just not going to happen,

Angie: 20:30

right? So if that is your goal, that's you know That's not if that's something that is keeping you away from lifting heavy because you don't want to get bulky That's really a fear that you don't really have to have because it's not going to happen. It takes a lot People don't understand how much it actually takes, how much focus and attention it takes to really build that mass of muscle, like to get really big and bulky. Like people have to work really hard to get that. muscle physique,

Kevin: 20:55

right? But to get clear, actually defined muscles, this whole idea of toned muscles does require heavy lifting. And that's a different setup. Be like, you can become muscular without looking bulky. And I think a lot of people that's a look that they're going for rather than that. That 90s way fish runner that you saw a lot when people are like, Oh, I'm looking for a runner's physique. They want that like lean toned body, not super skinny, but like actually looking like there's some muscle built to it. And that's where heavy lifting comes in.

Angie: 21:25

So what are some of the benefits of heavy lifting or what does it actually do? Like physiologically, what does it do when we lift heavier? Basically, you're placing a demand and a load on your muscles that they're not currently capable of doing. Now, this is where it gets tricky because if you overdo it, you're setting yourself up and increasing your risk for injury. But if you're not it. Loading them enough if you're going to lightweights, then you're not stimulating the muscles in the right way to cause muscle growth because what you're trying to get with heavy lifting is an increase in muscle fiber recruitment, which means like when you contract a muscle right now. Say in this, these are just numbers that I'm pulling out of the air, but say you contract a muscle and pretend you have a thousand muscle fibers in that muscle that you're contracting. Maybe right now, if you are untrained and if you've never done any weightlifting or weight training before, maybe when you contract that muscle, About 30 percent of those muscles are contracting so like 300 muscle fibers But with heavy lifting all of a sudden you're placing this demand on your muscles and your muscles are like whoa I'm not ready for that. I need help so they call on their muscle fiber Neighbors that have been sleeping in dormant and they wake them up. So instead of 30 percent of your muscle fibers, now you're contracting 50 percent because you need more muscle fibers to lift whatever that weight you're currently trying to lift. So it improves the number of muscle fibers or increases the number of muscle fibers that are actually firing. During each muscle contraction, which is a great thing,

Kevin: 23:01

which is super useful because when you're running your muscles are really working when you're in contact with the ground, which is taking place over like a couple of tenths of a second, and you need all of your muscles firing the Together and coordinated, but you can't have some of them slow to the party or trying to sleep through the party They all need to be coordinated. So lifting is what gets them all waking up and actually working together

Angie: 23:26

and coordinated So and I'm really glad you use that word because it helps lifting helps to build that neuromuscular connection so the message from the brain to the muscles that has them coordinated and But both firing more fibers and firing all at the same time. So like you just said, if you're with a group of people and you're trying to get something done the Olympics were just on this summer. So watching the rowing team, right? If you had eight rowers in the boat, I don't even know how many are supposed to be in the boat. But say you have eight rowers and everyone. is rowing at different times, you're not going to get very far, very fast. It's going to be all over the place. You're going to be like running into other boats, right? But if you have a coxswain, the little person at the front that is calling out to have every single rower row in synchronization with everybody else. you're going to get farther and faster, much more effectively. And that's what heavy lifting helps to do. It helps to basically call out more fibers. So more fibers are coming to the party and all of them are contracting more in unison so they can all work together. And that also helps to produce. A stronger muscle contraction. It also like, if we go into like the microscopic level of the muscle, if you want to go back to like freshman year biology in high school, you remember there's these two little pieces called actin and myosin that link together to actually cause that muscle to contract. heavy lifting actually improves the strength of that actin myosin connection as well.

Kevin: 24:53

I am with you. I remember that Velcro comparison. That is no longer taught in freshman bio. Oh,

Angie: 24:57

it's not?

Kevin: 24:58

No, that is anatomy and physiology. Oh,

Angie: 25:00

come on.

Kevin: 25:01

I am sorry. Our

Angie: 25:01

generation had it.

Kevin: 25:03

I'm just saying that is no longer in freshman bio because I have taught freshman bio and that is not in the curriculum.

Angie: 25:09

Oh maybe I'm wrong then. Maybe it's not. It's in further up like physiology. I

Kevin: 25:13

can't remember when I learned it. I know I learned it in high school, but I did take bio and anatomy in high school. So I took

Angie: 25:19

anatomy. Yeah.

Kevin: 25:19

I can't remember when I learned it, but I do remember learning it.

Angie: 25:22

There's two little parts of the muscle and that's what they do. They lock and load.

Kevin: 25:25

Yeah. It's Velcro. Yep.

Angie: 25:26

And heavy lifting, so it improves muscle recruitment, it helps to improve that neuromuscular connection between the brain and the muscle, it improves the strength of the contraction, and it also helps to improve muscle fiber size. And when your muscles are bigger and stronger That's going to lead to improvements in speed, endurance, and power, and also improvements in body composition, which I know a lot of runners care about. When you're lifting heavier, you're able to build more lean muscle mass. And if you have more lean muscle mass on board, it requires more energy just to stay just to exist. So you're burning more energy at rest, which leads to burning more fat at rest as well.

Kevin: 26:08

Yeah, I know. We've got a lot of listeners that body composition is one of their focuses. Mine is power. My thing is, if you're increasing your strength, you're going to be able to increase your power, which is how you're able to then take that strength and use it to make your body more powerful. Move forward in a coordinated fashion at higher speeds. And the more power you can create while running, which is a combination of actually increasing the strength and then practicing using that strength to boost as much power as you can do. The faster you can go and the faster your fastest you can go is then when you're going at easier paces, you're only operating at 50 percent capacity. And if suddenly your fastest gets even faster, 50 percent capacity is faster, or the same speed is only like 30 percent capacity and it feels super easy. So increasing your power output is huge. As far as I am concerned from a let's all run faster perspective.

Angie: 27:06

Yeah, I a hundred percent agree. And to touch on one of the reasons I think it's important. It's so important is as a woman in my 40s and in entering into perimenopause and then for any woman that is after menopause. It's really important for us to be building, heavy lifting is important to help build more lean muscle mass because as we enter this phase of our life, we start to lose estrogen. And estrogen is anabolic, meaning it helps to build muscle and bone. And so as we lose estrogen, it is harder for our bodies to build muscle and bone. So we have to make up for that loss of estrogen. with our training in our lifestyle choices. And so heavy lifting helps to provide that necessary stimulus and stress to counteract that loss of estrogen. So that is going to help us to combat something called sarcopenia, which is age related muscle loss and also osteopenia and osteoporosis, which is loss of bone density, which can lead to, if you fall, It can lead to a fracture, it can lead to stress fractures and runners, like you're just more susceptible to injury if you are suffering, if you have sarcopenia and osteopenia or osteoporosis. There are some older women, when I was treating patients in the clinic that were just so frail that just literally bending over To put on their socks and shoes. They caused a compression fracture in their vertebrae like in their spine They broke a bone just by bending over to do a normal daily activity. And so we want to do our Anything we can now, whatever age you are, to start building that muscle and building that bone so that we can remain independent and active for the rest of our lives.

Kevin: 28:44

Yeah, you mentioned in the realm of peri and postmenopause, but this starts so much earlier. You can build a foundation of strength. In your teens and 20s and give yourself a massive head start Or the counter is if you're like man, I really wish I had done that in my teens and 20s But now i'm in my mid 50s. You can still start like there's not a bad time to get into strength training There's a proper way to get into strength training like if you've never done any of it perhaps going To the gym and figuring out what the heaviest thing you can deadlift today is might not necessarily be your best day one. That's why we have real life runners Academy. It's a great place to start in a good source of anger, unless you're married to a doctor of physical therapy. Okay. It's the second best resource you have other than marrying your own physical therapist, which I think is. is the best thing for anybody to do. But if that's not available, consider joining the academy because man, it's a good source.

Angie: 29:41

There you go. So how should runners be incorporating heavy lifting? So Some people say that heavy lifting is just heavy lifting and it shouldn't be different for runners than it is for everybody else. And that, no matter your sport, functional training is just a load of BS. And there are those people on the internet and on social media that will tell you that functional training is a load of BS. All you need to do is just lift heavy, and you're good to go. You need to go, you need to do your main lifts. Like I was just talking about squats, deadlifts, chest press, and then you'll be fine. And I disagree. So as a physical therapist for over 17 years with a doctorate in PT, I think that activity specific training, AKA functional training is very important for us as runners, both for performance and for injury prevention. So yes, those lifts are important. Those big three that we talked about, that's a great place to start. That's a great foundation, but we also have to round out our strength training with more activity specific types of exercises, which for us as runners are really important. A lot of hip stabilization, which I talked about a couple episodes ago and single leg exercises because running is jumping from one leg to the other over and over again, some for lots of minutes, some for lots of hours, right? And we have to be strong enough to Basically, be able to handle that. Like our body needs to be able to handle the demands of running. Like what Kevin said earlier, running is a very physically demanding sport. And so we have to be strong enough. So yes, it is important for us to lift heavier on those big lifts. So I, like when I create strength programs inside the academy. They're each based on one heavy lift per day. Like you can combine a couple of them if you want to. Like if you're only doing strength training twice a week, but I like to do strength, if I'm doing a three times a week protocol, I like to do one big heavy lift per day. And then I round out that strength program. With more functional types of exercise and also other upper body and core exercises, because we want to be training and strength training the entire body. We want to make sure we're doing functional types of exercises, like a single leg exercises for us as runners, because we want to be strengthening the body in the way that we're. Asking the body to operate and like this is something that we did in physical therapy all the time, you know when I had Patients come in I always wanted to know what they did for work because especially if they had a physically Demanding job if they were lifting that they were on, you know An assembly line of any sort if they were doing construction like it's really important for me to understand What? What their body is going through every day. What are the demands of their job? And then how can I mimic that in the clinic so that I know which muscles we really need to work on to strengthen and stabilize them, to prepare them for whatever their daily tasks look like, because that could, that's going to be very different for someone who's. That is working on a construction site versus someone that's working in an operating room all day long

Kevin: 32:45

Yeah, but both of them have a whole heck of a lot of strength man Absolutely, your interview with me at the start of a session would be interesting. So what do you do for a living? I'm a teacher. So my major lift is this electronic pen that I used to write on my smart board I like okay, were there any other things I should know about what? Yeah, I trained to run a hundred miles Yeah, oh okay, so there's some demands but in both of these cases, you, when you talk about the functional training, I love that it is all single leg. It's some hip exercise. It's stuff that you can't do huge amounts of weight for because you're automatically unstable. All of your single leg lifts is designed to increase instability. So the challenge is not I'm lifting an absurd amount of weight. The challenge is I'm stabilizing myself. I'm not, tipping over. I'm keeping my hips level as I'm doing this lift and you can add weight to it. Like I do a single leg deadlift that I think is my favorite exercise that you have me do. And I put a good amount of weight on it, but it's nowhere near what I could do with an actual deadlift because I do it really slow and make sure that my hips are actually stabilized the entire time. And I think that's one of the Biggest things that has helped me run as far as possible. Also, I just like that exercise. So I like to pretend in my head that it's that one exercise that's making the big difference for me. Sure. Not the entire routine.

Angie: 34:01

Sure. But as long as you continue to do the entire routine, you can attribute your success to any one of those exercises, my love,

Kevin: 34:08

right? But that's the thing. Whatever you can find, because again, you enjoy lifting a heck of a lot more than I do. I lift because I try to see the best benefits out of it. So if there's an exercise where I'm like, all right, I get to do that one today, I'll fill out the rest of the routine. I'll do all the things, but I'm like, I get to do that one. You gave me a first routine. I'm like, okay, can I add curls to it? I know increasing the size of my biceps is not really going to help me run very far, but it's It's coming up to summer.

Angie: 34:36

And it also will because muscle is still muscle and muscle is a primary storage site for glycogen. So the more muscle you have in the body, the more glycogen you can store, which is going to help you run longer. So if you want bigger biceps, great. Do some more bicep curls. Like I have nothing against that. There's nothing wrong with vanity muscles. Like the biceps to me is more. of a vanity muscle in general yeah, biceps are definitely important. There's a lot of functional activities that, to help you with lifting and stabilizing it actually helps stabilize the shoulder as well. Like their biceps are great, but yes, building muscle is going to be great, but you just cracked me up. It reminds me of when I have patients that come in or even running clients that come in and they're like, Oh, yeah, I'm feeling great. I did that one exercise and I think that healed me and I was like, Oh, you're right. It was just that one thing. Yeah, that was it. You got it. Yeah. So I'm just going to continue to do that and nothing else. And it's I'll see you back in a couple of months. Yeah,

Kevin: 35:31

no that's not how I go. That's why

Angie: 35:33

the whole thing is important,

Kevin: 35:34

but you made a really good point there. One of the things that they do, one of the exercise physiology studies that they do on these like ultra marathon things is they measure the circumference of arms at the beginning and the end and just see how much muscle loss people have had. And part of it is a dehydration. They're losing liquid within it, but also is just literally you're eating up your own muscles as you're running down the trail or whatever it is.

Angie: 35:58

Yeah. When you're, creating your strength program, you're going to lift heavy for those big three, which is like four to five sets of four to six repetitions with a weight, not completely maxed out, but pretty darn heavy. Like it should be very challenging for you to perform four to six repetitions of that exercise.

Kevin: 36:17

I've got one on here. Do you believe in you should Always have one extra that you could get to I heard that a lot one

Angie: 36:22

to two. Okay. Yep So like lifting heavy is like basically our uses our PE as well So we teach effort based training which uses the RPE the rating of perceived exertion. How hard are you going? We teach this to all of our runners to help evaluate how hard their runs are You can also use it to help evaluate how hard your lifts are So the difference in lifting is that you want to be like when you're doing heavy lifts you want to be Usually going for an eight out of 10 would be it, which means you have two reps left before your form starts to break down.

Kevin: 36:53

That's how I've heard it explained is you want one or two left in the tank and as long as you still have good form.

Angie: 36:59

Exactly. That's really how you want to start incorporating it. You should be doing strength training two to three times per week, depending on what you're currently focusing on for your training cycle. If you have questions, reach out. We're here to help you guys. But there's also, it's also important to know when not to heavy lift. Okay. Because it's not like you should just be doing heavy lifting year round. This is why we. teach the concept of training cycles inside the academy. Like it's important for you to have one focus every 90 days ish. Sometimes your training cycles are a little bit longer. Maybe it's like a 16 week training cycle. If you're training for like a marathon or something, maybe they're a little bit shorter, but basically we teach 90 day training cycles and each one has its own focus. And you shouldn't be lifting heavy all year round. And this is, I'm saying that again, to help remind myself of this, because I really do lifting heavy. And but it is important for us to take like up, up cycles and down cycles and allow the body to absorb the training and all of that. But there are some times that it's important not to be going heavy. And this was based on, I really wanted to talk about this based on a conversation that we had on our weekly coaching call with one of our clients, because what she said I think was, is one of those things that a lot of runners believe, like I don't, she's definitely not alone because she's not the first person I've ever heard say that. And so today on the call, we were talking about lifting weights and we were talking about. focus and she was talking about how she wanted to get faster. And I said right now you're on a building strength program. So you're starting to incorporate some heavier lifting. So if you want to switch over to a speed focus, we'll just keep your strength on maintenance mode, because we don't want to be increasing strength like in lifting the the weights of lifting the same time that we're really trying to increase the. the demands of speed. And she's Oh, I thought those were two separate things. You want to comment on this?

Kevin: 38:55

Yeah. Increasing your strength puts this huge stress on your body and it's very difficult to increase strength and speed and endurance simultaneously. just any two of them simultaneously. You can try to do all of them, but none of them are going to move drastically if you're trying to do all of them. That's the problem is you've got to pick one area. That's going to be your primary focus because to really key in on that area to really actually make measurable and see meaningful improvements in that area, whatever it is, whether it's strength or speed or endurance, you've got to let the other ones live in maintenance mode and not have those things provide extra stress. Like you can only have so many big, hard stressful workout days during the week and make sure that you still have enough recovery time. Cause as we point out all the time, It's the recovery that allows you to actually get stronger. The lifts tend to break you down. Running really fast tends to break you down. You need that recovery time. And so if you're trying to do all the lifting and a longer run and multiple speed sessions, you just keep breaking down. You're like, Oh, but I broke down from lifting and then I broke down from speed and those are totally separate. It's no, both of them are literally just breaking your body down. You need the recovery time in there also.

Angie: 40:14

Yeah, it's one body and we can do multiple things, but if we're trying to do all of the same things all at the same time, this is what leads a lot of runners to feeling very frustrated because they're training really hard, but they're not seeing the results that they want, and they're just feeling tired and sore all the time. And it also leads a lot of runners to get injured because they're just increasing the load in all areas. They're trying to increase their endurance, increase their speed, increase their weights in their lifting sessions. And so it's just too much demand on the body. There's literally only so many hours that you can sleep every day and every week because you've got other stuff going on in life, right? We can't all just sleep 12 to 14 hours a day and then train the other six to eight. Like it's not going to work out that way. I like to think of them as levers, and this is the analogy that I was talking to her about. It's like when you're trying to pull one lever, if you're trying to increase your heavy lifting in order to build your strength, speed and endurance levers have to stay in maintenance mode. You might be able to move one a little bit, But it's not, you can't be moving and putting both up to full throttle. It's not going to work out. The body's you're going to burn out, you're going to get injured or you're just not going to get the results that you want.

Kevin: 41:24

But you can't ignore anything. So one of my favorite things is if you're going on a much more heavy lifting thing is to really make sure that you're ramping up strides because it allows you to, without putting a huge demand on the body, still be able to move at very fast speeds. But because strides is I'm going to go for. 15 to 20 seconds very quickly, possibly even very quickly. And up a hill it works well with strength training because you're building the strength and then immediately trying to translate it into usable power without trying to like, trying to increase like strength and 5k speed. I think it just sounds exhausting. Like I'm tired. Just getting that phrase out because the workouts that you need to key in on 5k pace, there's no way that I'd be like, Oh yeah, let me do that. And then go hit up the gym. That's just not, does not sound like a good idea, especially at my current age.

Angie: 42:17

And it's fine if you go hit up the gym, but you're just going to. Keep the weights in maintenance mode. You're not going to be trying to increase the weights for all of your heavy lifts in that same set cycle of training,

Kevin: 42:28

right? And, but the opposite is also true. If you're really ramping up the weights and you're carrying soreness from lifting weights and it's fine to feel sore from lifting and then continue to go out and run the next day. But that runs going to have to be easy. If you're like, I'm going to lift really hard. And then I have a speed session the next day, that speed session. Yeah. Even if it goes well, you're just compounding your fatigue and now you're going to be extra sore the day after that. So like you said, you're just walking around sore all the time, even assuming that you don't get injured somehow through this cycle, you're not going to actually progress because you're just going to be perpetually sore. So you're like, I don't know. I'm working super hard. I'm going to get better. No, you're not. You're just working super hard. It's pushing against a brick wall and being like, look at this phenomenal workout. The wall is not going anywhere, but you're getting really tired. And that's what this is. It's it's the social media version of working out. Every workout looks super, super hardcore because no one puts shows like the easy days. No one shows the recovery stuff because that's not as cool to put on there. Like it's cooler to show quarter repeats. It's cooler to show squats and deadlifts in not as cool to be like, and then it went for a 30 minute walk. That doesn't. That doesn't hit it real very well.

Angie: 43:42

Yeah, I agree. And I think that, maybe I need to do, or we need to do a better job at showcasing what that does look like, so I don't know if you guys follow us yet over on social media at real life runners is like our main account and then Kevin and I each have personal accounts as well. Kevin is. At Kevin Brown dot RLR and he doesn't post a lot, but maybe we'll convince him to start posting a little bit more about his ultra training as he starts to ramp up here a little bit.

Kevin: 44:08

Excellent. We're down to three months. I probably should start posting something about it. There we go.

Angie: 44:12

And then my personal account is at Dr. Angie Brown over on Instagram, so you can follow us each individually or just real life runners as a whole. We'll Whatever, suits your fancy there, but I really hope that this was a helpful episode for you to really understand what heavy lifting is, why it's so important and then how to start incorporate it. And if you have questions, reach out shoot me a DM over on the Graham and let me know do you have any other final thoughts as we wrap up here?

Kevin: 44:38

I love being married to a physical therapist.

Angie: 44:41

I love that you love that and I love being married to you too. Thank you. If you haven't yet can I make a quick request? Can you just hit pause real quick? And And if you scroll down, if you're listening to us on Apple Podcasts, I would love it if you were to write us a review. We haven't had a review, actually we did get one in maybe a couple weeks ago, but it's been a, we've had a little bit of a dry spell with reviews. And so I would love to ask you if you found this useful. Episode helpful. Can you please leave us a review on apple podcast? It only takes a minute Just scroll down if you go on to the main real life runners podcast page scroll down to where the ratings and reviews are Tap on that five star button Tap on write a review and just write a sentence or two and let us know what you enjoyed About the episode and then click submit. We would really appreciate it I appreciate that because each review helps us understand what is helpful for you and also helps us to reach more runners as well. You can also share, take a screenshot, share it on social media or you can send this episode to a friend if you think that this would benefit. If you have someone in particular kind of popped into your mind as you were listening to this episode go ahead and hit that share button and share it with them as well. So as always, thanks for sharing your time with us. Us here on the Real Life Runners podcast. This has been episode number 384. Now get out there and run your life.