Run Like A Woman Challenge - Day 3

DAY 3: INCREASE MOVEMENT CONTROL

Yesterday we talked about the different types of mobility, and how both quantity and quality of movement matter.

Today we are taking that one step further. 

A big piece of movement quality is your ability to control your body through the entire range of movement in any activity.

That requires strength.

But not just brute force strength. Squatting 300 lb won’t automatically make you a better runner. 

It’s about your ability to control your movement under any given load throughout the full range of movement.

If you can’t do that, your tissues and joints get overstressed, and you’re more likely to end up injured.

Today is all about finding our physical weak spots so we can run faster and longer without pain. As a runner, you need to strength train.  Period.  How often and how much varies from runner to runner, but there are some critical pieces that every runner must include in their training (because there are different types of strength and movement control needed for running!).  

ACTION ITEMS - PERFORM THE FOLLOWING TESTS:

Cross Sit to Stand Test: Sit on the floor with your legs crossed (criss cross applesauce). Note which leg is in front. Stand up without using your hands. With your legs crossed the same way (with same leg in front), slowly sit back down onto the floor. Uncross your legs and repeat the test with the other leg in front. Click here to see a video.

Single Leg Sit to Stand Test: Sit in a chair of normal height so that your knees are bent to about 90 degrees. Stand up from the chair using only one leg (and no hands!).  See how many repetitions you can do on each leg (max 30).  Click here to see a video.

For both tests, notice how you felt. Was it hard or easy? Was one side better than the other? Did you have any pain or discomfort? Was it easier to stand up or sit back down? 

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Transcript

0:22

All right, y'all. Welcome to day three of the Run Like a Woman Challenge. I'm so excited that you all are here and that you have made it. We are halfway through the week. Can you believe that we are already halfway through the week? It seems wild, how fast time goes. And I'm just loving the All of the aha moments that people are having. I'm loving, the comments that you guys are putting in the Facebook group. So if you have not joined the Facebook group, jump in there and say, hey, comment under one of our posts, put up a post of your own. I would love to hear how the challenge is going for you. Okay. Even if it's just one thing, like I want to remind you that even if you just take away one thing from this challenge that you would not have gotten or did not know. Or would not have done if you hadn't signed up for this, that is a win. All right. there's some, a lot of times I think we can be very mean to ourselves, right? We can beat ourselves up and be like, Oh, I'm behind or I haven't done the things yet. And we can use these things that we like sign up for. To improve our health, to improve ourselves, and we can use them against ourselves. Isn't our brain tricky that way? So don't let your brain do that. Don't let your brain make you feel bad, and tell you that you're behind, or that you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. Remember, if you just get one thing from this week, It will be worth it, alright? So pat yourself on the back if you've already gotten that thing. And if you've already gotten that thing, let me know what it is. Let me know in the chat, in the comments on Facebook, what has been your biggest takeaway thus far this week? Have you gotten one thing from this challenge yet? All right, because what I want you to see is that there is so much potential for you. Okay, if you can get even some small wins from just doing a couple little things like five minutes here, ten minutes here, like some people are already commenting in the Facebook group that they did the dynamic warm up, like one, one woman said, this got rid of my sciatic pain. Fantastic. I think it was Katie that said that. This got rid of my sciatic pain. How cool is that, right? if you can do something for five to ten minutes per day, is it worth it for you to feel better, right? For you to take care of yourself? Hell yeah, right? Heck yeah it is. So I want you to really understand perimenopause and menopause are just phases of your life, alright? And age is just a number. And like you learned yesterday, It's not all about the numbers. There are so many people that just go into this phase of life and are like, here we go. like I guess I'm just going to get older and it doesn't have to be that way. Age is a state of mind. I like to say it's about how you're choosing to move forward into this next phase of life, right? We were focusing on quality over quantity here and I want you to remember that the way that you move and the intention that you put behind it changes the way Everything and moving your body with intention is that first thing that you need to focus on? That's what we've been talking about all week this week. and we've been addressing some of the other ingredients as well But we're really focusing in on moving with intention because once you start to understand that once you start to do things And move your body with intention and train with intention Everything is going to change you are going to feel completely different And all the people here that are In the press play program there in the Real Life Runners Academy, they can tell you how much their bodies have changed, how much better they can feel both physically and mentally by just starting to incorporate some of these changes into your daily life. So that's Super cool. And that's really why I do everything that I do. that's why we're doing this challenge. All right. Let me check the wins here. I love this. Don't focus on losing weight, but focus on being strong. Yes. Becoming more aware of areas that I need to focus on the flexibility. Fantastic. I love that. all So today, yesterday we talked about movement quality, right? We talked about looking at the way that our body was moving. And today we're talking about. Increasing movement control because we looked at how the different types of mobility affect how we feel. And yesterday we talked about joint mobility and soft tissue mobility and you started to get some mobility tests to assess where you are. You started to see the way that your joints were moving and the way that you were, your body was moving in that overhead squat test. You started to feel some of the soft tissue restrictions that were present in your calf muscles and maybe in other areas of your body. And today we're taking that one step further. We're taking that idea of movement quality and movement control one step further. Because a big piece of movement quality is being able to control your body through the entire range of motion in any activity. And guess what that requires, y'all? It's one of my favorite things. It requires I see you typing core, yep. Strength. You got it, Cindy. It requires strength, right? Because in order to control your body, through a given range of motion, you need to have strength. Your muscles need to be strong enough to control that thing, right? There's a lot of people, if you've ever, tried to lift a heavy weight, sometimes if you try to lift it and you're having a hard time, if you like, get your whole body into it and get a little bit of momentum into it, you can lift a little heavier, right? Yep. And that's not, that's because you don't have enough strength to control that movement. So you have to use force and momentum to help yourself, right? And that's not, so that's a good example of why you need strength to control your body through that range of motion. But when I say strength, we're not just talking about brute force strength. Because squatting 300 pounds is not automatically going to make you a better runner. It's your ability to control your movement. Under any given load throughout that full range of movement, according to the activity that you are asking your body to do right. And this is the most important part. You are a runner, so your body needs to be able to accept the load of running. For whatever distance you're asking it to go, right? And if you can't do that, if your body is not able to control your movement through the range of motion, and accept and dissipate the forces and the load placed on it, that's when your tissues and your joints get overstressed, and you're more likely to end up injured. So today, And some of the tests that you're doing today, it's really helping you start to find some of those weak spots so that you can start to address those things in order to be able to run stronger without pain. Okay? Because what you will learn, now that you are in my world, is that strength training is the key. Non negotiable. All runners have to strength train, period. End of story. You can argue with me, but you're not gonna win. I'm going to continue to brainwash you and get you to drink my strength training Kool Aid because it is just the truth, alright? You need to be strength training. as a woman runner, and especially as a woman runner in perimenopause and menopause. This is non negotiable and today you're going to find out why, alright? This is 100 percent something that every woman needs to do. Now, strength training is going to look different between runners, right? Like your strength training should not look the same as an elite marathon runner. If you are someone that is running 5Ks and, doing your local running races for fun, it doesn't have to look the same. You shouldn't be training exactly the same, but the principles need to be the same. And that's what we're going to go over today. We're going to go over the principles of strength training that you need to understand as a runner, especially as a woman runner in perimenopause and menopause. Sound good? So the mistake that I see so many runners making, especially in this phase of life, is that they just focus on their running. And they don't think about all of the other things, all of the other pieces that need to go into becoming a stronger runner. Becoming a faster runner, becoming a better runner, becoming a, being able to run longer distances, right? So they're like, okay, if I just want to, if I want to run longer, I just need to run more. I just need to actually get out there and keep running longer. But, If you've ever tried that, you probably know that there's a point where that stops working, right? It might work up to a point. And that's why a lot of people get confused, and they're like, I don't get it. up until now, this is all I've done, and it's worked for me. Why does it stop working? It's because at some point it's going to stop working for everyone. All right, because there's more that you need to think about. There's more that you need to incorporate if you want to become a stronger runner, if you want to avoid injuries. And that's really what we're going to continue to focus on today and through the course of this week. You need to start thinking of yourself as an athlete, as a runner. If you don't currently call yourself a runner. If you don't currently think of yourself as an athlete, I want you, again, let's play with it this week, right? let's use that little piece of curiosity that we talked about on day one. And let's just put on our athlete hat. Let's just put on that runner hat and ask ourselves. What would a runner do? What would an athlete do in this situation, right? If you look at an athlete, think of an athlete, okay? Just right now, off the top of your head, think of any athlete. Who came to mind? so let's take Simone Biles. Simone Biles is a gymnast. Do you think she spends all of her training time just doing gymnastics? Or do you think that she probably does other things as well? In order to become better at her floor routine, does she just do the floor routine over and over again? In order to become better on the balance beam, does she just do the balance beam over and over again? No, of course not, right? She has strength training days where she's actually in the gym doing squats, doing lunges, getting her getting herself stronger. So many good athletes out there, right? But you all know these track athletes, they spend time in the gym. They spend time on the track. They go out for like distance runs, right? They do different things and they train their body in different ways. And you, as a runner, are an athlete. I don't care how long you run, you can run a mile, 5k, 10k, a half marathon, all the way up until ultra marathons. You're still an athlete, right? You have to start thinking like an athlete, accepting that identity of an athlete and asking yourself, what would an athlete do? An athlete is going to train appropriately and move with intention. Do you think that Simone Biles, when she goes to the gym, just Kind of wings it or like Google's a workout on YouTube to follow anybody probably not obviously like she's a an elite Olympian She's got so many trainers at her disposal, but she doesn't just go wing it and we shouldn't be doing that either Right? Every time we go out for a run, there should be a purpose for our run. Every time that we go to the gym, there should be a purpose for that workout. We should know the intention behind it. What am I trying to gain here? What muscle groups am I trying to work here? And it doesn't have to be complicated, and you don't need a ton of equipment. Okay, these are a lot of the, The pushbacks that I hear from people. It's I don't live close to a gym I live in a very rural area and it's an hour for me to get to a gym Okay, no problem. Can you get down on the floor and do some push ups? Can you sit down in your chair and stand up? There's a lot of things that you can do with the equipment that you have and the time that you have available to you So I don't have enough time is not a good excuse. You have 10 minutes somewhere in your day You To get started, right? Yes, let's all shake our heads. We know we have 10 minutes somewhere, right? Stop watching Netflix. Stop scrolling on your phone. You definitely are scrolling on Instagram or Facebook or something for 10 minutes a day, aren't you? time is not a good excuse. Because you can get a very effective workout starting in 10 minutes a day. Now, if you're training for a marathon, is 10 minutes of strength training gonna be adequate? No. Okay? I'm gonna be 100 percent honest with you. It's not. But it's a good place to start if you're not currently doing strength training. Starting with 10 minutes is a fantastic place to start. Okay, there's a lot of places that we can start. Okay, so time is not a good excuse. Equipment, also not a good excuse. Because there's a lot you can do. Anybody, can anybody do 50 push ups here? could you start trying? Would you get stronger if you kept trying to increase the number of push ups that you can do? And push ups don't require any sort of equipment, right? You could even do them with your knees on the floor and you'd get stronger. You can stand up and sit down out of a chair. How many people did the single leg sit to stand test so far today? Yeah? Alright, or the cross sit to stand test. That was a fun one, right? That's a new one that I just threw in there. Anybody find it difficult? Anybody notice how your body had to work hard to do it? That alone could be a strength exercise. Standing up and sitting down from a chair can be a great place to start. Doing it with two legs on the floor. Doing it with one leg on the floor. We're going to talk about modifications, afterwards. Terry, my husband cannot get up from the floor. Exactly. That's a problem, right? what if he needs to get up off the floor? it's important for us to maintain these basic mobility, movements as we get older, right? I don't want to be somebody that can't get up off the floor. And I know you guys don't want that either. That's why you're here. That's why you run. That's why you are trying to get stronger actively, right? It's a beautiful thing. So let's talk about why strength training becomes so important in perimenopause and menopause, alright? Because I would argue and offer that, I shouldn't always be saying arguing, I would offer my opinion. My very well researched, scientifically based, experientially based opinion would say everybody should be strength training, okay? But especially women in perimenopause and menopause. Why? As estrogen declines, that decline, that decreased level of estrogen in the body impacts our muscle mass, our bone density, our overall strength. And so we have to make up for this loss of estrogen with our activity. Nutrition and lifestyle choices, all right? Because I always like to think of estrogen and progesterone, especially estrogen, as like our wing woman, It's you got your wing woman there, she's got your back, So when you're younger and you've got higher levels of estrogen, sometimes you can get away with making poorer choices, right? You don't have to be doing all of the things and you can still have a decent bone density and a decent muscle mass. But like we talked about yesterday, I might have even started talking about this on day one. At, starting at age 30, we start to lose muscle mass. Okay, that's called sarcopenia. It's this natural decline in muscle mass. And that accelerates during perimenopause and menopause because of the loss of estrogen. And strength training helps to counteract that by promoting muscle growth. An increase in muscle size and also an increase in muscle strength. Okay. Those two things are not the same. A lot of people think big muscles are strong muscles. That's not necessarily the case. Okay, so the size of your muscle does not automatically mean that you're stronger, and you can be strong without having really big muscles. I know that's another thing that I often hear from runners is I don't want to get bulky. I don't want to be like a big muscle head. It takes a lot of intentional training and intentional nutrition and supplementation to get big and bulky, right? Like you as a runner, especially as a woman runner, are not going to just naturally bulk up, okay, just from adding in some strength training. It's just not going to happen. So if that's something that you're worried about, you can just let that fear go right away from you. All right. So we do have to try to help maintain our lean muscle mass. through strength training. Okay, and if we improve our lean muscle mass by building both the size of our muscles and the strength of our muscles, we're helping to also improve our running performance. Hooray, because stronger muscles improve your efficiency during running. When your muscles are stronger, you waste less energy. Okay, and I'm gonna talk about that a little bit, later when we get into, the different types of strength that we need. Because essentially, if you think about it, running is essentially jumping from one foot to the other, over and over again. So in a fraction of a second, because the average running cadence is somewhere between 160, ideal, is between 160 and 180 steps per minute. So that's, Essentially, you're taking two to three steps per second. So in a fraction of a second, your body has to stabilize itself on one leg and push you forward and propel you forward, into a certain distance at a certain speed. So when your muscles are stronger, You become more efficient at that. Because your body doesn't have to work as hard just to stabilize itself and push itself forward. So it helps to improve your running efficiency, which is going to also help you to improve your power and your endurance. Because if you're wasting less energy just trying to stabilize yourself, you're going to have more energy left over to run faster and to run longer. Sounds good to me, right? We also need strength training to help improve our bone health. All right. So declining levels of estrogen. Increase our risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures, alright? Strength training helps to stimulate bone remodeling. Yesterday we talked about, what's happening in our bone. Remember we talked about the construction crew, like the highway crew, where there's one part of the bone that like comes in and breaks the bone down and then the repair crew comes in and repaves that area and builds that bone stronger than it was before. So this is happening constantly. And as we get older We start to lose some of the, cause estrogen stimulates the builders. All right. So we start to lose some of those builders, those bone builders, but unfortunately the breakdown side of things, like the bone's still breaking down. All right. We just don't have as much of that, the building crew. So strength training helps to bring back some of that, stimulate that bone remodeling. Okay. That breakdown and that build back up. Again, if you give yourself. The proper nutrition, right? Which is going back to our three core ingredients that we really need to pay attention to in this phase of life. Because you can't build stronger bones if you're not giving yourself any cement and any building materials, right? And that's what nutrition does for us. So strength training is helping to, IM increase bone remodeling, which helps to improve your bone density, which then decreases your risk of osteoporosis and decreases your risk of fractures. Sign me up, right? We all want stronger bones. We don't, has anybody fallen as a runner? I fell this summer. I was out in California running on a trail. And, I just decided to, instead of taking the paved trail, I went the rocky trail. And I didn't see the big rock and I tripped and fell on the stinking rock. Scraped up my hand real, and I got some scrapes on my shoulder. But luckily, my body was able to react quick enough to the rock. That I didn't do more damage, right? that could have been a pretty bad fall, right? And my bones were strong enough that impact of that fall, didn't, I didn't break anything. Thank goodness. Broke a lot of skin. My hand hurt for a little, for a month. I had a big thing on my hand. Anyway, but my bones were okay, right? So falls sometimes happen as runners, but the beautiful thing is when you strength train and you get stronger, your running form improves, which means that your foot strike and your heel, your kickback will improve. So your foot clearance actually improves. So you actually decrease your risk of falls. both during your runs and walking as well, right? And falls are the leading cause of fractures in older adults. Okay? So we need to do whatever we can to build stronger bones, to build stronger muscles, and to do things that will prevent falling so that we don't end up with a fracture. I'm not even gonna get into the increase in mortality rate after a fracture, especially after a hip fracture, okay? But there are research studies, I don't know the statistic off the top of my head, which is why I don't want to talk on it, too much, but there's a very high percentage of people that die after a hip fracture. A hip fracture is a very scary thing for older adults, all right? And I want to take that off the table for you, right? And strength training is one of the ways that you can do that. Stronger muscles, okay? When you strength train, you're building stronger muscles. Those stronger muscles are also going to support and stabilize your joints. Which, like we talked about yesterday, increased joint stability, increased mobility in the joints, decreased wear and tear on the joints. That's going to decrease your risk of osteoarthritis. It's going to decrease your risk of joint pain. It's going to decrease your risk of stiffness and joint inflammation just because your muscles are stronger and able to actually support your joints better. Fantastic. There are numerous studies, lots and lots of studies. That confirm these things. Okay, so I'm not just like pulling these things out of thin air. That confirmed that strength training improves your bone mineral density. Especially in weight bearing bones like the spine, the hips, and your wrists, which aren't really known as, weight bearing necessarily, but Your hips and your spine are extremely important. I have had plenty of patients in the clinic that will just have literal spontaneous fractures of their vertebrae. Okay, the vertebrae are the bones in your spine. They're like building blocks. You build them up, alright? Those are the vertebrae that make up your spine. And there are people whose bones are so weak that they can have spontaneous fractures. Or just bending over to pick something up off the floor or And they ha the vertebrae just collapses, alright? Not only is that debilitating, it's very painful. Those types of fractures, like the amount of pain those people are in, very significant, alright? And these things can be prevented. Strength training is one of the ways to do that. Running is also a good way to do that. As long as we're training correctly and fueling our bodies, right? What else is strength training good for? It's great for metabolic health, right? If anybody here cares about their metabolism and the way that their body processes food, those of you at the beginning of the week that said you wanted to lose weight or lose fat or get healthier, You care about your metabolic health. I think we all do, right? Even if, even if your, the way that your body looks is not one of your primary goals or primary concerns, we all want to have good metabolic health. So when you have increased lean muscle mass, you actually burn more calories at rest because muscle tissue is the most energy consuming muscle. It requires the most energy outside of your brain. Okay, your brain is your number one energy sucker. All right, muscles number two. All right, so your body just requires more energy to maintain lean muscle mass. So if you have more muscle, you're going to burn more. This can help you maintain your weight, manage your weight, especially that abdominal fat that tends to increase more in perimenopause and menopause. Alright? A lot of women notice that they're not only increasing weight, but usually it's in that belly area. Now why is that a problem? Because in that abdominal area, the fat that accumulates there is often visceral fat. And visceral fat is the fat that surrounds your internal organs. Alright, there's two types of fat. There's the visceral fat, which is like the deeper fat, and then there's the subcutaneous fat. So if you have like fat that you can like pinch, that's subcutaneous fat. That's fat that's on the surface, like right under the skin. Okay, but the deeper visceral fat that's surrounding your organs, that's the stuff that's becomes really dangerous, and that increases your risk for cardiovascular disease, liver disease, different types of cancers and other chronic health conditions. Okay, so we want to do what we can to help decrease that visceral fat. Strength training and increasing your lean muscle mass is a fantastic way to do that. Strength training also helps to improve insulin sensitivity. So what does insulin have to do with it? A lot of people don't really understand insulin, unless you're diabetic, and even diabetics, unfortunately, don't really fully understand this and understand what it does. But basically, what insulin does is it helps to pull sugar out of your blood. It helps to regulate blood sugar levels. It helps to, so when, and cortisol is also involved in all of this as well, because when you have cortisol, It helps to stimulate the release of sugar into the blood because you're, like, you want blood sugar if you need to, go for a run, right? your muscles, glucose is the primary energy source, primary fuel source for your working muscles. So we need to release sugar into the blood when we're wanting to exercise, but we need insulin to help take that, take the sugar out of the blood and get it into those working cells. Okay, that's what insulin does. And when there's too much sugar in the blood, basically, the cells become less sensitive to insulin, and it doesn't work as efficiently, alright? But strength training and increasing lean muscle mass helps to improve your insulin sensitivity. Again, this is a good thing, right? 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome and obesity. This is a good thing, right? Are we all seeing why lean muscle mass is so important at this phase of our life? Another common symptom during perimenopause and menopause, moon swings, brain fog, mental health issues, anxiety, depression. Anybody have any of those things? Anybody having any, noticing any of those things during this phase of our life? Your BS tolerance is a lot lower. Did you guys see that video that I posted in the group? Yeah, I think it was yesterday. It was pretty funny, right? But like it's true like the way that you're handling things mentally changes and shifts because of the changes of estrogen and your hormones and strength training can positively impact your hormone balance and your mood. It helps to alleviate some of those menopausal symptoms like anxiety and depression and mood swings through different channels, okay? there's a, a factor in the brain called BDNF, brain derived neurotropic factor. It's a pretty fun one. It's really important for our memory and for our cognitive function and strength training and some of the other ways that we're going to talk about, like sprint training, plyometrics training, some of those high impact types of activities, helps to stimulate BDNF in the brain. So it's Actually leading to physiological changes. In our neurochemistry, which is why that third ingredient that we've been talking about this week of regulating your nervous system is so important. And we can use exercise to help regulate our nervous system, which is a fantastic thing. That's why all these three pieces continuously work together. Strength training also. just in general helps you like when you're stronger, you have better balance, right? You were, you decrease your risk of falls. You improve your ability to get around in the world, taking your groceries in and out of the car, climbing the stairs, right? Walking from your car into the grocery store into target or wherever you're going just becomes easier when you're stronger. All right. So there's so many benefits of strength training. Are you guys on board? Is this similar to after having kids as well? Yes, it can be, because like our hormones, your hormones after having kids can be similar to some of the hormone changes that people experience during perimenopause because your estrogen levels and everything, because of, especially if you're breastfeeding and like the different, the changes in your hormones. to, like in the mammary glands to produce milk and, yeah, a lot of the hormones and the decline, the lower levels of estrogen because you don't usually have a period, right? For the first, for me it was like 10 months, like with most, with my kids. but you don't have a period for a very big chunk of time. And so all of your. Estrogen, progesterone, follicle stimulating hormones, those are all like lower and similar to the profile of, like perimenopause and menopause. So yes, a lot of the symptoms, and this is one of the reasons that like postpartum depression is more prevalent, right? And because of some of the other mental health issues that women have after, after, So yeah, great question. So now that we are all committed to strength training, What does it need to look like, right? That's the next question that I often get. how often do I have to strength train? Am I supposed to lift heavy? Am I supposed to lift lighter? And do more repetitions? what is my strength training supposed to look like? Okay, minimum twice a week. Alright? Minimum twice a week, we should be aiming for two to three strength sessions per week. And trying, in the course of that week long period, trying to hit all of our major muscle groups. Thanks. Okay, that's the key because like we mentioned, running is a full body activity. So we can't just focus on our legs because our legs are not the only things involved in running. We need to focus on our back muscles, our glutes, which is really part of the legs, our stomach muscles, our shoulders, our stab, our scapular muscles. or neck muscles, right? even some of those smaller muscles that we might not think about. Alright, so we should be aiming for two to three strength sessions per week and making sure that we hit all of those major muscle groups. Now, what does that strength training need to look like? I like to break up the types of strength, the types of strength training that we need, the types of exercises that we should be doing into three categories, all right? Number one is just strength. I don't have a better word for it, all right? Because running is a full body activity, and so you need to strength train all the muscles of your body. And so we have to think about some of these bigger, more compound types of movements, like squats, deadlifts. Lunges, push ups, core exercises like planks and side planks, right? All of these are very important to help build our strength. When I think about strength, I typically think of like more of those bigger compound lifts like squats and deadlifts and chest press. Those are like the big three. So the squat, let's talk about the squat because that's what you did in your test today. You did the single leg sit to stand test or the single leg squat test. Squatting is really important for us as runners. Squatting helps to increase our vertical force. Our ability to push ourselves up in an upward manner, right? Deadlifts help to improve our horizontal force. Because it's a hinge movement. Like we're hinging at the hips when we're doing deadlifts. We also have to incorporate rotational movements. Because as a runner, You're rotating, right? Think about your, just the running motion. when your left foot goes forward, your right arm goes forward to balance out. You're rotating. The lower body is rotating one way, the upper body is rotating the opposite way to balance each other out. So we need to incorporate rotational types of movements into our strength plan. as well, right? Say hey, as you guys join us live here, I'm loving all the people that are jumping in on Facebook there too. I should, oh, I should have put the, the Zoom link. If anybody on Zoom here, if you guys want to, if somebody can pop the Zoom link into the Facebook chat, that would be awesome. If not, that's okay. all right, so we need to be building strength in all three of those planes, horizontal, vertical, and rotational. And these are like the bigger ones like I mentioned, right? Squats, deadlifts, lunges, those kinds of things. Push ups, chest press, fantastic. For those big movements, we need to be lift we need to be lifting heavier weights. we need a combination of heavier lifting, moderate lifting, and then light lifting is like less important, but there is definitely a place for some bodyweight types of exercises like planks and side planks. Those are two of my favorite core exercises for runners because if you think about it, I hate sit ups and it's not just because I don't like them. doing them? It's because I don't think they're very functional types of exercises. How many times are you doing this? It's not that they're bad, but think about your daily activities. Like how many times are you like doing that motion, right? Whereas a plank is a very functional activity. How many times during your day are you need, do you need to like, Contract your abs to keep yourself upright pretty much all day, right? Regardless of you're sitting or standing. So plank is a very functional activity. What is a rotational exercise? So it's any exercise that you're do like, that you're rotating. So an example would be like if you're doing a plank, like a side plank, like a tuck under. Rotational side plank, like where you can do, anything where you're doing, like the Russian twist, where you're sitting and rotating, anything that you're rotating, really. I like to think of, rotation is really important. Think about putting, washing dishes and putting dishwasher, or putting dishes into the dishwasher. That's a rotational activity. And it's a very functional thing for you to do as well. I know a lot of people that have herniated discs that can't do that, or that has triggered a herniation because it's a bending and a twisting movement at the same time. So we need to train ourselves that way to protect ourselves from those types of injuries as well. So anytime that you're, either your lower body is twisting or your upper body is twist, twisting can be considered a rotational exercise. Alright, so those are our strength exercises. We also need stability exercises. like I mentioned, running is jumping from one leg to another. So you need to have stability, specifically single leg stability. So these are balanced exercises, right? How long can you stand on one leg? without your hip dropping over to the side, right? Because you want to make sure your pelvis is level because if your hips dropping, if your hips are weak and your hip drops, it's going to put more force on your hip, on your lower back, on your knee, on your ankle, right? Everything's connected. All right. So we need to improve our single leg stability, which means we need to train ourselves. With single leg strength exercises single leg balanced exercises. So a great example of this would be a step up Does everybody have a chair or a couch at home? You can step up onto a chair step up onto a couch It's a fantastic single leg exercise, right? It actually trains the glutes really well to step ups are fantastic exercises, right? Again, you don't have to have a ton of equipment You don't have to have a ton of time a lot of these things you can do on your own At home, right? And I want you to start seeing that because during the tests that you went through today, you started to see some of the weak areas that you might have. But I also want you to understand how easy it is to start to correct these things, right? And having a coach and having the guidance and having a training plan is extremely helpful. But you can start small, right? You can start with just doing some of these basic exercises. So single leg exercises we definitely want. And the third category are power types of exercises. So this, these are things like plyometrics, jump training, and higher velocity lifting. Okay, so like lifting things like, more like Olympic types of lifts and like a fast, with a fast speed component to them. All right, we have to be very careful with this type of training, with power training. You don't want to jump right into power training if you're new to strength training, okay? This is why this is category number three. You want to work on strength and stability first and then add in that power. But plyometrics and power types of exercises are very important for us as a runner because if we want to run faster, we need to produce more power. Our muscles need to be more powerful. So we need to start training ourselves that way. Plyometrics are also very good for bone density and muscle mass like we talked about before. All right, so in my opinion, those are the three main types of strength exercises that we need to be incorporating as runners. Okay, the other thing that we need to look at when it comes to our strength program is making sure that we are doing things in a progressive manner. All right. There's a principle called progressive overload, and we talked about that at the beginning of the training today, the importance of thinking like runners, thinking like athletes, right? Simone Biles and Sidney McLaughlin, they don't just go do random things. They follow very structured programs that increase the difficulty level as they get stronger, right? They're the way that they train. in January is not the same way that they trained in July, right? Or last January, they should be on a program that's continuing to help them improve. They want to get stronger. They want to get faster. They have Olympic dreams. They want to win medals, all these things. They got to get better, right? And we as runners, maybe we're not shooting for the Olympics yet. I'm still, I still say I'm training for the Olympics when I'm 80, like when I'm that 80 year old doing the 100 meter sprint. I guess it's not the Olympics or the world championships, right? The 80 year old senior games. Thank you, Lisa. I don't know. but I want to keep getting stronger and keep getting better. I want to keep getting wiser, right? Like I don't want to just settle in my life for anything. And that includes physically. And what I can do at 40 is going to be different than what I can do at 50, which is going to be different than what I can do at 60. But I can tell you that I'm going to keep pushing myself. I'm going to be continuing to challenge myself. And so I really want to invite all of you to do the same thing, wherever you are. Make improvement your goal, right? And don't compare yourself to somebody else because maybe they've been on their journey longer than you. And that's a beautiful thing too, right? We use them as inspiration, not as comparison to make yourself feel bad. So we need to progressively overload our muscles. We need to gradually increase the resistance, or the weight, or both, or the repetitions. So that we're continuously challenging the muscles if we want to keep building strength, okay? If you keep doing the same thing, if you keep doing the same exercise and lifting the same amount of weight in the same repetitions, You're going to plateau. You have to keep challenging the muscles, right? If you want to keep improving. So you have to keep changing things. Now, this whole idea of muscle confusion, if y'all have heard about muscle confusion out there, like you got to keep mixing things up. So the muscles get confused, complete baloney. I kept that PG. G, even. Complete baloney. You don't need to confuse your muscles, you just need to overload them. You can, you should literally be doing squats for the rest of your life. there are some basic exercises. Squats, deadlifts, chest press, lunges, step ups, planks, side planks. If you did those for the rest of your life, you'd 80 year old. You don't have to like, go, like some of these exercises that you see on Social media, people are doing the most complicated things. it's all for show. You, it doesn't need to be complicated. It can be very simple. But you have to continuously challenge the muscles if you want to keep building strength. All right. And then the number, the last thing that I want to talk about that to me is really the most important When it comes to strength training is meeting yourself where you are All right, and those my members that are here on the call with me They know and they can vouch I say that all the time meet yourself where you are. It's great to have goals It's great to have a vision of yourself and what you want to achieve But you have to figure out where you are right now, which is why you, why I've given you these strength and mobility tests. So that you can figure out, okay, this is where I am. I need to start training where I am right now if I want to get better, right? So if I, if you are someone that has, for example, pain with lunges, the answer is not don't do lunges. That's what a lot of doctors will tell you to do, right? it hurts when I do that. then don't do that. Terrible advice. Terrible advice. The answer is modify how you do it. Going back to quality of movement and movement control, we have to change the way that you're doing it. We have to meet yourself where you are. So if it hurts you, if you're, say you're doing a lunge, okay, and it, you start going down into a lunge position and it starts to hurt, Okay, don't go down that far. We have to modify. It doesn't mean don't do the lunge. It just means don't do it like that. Make sense? at first, you might have to do lunges in a modified version. That might mean that you need to hold on to something for support. That might mean that you should not hold on to a weight at the beginning. You should just do body weight. That might mean that you can't, that you don't go down as low. You don't do a full squat or a full lunge at the beginning. And then you build yourself up. You build up your body's tolerance to that activity. Single leg deadlifts are one of my favorite exercises, both for myself and to give to my clients. I think single leg deadlifts are fantastic for runners. I used to, when I used to do single leg deadlifts, I told this story I think on our team call like a week or two ago. When I used to do single leg deadlifts, I used to flare up my back. Every time I would try to increase my weight, my sacroiliac joint, my lower back, would just flare up and be very mad and very angry at me for a good week or two, right? That's when I was trying to move from 15 pounds to 20 pounds. I'm doing like 35 pounds now with my single leg deadlifts because it's not, I didn't stop doing it. I changed the way that I was doing it. I, if it flared me up, I went back down. Okay, my body's not ready for that weight yet. I went back down to the lower weight. I modified it. I held onto the wall for support. I put down my back foot to help support my back so that I can maintain better alignment. I made sure that I was contracting. my ab muscles to help support my lower back, right? I focused on my form, I focused on the quality of my movement. And as I did that, then my body got stronger with that weight in that range. I improved that to a full range with that weight before adding more weight on, right? So if you are someone that has your body is gives you pain when you're doing a certain exercise, the answer is not, don't do that thing. The answer is, that's probably an exercise that's really important for you to start doing, but you have to modify how you're doing that exercise until you build the strength, until you build the control, until you build the mobility. That you need for that exercise. Does that make sense? We will be back to 11 a. m. tomorrow and Friday, okay? So 11 a. m. Thursday and Friday will still be the live times. 11 a. m. Eastern Time will be what we're doing. You mentioned about hormones when breastfeeding are similar to when in peri or postmenopause. I never thought of that before. I'm glad that was like a little realization. Can strength training overcome hereditary bone disease? Yes, I will. I will say yes for that. Define hereditary, right? nature versus nurture. there, there can be a genetic component. but like any genetic types of diseases, any type of hereditary types of diseases out there, there is your, Natural inclination, right? Your predisposal to that thing, which for some people, some women, do have an increased risk of bone disease, right? And then there's what, everything that you do. And your lifestyle choices, your nutrition choices, your exercise choices, can, play a huge role in preventing that, right? They say that genetics loads the gun and then lifestyle pulls the trigger, right? So if you're sedentary and you're eating a bunch of processed non nutritious foods and you're not getting your protein or your vegetables, then you're making all of those things much more likely to happen. Versus if you're making the choices to strength train And to run and to build muscle mass and to do the things that we know based on very good research. This is not like case study research. This is high level scientific research that shows that strength training plays a very protective role in bone density and muscle. Not sure if hereditary, right? But it's in the family, but oftentimes when it's in the family, lifestyle choices are passed down through, throughout the family, right? in, in a lot of families, there, people usually act similar ways, right? If you've got sedentary parents, the chances of the children being sedentary is higher. Or the children decide to go the opposite way and be like, I'm not gonna be like that. I don't want that for myself. But there's a lot of families that don't even question it. They just do what the other people have done. And that's why I always say, like, when you know better, you do better. And so when you start to have this knowledge, just by you showing up here, and putting in this time and learning all these things, you're already so far ahead of the curve. It's never too late to start. Amen. So any tips on how you, how your lower back to start, stop hurting when doing single leg RDLs? Yeah. I, I decreased my weight, so that's, that was part of my story. I met myself where I was, right? that's the key is like when my lower back would flare up, I would decrease my weight and I would work. on that movement. And sometimes that means get rid of the weight, right? Like it doesn't, sometimes it means you don't need, you don't do that exercise with a weight anymore until you can do it without a weight and not flare up your back. Do it with a full range of motion with no weight. Then you add in a lightweight and you see how you respond, right? It's, it requires patience. It requires you meeting, figuring it out and meeting yourself where you are. And maybe it means, if you can't do it, With no weight in a full range of motion, then you do a limited range of motion. pain free, right? Meet yourself where you're at. That's that. Those are the modifications that we talk about. And these are things that we talk about on our weekly calls, our weekly team calls, inside of our program, our coaching program all the time, right? Like how many of you have ever come to me saying, Angie, this exercise isn't working for me. what do I do about it? So that's one of the benefits of having a physical therapist and a coach on your team as well All right, you all, thank you for joining me. I will see you tomorrow Make sure you be, be there or be square. See y'all.