Real Life Runners with Angie and Kevin Brown

402: Why You're Feeling Slower (and How to Reverse It)

• Angie Brown

Share episode

Feeling slower despite consistent running routines is a common concern among runners over 40. This episode addresses the frustration experienced by seasoned runners who feel their performance is declining with age. Key topics include the real reasons behind this perceived slowdown—beyond just age—and actionable strategies to combat them. The discussion covers the importance of nervous system regulation, updated training strategies, the critical role of muscle maintenance, and effective fueling. Additional insights highlight the significance of polarized training, the necessity of strength and plyometric exercises, and the pitfalls of outdated high-mileage approaches. This episode is designed to help runners regain speed, strength, and enjoyment in their sport with practical advice and resources like free live workshops and membership programs.


03:35 The Importance of Strength Training

05:27 Introducing the 'Running Reconnected' Program

14:23 Outdated Training Strategies

19:44 Unmanaged Stress and Nervous System Dysregulation

20:43 Impact of Estrogen on Cortisol Levels

21:10 Understanding the Nervous System States

23:01 Personal Experiences with Stress and Health

28:22 Managing Stress and Nervous System Regulation

34:16 Optimizing Training Approaches

36:28 Fueling Your Body for Performance 


Thanks for Listening!!

Be sure to hit FOLLOW on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one!



Grab your free Strength Guide for Runners here.

Interested in our coaching program? Check out our coaching options here.

Grab your free copy of the Running Snapshot by clicking here.

Come find us on Instagram and say hi!





Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

Angie:

Have you ever felt like no matter how much you run, you're actually getting slower instead of faster? Like your legs feel heavier, your pace is dropped, and running just doesn't feel as good as it used to? If so, you are not alone. We hear this all the time from runners over 40. People who have been running for years but suddenly feel stuck, frustrated, and wondering, Is this just aging? Is this it? Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life? Is this just how it's going to be from now on? But here's the truth. It is not just your age. There are very real, very fixable reasons why this is happening. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about the top three culprits that could be slowing you down. Plus, of course, how you can reverse them and start feeling stronger, faster, and more energized in your running again. So if you're tired of feeling sluggish and you're ready to take back control of your running, this episode is for you. What's up, runners? Welcome to the show today. We're so thankful that you're here with us on episode number 402, just

Kevin:

coasting into the four hundreds here

Angie:

in a wild. so before we jump into today's episode, I want to announce that I am doing a new free workshop for you. It's a new free training, because you all know, obviously one of the reasons that we do this podcast is to spread the word and to help. As many runners as we can for free. And that is also why I do live trainings to go deeper into some of these topics. Cause you know, you listen to the podcast, you get some of some really great information on the podcast, but if you want to come live and interact with me and get your questions answered, that is one of the huge benefits of joining me live on one of my classes. And also we go even deeper and figure out. what exactly is going on? And a big thing that I'm going to be talking about is what we're discussing in this podcast episode today and how to connect all of these dots, right? Because a lot of times we feel like we're doing all the things, but we're not seeing the results. And there's so many runners that feel this way. And even on our team call this week, we had runners talking about. how they were just thinking about, Oh, it just must be me getting older. And it's no, it's, I don't like that excuse at all. We're not gonna, we're not gonna go ahead and blame it on age because there's so many other things that we actually have control over. Aging is one of those things that happens, right? as we, we are getting older by the day and that is a beautiful thing. and. I don't want us to ever look at aging as a negative thing because it's a blessing to still be here and be active and be running. And we can't stop time, but we can change our experience of it. We can control a lot of things that are going on in our bodies. And that's really what we want to dive into today.

Kevin:

Age is not a time to be like, all right, I have to be getting slower. Like there, there is going to be at some point. At some point, there's a point where you're not getting faster, but you can have different strategies. You can take on different approaches so that day doesn't necessarily have to be today. The day doesn't necessarily have to have already occurred. there are ways to go at this and change the way that you're training.

Angie:

Yeah. And also speed is not the only thing to look at either, right? there's lots of other ways that we can. Track progress and improvement in our running

Kevin:

speed was the only way to track running enjoyment. I would have been done a long time

Angie:

in your teenage years But yeah, I've actually so anyway before we dive into the episode I forgot to tell you about how to register for my free class. So head over to real life runners comm forward slash strong if you want to register for that class I'll be live on Thursdays, I will not be, I don't know when you're going to listen to this episode. It actually comes out on Thursday. So if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, I will be live on that day, which is March 20th, at noon and at 4 p. m. Eastern time. I will not be live the following week because we will be at our very first annual Real life runners retreat, which I'm so excited about. We have our retreat with our members next week, and I'm prepping for that. And we have so many amazing things planned. Our members are going to be joining us in sunny Florida for spring break. and we're going to be joined. Enjoying the sun and the beach and community and running and yoga and mobility and amazing food. And it is going to be such an incredible time. so if you want more information on that, when we do our next one, I'll be make sure you obviously stay listening to the podcast, but the best way to do that is to become a member of real life runners, because that. Our members always get first dibs on all of our events. and this one, since it's our first one is members only. So I didn't even really advertise it to non members. So I'm so excited. Behind

Kevin:

the velvet ropes, you will.

Angie:

Behind the velvet ropes. Oh, wow. That sounds awfully exclusive. And it should

Kevin:

be like the theme of the week.

Angie:

There you go. I also have some really other exciting updates coming out. we're essentially, I've renamed my, our signature program here. And I'm going to be telling you guys all about that. very soon. I can maybe talk about it now because I am going to be running a special since we, since I really redid all of the program.

Kevin:

I'm going to try woohoo again and see

Angie:

if my voice doesn't crack. Woohoo! If you've been following along, you know that I created a program specifically for women over 40 and perimenopause and menopause and last year I named this program Press Play, which

Kevin:

I loved,

Angie:

which I, it was okay. I never, I was never in love with it. And it was an

Kevin:

awesome pun,

Angie:

right? Because it was menopause. So I was thinking press play instead of pause, but even so

Kevin:

good,

Angie:

but even people in the program didn't really get it. And I was never in love with it either. And so I've been sitting with this for literally months and months, trying to figure out, okay, what do I want to name this? What is this all about? And so the new name of the program, drum roll. Do I get a drum is running reconnected nice and I'm in love with this name because it's so well, it just perfectly explains what we do here at real life runners and what we are doing to help runners feel more connected to their bodies, to their running, because we are just taught to disconnect from our bodies, from our running, from the. signals, to push through when our body's screaming at us to, ignore the signals that our body wants to send us, to ignore hunger cues and all the things. But when we get over 40 into perimenopause and postmenopause, it's so important that we start training differently and we learn how to reconnect with our body. And so that's really what this program is all about is helping runners reconnect to themselves and to their running so that they can get stronger, get faster, build a strong, active, vital vitality, lots of vitality, in their body now and in the future. And I'm so excited about it.

Kevin:

really gung ho on this program. The program's phenomenal and you're just so much more excited. Do you think the issue with the name the first time is that it was essentially a dad joke for a women's running program?

Angie:

Maybe.

Kevin:

You think that was the issue? Maybe that

Angie:

could be a problem.

Kevin:

Maybe that's why I was so gung ho but the program wasn't designed for me. I just really thought the name was awesome.

Angie:

Yeah. if you want to learn more about it, join me on one of our live classes. I'm going to be running some specials, to, to celebrate the new naming of the program and the new structure inside the program as well. so if you want more information on that, head over to realliferunners. com forward slash priority and get on the priority list so that you're the first to know when the door is open for that so that you can get in on the amazing specials and bonuses that I have planned, for the relaunch of this program. Yeah,

Kevin:

and just be following us on Instagram because Angie posts everything there. That's how, everything's

Angie:

happening. Not necessarily. I will be posting more. Yes, I will be posting. You know who classes are

Kevin:

coming when you post them.

Angie:

Yeah. So anyhow, all right, let's actually get into today's episode and, talk about why you're feeling slower and how to reverse it because we have so many clients come to us and this is one of the main. Things that they complain about fatigue. I would say is number one They're just feeling so much more tired. Just exhausted all the time. No energy And then slower paces is a very close second to that in for obvious reasons You know when you're tired and you don't have energy it's gonna be hard to run fast,

Kevin:

right? They're very much connected they're the same thing. Sometimes they're stated in one continuous sentence I just feel tired all the time and I'm slowing down like those might just be one One statement. But then it leads to the followup, which is the point of this podcast here is I'm tired all the time and I'm slowing down. Is it because I'm getting older and you always are very quick to jump on. No. and just like you end it there and you follow up, there's a great explanation. We have a whole episode on the explanation behind this thing, but you put a good. solid no period pause and just end the conversation there before an explanation so that it's very clear that the answer is no, that's not the clear cause here,

Angie:

right? And age is a related factor, right? But it is not because of your age that you are getting slower. Age is one of the factors. to consider and can lead to some of the other things that we're going to talk about today if you don't do things about it. age, I would say, is indirectly related because as, especially as women, when we get into this phase of life after 40 and we start to go through perimenopause and menopause and we start to have these hormonal changes, that's what leads to a lot of the symptoms that we are experiencing in this phase of life. And It's indirectly related to age, but just because you go through these changes and you go through these hormonal shifts, don't, does not mean that you have to experience some of the changes that we're going to be talking about today. Some of the reasons why you're getting slower, those are actually fixable and those are in your control. And that's what we're really going to get into.

Kevin:

Excellent. All right. So let's jump into them. We're starting to get some reasons.

Angie:

Yes. Okay. So the first reason that you're starting to feel slower after 40 is muscle loss and strength decline. So after 40, actually, this starts as early as age 30. After the age of 30, we start losing muscle mass, lean muscle mass at the rate of about 3 to 8 percent per decade, unless we are actively exercising. Okay. Building muscle unless we are doing resistance training and actively building muscle because running does not Build strength running may help to maintain strength if you're doing it the, in a healthy way, but if you're over training, if you're running too much and you're not fueling your body, which we're going to get into in a little bit here, then that's leading to further muscle breakdown. So our bodies just naturally start to lose lean muscle mass after the age of 30 because of these shifts in our hormones. And If we are losing muscle, that means we are losing power and we are losing speed because muscle helps us to create power and the more power we have, the more power that our muscles are able to put out, the faster we are able to run.

Kevin:

Right, which is It ties that whole part of muscle is power gets you to speed, is how sometimes running can be enough to maintain, but it's only enough to maintain for a little while. if you don't keep trying to enhance your muscle capability, your strength, it's deteriorating. you're fighting a slipping slope. A sli A slippery? But that's not really what I'm going for you're trying to build a sandcastle out of dry sand It's really hard to get it tall because it just keeps sliding down the sides. So if you're like, oh, no I'm definitely maintaining this you're only maintaining it if you keep piling sand on top of it because it just keeps sliding away because without doing anything, it's deteriorating. So anytime that you're taking little breaks from your running, anytime you get inconsistency, you start the deterioration. And that's only assuming that you're running in a way that is actually trying to create power, that you're running at some higher outputs, that you're doing some like devoted uphill. Powerful inputs, which a lot of people aren't

Angie:

most runners, I would say, are not like, unless you're following a plan that gives you very specific instructions on what you're supposed to be doing, which most generic training plans don't, most running plans out there that you, unless you are working with a coach, most running plans that you will just get online or in an app don't give you those types of specifics. And like Kevin said, it. It's most runners also go out and run. You didn't say this part, but I'm adding this in. Thank you. Unless you're trained. What you said was that unless you're training specifically for power and speed, you're most likely not building it because most runners, when they go out and run, they're running at about an effort level of a five or six out of 10. That is not hard enough to actually build power and speed. And it's also not easy enough that you're recovering in between sessions. So it's like in this gray zone where. some of that is okay, and some of that can be helpful if you're training for half marathons, etc. But if you're doing all of your runs at that pace, you're really just breaking your body down day after day. And so that's actually leading to the reverse of what you want.

Kevin:

And looking at it from a pure muscle loss and strength decline perspective, doing a bunch of runs at L5 or the ever popular L2 training, that is all over. So running, keep it in zone two. That's not doing anything for your muscle. It's not doing anything for your power. It's really not. It's

Angie:

good for cardio. It's great for your cardiovascular health, but it's not building muscle. No,

Kevin:

you are not fighting muscle loss and strength decline unless you are doing things directly devoted towards power, which is going to involve a whole heck of a lot harder and probably uphill.

Angie:

And one of the reasons this is happening, especially for women, is our loss of estrogen during perimenopause. And then, of course, the lack of estrogen after menopause, because estrogen is an anabolic hormone, which means it helps us to build muscle and bone. So as we lose estrogen, it becomes harder for us to build and maintain muscle and bone. So we have to do things to actively do that, and which we're going to be talking about in the next section. So let's move on to the second reason that you're. Probably feeling slower after 40 and that is one of those things that actually I'm going to do this one last I know I outlined it in this order, but I'm actually gonna do this one last we're gonna move on to number three first I'm with

Kevin:

you.

Angie:

Okay. So the first the second reason is out that outdated training strategies Okay, we did a podcast about this a couple episodes ago where we talked about ditching the high mileage model and There is this belief in the running world that if you want to get better, you just need to run more or you just need to push harder. I just need to go out and keep pushing myself harder. But this does not work as well after 40. And again, it's because of these hormone shifts as we as women are experiencing. And men are experiencing changes as well. they're just not as drastic as the shifts that women are experiencing.

Kevin:

Nope, it's just a gradual downhill from like 25. You just keep sliding the other way. It

Angie:

is a much more linear decline, right? Of testosterone. That is one of the big things that happens. You just, you tend to lose testosterone over time, but it doesn't affect men the same way that the loss of estrogen affects women because estrogen affects every single system in the body. And we go through this. essentially, zone of chaos in perimenopause, where it's not just this steady decline that our bodies can get used to, it's up, it's down, it's this rollercoaster ride, which is why we have all these crazy symptoms, and a lot of women think they're going crazy.

Kevin:

Yeah, you showed me the graph of, estrogen levels, and I'm like, that's just ludicrous. Whereas, if you graph, testosterone levels of a man over his lifetime, it really is a linear trend.

Angie:

Significant. if you actually look at it, like it goes down a little bit over time, but for most men, it just like flatlines a little bit, and then goes down just a little bit, but over the course of 50 years. Yes.

Kevin:

Yeah. Over a long period of time, there is a gradually downward sloping line, but that's essentially what you got there. And there's no period of chaos. Is that what you just called it? Yeah. Zone of chaos. Zone of chaos. Yeah. No, that got that term.

Angie:

I got that term from Dr. Mary Claire Haver, who is one of the leading experts. what happens, a lot of people, when they notice that they're getting slower, their inclination is to do more, right? Because that is what we've been taught. We've been taught that. If you want to get better, you need to do more. That the reason you're getting slower, the reason you're gaining weight is just because you're not doing enough. And so this leads a lot of runners to pushing harder on their runs, to adding more training sessions, to skipping easy runs and trying to make them more moderate or harder. they. They don't understand the benefit of strength training, which we're going to get into. and so they just focus on just running more because they don't see what we just talked about in part number one about muscle actually equals power and power equals speed. Like you need to build muscle if you want to get faster and they think I just need to run more to get faster. and then the big thing is that they start skimping on recovery. They don't. Prioritize sleep. They're not getting enough recovery, especially in between those harder sessions. And so their body's just constantly in breakdown mode

Kevin:

Yeah, when you talk outdated training strategies, you can go online and find some year you're like running influencers that are like Oh what you really need to be doing is and they're highlighting the things that are the exact problems You just mentioned skipping easy runs skipping the recovery days and just going harder every day

Angie:

I love when I watch like a 28 year old male Running influencer say those things. Yeah,

Kevin:

which need to be doing is interval training five days out of the week. It's okay, that's great. But you were at peak testosterone level. And what are you talking about? And the issue is when you talk outdated training strategy, that's 80 years outdated training strategy. Like you're looking at like the 40s where that was. the cutting edge of training was interval training five days out of the week

Angie:

We know so much more now

Kevin:

like we're a little beyond that but that was the peak It was like I don't think

Angie:

most people are doing that though,

Kevin:

but you can see it online There are people that are pushing it because they want to sound new and different and so you can just let our

Angie:

contrary and just to be contrary and of course then

Kevin:

you can justify anything and be like That person's doing it and they look super successful, but no, they're just being contrarian You have no idea what that person online is actually doing and

Angie:

yeah,

Kevin:

what kind of supplements they're taking

Angie:

I know it's so interesting like with the fall of some of these MLMs. I'm not gonna name any specific companies but how a lot of the people are coming out the coaches that were in these businesses are coming out now and talking about how They were not doing their own workouts. Like the, their gym routines and their diet was so much more extreme than the diets and the workout routines that they were pushing on, the infomercials that they were. Advertising.

Kevin:

It's because you either have two options, either the plan has to be so extreme that people are drawn in because it looks crazy, you're like, oh, it's crazy, it's gotta work, or it's so comfortable and inviting that you're like, oh, anybody can do it, I will sign up, I will give you money and try that plan, and then it's not effective. You're like, I didn't get the results they showed me on the infomercial. It's not that it's not effective.

Angie:

It's not that it's not effective, it's just not going to give you the results that they're necessarily showing.

Kevin:

Because results may vary. Or, the training plan may be completely different.

Angie:

Yeah. Okay, so following outdated strategies, that's another reason, pushing hard thinking that you just need to run more is not the best way anymore, for sure. That may have worked when you were in your 20s, but it's not going to be working for you after the age of 40. And then the third biggest reason why you feel like you're getting slower is unmanaged stress. and nervous system dysregulation. Now, this is a really big one that not a lot of people are talking about that I really have dove deep into, especially after Kevin's history of seizures and all the things, if you guys have been with us for a while and you know our story. I dove really deep into the research to figure out what the heck was going on with his brain and his nervous system and why it was so dysregulated. and so much of this comes back to stress. And When we are in midlife in our 40s, a lot of us have kids, a lot of those kids are becoming teenagers, a lot of us have parents that are now aging that we have to figure out More complicated end of life and aging and living situations for our parents. And we're dealing with all of these different things not to mention houses and careers and pets and all of the things. There's a lot of things going on when you're in midlife and going back to our hormone shifts as a woman as we lose estrogen. Another thing that estrogen does is that it keeps cortisol levels in check. Now, cortisol is our stress hormone, and so as estrogen declines, our cortisol levels stay elevated, and this can lead to chronically high cortisol levels, especially if you're not doing things to help manage that stress. And that increased cortisol can lead to fatigue, poor recovery, and slower paces because your body's never able to fully recover. You don't. There is, there's essentially two, main states that your nervous system can get into, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic state. so your sympathetic nervous system gets activated in times of stress, that's more of your fight or flight mode. And so when you're running hard and you're training really hard, your cortisol levels are high, that's putting you in more of a sympathetic state, whereas your parasympathetic state. Is more your rest or diet rest and repair state and we're spending so much time with high cortisol levels in that sympathetic state That we're not allowing our bodies to get into that Parasympathetic state as much and as regularly to actually repair from all of those times of high stress and high training If

Kevin:

if I remember correctly, this is also just a brutal cycle is you've got the lack of the cortisol It increases your fatigue, but then increased fatigue leads to an increased cortisol level it just keeps working on itself because you're feeling tired and when you're feeling tired it just gives you a feeling of Stress of the things around you because you're just not moving as fast and you're not getting things done Well,

Angie:

you can't handle stress. you're tired. Yeah, I mean think about like when you're tired Everything is annoying right? Like you get hangry you get like people just annoy you more like zone of

Kevin:

chaos It's my entire existence. Yeah, it's how it goes and so if you then, as you said, if you remove the estrogens, that's then controlling the cortisol, that's just gonna make all of these things more difficult, which then makes managing your stress that much more difficult.

Angie:

and your hormones helped to regulate your stress levels help to regulate your running performance, and so When these things are out of balance and your nervous system is dysregulated, you're not going to be able to run the speed or the distance. you're going to see an effect in your speed and your endurance. But again, this is not just for females. And do you want to talk a little bit about what you've been dealing with lately? Because this is one of those things that we talked about this from 2017 when it caused a series of seizures, which was really bad. but even recently you've been affected by this kind of stuff.

Kevin:

Yeah. As you may notice from not exactly the smoothest of voices on this podcast or from podcasts a few weeks ago where I wasn't on it cause I didn't have a voice or the month before that, where I didn't have it because I couldn't record that month either. I've been getting sick on the regular, and not just a little sick, but bedridden for a day, sick, and then sick on the front end and back end for several days around that day, where I basically spend an entire day in bed. Back in 2018, when I was coming back from, the history of seizures, I started the new medication. If I started feeling off, I would be like, ooh, that kind of feels like I felt on days where I'd have a seizure. I would just, I would take a nap and I'd be fine. And the nap sometimes was like an hour, sometimes it was a couple hours and I'd be fine. And lately I've been getting just incredibly run down, just super, super exhausted. And I thought, as I was moving through November, December, it was like, I've got some real high mileage, a lot of buildup heading towards an ultramarathon. Then I ran the ultramarathon and after recovering from that, I'm like, I don't feel like I'm recovering. And I got really sick in February and now I'm really sick again in the middle of March and it just seems Every time I try and get my training back up and I'm not out there pushing crazy Like I told you I think earlier this week. I want to say Monday or Tuesday. I was like, this is probably the first Good run I've had since January like I've gone out and I've run and I felt okay But that was the first time that I felt good that I felt like my legs were actually moving appropriately So it's not like I'm out there pushing super hard, but every time I string four running days together I'm just wiped. And that's how I've been since January, not to mention the sickness that I had last year. trying to figure out exactly what is causing all of this, it's, it really comes down to there's a huge amount of stresses going on. And in 2017, that huge amount of stresses led to some serious issues and into the hospital a few times. This, these last few months, those have led to almost every month. basically every month, every three to four weeks, I get incredibly sick and I'm out for a few days, which is not a great way to go through life.

Angie:

No, it's not. And this is one of those things where we need to find some answers again. Because I can see what's happening and as a wife, it's hard to tell you what to do because I don't want it. I don't want to do that. Like I want to help problem solve and help you see what's going on because I can see it from the outside. I can see how stressed you are. And not only is it just the stress and Kevin and I had this conversation a couple days ago when we were discussing this. It's, there are certain things that cause stress in our lives. There are circumstantial things that There's a lot going on right now in our lives and there are those things and then there's the stress that we add on top of it. There's all the stories that we tell ourself about what those things mean. So one example for him was like you, you Had a stack of grading tests of tests that you needed to grade.

Kevin:

Yes. There's literally a physical stack of It's 350 pages tall.

Angie:

And so that is a fact of the matter. If you look over at our kitchen table, there is a stack of tests that need to be graded. Now that is the circumstance, but the story that Kevin is telling is, I am so behind. I just can't seem to catch up. So can you see how that is adding another layer of stress? on top of the test that he still has to grade.

Kevin:

Right, and so that, that stack of papers that I bring home and then back to school and then home and then back to school because I'm grading it any second of free time that I can find, then one, eats up all my free time, but two, I'm literally carrying the stress back and forth to work and home every single day.

Angie:

Constantly.

Kevin:

I'm physically carrying the stress around with me. Which is terrible, but I'm also then mentally, I have that stress with me at all point, at all times because I have it with me, it's something that I could be doing. So if I'm not, I'm like, Oh, I really should be doing that right now. And so that's this additional stress of I should, and you are not a fan of shoulds, but. it it presents itself all the time of, Oh, I should be running more. I should be doing more strength training. Oh, if only I had the chance to be, get an extra hard run in, get in another recovery day. I need to be doing all these things. You have the time to do what is going to be able to fit. You have the time to prioritize what it is that you want to prioritize. You can't prioritize everything, but then you can't freak out that you're not prioritizing everything.

Angie:

But you do.

Kevin:

Yes, I do.

Angie:

Yeah. And there's a lot of people that do that, right? there's a lot of people that have that stress. And then on top of that, they have the stress about the stress or the stress over the lack of their ability to do certain things. And that's just making everything so much worse. So that kind of is a nice segue into what do we need to do about all this, right? Like how can we actually reverse some of these things and start running stronger, start to regain some of our speed. And we might as well just go into this first one. The first one is regulating your nervous system. this is a really important thing because this is what controls everything that goes on in our body. your nervous system controls how your body gains muscle. It controls your endurance. It tells your body, the, it sends signals throughout your entire body, through your nerves, through your neurotransmitters, through your hormones. to let your body know what it's doing. It tells it how, when to burn an energy, when to store energy, all of these things. And so when your nervous system is dysregulated because of stress and lack of sleep and lack of recovery and all these other things, high cortisol levels that are going on in your body, it's really hard for you to build strength, build speed, build endurance. So we really need to focus on sleep number one and stress management. We have to learn how to Not let those things affect us as much because yes, we can sometimes change our circumstances Like there are some things that we can do to try to make the those papers go away You can you know, try to carve out more time. There's things that we can do to actually deal with the physical The thing that's right in front of us, but then there's also all the things that we can do to change the narrative around That stack of papers or whatever that other stressful thing in your life is

Kevin:

right It's some of my favorite thoughts on sleep is and sleep is one of the best Biggest things to go to, to start with nervous system regulation, in my opinion. I don't know if you're fully on, on with me on that. 100

Angie:

percent sleep is one of the most important things. I just, I like start went over it because a lot of people have problems sleeping because of stress.

Kevin:

So this is my, why I love the hit on sleep because is the line of focusing on your sleep is one of the most important ways to improve your health. But if you can't get enough sleep, worrying about it is one of the worst things that you could do to hinder your health. you're gonna sleep however much you sleep. if you're normally sleeping like eight to nine hours and one night something goes on, you're up late or you wake up in the middle of the night, like whatever it is that you just can't get good sleep that night and you get five. You get like four, whatever the thing is, you can't freak out that you only have four. Yeah, you're going to be tired, but then freaking out that you're going to be tired is just going to make things worse.

Angie:

Yeah, they actually did a research study where they took two groups of people and Each of them got the exact same amount of sleep three groups of three

Kevin:

groups of people. Oh,

Angie:

you know the study I'm talking about. Oh, yeah. All right, go for it

Kevin:

three groups And they but they gave them all alarm clocks that told them what time they were waking up And so the one group thought based off of the clock that they were getting one fewer hours of sleep one fewer hours I don't think that was grammatically correct at all. And there was

Angie:

I know

Kevin:

you are saw that side, I hear Oh, I'm keeping that right there. And one group based off the clock thought they were getting an additional hour of sleep and just

Angie:

group three.

Kevin:

group three got what the clock actually said. So you have you have your control group and then you have the people that think that they're getting extra sleep and the people that think that they're getting less sleep and they gave them cognitive tests and the people that thought that they all

Angie:

got the same amount of sleep. let's be clear on that. They all had the same amount of sleep. They just had a clock that told them that they got. Less sleep, more sleep, or the amount of sleep that they thought they were going to get.

Kevin:

and then they gave them cognitive tests, and the people who thought that they got less sleep performed, actually statistically worse on the tests. Because they thought they slept less. And

Angie:

the people that got more sleep performed better. which

Kevin:

does not make any sense.

Angie:

So it was literally the only thing that was different was the amount of sleep that they thought They got not the actual amount of sleep that they got. So again, this goes back to the story that you're telling yourself about the sleep. So if you are missing out on sleep and you're talking in your head about how terrible this is, Oh my God, I'm just, this is going to mean that tomorrow is going to be awful. I'm going to be so tired. My run's going to suck. the day is just going to be so stressful. Guess what's probably going to happen, right? Like it's going to be become oftentimes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Kevin:

100 percent which is why I like to get up and start moving around and see how I feel Before I check my watch which tells me a sleep score Which is completely a made up number by the company that makes my watch like There's a bunch of random data that goes into a black box and then they spit out a number They won't tell you what that formula is, but my watch does it there's all sorts of brands watches that do it People have different brands of rings that do it for them. They will all give you a sleep score There's a million ways to track your sleep score and It'll then tell you whether it was restorative or productive sleep and it's just a number. How do you actually feel when you wake up? Because if you wake up feeling amazing, and then your watch is actually, you got really subpar sleep, is it gonna bring you down? I like to feel how I'm feeling before I check what my watch says

Angie:

actually connect to your body.

Kevin:

Yeah. Actually connect to my body.

Angie:

Fantastic. So that's the first thing is getting more sleep, improving the quality of your sleep and then managing stress, which also has an effect on your sleep. So those things will help with nervous system regulation, making sure that you're taking recovery, understanding and starting to. See the signs that your body is giving you to let you know that you're recovered well and maybe you can go out and push it a little bit harder today or signs that you're not recovered well and you have to start to understand what those signs are and especially how those signs appear in you and what your body is telling you. Again, that's one of the big things that we do inside of Running Reconnected is like teaching you how to interpret these different things that your body is trying to tell you because it's just too much to go into in a podcast episode. So nervous system regulation is number one. Number two, you need to shift your training approach. So going out and running all the time at that five or six out of 10, you already know is not what we recommend. It is not a good idea. there's so many better ways for you to train and the biggest one is polarizing your training. So making sure that you have a combination of both easy days and hard days, making sure that your easy days are actually easy. So when we say easy, we're talking about like a two or three out of 10 and your hard days are actually feeling hard, more of an eight or nine out of 10. Some days even going to that 10 level because that's how your body is going respond that and there's a whole lot of physiological mechanisms that we can get into that we don't have time for right now in this episode, but easy days, easy, hard days, hard, more easy days than hard days is for sure important. and then of course, incorporating strength training, plyometrics and mobility. Okay, that's going to help your body actually build the muscle because like we talked about before, you have to build muscle if you want more power, you want power if you want more speed. So you have to start lifting heavier. Not just light repetitions anymore and when I say that with an asterisk because if you are not currently strength training You want to start with body weight only you don't want to just jump into lifting heavy weights So this is all a progression But you want to progress to lifting heavier weights two to three times per week so that you're actually building muscles You want to making sure that you're doing mobility work so that your joints are Moving fluidly, and we can loosen up any restrictions that may be happening because of the tissue changes that tend to happen with, with age, and then plyometrics will also help with improving your power output, the fast twitch muscle fibers. your body's explosiveness. those are all really good. And plyometrics are also really great for building bone, and improving your bone density as well.

Kevin:

Yes. But again, much like strength training, if you're not used to heavy lifting, if you're not used to plyometrics, don't just jump right into those. Did you like what I did? Thank you. Nailed it.

Angie:

Yeah. I think I, I did the plyometrics episode that I did was just me. So you know,

Kevin:

I was in that one. Oh, you were in that one? Oh yeah. We were just endlessly punning on that one.

Angie:

All sorts of the Yeah. Yeah. shifting your training approach is number two, and then number three is absolutely critical, which is fueling your body for speed and energy. You have to eat differently when you are, as you get older. Your body is shifting. Again, those hormones are changing. We need more protein. We still need carbohydrates. There's a lot of runners that think perimenopause and menopause, They cut carbs, they restrict their calories. That is the last thing that you want to be doing because if you are not getting enough food and not getting enough calories and you are underfueling your body, now your body needs to break down something. It needs a fuel source if you're going out and going for a run or training hard, and so it starts to actually break down your muscle and your bone if you're not fueling it properly. It does not go right to fat. As much as you might love to want it to do that and you might love to hear Some influencer on social media telling you that if you train fasted, then your body's going to be more likely to burn fat. It's a big fat lie, especially if you're a woman, your body needs carbohydrates as fuel. Carbohydrates are actually like the lighter fluid to help kickstart fat burning. You have to have carbohydrates on board in order to, for your body to burn fat.

Kevin:

Yeah. And if you're doing any sort of faster running, you're just not burning fat. Like you're not, it's. a hundred percent carb based fueling off of that. So if you don't have carbs to burn your one, you're just not really going to be able to do any sort of

Angie:

maintain that kind of intensity. Like you

Kevin:

can't, you can't hold the intensity if you don't have carbs on board. So you have to make sure that you are actually fueling the work that you are doing. If you're taking in the protein and the carbs, you cannot ignore hydration on this either. Okay. hydration, super, super important. But the whole fasted training thing. Oh my word, it doesn't even work for like most elite men. It works for 1 percent of elite men that fasted training might have a chance of working and people are still spouting its greatness.

Angie:

No!

Kevin:

It's a really bad call.

Angie:

Don't do it!

Kevin:

If your only time to run is first thing in the morning before everybody else gets up and starts their day, is you have to get up and run at that point in time, you've gotta find a way to take in calories before you're out the door. What do

Angie:

you take in?

Kevin:

half banana, sometimes a gel, something that I can get calories in if there's

Angie:

I tell people a lot of times that like tell me that they can't eat at 5. 15 in the morning. Liquid? Yeah, that's what I tell them. I like choose liquid calories then, right? Yeah,

Kevin:

sports drink is a massive win at that point in time. Because then you're already getting the hydration. Because I'm not a huge fan at that point of taking in a huge amount of liquid. You drink a large amount of water before you head out the door. It's not like a crazy large amount of water, but relative to what I take in, it's a lot of water. If I'm doing anything at all over 30 minutes, or putting any sort of intensity into it, including just like strides at the end of my run, there's gotta be fuel on board. there just has to be, you can't do it fasted. You're not going to get the benefits and then you have to eat afterwards. Like you have to fuel before you have to fuel after if the run is going of higher intensity or over an hour, you should probably be fueling during. And that could also be liquid. Like you can get to a point where you're taking another things, but if you're like, Ooh, I've got like a light stomach on that one, liquid calories are going to be, it'll probably be your easiest way to get the calories in.

Angie:

Yeah. Okay, we just threw a lot of stuff at you guys, and I'm hungry

Kevin:

now.

Angie:

And I want you to understand, too, we, we know this, and sometimes we even make these Mistakes as well like we just talked about with Kevin like Kevin has not been doing a great job Managing stress and that's leading to a breakdown of his immune system. He's granted. He's a high school teacher he's around a lot of germs and At the same time his immune system is like doing its best But it's lacking here right because of how frequently he's been Sick. I also want to let you know, me too, I, cause I, I want you to know that we don't always get it right and we're not just sitting here on our high horse spouting off what we do perfectly and, what you, everyone else should be doing and following our lead. Absolutely not. I realized because I was feeling more tired, I was feeling more sore, as well. And so I started tracking my calories, tracking my intake and I realized I was not eating enough food period. And then also specifically not eating enough carbohydrates. And so I've been making a point to eat more carbs and more calories over the last two weeks and I feel so much better. Like already just in a couple of weeks I'm less sore, I'm recovering better after my workouts. I, Just feeling all over better, and I even lost a couple pounds, which was fun.

Kevin:

That's a fantastic win. that's an extra add on. Now that we've done this strenuous podcast I feel like I need to get some post podcast fuel myself.

Angie:

I need water I like forgot to grab a water over here, and so my mouth is very dry right now, so I apologize if you guys felt like that was like a fire hose that just got opened on you and we just threw out a lot of stuff, but we really wanted to pack this episode with a lot of really good information for you so that you can start to see some of these things and understand that it is not just about your age. You are not feeling slower just because you're getting older. There's a lot of training things and lifestyle choices that you may be making that could be leading to. These things. And that is great news. This is not to point the finger or tell you that it's your fault. This is fantastic news because these are things that you can change and you can experiment with and you can control and so that you can start actually feeling better. And if you want more details, if you want. Some coaching. If you want me to help you figure out how this applies to you, come to my live workshop over at realliferunners. com forward slash strong. I would love for you to join me on one of my live classes. I love interacting with people live. That's another reason why I do this. I get to talk to people all over the world. every week, which is super fun. and then also if you want more, coaching and support, and we have live weekly coaching calls inside of our membership inside the program, keep your eye out, get it, get on that priority list for running reconnected because that's going to be relaunching. Later this week or next week and like again, there's going to be some special bonuses attached to that as we relaunch the program. check that out, realliferunners. com forward slash priority if you want to get on the list for that, or forward slash strong, if you want to join my free class and with that, if you found this episode helpful, Thank you Please leave us a review, share it with a friend that you think could benefit from it as well. I know that people that are making these mistakes. So do them a favor and hit the share button and send this episode to them so that they can hear what's going on and why they're feeling this way, right? Because it stinks when you feel like you're not getting better and you're getting slower and your progress is slowing down and you feel like there's nothing you can do about it. That is a terrible pain. thing to feel. So help your friends out, share this episode, and let them know, what's going on in their bodies so they can start feeling better.

Kevin:

Yeah, that's excellent one. There should be a way to send this thing out like anonymously share Podcasts to people that you're like, oh that person needs it Yeah, because I feel like some people are they don't want to tell their friend that they're doing it wrong part of but it's super helpful. if yeah, they're doing something wrong just Send them out and be like, Hey, this guy makes silly jokes in the podcast. You might find that funny, but in reality, you just want them listening to Angie because she's spouting just wisdom over here.

Angie:

Or you can screenshot and share it on social media. That's a way to get it out there. Like you're not guaranteed that people, certain people will see it, but yeah, but you can make another excuse of why this podcast, is a good idea for people to listen to, haha, it's this running couple and wow, this guy had such a crazy story and. All these fun things. So anyway, as always guys, thanks for joining us. I hope to see you guys on one of my live classes or inside of running reconnected, because I would love to help you to feel stronger, to get faster and to achieve your running goals with more joy in your life. this has been the real life runners podcast episode number 402. Now get out there and run your life.