Injury Prevention

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 251 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: How To Run Smarter with Brodie Sharpe.

So if you’re a runner and you’ve ever dealt with a running related injury, then this episode is especially for you. I recently sat down with Brodie Sharpe. Brodie is a physiotherapist from Melbourne, Australia, and he is the host of the very popular Run Smarter podcast, in this informative conversation, Brodie shares his thoughts on a wide variety of topics related to running injuries and injury prevention.

So we discuss whether or not you should be stretching the benefits of different therapies like dry needling and shockwave therapy. When we should we be using heat versus cold? What causes cramping in runners? And so much more, if you’re a runner, this episode is definitely for you. If you are injured, this is especially important for you, or if you want to prevent injuries, this episode is definitely for you.

Brodie is amazing. I’m going to have links to his website in the show notes for this episode, so definitely check it out. But first, if you’re interested in getting a little bit of help, a little bit of guidance, a little bit of direction in order for you to achieve your weight loss goals, your running goals, your strength, your body composition goals, consider having a coach there to help you. This is what I do.

I’m very passionate about coaching, because coaching was one of those things that worked wonders for me. It was amazing to have somebody in my corner helping me to figure all this stuff out, somebody that was helping me to stay on track, helping me to correct mistakes, maybe that I was making, that was offering me that knowledge, that guidance, but also the accountability, the motivation, the encouragement to keep going.

The thing about coaching is, yeah, I mean, you can get the results on your own, but having a coach there means you’re going to get to your results much faster and probably get much better results. And that’s been my experience anyway.

So if you’re interested in having a conversation with me about coaching, just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me, and I’ll show you exactly what it would look like for you and I to work together and how you can become the most badass version of yourself, yet cool.

Okay, so like I said in the intro, I recently sat down for this very informative conversation with Brodie Sharpe. Brodie is a physiotherapist, and he’s the host of the run smarter podcast, and we talk about a lot of different stuff in this episode. There’s a lot of runners that are experiencing injuries right now, so we’re just getting into fall marathon season, and a lot of people are getting injured.

And I was talking to the people at my physical therapist office here in Cincinnati about this, and they are seeing a real rise in people that are injured right now, and especially as the volume is increasing in people’s training plans.

You know, they’re doing their 18 and 20 milers, and people are starting to get injured. So we talk about that and like, what’s going on there and how we can prevent that, you know, we want to be able to run forever. We want running to be one of those things that we can do for the rest of our lives, you know.

And one thing that we did talk about that kind of bummed me out a little bit, but really it’s that, the fact that you know, if you’re a runner, chances are you’re going to get injured at some point. I know it’s a bummer to hear that, right, but it’s true. Because you’re putting a lot of strain on your body, the chance of you getting injured are not zero.

In other words, like there is a chance that you can, you can get injured. And we talk about that, and really about a lot of ways that we can prevent that from happening. We talk about whether you’re a new runner versus a seasoned athlete, and if that has anything to do with you know, your chances of getting injured.

We talk about stretching. Should you be stretching? Should you do it before or after running? Is there any benefit to it? Does it help prevent injuries? We talked about hot therapy, cold therapy, you know, ice bath saunas, or, you know, direct pressure of or direct application of hot and cold to different joints or something if you have inflammation. We talked. About cramping. What causes cramping? How can we avoid cramping? We talked about dry needling and shock wave therapy, cross training, calf sleeves. Do they do anything?

So much stuff in this interview. So I had a lot of fun in this interview, and I really enjoyed talking with Brodie. It’s not the first time he’s been on the podcast, but definitely we had a really good conversation. I personally learned a lot from this interview with Brodie, and I know you will too.

Okay, so without further ado, let’s just get into my conversation with Brodie Sharpe. First of all, for people that maybe are you know new to my podcast, or I’ve never heard your podcast. Why don’t you just start by just kind of introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about your background and kind of what you do.

Brodie Sharpe
Excellent. Well, I’m Brodie. I am a Physiotherapist by trade, living here in Melbourne, Australia, and I shifted from doing my like working as an employee, as a just a general physio in a clinic, seeing anyone that comes in the door, to transitioning to doing my own thing and being an online physiotherapist that just primarily works with runners. And I have sort of tied a lot of online content with my business as well, so I have the Run Smarter podcast, and have been doing that for several years now, just trying to teach runners how to reduce their risk of injury, how to increase their running performance safely.

And what the recent research shows when it comes to running, at the end of every month, I’ll release a podcast episode looking at what’s research has been released in that month and what’s interesting, what’s some interesting findings, and try to get some, you know, running researchers on the podcast to interview them as well. And so, yeah, just trying my best to help educate runners as best as they can so that they can do what they love, run races, run fast, reduce the risk of injury, those sorts of things.

Patrick McGilvray
You’re doing an amazing job with that, for sure. Um, so what is, what is some of the things that are standing out to you, as far as some of the new research? That’s one of the questions I really wanted to dig into tonight, and you just sort of dropped that as the first thing here. But like, what are some of the newer things that are coming out that stand out to you recently?

Brodie Sharpe
Things that have stood out recently, like, there’s been a fair amount of strength training research that’s come out. Not that there’s, there hasn’t been in the past decade or so, but more and more supporting, like heavy strength training in terms of running performance, in terms of getting a better 5k marathon, half marathon, like even the longer distances, they are pretty robust, substantial, systematic reviews that you know, becoming quite undeniable at this stage, a bit around like nutrition.

I know people have, you know, gravitated towards that with your podcast as well. I’ve had some recent things on antioxidants and how that might increase running performance. I did some stuff on caffeine as well over the past.

YouTube video that I’ve released a couple of weeks ago, and that’s always interesting. There’s always, like, some nuances there as well, and nothing that’s really definitive, but some interesting like one off studies and like, oh, this is interesting. Just to entertain some thoughts and maybe try some things out yourself.

But, you know, there’s a lot about rehab, shock wave, PRPs, like stretching and like certain rehab specific work, dry needling, like shock wave, all that sort of stuff, and whether that’s effective or not. And so, yeah, just trying to keep my finger on the pulse and seeing what emerges.

And then, you know, not using it to really dramatically shift my opinions on things. I don’t think I’ve had any radical shifts in my opinions over the last, say, six months in terms of research, but just, you know, curiosities that are just guiding me slightly here and there, or maybe changing my perspective of things very recently.

A few weeks ago, there was an article that came out about orthotics, and I’ve just released a post this morning, like reviewing it, and I’ve never been really great on orthotics, never really promoted it, never really saw good research on it. But now there’s a review that’s come out and said that, you know what orthotics might be pretty good for runners in terms of reducing pain and, you know, helping mitigate some load to different areas of the body, if needed, if required. And so, you know, I haven’t completely shifted my opinions on it, but just, you know, slightly, you know, changing in a slightly different direction, and seeing if more emerges to maybe shift my opinion more. Who knows?

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you dropped a lot of, uh, interesting tidbits there. So I want to go back to a couple of them. Number one, strength training. You said something about like heavier lifting. Did you mean like heavier weights? Like actually lifting heavier weights, correct?

Brodie Sharpe
Yeah. So there’s, like, some of the research is, like, three sets, four sets of something that’s around about a six, six to eight rep max. That’s where, like, most of the strength training, sort of like, where most of the research lies, but there’s been some, like, smaller sample sizes, who even have lifted heavier than that and go into, like, their free rep max and working out then that seems to have more benefit with marathon times. But yet, the sample size is a lot smaller as well.

We don’t have a lot of studies where a lot of people are lifting that heavy, because that’s really, really heavy stuff, and you need a lot of experience. You need a lot of time in the gym, and not not a lot of time in the gym, a lot of experience in gym, like years and years of doing squats to, you know, be proficient with lifting that heavy, with good technique and that sort of stuff, and so, yeah, always seems that gravitating towards the heavier side of things, so that if you’re doing a squat or a deadlift or a calf raise, and you’ve got five reps out, you can it’s a real struggle to a sixth.

You’re really struggling to do a seventh. You couldn’t possibly do an eighth. Like that’s the amount of heaviness we’re talking and that seems to be more advantageous than doing the lighter stuff, the reps of 10, 1215, a lot of runners gravitate towards the body weight stuff or the lighter weight stuff, and do three sets of 15. And, you know, can see some benefit, just not as much benefit as the heavy stuff.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I’ve been a fan of the heavier lifting for years now, and that’s what I teach all my clients to do, which is lift heavy, um, not necessarily, you know, a three set max weight type of thing, but, you know, maybe in that six to eight range, and they seem to get the best results in that sort of sweet spot there from, from what I’ve found, too.

Because really, I mean, if you want to improve muscle strength, you’ve got to overload the muscle. You’ve got to get to that overload stage and body weight, just for a lot of people, that might be a good place to start, but it’s not, as you progress, it’s not going to get you there, you know, you do need to. You do need to overload that, that muscle. And once you’ve, once your muscle adapts, you’re not doing it. You’re not going to get stronger, unless you go up in weight. So that’s where you know the heavier stuff is, is key. The other thing you talked about that I want to touch back on a little bit is the shock wave therapy, because that is all the rage here right now. I mean, everybody’s doing it for everything it seems like. Tell me a little bit about what it is and how effective you think it is.

Brodie Sharpe
Yeah, it was several years ago now, but I had a shock wave specialist on, Matthew Benoit is in the UK, and specialized in the things I had him on to discuss and like, there’s always just, like, different research that comes out with shock wave. Essentially, it’s primarily used for tendinopathies.

So if you have an Achilles tendinopathy, high hamstring tendinopathy, patella, those sorts of things, that’s where they would direct the shock wave. It is essentially sound waves that just that penetrates the skin and the tendon and sort of, like, provide some sort of pressure. I guess you could call, like, sound waves, and I’ve had it done myself.

Like, when I was in clinic, we had a shock wave therapy machine that came in later when I was there, and had it for about one or two years in my clinic that didn’t use that often, but I was, you know, thought, give it a try. Like, out all the physios were experimenting on ourselves so I could feel how it was going. In fact, one of the physios that was working with me was actually doing a research paper on shock wave at the time, and I was a participant in that.

And so, you know, it’s just a quite unpleasant sensation, kind of not like an electric shock, but just like a pressure kind of shock that just goes through and pulsates at a different at a high frequency, at an area of wherever the focus might be, and to be noise definition it was, it’s more to irritate dormant tendon.

So you might have a good candidate for someone who might think about shock wave is someone who’s had a tendinopathy, usually a chronic tendinopathy, so like three to six months or so or more, and they’re not responding to a tendinopathy with the traditional methods, like progressive, heavy strength training, eccentric strength training, concentric like the heavy stuff, good, effective load management.

That’s what we do for tendinopathies, to restore the capacity and restore the function and those sorts of things. If you do that, by the book, if you do that well, and you’re still not getting the right results, if it’s stubborn, mild pain, it’s like a one or a two. You know, and it just isn’t budging. We might call that a dormant thing. And the shock wave, in banoise opinion, is to stir it up, wake it up. Let’s stimulate this tendon, actually get it a little bit sore, a little bit irritated, via the shock wave, and then see if we can then pile the traditional rehab back on top of that and see if it becomes effective again.

And so that is completely different from what people are told about shockwave they think that it heals tendons. They think that it has some sort of healing properties. They think that a two week old acute tendon will respond well. They think that a really chronic, really painful tendon that’s like a 567, out of 10 will respond well, that just makes things really worse. So we need to pick up candidates, and then what does the research show? I’m yet to be convinced that it’s really that effective.

In terms of, like, long term strategies, like you will come across papers that show it is effective. You’ll come across papers that say it’s no better than placebo or no better than other traditional types of therapies. So I don’t know. I’m still not sold on it. I’m still yet to have like this. There’s no conclusive evidence. There’s still ton of research that keeps getting pumped out. I’m yet to be convinced. I’m yet if someone is a good candidate, I want them to give it a try, if they’re happy to, if they’re happy to fork out the money.

However, two to three sessions see if it actually improves. If you’re not seeing any improvement in three sessions, no need to do four, five, ten, I’ve had people do twenty sessions and see no improvement. Breaks my heart, but yes, we need to be, you know, advised in the right way.

Patrick McGilvray
So similar sounds to me like it’s similar to, like a dry needling effect, where the dry needling is actually to irritate and sort of cause some micro trauma to the tissue, correct? Yeah,

Brodie Sharpe
I would. There’s different proposed benefits for dry needling, and I’m not entirely sure what it’s actually doing. Like, I I do dry needling all the time, like, when I was working in clinics and seeing people in person, I did dry needling the time because it worked, like people had less pain afterwards. I’m like, let me just continue doing this, and then pile the long term strategies on top of that. You get taught. You get taught what, what it does.

And some people say, like, releases active trigger points when you release into the muscle and it creates, like, a local Twitch response, which then, like, settles afterwards. Some people say that like, you can do like these, like spinning of the needles themselves, and you can actually see the fibers of the muscle spin around the needle, and then when you take it out, it releases, and that can maybe help release some stuff.

But whether it’s just like a massive placebo effect as well, based on how it’s delivered, I’m not sure, but good short term if it works for some people, so like, I would propose it to people see if they’re interested, if they get good short term benefits, we can see if that’s worked. That’s a good thing for you in the short term again, while we pile on the long term strategies, which we know is really evidence based, which we know is really long term effectiveness stuff, maybe the combination of the two is good. But if you do dry needling and you don’t really see much effect. I don’t suggest it. I don’t do it. I don’t if you don’t see personal benefit, yeah,

Patrick McGilvray
I’ve had my share of dried needling recently, dealing with a like an adductor issue, like strain or something like that.

Brodie Sharpe
How do you feel? How do you feel when it’s done?

Patrick McGilvray
So, uh, when it’s being done. It is horrible. It’s completely terrible. And I’ve had dry needling in a few different areas, and this was a very, very sensitive area, definitely so very painful for the first 24 hours or so, very sore, but then seemed to get better and so I had maybe four or five sessions. And, you know, every time I went, you know, the pain level was, let’s say a four, you know. And then a few days later I could say, oh, maybe it’s a three, three and a half. And the next time it was reduced a little bit. So I think it did help with the amount of time that it took to heal. I think it sped up the healing process. You know, because I was, I was not seeing any progression from this strain prior to doing the dry needling, and as soon as I started doing that, it started getting better, a little faster. Could it just be coincidence, maybe, but whatever, whatever it was, it seemed to be working.

Brodie Sharpe
Yeah, and people tell me, like, I’ve had this treatment done. No matter what that treatment is, I’m getting better, but I think it’s a placebo effect. Should I continue doing it? I’m like, hell, yeah, you should continue doing it.

Patrick McGilvray
If it works, yeah, it works.

Brodie Sharpe
Placebo. It doesn’t matter. You’re getting better, you’re having less pain, you’re not being like, you know, sold on something that’s ineffective. Obviously, we need to talk about risks, if there are risks, but as well, if we pile on the short term and the long term strategies, then you know, it’s okay.

Patrick McGilvray
So what are you seeing as like some of the the biggest issues that runners are are dealing with right now? And the reason I’m asking this is because going to physical therapy recently, they the the place that I go to they are all runners, and they specialize in working with runners, and they’re awesome.

And, and I went in there, and it’s usually, you know, there’s not a whole lot of people in there, it’s kind of quiet, and it’s just packed, and there’s just people everywhere. And I’m like, What is going on? And my physical therapist was like, well, you know, it’s marathon season, and everybody’s like, training for the races. They’re getting up in the mileage, and that’s when everybody starts to get hurt. So is that like, the biggest thing that you see is just like, the increase of volume, you know, increase of distance, time on your feet, pounding whatever is it, just overuse injuries? Is that the biggest kind of issue that you’re seeing, or is there something else going on there?

Brodie Sharpe
Yeah, yeah. Like in my line of work, physiotherapists, like the biggest issue I see is injuries and people wanting to overcome that injury that they’re having. Sometimes it’s long standing. Sometimes I’ve had it for six months plus, sometimes I’ve had it for a year, and they just can’t seem to budge it.

I think plantar fasciitis, tendinopathies like they can hang around a long time if you mismanage them, and so like in my line of work, biggest number one issue is like, Okay, I’ve had this injury for six months. Should I still be running on it? How do I prevent it? How do I overcome it? How do I get back to pain free running?

But you know, when someone isn’t injured, it’s how do I build up my mileage and reduce my risk of injury as much as possible? I want to run safely, but I still want to run races. I still want to run fast and, like, put in some, like, personal bests and that sort of stuff. And so, yeah, you’re right to say that. I think come marathon season, when people hit those peak weeks, it opens you up, increases the risk of injury. Unfortunately, that’s the case.

I try to educate people as much as possible to reduce their risk of injury. But I always say, like, you can’t get that risk down to zero. You can’t say I want to train for a marathon, and I want to get my risk. I don’t want to be injured. You can’t do that like getting injured is, unfortunately, something that might happen. We just have to open up that possibility. We’re pushing ourselves. We are challenging our capabilities, where we’re challenging the capacities of those tissues. If we do so safely, if we do it in the safest way possible, we are getting that risk of injury very close to zero, but it can’t be exactly zero.

And then if symptoms do emerge, and the injury does emerge, we train smart, we rehab smart, we can overcome those symptoms within days, without losing fitness, which is everyone’s fear when they get injured, they’re going to have to take time off running. They’re going to have to, you know, lose momentum. They might have to lose fitness like that’s a fear. So then they keep running through the injury, hopefully it goes away, injury gets worse. Then, who knows? They might have to take more time off. But what I say to people is, you can’t get that risk of injury down to zero.

You can get it close to zero. You can’t get it to zero. And when an injury does emerge, doing the right things, being sensible, getting back to pain free running without losing fitness. That is my true definition of, you know, injury prevention being smart about it. It’s a practical, realistic expectation outcome for people, and it definitely is attainable, like, if you pick up an injury, if you deal with it, you do the right things early enough, that’s definitely a possibility.

Patrick McGilvray
Hmm, nobody wants to hear that the risk of injury is zero, though. That’s a buzz kill right there?

Brodie Sharpe
Yeah, absolutely.

Patrick McGilvray
We all want the magic pill. You know what’s gonna make me just run injury free forever? Like, that’s what we want, yep. So one question for you, like, are these, you know, overuse injuries, these, these injuries related to increasing in volume. Is this solely like new runners? Is this, do you see a lot of seasoned athletes that are experiencing the same kind of stuff, like, does that play a role here?

Brodie Sharpe
You know, if there are links to injury, it is. Yes, some research will say, say, Okay, we look at a whole cohort of runners. It seems to me that the ones who get injured the most are the ones who have been injured in the past. So the more injuries you have racked up in the past, the more you are likely to get injured in the future. So there is research to find that correlation, and whether that is because those rehab injuries, those past injuries, haven’t been rehabbed effectively enough, or whether their whole mentality around running needs to be addressed.

But that’s when like you see seasoned runners, like you see someone who’s running for 30 years, they’re developing injuries because they’ve just purely had a lot more time to pick up injuries throughout those 30 years, whereas a new runner will more likely be injured because of they just don’t have the capacity, they don’t have the years of experience to adapt to the running conditions.

And maybe they’re just, you know, overzealous. Maybe they get excited, maybe they sign up for a marathon in their first year of running. That’s what I did, and that’s why I got injured. And that’s, you know, that could be the case as well, but it all stems if we wanted to come up with some sort of like universal principle around it, most running related injuries are due to either over training or under recovering, or some version of the two.

So take your example of you go into a clinic and you see, okay, around marathon season, there’s all these runners that are injured, they have built up their mileage too much, which means, like their their overall weekly mileage, their speed workouts, their you know, their long runs or anything, has increased to the point where it’s been too much, and it’s exceeded the capacity of whatever tissue that is in the body, that might be the knee joints, that might be the hamstring muscle, that might be the calf or the Achilles or the plantar fasci It’s surpassed that tissues capacity to handle load, and it started to get injured, or you have done the sensible build up.

You have really been methodical, really been patient, really been diligent, slowly built up, but somewhere along the lines, your recovery strategies haven’t been enough to meet the demands of your training load. So you’ve slowly built up, and your body’s the capacity of your body has adapted, and you’re you’re you’re slowly building up that safely.

But maybe you’re not sleeping enough, maybe you’re not hydrated enough, maybe you haven’t given yourself the amount of protein or building blocks or something within your recovery strategy so that it tips the scale. Your training load is too much for your recovery, therefore you have under recovered, and then you get overuse injuries. And so there’s going to be something within that equation for most that’s going to lead to someone being injured.

Patrick McGilvray
Very interesting. I never thought about it like that. Like the seasoned runners who have had a lot of injuries are more likely to have more injuries, like, I’ve never really put that together. I just assumed that most new runners would be the ones that were getting injured because they, quote, unquote, like, don’t know what they’re doing yet, you know.

Brodie Sharpe
There’s definitely experienced runners who don’t get injured, or who have learned their lessons, or have, you know, changed their philosophies and beliefs and approaches based on trial and error and based on changing what hasn’t worked in the past, and they’ve been smarter runners, and they’ve reduced their risk of injuries, because that definitely happens as well.

Patrick McGilvray
Sp, a couple things I want to talk about, and these are what I consider to be sort of like I don’t know, myths, misconceptions, or maybe just controversial stuff. And I think we talked about this the last time you and I had a conversation on my podcast. What do you think about stretching? Good question. I’m just gonna leave it open like that and just let you go.

Brodie Sharpe
I think stretching is good for runners if they personally find benefit from it, if it is a if it helps them mentally, feel like they’re doing something good, if it helps them unwind, if it’s like a cool down strategy, what I don’t like is runners who think that stretching will reduce their risk of injury, will increase their running performance, will help aid their recovery physically, there’s no research to support that, and there’s good, robust research to show that doesn’t support that.

There’s a certain amount of runners, in my belief, there’s a certain amount of runners who are so stiff in their joints that they can’t adequately get through the running motion effectively. They might have stiff ankles. They might have a stiff, I don’t know, lower back or hip to get hip extension. But runners don’t need to go through a large range of movement to go through a running action. And the vast majority of runners don’t really need to do stretches beforehand to get into that rhythm like you while you do it as a warm up, is just run slow or do a fast walk and then go into a slow jog, then a faster jog, then into your run. And that’s usually enough.

However, we need to filter this down to the individual. If you try stretching beforehand, and you try not stretching beforehand, and you feel a lot better with the stretching beforehand, continue doing that like that is a let’s filter it down to you, to how your individual response is. I would definitely say people do that, but don’t convince yourself that it’s going to reduce your risk of injury, because that doesn’t come back to the the training load recovery equation that I talked about before. Nothing to talk about that. And there’s research, mobile runners, flexible runners get just as injured as stiff, rigid runners because of, you know, training errors, training load and recovery and those sorts of things.

And then there’s a recovery side of things. When it comes to stretching, it won’t help reduce the amount of muscle soreness. It won’t help with blood circulation or flush acid or those type of things. But if it mentally helps calm you down and helps de stress you after a run, and you can get into a calm state quicker, then yes, we’re getting more recovery benefits, which is a part of that training load recovery equation I talked about before.

So you know, for individuals, it might be effective, but research will show doesn’t help running performance doesn’t help reducing your risk of injury, and so we need to be careful about the narratives around stretching. And, you know, pick the person who you know might work for the individual.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So I’ve, I’ve been like, I’m not anti stretching, but for years, I just haven’t really done it, you know? I don’t really it never really did a whole lot for me lately, though, and since I’ve had a couple of injuries this this summer, I’ve been doing my strength session at the gym. I work out the gym five days a week, and lifting heavy, by the way, and then afterwards, since all my muscles are all warmed up, I do some some stretching, you know, maybe 15 minutes. And I just have to tell you, it feels so good to do that.

And it seems, for me, it’s just helping to improve my flexibility, aches and pains, like throughout the day, like just reducing that and just really, like improving my running, just, I mean, not not preventing injury, necessarily, but just it feels better. I feel better. So now I’m sort of a convert of like, okay, I’m gonna just continue doing this daily stretching thing because it’s seems to be working for me. So, yeah, yeah. We are an experiment of one, you know.

Brodie Sharpe
Yeah, and everyone should experiment and continue experimenting. I think that, yes, when you’re 25 you’ll have a different response to stretching to when you’re 35, 45, 55 and so keep experimenting. Keep seeing what’s what the response is like. But, you know, it gets me a little bit irritated when someone says, I know I get injured all the time. They’ve had like, three injuries in the last 12 months, and like, yeah, I know it’s because I don’t stretch enough. That’s why I’m getting injured.

And you know, that’s when I have to, you know, sit them down and go through their training load and say, hey, maybe it was because you’ve doubled your mileage in the last four weeks, and not because you’re not stretching. And so if people have that belief, they completely ignore their what’s actually causing that injury. You know, that’s when we need to be, you know? We sit them down and say, Okay, this is what the research shows. And then, you know, change their beliefs a little bit.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, yeah, okay. Another one that’s that’s all the rage lately is, like the cold therapies, like cold versus hot therapy. So specifically talking about, like, cold plunge, you know, ice bath, sort of as a therapeutic type of intervention or sauna, you know. So you’re sitting in a hot box, essentially, you know. And I’ve done these in the past, and you know, fine, you know. But I know people that swear by like every day they have to do their cold plunge, or every day they need to do their sauna, or they do both, you know, they go from one or the other. What do you think about that stuff

Brodie Sharpe
In relation to performance or injury or rehab? Where are we going to take this?

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, how about let’s start with performance.

Brodie Sharpe
Well, I guess no matter what direction we take, I’m going to have a fairly similar answer. I’m not entirely sure I believe, I believe it has some benefit with not performance, but like, general health. For some people, I would say, like, you know, it could, like, increase testosterone, it could increase like, activation of, like, your brown fat, or some, like, some sort of metabolic thing that’s that’s going on, could work for some people.

I think the contrast therapies, so going from hot to cold, hot to cold can be an effective recovery strategy, if you are, you know, doing back to back performances. So if you had like a 10k on a Saturday and you want to do a half marathon on a Sunday, or if you had, like a running meet and you had like, a couple of events scheduled around that pretty quick succession, like those sorts of things, there might be, it might be worth to try doing those hot cold therapies like I had a recovery specialist. Shona Halson is an Exercise Physiologist. I think she was but expert on recovery, like top athletes interviewed her, and she was talking about the sort of pyramid of recovery and sauna hot cold therapies were on her list of things that you would do, provided that, like, it gets benefit, but the turnaround of recovery needs to be quite quick.

You don’t if you if it’s just like a standard long run, and the next day you’ve got, like, your easy run, or you’ve got like, a rest or a light cardio day, and then you’ve got your heavier sessions, like, you know, two or three days after that, you probably don’t need to do this. It’s probably not essential. But again, if it makes you feel good, and it’s like, you know, in terms of, like, time, effort, budget, all that sort of stuff, if it all makes sense for you, give it a try.

I’ve tried cold showers. I haven’t necessarily tried ice baths yet haven’t gotten that serious, but showers get pretty cold here in Melbourne, here in winter. But the rehab side of things like applying like an ice pack or applying a heat pack to someone, I don’t really advise on those sorts of things. I don’t really think they’re that effective.

I do think if someone rolls their ankle and they’ve got a swollen ankle for whatever reason, I think emerging in like putting their foot in an ice bucket and doing some squats and calf raises and things with that, that just works wonders. There is probably research to show that it restricts blood flow, restricts actual healing. Because, you know, blood flow heals areas.

And if we’re restricting blood flow and with compression, that sort of stuff, then it hinders. I haven’t seen that personally with the amount of people I’ve seen, so I’ll continue promoting that. But someone has back pain and if ice works, or if an ice pack works, go for it. If heat works, go for it. These are just like one percenters when it comes to the recovery of like, overuse injuries, it just might make someone feel a little bit better for, you know, half hour to an hour or something, and then back to status quo. So yeah, might be good in a trial and error basis. Try it out for yourself and see if it works.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I’ve heard that with, especially with the ice bath type of situation, like to do that after a workout is really not recommended, because you are, you’re having that dampening effect. You know you want, you want the blood flow and you want, you want the you have a certain amount of like, inflammation. \

When you lift weights or you run hard or whatever, there’s gonna be some inflammation there, and the ice bath tends to reduce that inflammation. Well, the inflammation is good, because that’s what’s kind of healing the muscles and whatever. What do you think about this may be like, I don’t know if you if this is your area of expertise, but it just made me start to think about an issue that I keep hearing from people, which is cramping, you know, especially like calf cramping, you know, during an event.

So they’re running a marathon, they’re cramping, and they’re like, oh, you know, I didn’t do enough electrolytes. Or, you know, they I’ve heard that that’s really not what the issue is, is it just like from an over use type of thing for the most part, and do things like the calf sleeves help reduce cramping? Is that something that people should be thinking about doing if they cramp regularly?

Brodie Sharpe
I think people cramp for different reasons, like you can get a hand cramp from typing on your computer too much. That’s not an electrolyte, like you haven’t sweated or, like lost electrolytes or sodium or anything like that. So like that would be like a muscle over use injury. Like, you know, there’s the typewriters hand, but we know that there is a strong correlation with. Ramps up when it’s like hotter conditions. So if you have a warm marathon compared to a cold marathon, people are going to go down like flies if it’s a warmer conditions, especially if they haven’t adapted to that.

You know, we had one. We’ve just had our Melbourne marathon, and it was kind of like a warmer day than compared to what we’re used to. So we’re just entering spring now. We’ve just gone through winter and starting to get some warm days. But, you know, Marathon day was warmer than usual, and people just got cramps all over the place.

They’ve probably trained adequately. So it’s probably not a, you know, a balance or an endurance issue. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s combination of both. But we do know, like in a sports side of things, if it’s a warm, warmer day than expected, cramps are more frequent, and they’re elite athletes who really manage their intake and that sort of stuff.

But it might be an endurance like a muscle, just like being overworked, it might be a bit of a nervous system, something just becoming, like a bit a bit more sensitive. It might be an electrolyte, or some sort of imbalance within your sweat. But I would say if you are one that’s prone to cramping, you can get sweat tests done. You can see how much sodium, how much you lose per liter of sweat.

So you want to look at two calculations. One is how much you actually sweat. And so you can sort of just get a general ballpark figure when I run at this intensity, at this this duration, with this amount of humidity and temperature, this is how much, how many liters of fluid I lose per hour, or whatever, get the volume, and then look at the concentration. And this is like, if someone wants to get technical with this, you can actually work out in your sweat how concentrated that sweat is with sodium. And it’s very different from individual to individual, but it’s very consistent within that individual.

So if you are losing, let’s just say, 50 milligrams of sodium per liter of sweat, it’s generally going to be always 50 milliliters. Like the volume of stuff that you will lose will change based on intensity, temperature, all that sort of stuff. But then you can come up with a strategy around how much I need to replace, how much fluid I need to replace, but how much that needs to be concentrated with a certain amount of sodium, and then see if you are prone to cramping. See, with that real adequate fueling strategy and fluid replacement strategy, do you reduce your amount of cramps?

And if it does, then maybe run to something around why your individual cramps are there, and if it doesn’t change, maybe we need to work on your endurance. Maybe you are only doing an 18 mile long run and then running a marathon and getting cramps at mile 20. Maybe we need to train your longer runs to be longer, and then meet those conditions, then see if cramps are less. These are the things I think about, not a lot of evidence based kind of stuff, but just trying to rationally think through these things.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, no, that’s good. And then what do you think about, like the calf sleeves? Are they doing anything?

Brodie Sharpe
I’m not entirely sure there was one research paper around compression garments and whether they’re effective. I don’t think they compared it like they looked at cramping, though. I think it was more of like a recovery type of thing. They showed it might have a little bit of recovery benefits, but nothing too substantial for me to, you know, tell people to start wearing them again. Like, why not? It’s relatively inexpensive. If you are prone to cramps, and you’re really prone to calf cramps, why not just try it and see if it maybe works for you? Because if it’s from an endurance standpoint, maybe the compression sleeve has a reduces the shock attenuation of the like the ripple effect that as you hit the ground there’s like the like, this little ripple that goes through your Achilles and calf, and it makes it a bit harder to like that attenuation of force makes it harder to for the muscle to contract, and if there’s a little bit of compression there, maybe that attenuation is a little bit less. Maybe you can perform a little bit better. Maybe it cramps a little bit less. That’s just a theory, but test it out. Why not?

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that seems to be a good theme that we’ve been talking about today, which is just like, do what do, what works for you?

Brodie Sharpe
Yeah? Yeah. We can’t always be evidence based, because the evidence is always, only ever as good as, like, the quality of the evidence that gets put out there. And, like, I say, with compression sleeves, I haven’t really come across any compelling evidence, not that there might not be something out there, or there but you know, why not just try for the individual, like I’ve seen resounding success with something that isn’t evidence based for someone, you wouldn’t tell them to not do it because they’re having resounding success, just keep doing it. So, yeah, that’s why we need to sort of fall back on, okay, do. Is there research? If it does, what does it show? But what does the individual response feel like? Yeah, stack all that up against each other.

Patrick McGilvray
Love that. Are there any like? I mean, most runners love running, and that’s all they want to do. I’m a big fan of getting people to do cross training to do other things other than just run. Are there any particular cross training exercises that you feel are especially good or especially bad for runners?

Brodie Sharpe
Yeah, good question. I would say cross training comes with a purpose. Everything has a purpose. If you love running and aren’t really that fast or kind of neutral when it comes to cross training, then we need to assess the individual. One, how many days do you run? Two, how often are you injured, or are you injured? And like, let’s just, we’ll use examples.

So let’s just say we’ve got an individual who’s running six days a week, loves running, absolutely loves it, gets a calf strain. When training sensibly, continuously, calf strains like, you know, three times a year. If you’re running six days a week, there would be, you know, merit to say,

All right, once or twice a week, let’s replace that run, or even a portion of that run, with a cross training alternative that takes out the calf like we’re sort of distributing the weight, because we know that this calf issue is an overload injury, so why not still keep you cardiovascularly fit by still doing some cardio, yet shifting the load away from the calves a little bit. And so that cardio option might be the bike. There’s a little bit of calf stuff on the bike, yet nowhere near as much as running.

You might do a rower, you might do swimming. It’s hard to convince a lot of runners to swim if they’re not really that much of a swimmer, but that’s an option that takes everything out of the equation. We recommend swimming for someone who’s had like, bone stress injuries, and if they’re constantly getting bone stress injuries and want to stay cardiovascular fit, hey, zero gravity, let’s put you in the pool. So pool running is also a cardiovascular thing that might be good for someone who has feet issues, or plantar fasciitis, or definitely stress fractures, those sorts of things.

But suffice to say, we want to come up with a plan based on that person, based on if they’re injured, based on, you know, where we want to distribute the load too. But another example would be someone who’s running, you know, four days a week, not really injured, loves running, getting a good balance of training load and recovery. You know, it’s not necessary. It would probably be advantageous for them to do like, one or two days of cross training to get them cardiovascular fit without increasing their risk of injury, but wouldn’t be as required as the first example that I had. So we need to pick our patient. Like, have some rationale behind it.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s cool. Swimming is hard, I will say that. And if you’re a runner and you want to improve your cardiovascular performance, just do some swimming. It is so good for you. I mean, it’s really hard, but as you get good at it, running is just gonna feel amazingly easy.

Brodie Sharpe
Yeah, you learn how to breathe, like you use your lungs. It’s sort of like learn how to do some deep, controlled breathing, like when you’re swimming, it’s good lung training. And then when you are out running, using your lungs a bit more efficiently. That’s my theory. Anyway, like I’ve I used to do triathlons, did some swimming, didn’t like it. Initially, I learned to be okay with it, but my breath control was really good. And then when I’m running, I feel like I’m taking deeper breaths. I’m using, like, you know, bigger parts of my lungs.

And you know, when we look at the the anatomy of the lungs, it’s like a teardrop, like a lot of people run, they top breathe when they run, and you’re using a very small surface area of your lungs, as opposed to taking really, like, controlled, deep breaths. You as a teardrop will say, like, all that surface area is in the base, and so, like, I think that’s really helped my breathing is like learning, like with the swimming and the control and that sort of stuff. And so there could be benefits there as well.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, when I was training for triathlons, and especially the Iron Man, I was doing a lot of swimming, and just started to really love it, because I’d never really been a swimmer before. You know, doing triathlons taught myself how to swim by watching YouTube videos and how to breathe on both sides and all that. So I ended up getting like, I really loved it, and it just was one of those things that most people hate the swim, and I loved it. I hated the bike. I loved the run, loved the swim, hated the bike.

So it’s been a while since I’ve done that kind of swimming. But it’s, it is, to me, it’s like, one of the best things you can do, just for your cardiovascular fitness. It really seems to really improve that immensely, because you’re trying not to drown. Let’s just be honest. You know, it’s like, there are consequences if you’re not doing it right. You know, whereas you’re just running, it’s like, yeah, you can kind of get away with bad form. You can kind of get away with, like shallow breathing, but in the pool you got to be you got to do it right. You know you got your form has to be good. Your breathing has to be on point. So all those things matter.

Well, let’s see. I’ve kind of gone through all the questions that I had. Brodie, is there anything else you wanted to kind of chat about, or anything else on your mind here today?

Brodie Sharpe
One thing that comes up is someone who is injured, they go to a therapist, and the therapist says something along lines of like, you have one leg longer than the other, or you have like a shift in your pelvis, or you have like spine scoliosis, or some sort of anatomical like, variation, or, like, you know, something that’s disproportionate from one side to the other and that’s causing your injury. I have, I don’t know, I’m a little bit like, it ticks me off a little bit, because I hear this quite often and isn’t really supported by research, like, if we take leg length discrepancy as an example, yes, you can go, runners get injured. You know, up to 80% of runners get injured per year. So that’s always going to happen.

You go to a therapist or, like a physio, or PT or someone, and they look at your leg length discrepancy. 90% of the population of some sort of leg length discrepancy, to which is around about, on average, about five millimeters. So like, we’re talking like, you know, very small amount, but if you go looking for it, odds are you going to find it, and you can that’s an easy sell for a therapist to be like, hey, look, you have one leg longer than the other. You’re going to be shifting your loads. You’re going to be impacting the ground, and the loads are going to be different from your right to different from your right to your left, and so it’s gonna cause a lot of imbalance, therefore, injury, I don’t like this for two reasons.

One, you’ve had that discrepancy your whole entire life, and you’ve probably ran for two years without any injury, and the only time you get injured is when you ramp up your mileage. So maybe it’s maybe you’ve just adapted to that difference. There is research to show that the amount of you need a 20 millimeter difference in your leg length discrepancy to start affecting your running mechanics, to which only 1% of the population, or less than 1% of the population, actually have that degree of leg length discrepancy, interesting.

But two, you can’t really do much about it. You can’t change your leg length discrepancy, even if you have, like, a pelvic shift, or you have scoliosis, like therapists might say, Yes, I’m releasing this. I’m popping this. I’m like, putting this back into place. But even if they do that, it’s probably short lived. You’ve adapted to minor imperfections in your anatomy, and is perfectly normal to be imperfect, and you’ve adapted to it like the body does. It pretty amazing things adapting to these imperfections, provided that you train within the right, you know zone, but it like it’s a narrative that is really harmful for people, like, if they’re running and they feel like their body’s letting them down, if they feel like I’m faulty, if they feel like I’m I’ve got this leg length discrepancy. I’m always going to be injured because of this leg length discrepancy, like all that sort of stuff. Yeah, it really ticks me off, because research shows you know that’s most of the people. It’s not linked to injury, and you can’t do much about it.

So, like it’s shifting narratives to trying to change these narratives, to help people understand, have reassurance that’s perfectly fine. It’s perfectly normal to have that. Let’s just get you super strong. Let’s just train really sensibly. And you know, surprise, surprise. They’re not injured years later, because they’re doing sensible things. So hopefully, that’s reassuring to some people that might find themselves in that bucket, and they’ve been told that in the past, there’s a big conversation around glutes not switching on and your core not switching on, or delayed timing. Of those sort of things. I have a little bit to say about that, but it’s around a similar sort of rant that I like to have. But yes, we need to be careful. We need to be careful about these, these narratives and what we’re being told.

Patrick McGilvray
I love the rant. I had that experience some years ago. I went to a I don’t remember what the problem was, knee issue or something like that. I went to a chiropractor, and they were like, oh, yeah, you have this discrepancy, like, one leg is longer than the other, so we’re just gonna, what you need to do is you need to come in here five days a week, and you need to just sit on this machine and it’s gonna like, you know, work on your back, and it’s gonna, like, fix everything for you, but it’s gonna take months of doing this. And I was like, nah, I’m not doing that.

It’s just like, I’m gonna go somewhere else. I was like, I see what you’re doing here. I mean, he’s a good guy, you know. But, uh, yeah, I was just like, this isn’t gonna help me at all. Like, and I ended up going somewhere else and finding out that it was indeed some sort of a like, tendonite tendinopathy or something like that. And we got mixed with some dry needling or something like that. But, yeah, I love that stuff. It’s just glad you brought that up. It’s good.

Okay, so Brodie, where can people learn more about you and reach out and kind of find you and learn how to run smarter?

Brodie Sharpe
The Run Smarter podcast is usually home based. For most people, it’s where the most of the contents put out the first 10 episodes of the podcast are 10 universal principles to overcome injuries. You’re going to learn a lot in the first 10 episodes of the podcast. However, there are 350 odd episodes to filter after that. So start there. And I do have these like, little like five day challenges and things like that. There’s like, email sequences to learn more about, like, you can try it. The most effective way is to listen to those 10 episodes. Maybe do a free email sequence, five day challenge that I have to learn, get yourself up to speed.

Then everything else after that is just like, you know, pick your episode titles and stuff that interests you. So my podcast is home based. YouTube channel is where I spend a lot of energy as well, like, just going through latest running research. So if people want to type in run smarter with Brodie Sharpe, that will come up as well. So you can start there. If that interests you as well.

People sometimes gravitate towards my Facebook group or Instagram or email list and that sort of stuff. But, you know, see if any of this resonates. See if you want to learn more after listening to that sort of stuff. And then, you know, whatever, however you like to absorb content, whether that’s listening, reading, watching, I just want to try and reach as many runners as possible. So whatever way that is, whatever way that suits you, if you want to listen on the long run, then podcasts are great for that. That’s where you can find me.

Patrick McGilvray
beautiful. Love all that. What? What do you have coming up? Do you have any races, anything you’re training for right now?

Brodie Sharpe
Yeah, certain different topics. I’m actually training for a Hyrox event. If anyone’s familiar with that, it is a cross between. It’s kind of like a hybrid athlete. So it’s running. It’s all in all, about eight kilometers of running, but mixed in with a lot of rowing, skier, sled, push, burpees, lunges, all that sort of stuff. It’s I did one in June, which was absolutely grueling. I’ve got another one coming up in December. And so trying to keep strong, trying to keep fit running, is 50% of this event. So it’s, it’s the vast majority of my training, but yeah, you need to be super, super strong at the same time and try to find that balance. And so that’s what I am really enjoying with my training at the moment, the variety and the balance between strength and endurance. And, yeah, that’s coming up in December.

Patrick McGilvray
Love that I’ve not heard of that one particular I mean, there’s, we have stuff like that, like Tough Mudder things like that here. You know, it’s not quite the same. I think it sounds a little bit different, but that sounds cool, because it kind of tests you as an overall athlete, not just in one, you know, physical, demanding thing. So that’s awesome. Good luck with that.

Brodie Sharpe
It’s been going on in Europe for a long time. It’s only been the second year in Australia. I think it’s just starting to sprinkle into the US, not very well known, unless you’re in like Europe and that sort of stuff. It’s been going on for quite a while. But who knows, maybe you start coming across it. It’s high rocks, Hyrox. And,you know, maybe in five years time, everyone knows about it. It might be CrossFit or something like that, but yeah, keep an eye out.

Patrick McGilvray
Will do and we’ll keep an eye out for you too. Good luck with that event there.

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