Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
If you’re a runner, you’ve probably heard that strength training can help you run faster, stay injury-free, and perform better overall. But knowing it’s important and actually doing it are two very …
Continue Reading about 282. Why Runners Struggle With Strength Training (And How to Fix It) →
There is a lot of information out there these days on what it means to be healthy and fit. My social media feeds are full of health and fitness experts spouting all kinds of opinions and ideas and …
Continue Reading about 260. 10 Hard Truths About Fitness No One Is Talking About →
A lot of runners believe that when it comes to exercise, running is more than enough. They love running, do it 6-7 days a week, and don’t feel the need to do anything else. Then there are those …
Continue Reading about 241. The Best Cross-Training Exercises for Runners →
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 241 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, the Best Cross-Training Exercises for Runners. So a lot of runners believe that when it comes to exercise, running is more than enough. They love running. They run six, seven days a week. They don’t feel the need to do anything else. Then there are those runners, and you know who you are out there, who believe in the power of cross training, and some believe in it so hard that they find themselves doing some form of cross training six or seven days a week. In addition to running wherever you fall on the spectrum, you know, whatever end of the spectrum you’re on, there are some forms of cross training that provide more benefits to you as a runner. So in this episode, I’m gonna explain what cross training is, what it isn’t, and offer suggestions for the best cross training exercises for you as a runner.
But first, if you’re interested in getting leaner and stronger, if you’re interested in running faster or longer, then you need to change your behaviors, because doing the same things is not going to get you there. Nothing changes, if nothing changes, right? But the real secret is doing these new things, making these changes and making them consistent. If you decide you want to get stronger, so you go to the gym once a month, it’s not going to get you the results that you want. If you want to get faster and you do speed work once a month, that’s not going to get you there. You need to adopt new behaviors, and you need to start doing them consistently. And this is where coaching really helps, because trying to stay on track yourself is very challenging. I know I’ve tried it a million times, and it never really worked for me until I got a coach. Then everything changed. Now, you know, I had somebody there was that guiding me every step of the way, holding me accountable, calling me out when I started slipping back into old behaviors. But most importantly, I had a coach that would never let me quit. So if you’re ready to start doing new things, adopting new behaviors and doing them consistently, consistently, then let’s get you there. Just go to running lean coaching.com. Click on work with me, and I’ll show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet.
Cool. Okay. The reason I wanted to talk about this today is because a lot of runners think that just running is enough of an exercise to do. I talk to runners all the time who tell me they don’t do any kind of cross training, they don’t do any kind of strength training, and that they run, and that’s good enough. And you know what? Running is great for you. There’s a lot of benefits for running. And then there are some runners who do all the cross training, and they work out all the time. They don’t take time off. They really don’t take enough time off, probably. And so there’s people on both ends of the spectrum here, like I mentioned at the intro here. So wherever you fall on that spectrum, let’s kind of get into what might be some of the best exercises that you can engage in so that you can start getting better results.
Okay, so first of all, what are we talking about here? What is cross training? So cross training is really, it’s engaging in one or multiple forms of intentional exercise in order to improve performance in your main sport. So for us runners, this would be any type of intentional exercise that complements your running goals or helps you to achieve your running goals. And your running goals might be to run faster or to run longer, to improve your running efficiency or to reduce your risk of injury. Okay, so any type of intentional exercise that complements your running goals helps you to reach those running goals.
What cross training isn’t for one. Cross training is not a substitute for running. So if you want to improve your running, you have to run right. You just can’t do cross training solely and then hope to run a marathon right? I think we kind of know that, but cross training should be used as a supplement to running, not a substitute for running, okay? And the one exception to that would be if you are injured and you can’t run, then cross training is a great way to, you know, supplement running and to maintain some level of fitness or without actually running. A lot of people who have maybe an overuse injury, let’s say something like a stress fracture of their, you know, tibia, or something like that. And they’re they can’t run, they need to take some time off running, but they can do other things like swimming or elliptical. So those are considered cross training exercises for runners that really help to improve your cardiovascular system, to keep your fitness up, to improve your endurance, but they’re not running, you know? But that’s that would-be one exception there. So in that case, it’s kind of a substitute for running, because you can’t run.
The other thing cross training is not, it’s not strength training necessarily. So there are types of cross training that are exactly that, that are strength training. So like weightlifting comes to mind, and I’m going to talk all about this in a minute, but keep in mind that all cross training is not strength training. And I talk to people all the time who tell me, you know, ask them specifically, are you doing anything to build strength? Are you getting stronger? Are you lifting weights? Are you doing regular strength training? Oh, yeah, I do yoga, or, you know, I swim, or I cycle, those things. You know, you might build a little bit of strength, but there’s a limit to which you’re going to get there. It’s really not intentional strength training. A lot of that stuff is more cardio type of behavior. So just keep that in mind, that cross training is not a substitute for running, right? It’s a supplement, and that it’s not necessarily strength training, but it could be so.
Is cross training recommended for runners? Is it good for you as a runner, or is it harmful? And this all depends on how you do it, how often you do it if you’re recovering properly between workouts and things like that. So there are tons of benefits to cross training for runners, and there are also some downsides. You know, there are some things you got to be careful of, and most of the downsides are based on when you start doing too much and you’re not recovering properly. In other words, when you start to cross over into overtraining, doesn’t matter what you’re doing. If you’re overtraining, this can lead to injury, you know? It can lead to burnout. It can lead to exhaustion, lethargy, like there’s all kinds of things that you can experience if you’re overtraining. So you got to be careful not to overtraining.
But cross training. If you want to do cross training, you should be incorporating some sort of cross training into your weekly training schedule. You know, I’m a big proponent of cross training for runners. I think it is good for you. I think the benefits really outweigh any kind of negatives. As long as you’re doing it properly, you should be training to run, not just running to train. In other words, use cross training to help improve your running, but don’t overdo it. Obviously. Don’t just run and make that your only form of training. I think that as a well rounded fit athlete, if you want to reach your peak performance, if you want to reach your full potential, you should be doing some sort of cross training.
And then another question comes up a lot, which is, how often should I be doing cross training? And again, I hate to keep saying this, but it really depends on your goals and on the individual. If you’re training for the Olympics, let’s say you’re training for the Olympic, you know, 5000 meters, you know. You might be cross training every single day, you know. But if you’re a normal human being like me, then maybe you want to run a faster half marathon, you know. So one to three days of cross training per week is probably where you want to be. That could be enough for you.
Okay, you can do more as long as you are properly recovering from the previous workout. So let’s say you start your workout on Thursday morning and you’re absolutely wiped out from the previous day’s workout, whether it’s a run, you know, cross training session, whatever, if you’re absolutely wiped out, then you might be over training. And some forms of cross training are easier on your body than others. So if you’re doing some mobility or flexibility work like foam rolling, stretching, yoga. These are not as taxing on your body as, you know, high impact intervals or, you know, plyometrics or something like that. So you can get away with more cross training sessions per week if you’re incorporating some of these types of trainings into your weekly schedule.
The key though is really just listen to your body. Make sure you’re seeing improvements in your fitness. You don’t want to be breaking yourself down. So how often you should train is really an individual. It’s up to the individual. Again, one to three days a week is probably good for most people. But, you know, for example, I lift weights five days a week, you know, I do yoga once a week, and then I do some other forms of, maybe some rucking, or some, you know, brisk walking a few days a week. So it just depends on the individual and what types of exercises you’re engaging in. Okay, really, it’s just, it’s mostly about making sure you’re improving and that you are recovering from the previous workout.
Okay, so if you’re interested in getting into some cross training, then the first step is to determine your goals for cross training. So you have to have one or more goals in mind in order to get the most out of the cross training that you choose to do. So instead of just saying, like, oh, people say I should be doing, you know, some swimming or rowing, you know, just determine what your goals are, you know, first, and then you can just decide what exercises might best help you reach those goals. So a few goals that I would challenge you to kind of think about would be to prevent injury, to gain strength, you know, to actually get stronger, to run faster, to run longer, so either increase your speed as a runner or increase your endurance as a runner. You know maybe you want to PR a race, to build lean muscle, to improve your bone density, to increase mobility, to improve flexibility, to improve your cardiovascular system, to improve your explosive power, or maybe it’s all of the above, or some combination of aforementioned goals. So whatever your goals are, and there might be more than I’m not thinking of, but those are the ones that, the big ones that kind of came to mind. Once you know your goals, you can start looking at different exercises, different cross training exercises that actually help to help you to reach those goals.
Okay, so let’s go through some of these. So if you want to prevent injury, a few cross training exercises you might want to consider would be strength training. You know, when you get stronger muscles, you’re less likely to get injured. You also build stronger connective tissues, ligaments and tendons, which is where most runners tend to get injured. You build just a stronger structural system, you know, stronger bones as well. So if preventing injury is one of your goals, then regular strength training will go a long way to help with that, also preventing injury. Mobility work like stretching and foam rolling, and flexibility work like stretching, yoga, Pilates.
So all of these things can help you if your goal is to prevent injury, right and, and you don’t have to do everything I just mentioned under that category, but you can just pick a few things. You know? Maybe you do pilates and some foam rolling every week, and some regular strength training, and then you’re doing enough to prevent injury, okay? Maybe your goal is to get stronger. Again, strength training like this is intentional resistance training like weightlifting, right? You have to have some resistance. You got to overload your muscles. You know? We want to progressive overload the muscles in order to get stronger. And we want to be doing upper body as well as lower body exercises that work various muscle groups will give you the best overall results by just doing a few exercises.
For example, the three big ones that come to mind that work the most muscle groups are deadlifts, squats and bench press, like these are the big power lifting moves. But they work a lot of muscle groups, and they cover pretty much all your bases right there. Rucking with a weighted backpack or a vest. So this is just, you know, power walking or hiking in the woods, however you want to do it. This will get you stronger, and this helps to directly improve your running as well. If your goal is to run faster than obviously, you need to be doing some speed work, like some high intensity intervals, but also some things like pool running or jumping on a stair climber, doing hill repeats. And then again, strength training will help you to run faster as well, because you’re going to have more powerful muscles you know, to propel you down the road or on the trails. If your goal is to improve endurance as a runner, then any exercise that raises your heart rate and keeps it there is going to go a long way to help you improve your endurance.
So things come to mind like swimming, cycling, elliptical, stair climber, pool running, cross country skiing. It’s kind of hard to think about that. We’re in the middle of summer right now, but you know, maybe you’re on the other side of the world, and cross country skiing is something you can engage in. It’s awesome, awesome exercise to build endurance, and then strength training goes a long way to help improve endurance as well, because strong muscles take much longer to fatigue than weak muscles. So you want to improve your endurance as a runner, you know, get stronger. Do that regular resistance training, maybe one of your goals is to build lean muscle.
So hypertrophy training, this is going to be probably the best type of cross training that you can do to build lean muscle. So this is resistance training done with lighter weights and more sets and reps. So your volume is going to be much higher but the amount of weight you’re using is going to be quite a bit lower than strength training. If you’re actually training to build strength. You’re going to be working with heavier weights and fewer sets and reps. And I did a whole podcast about this a while back. I don’t remember which number it is. I’ll try to put a link in the show notes to that episode.
Rucking is another way of building lean muscle, especially lower body, but also core, back, neck. You know, if you’re doing anything with a weighted backpack, you know, it does put some type of strain on your shoulders and your upper body, and so it does help to improve strength all over. Let’s see, improve bone density.
So impact activities like running actually help improve bone density. So bone stress is one way that this works. So when you run, your muscles pull on your bones, which causes them to reform and become stronger, right? It’s called Bone metabolic activity. And then the higher impact stuff like running is a high impact exercise, and higher impact activities generally have a greater effect on bone density than lower impact activities.
But in addition to running, since we’re talking about cross training here, strength training helps to build stronger bones, rucking, hiking trail running, Plyometrics, jumping rope, any time you’re engaging in any kind of high impact or higher impact activities is going to help improve bone density.
Keep in mind, though, that again, when we talk about over training, you know, there’s a point of diminishing returns where you could be over training when it comes to too much impact, and this could start to have some diminishing returns on bone density, so just be sure to stay out of that over training zone. Make sure you’re not over training if your goal is to increase mobility, then you want to be engaging in functional mobility exercises like kettlebell swings and yoga and stretching and foam rolling. So all of these things can help improve your mobility.
Plyometrics is a good one for that as well, if we’re talking improving flexibility, yoga, stretching. I love my power Yin class that I take every week. So this is a yoga class. The first half of the class is building strength and endurance. So this is the power part of the class. Second part of the class is the Yin yoga part of the class. So this is where we are holding poses, and not, you know, it’s not building endurance. So you might be seated and you’re holding a stretch for a longer period of time. That part I love. I love that part of the class, because I just feel whenever I leave there, I feel more flexible.
If your goal is to improve your cardiovascular system, you might want to consider HIIT training, you know, again, high intensity intervals, stair climber, elliptical, swimming, cycling, cross country skiing, hiking, even just brisk walking, anything again to get your heart rate up and keep it there.
And then, if your goal is to improve explosive power, then plyometrics and any type of resistance training done with power, as opposed to, like, slow lifts. So if you’re doing, you know, bench press instead of just, you know, pushing the weight up very slowly, you’re going to power that weight up and power that weight up like, that’s how you’re going to do your reps, if you want to build power into your muscles. So improving explosive power can be done with, you know, plyometrics specifically, but also with explosive resistance training as well.
And then, if your goal is maybe to improve your running form, HIIT training like sprinting is an awesome way to improve your running form. Because if you think about this, try this the next time you’re out running, go sprint for a few minutes, you know, or 30 seconds at a time, or whatever it is, and you will find that your running form is much different when you’re sprinting, it’s much more efficient, like you just run differently when you’re sprinting. It’s really hard to run with bad form when you’re sprinting, so practice intervals like sprinting to help improve your running form, but also things like yoga and pilates can help with that too, because they help improve your core. Pilates is an awesome core and back strengthening type of exercise.
So as you can see, there are a ton of awesome cross training exercises that you can do, that you can choose from. So the first step is to figure out your goals, and then decide which of these might help you to reach those goals, and pick a few from some of these categories, you know, just be sure that you’re not over training right. Again, maybe one to three days of cross training is enough for you. You can do more as long as you’re recovering properly from each of these workouts.
The important thing is that you are doing some sort of intentional exercise to help supplement and improve your running and help you to reach those running goals that you have. You know, running is great and you need to keep running in order to get faster as a runner, or to run longer distances or improve your running form. All those things are going to help, but consider some of these cross training exercises that will help you to also accomplish those goals and maybe a little bit faster and stay injury free in the process.
Cool, that’s all I got for you today. I know you guys got this. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
When it comes to losing weight, there are many, many approaches you can take - some of them will work while others definitely will not. Runners especially need to be mindful of their approach to …
Continue Reading about 193. 5 Dieting Disasters Runners Need to Avoid →
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 193 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Five Dieting Disasters Runners Need To Avoid. So, when it comes to losing weight, there are many many approaches you can take.
Some of them will work, others definitely will not. Runners especially need to be mindful of their approach to weight loss because certain methods might help you lose weight, but will drastically impair your running performance.
So in this episode, I’m going to go over five dieting disasters that runners need to avoid if you want to lose weight without completely destroying your running performance. I’ll be talking about things like calorie restrictive diets.
The problem with the types of foods you might be turning to carbohydrate management, overtraining, one size fits all approaches. So I think there’s going to be something for everyone in this episode.
But first, I talked to a lot of people who want and need help figuring out this whole nutrition exercise stuff so they can lose weight and keep it off for good. And they want to change, they want to do something about it. But instead, they put it off, they say things like I need to think about it. Or maybe later, maybe now’s not the right time.
But if you’ve been thinking about this for a long time, now, you know that you’re going to have to eventually do something differently, or else nothing is going to change for you. Right, nothing changes, if nothing changes, right.
So thinking more about it or delaying this decision isn’t going to do anything, you have to take action. So you have to make a decision, and you have to take action, the only thing guaranteed to not work is to just do nothing.
And a lot of people continually put things off, because they’re afraid, because they fear failure, or they feel fear, the kind of changes that you’re going to have to make when you take on something like changing your diet.
And the truth is, yeah, you’re gonna have to sort of become a different person in this process. But think about this, where do you see yourself in, let’s say six months time, what would that different person look like?
Because if you do nothing, you’re probably going to still be right where you are, maybe struggling with your weight or your body composition, your energy levels, still wishing you felt better regretting that you didn’t start six months ago, right. But if you took some action and started now, in six months, you’re going to be six months closer to your goal, wait six months of having practiced good habits, having developed good habits, six months closer to that most badass version of yourself.
So don’t put it off. If this is something that you want for yourself, take action, make a decision. And if you want some help from me, great. If you want to do this on your own, I think that’s amazing, too. But I’m here for you.
If you want a little bit of help, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And then you can fill out a little application, you and I will get on a Zoom call, we’ll have a conversation and see if coaching is a good fit for you. If it is, great. If it’s not, that’s cool, too. I want the best for you. That’s it, whether you want to work with me or not, it’s okay.
But I do want you to stop thinking about it, stop putting it off and just take some action and do something today. Okay. One thing you can do right now is if you just want a little bit of help getting started with all this stuff, you can take some action.
And check out the free training that I created. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner. And in this free training I put together I will teach you how to lose weight the right way and keep it off for good without running a million miles a week.
Some of the things that you’re going to learn is why running more and eating less does not work when you’re trying to lose weight. Some of the things that runners don’t do properly when they’re trying to lose weight, the best fuel to use to improve your endurance and you know, get weight loss really working for you.
And then I talked about the mindset shifts required to make these things last for life. So there’s a lot more in that training. I spent a lot of time putting it together. It kind of takes everything I teach on the podcast and combines it into about an hour long training. So definitely check it out.
Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training and then you can go through that, and that’ll get you started on the right track. And if again, if you want a little bit of help moving forward with this stuff, you can always apply for coaching with me. Cool.
Okay, let’s talk about five dieting disasters that runners need to avoid. And the reason this came up is because I’ve been hearing a lot about a lot of different types of diets. Recently, I listen to a lot of books, I listen to a lot of podcasts, and read a lot of books on diet, nutrition, exercise, running.
And one thing that keeps coming up is that all of these diets that are out there are kind of designed for the general public. And they’re really not specifically designed for runners. And so the first dieting disaster I want to talk about is cutting calories.
And this is one of those things, cutting calories is one of those traditional ways of losing weight that a lot of people ascribe to that is, unfortunately, just not really good for runners, it really just doesn’t work for us as runners actually, it really doesn’t work for most people. I’ll get into that in just a second.
But just understand that as runners we have special needs, we are special. We need to make sure that we have the energy that we need, and the fuel that we need to power us through some long workouts, some long runs, some tough workouts, some higher intensity workouts.
And honestly, if you’re in a calorie deficit all the time, this is going to be kind of a problem. So cutting calories is one of the dieting disasters I think you absolutely want to avoid. So here’s a couple of problems with this. Yes, if you cut calories, you can lose weight, but you’re not really fueling your body properly.
If you are constantly in a calorie deficit, right, you’re not going to have enough fuel to properly not only fuel for your workouts, but recover from your workouts, which is probably even more important because running is catabolic.
Running breaks down muscle, just like lifting weights is catabolic. When you lift weights at the gym, you are breaking down muscle, you’re tearing muscle fibers, in order to get your body back into an anabolic state where you are building and maintaining muscle, you need to get enough rest, you need to make sure that you’re providing enough fuel enough calories, enough protein to build that muscle back up.
And unfortunately, a lot of these calorie deficit diets will not give you the proper amount of calories that you need and the proper amount of protein especially in order to get back into that anabolic state where you’re maintaining and actually building muscle.
Okay, so you’re constantly breaking down your body, you’re breaking down tissues, you’re breaking down muscle, and this is going to dramatically impair your progress as a runner. So when you’re in an anabolic state, you’re building and maintaining muscle mass. When you’re in a catabolic state, you’re breaking down or losing overall muscle mass.
The anabolic state happens when you are at rest and when you are fueling. And when you are recovering, when you’re sleeping and things like that catabolism being in that catabolic state happens while you are actively working out especially doing anything that’s high intensity.
So your running performance is going to take a huge hit if you’re constantly in some sort of a calorie deficit, okay, you’ve reduced your overall caloric intake, you’re not recovering from those harder runs. The next run you go out on the next workout that you engage in is going to feel especially hard because you’re not fully recovered from the previous workout.
And so you’re not going to recover fully from this workout. And then this cycle just continues. And this is a way of getting super burned out and really hurting your running performance. And it could lead to injury too, especially if you’re not building muscle actively. If you’re not gaining strength, if you’re losing strength through this process, this can really lead to injury. So this is a big problem. The other thing you have to understand is that this whole idea of calories in calories out, this is not really a sustainable weight loss method.
And I know that this kind of information is disseminated out there from everyone. I listened to so many experts talk about cutting calories as the way to control weight. But it is not sustainable. Studies continually show that cutting calories, yes, is an effective way to lose weight. No doubt about that.
Studies have shown that it’s also the number one least sustainable weight loss method. Why? Because when you are in a calorie deficit, it will actually over time will slow down your metabolism. So your body’s really great at keeping you in homeostasis, which is keeping your body in a balanced state.
So if you reduce energy coming in, over time, your body will reduce the energy that you’re putting out. So if you continually eat in a calorie deficit, your body will slow down your metabolism because it’s saying, hey, we’re only getting 800 calories a day, 1000 calories a day, whatever, we need to slow things down here. So we’re not burning so many calories here, we need to slow down this metabolism to match what’s coming in.
And when you continually do this, your ability to lose weight will eventually stall and stop. And then you cannot continually eat in more of a deficit, because then you’d have to reduce it by a few hundred calories more to get the weight loss going again.
And then you can see why this is completely unsustainable. That’s why shows like The Biggest Loser were great at first. All these people that are pretty overweight, they lose a ton of weight by restricting calories. But eventually they gain it all back.
And then some, in fact, I was doing a little research on this. And there was a study from the NIH, the National Institutes of Health that said that they followed 14 former Biggest Loser contestants over the course of six years. And the participants had all gained back most of the weight that they had lost on the show. And in some cases, they even put on more.
So this is not a sustainable weight loss method, the whole calorie deficit thing. You cannot continually eat in a calorie deficit and expect to, you know, keep performing well as a runner. Okay? I would argue that even as a human being, it’s just not sustainable. So cutting calories is a huge mistake. And I think it’s a disaster that you just need to avoid. Okay. So that’s number one.
Number two is not eating real foods. So runners love their fuel. They love their shakes and their smoothies and their bars and their drinks and their gels and their goos. And all this other stuff, whatever’s quick and easy for a runner, I need my fuel. And so you grab the latest, greatest thing and a little package or whatever.
This can be a real problem because you end up eating a lot of processed food. And processed food is processed food is food that no longer looks like food. It’s like heavily processed food that has been ground up and you ‘ve pulled the certain ingredients out of whole foods and then combined them.
And all you gotta do is look at the back of a package of whatever you’re eating like an energy bar, and look at the ingredients and you’re gonna see tons of ingredients, tons of ingredients you don’t understand, usually tons of sugar, and refined grains like flour.
And there was another study from the NIH that said that when people ate a diet full of ultra processed foods that they just consume more calories and gain more weight than when they just ate minimally processed foods. So just the fact that eating processed food will cause you to gain weight.
I was looking at the back of a Clif Bar recently. Actually, I just looked this up online, I don’t buy Clif Bars anymore. I used to eat this stuff all the time back when I was like 40 or 50 pounds heavier, but I was looking at the ingredients of a Clif Bar.
And I’m just gonna read through a bunch of these ingredients so you understand what I’m talking about. This is processed food. This is highly processed food. And you’re gonna notice a couple things.
The first ingredient is organic brown rice syrup, and they use the word organic in front of everything here to make it sound like it’s healthy, just so you know. Okay, organic brown rice syrup. That’s sugar, by the way. Organic rolled oats, soy protein isolate, organic cane syrup, sugar, organic roasted soy beans, rice flour, cocoa, organic soy flour, organic high oleic sunflower oil, organic cane sugar, sugar, organic oat flour, organic oat fiber.
Why do you need organic oat fiber if you have oat flour and rolled oats in there anyway? Natural flavors. What does that mean? Alkalized cocoa, organic cocoa butter, sunflower oil, salt, barley malt extract, green tea extract, unsweetened chocolate, soy lecithin, baking soda, dye, calcium phosphate, magnesium oxide, ascorbic acid, tocopherol, acetate, beta carotene, NYAS, cinnamon, global, I’m not going to try to pronounce a lot of these words because they’re crazy.
Here’s the thing that I want you to take away from this. This is a highly processed food loaded with sugar. The reason people love Clif bars is because it’s just a candy bar wrapped in a quote unquote healthy package. Look at the word organic on there. Oh, they’re organic. It’s good for you.
If you’re an athlete, you know, they got a picture of somebody like climbing a mountain climbing rock climbing on the package. So of course it’s for the athlete, it’s good for you. It gives you energy. Yeah, it gives you energy. It’s just pure sugar.
Okay, so just understand that this is an ultra processed food. And this is not healthy food. Okay, this is not something that is good for you. And to eat a bunch of stuff like this constantly is a problem. Right? This is going to be a disaster.
So what happens? What if you ditched all the highly processed foods? What if you just ate real food? Well, a couple of things. Number one, eating real food will help you to stay satiated. Protein and fat are filling. And when you eat foods that are high in protein and good quality fats, your body’s getting all the nutrients it needs.
You’re gonna stay more satiated through the day, you’re gonna feel full, your body gets everything it needs, your hunger signals will return to normal. All the sugar and processed food will kind of mess with your hunger signals.
Ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, gets overproduced when you’re eating foods high in sugar high in carbohydrates. Leptin is the fullness sensor. It’s a fullness hormone. And that gets downregulated and will cause you to stay hungry even after you’ve eaten a bunch of food when you’re eating processed food and carbohydrates and things like that.
So it causes you to stay hungry all the time, which makes controlling your eating really hard to do and you end up just massively overeating. It’s very, very easy to overeat stuff like Clif Bars, right? It’s pretty hard to overeat like chicken or steak or broccoli or eggs like you don’t eat so much. And then you’re like, poof, I’m full.
That’s the way we’re supposed to be. That’s the kind of food we’re supposed to eat. So eating real food will help to reset your hunger and satiety signals, you’ll naturally and easily just kind of eat the right amount of food. Your body is very good at knowing, hey, I should stop eating when you’re eating real food. It doesn’t have those same sensors working properly when you’re eating all this junk food.
All this processed food, especially food, it’s super high in sugar, like a Clif Bar. Okay, so what is real food? Real food is food that still looks like food. You look at it, you’re like, oh, that is an egg that is an avocado. That is a steak. Like you know what that is, your ancestors would recognize that stuff as food.
So examples of real food that we can find in the grocery store would be that stuff that we find around the perimeter of the grocery store. The outside edges of the grocery store stuff like fresh produce fruits and vegetables, meat fish, cheese, dairy, eggs, nuts, seeds, legumes, healthy fats, olive oil, butter, coconut oil, you want to stay away from those toxic seed oils that would include things like canola oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, grapeseed oil, rice bran, all these things are toxic and highly highly processed.
And if you understand how they process these quote unquote, like vegetable oils, it’s a horrible process that they go through. This stuff is just not good for you. Stick to real quality healthy fats, okay? Also just stay away from the package foods if it has a label and an ingredient list and a marketing message. I would just say no to that stuff. Okay.
Now sometimes this kind of stuff is okay like, I’ll go to the frozen foods aisle and I love getting like bags of frozen broccoli, or riced cauliflower because I love love riced cauliflower. It’s a good substitute for rice and a lot of dishes and stuff. And to make it myself is a pain in the butt, super messy and a huge pain in the butt so I can just buy that stuff. Yes, it is, quote unquote processed because they’ve chopped up the broccoli and they froze it.
They’ve like shredded the cauliflower or whatever they do to it, they’ve erased it. But it’s minimally processed. If you look at the package, there’s one ingredient, it’s like cauliflower. There’s one ingredient, it’s broccoli. So that kind of stuff is okay. Stay away from the stuff with a package, and a label and a bunch of ingredients, and you’re going to be fine. So just stick with real food, okay, because eating all the processed food is going to be a disaster for you. All right.
Number three, carbohydrate mismanagement. So carbs are not the enemy. And I just did a podcast about this a few weeks ago, you can check out episode 190 and listen to that. And I talk all about carbs and why carbs should be included in our diet, and everybody needs to kind of figure out their own number of cards and things like that.
But just understand that carbs are not the enemy, but carbs need to be managed. You need to control your carbohydrate intake, if you want to improve fat burning, so fat burning will help you to improve your body composition. Because fat burning is how you lose weight, you have to burn fat.
Fat Burning also is how you improve your endurance as a runner, you have to get good at burning fat. So the goal with our diet is to eat the kinds of foods that will help us to keep our body into a fat burning state. Right, so we do eat some carbs, but we don’t want to go crazy on the carbs. We need to manage our carbohydrate intake because carbohydrates are just sugar. And there’s a spectrum there.
Of course, you know, there’s table sugar, and brown rice syrup and cane sugar syrup and things like that, which are super concentrated forms of carbohydrate. And then there’s like, you know, blueberries or a sweet potato, which are carbohydrate, and they’re a little bit higher and carbohydrate, but they’re pretty low, and they don’t spike your blood sugar, okay, but when we consume carbohydrates, sugar, some of that energy is used, or some of that sugar is used for energy, and then some of it is stored as fat.
And depending on the concentration of carbohydrates, it’ll determine how much of that is stored as fat. So eating just pure sugar, if you drink like a big 32 ounce Coca Cola or something like that, that’s going to have like, I don’t know, 28 grams of sugar, or I’m sorry, not 28 grams, probably have like 28 teaspoons of sugar in there or something like that’s crazy.
It’s like a ton of sugar. Most of that’s going to be just stored as fat because your body can’t use that much sugar, right, right all at once. So too many carbs, too much sugar, and your body will not turn on the fat burning system, you will be storing fat.
Because when you raise your blood sugar, which happens when you eat most foods, but especially things that are very concentrated and carbohydrates, you raise your blood sugar quite a bit, insulin gets raised quite a bit and insulin is the gatekeeper, they will keep fat locked up in your fat cells.
So we want to keep insulin levels managed. We want to keep them pretty low most of the time. So fat burning should be your goal. This is our natural state as human beings. Fat Burning is what we’ve always done, we feast and famine, or feasted and fasted. As human beings we’ve had these times in our evolutionary history where we developed this amazing fuel system that can be used in times of famine when we did not have a lot of food available.
So we’d go on a hunt, where you would eat some large animal, let’s just say like a woolly mammoth or something like that. And then we would fast for days because we have this storage system, you know, we’ve stored some of that energy as fat and we can use that for energy. Right.
But nowadays, we’re eating all the time we’re eating tons of processed food, tons of sugar, and we just keep storing the fat and storing the fat we’re not tapping into that stored body fat for fuel and that’s what we want to do. So our goal, from a dietary standpoint, from a nutrition standpoint, from an exercise standpoint is to enhance fat burning, right?
This helps with weight loss. It helps with improving endurance and it helps with your energy throughout the day. If you want all day energy, just burning more fat helps with focus and concentration. All kinds of positive benefits of becoming a good fat burner, okay? Too many carbs. Fat Burning just gets shut down. So carbs don’t need to be eliminated. We just have to manage them properly. Okay.
The other side of this is just not eating enough. So people think, oh, carbs are bad, I just got to stay away from carbs, I’m just going to eat zero carbs. Okay? Some people do really well, eating very few carbs, it’s almost impossible to eat zero because even if you eat like an egg, it’s got like a one or two grams of carbs in there, okay?
Some dairy has carbs, if you just ate nothing but meat, which a lot of people love this, like carnivore diet, they’re gonna get close to zero carbs, but probably not zero. And they do okay, and they, they might do fine. I don’t personally think that is the best for everybody. I think there are some people that really do well on that.
I’ve tried it, and it was great for a period of time. And then I felt like I needed just a little bit more in the way of carbohydrates. So I added some more carbs into my diet. But carbs are not necessary, I want to make sure that it is very clear that our body will produce the glucose that we need to keep our brain functioning. And all these people that have been doing carnivore for 5-10 years. They don’t eat anything but meat and salt. And they do really well.
And they’re functioning great, you know, they’re improving their performance, their athletes, whatever. And that’s great for them, doesn’t mean everybody has to do that. Okay. So I think sometimes we can go a little bit too low.
And if you’re somebody who isn’t performing well at super low carbs, then we got to increase those carbs. Some people do well, when they’re 50 grams or less per day, other people feel better when they’re at 100-150 grams per day, something like that. But again, this is still considered kind of low carb, okay?
The average American is somewhere around three to 500 grams of carbs a day, it’s crazy. So a lot of carbs, I couldn’t eat that much today, if I tried. Why? Because I probably could if I really tried. But that is a ton of carbs to eat in a day.
In my opinion, I’ve been doing this low carb thing for years and years, I feel so much better when I keep my carbs pretty low. Right? So some people do well, if they’re super low, let’s say under 20 grams a day, that would be like the carnivore type people, others do something called carb cycling, that might be where you, you for like three or four days in a row, you might do around 50 grams, and then you have a day where you up that to 120 or 150. And then you go back down and every third or fourth day, you increase your carbs, you know, by 100 or 150 grams a day.
And some people do well with something like that. So in the course of a week, you know, your average daily carb intake is a little bit higher than somebody that’s doing, you know, a much lower carb intake. But again, this is individualized, you gotta figure this out for yourself. Okay, carbs will help your body to recover from hard workouts, they help you to get back into that anabolic state so they help you to signal proteins synthesis in order to build muscle.
So insulin is one of the ways that you can activate muscle protein synthesis. Another way of signaling muscle protein synthesis is eating foods high in leucine. Leucine is an amino acid and it helps to activate that protein synthesis so eating foods high in leucine will help you to build and repair muscle things like chicken beef, pork, fish, tofu, can beans, lentils, milk, cheese, cottage cheese, eggs, all these foods are high and leucine.
Anything that has a complete protein typically is going to give you higher amounts of leucine. So eat some carbs, eat the right amount of carbs for you and your goals and it takes a little bit of trial and error sometimes to figure this out. You might do better if you’re eating some carbs to help signal some protein synthesis as well. Okay.
The other problem is that people who just eat the wrong kinds of carbs so it’s easy to say okay, I need to eat a few more carbs every day and then you’re just going crazy on like doughnuts and pasta and muffins and cookies and Clif bars or whatever. And these are all junk carbs right they’re not healthy foods.
Refined sugar is not healthy food. There’s no study out there that is going to show you that sugar has a bunch of health benefits unless it’s sponsored by like the sugar industry like Coca Cola or something like that.
And I have seen those kinds of studies before they’ll be like, sugar is good for you. It’s clean energy and blah, blah, blah. And I’m just going to tell you right now there is not a nutritionist or a dietician, no matter what sort of method they prescribe that they are not going to tell you that sugar is good for you.
Okay, doesn’t mean you can never have sugar but you just got to be really careful with that again, it comes to control management, but the right kinds of carbs are the ones that are not going to spike your blood sugar. Like our goal here is to keep fat burning going.
Our goal here is to keep your blood sugar managed relatively low, not super low. You don’t want to be hypoglycemic. But we got to kind of manage our blood sugar so it’s not constantly spiking and crashing. So the right kinds of carbs and the ones that I like talk to my clients about including in their diet would be things like fruit, berries, dairy, legumes, starchy vegetables, like sweet potatoes, root vegetables.
Again, these are all real foods, they still look like food. Our ancestors look at these things and say, oh, yeah, I know what that is. That is a sweet potato. Oh, yeah, that is a blueberry. Okay, so carbohydrate management is very important.
Number four is increased cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone. Your body produces cortisol when you get stressed out, and this is normal. And this is actually good. Because when you’re in this stressful situation, and we’ve evolved to produce cortisol in stressful situations, like the saber toothed tiger comes at us from the jungle, and we’re staying there and we’re like, oh, my gosh, your body raises cortisol raises glucose produces a bunch of blood sugars, so that you can like fight or flight like you couldn’t run away, I would run away if it was me.
Same thing happens when we are under stress, though today. And this stress could be from an inbox full of emails, or financial issues, or work related stuff, or family or relationship stuff. Like there’s so many things that stress us out in society today. And if you’re in the state of chronic stress, where cortisol is chronically raised, this is a big problem. All right.
Cortisol, in small amounts in in short term is fine like it is actually it’s a good thing. Because your body will have an adaptive response to that. So you do a hard workout, you do a hard hit workout, cortisol is gonna go up. As soon as you get into the rest mode, like that’s gonna go back down again. And then cortisol is back to normal, and you’re good to go.
The problem is that we have these lives, you know, stresses that keep us in a chronic state of stress, which keeps cortisol chronically high, which keeps our blood sugar’s chronically elevated, which keeps insulin chronically elevated, which keeps us storing fat. It keeps us from burning fat. So if you want to completely avoid fat burning, just stay stressed out all the time.
So this is like lack of sleep, too many hard workouts, not enough rest and recovery days. One way that a lot of runners will put themselves in a state of chronic stress is doing what I call chronic cardio, this is where you’re just doing all your workouts at that sort of medium hard level of intensity, they’re not easy enough to be easy.
They’re not hard enough to be hard. It’s like you’re doing everything at the high end of zone three or something like that. And it’s just all your workouts are a little too hard. You’re never giving your body a break. You’re never pushing yourself so hard that you’re getting into those higher zones, and you’re never really doing anything that’s easy enough to help you to respond and recover and repair.
So we got to be careful with this chronically elevated stress, chronically elevated cortisol, and chronically elevated glucose peruses, that chronically elevated insulin and then you’re chronically storing fat, right? You cannot burn fat while your body is stressed out.
So you have to manage stress. This means managing your day to day stress. And any sort of exercise undue stress. So you got to prioritize rest and recovery days. You can’t really improve your fitness if you’re out there just cranking out the miles day after day after day, your fitness improves while at rest. So you do hard HIIT workout speed intervals, something like that.
And then the next day you take a rest day, maybe an active recovery day, something like that. Well, that’s when your body has the positive responses and your cardiovascular system improves. Your lactate threshold improves. Same for lifting weights, you don’t get stronger while you’re lifting weights at the gym. That’s when you’re breaking yourself down. You get stronger during the rest and recovery phase, right.
So you have to improve stress. You have to manage stress, you have to improve your sleep quality. Sleep is so important. People don’t understand the importance of sleep but getting enough sleep and getting good quality sleep are super important because if you’re not getting enough sleep you could keep yourself in this state of chronically being stressed out. And stress leads to a lack of sleep. And a lack of sleep creates stress.
So this is a terrible cycle to be in. So you have to manage stress from the outside and you got to manage stress from the inside. And you have to make sure that you are getting quality sleep, whatever it takes, okay? A better approach to running is the 80/20 method. I’ve talked about this before, this is going to help you to keep cortisol at normal levels at 20 just means that 80% of the time, you’re you’re running workouts are going to be pretty easy conversational pace, pretty low zones, one or two 20% of the time, heart zones, 3, 4, 5, where you’re going to be doing speed intervals, you’re going to be doing HIIT workouts, you’re going to be doing tempo runs anything that’s going to really push the needle hard, but that’s only 20% of the time.
And if you kind of stick to that formula, the 80/20 formula, that’s where the magic happens, right. That’s how you improve your endurance, you improve your speed, you improve your strength without burning yourself out. So you do have to include the 20% of hard workouts, but it should only be 20%. It shouldn’t be chronically hard workouts, okay? All right.
And then number five, dieting disaster that runners need to avoid is one size fits all approaches. And I have done all this stuff. I’ve read the books, I’ve tried all the fad diets, I’ve tried everything that’s out there, pretty much. I’ve even experimented with some of these lately, just to see like, hey, this actually sounds interesting. I wonder if this might work.
This diet that somebody wrote out there, you know, the problem with that is that they don’t work. They don’t work for everyone. There’s not one diet that is going to work perfectly for everyone. Why? Because you are an individual. You have your own body, your own metabolism, your own goals, your unique lifestyle, your own culture, food preferences, food likes and dislikes food allergies, you got your own athletic goals, your own training schedule, your own particular body composition goals, your own hormonal makeup, genetics have a factor in this too.
If you think that one fad diet is going to work for you exactly the same as it did for that celebrity who’s selling it, I’m sorry, but you’re just mistaken, it’s not going to work for you. I mean, it might, but there is no one size fits all diet out there. Okay.
That is why I am a coach and I don’t have a book to sell you on how to lose weight, right? Because it just doesn’t work that way. Everybody’s different. And coaching works, where all these other diets fail. Because what I do is I’m going to meet you where you are, and treat you like the individual that you are, we’ll take a look at what you’re doing today.
And then we’ll start making some changes. And this looks a little bit different for each person I work with because we’re starting from where you are. And then we start making some small changes. And we start small, and then we layer things on. And you know, we got to make sure that your body adjusts to each of these changes. But this is the right way to approach any type of dietary intervention, like you can’t just change 27 things all at once.
This is not sustainable, this is very overwhelming, and most people will not stick with it. So when you look at some fad diet out there, and they say okay, here’s the 27 things you need to do. Here’s the food you need, this food’s naughty, here’s the kind of thing, here’s my carbs, calories, how many macros and blah, blah, blah. Like it’s just overwhelming for a lot of people.
So it has to be something that is a progressive approach. I always take an progressive approach with my clients. And coaching is about feedback and results like is this working for you? Yes or no? Are you seeing positive results? Yes or no? If yes, cool. We’re going to keep going. If no, then we need to change something so that we can start getting results again.
And I’ll even say this, and this might sound a little bit arrogant, but coaching pretty much always works as long as you stick with it. As long as we are constantly analyzing results and making changes when necessary. You’ll always be moving towards your goals. You’ll always be getting results as long as we take that approach.
Because it’s not about any particular diet. It’s not about some dogmatic set of principles. Coaching is about what works for you as an individual. Yeah, sometimes it takes a little bit, a little bit of time to figure things out. Sometimes you have some setbacks, sometimes. It just doesn’t work.
But then we get into detective mode and we figure out a solution. And every other diet that’s out there, every other like one size fits all diet. You know, here’s what you do. And if it’s not working, sorry about your luck, you’re probably just doing it wrong. That is not the approach you need to take, you need to take an individualized approach.
And I’m not even saying you got to have a coach to help you through all this stuff. But you do have to constantly be analyzing, is this working for me or not? And if it isn’t, there’s something that has to change, you can’t keep doing the same things and expecting the results to be different, right?
So that is why I don’t just have a document, I can hand it over to you and say, here’s what you’re going to do. And this is going to work perfectly for you. Because there is no such thing. There just really isn’t. Okay. So this is a very dynamic process. It’s a process of trying some things and seeing if it works, and if it does, great, try something you know, later on the next thing, if it’s not working, though, we have to make a change. You can’t just keep doing the same things. Okay?
So you have to take more of a dynamic approach to whatever method you want to take on here. And that’s again, that’s why I do coaching and I don’t just hand over a book or document or something like that.
Okay, so those are the five dieting disasters that runners need to avoid. Number one, cutting calories and number two, not eating real food number three, carbohydrate mismanagement, number four, increased cortisol and number five, the one size fits all approach is just don’t do those things. And you’ll be fine. Cool.
And as always, if you’re looking for some help with any of this stuff, we can talk about it just head over to runningcoaching.com and click on Work Withork with me. We’ll have a conversation, see if coaching is a good fit for you. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Most people will agree that exercise should be included in any weight loss plan. Unfortunately, most people think that exercise should be the ONLY component of their weight loss plan. Eat less …
Continue Reading about 178. Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs to Know Part 2: Exercise →
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 178 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs To Know, Part Two: Exercise.
So most people will agree that exercise should be included in any weight loss plan. Unfortunately, most people think that exercise should be the only component of their weight loss plan, eat less and move more. Right?
Isn’t that the mantra that’s been forced upon us for several decades now? How’s that actually working for you? Not so great? Well, the good news is you’re not alone, it didn’t work for me either. There’s more to losing weight than just exercising more and eating less.
I know that if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably a runner, and you think that you’ve probably got the exercise thing down pat. But running alone, or just running more isn’t the answer when it comes to getting lean and strong and keeping the weight off for good.
So today, I’m gonna lay out several exercise principles that every runner needs to know, especially if you want to lose weight and keep it off. This is part two of a three part series called Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs To Know.
Part one, focused on nutrition principles. And next week, I’m going to do part three, which is all about the most important mindset principles you need to adopt in order to become your healthiest and most badass self.
But first, let me ask you this, does any of this sound familiar? You work out every day, and you don’t lose weight, you train for something like a marathon, you actually gain weight, you track all your food, you count all your calories and still the scale never budges.
Your eating feels out of control, you just can’t seem to put the consistency that you need together. And you can’t ever make any significant progress. It’s always like one step forward, two steps back. Or maybe you’re just finally ready to be done with all of that, all the struggling.
I know exactly what this feels like. Because I’ve been there. I struggled for years. I tried every diet you can imagine. Nothing ever worked for me, not long term. And all these diets had one thing in common, they all said, eat less, run more.
And the more I ran, and the less I ate, the more miserable I actually was, I was just like hungry all the time. And being that hungry all the time makes it very hard to lose weight, right. So that approach just doesn’t work.
So if you can relate to any of this or all of this, just know that there’s nothing wrong with you, you don’t lack willpower. You don’t lack self control, you’re not a failure. You’ve just been given bad advice. Whatever you’re doing doesn’t work, right?
Nothing changes if nothing changes, so maybe it’s time for a change. If you’re ready to try something different, something you’ve probably never tried before, just consider coaching. Coaching works where most cookie cutter plans fail.
Why? Because coaching gives you the expert guidance, support and advice that you need for you and your particular goals that the cookie cutter approaches just can’t do for you. Okay.
Coaching also provides encouragement and motivation to keep you going, especially when things get hard. Coaching even offers up a little bit of tough love every now and then because sometimes we all just need a little kick in the butt to get us back on track.
Coaching has been the one thing that changed everything for me, and I’m confident it can be the game changer for you too. Whether you’re just getting started on your weight loss journey, or you want to drop those last 10 pounds, check out The Coaching Project.
This is my lifetime access weight loss coaching program designed specifically for runners just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn all about it. I would love to see you in The Coaching Project. Alright, let’s get into these principles.
These are weight loss principles that every runner needs to know. And today we’re focused on exercise. So if you want to lose weight and you want to keep it off for good, there’s a certain way of doing things that may go against some of the standard practices out there.
Like I mentioned before, like running more and eating less. That just doesn’t work for most people, it didn’t work for me. And a lot of people I work with say it doesn’t work for them either. That’s why they come to me for advice and help and so what I’m going to lay out for you today is the exercise principles that we need to start to kind of wrap our head around, okay.
So I’m just going to jump into these and the first one is this: that it is okay to keep exercising. I know this may sound a little crazy. But there are a lot of coaches out there who tell people when they start out losing weight that they should stop exercising. And I know that sounds a little crazy.
Here’s why. Here’s why they do it because I had to look into this little bit. If you want to lose weight, and you’re not someone who exercises regularly, it might be a lot to completely change how you’re eating, and start exercising at the same time.
Think about that, if you’re somebody who has weight to lose, and you have not been exercising, to try to start a whole new diet and exercise at the same time can be a little overwhelming, right, it’s hard enough to stick to a meal plan. Now you want to stick to a whole new exercise plan too?
That can be a little bit much for people, especially if they’re just getting started. They’re not somebody who exercises regularly. But I have to say, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably a runner, and you probably run pretty consistently already, right? If so, great.
Just keep doing that you don’t really need to change anything. Right? Keep running, let’s focus on making changes around your nutrition at the beginning. Anyway, if you’re not somebody who runs consistently, and you want to lose weight, I’ll suggest just focus on the food for a while.
Go back and listen to the episode I did last week on nutrition, start with that, but get used to eating differently, wrap your head around that. Start developing some good habits around nutrition first, then we can start working on an exercise plan.
Okay, so it’s okay to keep exercising, if that’s something that you’re doing now just keep running. If you’re going to the gym, if you’re doing yoga, whatever it is you’re doing, just keep doing it. Don’t really change anything at the beginning, just focus on the food at the beginning. Okay.
Second principle, it’s not all about running. So this is another one that runners will push back on me with beyond a little bit. But listen, you have to wrap your head around this. Losing weight is not about running a million miles. I say this all the time. Okay, this isn’t about just like increasing your running till you’re running 85-90 miles a week or something like that. Okay.
I talked about this last week, you can go back and listen to that episode, again, if you want to understand what the biggest driver is when it comes to weight loss. So that’s going to be nutrition. There’s lots of reasons why. But it isn’t more cardio, you know, it’s not all about the cardio.
If you’re running, keep on running, just understand that you can’t outrun that bad diet, right. So you’ve got to get your nutrition dialed in first. That’s the most important factor when it comes to losing weight.
Cardio, or just running more is not going to solve your weight loss problems for you. You cannot run so much that you will just you know lose all this weight and be able to keep it off. And it’s something that isn’t really sustainable.
So this leads me into like the next principle, which is just say no to chronic cardio. No, that kind of rhymes, just say no to chronic cardio. Okay, what is chronic cardio? Chronic cardio is when you get out there and every single workout you do is medium hard, right?
You never work out hard enough to get the adaptive effects of those hard workouts. And you never work out easy enough to get the adapted cardiovascular effects of those workouts. So everything you do is a medium-hard intensity. All your runs, all your, you know, sessions at the gym, yoga, whatever. Everything is at this like medium-hard intensity. And this is the way that I used to do it. And every run, I would go out there and just push myself not too hard, but not too easy.
Here’s what happens when you do that, right. And the reason it’s called chronic cardio is because it’s constantly happening. It’s constantly recurring. It’s what you do every single day day in and day out.
Some of the problems. Number one is that this puts your body into a state of chronic stress. So stress is okay. And there’s two types of stress. There’s the chronic stress, which I’m going to get into in a minute here.
But then there’s acute stress, acute stress is where you go and do like speed intervals. And you do a HIIT workout where it’s very short and very intense. And it’s a very intense amount of stress on your body but you’re you have an adaptive response. Your body gets stronger, your cardiovascular system improves.
You go to the gym and do a less hard weightlifting session. Very hard, very intense but short, you know, and your muscles grow because of that, right? That’s the adaptive response to acute stress, then we have what we call chronic stress.
Chronic stress is the kind of stress we don’t want. Chronic stress is where your body is in a state of that fight or flight. Stress, fight or flight or freeze, you know, kind of all the time, you know, think about how we’ve developed as human beings where, you know, we saw the saber toothed tiger, and we became stressed out about that.
That’s acute stress, we run away, you know, cortisol goes up, glucose gets produced, our bodies are, the adrenaline gets produced, whatever. And we can run away, so we have the energy for running away.
But now, a lot of times we put our bodies into this state of chronic stress where our cortisol levels are always high, our glucose levels are high, which means our insulin levels are always high, which means we’re always storing fat, which means it’s really hard to burn fat and lose weight.
Chronic stress leads to chronic weight gain, or the inability to lose weight. So if all your workouts are medium-hard, you’re going to put your body into that state of chronically being stressed. And we do not want that, okay. Exercising this way will not help you to lose weight.
In fact, the opposite might happen, you might just gain weight. And this is why a lot of people come to me and they’re like, Patrick, I don’t understand I workout all the time. And then they start describing their workouts. And I go hmm, I think I know what the problem is here.
So we have to switch how you exercise and how you structure your runs. So what do you do instead?
This leads me to the next principle, which is the 80/20 principle. So what is the 80/20 principle? This is where 80% of your runs, 80% of your workouts should be easy, comfortable, low intensity, conversational pace, zones, one and two. And 20% of your workouts should be hard, high intensity, you cannot carry a conversation in zones three to five.
This is what the best runners in the world do. They focus 80% of their effort on low intensity and they build that cardiovascular base, they build that aerobic engine. And then 20% of the time, they are focused on running super hard, super fast tempo runs. Fartlek speed work, HIIT training, that kind of stuff.
And if you want to take a deep dive into this, read the book 80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgerald, it has a lot of great science in there. But he does explain how this principle works, why it works in great detail, I’m not going to get into all the details of it here.
But if you just take this 80/20 principle, and you start applying that to how you’re running now, this principle is going to help you immensely right, you’re going to start to improve your running, you will actually improve your cardiovascular system, you’ll improve your running engine, so you’ll be able to run longer distances, you’ll improve your speed.
And you don’t risk all the negative effects of having this elevated cortisol all the time and putting your body into that state of chronic stress. Okay, so just understand that if you want a better approach, stay away from the chronic cardio, focus on 80/20. And this is gonna go a long way for you here.
Alright, next principle, resistance training beats cardio every time. So lean runners are strong runners. I told you the first and most important principle when it comes to losing weight is going to be to focus on nutrition. The second best thing you can do for yourself if you want to lose weight is resistance training. This is going to have the most impact over cardio.
Okay, most people don’t understand this. So number one is going to be nutrition. The second biggest driver of your weight loss of your body composition is going to be resistance training. And what is resistance training?
So resistance training is weightlifting. It’s called strength training a lot of times, but resistance training is using some sort of resistance and this could be your own bodyweight. It could be weights at the gym. It could be anything heavy that you carry or resistance bands to cause an overload in your muscles, so they have an adaptive response.
That adaptive response can be more than just building strength. So when we say strength training, yes, we want to build strength, we want to become stronger, but you can also build endurance power speed hypertrophy, which is larger muscles.
So, depending on what your goals are, you might want to build power and speed because you want to increase your running time, you want to be more explosive, maybe you want to run a faster 5k.
So you might want to focus on power and speed versus hypertrophy, like you don’t want to get big and bulky. Okay. So here’s what happens though, when you do not focus on resistance training. So most runners kind of neglect doing resistance training the right way, they just don’t do it the right way. Or they don’t do it at all.
And when you neglect regular resistance training, weight loss will take longer because your metabolism will actually slow down a little bit, you’ll be actively storing more body fat, you’re at a higher risk of injury.
Runners who don’t build strong muscles and connective tissues are more likely to get injured. So being strong means you can run hopefully, injury free, you won’t be able to run as far as having weak muscles means your body won’t be able to carry you as far before if fatigue sets in.
So being a strong runner means you can run longer, and you won’t be able to run as fast. Being a strong runner means you can run at higher intensities for longer. So strong runners are faster and more powerful.
On the flip side, here’s what you can expect when you stick to a regular strength training routine, you will lose weight faster so the more muscle mass that you have means the more fat you’re burning. Carrying muscle around requires more energy than carrying fat so your metabolism actually increases just by getting a little bit bigger and a little stronger.
This doesn’t mean you’re going to be big and jacked. That’s really hard to do, you don’t need to worry about that. Building muscle also speeds up the fat adaptation process which helps you burn even more fat. Building strong muscles means you’re at a much lower risk of injury especially from those connective tissue problems.
Most runners’ muscles adapt pretty quickly but your connective tissues, ligaments and tendons, they take a little bit longer to get strong. That’s why most running related injuries are ligament intended injuries, not muscle injuries. Also your endurance will improve your ability to run longer distances before fatigue sets in vastly improves.
So become a better long distance runner and you’ll get faster. Carrying more muscle means your power to weight ratio improves substantially. So you’ll be able to run faster at higher intensities for longer periods.
Lastly, you’ll live longer. A new meta study in the British Journal of Medicine says that people who do regular strength training are less likely to die prematurely than those who don’t, even when they don’t do any cardio at all.
So, in my opinion, I think that the number two thing you can do besides changing your nutrition is focus on resistance training, and then decide do you want to build stronger muscles? Do you want to build more power, more speed, more endurance? Or do you want to put on more muscle you know, focus on hypertrophy. So you got to figure that out. But resistance training beats cardio every time.
Next principle, you have to understand this: running is catabolic. So long distance running is catabolic, which means that it does break down muscle to some extent. So running is not a muscle building activity on its own. It’s a muscle depleting activity.
This is another reason why doing regular resistance training is so important, you got to keep up with this so you don’t lose muscle. This is also why you need to prioritize protein as a runner, you can lose weight while training for a marathon or any other race, you just have to make sure that you’re not losing muscle weight, right.
So regular resistance training, and getting enough protein will offset the catabolic effects of running, it doesn’t have to be catabolic, it doesn’t have to be a problem for you, you just have to make sure you’re doing regular resistance training and getting enough protein too.
Okay, next principle, I want to just kind of break these two things down here activity versus exercise. So, physical activity, this is any bodily movement produced by your muscles that require energy expenditure.
Exercise, on the other hand, is a subcategory of physical activity that is planned, structured, repetitive, and purposely focused on improvement or maintenance of one or more components of physical fitness.
So for example, activities would be things like walking the dog, playing with kids, yard work, house cleaning, these are not forms of exercise. They are activities.
Exercises are things like running, weightlifting, cycling, swimming, yoga, and on and on, right.
I think we kind of understand this, but I just want to make this very clear to you. And here’s why I’m bringing this up. Because the key words I want you to focus on here are planned, structured, repetitive, and purposefully focused on improvement.
So, think about your current exercise regimen. How often do you plan your workouts? Do you have a plan? You should have a plan. All your workouts should be planned for the week, whether you’re running weightlifting, doing cross training, swimming, yoga, whatever, these should all be on your calendar, they should be planned ahead of time.
How repetitive are they? How consistent are you with that plan? You should be consistent with your exercise routine, because that’s the only way you’re going to see improvements. Right? How purposefully focused on improvement? Do you have clear goals? Are you tracking your progress? And are you making steady progress? If so great. If not, why not?
Like for running, you need clear running goals, you need a solid running plan. You need to be consistent with your training like don’t ever miss two workouts in a row. And then every run, every workout has to have a purpose. Like you need to be continually making progress towards those goals.
And if you’re not, you need to kind of look at why am I not making progress? Am I overtraining? Am I not getting enough rest? What is the problem here? How can I change things so that I’m getting good results so that I’m moving closer to those goals that I have for myself?
So I just want you to understand that when it comes to exercise that has to be planned, structured, repetitive, and you have to be focused on improving. Most people don’t do it this way. They treat running like it’s, you know, yard work, right?
Running just becomes another activity, which is great. If that’s all you want to do, you just want to treat it as like something that you do, like walking the dog, that’s fine. But if you want to improve if you want to get faster if you want to run farther, you know, if you’re focused on weight training, and you want to get bigger muscles or improve your body composition, or get more toned, especially for the beach, whatever, then you need structure, you need goals, you need to be planning this you need repetition and purpose. Okay?
If you want to PR your next half marathon, you can’t just wing it with your training, you have to have it planned and structured. And you have to have this focus on improvement. Okay, so that is the big difference between activity and exercise.
Which leads me to my next principle, which is you have to prioritize rest and recovery. I know a lot of people do not want to talk about this. And I know a lot of runners who run or workout every single day. And they do not give themselves a chance to rest and recover properly.
And I just have to say when it comes to changing your body composition, losing weight, too much stress, a lack of sleep, lack of proper rest and recovery will result in chronic stress and the inability to lose weight. So just understand that you have to prioritize rest and recovery.
You cannot train every single day hard, like I mentioned earlier, unless you make sure that you’re prioritizing rest and recovery, you have to have those days built into your training plan, right? So think about how we build muscle, right? So you overload your muscle, you have an adaptive response, which means your muscle grows in response.
Or let’s say you want to improve your running, you do a hard intense speed workout and then the next day you rest and your body improves in that off time in that downtime in that rest period. That adaptive response does not happen on days when you’re doing intense training. It just does and it requires rest and recovery for this to happen.
So if you’re not seeing progress in your weight loss, if you’re not seeing progress in your running or your strength training, then you need to look at how is my rest and recovery? Right, remember we don’t want to be in that state of chronic stress, chronically high cortisol levels because that’s just going to keep us holding on to excess body fat okay.
And it leads to chronic fatigue and if you feel like tired all the time, maybe you can’t get a good night’s sleep which is a key component of rest. Maybe your workouts have diminished like your your ability to work out. Well has your performance gone down? Do your workouts feel harder? Your endurance has tanked.
If any of this stuff is happening, then look at rest and recovery, right, this also has a mental impact, right? You don’t have as clear of a head, you might be in a grumpy mood, you might start to lose your motivation, you just don’t feel like running anymore, right?
So you need to focus on rest and recovery. Because when you do, you give your body a chance to rebuild to repair and recover from those hard workouts so that you have that positive adaptive response, you’re able to go harder on your hard days, which means you’ll improve your fitness even faster.
And that’s the thing that people don’t understand. They think, oh, I don’t want to miss a day, I’m just going to do these hard workouts everyday so that I improve faster. Well, the opposite is actually true. If you want to improve faster, focus on rest and recovery days, okay, you give your body a chance to adapt to your training load.
Adapting means that you’ll get stronger, and you’ll improve your cardiovascular system, you can increase the intensity and the duration of your workouts. As long as you’re getting enough rest and recovery time, you won’t be as fatigued, you’ll feel better, your workouts will actually get easier. And you’ll get those positive mental benefits.
So you’ll feel more clear headed, you’ll be happier and less moody and stuff like that. Okay. So just understand that rest and recovery have to be a priority. And if they’re not, put them in your schedule, just put those days in your schedule.
All right, the next principle is this, you need to be working on flexibility and mobility every single day. One of the most debilitating aspects of this world we live in today is sitting in chairs all day, right? You run, you lift weights, and that’s all great.
You know, you get your exercise in every day. But what about the eight hours or whatever it is a day that you’re sitting in a chair at work, or the two or three hours at night, when you’re sitting down watching TV before you go to bed.
I did a little research on this, the average American adult sits down in a chair for about seven hours every day, that’s average, some people it’s a lot more, some people a little bit less. For teenagers, it’s around eight hours a day.
And research has linked sitting for long periods of time with a number of health concerns like obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and these all make up what’s called metabolic syndrome.
And by the way, about 88% of the US population is considered metabolically unhealthy. This is not where you want to be, this is not a good trend. So sitting all day contributes to this, it’s not good for you.
But I get it, you have to work. Your kids have to go to school, they got to sit at desks, whatever. So what do you do? Work on improving your flexibility and your mobility every day. And this is one of those areas where I talk to people about this.
I talk to clients about this, and I can see their eyes kind of rolling back in their head and they’re like, oh my gosh, just one more thing I got to do. I don’t have time for this. I’m already working out all the time. I don’t have time to work on this. But listen, you got to make time for this. You do not want to be one of those 88%.
Okay, so there’s a few things you can do. I’m gonna just talk about a couple of things you can do. They’re super simple, but they’re gonna make such a huge difference for you. Number one, get a standup desk. If you don’t have one already, just get one. I have one. I love it. I’m up and down all day. I’m sitting right now. But a lot of times I’ll record this podcast while I’m standing.
And so I move the desk around, it’s actually one that can go up and down. And I’ll move it up and down and switch every meeting that I have all stand up for one and then I’ll sit so that I’m cutting the amount of time that I’m sitting in a chair and half by doing that right there. That’s a huge game changer right there.
Another thing you can do, which is so simple, and this is going to sound ridiculous. But this is just get on the ground. Spend time on the ground sitting on the ground, squatting, getting up and down from the ground laying on the ground. You could do this any time during the day, grab your laptop, put it on the ground, just sit on the ground.
You can do it while you’re watching TV. You can, you know, do it while you’re eating dinner, put your dinner on the coffee table and just sit there on the ground. You know, there’s cultures that do this already, right.
And little kids do this all the time. I recently spent some time with my grandson. My son and his wife had to go to a wedding and they were like can you come and watch, you know, Vigi’s his name. Can you come and watch him for a few hours while we go to this wedding? So we spent a lot of time together. And which was really interesting.
I was just watching him for a long time. He’s probably thinking like, geez, what are you doing weirdo, but I’m just watching him and he’s on the ground the whole time. He’s squatting. He’s sitting, he’s crawling around.
He wants to play this game with me called crawlies which is just like I’m crawling around, and I gotta chase him around while we’re both crawling and it was super fun. But the point is that little kids do this.
Naturally, this is our natural state as humans getting and moving around on the ground, is how, how we evolve and how we learn, good posture and sitting. And this is very natural for us too. But we’ve gotten far away from this, this world that we live in now with chairs and couches, and we sit everywhere, it’s not good for us, right?
There is this field of study, this field of what’s the right word like rehabilitation, that’s called DNS, or dynamic neuromuscular stabilization. Fancy word I’m going to explain. I’m going to describe what it is, I’m going to give you like their definition of what it is. And then I’m going to tell you in a nutshell what it is.
So DNS, dynamic neuromuscular stabilization, is about the nervous system, and how it establishes programs that control human posture, human movement, and our gait. So this motor control is largely established during the first critical years of life.
DNS emphasizes neuro developmental aspects of motor control in order to assess and restore dysfunction of the local motor system and associated syndromes. Okay, that was a lot, right? Here’s what DNS is. In a nutshell, it’s about restoring our natural movement.
It uses postures, positions, and movements, based on what babies and toddlers do naturally. So if you look up DNS positions, DNS exercises, you will see pictures of babies, and then the adult version of that thing. So a baby may be in a squatting position, and then the adult is in the squatting position.
And they explain, you know why these movements are so natural and so important. But I noticed that my grandson has all this flexibility. Like, it’s crazy how flexible he is. And I’m trying to do the same things he’s doing. And I’m like, dang, I can’t do that anymore. Like I used to be able to do that, you know, so we lose that as we get older.
Okay, so I know this sounds crazy, but I’m just telling you right now that the main benefits of DNS are going to be improved mobility, improved flexibility, and improved stability. Every mobility issue, tight muscle or stuck joint is really an underlying stability issue. So if you can improve your stability, all this stuff goes away.
So get on the ground, this doesn’t take any extra time, just get on the ground, and do what little babies do. It’s so fun to just roll around on the ground and sit up and get up and down. If you find that if you’re older, like I am, and you find that getting up off the ground is like oh, my knees are cracking and it like takes a little bit more effort than it used to, then this is something you need to focus on. Okay.
Here’s the thing, if you did this regularly, if you focus on this type of DNS training this like getting on the ground, spending time on the ground, and consistent resistance training, you would feel amazing, you would improve your health, your body composition, your vitality, your longevity, and just become an overall badass, really.
If you just did these two things running fine, run, keep running. But I’m just going to tell you that this and resistance training are going to go so far for you and feeling better, but also in improving your body composition, losing weight.
So this brings me to my last principle I want to talk about today, which is run because you love it. Don’t run to lose weight. It doesn’t work. I think you understand why by now. Run because you love running. And people say this to me all the time. They say, Gosh, Patrick, I just love running. Running is like my therapy.
And I love this because just like therapy, running helps you to feel good about yourself. It helps you to build self confidence and self esteem. It helps you to improve your self awareness. It helps you to connect with yourself and with other people better. And just like therapy, running can help mitigate depression and anxiety. Lots of studies have shown this.
So running makes us feel better about ourselves. People who run regularly are typically happier. So run because you love it. Running helps you improve your focus and your concentration throughout the day. So you can actually be more productive. It’s an amazing stress reliever. So run not to lose weight not because you have to run because you love running, right.
If you’re running just to try to lose weight, you’re going to be very stressed out, it’s just going to cause a lot of unnecessary stress in you, okay? And don’t run because you have to, it’s not a chore, right? You’re not trying to prove something to others either, just run because you want to prove something to yourself.
Run because it feels good to run, run because you, you want to become healthier and happier and you want more for yourself, you want to improve, run because you love running. So maybe it’s time to change how you run a little bit, maybe leave your watch at home, leave your phone at home, just go run naked, they say that doesn’t mean without clothes. It just means running without your watch and your phone, no headphones, just go out and run.
Focus on your breathing, focus on the surroundings. Focus on nature. Maybe use this time while you’re running to give thanks for everything that you have in your life. Think about the trees and the birds on the sidewalk and the dirt path beneath your feet.
Think about how grateful you are for everything in your life. Maybe you can use this time to meditate or to pray. However you do this, it’s up to you. But I just want to encourage you to to run because you love running not because you have to.
So those are the principles I wanted to share with you today all about exercise. Remember, this is part two of a three part series called Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs To Know. Check out last week’s if you haven’t already, it’s all about nutrition.
And next week, I’m going to come up with part three, which is going to focus on the mindset principles every runner needs to know. And to make sure you never miss an episode, just subscribe to the podcast on whatever podcast app that you use.
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I get a lot of questions about how to improve running performance and one concept I keep coming back to is building your aerobic engine. Before you can run longer or faster you have to improve your …
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 158, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, building your aerobic engine. So I get a lot of questions from people in general and clients about how to improve running performance.
And one concept I keep coming back to is building your aerobic engine. Before you can run longer, or run faster, you have to improve your aerobic fitness. So building and maintaining a solid aerobic base should be the goal of every runner, regardless of your running experience. But many runners skip this step, because they just want to get to the faster running the higher intensity running.
So in this episode, I’m going to explain how building your aerobic engine is essential to helping you improve both your running speed and your endurance. And Happy New Year everyone. This is the first episode of 2023. And is this going to be a new year and a new you or a new year and the same old, same old you?
So I want you to think about this, where do you want to be this time next year? When you look back? Over 2023? What do you want to have accomplished? Where do you want to be with your health and your fitness? Do you want to make this year the year that you finally lose the weight and learn how to keep it off for good?
So I really want you to think about this, what do you really want for yourself this year, because here’s the truth. Whatever you want for yourself, it’s available to you, it’s achievable for you. So let’s get you there together. When you sign up for coaching with me, you get all the knowledge, support and accountability you need to achieve everything that you want for yourself in 2023.
So let’s make this year 2023 your best year yet, to learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a quick application. You and I will get on a call, we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. If it is, boom, we’ll get you started. And we’ll start making this the best year yet for you just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply.
Okay, so lots of people who are new to running, especially the newer runners, want to kind of skip the part where they have to focus on building their aerobic base, or what I like to call the aerobic engine. And this is a good time of the year to be talking about this, because I think a lot of us are just about to start marathon training, or maybe half marathon training, a lot of spring races happen in the United States.
And so the beginning of January is when a lot of training begins. The problem is that most runners don’t do a really good job of building their aerobic engine properly. At the beginning of a training cycle, lots of runners, even very experienced runners who are maybe following some sort of training plan.
So they may have some sort of marathon training plan that they’re doing. They just begin by, you know, doing all their miles at a kind of medium hard intensity, and they end up kind of maybe getting burned out or getting injured. A lot of overuse injuries happen, especially with new runners, but even with experienced runners.
And a lot of these overuse injuries happen kind of at the first half of the training cycle, which leads me to believe that when we start our marathon training or start our half marathon training program, you need to be you need to have developed a good solid aerobic base, you need a good solid base on which you can build, right?
So you want to start with a good base, start with a good aerobic engine, and then you can get faster and build your intensity levels on top of that. So what does it mean when I’m talking about your aerobic engine? So really what I’m talking about here, as I’m talking about increasing the efficiency of your cardiovascular system, right?
The cardiovascular system is the different functions of your body that can combine to enable you to run for longer distances, right? Your cardiovascular system is, you know, your heart, your blood, carrying oxygen to working muscles and organs to every working part of your body. So it’s mostly, you know, how, how efficient is your heart? How much blood can your heart pump out at a time, like how much blood volume can you pump out?
Because the more blood volume in your heart can pump out, the more oxygen you will be delivering to working muscles, the better you are at delivering oxygen rich blood to working muscles, especially those muscles used for running, that easier running becomes. So we want to improve this system. And it’s something that you can absolutely improve.
Now, if you’re a new runner, and you’re just starting out, and you get out there, and maybe you’re training for your first 5k, and you get out there and to run a mile is takes everything you’ve got and you feel completely winded at the end of that mile, that is fine, that is normal. If you’re just getting started with this, then that is something where if you continue running, and you continue doing the right kind of running, you will find that running a mile becomes very easy.
And then running two and three miles becomes a no big deal. And then all of a sudden, you’re like, I’m just gonna go ahead and, and run a half marathon or trust our training for a marathon, right? But don’t get ahead of yourself. Work your way up to that slowly. And I’m going to be talking about that in a minute here.
So really, what we’re talking about when we’re talking about your aerobic engine, is your cardiovascular system, you know, your body’s ability to deliver oxygen rich blood to all the working muscles and organs and all the functions in your body that help you to improve your running efficiency and your running performance.
Okay, so why do we want to build an aerobic engine? Like why is it important to build this? Well, you know, you just can’t expect to go out there and run a fast half marathon or a fast marathon. Without doing the work to build your cardiovascular system, you can’t improve your running performance, if you don’t start with a good base, right?
So you need to first build a solid aerobic base, then you can work on getting faster, and increasing the intensity of your running over those longer distances. But I want to make sure this is very clear, do not skip this step, do not skip the part where you build that aerobic base. And something that is actually kind of counterintuitive. But I’ll explain why this works in just a minute here, you will actually get faster, just by improving your aerobic engine.
So by doing more slow, easy running and improving your cardiovascular system, you will become more efficient at running and you can actually run faster at the same intensity levels. This is one of the huge benefits of building a strong aerobic base is that you can improve your running efficiency, you can improve your running speed.
In fact, there are many benefits to improving your aerobic engine here. So when your cardiovascular system gets more efficient, when you improve your aerobic fitness, running becomes easier. This is like one of the number one reasons why we want to do this, it just gets easier, right? You can run longer distances and you can run faster at the same perceived effort level.
So let’s say you go out there and you run out a perceived effort level of a three or a four and you’re like this feels great, it feels pretty easy for me. And you might notice your pace is a 10 minute pace. For example, over time, if you build your cardiovascular system the right way, if you build your aerobic engine properly, over time, you can run at that same three four effort level.
Oh, this feels pretty easy. But now your pace is a 9:30 or a 9:00 minute pace because you’ve improved how your body is fueling itself and how your body is using oxygen and and how much blood volume you’re pumping out there. Okay, so you actually get faster at the same effort level, which is amazing.
Another reason why we want to improve our cardiovascular system, or our aerobic engine is that it actually increases the number of mitochondria in your body. So this is the powerhouse of your cells. And you can actually increase the size and strength of your mitochondria as well. So this right here is going to give you an edge and this is one of the reasons why you run easier and you can run faster at the same effort level.
You also get denser capillaries and you can deliver more oxygenated blood with more capillaries working in your bloodstream. So your working muscles will actually get more oxygen, which makes running easier. Another kind of benefit of improving your aerobic engine is that it helps to build mental toughness. So as you improve your cardiovascular system, you start to feel more confident. So you can go out there and run three miles and it feels tough.
But as you, you know, increase your running volume as you increase your distance as you increase your aerobic capacity and your aerobic performance, then running becomes easier and becomes more confident you can run 8, 10, 12 miles and and feel like well, yeah, I can do this. And it makes you more mentally tough because it pushes you, enables you to push yourself a little bit harder, enables you to shoot for higher and higher goals. And next thing you know you’re running a half marathon or you’re running a marathon, you’re starting to train for an ultra marathon.
Another benefit of improving your aerobic engine is that it helps to improve muscular strength, you know, you’re delivering more oxygen to muscles, you’re able to run longer, you build more muscular strength, you improve your running economy, you improve your running efficiency, you become more energy efficient, you know, you’re using the same kind of you have the same inputs, but your output is much more efficient. And then you get faster, you know, you’ll be able to perform better at races.
So all these reasons are why we work hard to improve our aerobic engine, okay. So do not skip this, we absolutely want to make sure that before you begin your training, or the first phases of your training for any kind of endurance events should be to really build a strong aerobic base. Now some people like to do this in the offseason, they like to spend, you know, four to six weeks building that aerobic engine, even up to 12 weeks, you know, really building a strong aerobic engine before they get into their training cycle.
But you can absolutely do this at the beginning of a half or full marathon training cycle. So how do we do this? How do you start building your aerobic engine? What are the keys to improving your aerobic fitness and improving your cardiovascular efficiency?
So the first tip I’m going to give you here to improve your aerobic engine would be to increase your running volume. Right? The simple fact of running more will help you to increase your aerobic capacity, increase your running efficiency, just running more and increasing your volume helps to improve your running form and helps to increase your cardiovascular system.
You build stronger muscles. Running becomes easier, just by running more. But the caveat with this is you don’t do too much too soon. This is one of the biggest rookie mistakes that new runners make is increasing their volume too much too soon. So the standard sort of rule of thumb has always been to increase by no more than around 10% a week in your weekly volume.
So that means if you’re starting out and you’re running about 10 miles a week, you know, for the first few weeks, I would only increase that by like a mile each week. So maybe week one you’re at 10 miles and then you build up to 11, 12, 13. Maybe you can jump up to 14.5 or 15, 16, 18, 20. But you don’t really want to increase volume too quickly.
So people get excited when they start running and they’re like oh running is amazing. I feel so great doing this and your muscles might be ready to take on the miles but your connective tissues, your tendons and ligaments are not quite ready for that yet. And a lot of the running injuries that people experience are tendinitis issues or strained, you know ligaments or tendons. They tend to be more connective tissue issues than they do with muscular issues.
It’s pretty rare to strain the muscle from running in the beginning especially. It’s more common to have these connective tissue issues so definitely be careful and don’t do too. Too much too soon try to keep it around that 10% increase in weekly volume, then, you know, if you’re a more experienced runner, you can increase that from 10 to maybe 15 or 20% per week. The idea is that you have to do what feels right for you. And don’t overdo it. That is the key here. Less is more in this case, right. So just slowly build your volume, but definitely increasing your volume is going to be one of the best ways to improve your aerobic engine.
Another way of doing this is to run slower. So when I talk about running slower, there’s different ways we can look at this. So running slower means you’re running in, maybe you’re running in a zone one or two. From a heart rate standpoint, maybe you’re someone who likes to just use RPE, rate of perceived exertion, the scale of 1 to 10. And you might like to stay in the one to four range.
That would be nice, easy running, maybe you’d like to just run at a conversational pace, you’d like to just, you know, go by if you can carry on a conversation or not. The idea here is that you need to slow down, and you need to do a lot of running slower. When you do a lot of running slower, you increase your distance, but if you keep the intensity levels very low, you are at lower risk of injury. And you put less stress on your systems, you put less stress on your bones and muscles and those connective tissues like I talked about.
So slow running is one of the best ways to build your aerobic engine, it’s one of the most effective ways to build your aerobic engine, you’re not going to be able to get more aerobically fit by just cranking out every workout, you can’t go out there and do every workout hard or medium hard, you know that you have to spend a lot of time running easy and rolling slow.
So something I noticed here, so I took about three months off of running. And since August, so August, September, October, getting into November, I’ve been running very consistently since the middle of November in my room or maybe like Thanksgiving, let’s just say. And I’m noticing that I’m paying very close attention to my effort level and my heart rate.
And I’m noticing that I’m staying very consistent from an energy standpoint, very easy running most of my runs, I would say 90% of my runs right now or at a very easy conversational pace, probably that one to two zones, and the heart rate zones, and maybe three to four on the RPE scale, or two to four somewhere in there and that our RPE scale.
But one thing that’s interesting here is I noticed that my effort level is staying the same, my heart rate is staying the same, but my pace is increasing. So I’m getting faster, at the same effort level. So this is a sign that I’m building a strong aerobic engine. And this is what I want for you too. You should notice that over time, doing a lot of running 90% 80% of your runs at this slower pace, just slowing things down, will help you to increase your aerobic engine and help you to get faster.
So now as I get to the place where I’m you know, going to get into marathon training here, and I’m training for an ultra marathon event here in May, I will continue doing a lot of this slow, easy running and see my pace continually increase, you know, to a certain degree here, okay? The other way that you can really increase your aerobic engine is by running faster.
And I know that sounds a little bit counterintuitive here. But doing higher intensity, like short, higher intensity workouts is another amazing way of building that aerobic engine, right? So why these work is that these workouts put a very high amount of stress on the cardiovascular system, very high amount of stress for very short intervals. This elicits an adaptive response where your system improves.
Think about it, like you know building muscle, like if you lift heavy weights, and you do you know six to eight reps of a very heavy weight. And you get to the point where you just cannot lift one more rep of that weight.
And then you stop and so that’s a short interval but very intense. Your muscle is going to have been put under a high amount of stress for a very short amount of time. That muscle is going to have an adaptive response. It’s going to get stronger. It’s going to grow. You’re gonna see some growth rather than that muscle, and the next time, you’ll be able to lift a heavier weight.
The exact same response happens in our cardiovascular system. So we put high stress for a very short amount of time on that cardiovascular system that improves, this isn’t there’s an adaptive response, your body’s like, hey, we need to, you know, change the way we’re doing things here, we need to increase the amount of blood we’re pumping out per heartbeat. So increase our blood volume, you know, we need to deliver more oxygen working muscles.
And this is another very effective way of improving that aerobic engine. And especially when you combine it with your longer slower runs, right, your very easy lower stress run. So very low stress, long runs, and then very high stress, short runs. So running fast and hard for short intervals, like this could be like, one to three minutes, a very hard running 4-10 minutes of moderate intensity running maybe 12-30 minutes.
For tempo type workouts, these are just examples of different intensity levels that you can add in there. But you know, anything short is one to 30 minutes, maybe. And it just kind of depends on the event that you’re training for. But high stress for short intervals, and low stress for the long runs equals a badass aerobic engine, right there. Okay?
So those two combined are a really, really good way of improving your cardiovascular fitness. So the slower runs focus on 80-90% of your runs at that slow pace, and then higher intensity, shorter workouts, you know, 10-20%, depending on where you are in your training cycle, when we’re talking about building your aerobic base here, I would I would focus on more of a 90/10 breakdown there, okay.
And then probably the most common method people think of when they want to improve their aerobic fitness would be the long run, like improve the length of your long run. And when I say long run, it depends on what you’re training for, again, so this could be 30 minutes, if you’re training for your first 5k, that could be a long run for you, or six hours, if you’re trading for for a 50 miler, you know, so, long run is very subjective. So it just kind of depends on what you’re training for.
Most of us, if we’re training for a marathon, let’s say, most people are going to be doing a long run anywhere from an hour to three and a half hours, something like that, okay. So when we’re talking about in increasing the distance of your long run, the effort level has to be low. So we’re talking about, you know, heart rate zones wanting to wonder for on the RPE scale, this is a conversational pace, this is a easy, I could run all day at this pace.
Okay, this is gonna be one of the most powerful ways of improving your cardiovascular system. So we’re, we’re not just doing one of these things. By the way, we’re not just picking one of these things and saying, like, Oh, I’m just going to improve my long run, I’m just gonna increase the distance on my lawn, or I’m just going to do some HIIT workouts or I’m just going to run slower.
No, you got to do a mile, you got to increase your running volume, you got to run slower, you got to run faster for shorter distances, and you got to increase the distance of that long run, you got to do all these things. But when you do and you combine them all, you’re going to find that your aerobic engine is pretty badass. Okay.
And then the last thing I’ll add to this list is really just getting better at burning fat. You need fuel for running. And when you’re especially running slower and running at these lower intensities, the preferred source of fuel your body’s going to want to use as fat, the better you can get at burning fat, the easier running is going to feel for you.
Listen, we as human beings, we’re naturally good fat burning machines, we’ve just gotten very far away from that state. You know, we’ve been eating a diet that forces us to use glucose as our main fuel source. And granted, it is a very easily available and very quick burning source of fuel especially for running but you run out of that fast and your body isn’t using a whole lot of glucose. When you’re running at these lower intensities fat is going to be the main fuel source, so you got to get good at burning fat.
I suggest you get fat adapted stop using sugar and carbs as fuel. stop relying on glucose as a fuel source. Start training your body to tap into your own stored body fat as a source of fuel for running run in the fasted state. That means you don’t need to fuel up before you run. Maybe for a long long run or a high intensity run, yes. But for the most part, you know, you don’t really need to feel up before the runs, train your body to get good at burning fat.
And this isn’t about like zero carbs or anything like that, this is just about using the right kinds of carbs and using carbs properly. Keeping the carbs pretty low, though, okay, so get better at burning fat. Listen, we’re great at storing fat, right? We’re really good at storing fat, we’re just not good at tapping into our own body fat for fuel. And if you’re somebody who has, you know, 10-20 pounds to lose, you’ve got way more than enough body fat to get you out there and run for many, many, many miles for days, days.
I’m pretty low in the body fat percentage, and I’ve got hundreds of 1000s of calories of body fat on my body right now that I could use, I could literally run for, you know, weeks at a time or something like that. So get better at burning that fat. And you’ll find that your aerobic capacity, it gets better too. And just running just becomes so much easier. Okay.
So remember, we want to build our aerobic engine, we want to, you know, we only want to be delivering more oxygen to working muscles. The way we do this, as we increase our running volume, we run more just more often, we want to run slower, keep it in those zones wanting to keep it in the fat burning zone, right? You know, RPE should be, you know, one to four, run faster, do some HIIT workouts, do some high intensity, but short workouts run longer, like increase the distance of your long run, and then get better at burning fat.
And when you do these things, and you combine all these things, you’re going to be well on your way to being a fit faster, more efficient runner, running is going to become easier for you, you’re going to be able to get faster, and your spring marathon or spring race, whatever it is that you’re training for, will be a huge success for you. Cool. Awesome. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
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