This is episode 438 with professor, strength and conditioning coach and author Dan Cleather.
Welcome to the Strength Running Podcast.
I'm Coach Jason Fitzgerald, and I want to help you become a better runner.
Don't miss our award-winning website at strengthrunningcom, our YouTube channel with more than 100000 subscribers, or feel free to connect with me on Instagram at JasonFitz1.
My singular goal is to help you become a better runner.
So make sure you're subscribed to the show, hit follow, and let's get started.
This episode is being published on Christmas Day, so Merry Christmas.
I'll be playing with my kids' toys all day and, whether you celebrate or not, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.
And if you love the podcast, you can support us by taking advantage of our partner's exclusive discount codes.
A big thanks to 2Before.
Get yourself a whopping 30 discount on their 20-pack and multi-packs at 2Beforecom for their all-natural, scientifically proven pre-workout with code JASON.
2-Before, which is the numeral 2 followed by the word before, is made from New Zealand blackcurrant berries, which improves vasodilation or blood flow, just like beetroot.
But they also improve recovery after exercise by managing oxidative stress through their unique ratio of antioxidants, which also have a nice side benefit of supporting your immune system.
Now the main antioxidant is called anthocyanin, which I hadn't heard of before but is actually more present in New Zealand blackcurrant berries than tart cherries raspberries, blackberries or blueberries.
Plus, 2 Before tastes delicious.
I love products that are both good for your performance and good for your overall health.
Get yourself 30% off any multi-pack with code JASON at 2before.com.
They have a caffeinated and non-caffeinated version, which is great, depending on your caffeine tolerance.
Me, I love having the caffeinated version with 120 milligrams of caffeine in place of coffee before my morning runs, especially if I'm in a rush and I don't have time to brew a pot of coffee.
Go to numeral2before.com with code JASON for 30% off your order of any multi-pack.
A huge thanks to Prevenex and their new Gut & Greens Superfood Greens Powder.
I've moved on from AG1.
Sorry, Athletic Greens.
It's just not doing it for me anymore.
To be upfront, I still like AG1 and I think it's a great vitamin and probiotic supplement, but it tries to do too much.
I've learned that it includes too many greens in such tiny amounts that they're just not very helpful.
And while the vitamins and probiotics are great, that wasn't actually the reason for me taking the product.
Enter Gut and Greens from Prevonex.
It has organic barley and oatgrass, alfalfa, spirulina, chlorella, kale, and broccoli.
And that's it.
I'd rather a supplement that does a few things well than one that tries to do everything.
And as always, like everything from Prevonex, their ingredients are backed by clinical data.
Three specific gut fibers are included that are clinically studied and help promote GI health digestion, reduced inflammation and a better microbiome.
And best of all, it actually tastes good.
I'm a weirdo and actually didn't mind the taste of AG1, but Gut & Greens is by far a superior flavor.
And I love that it doesn't have any artificial ingredients gums sugar, alcohols or anything like that.
So move over, AG1, for Prevonex's Gut & Greens.
Try it for yourself at Prevonexcom and be sure to use code JASONGREENS to save 15 off your first order.
And don't tell anybody, but you're also going to get that discount on anything else in your shopping cart.
Just make sure you put Gut & Greens in your cart and use code JASONGREENS and that discount will be yours for whatever you're buying.
My guest today is a professor of strength and conditioning at the English Institute of Sport, St.
Mary's University and has worked with world and Olympic champions in athletics rowing, canoeing and rugby.
He's written numerous books, including his latest, The Practice of Change, The Art and Science of Training, which I absolutely adore.
This like a philosophical deep dive into what training is and what it's attempting to do.
I highly recommend it for any running nerds out there, anybody who wants to understand why we do what we do as runners.
You can pick up a copy at the link in this episode's description.
Today's conversation starts by defining what training actually is, the principles behind the training process, the differences between capacities and skills, the value of discovery, what prevents us from changing our bodies through training and his advice for everyone running the Boston Marathon.
Without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Dan Cleather.
Here we go.
Dan, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
It's great to be here.
So congratulations on your book.
You have written such an elegant philosophical book on the training process that it's honestly a little hard to describe.
It's beautiful.
It's I wanted to focus a little more on the art of training rather than the science of training.
Since most episodes of this podcast are already focused on the science of training, I thought it'd be a little bit more interesting to kind of talk about the other side of things and maybe get a little bit more philosophical.
So let's start with something super simple.
What is training and do you differentiate it from exercise?
Yeah, so kind of sort of start the book with asking that question.
Just kind of you know, so that we're all on the same page with you know okay well, what are we doing here?
So I had a, you know, a bit of a think about that.
And you know I do kind of differentiate training as being something different to kind of exercising.
And you know what makes it training, I think, is that you know we're purposefully trying to move somewhere.
Like we're purposefully trying to change you know who we are in some way, or what we've got or what we can do.
So yeah, like for me then yeah, what defines it being training is that there's a vision, you know, that we're pursuing in a deliberate and, you know, often structured way.
Yeah, that structure, I think, is maybe one of the key parts of it.
Now that I'm a little bit older and I'm not really training anymore, my training or lack thereof my exercise is not as structured as it used to be.
And I do miss it a little bit.
I think the structure is fun because it's predictable, but it also is exciting because you reach new places that you haven't been there before.
Now, a strong thesis in your book is that there is no system or, you know branded, trademarked way to set up training.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Yeah, I guess kind of it's a different message to a message that lots of people have, because systems sell.
Like, you know, systems are very marketable.
And you know, I guess one of the reasons why systems sell and they're marketable is they do bring confidence.
It's kind of like, well, you know, I'm doing this.
It kind of guarantees results.
But your body doesn't know it's following a system.
Like your body only knows what it's experiencing in any particular moment.
Um, for, to kind of, you know, and, and your body is beset by signals constantly.
Um, you know, some of which are intended and some of which just arise.
You know uh, as we go about, you know, through our, through our lives,
So, kind of you know, the systems that are successful, or the pro training programs that are successful, aren't successful because of the system per se.
It's just because they've elegantly put together um, you know, some training in a structured way that respects and reflects how your body wants to change and that, you know, respects the fundamental principles of training.
So, at their best, systems are, you know, organized ways of you know following the rules um, but there's very many ways to do that.
Um, and kind of you know one of the things i talk about in the book.
One of the problems with systems is that they can be very constraining um, that you know you need to train in this way or you're not training on the system anymore, and that can make you, you know the the training process fragile.
Um, whereas if you have, if you're a more principle driven coach or athlete, like if you understand okay well, my body adapts because I'm following these basic rules.
Um, then, then that, you know, gives you license, uh, to respond to, to, you know, to a lot more.
So Dan, if I'm understanding you correctly, this partly means that if you understand the principles of training, you can follow a system, but then it gives you a lot of flexibility in veering from that system and doing something that your body probably doesn't wants to do on that day.
I'm reminded of that training maxim.
The best workout for you today is the workout that your body is going to be responsive to.
And that's not necessarily what's written down in the training plan.
And I'm a running coach and I sell training plans, but I'm always the first one to say look, I don't think anybody has followed a training plan from start to finish, exactly the way that it's written.
We've got to be flexible with it.
And it sounds like The principles that you are speaking to in your book give you the foundational knowledge necessary to then veer from a system or some kind of plan and still have it all work out because you understand those principles.
Yeah, absolutely.
Some athletes just want to be told what to do, and that's fine.
Actually, that might be a better way to progress if you're not constantly second-guessing what you're doing.
But for those of us who are interested in how training works, the best plans...
It should be completely obvious what they're doing, like how it's structured and what knobs it's turning, what buttons it's pushing to try and promote change.
So kind of like you can be following a plan if you understand the principles, you understand okay.
Well, here I'm trying to accumulate some volume, or here I'm trying to sharpen a little bit.
But then that also means that okay well, I understand that I'm accumulating volume here, but it's just too much for me today.
So understanding that well, it's better to back off and be able to train tomorrow is going to be more productive in the long run than just slavishly following the plan and doing what's written down, even if it means that you then have three days off.
So absolutely, it's kind of Plans are great, but it's not the plan that's great.
It's the fact that it adheres to the underlying principles and gives you structure that allows you to follow those underlying principles.
Yeah, there's so many of teammates that I had in a college setting who were so good at understanding the principles that if they were left to their own devices on winter break or summer break, they would still absolutely know what to do, even if they were workouts that the coach would never have prescribed.
I think that's because... these guys just understood training.
They understood kind of what was required at that time during the season to get them to where they wanted to go at the end of the season.
And that was always very inspiring to me because it was like, you're Neo seeing the matrix.
You don't need the training plan from coach.
You know what your body needs and when it needs it.
And I always found that to be really exciting.
Now you did say a word that I find very interesting that you use throughout the book, and it's change.
You discuss certain changes that we get through training as both skills and capacities.
I'd love to define each one of these and help us understand what types of changes that we're after as endurance runners.
Yeah, like it took me a long time to get the language consistent in the book, actually because we're so, you know, as I'll talk about in a second like we're so used to talking about adaptation.
You know that I was trying to deliberately use that for a certain thing.
And yeah, then I found myself wandering off.
So kind of like you know, keeping the language very stripped was actually quite a challenge with the book and and the reason why that's important to me is that yeah, i think that you know we affect change in our bodies.
You know through two distinct kind of ways.
Um, or we got capable.
You know two distinct types of capabilities and you know those two distinct types of capabilities we have.
I recall our skills and our capacities okay, and so capacities are kind of or.
You know, the analogy I use in the book and I've used in other writing is, if you think of a kind of a Formula One car well, the properties of the car are the capacities and the skills of the driver are the skills.
So kind of, you know, you have a car with a big engine, a large fuel tank, great brakes.
You know those are all things that the car can do, but it still has to be driven and you still have to have someone who's good at using that car well,
Why it's important to me to make that distinction is that Often, when we think about training, and particularly in sports like running or my main sport now weightlifting, we tend to get very trapped in the capacities mindset.
So we're just thinking, okay, well, I want to improve my VO2 max.
I want to push my lactate threshold up.
I want more mitochondria.
I want better capillarization, whatever it is.
And we're really, really focused on changing that, the structure, and we don't think as much about okay well, what's the skill in how we use that structure?
Um, and kind of, if you think about running, you know, like you hit the ground.
Like every time you hit the ground in running, you know, you're expressing force against the ground.
Like, you know, that's the skill of a runner.
And the amount of times that you do that.
You know like we're missing a trick if we're only focused on okay well, you know, how much energy have we got?
Like, you know, what's our capacity?
And we're not thinking about, well, how good are we at hitting the ground?
Because that happens thousands and thousands of times.
So that's kind of, you know, I, I don't talk about adaptation.
I talk about change because change involves two processes.
One of which is adaptation, which I, is a word I use to describe building capacity.
So changing the structure.
But then the other way we change is through practice, which is how I describe the process by which we improve skill.
So yeah, the discipline I had in the book was, okay, well, change is the top level.
And then beneath that we have okay.
Well, are we predominantly trying to affect structure or are we predominantly trying to work on how we use what we've got?
And just to kind of you know, sort of like in a sport like running, what I'm trying to do with.
That is okay.
You know how do you fit a pool player into a model of you know training?
Because if a pool player goes, you know, to the bar or to the pool hall as plays pool like they're training.
They're deliberately trying to get better at movement.
But they're not...
There's not a huge amount of changing of the structure going on, maybe within the nervous system, but not in the kind of way that we'd be used to thinking about it as runners.
So kind of what I'm trying to do and what I feel is missing in our field when we think about training is we get really, really stuck on this adaptation, this capacity building route and we don't think enough about about the skills that we're deploying and the way that we develop those.
Yeah, I think runners are much more used to thinking about improving our capacity for certain things, our capacity to run higher mileage levels, our VO2 max, lactate threshold, aerobic threshold, maybe improving running economy, although that might veer into the skill section of things.
And I'd love to hear your thoughts on the two types of changes that we're looking for.
With runners, what are the skills that we're looking to build?
Is it like running form?
You know I can certainly think back to my days running the steeplechase and actually learning how to hurdle as a skill that I had to learn.
That you know, usually running on flat ground.
I don't have to think about that whatsoever.
So that was a jarring experience for me personally.
But what are some of the more skill-oriented aspects of things that runners should be thinking about?
I mean, like you mentioned them all.
I mean, I would kind of go to kind of Talking about running as a skill again, for some listeners might feel like well yeah, but I've been doing it my whole life.
I know how to do that.
Where I would address that kind of response is, okay, well, think about a different endurance sport.
Think about rowing.
If you're a rower, then you very, very clearly know we'll go and do lots and lots of skill work, you know, to build a more efficient stroke.
Like you know, it's not just about how you're moving your body, it's about how you interact with the water, through the ore, etc etc.
Like you, you will go and practice, you know.
Like you know, you will go and do sessions which are yeah, predominantly focused at just getting better at rowing.
Like you know, I would argue that you should be doing the same thing as a runner.
Like you know like yes, it's a more fundamental movement pattern that you're, more you know, used to doing.
But, you know, neglecting thinking about, well, how good am I at running is a mistake in my mind.
Yeah.
We can talk about what that sort of activity might look like.
But yeah, if you're in a very, very capacity-driven mindset and you're going out and either trudging along generating miles or doing more quality things, but you're always on the ragged edge of your technique, you're never training running well and looking great and feeling great as you're running, which I think is a missing part in a lot of runners training.
Yeah, that's a good point.
You're sort of building fitness on top of dysfunction at that point when you're on that ragged edge.
And I really liked how you described that.
So for me as a coach and I do want to stay away from very prescriptive workouts do this in your training.
But you know, at least here I'm comfortable saying you know, do your strides, get comfortable running fast, do drills, you know all the things that we know are going to be helpful for running economy and also just good training, which is maybe one of the underutilized ways of improving your running economy.
If we zoom out a little bit and think about the training process as an intentional effort at changing our bodies, What is the change killer?
What prevents us from changing our bodies into becoming better runners?
In your experience working with athletes,
Is it as simple as a lack of consistency?
Or you know what are some specific examples of, you know, runners either making training errors or mindset mistakes.
Even that prevent these changes from taking place.
Can I just go back slightly just to, you know, so talking about kind of the skill.
Oh yeah, let's do it.
You know, like we know that kind of you know, in good running training programs people do a lot of easy runs.
I think like it would be common for people to think that they're doing easy runs, you know, because they're just accumulating volume.
Um, like for me, you know, the, the easy run is resetting the system, you know?
So so.
So, like you you, you've got, you've done, you know some intervals and you've been on the raggedy edge, or you know you've done your long run and and you know like you've, you know collapsed through the door at the end.
Like what, what you've done there is, you know, like you you've run in a way where you're running by the end of it wasn't looking great.
So for me, like the easy runs, the toe tapping and things it is, is you going back out and and greasing the groove, like drilling okay, what?
No, but this is what easy running feels like.
But like this, you know, i know it's not fast, but it is, it's getting, it's getting the feel back, you know.
So for me, kind of like that's, you know the easy runs are are, you know, like I agree with you on strides, on drills, et cetera, et cetera.
But also just, you know, not having a volume mindset to your easy runs, but rather thinking like at the end of this run I should feel better than I, you know, than I did when I started.
I should recover.
You know, remember my joy for running.
You know like it should feel good again.
You know like.
You know like that's what you're doing there and that's why you're doing so much of it.
In my view,
That's a really good point.
I'd love to just kind of double click on that for a second before we get into kind of the barriers to change that I mentioned previously.
I'm someone who always thinks there's multiple reasons why we do anything in training.
You know the easy run is not just there to pass.
Had the weekly mileage number and get you an impressive weekly total on Strava.
That might impress your friends, but it's not the only reason why we do those easy runs.
And I think what you're bringing up is this idea of this is another opportunity for intentional practice.
And even though it is an easy run, you don't just slog through it with bad mechanics and you're not thinking about anything.
This is now a time to maybe reinforce good form.
Maybe you can just be a little bit more intentional with how you're running.
Maybe you can employ a couple form cues while you're running.
Again, just to stay a little more psychologically engaged with your form while you're running.
But also I think about sort of the, the mental skills that I think we have to build as well with running.
You know you mentioned finding joy again.
And you know like I never really loved the hard workouts that I did as a as a runner, but you know the easy distance runs with the team was always like that's what made me keep coming back to the track team.
The cross country team was amazing. you know, those social activities.
And once you build a little bit of capacity so those easy runs aren't taken so much out of you, they are, I think, some of the most fun that you'll have as a distance runner.
So it's this combination of, yeah, it's a reset between your hard sessions.
It's psychologically liberating because it's easy and you get to maybe have a little bit more fun.
But it's also this really good opportunity to think about your form a little bit, to make sure that you're executing the easy run exactly the way it should be executed.
You're not going too fast, but you're also not going really, really slow and reinforcing sloppy mechanics.
So there's all kinds of reasons why the easy run is so integral in the training process.
But I really like that idea of it being a little bit of a reset in between those hard days.
I agree.
And I agree that, like you know, all of the components of our plans have multiple you know purposes.
I mean, if you take weightlifting as a sport, kind of you know, or powerlifting as a sport, this idea of greasing the groove, you know, so just repeating the same movement pattern over and over again so that it's slick like it's quite well embedded in that sort of culture.
And it's understood that you're not doing that with.
You know maximal loads or you know maximal repetitions.
That's, you know, you go in the gym and do light stuff to make it feel good.
You know so, so that I think that that's a a training understanding that exists in the strength world that I think is less, you know, less prevalent in in the endurance world generally.
Yeah, I think a lot of runners think that every run maybe has to serve a really important purpose, where there's a lot of easy runs, where I don't know they're not super important, but in the grand scheme of things they are.
So it's this delicate balancing act of, yes, we need to grease the groove.
Let's run a lot.
Let's keep a lot of it easy, but let's be intentional with it.
Just a quick break to thank our partner Tube4, a powerful sports supplement made from New Zealand.
Blackcurrants designed to increase endurance, manage inflammation, support immunity and promote adaptation.
Tube4 helps boost performance by increasing blood flow, making it more efficient for the body to pump oxygenated, nutrient-rich blood into the muscles.
Boost your performance before your next big workout and support your immune system with two befores high antioxidant pre-workout.
Use code Jason for 30 off their 20 pack and multi-serve packs at two beforecom.
Move over, AG1.
Coach has a new greens mix.
I've upgraded my game to now include Prevonex's gut and greens powder instead of AG1.
It's a more potent source of greens and includes clinically backed ingredients that help with your GI health digestion, inflammation and improving your microbiome.
Try it for yourself at Prevonexcom and be sure to use code JASONGREENS to save 15 off your first order.
And don't tell anybody, but you're also going to get that discount on anything else that might be in your shopping cart.
Just make sure that you put Gutton Greens in your cart and use code JASONGREENS and that discount will be yours for whatever you're buying.
Let's shift back to some of the things that prevent us from experiencing this process of change.
In your practice working with athletes, have you discovered any commonalities among those folks who tend to progress less or maybe less quickly than others?
Yeah.
I mean it kind of goes back to the point that you just said like okay, if we want to be a good runner, we need to run a lot.
You know like that's a truism for training.
Generally you know like change isn't fast or profound change isn't fast.
You know generally, like you know you need to be in it for the long haul.
Um so kind of.
You know, the number one change killer, you know, for me is anything that stops you being consistent.
Um, and kind of ironically, and you know, and and tragically, kind of often the things that stop people being consistent are driven by their desire to get better.
Oh wow, to get better as fast, as fast as they can.
You know.
So, kind of like overtraining.
You know overtraining is a change killer, like it comes from a good place but it, you know, like you do too much, it destroys your consistency.
And then you know, like you go backwards because what you did too much and then you have to stop um, injury is a similar thing um, changing programs before you've had a chance to see if it works.
You know it is another one, like you know, for me, kind of, you know, in a previous book, you know, i i talked about the cardinal rule of training, you know.
So, like the number one rule of training is just do lots of training, be consistent um, and then the corollary of that is well, don't do things that stop you being consistent.
You know that is what kills your change, doing things that are going to prejudice your consistency.
Yeah, that reminds me of an old rule I heard a long time ago, which was don't do anything today that will compromise your ability to go for a run tomorrow.
So it's almost like thinking of tomorrow's run as just as important, or maybe even more important than whatever.
Today's training session was simply to allow you to continue on the process of training, right.
It's like this, this infinity game which is this wonderful concept that I love where the goal is just to keep playing.
You never really win, you just want to keep playing.
As long as you're able to keep playing the game, then you've basically won.
And I love that way of thinking about training.
Yeah, no, that's a fantastic analogy for it.
Yeah, I 100% agree.
And yeah, I do think that we, you know, for all the right reasons, we self-sabotage ourselves constantly.
Like.
I think that's The main place where having a coach is valuable is in helping you to not self-sabotage.
People misunderstand the coaching process.
People think that the coach is there to scream at you to go harder.
Most people don't need screamed at to go harder.
What they need is someone hanging onto them, trying to make them stop.
That's what coaching is.
That's probably the number one confusion around coaching that I have discovered over the last 15 years or so of my coaching career, which is I'm not the drill sergeant.
I'm the one 98% of the time holding you back.
Like, let's run a little slower.
I don't think you should run that extra day per week.
No, that's too many races in the schedule, whatever it might be.
And that was first a little bit surprising for me when I started coaching.
But, you know, I think it's a little bit inherent in the population of runners.
You know, we're type A, hard-charging people.
We want to train a lot.
And, you know, running is a little bit of a dangerous sport.
You know, the injury risk is pretty high among most runners.
I think it's 60 70 of an annual injury rate, depending on the study that you're looking for, which is a little bit depressing for me.
But...
Yeah, that aspect of coaching is always very interesting to me.
I want to talk about something that you mentioned in your book that I would love to just learn a little bit more about.
And this is the idea or the principle of discovery.
How is this relevant in a running context?
How do we understand this through distance running?
I mean, what are we discovering through the training process when it comes to, you know, running 5k to the marathon?
So the context in which discovery is talked about is very much in the skills side of the change.
So there's this idea that I mean.
There's lots of models that have been proposed historically of how we learn skills.
But I think, largely know.
The most commonly accepted model now, or at least the one i find most compelling is um, you know this idea that well, we're a dynamic system which exists within our environment.
Um, and you know, our movement is something that's an emergent property of the system that is us in our environment, so kind of like you know we, we learn how to move um, But it's something that's constantly evolving.
And so, if you want to help people to learn skills, what is a very helpful way to do that is to get them to explore what they can do and to discover for themselves what's optimal or what's good.
So kind of that's the concepts of discovery, but would kind of more classically be applied to kind of things that more obviously look like skills that you're learning.
How then that kind of applies to running, though in the narrow context of getting better at the skill of running?
Is that actually kind of We talked about this already in this conversation that we want to be constantly seeking improvements in how well we can run?
And so we want to be exposing ourselves to a broad spectrum of challenges that allow us to learn things about how our body moves.
Those broad spectrum of challenges can be, you know, within running itself.
You know.
So, for instance, you know, if you think about kind of you know, a 510k or even a middle distance runner, like they're going to run cross countries in winter, you know, and you know, depending on their event, might go down to 400 on the track.
Like, you know, those are very different ways of running, you know, and very different surfaces.
You know, like if you think about the way that you're running in the middle of winter in a muddy field, you know, versus on a mondo track in spikes, like that's a very different skill.
But, you know, the opportunity there, you know, from a discovery point of view is to learn more.
Just to get better at moving, and that you're giving your body experiences by which it can figure stuff out and find better technique, a technique that's more adaptable to those different surfaces but also that is more optimal on the target surface as well.
You know, so that's in a very, very narrow kind of idea, but then you know like, as we know, kind of, you know things like drills, you know like it's not exactly running, but you know they're very similar challenges and that gives us an opportunity to explore okay.
Well, you know what happens when I move my legs like this
Like you know how, how do my legs move if I constrain my arms.
You know, like you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Um, And then finally, I mean, I'm an S&C coach, so I obviously have to mention the weight room.
Within the weight room, the weight room isn't, like you said before, everything isn't just one goal.
The weight room isn't just about get stronger.
There's an opportunity here to like okay again, I'm moving my limbs.
Know, in this environment, what can i learn, or what you know that makes it sound like a cognitive process.
What can my body learn about expressing force in in this environment?
Um, you know what can i discover which you know might change?
You know the posture that i hold when i'm getting tired.
Or you know my ability to bounce on a, you know, on a track, etc etc.
So kind of athletes should be wonderful artists of movement and you know everything that you do is an opportunity to learn how to move.
You know this wonderful body that we have and you know the more skills you have across a very wide spectrum, i believe you know also is going to give you a better ability to adapt when you're doing the very narrow thing that you're trying to specialize in as well.
I think you're giving me PTSD flashbacks to cross-country and traveling up to Maine to do cross-country races in November when it was 19 degrees.
Very challenging, but I really loved it.
I think what I'm learning from you is that variety is really, really important, especially in a sport like running that, let's face it, is fairly two-dimensional.
Most of the time, we are running straight ahead.
We are often just trying to go as hard as we can.
And That kind of a system is probably prone to breakdown if we don't inject a lot of variety into it.
And I think we can get variety in almost an unlimited number of ways, from our shoe selection to our surface selection that we're running on, to the workouts we're doing, the types of races that we're training for.
You know, we can put a lot of mobility and strength training movements into the program so that we're experiencing all these different ranges of motion.
And we're building all these other physical skills like mobility and strength and power and general athleticism and coordination and all these things that I think you know.
Running itself doesn't necessarily build mobility in the most effective way.
So if we want to be that kind of good athlete that specializes in running, rather than just the person who runs all the time, I think all those other things are really important to us.
You know, staying healthy but also achieving our goals on the race course.
I couldn't agree more.
And you know, but also you know again hopefully, what this chat does is give people some comfort.
You know that having a wider breadth of activity isn't holding them back.
You know it might be giving them something that they're missing and making them a better runner, but also that they can, you know, have a more broad program that, you know again, hopefully brings back some of the joy you know in training.
But it's not just 4am, you know, trudging along the road, or you know, you can tell I'm not a runner, can't you?
Like what my, my, my, my images of running in my head.
I mean, I have certainly have memories.
It wasn't 4am but it was 5am of of trudging along in a New England winter every day before work, which was, you know Yeah, a very challenging space to train in.
And I think, like you said, there's not a lot of joy in that scenario.
And while I will be the first one to say that I think specialization is required to reach your potential in any sport, I think the more I learn about the training process and athletics in general, the more I believe that the broader base of participation in all kinds of physical activity is better for you as a human in the long term.
So, even broader than just becoming a good runner, all those other things that you could potentially do in training or even with other sports are just going to be better for you as a whole.
Um Now Dan, you've painted this really elegant picture of intentional training in your book about how we change our bodies, how we get into relationship with training and our own physiology.
What do you think are some of the biggest mistakes or ways in which runners get this process wrong?
Where's the lowest hanging fruit that we might be able to pick to address right away that?
If a runner is feeling stuck, if a runner is plateaued, if a runner just wants to really take advantage of these ideas so that they can thrive, where would you point them?
I mean, you know, first of all, just to echo back to the consistency, you know arguments are kind of, you know, like taking a critical look of.
You know what am I doing?
Am I self-sabotaging myself?
But then to kind of, you know, move on to that, to something a bit more specific.
You know, I think
One of the most common errors that people make in training is that they just have a set idea of okay well, I should end my training session feeling tired.
And that's the bar by which I judge that I achieved something.
And then the net effect of that is when you come back the next day, you're tired.
So all that is realistically achievable, again, is to make yourself tired again.
So there's two things operating here.
There's one that kind of like okay, goal of fatigue, and then the second being the goal of okay, well know, i need to prove that i've done enough, and what that does is it just gives you a really monotonous training program where you just, you know, do a very similar thing every day, and you know, like we've already talked about, kind of okay, having lots of easy runs um, you know, having some faster stuff and maybe having a long run or two um, You know, like what I think would be, you know, a very common mistake in running though, is that easy runs are never easy.
Like easy runs, drift towards something a bit harder always, which then means that when you come to do your more quality stuff, You're too tired to do it well.
So that drifts down to be, you know, here.
And what you just have is you don't have a week which is easy easy easy sharp easy easy sharp easy, easy long.
You've just got medium 20 minutes.
Medium 20 minutes.
Medium 20 minutes.
Medium 40 minutes.
Medium 20 minutes medium.
You know.
So yeah, like I think, and again it goes back to kind of what we're talking about, where the value of the coach comes in
It's like you know easy means easy, like it should be easy.
Um, you know you need someone who's you know who's holding your hand and telling you no, it's meant to feel, you know, it's meant to feel that easy so that you have the confidence to do it.
But come tuesday, i expect you to be fast, not kind of okay, because you've, you know, run every easy, run too hard, or?
Yeah, you know, in my experience too, this ends up being one of the bigger changes that I end up making with a new client is that I will typically tell them to do quite a few things easier than they have been doing.
But I will also prescribe certain things harder than they have been doing, and not necessarily faster.
It could be, you know, OK, we're just going to run more mileage.
Maybe we're just going to add some cross training.
You know, maybe you're not doing any drills and strides and dynamic warm ups and sort of like some of the other ancillary things around running.
So.
I found it to be the situation of yes, we are going to push you forward in some areas, but it's also almost always the scenario where I am also pulling them back in more than one area.
And I think, like you said, that's where the coach is truly valuable, because you know, they know exactly where to push and where to pull back.
Dan, let's get a little more specific.
We're recording this in December.
Imagine you're speaking with all 40000 runners who are just about to start training for the Boston Marathon coming up in April.
Based on all of your insights and expertise, on gaining skills and adaptation, essentially changing the body so that it can do what we want it to do on the course.
What kind of advice would you give to these runners about their preparation for the upcoming Boston Marathon?
So I'll speak to the new runners.
You know like, uh cause you know, the advice you know would obviously be different, but a good chunk of those 40000 runners are going to be people doing their first marathon, aren't they?
Um, and you know, my advice to them would be to change the mindset of how you're approaching this, because I think that you know people, you know when they're doing their first marathon, you know like it's a big milestone, it's a big challenge.
You know people want to do it as well as they can.
You know, almost invariably they're going to like, overtrain and break themselves um, you know and have time off.
Like but you know, for me, like all of these things, I get you know and it would probably be the same way, but I wouldn't approach the marathon in that way of like.
Okay, I'm going to do a really really hard trading program, which is going to be one of the hardest things I've ever done.
And then go run a great time.
Like it's more. well, this is an opportunity to try a new sport.
This is you trying running.
It should be fun.
Doing that, however long it is, 20-week preparation program, it's not about suffering through that.
It's about trying this thing because who knows?
You might like it if it's pleasant.
If it's rewarding, you might like it.
And this might be something that becomes you know, something that you enjoy doing and that becomes part of your life, that makes your life better, you know that makes you healthier, you know, maybe helps you live longer.
Um, you know, so kind of yeah, my.
My advice on that would be yeah, rather than you know, fighting through, you know this program to do this big challenge.
Why not approach it as well?
Look, Dan says the most important thing is to be consistent.
You know, like, let's train in a way that's consistent.
Let's train in a way that most sessions I end up feeling, like, exhilarated by what I did.
You know, and then let's see what happens in the race.
Like, that to me seems...
The biggest success taking part in a marathon if that's something that has always been interesting to you is not to go and run it sub four hours or sub three hours, whatever your goal is.
The biggest success if you're a non-runner is that you get to the end of that 20 weeks and think I really like running.
This is something that I'm going to add to my life.
So I would just recast the whole thing know challenge, as you know, as not being something arduous, and you know that you're going to tick off and then never touch again, but rather take it as like i'm going to do this in a, you know, sensible way and try out this new sport and see if it's for me yeah, almost like using it as a way to get into the lifestyle of running and and the training process, and that, I think, speaks to sustainability with training and also just being consistent long term.
Now, you also called marathon training pleasant, which I might have a little bit of a problem with.
But yes, I think that's a really good way of thinking about it.
Now Dan, is it also true that to follow your advice, to try to make this process as pleasant as we can, as manageable as we can, and not suffer through the entire marathon training process, doesn't that also mean basically not going from couch to marathon, that we have to have a bit of a foundation first?
Because we're not talking about a 5K which I think almost anyone can hop off the couch and get ready in a relatively short period of time to complete that event.
Marathon's a little different.
Do you think that...
Runners should be a little bit wary about signing up for races that are as challenging as a marathon, because if they don't have that base, it's going to be really hard to find joy in the training process.
It's going to be really hard to not suffer through training because they're asking a lot of their bodies.
They're asking for a lot of change in that, you know, 16 to 20 week period.
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
I mean, you know one needs to be realistic about, you know, to change your body into one that's, you know, adapted to run, you know it's going to take a lot longer than 16 weeks.
I mean, it does come down to like, okay, well, why are you signing up for this marathon?
Like, I mean, you know, if you're...
I don't say this in a negative way.
But if it's a fundraising challenge and you're happy to half run, half walk around the course in six hours fine, go couch to marathon.
But if you want to run the marathon, like you know, run 26 miles without walking um, you know, then yeah, you need to be like.
I'm very aware I'm talking to runners now and I'm not, but you know, like what, you know, your last long run has to be what?
20 miles, something like that.
Like you know, to get to a place where you know your body is going to be able to tolerate 20 miles of running without breaking.
Like I think for most people um, You know, for most average people kind of expecting to get from couch to you know realistically, being able to do the volume that's needed to be able to do that in 16 weeks is going to be a step too far for a large proportion of people.
You know, would be my feel, yeah.
And you said earlier, too, that change takes a while.
It's kind of a long-term project.
And I found that if runners are patient, that's probably the number one psychological superpower that they can have, because it makes them not follow the training plan.
It makes them listen to their bodies.
It makes them not rush their training.
It makes them set more realistic goals.
And you know you can be very aggressive in a race situation and kind of almost be unreasonable with some races and workouts, within the context of being a realist.
But yeah, having that kind of mindset and just understanding that hey, this is going to take more than three or four months,
I'm fine with running a fast marathon three years from now.
And I'm going to build all of the different capacities and skills over that time period to get me there.
That to me is, you know, you've won the lottery when it comes to running mindsets.
That is the mindset of a very successful runner.
Absolutely.
And if you look at you know the path of many elite athletes into marathon.
You know they'll never attempt one for years and years and years.
Like they'll build speed at lower distances, you know, improve their capacity to tolerate the kinds of volumes that they're going to need in order to train to run a fast marathon.
You know, I 100% agree.
I mean, I think also kind of the couch to marathon type thing, is that so many people that do those sorts of programs will have such a fractured training program anyway, because they'll be broken, and by broken i don't mean, you know, completely broken, but you know like so sore, you know, in the first two or three weeks that they're, you know.
If they're, if they're consistent with the training program, it's through sheer willpower alone, you know, and willpower isn't a great way, as you know, adhering to a training program in the long term, you know, and then towards the end of the training program they probably are, you know, breaking down or and, and you know, i think for a lot of novice runners that do do a marathon, like they do get something from the training, you know, which is yeah, they certainly get a little bit better at running.
They get, you know, they learn some psychological skills, but ultimately they make it round, because it's a big challenge that they suffer through, you know, and you know they could probably have, you know, suffered through it without the training.
Maybe not without the training, but
You know, with, you know, like they're not getting as much from the training as they think they are.
Dan, I really enjoyed speaking with you today.
I think the fundamental ideas that you wrote so beautifully about in your book are so integral to understanding why we do what we do as runners.
And I think once you have that understanding of why are we doing this?
What's the purpose here?
If I'm not feeling it, can I be flexible?
Can I do something a little different?
You know.
Understanding those principles then allows you to have much more control over the training process.
And I think it helps you get much better results because you're not going to hold yourself to some kind of unrealistic standard.
So thanks so much for uh this amazing book.
I hope everyone picks it up.
There's a link in the uh show notes to get it on amazon.
Where else can we buy your book and where can folks learn more about your work dan, because i think it's really important for athletes of all different types?
Thank you, um Yeah.
So like I have a website, which is danclever.com.
So kind of, yeah, there's descriptions of my books there.
So I guess, you know, other than Amazon, that would be, you know, the best place to find me.
Wonderful.
Well, thanks, Dan, for your expertise today.
We really appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for listening and being part of our community here.
If you're getting value from the Strength Running Podcast, if the show has helped your running or made you rethink how you approach your training, please consider leaving a review or a rating in Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Those reviews are incredibly impactful and helpful for this small business.
If you have questions about your running, feel free to email me at support at strengthrunningcom, or you can search our website at strengthrunningcom.
For more digestible tips, videos, memes, and more, follow me on Instagram at jasonfits1.
We'll be in touch.
