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This is episode 447 with 37-time marathon finisher, Ironman triathlete author and one of the most widely respected sports medicine doctors in the country, Dr Jordan Metzl.
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My guest today is a titan in the sports medicine world.
Dr Jordan Metzl is a best-selling author, highly sought-after international speaker and a graduate from Harvard Medical School.
You might recognize him as the creator of the Iron Strength workout series popularized by Runner's World.
His newest book is titled Push Unlock the Science of Fitness, Motivation to Embrace Health and Longevity, and is now available everywhere.
Today we're talking about longevity in the sport of running.
How do you maintain motivation and physical capacity to keep training?
For a question as big as this, you probably shouldn't 100 trust someone like me, because I'm only 42.
I don't personally know what it's like to train at 50, 60, or even 70 years old.
But Jordan does.
He's been working with athletes of every age for decades and he has a really unique perspective on this topic.
He's written about it, he's worked with those going through it and he's personally demonstrating these skills today.
For someone like me who wants to keep running well for another 30 years, this was a particularly interesting conversation, and I hope you enjoy it too.
Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Jordan Metzl.
All right, Jordan Metzl, welcome back to the Strength Running Podcast.
Dude, I am so happy you're back here.
I feel like we haven't seen each other for a hot minute and I love seeing everything you're doing and I'm so happy to rejoin an old friend.
Yeah well, the last time you were on the show we were catching up a little bit offline was right before COVID hit.
So it was the before times.
And then, when we actually met in person, was at a Runner's World event in 2014, back before I even had a podcast.
So I'm glad I started this just to have an excuse to catch up every so often.
Dude, I love it.
I love seeing you and I love seeing how well you're doing.
So the last time we talked was in the era before remote work, huh?
Yeah, yeah.
I was a little ahead to that game.
Yes, you were.
I'm still trying to figure out how to do that.
Doctors haven't really mastered it, but everyone else seems to have gotten a lot better at it.
So good for them.
Yeah, I'm a little glad that doctors haven't completely mastered remote work.
I like seeing you guys in person.
Exactly.
Well, you are someone that I always love talking to because you have such a wide perspective on the sport.
I mean, you're, I think, a 33-time marathoner.
You've done a whole bunch of Ironman triathlons, but you're also a medical doctor.
You treat runners.
You're in the clinic.
You're kind of hands-on in this space.
And so I think that gives you just a really beneficial perspective on you know what keeps runners healthy, what keeps us able to be sustainable with the sport.
And that's kind of what I wanted to focus our conversation on today is sustainable training longevity in the sport.
You know, look, I'm a former track guy.
Running fast is exciting, but I also want to keep running and enjoying the sport until the very end.
So hopefully you can help me figure out how to do exactly that, Jordan.
That's exactly my perspective.
Thanks for the nice comments.
I mean I basically in the days I see people of all ages in my office, from kind of eight-year-old gymnasts to 82-year-old people doing the marathon and everybody in between.
The commonality of everybody is they all want to move.
And my job is to help keep them moving.
And so it's a really rewarding field and a way to be.
And so I like to think about, you know, what are the factors that we can make a difference with in terms of helping people move, move healthily, move safely?
I've been lucky enough to be involved in some research initiatives around healthy and safe running.
And also in New York, at the New York Roadrunners Club, we started a medical advisory committee looking at making running health and safety and education.
So there's a lot in that space that's quite interesting to me.
But the bottom line is exactly as you say, how do we keep doing it?
Not for a day, not for a week, not for a year, but for a lifetime.
And that's really where I think we need to start messaging, because it's all about what I call healthy longevity.
Runners are healthy because they get out and move every day.
So it's important to be able to make sure they're able to do that.
Yeah, 100%.
And maybe we can start with just acknowledging whether or not a tension even exists between the goals of performance and the goals of sustainability and longevity in the sport.
Are some performance-related training strategies not necessarily in our best interests from a cutting corners with regard to our long-term health if we are so solely focused on performance?
It's a good question.
I mean, I think that you know the data on runners and longevity is runners tend to live about five to six years longer than age match controls.
They have less arthritis in their knees and hips than age match controls.
They have a higher incidence of atrial fibrillation and ventricular fibrosis than age match controls.
They have higher coronary calcium scores than AIDS match controls.
They're generally healthier.
They may have, if they do it long enough, a slightly higher risk of AFib.
Now, that being said, we all get slower as we get older.
I was looking back.
I was like when I was just starting my residency.
I don't know if I told you this story, but the way I got into marathoning was I did my residency in Boston.
And residency was just hard as hell, dude.
I mean, they keep you up like 36 hours in a row.
You're like, life sucked.
And the only thing I wanted to do was move.
And it's like, you're locked.
It was like, I learned a lot, but damn, that was hard.
And they had a thing in Boston.
When I got there, if you run the Boston Marathon on Patriot State Monday, you get the day off.
And nobody ever took him up on it.
I'm like, you mean locked in the hospital for all day long or run the marathon?
It was literally my first Boston Marathon because it was better than being on call all day.
You might be Bill Different, Jordan, wanting to run a marathon versus a day of work.
Dude.
And so then I started, I'm like, this is awesome.
This is so much fun.
So I started doing it, but I'm looking back on my times.
And I used to be able to pop off like a 304, 305 marathon just as part of what I did.
Now I'm like working my ass off to try and break four hours as hard as I can.
And it's just like we all get slower as we get older.
We all do.
We lose our VO2 max.
We lose our strength.
We get stiffer.
Our muscles lose power.
That rate of decline is dependent upon training, age, genetics, luck.
There's a lot of factors in there.
And then the other thing, which is both a wonderful thing and a slap in the face, is like New York Road Runners Club, where I do most of my races, has a thing where it's like age match control.
So you kind of see where you are and then versus what your time would be is if you were the same age as whatever else.
So it's like you ran 358, but this would be the equivalent of when you were 30.
The same time would be like a 312 or something.
And you're like, wow, you really got to rub it in my face, huh?
And then they say, these are all your times for the last 20 years of doing these races.
And it's just like.
But then you have to remind yourself like, 10 years from now, I'll give my left foot to be doing as fast as I am now.
And so to me, longevity is a lot about... enjoyment one, performance two.
And I think that probably switched a little bit over time.
I used to want to perform as best as I possibly could.
I always loved it.
I was always smiling, but I'm interested in just doing this for a long time.
Many of my patients are as well.
And so I think the way you train is by thinking about, am I a good body listener?
Am I recognizing the cues my body's telling me?
Am I training appropriately?
Am I doing enough strength training?
Am I taking enough off time, recovery time?
All those things kind of start to fall into our lives.
As you know, recovery gets harder as you get older, right?
It slows down.
So recovery times slow down in addition to our time slowing down.
So how do I think about my recovery?
How do I strategize about that?
There's a lot of factors built into this great question you asked to start off.
Yeah, don't remind me how we get so much slower as we get older.
Because I remember when we first met, I had just run the Boston Marathon.
And there was this whole race series one month later at this festival we were at together.
And I just sort of ran the 5k.
I didn't even run it that fast.
And I even a month out from a marathon at a sub maximal effort is so much faster than what I could potentially do today.
And It's just such a visceral reminder of what happens to you as the years go by.
But 10 years from now you'll love to go as fast as you're going right now, so you've got to keep it in perspective.
Listening to you, it does sound like one of the keys to ensuring that you can run for a very long time is making sure that you're having fun, finding the joy in what you're doing.
Now, does that necessarily mean that sometimes when we do things for performance that we don't really want to do?
But you know it's part of the training plan.
I gotta, I gotta go do that 21 mile long run before Boston or whatever.
Are those things that are necessary for sustainability in the sport, or are those only necessary for performance?
So I think one of the things that I have learned and noticed over time is that people are built differently in terms of what makes them get out of bed in the morning and tick
Some people love competition.
Some people love solitary training.
Some people love pushing hard.
Some people love just participating.
Some people love being part of the experience.
Some people like using their times as a stepping stool for going forward.
There's not a one size fits all.
And as I think, you know, I just had a big book that came out on motivation called Push.
And the whole idea is trying to get people to understand why they need to push themselves.
And that whole discussion has made me realize that there's not a one size fits all for motivation, and people are motivated by different things.
So it's not necessarily training for a race that can sometimes cut short your longevity.
It's training for a race when you don't necessarily want to.
Well, I'm not sure that's true actually, as much as I want to agree with you because you're the nicest guy, but I don't think so.
I think it's training for a race.
When you need a kick in the ass and you don't want to do it is really important.
That's the whole idea of pushing.
It's snowing.
It's icy.
I want to watch football.
I don't want to go do my long run for Boston.
But getting your ass out the door and starting to do that is all about pushing yourself.
And I think there's a lot of value in that not only in running, by the way, but in life in general, which is why, if you want something done properly, ask a runner, because they'll always do it well, because they're used to pushing themselves in all aspects of life.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny you mentioned that.
A lot of hiring managers have said that to me in my prior life as someone searching for a job.
They really enjoyed the fact that I was a runner, because it meant certain things to them that I didn't quite realize at the time.
But an older hiring manager very much saw that.
Exactly.
If you want something done, give it to a runner.
They're driven.
They get the job done.
So that is something that I've certainly experienced, too.
Yeah, definitely.
Now I'd love to know, you know if you're thinking about OK, how do I get someone to be able to enjoy this sport until older age?
I'd love to know what not to do.
What are some of the common missteps that runners make that might be beneficial perhaps for short term running success or even, you know, not necessarily counterproductive in the short term, but maybe problematic in the long term.
Great question.
I think that people get discouraged because they're not as fast as they used to be, or they're in a running group and they're the last person, or stuff hurts, or they're not doing as well as they want.
I think the idea number one is if you are out there moving, you are freaking awesome.
Like I don't give a shit how fast you are, how slow you are.
Like that's, I could care less.
If you're out there doing it, you're awesome.
And I want you to make sure people think that because it's true.
Just getting out there and doing it helps you, helps your, your family, your community, your friends.
Like you're inspiring everybody just by getting out there and doing it.
So I think, feeling unsuccessful because you're not comparing yourself, you're comparing yourself to other people on social media or people in your world.
That's number one discouraging.
And then number two, with aging, if you're not changing how you're doing it, if you're not listening to your body cues, changing up your training, changing up How you push, how you don't push, how you go forward, how you back off, all those things make a difference in terms of how you can be successful over the long term.
And I think some of the most successful people I've had in my practice over years really love what they do.
They're so appreciative about being out there and they really enjoy the community they're part of.
It's not to say you shouldn't be competitive.
I hope you're busting your ass at 75, like trying to beat the other 75-year-olds.
That's great if that's what you want.
But I also want you to take the time to realize that most 75-year-olds have a walker and you are out there doing it, and that's really valuable too.
So you've got to keep the perspective as well.
Yeah, it sounds like a lot of the advice I got even when I was competing and sort of at my prime.
It's care about the performance.
It is something that's worthy of your care.
But, with that said, don't care about it so much that it becomes your identity, that you're nothing without it.
So it's that fine balancing act of yeah, I care about this and I want to compete, but if it doesn't go well, I'll sort of just shrug my shoulders and I'll get back to work tomorrow.
100%.
You couldn't have said it better yourself.
So it's good you said it yourself.
That's right.
Well, I'm just trying to help myself understand some of this great wisdom that you're imparting.
And I kind of want to focus most of our conversation on what you said previously.
It's how to change your approach to running as you age.
Because I feel like there's so many different threads we can pull from that brief answer you got of changing how you approach workouts and volume and your mindset around the sport.
Because that's, I think, the real key to being able to do this for a long time.
So what do you think are some of the more important ways in which we can evolve our relationship with the sport as we get older?
I think one of the things is being very mindful of the rule of twos, like too much, too fast.
Your body needs to adjust to new things you're throwing at it.
And the further you are from 20 years old, it's harder to do.
So you have to make sure you are slowly building up your volume.
Being a good body listener.
I just saw a patient last week who did three marathons in about a year and a half period of time, when he hadn't done a lot of marathons before that.
And he came in with a subchondral fracture in his tibia, meaning he was so sore he was limping around.
And one of the discussions he had.
He had some wear in the cartilage in his knee and that cartilage loss disallowed him from loading too much pressure on his knee which in turn meant the bone was seeing more of the loading force, which caused some swelling in the bone, called the subchondral fracture.
And I didn't expect him to know all that, though it's taken him about three, four months to get better from that injury.
But the problem with that is that he was not a good body listener.
He kept trying to push himself through because he's like, I'm a runner.
I'm successful.
I can do this.
I keep going.
And so a little bit of a problem became a much bigger problem, because he was quote, pushing through the pain.
Now, if you're not hurting a little bit, you're not going hard enough.
So running is not about being comfortable because, let's be honest, if running is super comfortable, you're doing something wrong.
However, that being said, there's healthy pain.
You know, I feel myself working hard and I like that versus unhealthy pain.
Like my mechanic is changing.
I'm literally running.
He was running differently because his knee, he came limping into my office.
If you get to that point, you're doing something wrong.
And those kinds of discussions, be it, tendon injuries, bone injuries become more serious as we get older, and the potential risk for these and the healing time, the time off, the associated muscle loss, all those things really play into each other.
If you're not mindful about, about being, you know, paying attention.
You know, Jordan, I'm 42 now, and I don't really consider that, you know, quote unquote old.
No, you're in the prime.
Yeah, I do find myself being a little bit more cautious with signals that my body is communicating to me.
And I feel like this is one of the harder parts of being a runner.
It's, well, how do you be a good body listener?
You know, how do you decipher the language that your body is speaking to you?
Now, I think the silver lining here is that it gets easier with experience.
So the older you are and the more running experience that you have, when it becomes more important to listen to your body, you're better at it.
But how can we steepen that learning curve and get a little bit better at learning the language our body speaks, so that we can push when it's not so serious but really take things back a little bit when we're probably pushing too hard?
Yeah, great question.
The answer to that is the same for kids, parents, and grandparents.
And that is, if pain is changing your mechanic of movement, get it checked out.
So a little bit of pain, I don't care.
Pain that changes how you're moving, I care a lot.
You got to back off and get that checked out.
That's super simple and easy.
Yeah, I generally use a three-part framework to help runners understand this.
Like, if it's changing how you run is a big one.
Also the type of pain I've always found to be important.
You know dull achy, sore.
You know that is usually generally okay to run through as long as it doesn't get to a certain threshold.
But if it's sharp, stabbing, that kind of an intense pain, that always makes me very nervous.
You're probably doing more damage with that.
Is that something that you subscribe to as well?
A hundred percent.
I spend a lot of time with people like the story the guy was telling you about.
He didn't recognize his changing pain and he kept trying to push through it.
And he did a he did Chicago Marathon when he shouldn't have.
And it ended up getting a lot worse for him, set him back a lot.
So I think the good news for him is he's going to be a much more educated guy.
He's just getting back to running now and he's going to be smarter on the back end because of that experience.
So I'm trying to get everybody to understand that experience before they do that themselves.
So that's why that information is helpful.
Yeah, and the final piece to that is, as I've always said too, like the scope of the pain as you run is important.
So in other words, if the pain gets worse, that's bad.
If it gets better and dissipates as you warm up and ease into the run, that's a very good thing.
So whether or not it passes that test is also another piece of evidence that you're likely not doing additional damage to whatever might be bothering you.
100%.
100%.
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All right.
So the other aspect of injuries that I think is really important, that I want to cover with you Jordan is, I think, the increasing importance of treating small injuries, or even medium injuries, really well and getting to the root cause of it early.
I think becomes more important as you get older.
Because the last thing you want to do is ingrain certain poor movement patterns or make something chronic when you could have nipped it in the bud early.
Can you speak to the value of getting things treated earlier when you're a little bit older?
Definitely for anybody, but particularly for people as they get older.
I mean, I really break down injury treatment into number one, you know, recognition of the injury, including what is it?
How bad is it?
What's the diagnosis?
What tests are going to be done?
A patient history, an exam x-rays, maybe an MRI, get a full picture of the injury we're talking about.
That's number one.
Number two then is injury treatment.
What am I going to do?
Is that somebody that I need to kind of back them off, strengthen them, cross-train them, whatever.
And then number three, and then number three is why did this injury happen in the first place?
What are the causative factors that led to this injury?
Was it volume?
Is it mechanics?
Is it volume and mechanics?
Training error?
Stride mechanical problems?
Are they have a nutritional problem manifesting itself in an injury?
So that falls into the why.
And you have to think of all those things separately.
What's the injury?
How am I going to treat it?
And why did it happen?
And increasingly in sports medicine and in running medicine.
I think we've gotten a lot better at trying to answer some of the why.
So things like a running analysis to kind of get an idea of your run mechanic.
You know, what am I doing?
Am I doing this well?
Is there something I should be thinking about?
We've got a whole program at our hospital on run mechanic, run analysis, a number of places do.
I think there's a lot of value for that just to get an idea of what are the factors you can change.
I think you can start thinking about your training volume, your training program.
Am I doing that appropriately for where I am in my own life?
We all know that if you line up a bunch of 42-year-olds, there's a wide variance of 42, right?
From very fit to medium fit to not fit.
Some combination of what they do, their genetics, their body makeup, their history.
There's a lot of factors.
So there's not a one-size-fits-all relationship, which is why I'm always a little careful about you.
Know, if you do this, did you get ready for this?
Like you need to, everybody's a little different.
You need to be very good at trying to figure out what works for you.
Let's move on and talk about the mental side of things, because I think we briefly mentioned this idea of well, if you want to run for a long time, you should want to run for a long time.
Have you found any productive mindset shifts that have to happen with age, so that we can prioritize our long-term involvement in the sport?
Because I know, looking back, I could not, at 42, have the same mindset about running that I did when I was 22, or even, you know 28, because I was such a hard charging, competitive.
You know I'm going to get the workout in no matter what kind of guy, and I now recognize that I needed more flexibility.
I need a little bit more care of my body these days.
But from a psychological perspective, what do you think is really important for us to change as we get a little bit older?
Yeah, I think that basically mentally, you have to be – one of the concepts I talk about in my book Push is about what's called lowering the cost to act, which is a behavioral economics term, around removing some of the obstacles that may be in your way.
So when you're 25, you're 20-whatever.
You finish college, you got a job.
Your life's pretty carefree.
When you're 42, you got a couple of kids, you got other stuff going on, it becomes more challenging.
And so how do you, in between all the other things you're doing, figure out how you can get yourself to be consistent and motivated?
And the idea of lowering the cost to act is how do I remove some of the barriers and how do I make myself part of that?
So when it comes to general fitness, I talk about things like prepaying for a trainer or joining a gym that's on your way home, or meeting a group first thing in the morning or after work, but usually first thing in the morning.
That will make me go be part of that experience.
And I think those things become more important as you figure out how you want to psych yourself up.
And then lastly, I think having a goal, right?
So for us, we're lucky that we have goals all the time.
Wherever we are around the world, you can sign up for a half marathon or a 10K or something several months in advance.
That scares you a little bit, that you just can't roll out of bed and do.
That makes you feel like I want to work towards that goal.
These are all things I think motivationally that can help keep us in the game.
And I think for runners particularly, that becomes important, because you may look at someone like you or me and think well God, those guys are motivated.
They never have a problem.
But that's not true at all.
When I started researching motivation and writing about it, I realized that everybody needs motivation.
We do too.
And we need to figure out how we can lower our cost to act.
Yeah, I really like this idea of lowering the cost to act.
And you mentioned fitness-oriented folks.
I think this is good for anyone who might be fairly competitive, making it easy to get in the training.
That's probably going to increase adherence.
So finding a gym on the way home from work.
I love that.
Uh, I was just.
I mentioned in a another podcast episode recently that I enlist the help of friends to get me out the door for my long runs, because if I'm going to skip, one of my runs is probably going to be the long run.
I'm going to cut it short.
I'm not really training for anything right now, Jordan.
So why go do a long run?
And I hear that.
Yeah.
And you also, you could say like once a track athlete, I was a track athlete, right?
Yeah, I would rather get on the track and rip some 200s than go run for two hours.
Then again, I do live in Colorado, so a two-hour trail run sounds quite beautiful.
Let's talk a little bit about, broadly speaking, your high-level 30000-foot perspective on runners who can keep doing it for 40 years, and then the runners who have a couple years and they end up just trailing off and and not staying engaged in the sport.
Because you have treated tens of thousands of runners, you've written all these, you know very best-selling books.
You've been immersed in the running culture for decades jordan.
So what sets apart these two people from from your, in your perspective?
Is it genetics?
Are there core differences?
What's going on here?
It's interesting.
When it comes to health.
We used to think that there was a whole study that was done on what are called the super-agers people that live between 80 and 100 that have no chronic disease, versus the average person over 80 has at least two chronic diseases.
We thought that super-agers were genetically different.
They did genome sequencing on both groups.
And they were actually genetically identical.
The thing that the super-agers had in common were habits.
They were part of a communal experience.
They exercised every day.
They had more happiness in their lives.
So when it comes to that concept, putting it over into runners…
I kind of think about what makes people happy.
I'm sorry to make it that simple, but I really think that the thing that's the biggest difference maker is what makes people happy.
I look at so many of these fitness influencers on social media and wherever else and they just look like they're auditioning for Les Mis on Broadway.
They just look so unhappy.
They got these jack muscles and they look miserable.
And that's not sustainable.
Like I just feel, like you know, in the words of my nurse, they look like they need a good mac and cheese sandwich.
Like they just they just look like they're underfed, overmuscled and not happy.
And to me, consistency is so much about enjoying what you're doing and that I want people to really enjoy what they do, to love it.
And if they're able to do that.
I think they'll stick with it.
I think that's the biggest difference maker between the ones that do it a little bit and the ones that do it for their lives.
You know, Jordan, that reminds me of something that Steve Magnus posted on social media recently.
He was talking about.
He said all the elite athletes I know eat ice cream pizza, candy and have an occasional beer.
And it just goes to show that you can be a high-level competitive athlete and still have fun and not take things so seriously and still treat yourself to some things that probably all of us enjoy sometimes.
And I think that's a big part of the sustainability thing.
It's not taking yourself so seriously.
Going to the run club that... I have a run club every Tuesday evening that I like to go to.
And it's from a brewery.
And we have a beer afterward.
And it's great.
And it's only a three-mile run, Jordan.
I really feel that I'm not earning that beer.
But I don't care.
And it's wonderful.
And there's so much community there that I think that far outweighs the fact that I'm not getting in a lot of miles that day or I'm having a beer.
But I'm having a good time.
And that's important.
Keeps your motor charged.
I love it.
I want to ask you a couple of rapid fire questions.
These are some things that you've posted about recently or that I am just particularly interested in hearing your perspectives on.
How much more important is protein to the older runner?
I'm sure you've seen the protein revolution that we're living through right now.
Pretty sure they added protein to that beer I had the other day at the brewery.
I know.
I made the comment.
Somebody asked me about protein.
I'm like, we're going so protein crazy.
I think pretty soon we're going to have protein toothpaste.
They're putting protein in everything.
Listen, protein is important.
We probably need a little more as we get older.
But this whole idea that you need to eat like as much protein as you possibly can, starting in breakfast, load your protein.
There's just no evidence on that at all.
And people are just really – it's probably fine.
I mean as long as their kidneys are working, they're basically metabolizing it.
But there's just not a lot of evidence of like.
First of all, flipping that food pyramid totally upside down, loading protein, loading red meat.
The idea of not eating tons and tons of ultra-processed foods is great, but most Americans in their diet get plenty of protein.
And so this whole idea of protein loading for longevity is just complete BS.
Can you contrast that with the risk of sarcopenia for a lot of skinnier runners?
And I'm personally thinking about this because I have your very cliche stereotypical marathoner build and I sort of have always been like that.
Now that I'm getting a little bit older, I'm nervous about being this thin.
I agree with you.
Look, I think, you know, Age-related sarcopenia is a real thing.
And for those who don't know what that is, losing muscle mass with aging is a real thing.
It happens to everybody.
If you start out as a skinny runner with not much muscle at age 40, it's important to start thinking about it.
That being said, consistent strength training two or three times a week is something I really have all my patients do.
If they're kids parents, grandparents and you need to make sure you're doing that as part of what you do.
You need to think about muscle and muscle building activity, But that's not through loading excessive amounts of protein.
It's through strength training and being consistent with your strength training.
So that's what I want to make sure you're doing is strength training, not eating all the protein you can see in the world.
Yeah, that's probably a good point.
And we haven't spent a lot of time on strength training, although anyone listening to the Strength Running Podcast knows that I'm a big believer in strength training.
Even though I don't love it, it just enables me to do more running, which I appreciate.
And it's really important for that longevity aspect of things.
For a real practical suggestion is that maybe one of the best things that runners can do to optimize for longevity in the sport is to simply make sure you are strength training regularly so that you know you're not losing too much muscle mass, you're building strength, you're maintaining some movement capacity.
Is that one of the easier lower hanging fruits for distance runners?
It certainly is one of them.
And we've done a lot of work on importance of strength for injury prevention and there seems to be some benefit.
Definitely improves running economy.
It definitely offloads arthritic, hips and knees, et cetera.
And so I think that we've learned a lot more about strengthening.
I remember we started talking about strength training 15 years ago.
We were like outliers.
And now most runners, I think, do some kind of strength training.
So I think the whole pendulum has shifted, I think, for the better.
But I think it's important to make sure you're consistent with doing that, especially with aging.
I think it's a great message.
And the Strength Running Podcast is a great place to kind of reinforce that idea.
I put a home gym in my garage and I've never been more consistent with strength training.
So going back to making it easier, that was a real unlock for me personally.
I love that.
All right, Jordan, you have spoken about exercise snacks quite frequently.
Can you first explain what those are?
And then maybe do you actually think they're that important for runners, who might typically have a more formal exercise program most days.
Is that something that we should kind of be worrying about?
So exercise snacks are short periods of activity with increased heart rate that you put throughout your day.
So, for example, taking the stairs at work, a couple of flights of stairs, you may feel yourself huff and puff a little bit and then you go out your day.
Or in my office my nurse about an every hour does squats in the room before she puts somebody in the room.
Like those kinds of things add up over time.
And there's a lot of evidence that's just come out recently on the benefit of these exercise snacks uh, throughout the day for improve health metrics, not to get you fit, but to improve your overall risk of disease, metabolic disease, etc.
Now runners, if they're consistent, listen.
A little snacking is always good for you, for sure, but if you're already doing something formal, it's probably not as essential because you're getting your stuff in otherwise.
But there's no such thing as an upper limit and so take the damn stairs.
I think i've got no problem with that.
You should.
And, by the way, stairs for you, if you're listening to the running Strength podcast, may mean doing two stairs at once as a walking lunge going up the stairs.
That's a lot of strength building and balance.
Why not?
I mean, do that for a few flights and that'll help.
Yeah.
You know, for me personally I've always found an evening mobility exercise snack.
You know, five to 10 minutes long, light mobility.
You know, maybe you spend a few minutes on a foam roller.
That always has helped me feel better the next day than just not doing anything in the evening.
So that kind of thing for me has always been really wonderful, just getting in a little bit of extra mobility.
You know, maybe we can call it stretching, but it's a little bit more dynamic than that and that, to me, is great because it's it's not a lot of what we do as runners, so it provides a nice little balance.
Yeah, definitely.
I'm actually excited to do – we'll talk – we're going to do this again before 10, 15 years that it's been – we'll do this more regularly together.
But I am excited to come on your podcast 20 years from now, when you're like 65 62, and we'll talk about where you are and how it feels.
And I think if you are consistent with what you're doing now, your 62-year-old Jason will thank you.
Yeah, hopefully I'm still – still racing, still enjoying myself on the trails at that age.
Cause I think I, I think I can be.
Dude, you bet your ass you will.
That's who you are, man.
That's, that's who you are.
You love it.
You smile when you talk about it and your job is going to be, no, but I look at it.
You're going to be all amped up jordan.
I'm getting excited about running for decades.
I love it.
Well, that's it.
Uh, i could keep you for hours.
I know you've got a tight turnaround.
You have another speaking engagement tonight, so thank you so much for your time.
Uh, your new book push, is out now.
We'll have a link to that in the show notes.
Uh, is there anything i might have missed?
I, i know we had to do a little bit of a rapid fire q a today, but anything you want to leave our listeners with about staying in the sport, about longevity in the sport, making your running more sustainable and healthy.
No, I want to emphasize that I love running.
I love runners to run.
And that you have to be mindful about the decisions you're making that allow you to stay on the road.
And so you have to be smart about it.
You have to be thoughtful about what you're doing.
And, you know, you just have to keep asking why.
So, for example, taking three weeks off when you're 20 is different than taking three weeks off when you're 50.
You lose a lot more muscle a lot quicker.
So thinking about how you strategize what you're doing becomes important.
Be a smart runner.
Be an educated runner.
And I love chatting with you, Jay.
You're the best.
Thanks Jordan.
Appreciate it.
What an episode.
Thank you so much for listening and being part of our community here.
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