The Nick Bare Podcast - 186: How to Start Running From Zero (Beginner Runner's Plan) | Jeff Cunningham

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

In this episode, I sit down with my running coach and host of the Consistently Good Podcast, Jeff Cunningham, to simplify running for beginners. We break down how to build an aerobic base, run easy without obsessing over Zone 2, introduce fartlek and speed workouts, warm up properly, combine running with strength training, and fuel for performance. The goal is simple: stop overcomplicating the process, start where you are, and build through consistency.CHAPTERS:00:00 Intro01:23 This is not for the top 1%04:59 "I know I'm not fast enough to be coached"06:03 Identity and habits for new runners08:20 Why Jeff starts every new runner with fartleks instead of track work09:28 Speed play explained simply for beginners15:43 Sprint/die vs. speed up/slow down20:07 Zone 2 running25:29 The gray zone that kills your running progress28:44 RED-S explained34:00 How speed work makes you faster44:39 Why static stretching before a run is a mistake57:04 Running to lose weight01:10:33 How to avoid injury as a new runner01:17:36 The patience principleORDER MY BOOK HERE: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210FOLLOW:The Consistently Good Podcast:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdvAh1V7frci0Rfv0dfm9-gBecome a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 25% off FOR LIFE ⁠https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutritionBat City Track Club is an emerging national class and regionally elite team with a primary focus on distances 5,000m to the marathon.https://www.batcitytc.com/FOLLOW:IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitnessJEFF CUNNINGHAM:IG: @jdcunningham97BAT CITY: @batcitytrackclubThis podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal [health or profession] advice. Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) is not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice.This podcast may not be republished without the written consent of Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN)MB01A9GV3QTHSTE

Ladies and gentlemen, today, returning guest, my personal running coach, who has helped me go from a 415 marathon to a 2-hour 39-minute marathon, Jeff Cunningham. Man, I'm fired up to be here, excited to be back. It's been a while, man. It has been a while. Out like your hat. Where'd you get it from? This is the hat that I've been rocking for almost 10 years now. Yeah.

Listen, man. If you got rid of every BPN hat that's ever been made, the one that we're wearing, keep it. It's my go-to. It's my go-to. You know, now that I'm in high-rocks training, I'll wear this hat for some of my high-rocks workouts lately. And it gets absolutely drenched and they smell. I started throwing my hats in the dishwasher in the evening when they get just trashed. Oh, yeah?

And it cleans them pretty well. Well, I've heard that they actually have like things that you could put in your hats to put them in the dishwasher. like an insert or whatever to keep them from sort of losing their shape. But I don't know. Yeah, this is my good two hat. Yeah, love it. This one shows sweat stains the least of just about any hat I've ever own. And I'm an anti-sweat stain guy, so.

I sweat a lot, but I don't have a lot of sweat stains, surprisingly, even though I'm a heavy, salty sweater. Yeah, well, I don't know, man. I love it. My favorite hat, so. Well, I provided you some context into this conversation. where I'd like to take the discussion. And for context,

for the listener or the viewer, what I was telling Jeff is, sometimes I find myself creating content and sharing things for the top 1% of the population. The people who have been doing this for years and years and years, and they have systems and routines and habits in place, they are committed.

they are already motivated and inspired. They're training for Ironmans and sub three-hour marathons and ultras and all of these things, which is great. But I found myself neglecting the people who are just getting started. And I want to take a lot of my content back to serve those people. The people who are having trouble just getting to the gym a few times. week. Yeah. Or waking up without hitting snooze in their alarm or who want to start logging some miles.

So that's what I would love for this conversation to be grounded in is that we're providing information and resources in a training philosophy, but also a mindset philosophy as well of where they should get started when they first get started with running and training for maybe. a 5K, half marathon, full marathon, if you fancy. But I hope that shapes kind of the people that I hope this podcast reaches and helps. It's funny because I think that you and I have had this discussion before about how sometimes we get so close to it that we can't see the whole forest, you know, because our nose is so close to a tree trunk. There's a whole forest. There's a whole landscape of people who are getting into the fitness space who may sometimes view anything, whether it's experienced high rocks athlete, experienced bodybuilders, experienced runners, where I don't want to say there's embarrassment, but there's reluctance to get in there because there's this fear maybe of judgment.

Sometimes it can be projection. And I really want to help erase that. And I don't want to be sort of part of that machine that only speaks to the 1% because I think fitness and moving our bodies, whether it's running, whether it's high rocks, bodybuilding, being a hybrid athlete in a general context, I think is for everybody. And it's generally helpful, both from the neck down and the neck up, mental health, physical health, everything, you know? Trey described it to me a few weeks back. And I feel like I've quoted him many times since then. And we were talking about, you know, building business and brand and serving the committed athlete. And you find yourself in this echo chamber sometimes where you forget about the people who aren't that committed or that experienced or have that much wisdom around what to eat, when to eat, how to train, what to train.

And he said, dude, sometimes we find ourselves just smelling our own farts. And I was like, you know what? That's pretty accurate. And we got to get out of that space of smelling our own farts to talk and help and share information to more people. I can tell you, there is not a week that goes by that somebody doesn't either text me, DM me, email, reach out in some way, shape, or fashion, and say, I know I'm not fast enough yet for you to help me. or I know that I would be one of your slowest, or I would probably be the slowest person you've ever coached. And I always stop them. I try to stop them in their tracks if I could actually be there and be like, hey, stop with the self-denigration,

stop with sort of positioning yourself as less good, less relevant, as if you matter less, just because you can't run laps as fast as somebody who you saw on Instagram. You can't run a mile as fast as somebody who you saw me talk about on a podcast. Let's stop. There's space for everybody here. And so I always lament that that's the perception is, well, Jeff Cunningham only wants to coach fast people. That is so far from the truth.

Yeah. That's great context for you to share. Yeah. You know, one of my favorite quotes is belief comes before ability. and I just finished reading, re-reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. I created a lot of content around that book and the message of that book.

And he talks about how important identity is. We have to believe we are who we say we want to be, but then our habits, our routines, our systems have to reflect that identity. You can't say, you want to be a fast runner or a runner in general,

or you want to finish and complete a marathon, and then your systems don't reflect that person you say you want to be. So that's what I hope this podcast addresses in some way. So I'd love to dive right into it. You know, we were briefly talking about this. For someone who's just getting started with running. You know, if you're just getting started, you're probably not incorporating speed work.

yet. You're not going after critical velocity workouts on the track or tempo and threshold workouts. But for a new runner who has spent weeks, maybe a few short months, just easy running, gradually progressing volume, time on feet, when they start to incorporate speed workouts, they go to the track. Part of their program is eight times 800 meter repeats. or they have a tempo workout where it's a two-mile warm-up, a two-time-two-mile threshold run, and then a two-mile cool-down. How do these individuals figure out how fast they're supposed to be running?

Whether that's a track workout, 800-meter repeats, or what does tempo and threshold mean? Where do you get started if you don't have paces prescribed for that specific workout? Is it a pace? Is it an effort? Is it a feel? Like, how would you describe to a new runner, how to run at tempo, a threshold, or a track session? One of the things that I do with every runner I coach. In fact, I even do this with runners who are starting a new training block, or maybe they've just completed an ultra, they've just completed a marathon, completed some sort of a goal race.

Even those people fall into this category. But especially for new runners, what I tell people is let's hold off on going to the track and creating both the emotional distress of having to spin laps in a mostly arbitrarily picked time and being married to looking at our wrist and wringing our hands over the nuances of one second here, or three seconds there on pace when frankly maybe you don't have enough experience yet you don't you don't maybe have enough of a shall we say dialed inedness yet on exactly what your capabilities are to put that kind of pressure on yourself so let's take the pressure off let's maybe start with a fart leg workout and once again i'm using a term that's a that's a that's a that's a

term of art it's a trade term fart leg is a sweetest word for speed play speeding up slowing down speeding up, slowing down. So maybe we start out with eight times a minute, quick tempo, and then one or two minutes jog, and just run on feel rather than going, well, what patient I run for that one minute? This is what I tell people, 10 being running almost all out, one being fast walking. Just run up to an effort level of about a six or a seven on a scale of one to 10, okay, and just feel that to where you're not running to where you have blood squirting out the corners of your eyes. You're in control. Your respirations are in control. You're not gasping for air and begging for a mercy killing at the end of every, let's say, one minute's section, but you can even do eight by 30 seconds, eight by a minute and a half, six by a minute and a half. There's really no rules to this. And then what you do is, is you create a situation where you learn how to manage your effort.

You create a situation where you learn how to meet out your resources in an effective way. And you might screw it up the first time. But you want to know what? Is it really screwing up? You're out there. You're doing the thing. Screwing up might be never challenging yourself, never getting the, shall we say, the hootspot to actually get started. So you'll figure your way through it.

You go out there, maybe you go out a little hot, maybe you go out a little hot, maybe die a little bit toward the end and say, okay, I felt that effort. Next week I'm going to come back and I might do something similar to this. Now I know what that effort feels back and I can just hold on to those rains a little tighter and sort of pull, pull, keep that horse from running and then you figure it out. And so then, Nick, after let's say you do that for maybe six weeks, you can start looking at data on your garment or whatever. You could go out and do that workout on a flat trail, a flat street in your neighborhood, in a local park, or you could go to a track, but you can look at your data and go, huh, this is interesting. I've noticed now that I've gotten into this a bit. Maybe I did eight by three minutes or nine by two minute, a little quicker reps with some easy jogs. And I'm noticing there's trends on pace. Typically, I'm running maybe about an eight and a half minute mile speed, eight minute mile speed on the fast sections. It may be a 10 or 11

minute mile speed on my recoveries. Now I can go to the track. Now I can say, okay, now I can go and run some half mile repeats because I have an idea on what pace feels like and what pace is in the empiric sense by looking at some Garmin or Corros data, right? Then you can assign yourself paces. But until you do some workouts like that on feel, and you just feel your way. way through it, you can hardly expect to go from jogging three miles a day to suddenly going down to the track and go, okay, today's the day I start hard repeat work. I'm going to assign myself X-Pace. How in the world could you do that, that you're not being fair to yourself? You have no idea what to assign for repeat work, whether it's 400 reps, 600 meter repeats, half-mile repeats,

whatever it is you decide. That's how I do it. That's how I learn from my runners. I actually give them fart leg workouts. Then they'll say, coach, how could you possibly know what to assign me on 400 meter repeats? Right? 100 meter repeats. And I says, it's funny. You didn't realize it for the last six weeks. I've just been collecting data on you.

I go into your Garmin data that I have access to remotely. And I start looking at your pace trends. And I know exactly what you can hit for half mile repeats based on looking at what you hit on your farlet workouts and then laying it next to your heart rate and I have a pretty good idea what you can handle. That's how I do it. Can you go into a little bit detail of what a fart lick workout would look like? Yeah, man. Like from warm up to cool down? Yeah. So for some runners who are relatively new to getting into sort of the space where they decide I'm going to do more than just job. I might assign a workout where I say, okay, let's go run nice and easy for about a mile.

Sometimes if they're really beginner runners, their warm-up may only be a half a mile of easy running because that might be five or six minutes of running for a half mile. And in a warm climate, that's enough to get warmed up enough, especially if we're trying to keep your volume low. And then I might say, okay, let's run six by 30 seconds, quick tempo, up-tempo, fast. They're all kind of synonyms for something that's faster than easy, but easier than running all out. Okay, so I might get six by 30 seconds up tempo with a minute and a half nice easy jog and then a one mile cool down. So you do a mile easy, six rounds of 30 seconds fast, one minute easy, and then go do a one mile cool down. That might be a sort of a beginner or a novice or an introductory level little fart like workout to start introducing speeding up slowing down, speeding up slowing down. And here's what I tell everybody.

let's divorce ourselves from our relationship with sport that might have come from running. You played high school baseball. You remember when the coach got mad because y'all were out there grab ass around, practices, you all had to run foul pole to foul pole and you're vomiting, or doing air raids in football or running gassers in basketball. So a lot of people come from that background in scholastic sports experiences, typically where running was used as punishment and it was go harder, go home, Blood squirting out the corners of your eyes, beating your head on a locker sort of efforts.

I tell everybody, let's not do that. That in a fart leg workout would be sprint die, sprint die, sprint die six times. This is what I tell people. It's speed up, slow down. Speed up, slow down. Kind of like taking your car out on I-35, right here in Round Rock, and going between 50 and 70 and 50 and 70, not going from 20 miles an hour to 90 miles an hour. 20-90, 20-2090 is sprint die, right?

50-70, 50-70 is a well-executed fart leg workout where it's speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down. That's how I would describe it. And what is that teaching the body, if so the body, or is it the mind? Is it getting someone comfortable running at faster paces? Or is there an actual physiological response that is helping your muscles become faster? I so love that question. The answer is it's teaching you emotional control. It's teaching you emotional stability rather than bust it, die.

Bust it, die, right? It's I'm going to be controlled in my efforts because I'm thinking about tomorrow in the next week and the next month. It teaches sustainability. It teaches reproducibility. Okay. It teaches discipline. But then the physiologic responses are even more. nuanced, but even perhaps more important. When you go sprint, die, sprint, die, sprint die,

you one, increase your risk of injury because you're ripping and tearing a connective tissue and fascia that may not have been stressed in that level for that amount of volume in your recent history. But then also from a physiologic standpoint, we know that you get better aerobic adaptations. Aerobic adaptations basically is your body's ability to continue to deliver oxygenated blood to working muscles, which is the hallmark, which is the full chrome and the focus for all endurance sports. You actually increase your aerobic capacity more effectively by building out a mitochondrial density. Modicondri is just the engine that makes cells go that delivers for long, better way, probably the best way of putting it delivers oxygen.

to muscles, it converts oxygen into energy, you're better going to speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down. Your body actually makes better adaptations than it does sprint, die, sprint, die. Because if you're sprinting, you're running anaerobically. Anerobically means the opposite of aerobically. In other words, not aerobically. So really what you're doing is just working your sprint fibers when you start running really, really fast and then dying, right?

And your body's going to make better aerobic adaptations, make more aerobic adaptations, and you're going to stay more injury-free. And psychologically, you are not going to have this sort of self-loathing and this sort of trepidation when it comes to running hard because you're not going to be creating negative experiences. Because honestly, when you're dying on a workout, you're out there, you're just dying. It's really, you're quote, embracing the suck. I mean, that's a popular thing to say. But how long, especially when you're new to something, if it just absolutely empirically sucks, think about it, Dick, if it just sucks, are you really going to be building in longevity?

Are you really going to be building in sustainability? Would you loathe something? Nah. I mean, the key term there is sustainable. Yeah. What's so unique about running, is as you try to get faster at running, you're trying to get faster, but in endurance sports, trying to get faster for sustainable longer periods of time. So it's not getting to this finish line

that is 400 meters away. It's getting to this finish line that in some cases is 25 miles away. So how do I run as fast as possible in a sustained effort? Yeah. You know, part of these speed workouts, the intent for me at least, what I take away from it, it's learning pacing. Yeah. And one of the things you told me once that has always been at the forefront of my mind when I'm doing a speed workout is controlled discomfort. When I go to a threshold workout or a critical velocity workout, I expect it to be uncomfortable, but it's a level of controlled discomfort. It's a pace and a speed in which I can hold for a sustainable effort, but I'm still pushing.

it's still hard, it's still challenging. Now we touched on speed right out of the gates, which should and is not the foundation of running. So I do want to go back a little bit. What is the foundation of running is these easy, aerobic base building runs. I want to talk about Zone 2 running. What are your thoughts and feelings around

zone two because zone two has become such a popular buzzword these last couple years but I would argue that most people when they go for their easy aerobic base building runs their everyday casual run they're probably really not in a true zone two true zone two is pretty

low heart rate and if you look at someone's zones of heart rate based off their pace and effort and you tell someone go go stay in zone two for this one hour run, that might be like a 12 minute mile for them. And some of the responses I get all the time are, dude, I'm trying to stay in zone two, but it is so slow that it is annoying and I don't want to do it and it's painful.

So when a new runner comes to you and they know that, say, 80% of the running has to be easy and aerobic, what does easy and aerobic mean? Yeah. And how do you address the questions of, Coach, I can't stay inzo too. It's just too slow. I'd love to hear your thoughts around all of that. I love it because it's actually relatively nuanced,

but it's actually not that complicated. We like to put things in boxes. We like to have formulaic approaches to things that we can reach out and touch and hold and point to. And one of the things that we like to do is look at either maybe an arm or maybe chest strap, heart rate data that's relatively reliable and be able to sort of hang our hat on it and say and point to it and say zone two is where I have to be. Here's what I would tell people. When you are a new runner, running is going to be harder for you than running is on a day-to-day basis when you're out running, quote-unquote, easy than it is for somebody. who has run 10 marathons who run 60, 70 miles a week and is a season veteran.

Okay? I'm here to tell you right now that there is a chance that your heart rate might technically be in the bottom end of what would be zone three based on the calculations for, you know, if we use like the mafetone method, right? Here's what I would tell people is, so what? I mean, so what, right? If you are in control, if you are able to talk at least sporadically in full sentences, when you're new to running, that's probably good enough. It's probably easy enough.

Let's go out. Let's get the runs in. And let's not be so adherent to zone two to where we actually are almost paralyzed and actually maybe fail to progress because running is just not going to be that easy for somebody who's brand new to running. somebody to elucidate this point who may have never gotten really much exercise in our whole life. And they wake up one day and they say, I'm going to start running. Even three, four weeks into it, they might be squarely in zone three, moving at a pace faster than walking. Well, just go ahead and just do your run in zone three. It's going to be okay.

And what I would tell people is as you get more fit, your heart rate naturally is going to become lower at faster paces. And just like not assigning yourself repeat work at a track in picking numbers out of thin air for splits, the first time you ever try to run faster than jogging, I would tell you that when you first start running, also don't be so married to numbers instead of split times, heart rate numbers on a wearable. Just go run, make sure that you're doing your best to not strain. Don't purposefully hit the gas. But whatever. you have to do to keep moving, just accept what that heart rate is. And as the weeks and the months go by, that heart rate is going to come down. You're going to get faster. And then when you get really

more in tune with how you feel, when you really get more in tune with sort of what it is to be a runner, rather than somebody who got up off of a couch who runs, two very different things, then suddenly you can start looking at heart rate and really engage. And get it. And get a in sort of the self-criticism and the self-analysis, which did I really run easy on that run or was I pressing? Then we can start looking at heart rate. For beginners, guys, just run easy. Be able to fire off some sentences from beginning to end with a period at it while you're running, if you're running with a buddy or talking to a friend or whatever. If you're doing that, you're probably running, you're probably running easy enough. Don't worry about Zone 2 that much.

What are the consequences and downfalls if you are running your easy days a little too hard? Now, if you start purposely pressing and you're purposely going into what I like to jokingly refer to is the American mindset, which is equal rules, equal application of the law for everybody else, special privileges for me. And in the running context, what I mean by that is, well, I know everybody says everybody needs to run easy. but the rules are going to apply differently for me. I'm going to press a little bit, and I'm going to try to get better every single day because I've got to catch all these dudes

and I've got to pass them on the performance charts in the local gym or whatever. Here's the dangers of it. You create massive, it's insidious. It creeps in neuromuscular fatigue, okay? And there's two kinds of fatigue. you can have central nervous system on and then you can have peripheral nervous system fatigue. And what I'm talking about is sort of this peripheral fatigue where neurologically, you're just,

you're just starting to strip the casing off of the wires. You're just getting a diffuse electrical signal to your extremities, your arms and your legs. And over time, you just tired. You're just tired. And you actually stunt your growth as a runner if you try to press every day. And it is tantalizing. It's this sort of sexy, shiny thing when you go, I'm still going to press. I'm still going to press.

Why? Because my baseball coach told me to do it. My high school basketball coach told me to do it. My high school football coach that hikes those hideous gray coaching shorts up a little too high, right? Those guys in the neighbor in town are getting better today. And you, you wimps, ain't doing nothing out here. Get out there. Get on the line.

I mean, there's a lot to that. And I think there's some good that. that comes from that on some level. But let's try to divorce ourselves from that. Because once again, you're going to get tired. You're going to stunt your growth. You're actually going to shut down or you're going to truncate or be sort of obstructionist

to the building of this heroic process. And also, you know what? You're just not going to enjoy it. You're going to start loathing it. And then you're going to quit. And your ass is going to be right back on that couch because you tried to cheat Mother Nature. And you tried to accelerate a process.

It takes time and patience. Yeah, there's this gray area where you have your easy aerobic base building running. Yeah. And then you have, I mean, that's one side of the spectrum. The other side of the spectrum is your threshold running, critical velocity, speed work. Mm-hmm. And they both are intentionally designed to create a stimulus in the body. Correct.

When you're in the middle in that gray area, you're not getting the benefits from the low end, low effort, aerobic, easy running. You're also not getting the benefit from that top end threshold work. So you're right in the middle in this gray area where you're really not getting the benefits of either side. Yes. And when you do that too much, too frequently, too often, running itself is high cortisol producing. It can be. Your body, if you spend too much time in that gray area and you're not doing enough aerobic work, you're going to see negative consequences to metabolic health, aerobic health, the endocrine hormone system. There's this syndrome called Reds, Relative Energy Deficiency Syndrome.

And it's when athletes push too hard, too often for too long. That's right. And then often accompanied by chloric restriction. So you're overall in depletion of energy. Yeah. And you start digging yourself this hole. Now, it takes time. It takes months and months and months to truly get yourself into reds.

But once you have reds, you can't just recover overnight. It takes months to dig back out of it. Yeah, it's like crawling out of the Grand Canyon. Yeah. So for new reds, you have reds. runners, when you take your easy days, truly take them easy. So when you have your hard days, you can go hard. But try to avoid that gray area in the middle. Yeah. You know, I guess you Catholics can appreciate this. I call it Pace Purgatory. Right? You are somewhere in the

middle and you're not heading north. You ain't necessarily heading south, at least in the moment. you're just sort of in a really non-productive zone. Here's what I would tell people too. Arthur Lideard, who is widely accepted as the father of running, okay? Arthur Liddeard had a theory that I think is backed up by some pretty solid science. Now, his exact number, I mean, we can dispute it. But he says, listen, you can get anywhere 95 to 98% of max fitness, basically just doing a lot of easy running.

without obsessing over the details of pace and repeat sessions and things like that. What I would tell people is this, and of course, you know, a sort of funny name, but a giant in the running world of the United States is Dr. Jack Daniels. God rest of soul, passed away recently. Dr. Daniels said, listen, for a new runner, you go from zero miles a week to 20 miles a week, doing nothing but easy running. You are going to get exponentially better fairly quickly by just simply going to. going out and running 20 miles a week compared to when you are running zero miles a week. A runner that runs 20 miles a week is going to be way faster than a person that runs zero miles a week.

A person who runs 30 to 40 miles a week is not going to be the same amount faster than the 20 mile a week guy than the 20 mile a week guy was than the zero mile of week guy. So what Dr. Daniels was saying is there is a law of diminishing returns. You're not going to get a one-for-one improvement. you're not going to get a nice linear improvement curve that literally tracks the exact number of miles you run. So here's what I would tell people. For beginning runners, the most important thing

is that you're out the door and you're running. Let's not overcomplicate it. And as you get better, and as you get better at self-regulation, and effort regulation, and pace regulation, and heart rate regulation, then you can start going into all the nuanced details of was this lactate threshold,

was this aerobic threshold, was this critical velocity, was this 100% of my MBO2, right? That's not that important. When you're new to running, hey, man, let's get out the door. Let's complete runs. Let's check boxes. You are going to get exponentially better really quickly. And then we can start inserting a lot more of the nuance, right? Think about it.

From the first time you went into a weight room and banged some weights to where you are right now, Think about how much more you know and how much more nuanced it can be for you, right? A concept of, you know, a progressive overload and all this other stuff that you know. Man, I'll tell you what, if you never lifted away, just go in, hit a modest session that makes some sense. You don't have to get all crazy with it. I'm so aligned with that. Yeah. I think that we oftentimes overcomplicate all of this stuff.

Right. And what works is stimulus. You know, I wake up 5 a.m. every morning, I'm running by 5.30. And whether I feel great or feel horrible, if it's a day after I hit lower body strength, I know it's going to feel horrible. My legs are going to be heavy. But for me, it's the commitment to that consistency, but also knowing that that stimulus, whether fast or slow or far in duration or shorter in duration, that stimulus has an impact, a positive influence on my performance over time.

And it kind of leads me to my next question I had. I know this is very specific to the individual. But how important, how necessary is speedwork to getting faster? Like what incremental benefit does it make for a runner to incorporate speedwork? You say that the additional nuances is diminishing. The returns are diminishing over time. It's not purely linear. But what can we expect from speedwork versus not incorporating any speedwork?

Speedwork will make you faster. Plain and simple. Plain and simple. Running faster than easy will make you faster at racing the mile, at racing 5Ks, racing 10Ks, right? But with speed work, with doing structured workouts, comes responsibility. And that responsibility and the ability to do those effectively also needs to come from a background of experience. What does that experience need to be?

Well, running a fair amount, right? before you can really effectively do speedwork and sort of earn the right to then go and do speedwork. If you've been running for two weeks, there's absolutely no world in which I would recommend anybody do anything other than just go jog. There's not a world where I would recommend sending somebody to a track, right? But there comes a point, going back to what Dr. Daniel said, there comes a point we're just going from zero miles of week to 20 miles a week, that's going to take you pretty far, pretty quick on the front end, right? It's like throwing darts. I mean, if you've never thrown darts, right, the victory is going to be hitting the board at all versus missing the board entirely and hitting the wall, right? And then

once you consistently can hit that dartboard, then you can start doing speed work so that you can figure out how to actually do placement of where the dart hits the board. And you can be a little bit more exacting. When I have a runner who has completed their first race, a 5K, a 10k or whatever, they're just beaming. They're like, I did it. I ran a race. The first question is, okay, I enjoy that. How do I get faster? Okay, let's get a little bit sexier with the work. Let's get a little bit more detailed because now I have a bevy of data. I have a massive data on you, or you, if you're self-coaches, have a massive data on yourself. And so then you know that if I just go and jog,

I'm probably not going to continue to get a whole lot better. I need to really make sure that I'm doing something to actually start going for these nuanced improvements. I went from never having a 5K time to running a 30-minute 5K. Well, how do I get to 27 minutes? Well, that three minutes is actually going to take a lot more planning and a lot more work relative to. to what it took you to go from zero minutes

to never having a time to a 30 minute 5K. It's like when you told me flat out, the amount of extra work it took for you to go from 248 to 239 was wildly massive, wildly more than what it took from you to go from 259 to 248.

Right? And so you get more exacting with it. But yes, speed work will and here's why. We know that your buy body has, I'm going to get two sciencey here. Your body has two kinds of fibers, but it's really three. You have type A fibers, right? And then you have type B fibers or type one fibers, type two. It doesn't really matter, two big buckets. But that second bucket is your speed fibers, and those are divided into two sub-buckets. You have the fibers that can go from being only explosive sprint fibers to fibers that work more in more of an endurance capacity. Okay. And so what you do is, is we know that when you start doing fart leg work, and then you start doing well-orchestrated, accelerated running, tempo runs, threshold running, interval running.

We know that you take those type 2A fibers and make them start working more from an endurance standpoint. And in short, all you're doing is is creasing your ability to run farther at a faster pace without falling apart. And at the end of the day, every single coach from a junior high track coach with a shitty whistle, you know, from the sporting goods store to your best professional coach in the world, they're all trying to do things. How do we get you to that finish line running faster than you ever have without falling apart? That's all we're trying to do as runners. That's what we know that well-crafted, quote-unquote, speed sessions can do for us, which you've got to be. careful you have to earn right to start doing those workouts. When you get off your couch, just go run, man. You will already start getting some aerobic adaptation.

Your mitochondrial density will double, will triple simply by going from never stressing your aerobic system at all other than maybe walking to the refrigerator to suddenly you're out running three, four miles a day, four days a week. Trust me, your mitochondrial density will double or triple in the first few months by just doing that. It's similar to strength and resistance training. It's almost identical. Yeah, where if I go from being untrained to going to the gym, and I'm training moderate weight, higher reps, hypertrophy focused,

like these bodybuilding style splits. I'm going to put on muscle, and I'm also naturally going to get stronger alongside of. Just lifting the weights is a byproduct of getting, stronger, just like running. If I go from being untrained to just starting to run, I'm going to get faster as a byproduct of just doing the thing more. There you go.

When it comes to running, to truly get faster and refine, we have to add in speed work to work a specific type of system in muscle fiber. Same thing goes for strength training. You are going to get significantly stronger than gym by training for strength. This is heavier loads, lower reps. And the byproduct is not

just building muscle. It stimulates the central nervous system where the whole body now is trained for these neurons to sink simultaneously to move heavier loads. So it's very similar. It is the same type of system stimulus

between strength and resistance and and speed and endurance. Now, one question I get all the time daily is, and I'd love to hear your take on this, especially from the experience of the runners you've coached, what pre-run warm-up or mobility routine do most of your runners perform before a training session? Now, I know this is going to look different from an easy run in the morning. and a workout, a hard workout.

For me personally, right now, Monday through Friday, I'm running six miles, six easy miles in the morning. I get a lot of my threshold work during my high rock sessions during the week. Ah, okay. And then I have my long run on Saturdays. Before those easy runs in the morning, I'm rolling out my ankles. I'm using the,

the percussive massage gun on my legs. I'm doing some light stretching. And then I just take off my run and I start really low and slow. And if I want to, I speed up a little bit. That is pretty much the extent of my warmup. When it comes to a speed session, I'm dedicating 10, 15 minutes, a longer warm up to dynamic stretching. Some static stretching, not much more dynamic. some movements opening up my hips, my ankles, hip flexors. What do you see most of your

athletes do in terms of pre-run, pre-training warm up? Really good question. What we know is that basically any movement that you do from a physical exercise standpoint, one of the best things to warm up is to do the thing that you're going to do slower and easier, right? There's a reason. I don't know why I'm talking about baseball so much. There's a reason why we have bullpins at every baseball stadium in America for the most part. Why? Because you go down there, pitchers starting to fall apart, you're starting pitcher, and you need your middle reliever to come in. And what do they do? they end up the pros, they'll radio out to the bullpen, right? And they'll say, get up, get moving.

What do they do? Start with some soft toss, right? And then they'll run it up there maybe 50 miles an hour, and they'll run it up there at 60 miles an hour, and then slowly they'll warm up into being able to run in out of the bullpen, you know, and then they might need to be able to run it up there 95 miles an hour in their first pitch and hope they don't groove it, waist high, right? So that's my first thing is a lot of people don't understand that sometimes

one of the most important things to do is go jog. I mean really, really slowly, right, to start your warm up if you say have some sort of a repeat session or some faster running. And then after you've jogged for eight, ten, sometimes 15 minutes, and you jog progressively faster, then you're done. Go get a sip of water. You can do some dynamic movements. Then at that point, A skips, B skips, butt kicks, high knees, right? Things that really activate the muscle fibers and neurologically create the connection or sort of rekindle the connection between the brain and your legs where you're telling them, all right, we got to get snappy here, right? Or, and then maybe do three to four times anywhere from 80 to 100 meter fast runs.

We call them strides. Once again, it's so interesting. I'll have a new runner, and sometimes I'll forget myself, and I start doing the 1% stuff, and I'll say, you know, warm up plus drill plus strides. And they'll be like, what is that? I'm like, oh, okay, what it is 80 to 100 meters at a crisp pace, probably maybe 80 to 90% of full out, okay, or maybe do four of those to really, really activate everything neurologically,

but you do that after jogging, after doing some dynamic movements, whether it's butt kicks, high knees, A skips, B skips, just some stuff where you're activating, quote-unquote, everything. Static stretching has mostly, mostly fallen out of favor as a, a useful part of most warm-up routines. Why is that? Have you ever taken a rubber band, maybe that you rubber banded around maybe a Ziplog bag

that you had maybe some meat in or something that you put in a freezer? Right? Have you ever taken a rubber band out of a freezer and try to stretch it? Guess what happens? It just snaps. It's not pliable. What we also know is that there is a 15, to 20% reduction in the explosiveness of a statically stretched muscle, okay, for 10 to 20 minutes

after you statically stretch that muscle. In other words, you actually reduce the strength in the explosives of your muscles before you have to engage in actual explosive activity if you statically stretch that muscle. It actually does much better if you dynamically warm it up through leg swings. This is another really good one that I'll, like to use. Hold on to the fence and you know, you could do leg swings side to side right leg, side to side left leg. That's my go-tiel. Right. And then stand with your hips perpendicular to the forward, backwards. That's dynamic. It stretches the muscle without you just ripping and going from static to ripping at it. So that's my recommendation before a repeat workout. Before an easy run,

I like what you do. Foam roll. Maybe if you got a little bit of a tight calf and you felt it the other night walking down the hall to put the kids to bed, foam roll a little bit, go and use a theragun for maybe, you know, three, four minutes, you know, on each leg, and then get out the door, and then frankly, on an easy run, you warm up into your run by warming up into it,

by running really slowly. You might start your run at 11-minute pace and you might finish your run at 8-minute pace. That's fine. That's fine. And if anything is your heart rate will be, basically the same at nine-minute pace as it is at 11-minute pace. The problem is if you try to start your runs really fast at the pace you want to, quote-unquote, average, or because you're married to a pace on your easy run, which you should never be,

is that you actually feel worse because what happens is you shock your body into this mild. It's a very, very mild, but I would say this is sort of akin to a mildly induced fight-or-flight response, right? Let your body warm up into it, right? You don't want to jump out of bed like a fire alarm just went off. You know, let's ease out of bed. Let's get both feet on the floor, wiggle our toes, make sure that the blood's flowing. Get up, stretch, yawn, put your clothes on. Let's just be progressive with everything.

We're probably going to be okay. It makes me think of one of my favorite speed workouts to do, tempo workouts, is a negative split tempo. Oh, yeah. So say I have an eight-mile. run and I want to get some tempo work in, I'll do a two mile warm up, two mile cool down. That leaves for four miles in the middle of tempo. And I'll start that first mile, that four mile segment, you know, moderately faster than my warm up. And then mile two gets a little faster, then mile three gets a little faster. And then by mile four, my last mile, it is the fastest

of that segment. Yes. And I'll do it, you know, that two mile cool down. That's one of my favorite speed workouts to do. Because I feel like it warms you up really well. You reduce risk of injury by going too fast, too early. And I get a really great workout from it. A hundred percent. And it tracks everything in the world. And people may be asking Cunningham, what are you talking about? Guys, the Rivian, the Tesla did not exist before the Model T Ford. Right? Everything is progressive. Think about it. We talk progressive overload, right? We talk about advancement or revolutions or evolution. Everything is progressive. We go from simple to complex. We go from easier to harder. We go from less advanced to more advanced. Everything works really, really well progressively in the course of human history.

we had to have the Wright brothers in Kitty Hawk before we got to being able to build, you know, an F-16 fighter jet, right? And so my take is everything in the micro is progressive and everything in our world in the macro is also progressive. So treat our bodies the same way, even on an individual session, like you said, we do really, really well going from slightly slower to faster, right? we know that our aerobic system and our neurologic system functions that way as well. Because if it didn't, we would never have to warm up before a workout.

If it didn't, then we could literally go all out from the gun in a race. Well, we know that that's not what happens. If you let your body slowly warm up into a race, it will continue to function aerobically much longer because if you start performing anaerobic work, meaning sprint work, really hard work, and you dump a bunch of lactate into your system early, that's just like those hilarious cartoons that we used to watch when we were kids. We'd you see Wiley Coyote and all that deal, and they would run over the cliff,

and their eyes would get big as hell, and they would have that, oh, crap moment, and then you fall straight down. Once you go off the aerobic cliff, once you go off the performance cliff by starting anything too hard, within that session, you are not going to be able to climb back onto the cliff, without going and basically sitting out for 15 minutes,

20 minutes to let your body come back down, that's not the way to get better. Yeah. So just don't go over the cliff. Start progressively. One of the things you brought up is strides. Yeah. I want to touch on that again briefly.

Similar to the fart lick, where if you go from no speed work to wanting to incorporate speed work, I think both strides and the fart lick, very similar. Very. Or a great way to start turning the legs back on. I know from just historical experience, I'm always running.

I run year round. But when I go into a prep for a marathon or a high rock or something that requires speed, and I start incorporating speed workout against, I can tell my legs just aren't turning on like they used to. It takes a period of time to turn my legs. back on. Yeah. To get comfortable with that turnover. Yeah.

Once again. So I go from, you know, my easy morning runs every day to going into prep, I find that priming the body in preparation for bigger speed workouts, fart lex and strides. So maybe at the end of my six mile run, I'll do a few 30-minute strides, which are completed at a pace faster than your easy runs. just like the fart lick, you increase speed intensity a little bit, drop back off. Increase speed intensity, drop back off. I find incorporating both strides and fart lick to prime my body as I transitioned from just easy running to bigger speed workouts,

turns those legs on a little bit easier. Absolutely. And it's something that we refer to as neuromuscular stimulus. everything is neurologic. Everything starts with the central nervous system. Everything from blinking to driving a stick shift car to being a concert pianist. Frankly, to riding a bike. Everything is neurologic.

And so what happens is we talk about the muscles, but we don't talk about the nerves that much. speed is neurologic and it's completely accurate for you to use the term turning on because that's actually what you're doing. The lights off if you wanted to go and turn on, what do you do? You flip the switch. What are those switches? Strides, fart like work. You're flipping neurologic switches where when your brain says go fast, you're building in the neuromuscular memory for your. your legs to then recognize the stimulus and go, okay, I understand what my brain is telling me to do here.

So you build those neurologic pathways, right? And so speed is very neurologic. That's why we call it neuro muscular stimulus. So when you're doing strides, when you're doing Fartleck, when you're doing just a little bit of accelerated running, you're going to get faster, not because suddenly you're changing necessarily, you know, the basic makeup of, of your muscles per se, but your muscles are recognizing the neurologic impulse that your brain is sending to them, right?

And going, okay, yeah, it's time to go fast. Now, you have a certain number of white fibers that you're born with. The white fibers are your fast, your speed fibers. You cannot create more white fibers. You also cannot destroy white fibers. The number that you were born with is the number that you have, and when you reach late adolescence, and when you're done growing,

you've got what you've got. But you can recruit them, right, by neurologically stimulating your muscles to recognize the stimulus and get faster. So just little bits of speed work. And here's what's funny. It doesn't take much. And I think that's one of the biggest problems that I see from scholastic running, collegiate running to adults who are getting into it, is there is this over-emphasis. And Lidde, going back to Arthur Lidierd, he spoke to this. There is an over-emphasis. People tend to do too much speed work. When we don't need that much, it's a lot like cayenne pepper and cumin.

A little bit goes a long way. Too much of it is going to ruin your enchiladas, right? It's going to make your chili inedible because it's too hot to eat. and you're going to get what we refer to is neuromuscular fatigue when counterintuitively. If you do too much of it, you actually end up getting slower because you're stripping the casing off of those wires that are the nerves that are going to your legs and you start getting what we refer to as a diffuse electric signal, a diffuse neurologic signal where it doesn't reach its intended target, right? and we know that weak electrical impulses lead to really, really dim light bulbs. And sometimes when the signal turns off, that bulb ain't coming on at all. Yeah.

Got to be careful. So I get this question a lot. Okay. And it is, what advice would you give someone who wants to improve their running performance, increase mileage, fuel properly, but also lose body weight and body fat simultaneously? And I think this is, it's a really commonly asked question because it's a really hard question to answer directly. Because it's a very thin line that you're trying to balance between fueling enough for your performance and also, in this case, being in some sort of caloric deficit to lose weight. So I'll maybe reform it for a little bit and then hand it off to you.

I think the go-to answer for this has to be, if you were trying to lose body weight and body fat, but also perform, running has to be paired with strength training, building muscle. Muscle, and I've talked on this many times before, muscle is more metabolically expensive. So when you have more muscle and lean tissue on your frame, your basal metabolic rate, your BMR, is higher.

Your body naturally burns more calories at rest when you have more muscle and lean tissue as opposed to if you did not. Now, running compared to strength training, you are going to, in most cases, burn more calories acutely in one hour of running than you would one hour of strength training. but if we take the long-term approach, having more muscle, more lean tissue is going to burn more calories. It's going to improve your body composition. You're going to get leaner. You're going to look better. You're going to perform better. So I think we have to first answer this question with if losing weight, losing body fat is one of the primary goals.

Yes, you can run, but you also should be incorporating strength. training alongside. And you should be very careful because you have to make sure you're fueling enough for that performance. But to lose weight, you have to be in a clorke deficit. You can be in a cloric deficit from just nutrition alone, from just exercise alone, but it's best to be in a chloric deficit with the combination of exercise and nutrition lifestyle choices.

But it's a tricky spot because. oftentimes people will ramp up training volume and intensity. They'll significantly and simultaneously decrease chloric intake. And they find themselves low energy, not able to perform, not able to get up in the morning. They have brain fog, fatigue. This is where you don't want to get to. Agree. Did you have any more comments on that?

This is complex. It is complex. It fuses. societal prejudices. It fuses unrealistic expectation when you look at a magazine on the rack at the grocery store checkout line, right? I know that you're very sympathetic to this because of some experiences that you've had in your life. we talk about mental health when we start talking about these things. And so I agree with you, it's a very, very fine line. And we have to be very, very careful.

But there are some truths here. In order to lose weight, you've got to be burning more calories or your body has to be ramped up in a way where you're your plus minus ledger is such that you're in a chloric deficit. I mean, you don't, nobody, nobody eats 4,000 calories a day and burns 2,000 calories a day and loses weight. Can we agree on that? Yeah. Yeah. But here's what I would tell anybody. If you have a history of eating disorder, if you have a history of disordered eating, if you have a history of body dysmorphia, I would be very, very careful going into anything with the sole goal to lose weight. Here's what I would tell you.

Go into exercise, go into fitness with the goal to be the best that you can be. And things will naturally, you will naturally lean out if you're lifting weights doing resistance training, infusing that with aerobic exercise, your body's going to land at a really good spot. But I agree with you. The science is really good that having more muscle is going to net you better results than simply alone, just going out there and swimming a million laps, riding your bike a million miles, or going out and running a million miles. You're going to be better off if you fuse the two and you do resistance training.

two, three days a week. Let's get in there. Let's do some strength and some mobility training. Let's get into the gym. Right. Get some, you know, and if you need some help with that, there are literally thousands of people who are actually qualified to help you at certain levels, right? And the more experienced you get, the more of an advanced strength coach you might need or more of an advanced strength program you might need. Right. Be careful when your goal is to look in the mirror. and want to see something that you saw on a magazine or something that you saw on a starting line because that person on that starting line happened to win that race until you've decided I have to look like them to be good at this. Well, that might not necessarily be true.

You might not also know the quiet hell that that person is living in because they're, okay, hanging on for dear life and running okay right now, but they might have an eating disorder. They might have a DSM-5 diagnosis of anorexia nervosa. They might be bulimic. You don't know the walk that somebody's walking. You don't know the life that that person is leading to look the way you think you want to look. Be kind to yourself. Engage in healthy habits.

Have responsible coaches, responsible mentors, and get advice from responsible science and evidence-based sources so that you can be as fit as you can be, your body will lean out. Listen, you are not going to go and sit there from eating hot Cheetos and licking your fingers and watching, I love Lucy reruns and sitting on your couch all day.

You are not going to go from that and not change the way your body looks. And more importantly, I would say, the way you feel in your body, if you just get up off your couch, go get some running shoes, go down to the gym, do some lightweight work,

going job three or four days a week. I guarantee you, you're going to look better and you're going to feel a lot better than you were when you watch. And I love Lucy reruns and licking your orange fingers and not moving a finger for years on end. Oh yeah, you're going to look better and you're going to feel better. Yeah. That's my speech. I think sometimes what happens with newer runners, especially if they had a background in some sort of exercise. Uh-huh.

I can use myself as an example. I lifted weights seriously. I did bodybuilding style training, strength training for about 10 years before I started seriously running. And then when I started running, I had this false assumption that running just burned exponential amount of calories. It burns a lot of calories, but I used to overestimate. I remember my first 10-mile run ever. It was downtown Austin. I finished that 10-mile run

and I told myself, dude, you earned yourself whatever you wanted it. You probably burn like 12,000 calories. And that was a reality. I remember I went to Whole Foods afterwards. I got a smoothie. I went to the hot bar. I got myself dessert.

So I find with a lot of new runners, they overestimate how much they're actually burning in some of these runs. and for one, their appetite is stimulated. I know on days where I run versus days where I don't run, my appetite is much more ravenous on days where I run than when I don't. So you start running, your appetite increases, you think you're burning more calories than you actually are,

you increase your caloric intake significantly in a greater margin than what you're actually burning. Yeah. So I often hear from new runners, dude, I actually started gaining some weight. What's going on? Well, you might be over-consuming based off of your improper

estimate of how much you're actually spending in this exercise. Your appetite is now stimulated. You're eating more and more often. So you still have to be conscious of, you know, what you're consuming, how much. But just because you start running, doesn't mean you have this, like, this fire within your belly that just burned anything you'd give it.

And what's wild is you can actually gain two or three pounds and actually be exponentially fitter than you were when you were two pounds lighter. For sure. And completely almost sedentary. It might be muscle. It might be muscle. Oh, 100%. I mean, we know that muscle weighs more than fat.

I mean, let's just call it what it is. So let's get in there and let's lift some weights. Let's go run. But you know, people say, well, you know, the calorie counter and all this, I say, listen, man, we can get into all the nuance and all this. The reality is, is, I mean, I think the round number you can land on is about 100, about 100 calories a mile. I mean, that's sort of a round number being for some people who might be 105 for some other people that might be 90. But that's probably about right, right? but, you know, there's some new science and there's some new discussions about sort of within either a week or a few days' time of sort of periodizing your carbohydrate intake, right?

Your carbohydrate needs for fast burning fuel because your bodies, when you're running hard, need instant energy, they go straight to carbohydrate, right? you're going to need more carbohydrates, okay, before a hard tempo run, an intense long run, or a hard interval session, then you are to just go out and just do an easy five, six, eight mile run where the intense instant need for energy isn't there because you're running easier and your body can rely a little bit more on fat stores, right, for energy in that. So there have been some discussions. as a coach, I can tell you that I'm really, really careful, if not, training toward reluctant to have these conversations with a whole lot of people who may have an ambivalent relationship with food,

who may have a disordered relationship with food to start talking to them about how, well, you can get away with eating less bread, less sweet rolls, less rice, less potato, things like that on your easy days, and you really only need to eat it off on your hard days. Listen, it's nuanced. And I understand that, you know, guys like Josh Kerr, who just broke the world record a couple of weeks ago in the mile, listen, that's very advanced.

He's got multiple team physicians, physios, he's got therapists and chiropractors and massage therapists. I mean, he's got a whole team that are looking at everything because this guy is trying to figure out how to take the world record, which he did from, you know, three, 343.1 to 342.6. That's five-tenths of a second. We refer to that is obliterating, shattering the world record. Listen, when it's that nuanced and you're needing to be so exacting in every way, we can start talking about periodizing your carbohydrate intake and

all that. Listen, just like we were talking about for your beginning runner, let's not overcomplicate this. Carbohydrates or fuel, generally speaking, we can get into the scientific nuances of it, But generally speaking, protein is not fuel can be, but for the purpose of discussion, right? Eat enough carbs. Eat plenty of protein for muscle repair, right? And in building muscle, eat creatine's great. Go lift, go run. Your body will generally settle out in a spot where you're going to look good, you're going to feel good,

and you're going to perform really, really good. Yeah. Yeah. So last question I have. What are or is some of the best practices to avoid injuries for new runners? I mean, I myself, when I first started running, I experienced every injury under the sun. Knees, hips, ankles, planar fasciitis, tendonitis, shin splints. I got hit with all of it.

The longer I ran, I mean, like not distance-wise, but like over time, years and years and years, less injuries, less injuries, less injuries. Now, it's been years since I've had any injury. And part of that is, one, my body adapting to the volume over time,

but also, if you look at the videos of me running from 2017 until today, my biomechanics have just gotten so much more efficient. So my body has adapted to becoming a runner to run longer, more frequently, more often. So what are your some of your best practices to avoid injuries for these new runners? Love this question. One, be consistent. Be consistent.

When I say consistent, what I mean is, is let's run more. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, if that's what you're doing. And outside of the exigencies of life sort of intervening, you know, you got a bar mitzvah that you've got to be at, you have a christening that you got to be at, and you just can't get you running it. But absent that, be a creature of habit, be disciplined. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. We do really, really well with rhythm. That's why we do really well with going to bed, with,

the same 15 to 20 minute time frame every night. That's why we do really well waking up within the same 15 to 20 minute time frame. That's the reason why we call it jet lag. We have circadian rhythms and we get thrown off. Our bodies do not respond well to lack of rhythm. Our bodies respond really, really well to disciplined rhythm. So that's the first thing. Stay in rhythm.

Two, do not let your bodies fall into disuse by, letting apathy, letting, um, uh, a sort of disdain, letting boredom creep in, and where you have eight weeks, 10 weeks, 13 weeks at a time every year where you literally, basically don't do anything. Your chances of injury, um, um, shin splints, Achilles tendon problems, um, Patelor tendonitis, IT band syndrome. Um, those are the things I see a lot. Okay. And a lot of that is because of the, loss of rhythm and allow loss of consistency. Be consistently doing something 50, 52 weeks a year. You're going to reduce your risk of injury because you're going to be creating reproducible

and recognizable micro trauma and stimulus where your body's going to go, I recognize this. I'm used to this. This feels good. We're good. Okay. Two. One of my great friends, she coached Olympians and many, many, many NCAA champions at the University of Colorado said, listen, my rules is don't ever try to precipitously spike more than one thing at a time. In other words, you're going to increase volume. You're going to increase intensity, meaning how hard you're running or how hard you're lifting, right? You're going to increase the number of days. In other words, your density, in words, how close together your hard efforts are or how close

together just your runs are. If you're a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday guy, don't suddenly go from four days a week to seven days a week of running. That's a recipe for getting injured. Maybe add in one tiny, tiny little lift or tiny, tiny little running session. Add in a fifth day. After you've done the same thing, maybe for three, four months straight, four days, let's add in a fifth day. Well, let's make it a little wee, bitty little baby day and then turn that baby day into a robust day like the other four. Do five robust days. Do that for a month or two. Then consider a sixth baby session.

Don't spike any two things at the same time. Your intensity and your volume and in words, how hard you're doing it and how much of it you're doing, that's a recipe for getting injured as well. The other thing, we love to say things like burning the midnight oil, your university professors. You know, when you remember you were in college, the kids that are making the A's of the,

the ones that are staying up all night studying. Don't do that. We've glorified wrecking ourselves. We've glorified never embracing rest and recovery because we associate with slovenly behavior. We associated with lack of motivation and laziness. No, I mean, listen, there's a reason why our five-year-olds and four-year-olds have to take a nap at school. And there's a reason why once you're 15 or 16, you don't. Because the five- or six-year-olds need more rest.

They need more recovery because we know that their neurologic systems are not developed enough for them to be able to just be turned on all the time. Well, as adults were the same way. That's why we take vacations. That's why we love to be able to sleep. Think about it. If we didn't need rest, we'd just be awake 24 hours a day for 50 years straight, right? Even in our exercise, take days off. When you're running easy, really run easy.

The people who run a little bit harder than easy on a day-to-day basis, they're the ones that end up with Achilles tendonitis. They end up with planet fasciitis, right? So don't spike your volume too much. Don't spike your intensity too much. Invest in value and embrace recovery and rest. Even if in other parts of our culture, corporate culture, don't get me started on that in this country where, you know, I mean, listen, corporations really, really, and BPN does a great job

really valuing your employees freedom to go on vacation, have some downtime, have some alone time on all that's other stuff. So value your rest, value your recovery, don't spike your intensity, don't spike your volume all at one time, okay? And just be patient, you know, just be patient. But we're, I always like to say it, we're, you know, we're engaging in, you know, if you're lifting, if you're a bodybuilder, or if you're a high rock athlete, if you're a distance runner, those are all turkey baking endeavors. And what, unfortunately, we're sort of in a microwave dinner world, right? We have self-induced ADD where it's just go, go, go, go, go, go, listen, if you go, go, go, go, go, all of a sudden, your body's going to go, no go, no go. and that ain't fun. Well, Jeff, this is extremely helpful for...

I hope so. I talked a lot. For people just getting started. These are some of the commonly asked questions I get. A lot of these questions were guided by a pool and survey I put up on my Instagram. Really? Asking people, you know, what do you struggle with as a new runner, someone aspiring to be a runner that's just getting started

and what questions do you have? And this is some of those. So I appreciate your wisdom, your experience, your coaching for myself, and all the people watching and listening. So it's always a pleasure. I appreciate you, brother. Thank you. My pleasure. It was a lot of fun. Can't wait to do it again. Love it. Thank you so much.