SECRETS From The Lost Tribe of Barefoot Runners: Christopher McDougall & Eric Orton

oh that hurts a lot oh oh my God back in 2011 just before the start of this podcast a hugely influential book was released that greatly inspired me both as a writer and as an athlete and made the entire Running World seem to stop and pay attention that book of course was called Born to Run at the time I wrote Born to Run the running bookshelf was pretty thin it was ultra marathon man which was a great adventure and then a bunch of stuff about how not to get chafed over a decade later I finally had the honor and the privilege to sit down with the author of that Mega bestseller Christopher McDougall as well as the co-author of its sequel Eric Orton Yes you heard me right Born to Run 2 is here I think too many of us start to stray into the world of exercise as punishments as a test of our inner worth but exercise is a sense of like joyfulness of creativity of artistry along with race ready recipes and shoe recommendations Born to Run 2 focuses on training regimens to help get you in shape corrective drills to perfect your form as well as tons of great advice on how to add more joy to your running and how to find a local running Community I think people misunderstand that focusing on form is tedious to me it's really joyful don't view starting running as a workout create the joy first and everything else they follow in addition to being the Born to Run 2 co-author Eric is also Christopher's running coach and before he left the podcast Studio Eric actually ran knee through a handful of drills and PT positions to help me work through my chronic back pain and I have to say it helped me tremendously in any event it is now my great pleasure to present you with this conversation between me Christopher McDougall and Eric Orton well welcome gentlemen I'm so excited to talk to both of you today this is a real treat for me personally and I think it's going to be for the audience and my intention going into this is twofold on the one hand obviously we have Christopher McDougall here I want to hear all his amazing stories from his journeys emanating from Born to Run a book that you know we all fell in love with several years ago and then also to have it be kind of part tutorial practical tools for running and lifelong pain-free Fitness with you Eric so I think together we're going to create a really cool unique experience and to kick it off I mean I just have to say you know Christopher like I just I I you know my heart is bursting wide open just to meet you like your book and the work that you've done has been such a huge influence on me both as an athlete and and as a writer so this is long overdue I know we've been trying to make this happen for a long time so I'm just super excited to meet both of you you guys and be able to do this that is really super heartwarming thank you thank you I remember when born to one born came out it came out in March of 2011 right originally 2009 2009. actually rich can I even interrupt yourself we brought you a little gift this is a hand woven thought romater running bracelet oh wow and uh Eric and I are both wearing them brought you one just because you know it's a little ritual that that do before they do like a multi-day event we're on the same team we're gonna you know it's like if you feel pretty you run pretty yeah so I just want to get all right man thanks buddy I appreciate that they're sliding it on right now right this was this made by yeah yeah that's right unclear on how to exactly pronounce that we have a friend who has a contact in one of the villages and will you know buy these hand bracelets and we sort of like to have them I had one experience running with uh with a Tata motto I did a running event for runners World magazine in Mexico City several years ago and one of the guys came up and I was able it was at a track like at a university but I was able to kind of run right behind tuck in right behind him and run behind him on on a track and I've never seen anything like it that's smart the the uh it's one thing to talk about their form and how free they are when they're running but to actually experience that close up and to really see how effortless it is and how joyful it is I mean this guy looked like he was walking and he's running I don't know seven minute pace or something like that and it just looked so smooth and easy and and fun it was really remarkable it really stayed with we'll give you the idea to tuck in rather than run next to him and try it well I was I was like I need to I want to learn if I can get in lockstep with him and I know Eric this is you know a lot of a lot of your tools and your drills are kind of similar in that regard I mean it was just instinctual I think at that moment but most people don't do that and it was an education to me the first time someone said get in the right type behind me I always thought you were next to somebody right did with you initially right get as close behind you know I don't know if I was that close to him but right you know I was trying to kind of track him and uh it was a really cool experience and you know I remember when I was wrapping my head around like uh the experience that we're gonna have today I was recalling attending a book event it must have been Born to Run had been out a little bit so maybe it was 2010 it was a book soup in West Hollywood and you weren't there I Was Born to Run event but Scott was scotchuric was kind of hosting it and he was telling stories from the book and from his you know career and experience and I just remember uh it was my first time meeting Scott in person and we were both like in the midst of writing our own books at the same time and I'm just coveting this like massive uh you know sort of imposter syndrome right because I had this opportunity to write this book here's Scott he's the the greatest Ultra runner ever also vegan I'm like well you know why is anyone going to read my book and then I'm reading Born to Run and I'm hearing these stories and I'm like what am I even doing right I should remember and I also remember um Peter sarsgaard was there and I was actually because I see there that were you I was do you remember this I don't think I met you I don't remember meeting you yeah we had done a run earlier in the day up in uh Griffith Park and then had that event afterwards but because Peter and Scott was there I was trying to give them all the mic time and I kind of had a feeling oh you know what I think we've all heard enough talking so I think I came on and said thanks everybody and that was like almost the only thing that is I mean it's a vague memory right my recollection is that Peter was there because at that time there was an effort to turn the book into a movie and Jake Gyllenhaal was involved I know he showed up at Leadville and there was a lot of energy around that and then like what my first thing is like what happened yeah it all fell apart or what what transpired that's an episode in itself right well it's kind of cool so let's look at the Rosier glass half full part which was it was a really fun experience what happened was Peter was on the set of Green Lantern and he had almost like massive prosthetic makeup they were putting on it was like a four-hour process so he was reading Born to Run someone like slapped into his hands when he's in the makeup chair he's reading this book and then at one point he said I got out of the chair and called my manager and said I really want to be involved in this film at that point producers had it but they didn't have a director or screen reader they had a screener but not directed so Peter calls up and he said I would love to direct this film I'm an aspiring kind of baby Runner myself so Peter got involved and I first got wind to this when I got a phone call at home from one of the producers one of The Producers saying hey we know that Leadville races in a couple weeks would you be interested in going and camping out there with Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter sarsgaard and I'm like yeah I could probably clear out my schedule to go camping with Jake Jones and so then Eric and I plays on out there but these guys were going to like you know bushwhack and be up on the mountain in like a pup tent and I'm like you know dude I did enough of that stuff no thanks so we run we rented uh cabins down by uh Twin Lakes these little rustic cabins and the first night these guys arrived like a freaking Monsoon blew in and the next day we got a little knock on the doors Peter and Jake like drenched to the Bone like hey uh can we come in and dry off yeah so that to me was a lifelong memory was Jake Gyllenhaal occupying my little bathroom taking a hot shower and coming out I just remember the aroma like oh you know like Aroma of Jake is really good like whatever product he uses like eucalyptusy uh so we spent a nice weekend there uh Jake is a fantastic athlete and a fun dude a good guy to hang out with Peter likewise and um but what happened basically to cut to the end of it was that it became so mired in what the story was and this was a particular challenge for me writing the book I wrote an entire draft we can get into some writerliness yeah her entire draft of the book and turned it in and my editor called me a week later and he goes yeah um you should think about starting over they literally trash a hundred thousand words and I knew he was right um It's A Hard story to tell because there's a lot of chainsaws juggling at the same time and I think what happened with that uh sarsgard Gyllenhaal attempt was they just got stuck in the quicksand of what story is it and they just kind of churn in the mud for years trying to get a screenplay together and it didn't work never never panned out yeah to me I mean on on on the surface it appears to be a very difficult book to translate into a you know cinematic narrative but my sense was always that the story lies with caballo blanco like it's Mike a true story so you have to show you have to like go on that journey through his point of view not yours and the stuff that that you know you talk about in the book can come in but the arc really is Micah and if you tell that story then you can with tangents tell talk about all the other things that was that was the direction of it but it wasn't unfortunately uh but that was the Revelation that I had was you know I first tried to write the story I come from a magazine writing background which is like you got to smack people in the face quick get their attention and keep their attention and so to me the most dramatic moment in the story is when you get these two hard partying Surfers and suddenly they're lost in the Gila in the Chihuahua Back Country and this could be it for them so I kept trying to open the book with Jen and Billy going off on Iran and then Vanishing but there's way too much backstory to be folded in and then after turning in a draft with that starting point and my editor said you know once you shred it and start over I had to take the step back and I realized the same thing this is caballo's story the beginning middle and end is all Micah and the story has got to track him and that's when I understood like how to tell the story yeah and the conclusion to the Micah true AKA Cabello Blanco story had yet to be fully written when the book came out it has since been written and there's something interesting about where we are right now we're in Agora Hills right so can you talk a little bit about how that chapter finally concluded after the book yeah it's funny because Eric and I were talking about this in a way over it might have been like 10 years almost almost within a few months 10 years to the moment of where we are now when this all happened wow I was here and it's eerily familiar to me because I was here at the Agora Hills Library uh they had asked me to come in to do a book event and at the time I was researching my my next book Natural Born Heroes and through a very tenuous series of connections I had arranged to have a breakfast with Rick Rubin you know Ace music producer Rick Rubin for that research on that book and all this is happening I'm flying in I'm trying to arrange this breakfast with Rick Rubin and my phone dies on the way here and I arrive at the library and get out of the car and there's someone very anxious looking at the door and sees me and just starts bustling over to me very concerned and they get up to me and they go thank God you're here I go I think I'm on time right no it's not that Maria is trying to reach you I don't think I know any Maria's and he hands me the phone and I return the call to whoever it is it's Maria and it turns out it was kamaya's girlfriend Maria Walton and she's oh thank God I reached you Mike is missing and like well that's kind of what the dude does you know he was always missing and maybe just explain a little bit about who this guy is if you know for the people who have not read more in Iran it's a kind of contextualize it a little bit so Micah true has always lived in my mind as sort of half man half ghost there's a guy that is always there but not there when I first heard about him I was in Mexico City on the sign of the New York Times magazine I was supposed to be tracking down known associates of a woman in Gloria Trevi who's a hugely famous Mexican pop singer and she was accused of secretly running this brainwashing sex cult and then going on the lamb so you think a story like that is gonna occupy your attention but when I traveled from Mexico City into Chihuahua I kept noticing these pictures of people in a running posture wearing like dresses and sandals and in my hotel there was a little magazine and they explained that this group were the taromada and they could run hundreds of miles in the fitness of sandals and they're doing it deep in the old age at the time I was a discouraged had long given up on running I was a big dude like 260 pounds and had been told by doctors that running is bad for every human body particularly bodies like yours and so I'm looking at this magazine and I'm thinking to myself there's no way this crap is true you know there's nobody running a hundred miles I'd never heard of an ultra marathon you know the marathon was the ultimate Challenge right Philippines died they're saying this guy ran four marathons in flip-flops in a dress and he's 72 years old like no way but I kept seeing these images on the license plates you go into a little taco shop and there's a picture on the wall so I started to ask around and they say oh those are the taramada and they're down in the Copper Canyon and they they're hard to find but they're amazing runners so I think well this is cool I can double dip on my assignments as a freelancer I'll just get a story for runners world out of this in and out a couple interviews you know double pay find a guy takes me down to the Copper Canyon we actually after a week of searching locate a taramara village and discover that the way you remain a reclusive tribe is like not talking to strangers but they did tell me about a guy a guy they called caballo blanco the White Horse they said you should go talk to that guy and 50 of my mind is like great and the other 50 is like they're just trying to get me out of town so when I finally uh tracked this guy down Micah true it was just like they had described he was a big tall dude who had come down to the Copper Canyons from Netherlands Colorado in search of the same thing I was looking for but when he found that he never left he'd been down there from his 15 years at that point running with the turtle Mata and sort of mimicking not just their running but their lifestyle like he felt that he had discovered something very powerful and life-changing and at the point where he never wanted to leave and he was running upwards of 170 miles a week or something like that right just like unbelievable mileage here's the thing about it so Louis Escobar our friend who came down with us later he would say that cabayo's range was unlimited and that's what really stuck in my brain was it wasn't like he was doing X number of miles per day is that the world was his playground whatever he felt like doing he had the range to go do it wow so this guy becomes the central figure the protagonist in in Born to Run and all the stories are kind of through his lived experience and what can be gleaned about the nature of running the human body Etc and all the stuff that you talk about with minimalism um but true to his word Micah true right he's living this very off-the-grid lifestyle for a very long period of time and um in the wake of the book coming out at some point goes missing when you're out here in Agora Hills so one of to me one of the happiest accomplishments of the book Born to Run is that cabio got a girlfriend and he got a killer girl from Maria Walton right now dude she's a dream just loving tough smart and like everything he needed like yeah he got a email out of the blue from some woman Say Hey I want to train for a race I like the book and he's like he gave her some kind of a Kurt rude response and she was not to be dissuaded and uh they became you know uh they became boyfriend and girlfriend so she was the one who reached out to me and said hey he's missing and I'm like yeah well you know what do you expect yeah but then she said something that really caught my attention she said uh he left wadahuco tied up and overnight is like wolf dog his wolf dog is the only way to describe wada huko and that really caught my eye because this I was in Boulder once and kabaya was back in the States and he shows up at this like furry Tony Boutique Brew Pub and he walks in with this freaking wolf on a chain and it's in a cast because this dog had never been out of the copper can he literally had like adopted a feral creature and made it you know his partner and she shows up in Boulder and the first day this dog like walks in front of a bus and gets hit and so there's a cast on its leg and so goodbye was like carrying this thing around brings it to our table and this dog is like snapping at people's food at other tables and kabaya was just like no problem but uh so he was in Inseparable from wadahuco he would never ever leave that dog tied up and so Maria tells me this I'm like again walking into an event a speaking event there's an audience there and I got this phone call my phone's dead and I said well wow okay um have you talked on Lewis Lewis Escobar and Lewis is a character under himself because he's the one guy I wish there was more of and Born to Run but there's just so many big personalities Lewis almost got a little bit sidelined but he he's kind of like he's the uncle you know he is the steady Uncle that's life at a party but at the same time in a pinch you're in jail you call Uncle Lou so I said Maria have you called uh Lewis and she said oh yeah he's on his way so then I bought a guy's phone call Louis and Louis is typical driving out of Santa Barbara he's texting people driving with his knees and he's on his way down to the Hilo Wilderness uh in New Mexico where kabaya was last seen so I sorry dude I got this talk I'll be done I'll drop off my rental pick me up at LAX and that's what happened right so you go down there and the ultra running Community kind of turns up for this man hunt right Scott jurich shows up I think Timmy Olsen show up as well a bunch of people Skaggs Brothers turned up except for one notable character Barefoot Ted because he had a different perspective on what might have been happening so we're so Lewis picks me up at LAX and uh I jump in his truck and he already had like two other people and we're bombing down the highway we swing over to pull up Pat Sweeney who jumps in a lot of people I'd never met but it was the kind of weird orbit that had developed around Micah which is it within a year or two of the book coming out suddenly people who were fellow Spirits had connected with him and loved him and so I'm like in his truck with like I know Lewis like who knows everybody else and they're racing to the rescue so we're bombing down the highway and oh yeah I think people are venmoing money to Lewis like I'll pay for your gas you guys gonna need Taco Bell so his phone's dang we had to shove him in the back seat because dude you cannot be driving anymore and um on the way I get a message from Ted which is the the most infuriating but loving thing about Ted which is he says stuff that just makes you want to just rip his head off but in the in retrospect it's true so he can send the message like he's an acquired taste is exactly right I feel like the closer I get to Ted the more anxious I get and the further away I get the more I love him so there's like a magnetic polarization uh-huh and so he sent me this message like he's like why are you going down there he predicted this and he said that someday man I'm just gonna walk off into the Wilderness like Geronimo and lie down and that will be my end I'm like Ted and you know we're trying to help this dude like why are you saying he's dead but that was it Ted I think if Ted tentative super loving guy yeah there's never a no that comes out of his mouth much as he drives me crazy you ask Ted a favor he'll double it but in this instance he's like no it's over which was infuriating but yeah he was right so you know eventually the body is found wasn't he sort of at a creek bed with his his feet or his legs in the water and it was unclear like they did an autopsy there's a lot of uncertainty about how and why he died um the conventional isn't the conventional wisdom that it was some kind of fidipides cardio myopathy but you have a different view on that don't you so it was a weird scene we get down there it's Sun up search and rescue is super well equipped to deal with this they know the Gila and then Lewis Escobar gets right up in the face of the head Searcher and he goes uh he knows something you got some of the greatest Ultra runners in the world standing in front of you you should cut them loose and this got his credit because this could have turned into a disaster something you have 15 people missing and he's like okay quadranting off you know go to town and then just launched you know Kyle Skaggs Scott George everyone just pouring off in every direction to run through the mountains and what's weird is to a scientific fact they knew he had to be north of the age of the Park Station because his night has been seen running right up the highway that the times figured out he had to be north of there so for three days we're searching this every crevice like not a sign of the guy and a couple guys who had known Micah for a long time ago well if he absolutely has me North he's South and they just turn around with the opposite direction and then very quickly they found him yeah his his corpse Lying by the side of a creek and in some eerily irritatingly Barefoot Ted way it was the most beautiful final resting spot you can imagine so they did an autopsy they thought it was cardiomyopathy but other endurance athletes with Science Background said every endurance athlete has got an oversized Heart Like that's nothing they just haven't dissected enough endurance athletes their estimate which seems to me the one that has the most fruit is that he had a parasitic Invader in his body because he he'd had these fainting spells on occasion where he'd just drop over and uh he contacted he thought he had Wes Nile for a while for about three months he was just flat on his back and this was not too much prior to the incident yeah and so I had to believe that he would have had an undiagnosed you know sort of a tropical parasite that was probably you know car in the way it is um at his heart Mythic figure who lived you know the way he wanted to live and you know died in a in a in a manner befitting you know who he was you know it's kind of an incredible story yeah yeah I hate to mythologize it too much but you know he talked about this old west figure that just want to head out into the hindrance and carve his own little lifestyle and to find like-minded Souls among the taramada oh yeah he was he was at home yeah how do you think about balancing you know that kind of fidelity to principle with like being you know somebody who lives in the world and you know has a family Etc like there's so much to be learned from that type of Courage but also you know you have a different mission right so how do you like wed those two things to try to you know create the life uh that on some level you know takes the best of what he had to teach us you know it's a fundamental question that I've asked myself a lot because not only do I ask you how he lived this way but when I look back on that whole adventure of Born to Run I'm like what's everybody doing here like why is Scott York here of all places why isn't the bottom of a canyon with some race by some dude who he doesn't even know why are Jen and Billy here why is Eric Horton here Eric has a very successful coaching business in Jackson Hole why isn't El Paso getting on a Greyhound bus and over time I realized that I think all those people involved in that Adventure we're looking for the same thing they're trying to find a way where they can turn the thing they love into a lifestyle not just Recreation not just the 45 minutes you carve out you know when you're on the treadmill in the afternoon and I think the answer in the end comes down to that this idea of I think too many of us start to stray into the world of exercise as punishments as a test of our inner worth and I think every person down there and you can look at Scott is a very particular example is exercise is a sense of like joyfulness of creativity of artistry and Artistry can take any kind of form but if you believe that your abilities to create not just to destroy not to beat somebody else beat yourself up beat down your body but to really create and and relish then you start to get on the cabayo path that's really the secret sauce of Born to Run success right I've heard you talk about this quite a bit like when people ask you like why did this book break out and become such a massive hit like in retrospect looking back this idea being that running it wasn't a narrative about running as uh you know a suffering vehicle for personal growth which is kind of like what my book's about right but it was about finding the joy in the community right that that this should be a joyous expansive experience that's that's fun and it's your journey journey towards discovering that for yourself oh but I would I would counter I would I would rebut your point because you were on a path to a lot of unhappiness and pain and destruction and you found something that sort of hurt glow yeah um but I'm curious so your writing process uh what was that like for you so it was a long period the sort of Dark Knights of the Soul like am I ever going to finish this you're trying to flip it on me right well it tells you a little bit but this is about you but yeah I mean it was look it was my first book and I don't have a you know a history or a career of being a journalist so it was definitely yeah a lot of you know Dark Knights of the soul and panicking and like I said imposter syndrome and the like like I just was delighted that I had a book deal I couldn't even believe that like somebody was like really so you know I was determined to you know write the most uh you know authentic version of this story that I possibly could because as I mentioned earlier and I've said this before I knew Scott was writing a book and I was like well my book can't be anything like that and it shouldn't be anything like that like what do I have that's unique to me that could be helpful to other people and I realized that the value of what I had to say was going to be deeply wet to the extent to which I was willing to be honest and vulnerable about like my own pain and my own foibles and failures because that would be the emotional like connective tissue that could hopefully speak to a broader audience Beyond just like the running Community right like I I my goal was to write a book that wouldn't just live within running circles but connect and speak to you know a broader audience of people which you did so beautifully and successfully um you know mine wasn't nearly as successful as yours but you know I'm proud of what I was able to do you're doing okay Rich yeah well this is a different thing here but anyway um that was it that was it you were writing a book about athletes for people who may not be athletes and that was my total orientation for Born to Run was like the sports movies I love the most are sports I don't give a crap about you know like Bulldog yeah right uh Tin Cup I don't think I've ever hit a golf ball I will die a happy man if I never do hit a golf ball but I will watch the crap out of 10 cup mm-hmm bulldorem I don't play baseball don't watch baseball love the movie and that was my thoughts like if I can take this activity everybody thinks it's one thing and if I can show them another side of it and I think you had the same orientation like if I could take my story and just not really about hammering my butt in triathlons but it's really about letting yourself explore and discover and I think the other there's a freedom which I think we probably both had which is you're not quite sure if anyone's ever going to read this yeah and at the time I wrote Born to Run the running bookshelf was pretty thin it was ultra marathon man which was a great adventure and then a bunch of stuff about how not to get chafed right like shorts really practical type books and regurgitating this stuff for murakami you know although I'll tell you that was right around I'm not sure if that was before or after born and runs almost at the same time yeah but even then I was willing to say I'm in a different category I'm a different age group because you know he's a super successful novelist and I'm some jiboney magazine writer so but I think that was it that you and I had um a common experience of feeling like we could say what we wanted and to be as uh open and exposed because there's a good chance no one's going to read this yeah Eric I promise we're going to get no you're fine you're fine um go ahead what I you can see I'm a lucky man I've been uh two and a half weeks with this guy hearing all these stories yeah well he's a very skilled Storyteller so you know we're good you could buy you a spirit animal for Eric was El Gavilan the hawk yeah it's hovering above watching yeah and then dropping the talons yeah um two observations on what you just said the first being uh that you know on this on this kind of um spectrum of suffering to Joy in terms of our relationship to Fitness and running in particular you know my I I would still submit that like my book was about like how suffering can be a tool and a teacher for personal expansion and growth but I also think it's a it's an unsustainable fuel source like now you know we're about the same age maybe almost exactly the same age like now my relationship to it is so much different like the joy finding the joy and doing it for the joy as opposed to a performance goal or you know some kind of self-flagellation is much more appealing exciting and ultimately more expansive right and that's what you know we're going to get into the the new book but that's a huge message of of this new book like Born to Run being kind of the the why and Born to Run 2 being the how isn't it funny that fun is like a dirty word in Endurance Sports fun I enjoyed it I had a good time like no dude you're not serious man it's got to be you know run yourself into the ER or you didn't leave it all on the table and to me like that's the Gap in our human evolution as athletes we start off that way as kids and it's it's been funny we've been we were at a group run in Chinatown New York run for Chinatown and as we were talking to Leland you as he's describing his own uh immersion to running these little kids are just ripping around back and forth in the playground I feel like why are we talking to you dude we should be talking to these kids because what they figured out is it but what happens is we sort of take kids when you sort of pin them up in their desks and over the time by the time you're ready to get back out and move again You've Lost That Fun component but it's again ancestry it's so important um yeah um Born to Run was not an instant New York Times bestseller I think that would surprise a lot of people oh yeah like it's kind of amazing the Grassroots work heavy lifting and campaign that you devoted yourself to to get this book out there and the difference between kind of how people perceive that book Now versus what you were actually doing when it came out I still don't know nobody know what happened I don't know when the electricity started to spread but the book came out in May of 2009 and the first I kick off events that my publisher had arranged for me was to have a talk in a running shoe store in New York this is a book which says that running shoes are the the cause of all evil in the no world and they put me into a running shoe store and there's about three people there and sort of talk to them and don't know what I'm doing they left and that was the end of that event and did a couple others go to a bookstore talk to four or five basically friends that was it so after a week book tour is over book is not reviewed at all uh Runners no reviews at all to this day Runner's World has never written an article about born and run get out will not touch it because it's too offensive to its Advertiser base I don't know I don't know I can take guesses but you know I think it's so I mean four million how many how many copies of this book have you sold four million copies yeah in that range so early on it's May 2009 this book is going out like a flickering candle and I'm thinking I'm not I'm not done yet you know I got more to do and I'm thinking to myself you know every day there are people getting together to run I just got to go to where they are rather than telling them to come to me so I was living in Lancaster Pennsylvania so I went to my local bookstore said hey can I buy 100 copies of books from you and I bought them cash out of my pocket and then I'd resell them so if there was a 5K race I'd Rock up open the back of the truck have a box of books there and say guys give me two seconds before you run got this book May really dig it um there's a handsome guy on the cover Millie Barnett and that kind of stuff and you know at a raised people I've got other things on their mind than buying a thing that they now have to carry around but bit by bit it started to gather and then I would start to show up at races and people had already heard about the book and we're kind of curious about getting a copy they'd only have one or two copies in a Barnes and Noble at a time so they're they're selling out fast and I would show up with 30 books in my truck and that was it May June July just kind of you know hucking and hucking it and then out of the blue I get a phone call it was August I remember this because I was supposed to go back to Portugal I used to work as a foreign correspondent visit friends for a birthday and I got a call say hey um John Stewart would like to have you on The Daily Show like the week after next you got a little opening right before they go on hiatus they go you know it's actually not not a really good time can we reschedule it and they no no we can't uh-huh idiot and something all right fine I'll go in the Jon Stewart show and uh so his producer's husband was a big fan of the book Jon Stewart had a producer and producer's husband was a member of the Central Park Track Club and the husband was just like on his wife and John you got to get this book on whatever so I get unload the backstory of how it actually happened but then lo and behold like seven days later I'm walking onto The Daily Show and that's when you know right that was the big inflection point and then did you end up hitting the New York Times list after that it might have been on just before that I don't recall but that was to me the surprise when I when I snuck on to the best seller list there's the list and there's the extended list and all of a sudden whoa there's like the 15 and there's the extended list and they'll say hey Born to Run look at that it might have been just before that and then it just built from there and it continues to sell like if you go on Amazon it's always the number one book in the running category and probably in you know the broader Sports category as well crazy man you and me man back and forth right I'm way below you know it's like dude there's a huge gap there brother I don't think so that's all right you know yeah um I mean that's really inspiring to uh you know see the power that grass you know grass movements like that you know still hold to get a message out there that's worthy of being heard and you know the power of just sharing one to one to one like people just saying this is a great book check it out it's very cool but I'm sure a lot of people told you not to write a follow-up Born to Run two a sequel I think you compare it to Vin Diesel right yeah yeah yeah authors what are you doing fast and furious seven you know touch that so here's what happened here's an untold part of the story that you don't know Rich uh I was actually contracted to write another book I was writing a book called King of The Weekend Warriors and the idea was that there are extremely high performing endurance athletes out there that most people have never heard of because they don't care about podiums or anything and I got a buddy in New York he's got seven different Guinness World Records he gets intrigued by an idea for instance he wanted to be the person to do the fastest Traverse of the entire New York City subway system at the time he was working for a bank and he hacked into the Mainframe computer of the bank and started running the millions of computation to figure out the best Traverse of the New York City subway system it's an extremely complicated mathematical equation and he figured it out he came up with a plan and then he trained for it because it's a very real physical challenge you get a Sprint between stations and you got to map things out you got to go to one station down to another running in the tunnels or no you're on the streets but It's Tricky so you have to hit every single stop faster than anybody else and a number of people have done this over the years it's one of those like underground records where people like it because it's a mathematical like tri-level chess uh problem it also has a physical component so my buddy figures this out he has a plan and he goes off and does it and he breaks the world record he has the world record for the highest Ascent in 12 hours so the most vertical feat gained in 12 hours and the way he did it was he had his wife standing at the top of a skyscraper of a building that he had an office in and she held the elevator for 12 hours so he would run up the stairs rolling the elevator he hit down come off the elevator hit you know 75 whatever the top floor was he'd run up the stairs he'd do this for 12 hours up and down up and down his poor wife hold door hold the door but I was fascinated by this guy because I would say to him hey you know how about this you should jump into one of the backyard challenges he's like dude I would never do that and he could explain his logic that's you against other people right I'm against me Sam I want to write this book but I'll tell you why and this is going to come across as offensive to some people and I don't yes I do sort of mean it that way to me where I realized halfway through the book was I'm not writing a story for the right reasons I'm writing this to wave a finger at David Goggins and say dude you're wrong you know you should not end your race on floor in the emergency room you should end with a smile on your face and sense of achievement and I felt like I'm not writing I'm arguing and I just felt the wind coming out of my sails as I worked in this book I'm not telling a story for the joy sheer Joy of it I'm telling a story because I feel like I know something and I'm going to argue with this guy and just soured on me and I'm thinking to myself that's the wrong reason so what is the right reason at the time I get a lot of messages all the time from people asking me for training advice and I'm like you can do better but don't ask me you know I'm not that guy and then like that day I'm opening up my inbox and there's like 10 messages hey I've got planner fasciitis what should I do you know what shoes should I buy and it's just clicked the book you should be writing is the book that people have been asking for but I never felt I was in a position to do it I just didn't know enough and then I thought but I know someone who does we really need to take everything that was not inborn to run and putting the board in a run too sure I feel like most people wanna eat better they want to improve their diets absolutely have you heard of it I've heard of it this trips up so many people we thought hey we know a couple things about how to do this a few so we created this thing called the plant power meal planner that is this beautiful offering whereby you gain access to literally thousands of plant-based recipes that you can totally customize based upon your preferences your allergies your peccadillos it integrates with grocery delivery so all the ingredients that you need get shipped right to your door so you can make the stuff that you've pre-selected and we all could use a little inspiration and support when preparing meals for our families in our busy lives so we hope you join us no matter what your eating style is we have our arms open wide and we've saved saved you a space at our family table to join us in eating more healthy vibrant plant-based meals and if you're looking for the perfect holiday gift for a loved one right now for a limited time we're offering twenty dollars off meal planner gift cards through December 15th visit meals.ritroll.com to claim the offer again for twenty dollars off meal planner gift cards from now until December 15th visit meals Dot richroll.com [Laughter] so that that brings us up to you Eric um why don't we start at the at the beginning here like how did you first meet Christopher and what was the process of of getting him ready for that first 50k race that he wanted to run I mean the whole thing with Born to Run is about how you didn't see yourself as a runner you thought those days were in the past and um you know I'm a big guy and knees and Etc and all that kind of junk and you really rewired his thinking and created an approach that you know basically allowed this guy to Blossom and become you know an ambassador of of the sport in a in the broadest sense of the the word yeah so we first met in oh five he was doing a magazine article on my training in Jackson Hole and it was right when he came back from the Copper Canyon the first time and I'm like you just did what because I I moved to Colorado in 91 and it's right when the taramara who had raced Leadville 100 so they just came on my radar I'm like oh man this is this is this is legit and um and that was back when there was no internet you know the mythology of what they're doing was proliferated because you couldn't find any information about them so here I am like walking into meeting this guy who just spent time with them and we just kind of hit it off and so we were supposed to do a two-day kind of I was like the flavor of the month for this magazine article and it was like America's greatest workout or something something right crazy like that and so he we met day one I kind of went through what I had scripted and then it came really really obvious to me here's a guy who really really wants to run can't doesn't think he can been told he can't and I ripped up my script for day two and we went to work and and at that point of time I think you know how we kind of explore this is super important because I think a lot of people watching and listening see themselves in that way and I'm kind of going through something right now you know that has forced me to reframe like how I think about my my running and I'm curious to explore that with you as well but at that time were you would you consider yourself to be kind of a traditional running coach did your approach change as a result of your exposure to this new way or had you already kind of cottoned on to this more minimal naturalistic approach to training and lifestyle it's just been a lifelong you know I was an athlete growing up so I've always looked back and all these little points in my life that have really just accumulated so at that time when I met Chris um I I just kind of have a feel for what an athlete needs and it's it's a combination of research School knowledge my awareness of my own body my awareness of seeing athletes good and bad you know and sometimes seeing bad is really really helpful um and and then knowing the psyche of the athlete you know the what was most important with Chris and I was for me to see his desire to run and being so frustrated that he can't and knowing a lot more about Chris now is that that what that was the rebel in him he really wanted to run because everyone's told him he can um and so it's then just I mean in I I can't it's just a feeling of from a coach of what what an individual athlete needs right so in CR in the in the case of Chris though he comes to you and you have this Keen observational ability to kind of look at someone their posture how they walk Etc and immediately hone in and identify like oh here's what's up and here's what we need to work on so what is that process like so for Chris it was it was two things it was one just kind of dialing into the form you know and for me that that's that's an easy part um but it was also starting to see that really specifically what he was doing that was causing some of the trouble that he was encountering is that he he didn't have the ability to run easy you know we go out for our nice long conversational zone two run he really didn't have that ability so every time he went out it was kind of morphed into this moderate effort that was breaking him down his own effort exactly right so was that a fitness thing or was that like a heavy foot form technique it was both it was both um but it was it was I think precipitated by the form is that he he did not have the efficiency to run easy and that's what we really dove into and and I I think too the third part was most importantly in that visit that initial visit was me really giving him the confidence that there was a solution and I think you know that that's just my own according to give his own right just just the idea that there possibly could be a solution absolutely it is and was revelatory because there was this idea and you talk about it in foreign too like like don't teach people technique when it comes to running like everyone's an out of one and there is no right or wrong way and we all know how to run so you just go out and run and like don't mess around with that which is insane when you deconstruct that like you use the example of like the basketball player like you don't just throw the ball up in the air and hope for the best like you it's a skill just like anything else and there is a right way and a wrong way and so much about our you know modern Lifestyles and we can get into all of that drive us into situations where we're compelled to do it improperly and that leads to all of these you know injuries and persistent you know problems that sideline people unnecessarily when you you asked how I kind of developed all this is one of my personal experiences I was living at Colorado at the time and doing a ton of running doing a ton of bike racing and decided to go to Triathlon route and had no swim background so here I am I think the week before I'd won a bike race so fit and I decided to start swimming well I had to go like the last hour of the rec center hours that they were open and swim the width because I had a hard time getting just from one end to the other and I'm like this isn't a fitness thing this is an efficiency thing that can translate to any any activity yeah sure I mean that's that's like a reference I'm always banging this drum because I come from a swimming background and so I learned proper technique very early and you know being a triathlete and training with other triathletes who learn swimming later in life I just watch them fighting the water their technique is terrible but they're they're time crunched and their main concern is the fitness part of it right like I got to get this much distance in and this much time it doesn't matter I'll do the technique later and I'm like bro you should just forget about the whole thing and start at the beginning um so why wouldn't that apply to running it's the same thing yep yep yep and and I think you know I I tell a lot of beginning runners don't view starting running as a workout or as a form of Fitness or a way to lose weight create the joy first and everything else will follow and that goes into learning to be efficient and not thinking it has to be hard and that's that's kind of what we really dove into with Chris is that I worked kind of the real easy end but also he did a lot of Hill Sprints and a lot of other higher effort training to develop that efficiency and economy that was you know revelatory you know he was in a matter of a couple weeks doing so much more than he had ever done just be by changing things up yeah and and so Chris from your perspective what was that like hooking up with Eric I mean it'd be one thing like maybe when you first met him you're like oh well we'll do this one thing together but you guys have gone on this like lifetime adventure together so obviously like this guy's been Central to you know everything that you care about in this world you can see why just from that answer yeah it's so smart and so easy to appreciate and absorb but um yeah so I'm super grateful on a personal note because he gave me something that has changed everything um not from a career standpoint but just from a physical standpoint imagine being told you can't run believing it stopping it and then 15 years years later realized I can walk out the door and run as far as I want in any direction the whole thing we're talking about with cabio that that freedom that Joy I mean someone's giving you just an incalculable presence so you know I just owe you a ton right so so here we go we got Born to Run two and this really is it is the how it's like this manual that walks you through um these essentially like these seven principles these like pillars for lifelong athleticism that all conveniently start with the letter F right I don't know that we need to go Siri Adam through the whole thing but um you know uh you know let's like let's hone in on the on the on the form piece for a little bit I think with with Born to Run um it became a little bit reductive in the sense that everyone just thought it was about minimalism and barefoot running and that is a piece in there for sure right but that's really kind of evidence of a broader uh you know concept around form technique and and lifestyle so I don't that's not really a question but like maybe we can launch into how you guys are thinking about that I mean Born to Run huge huge and ushering in this minimalism sensibility with running and it's been interesting to kind of watch the pendulum swing both ways like it was all about Vibrams for a while and then I remember I I was helping to crew Dean carnaz is at bad waters you know some handful of years after that and every single person was wearing hokas with the giant marshmallow you know souls and I still have yet to see Elites um running in minimal Footwear for the most part I mean I'm sure there's exceptions and you guys probably know these guys but it's not like everyone's Towing the line in sandals at Leadville or anything oh but the elites do yeah no one's lined up for a marathon and a pair of Hocus you know they're wearing the most I mean the most more cushioned ones if you're running on Elite Marathon you had the thinnest those are it's a minimal shoe right well you have the Nike whatever it's called and all of that all the high temperature and stuff I'm sure you have lots of opinions about all that kind of stuff you know but you know it is weird like it had you know the the shoe the shoe company still Prevail for the most part like they've taken a note from the work that you've done but I don't know like what's your sense of where all that is right now Chris is more of a purist than from that standpoint from me as a coach and myself you know I live in Jackson Hole running the Tetons so for me my number one kind of decision making um process as far as shoe choice is what's going to give me the most protection that day based on where I'm running so I I need Rock protection so I'm trying to go as minimal as possible but still allow me to have that protection I need to you know rocks hurt and um and based on the performance that I want that day so but one step back is that I think the further we get away from the ground in a shoe the more we are getting away from allowing our feet to work in a natural environment and I think what people really need to understand is that how we use our feet really dictate how we stabilize you know our first line of defense as Runners is with our big toe and our Arch that's our stabilizer and that really dictates how well we use our glutes so how we use our feet directly relate to how we've kind of hear the important stability strength we need to be healthy strong performance or longevity-based Runners and that comes to our feet so pick and chew you know I I use shoes as a tool sure yeah yeah yeah I mean I I think it you know there is this idea in the book like it's it's not that running Barefoot or bare you know minimal shoes are are this Panacea like you say you could you could just strap those on but if your form is terrible you're still going to get injured right like we have to even step further back um and really evaluate like how do you hold your body and what are the activities that you're you know annured to on a daily basis that are leading you astray and you have all of these cool like really simple you know drills to kind of get a meter on like where you're at like the The Rock Lobster thing you know that kind of stuff it's great it's amazing how to talk a little bit about that is it's crazy how well that works but here's here's my take on this rich is I come from a perspective of like I am the guy that's always like one cushion shoe away from backsliding we were at a great store in uh North Carolina relapse totally yeah well I would be very cautious about that word you know but we're in a running shoe store and I've always been curious to try the ultra Escalante racer it's actually the shoe we recommend in the book if you were transitioning if you're trying to get your form dialed in I've been very scrupulous to never even during the vegan five finger phase I never recommended a show so I'm just not authoritative enough to recommend a shoe I wear myself make your own choice I've been born to run two we recommend a shoe because we can't just be agnostic saying hey you should pick a shoe but it's up to you but I never actually tried them on myself uh I was arguing in favor of a more minimal shoe so I'm in this running shoe store and they bring out a pair of the ultra Escalante racer I put it on like minus too much shoe rip out the insole still too much shoe and Eric's like this is a super stripped down minimal shoe for everybody else but for me I always feel like man if it's too comfortable I'm gonna fall apart my form is going to go to hell and to me that's what it's all about if you learn any other craft if you're learning a martial art they're not like patting you up and stuff they are letting you learn how to move and you uh you match the craft over time and to me running should be no different and I can only really feel like I'm in control of form if I'm actually feeling what my feet are doing on the ground yeah are you guys familiar with Tony riddle you know this guy is British guy had him on the podcast yeah um he's he's uh he goes by the natural lifestylist on on Instagram he's got a pretty big following and you know he got rid of the chairs in his house like he Wilding running yeah I think yeah I mean I don't know how he's branded it or whatever yeah maybe he's yeah rewilding running right um he's done a couple Adventures he did this thing one man two feet Three Peaks and made a documentary about it where he did The Three Peaks challenge in the UK running on vivos like on the roads in between the Peaks but then scaling or yeah and then scaling the the Peaks which are very Rocky and rugged like Barry but yeah he came out here and we went on a run in Malibu Creek State Park and he went Barefoot and there's like there's so many loose little you know I I put on vibrums just in good spirit and I'm not super experienced with that and that was a lot for me and I I could not believe how um balletic like how graceful he was running over like very rough I mean he's been doing it for a long time I have a gravel driveway and he could like run on it and do drills on it I can't walk on it Barefoot without it hurting my feet yeah clearly you know there's something profound going on here um but I think for me and I probably am a stand-in for the audience like there's an aspiration to be more like that um but it does require like a long-term commitment to get there let's look at it yeah let's look at a different way um your feet are sources of sensual pleasure you know one reason why we like running shoes one reason why we like the hokas is they feel good the reason why we have more than one pair of running shoes is we like that sensual pleasure of trying something new on our feet same reason why we like to vary our meals well this tasted great for breakfast I want something different for lunch and that's why yeah I was in a place and actually that same Ultra Running Company hey try these shoes oh these feel fantastic can I have them I don't need them but I like them and so there is that sensual Joy of comforting your feet with something to me rather than say well you have to commit to learning form what if you decide I'm going to really relish the sensual pleasure of freeing up my feet I've actually experimented on that gravel driveway because over time it's going to feel really good you don't have to make it punishment you don't have to say okay I'm gonna walk up and down this gravel driveway like it's a bit of hot coals I'm going to try a little bit I'm going to sense it and see what it feels like my wife who was not a runner she was a dancer and she got sort of dragooned into this whole thing when we started to run with our rescue donkeys but her genius technique was to learn barefoot running she would just set out Barefoot on an asphalt road with her shoes in her hand and the second it was at all uncomfortable she put her shoes on and then finished the run but over time she went from 50 feet to a thousand feet to a mile and that was it as soon as it's no longer pleasurable switch it up and what is the what is your sense of like how long making that full transition takes to do it responsibly see I I I think that's the wrong way to approach it that this is sub should be something that's different for everybody and seen as a tool and a training tool and I I don't think for me using my athletes as an example you know I just had someone finish 100 Miler and we we have him in minimal shoes some of the time we have him doing foot core exercises we have him doing a lot of different types of training but then he's picking the job or the tool for the job for the race right and so I don't think it has to be this this either or and I think that's where people start to see it's it's I'm either a minimal Runner or I'm not see see this as a tool and in training just like you do your your intervals and your your threshold runs and and that is because it is trained in every step can be a form of strength training yeah well this book has come at a really opportune moment for me because I've been suffering from some pretty chronic lower back issues and sciatic pain I've got some numbness in my foot and you know that's very concerning and has benched me from running and sent me on a bit of a world tour of you know meeting with you know all manner of Specialists all of whom seem to have you know versions of the same advice but also very different at times which can be paralyzing and confusing but one thing has become abundantly clear which is the lack of uh my my brain to connect with certain muscle groups so it's not even that they're weak like they don't don't work my brain says move that muscle and nothing moves right my glutes don't fire Etc I've got tight hips and all these sorts of you know knots that I'm trying to untangle with a lot of the you know the drills and some of the advice that that you give in the book and I watch some of your videos as well um it's been slow going for me and so I am going to make this about me and say yeah maybe you can like you know we can go out there afterwards or really you can like look at me a little bit I'm not gonna let you leave without taking advantage of that opportunity yeah all right cool um so you know using me as a proxy for the typical middle-aged person who kind of maybe had a history of running but has banged up a little bit and you know I like I'm reading this and I'm feeling a sense of hope like I really want to be able to run pain-free fall in love with this thing that I care so deeply about and it's been really you know frustrating to not be able to move my body the way that I would like to yeah and I think you said one thing that really resonate resonates with my experience in my cans clinics coaches people I hear from um that the neuromuscular strength component where you're lacking that activity from a neuromuscular standpoint and I think that's a really big key where people and athletes Focus so much on developing strength and getting stronger and core exercises are great example you may have the strongest core in in the world but unless you're using it in a functional manner it doesn't matter and so having that neuromuscular connection is the type of strength I see most Runners needing and lacking the most and you know just as a general statement a lot of that starts at the feet you can't train the glute activity properly unless you engage the feet and I think that's that would be the first thing we would we would look at have you had success working with because you there's a section in there where you go through kind of common ailments that people have I didn't see one for lower back pain but I'm I'm sure you've had to contend with that with it yeah I I you know again just general observation with what you're saying is that my sense is that the back pain is just a symptom is that more times than not where you're feeling it is just a symptom of of another culprit and that's what I would explore is like okay let's maybe not look to treat the back is there something else that we can look at maybe hip flexors so as you know I'm sure you've heard all that but um so I I that's that would be my Approach is that okay if the back if it's truly not a back injury what what's maybe causing the back to let you know something's going on and we look in that direction yeah I mean that's 100 what it is because I I have you know I have a little bit of sponty but it's not like I have a slipped disc or there isn't I've had an MRI like there's nothing to create like it's not perfect but it's not like oh man you need surgery so I know that it doesn't necessarily just live in that local spot that it's a it's a manifestation of a you know yeah my my sense with the whole sciatic maybe we look at tfl kind of what's going on inside of the hip yeah the hips the hips start to hurt the top of the hamstring start to hurt then my my feet will will hurt like and I'm like this is not right so it literally travels right down the chain you feel like one place then another then another yeah I mean yeah I mean those are kind of where I feel it yeah like if like I could go out and run now fine but like um after a certain number of miles I'll feel it in my hips and then I'll just be a little bit more sore than I should be the next day and my feet will hurt when I put weight on them and I'm like that's not right that was exactly the idea of this book so when we started to talk about it the idea was was well we want a universal book we wanted this to be literally the ultimate training guide but where is the cross-section between veteran Runners and beginners or people in the middle and what we came up with and this was a shock to us we did a photo shoot in Colton California and Lewis had gathered this great wonderful diverse group of people for photos and we were just running them through some skills just for the photographic purposes and then Eric was pointing stuff out like oh my God I'm shocked at what I'm seeing Jenna Crawford who won the Rose Bowl half marathon fantastically uh trained Runner but watching her glutes shake like a paint mixer and Eric's I see her glutes they're switching on they were dormant switching on now and we realized even people who are at Peak Fitness have these what we call wobbles little wobble yeah in your mechanism they could then and it sounds like exactly what's happening with you rich as you're in a run and that little wobble is taking its Tolls by mile five is catching up so we wanted a book where we could tell people you can go back to a factory reset you can go back to First principles rewire yourself so even if you're a beginner or you're a veteran you can both arrive at the same place of feeling like you're running is really dialed in one of the really counter-intuitive and fascinating aspects of of you know getting started on this adventure was this idea of of starting with going fast right you just think like well you start slow and you build up your Fitness and then you get faster but the best way to evaluate where you are and what you need to work on is to get somebody to Sprint first or run you know run really hard because you can't hide from your form in that regard and then you kind of build into your slower form from what you learn about what You observe when somebody's running very quickly yeah with that specifically you know I like to change The Athlete's perspective of how they gain speed there's two ways to gain speed Cadence or frequency of how often we strike the ground and secondly our distance prescribed and when you put someone in a sprinting um environment I can then see are they do they reach for their speed through the leg reaching out in front of them or over striving over stride yeah versus switching their mindset to the other leg and and pushing into the ground to propel themselves forward and changing their mindset so for me it's it's seeing seeing what they do in a speed environment and then using that that information to kind of go from there right and and ideally it should it should always settle around 180 right that that's that's the magic goal right you know so talk a little bit about why that is and what that means yeah so I mean coaches Through Time have analyzed Elite athletes Elite Runners and kind of that's been come the magical number that those Elite athletes tend to have that I think that's where that number came from so I see it as an aspirational number for a lot of people um use Chris as an example you know with his with his height he's maybe always going to gravitate to utilizing his distance prescribed just a little bit more than I would or I might um kind of focus on the Cadence a little bit more but for me and my athletes and and people that I want to kind of effect is that that 180 number is just something that we look to get better and better at 180 steps a minute exactly 90 each leg and to me the the light bulb Rich was when Eric was explaining this to me and he put in terms of you watch a box a boxer Skip and rope I'm going to leave the mic now for a second but not doing this right we're doing this yeah right and light on their feet bouncing and they're using all that elastic recoil they're turning their bodies into a gigantic spring and when Eric explained this 180 in that context like I get it you're not using muscular Force to LEAP stop leap stop you're using elastic recoil spring strength Just Bounce Bounce Bounce and you can translate that into running and in terms of figuring out the optimal way to translate that there's this idea of of beginning with your back like pretty close up against the wall and jogging in place essentially right which is training you to really lift your knee and not get into that over striding kind of you know traditional way that we that most of us run when we're you know just doing it the way that we feel like we should be doing it right and and what we wanted to do is and I've said this is run form is not difficult learning it takes five minutes you just described it running in place against a wall you'd understand where you strike the ground now you put a little bit of music to it at 180 beats per minute you have your Cadence okay you can't kick back so you can't over stride that gives you the sense of how your relationship with the ground works as a runner and so then where the challenging part comes in is then having to develop that muscle memory right for it to take hold and that's the piece that maybe people don't understand is that I see a lot of people they think they've learned to run with good form and then when that muscle memory starts to create some frustration they think they need to learn more and it continues that frustration where it's maybe throwing in some skills and drills and and and part of that that neuromuscular strength that is really what needs to take place like the human the humans just hardwired to try to over complicate it right exactly where do I go behind the VIP rope there's got to be more than just this like running place you know with my back to the wall thing right it was funny Rich we were with an athlete yesterday in Phoenix so super skill very strong athlete and a dancer and it was great watching Eric in action because she's a non-run doesn't like it has been conditioned to hate it and she would ask her a question and he would say okay try this and he gave her these different skills to do and I watched in real time in five minutes how she progressed from a very awkward pointing her foot um kicking back everything wrong and then in five minutes suddenly she and Eric are going side by side she's relaxing loose and we stopped for a minute and Eric started to work with her husband and we started to run back I had to call Eric over like dude she's doing it again and I was watching her it's like she was processing everything that she thought she'd heard and was trying to then do it instead of just feeling it she was thinking it and everything went to hell again wow that's amazing yeah um and the The Rock Lobster song The B-52 song playing that there's a purpose to that which is that the beat mimics the 180 you know sort of Strokes per minute that you're looking for so there's this whole whole section of the book that's fascinating about music should you listen to music when you're running should you not listen to it should you find music that that has the beat you know that's that's going to train that neurochemistry to you know develop that type of cadence and I love that this conversation transpires between you know Eminem flea and like Rick Rubin like none of which are people you think about when you think about running yeah our friend lady Southpaw yeah right and my long postponed conversation with Rick Rubin which was supposed to have happened here when I got dragged away to look for uh Micah it finally took place 10 years later so yeah so talk about that a little bit I think just that story is great um so the wrong option thing in particular so Eric and I are having this conversation and Eric can really become sort of quantum physically about stuff we're looking at the uh the fitness chapter and he sent me over like 30 exercises and I said dude I will speak on behalf of the American public we are not doing 30th no you need to tell a story yeah that's true but also I got limited attention span give me three exercises you gotta hope you give me 30. it's a it's a non-starter and with Rock Lobster when we're discussing 180 per minute or you have to carry a metronome how are we going to do this and we had this conversation like well music has a rhythm walls right there and we can really simplify it and then once Rock Lobster's in your brain you cannot like pressure wash it out it's there for life so once you learn to run to that beat you got it um and then for the whole music questions the same thing I'm like we're having this conversation back and forth like we're purists we do not wear our earbuds we want to have our thoughts but I'm like you know what I've never actually been in a race when someone starts playing Gloria Gaynor that I don't run better you know as soon as the music's on I'm like ready to go I've never had a run that was worse with music so how are we going to sort of navigate this and that's when we just kind of put out the uh the bat signal like get some opinions about this and you know so fleas on the record adamant no music and then we reach out to this woman lady Southpaw who's a punk musician who has done an entire album of songs punk songs specifically to accompany her on her own New York City marathon and she wrote all these songs and she plays them and then uh so we have this back and forth you know she's like Pro Music flea's like no music we reach out to Rick Rubin who in all things of course is the Grand Master group the voodoo yeah Buddha stepped in and sort of enlightened us and the way to go I loved I loved his his um his salamic wisdom on this one yeah what did he say he said uh when uh his he's like the question you need to ask is when do you want to be at the mercy of music right like you can understand that flea like flee is music so when he goes running he needs a break from that right but not everybody is a musician so they can leverage it for certain purposes I mean I think there's Beauty in both but I do like this idea of programming a playlist of songs that all have that specific beat when you're in the process of trying to you know rewire your brain and your and your form and your Technique around that Cadence and with it I think what's key is to to feel the Cadence to feel the music to Feel The Beat versus looking at the watch we can you know we can have our watch tell us where we're at but that doesn't create that feeling and understanding of what it feels like it's just like feeling a good and bad stroke you feel a bad one and you adjust while you're swimming I want people to while they're running to feel good and bad so they can adjust this is really the common idea of the entire book is that understand the purpose of what you're doing so we look at like food for instance our first chapter your fork is not your coach so many people get into running as a relationship with their food they're either trying to lose weight or get in shape and if you're on that hamster wheel you will never be happy you will never outrun a bad diet and so you know we're not going to be purists but you know film off a tone has a thing called the two-week test which to me is like the genius approach to food don't say I should be keto I should be vegan listen let's just strip out all the high glycemic foods for two weeks reboot your system reintroduce them see how you feel minimalist Footwear let's take your shoes off see how you feel if you want to put on a cushion shoe have at it right but if you want to understand the relationship between what you're using and what results you want to have you need to get back to First principles music is the same way rather than just blasting something in your head to forget to distract yourself maybe there's a purpose if you put on like lady Southpaw genius did put on 180 beats per minute she's getting the satisfaction of an uplifting uplifting Melody but at the same time she's got 180 strides and it's a tool that actually helps her as opposed to distancing herself from The Experience yeah um you mentioned uh Phil mafatone the mafitone method I mean I I Love Phil maffetone's teachings it was transformational in my own you know endurance Journey did Rick Rubin tell you that Phil mafton used to live with him he like moved him in with him what's funny is that's a weird Confluence of like two worlds that you would not predict anything in the world of Phil mophatone is is cool and weird uh he lives in a place called Oracle Arizona and of course you do film office where else would you live it's a place called Oracle I met with him once here in California he said hey let's go over and check out like Shangri-La like you mean like the place where Dylan hung out he's like oh yeah I got the key he's like what oh yeah you know I'm buddies with Rick Rubin and he brought me in to deal with Johnny Cash I'm like dude every time you open your mouth right it's a journey nuts yeah you think he's a runner's geek kind of guy like what is he doing you know meeting Rick and dealing with Johnny Cash right it's wild why are you even in this world and why is Mike Pig calling you in the first place you know you're a chiropractor from Buffalo yeah but that's it that is the weird journey of film offatone well he's really initiated this conversation that that seems to be mushroom clouding at least on the internet right now around Zone training like in my world the there's so much interest in zone 2 training and understanding what it means to you know be in that aerobic State and their super geeky podcasts and we certainly had many conversations here about that your whole section in this book which is under the focus uh pillar is really about Zone training and it could have been an incredibly dry like here's you know a scientific with graphs and all kinds of stuff about like how you set your zones and why these zones are important and how to train at the polarities of them instead it's about Caesar's Roman army Runners and you know Laird talking about you know how to hold your breath and why that's so important so that's just such a beautiful way to introduce what could be you know difficult topics for people to understand in a way that allows them to kind of resonate in your memory for me I'm not really interested in something that's a new revelation or a gadget I get really curious when I start to see the same thing popping up again and again again throughout history if you look at taramada wadachis those sandals like wow you know what Romans Centurion is warm read Messengers wore them the taramada could wear different Footwear they have the capability to put arch supports or cushions into those sandals they chose not to so to me it makes sense when you have a timeline of a device that has re-emerged cold plunges okay they've been doing it throughout history for a particular reason and zoned training the zone two training if you look at the physiology anytime we start to put ourselves into a state of oxygen distress the second we are out of that zone two and we're starting to approach our aerobic threshold then your body has a physiological change you know your peripheral vision will kind of shrink down your body posture will change you are in this you're in a flight mode and your body reacts to that and so to me joy quotient starts to go down a little bit completely and actually what your body is going to then where it's going to a stored memory is going to be hey never put yourself in this position again because this is trouble and so when you start to do zone two training and you realize oh there's a way where my back's open my diaphragm is expanded I'm actually enjoying what I see I'm smelling and sensing things because just because of pure body chemistry when your body is in distress mode you're going to shut out sensory perception only in tunnel vision and then you start to look back through time like huh let's look at the Romans Insurance what was their Pace because what they were famous for was they were covering a ton of distance with packs in a record amount of time that's what made them so formidable and you start to look out and people have done this you know the military historian like uber scientists had figured out strides per minute and miles per hour and what you see is they're basically locking in its own too right so 2 000 years ago they understood Zone training and they had these basically these three phases right like it was the yeah with the rocks and like with the heavy equipment how far can they go in a single day and they would set it at like what was it it was something like you know 20 miles in five hours or something like that and they had different they had different distances and periods of time that were really basically setting their zones right right and then mandating them the same way author Lydia did and the way drill sergeants do today they do it by calling own response which again I found faster which is just a different version of rock lobster right right yeah like you can sing a song so it's singing a song in your aerobic Zone calling response is like the Zone would be zone three right right right yeah and uh and then you know obviously you're not doing anything when you're going all out yeah and so when you're looking at author Lydia when he basically began modern jogging he was working with cardiac patients in Auckland and he had a mandate conversational Pace do not run any faster than you can maintain a conversation he mandated his own two but he didn't say hey set your watches and it's like if you can chat with your buddy you're in the right Zone mafadone does something similar and then I think um what you see today is in military training and boot camp they want everybody in they don't want somebody in the distress mode they want them to be able to go all night for an unpredictable distance and so they do first they do chance and then when you click over to another Zone you go call in response where you only have to have half of the conversation right and it's understanding that in those moments if you're in Caesar's Army you're going to be called upon to suddenly Sprint but when you arrive at you know what you're sprinting towards you have to fight right so you can't be buckled over right so it's like do you have the fitness to be able to do that and do you have the the conscious awareness to pace yourself to go as fast as you need to go to get there but also be able to handle your sword when you arrive right so you know when Joe v hill first saw the Taro MATA in Leadville and this is something I I it took me years to unpack and it's the reason why I got Born to Run two didn't happen a couple years after born and runs I still did not really understand what I was seeing and Joe vigil told a story you know he is America's preeminent uh cross-country coach has worked with Olympic athletes and he talked about the fact that I've seen it all but what I've never seen his Smiles these guys are mile 60s scrambling up a hill and they're having a good time he told me that story I related it it was interesting to me I didn't get it until years later and V Hill's point is these guys have got their their gears figured out they're a mile 60 it's 100 mile race they're up a hill and they can't dial it back then they're they're toast and they've learned how to instinctly dial it back I'm like okay if I'm in a point now or I'm having fun slipping up the hill I'm in the right Zone he saw it and got it and it took me years to understand what he saw did you see that uh the other day killing Journey like published all his training data I did see so the endurance endurance Twitter is losing their mind right like everyone's like geeking out on like going deep into all his data uh there's been some articles written about it um but what I thought was really fascinating and instructive about that is over the course of something like 1200 hours of of training over the course of the year um there were two really important things that jumped out and I'm interested in what you think about this the first was how much of it was at lower intensity 88 was at Zone one or zone two like Zone one 56.9 zone 2 20.2 zone five like his all-out effort only 3.8 percent of his training which goes to show you like he's in that like let's have a laugh and sing a song the majority of the time when he's out there of those 1200 hours the second thing was um he's starting to question the validity of these long runs like he he kind of even tweeted the other day like I don't know if we need to be like it's more about frequency and he was comparing that approach to what Camille Herron is doing and the success that she's having like she'll do two or three runs in a day but she won't go out and do that super long you know Saturday or Sunday run that the rest of us are doing Lots there yeah yeah um I I I'm glad you're bringing this up because uh now I get the cookie yeah this is Let's Go Geek yeah um so I think Killian one thing you know he's fasted pretty much every distance yeah and if if we look at his everything you just mentioned I think what listeners need to hear there is that he is fast enough to be able to go easy enough on that 88 right his Zone one is probably like a seven minute pace right right which you know is our walking pace or whatever like exactly right and so what you know since the the popularity of ultra running is the the development I see most needed with most athletes is that they need to get faster first so they are able to run easy enough to even make cutoffs or to be able to run in zone two Zone one for a very long time lots of athletes especially in in Mountain environments don't have the the ability that can be developed to be able to do what Killian does but then they go try it and now they're out for their five hour run because Killian does but it's you know 50 60 of it's in zone four and five you know so taking a step back and really developing your ability your raw ability to get faster and then applying it to what Killian's talking about I think is really really what's missing for a lot of athletes yeah that's interesting I mean that's the reverse of kind of how I've always thought about it and practiced it yep like my whole thing was build from the build from the ground up and create that massive endurance base and you know occasionally do some threshold work for Speed because I'm not trying to run fast anyway I do you know I know that gear needs a little bit of attention but it's really not something I need to rely upon for I think there's a micro and macro way to look at that is that back when I was doing Iron Man there was only two Iron Mans to do is Hawaii or Canada and so to qualify you kind of went through the ranks you started with your Sprint your Olympic worked your way up to a half and so there was a development system built in place just because we didn't have the ability just to go sign up for an Iron Man well it's still the case I mean the people that are killing it at Iron Man are people that you know went you know were on that trajectory right because you can go from really fast to really long you can't go from really long to really fast right right and look at just the development process for runners is that you know middle school high school it's you know 3K 5Ks and then you go to college and it's a little bit more and it's a little bit more and all of a sudden now they get to their 30s and they're ready for the marathon whereas now the majority of age group athletes are just jumping into the longer runs or the longer races which is fine my point is that they need to understand that that speed development must really take place to really escalate their their ability rather than just doing more yeah that's super interesting start with the fast stuff get faster improve your raw ability and then apply that to go in longer now that longer efforts faster and your have you have that ability you can't run a three-hour Marathon if you're you know for mile pace is an X right you know it's a famous Emil's Adipex story when he trained for his first marathon he trained by doing 100 meter Sprints people like Emil it's a 26 mile race he goes yeah I thought the point was to run fast I already know how to run slow yeah well this is sort of jumping ahead to the to the kind of Community Family Fun section of the book but the story around um uh what's his name Billy and his wife Billy Barnett yeah Billy Barnett and his wife after having a baby and going from just you know endurance lunatics to doing very little and then having PR's when they kind of just had let go of any expectations of even attempting to try to do anything all that fast yeah we know I keep harkening back to the Eternal wisdom of barefoot Ted so one year I was patient head at Leadville I pick him up at mile 85. and this is no man's land and this is the Valley of the lost the mile 85 in Leadville you know the 8 station 10 is full of people who are ready to dnf and tap out it's after two hope passes right yes and it's dark it's like two or three o'clock in the morning when you're coming in take them through the tent like it's a surprise party just for Ted happy chatting I'm on one side tennis on the other I watched him just like socialize his way through the tent before he reaches me and he's like let's go I'm like dude what is up with you he does a sub 24 Leadville which is very fast in his own homemade sandals and he's run about this one guy we're passing on the trail and some guy recognize he's like hey Mike I took this race and I turned it into a chat Fest the guy's like I'm not surprised he sounds so much like him right and we're blah blah blah blah sub 24 I'm like dude your training had to be massive he's like I'm doing 25 miles a week I'm like how in the hell are you doing a sub 24 Leadville on five miles a day with two days off and he goes mikoso I'm not interested in the limits of what's painful I'm interested in the limits of what's pleasurable and I'm just rolling my eyes back so hard so far in my head I'm sprained in my eyeballs but I think about it he's five miles a day I bet we're smoking fast he probably did some yoga you know hiding acai Bowl wherever how he eats and then just blazed out he's doing 25 very fast very technical miles a week and he was able to link that in Matt Carpenter told me that one time too the guy who holds the Leadville record I went to the to the Temple of Matt Carpenter to learn the secret of running the world's fastest Leadville and he took me out to a park with his like five-year-old daughter and he goes all right walk to that tree and race back so I erased the five-year-old I will not tell you who won and then he goes all right do it again all right do it again and that was it walk to the tree Sprint walk he goes she just gotta shorten the distances that you're walking and that's your that's your turn training wow to be fair with Barefoot Ted though he's sitting on years and years of like miles right so he has this vast reservoir of endurance capacity yes there's a lot going on with Ted I see a picture of Ted today I'm like how is this guy so freaking jacked you know like I don't get it he is like three percent body fat I don't know I cannot Plumb The Genius of barefoot Ted but I think he has a lot of things I think he like me we have a kind of kinship because I think we're both like undiagnosed ADHD I think his wheels are churning from the second his eyeballs will open in the morning right right one of the things that that that blew my mind in this in the book is this uh connection between the brain and and the Barefoot um and this study that showed that working memory improved 16 after a Barefoot run whereas there's no improvements with normal shoes like this is insane like the fact that like by going out and having your feet be in contact with nature while you're running um that that that like Highway between what's going on up here between the years and the proprioception like the Strategic intentional you know mindset that you have to have about where you're placing your feed and all of that that actually has this benefit on your cognition yeah I mean that to me says it all I mean it in in where it can is we all can do this in the way that we need to for our own selves it's that you might just start running on the the dirt road or the gravel that you talked about and someone else might be doing it all the time like Chris but it all has a benefit in our own way in finding it doesn't have to be that All or Nothing thing that maybe what's what's out there is that you don't have to just become a minimal Runner it's like use it as a tool and this is coming from a coach is that it's so powerful it's how we use our feet is such an element of what athletes need to do and it just you know it was my aha moment as a coach and it just so so potent and um take it from there Chris yeah well so you mentioned Billy Barnett the fact that this guy age 36 with a nine month old baby had minimal training because he was the primary caregiver in the afternoon his wife's working all day when Billy came home from teaching school he would be responsible for Cosmo and if Cosmo wasn't up for it then they weren't running that day nine months of this he walks out and he podiums the Honolulu Marathon right he's like he was just doing it on a flyer he literally only signed up because he realized oh it sounds like there aren't that many people running this year so I can just get jump into last minute and the last minute jump in he ends up blazing out a PR as fast as Marathon 225 or something like that yeah yeah third place overall finish and then what's her name Alex Alex Alex and then she like crushes the hurt 100 to hurt 100 has her best ever hurt 100 and she struggled with that race but to me that's what it's all about this idea of the sensual pleasure you know we had these two chapters in the book about family and fun it's a very antithetical note to have in a training book but it really gets back to physiological Roots things that you enjoy you will be predisposed to repeat them and want to do them things where you're in a group I mean we think about in evolutionary terms you would never run off into the Wilderness by yourself you would never come back we evolved to run as hunting packs in concert with other people and you feel it you've never had a run with a buddy that felt bad you never came back like wow that was a bad idea the bigger the group The more fun it is unfortunately we have turned running into this thing well if it feels good we're probably doing it wrong you know it should feel bad we should be by ourselves we should be racing our Strava and what we're finding again and again is if we actually embrace those tadamata evolutionary roots family and fun and incorporate into our workouts the results are amazing sure and you're also creating sustainability for this thing that you enjoy doing I think it is you know it's it's part of just our whole Western mindset right like if I'm going out for a run like I've got this much time I gotta extract the maximum amount of Fitness out of this opportunity so I'm going to go run as fast as I can for you know how long I you know for that distance that I can maintain and unless I you know butt up against that pain point then it was a waste of time right we've we've unfortunately associate fun with with Badness you know you know if I eat a quart of haagen-dazsa that's fun I'm enjoying this and it's not so good for me but and that's what I want to do really accomplish with the gears getting back to the zones and the gears that I wanted people to really see and make that correlation from okay if I'm if I want to run x amount for Pace mile what does that correlate to as far as a time interval so they're training and not straining and keeping it we're talking about fun right now but it's it's that Str you know going from not straining to training to accomplish what you're looking to accomplish to give them a correlation between time and speed yeah and you have this set of tables in the back of the book it's it's in every man's way of establishing what those zones are without having to do a proper lactate test you go out you run a mile and based upon that you can kind of establish how to go about that right and again understanding what is an appropriate level of effort for what you're trying to achieve that day so if they if an athlete knows hey I'm going to the track to do um two two minute repeats I know what my speed should be to accomplish that versus going out too hard so and and and it really a lot of it is about the polarities right you want to be doing your Zone one in your zone two and then you choose your moments for your zone five and mean the way I've kind of been going about it is most of it is in that lower Zone stuff and running the trails around here but then I'll go to the track and that's where I'll take my shoes off on grass or even on you know a kind of a padded track and do a lot of drills and you know try to develop that that foot connection and the foot strength right absolutely one thing Eric would do with me early on this isn't that first honeymoon period where he's training me uh the first thing he did one time was he sent me a workout for a two hour run I mean just dude there's no way you know I can barely run three miles two hours but what you find is when you have the mind saying oh man I'm gonna be out here for two hours no matter what I loaded up a backpack like I was like it's like trying to summon the Himalayas you know I brought toilet paper with me I thought what do you do if you're out there for two hours I've never done anything like this so I set off on this two-hour journey into the unknown and what you realize after an hour like you better just simmer down and take it easy otherwise you're not going to finish but you relax into it and that's when the sense of fun and joy came into it and then for longer runs again we were training for the 50 mile and a Copper Canyon on a long run he would have me do hill repeats in the middle again I thought this was like stupid you're taxing me out you're burning me out in the middle of a run but it taught me to wake up get my form dialed in got my heart rate up again instead of this is still a slow steady slot toward the finish line so his way of incorporating those gear changes you know we kind of rev the engine a little bit where it's just to me just brilliant yeah I mean that's where you get into real Fitness right and Iron Man it's all about like the slow locomotive you kind of get up to speed and then you just hold it there all day but you don't have that you don't have a lot of gear change ability you know in that distance if you're training for that specifically and when you are doing those gear changes you create that resilience so you can attack a hill but you're also because you're doing so much aerobic work you can bring that heart rate back down quickly so you don't have to stop at the top of the hill and buckle you know Buckle over for a minute but for me even more so it's it's what we're doing for the structural system is that a lot of what's in the book waking up all those muscles and groupings and using them in an appropriate manner activating things we we were in Lawrence Kansas what two days ago or whatever it was and you know kind of our Mo for these events have been start out with some of our our skills in the book and then go for a run and we did some neuromuscular jumping and and um what we call leg stiffness leg stiffness is a crucial element for performance and Longevity for good health and running and so we went through our leg stiffness exercises and then went for a trail run and after the trail run two two gals came up to me and they they said those exercises were transformed my running in a matter of 30 minutes because normally I would not be able to run that trail as a steady run I felt like I could run forever and that's that's the connection that you're talking about and that how faster running for me is less about maybe the anaerobic or what we consider it from a cardiovascular standpoint but what it's doing with our connection with the ground and our structural system we were in Baltimore with a group called The Riot Squad running as our therapy and there's a new Runner there Justine and toward the end of the run it's getting dark she's laboring struggling and we had done Rock Lobster exercise beforehand and she kind of looks over it's like what was that song again you know rock lobster she gets on her phone punches it up and like that her running switch because she's the point where now she's just slogging it she put the song on all of a sudden she started a pitter-patter and then brought the run in for a landing but she did it out of sense of desperation like everything else sucks maybe the song will help and it really did um what does that mean leg stiffness essentially your ability to land and get off the ground as quickly as possible helping your Cadence so I I see Cadence and leg stiffness go hand in hand for performance and for longevity or you know that that real feel-good we want out of running where it takes away tightness when we hear leg stiffness that's a good thing it doesn't mean lack of Mobility or tightness it's it's your ability to use and operate the springs and rubber bands in your body to land and snap and get off of it as quick as possible I see yeah cool so um what's the most common thing that you come across like you're me you're doing all these things with all these running groups right you're seeing all shapes and sizes of Runners uh what is what is like the refrain you know what's the thing that people share with you the most or um or you know what is a common misconception about people's relationship to running that you'd like to disabuse people of wow that's let me think you keep going because you always can I'm not a real Runner invariably there's never been an event where people don't say I'm not a real Runner I'm not good at this I'm not as fast as you believe me you're as fast as me for starters yeah that doubt lack of self-confidence and also lack of a sense that this is an art that you can master and that's to me is it and it it's always like a a real Pleasant shock to them when we start to do these skills and they realize oh okay I get I can do this yesterday we're working this athlete in Arizona and she's a dancer so she's struggling to run and Eric stops and goes hey show us a couple dance steps and she's clicked and he's like she just started to bust out this dance instantly no hesitation and Eric's like you're a runner like that's it because her dancing was this nice rhythmic bouncy things like just move it forward and you're a runner I would imagine some of those people who say I'm not a rail runner are the people who are out pushing strollers with their little ones right and actually you have this thing in the book about like this is actually a tool like to improve your running form we were just with one of uh Eric's clients Ellen Ortiz uh in Birmingham she's fantastic but what I love about her is that she is Alpha Dog I'm gonna BQ or die kind of Runner but at the same time when she had her baby she decided okay now I'm gonna get really good at this and we're just like watching like drinking in tips and information and where she positions the dog stroller but yeah she's turned this in an amazing learning tool yeah talk about a little bit about the movement snacks I mean that's sort of drill oriented but I like how you've encapsulated that and and turned it into like a fun thing yeah the the movement snacks are something that you can do anytime anywhere for a variety of reasons but how we strategically use them in the book is a lot of diving into the Diagnostics of the injury chapter where um maybe the the movement snacks are a strategic way to begin to add more Mobility or give you a sense of where you're lacking in movement while you're then implementing some of the the remedies for that specific injury these are these are developed by a friend of ours Julie Angel who comes from a parkour background and so what Julie Julie's actually a filmmaker who started to film parkour athletes and as an observer she realized oh they've got some really kind of cool full natural movement skills that a lot of people could benefit from so she extracted movement snacks from the isolated movements of Parkour athletes like Precision jumping or quadrupedal movement right controlling around on all fours yeah yeah but that kind of thing too to balance on your left foot and your right hand at the same time and move forward and then she realized these are fun they are non-threatening and that if you do a little bit of bear crawl for like 30 seconds and you stand up Everything feels loosened and so I think it's kind of a genius move by by Julie to create movement snacks because you take that group of people I'm not a runner I don't want to do this I don't do that oh yeah so the parkour Community will form a big circle as a way of saying hello and then they will bear crawl to the center and everyone will high five and then they'll reverse and bear crawl backwards back out that's the warm-up but they've now extended their entire chain of motion their arms shoulders backs are loosened and they're ready to go out and work out so that's what we we basically uh adopted all these things from from Julius and movement snacks cool are you guys still in a formal coaching athlete relationship yeah I'm like Curious like what does Chris still need to work on like what is like what does that look like I'll cover my ears like yeah I I assume it's more than just like here's your workout like it's not about that it's more about like technique and form and strategy no when he mentioned when we were in Colton California doing the photo shoot he still had the best form there and so he's here that Jenna Crawford yeah right right best form Ever um what's most important with what Chris does is he understands what he wants out of running and he sticks to that mission is that what's most important for him is to do it properly and that trumps everything and you know when when we first started working together his goal was to be able to run anywhere anytime any distance and that's that's kind of where we say you know begin the book of his his transformation or 15 years and so I I there's I I think he moving to Calif or to Hawaii and living there full time now I'm going to be really interested to see how he gravitates to the trail systems there and he's even got me um interested in getting back into swimming because he's talking about some swim run challenges and just kind of create an adventure so um it's you know he he's he's inspired me a lot recently just to kind of maybe get back into swimming so that's cool yeah have you done any swim runs oh yeah I mean on my own I've kind of yeah invented some like little roots of my own but I gotta get back to what Eric says I feel like I'm the guy that can't Coast you know I didn't come into it with um the natural abilities and I came in from it from a history of hating it and disdaining it and being hurt and so that's why for me form is like foremost on my mind I feel like I barely got my arms around this and so to me it's a priority I think stronger better faster athletes can get by for a while before they run into trouble I'm starting from a position of trouble but I also dig it because you know it's like if you watch someone do something even if you don't know the sport but it's elegant and clean and Powerful I don't know what a backhand is supposed to look like but you watch you know Serena doing oh I guess that's pretty darn good and for me that's what running feels like I think people misunderstand that focusing on form is tedious to me it's really joyful because when you get that moment oh that felt good oh that one felt good too how many strides can I String but as far as swim run dude come on out uh I got some fun roots and I just did on my own because you realize huh there's a canal that can swim across about a half a mile right where I can run a certain Trail and it pops out on a series of beaches with rock Jetty in between so you can come off a trail jump in the water swim a quarter mile land on the beach run down swim another quarter mile yeah and just you know make your own swing yeah I love it um are you are you on Oahu yeah yeah are you like in the Honolulu area or like Kailua like up north yeah cool yeah that's where my wife grew up yeah I'm nearby in Kaneohe yeah yeah that's that's very cool no I I went down the swim run Rabbit Hole I did otilo in Sweden and you know it's it's cool in Europe like it's a whole thing man and these guys have it dialed and it's a it's a very specific skill set we went in me and my coach Chris South we were we were totally unprepared for you know what exactly we were getting into but so fun and I love when the environment dictates the adventure and the experience it's not like oh it's an Iron Man has to be this distance we just lay this you know Tableau on top of the terrain it's the other way around and you know it's all it's all about like respect like if you drop like a gel pack on the you're disqualified if anybody sees you like zero tolerance policy for that it's really all about like the Beauty and the immersion in these beautiful places but I remember like let me I'll just share this one story like we in the days leading up to that race we're in Stockholm and you know a bunch of the athletes are there because it's in the archipelago off the coast and and uh and and so we're doing like just little fun you know last minute training sessions literally running like down the city streets of Stockholm in wetsuits and like jumping in the water and swimming across these little waterways and and there's people you know going to work and nobody like they're all like oh yeah that's normal here you know like the weirdest thing to see like people running down a city street in a wetsuit is it an enforced buddy system don't you have to be with yourself yeah you do it in in teams of two and you have to stay within three meters of each other some some of the teams actually tether themselves to each other with like a bungee cord type deal and you can like use whatever you want like most people have hand paddles and you swim in your tennis shoes and the whole thing and it's crazy I love that partner aspect of it to me it's yeah that's a whole new kind of element of the whole thing which is about fun and Community Family like all these things that you talk about in the book yeah yeah it's cool was it brutally cold though uh we had the I mean it's a longer story but yeah we had like the worst weather ever terrible which made it epic you know I'm glad in retrospect I mean it was sideways rain and crazy wind and chop and swells and all kinds of stuff did it make it in retrospect all the more satisfying or like I really wished it it was terrible on the day but like yeah now looking back I'm so glad it wasn't like a glassy day like we could we you know that's what we signed up for like I hate cold water you know I was like I'm gonna go do this thing that I'm kind of scared of right we did fine like we're you know I I held my coach back of course as I'm as I should right um but yeah it was an experience I won't soon forget and now you're seeing swim run competitions starting to pop up in the states and I think that's a really cool thing yeah and I hope the uh the US versions actually maintain that um that buddy mandate to me it's just it's yeah it's a whole different kind of experience the Americans yeah they don't like that though they're like I don't want to do the thing with I want to just do it myself right but that's kind of beside the point yeah that's the whole thing um cool well let's let's uh let's end this with a couple drills things that you can I don't know if we can like if it's possible to articulate it in a way where people can kind of understand but like one or two things that people could start to practice where they can get a gauge on like oh this is why I feel this way because this thing is weak or what have you yeah so that maybe we can hit it from two sides one what we call the foot core where we can train our feet we've got muscles on the bottom of our feet and there's some simple but very very potent ways to train your feet and it's just simply you always kind of want to work Barefoot and simply taking off your shoes and socks and balancing on your forefoot on one leg and Chris is sick of me here and saying this but you know you're going to feel it where you need it you're gonna the weakest link is going to show up it might be for someone hey they start to feel it in the feet in the arch or it might be the calves or hey they're strong down there they they bike or they do mountain running and so they're strong down below the knee but they start to feel it in their glue and that's that's how the feet really affect everything up through the leg so again simply Barefoot four foot balancing right I've noticed and I don't know whether this is an age thing or a weakness thing or whatever but my balance got really bad like when I you know when I stand on one leg or I'm putting my underwear on or whatever I'm like why am I why can't I just you know hold myself up in a stable way and I think too in doing these simple um foot core exercises that you're going to start to see or feel a difference between right and left and then you can start maybe making a correlation of oh yeah I'm kind of tighter on this side and and making a correlation of how poorly or how well you're using each foot based on how you're feeling as an athlete The Genius of these exercises that Eric came up with is I wanted everything to be something I would personally do and if I ain't going to do it I'm not going to put in the book and things like the one foot balancing if you're waiting for the coffee to brew you got two minutes on your hands you can do this and that's what I really like about them these are extraordinarily practical but have a great residual effect as well and that doesn't mean they're not potent I mean right as you're listening right now take off your shoes and socks and balance on your forefoot it's it's not an easy thing and you can see how challenging and difficult it is and with that in that position regardless of good or bad form we're asking ourselves to be in that position every step as we run and you need to be stable there and that's how we can really train the fee it has these the self-correcting part of this is that Earth doesn't give you any instructions on how you he goes just move your arms and move your legs however you want to get that balance what you find is you self-correct you realize oh if I just kind of tighten my core up a little bit if I straighten my posture if I do my arms like this and so you do it for 30 seconds and your body will find that balance that you are struggling for just by putting itself in that position yeah The Tweak for me is embracing the fact that so much of that is about like creating those neural Pathways it's not about suffering like you know the athlete in me is like I'm going to do it until it hurts or how many of these lifts you know am I gonna do well I'll just do it until it's burning like crazy but it's not really about that it's really about just developing The Habit as a preset and that's about like your mind connecting with that movement it's not about like you know hitting anything hard it's the best warm-up you can do because now we're turning an electrical system on before we go out and run yeah so another one leg stiffeners we talked about is simply there's three types of strength we have concentric eccentric and isometric and The Eccentric and isometric is very rarely talked about and especially the isometric where it's that when we land as a runner there's a moment in time after our land and before we take off that is really really crucial for injuries that isometric hold okay a lot of Runners don't have that so leg stiffener exercise would be simply standing on your right foot barefoot and just taking a short Leap Forward and sticking it like a ballerina without a whole lot of leg movement you want to stick it without movement and just kind of progressively hop forward with that stick two or three five second stick to create more leg stiffness to allow you to really get off the ground right so that that creates the ability to be resilient in that isometric position and avoid injury and it's a great way for people who are training for a silly race that might not live in that area and now we're trained in that eccentric Landing as well that we get from downhills that maybe they don't have so yeah cool yeah yeah um can we go outside yeah and you're gonna like put me through the ringer we're gonna look at here all right what's cool about this is that people love these exercises people go I'm not a runner and you have them do the sticky hop lunges and you just see that like they're having fun it's a playful game yeah yeah yeah cool man yeah um well thanks you guys I appreciate it Born to Run too I'm so excited for this to be out in the world again it's the uh it's the how-to on Born to Run um I think it's going to help a lot of people this was a you know a very worthy investment on your guys's time and like a gift to all of us Runners out there in the world so I appreciate it thanks for having us um I imagine that there are a lot of people who are going to come and ask like oh how you know they're going to want you to coach them like do you is that what you do do you is there some place where people can learn more about you resources Etc yeah so I I have my website and ericorton.com and kind of there's a lot of lots going on I have my YouTube channel which is kind of the the place to go see the how-to tips in in YouTube environment and but what I do kind of daily is I coach Runners all over the world for marathon and ultra running kind of the traditional type of coaching but then I do camps and Clinics and speaking and have people visit me in Jackson Hole to kind of dive into all all this dysfunction that Runners tend to have yeah we kind of so kind of hitting it from two two different coaching environments yeah very cool and if there's you know people on the tip of like community and finding a pack to run with are there good online resources for people to go to who are living wherever who want to see like what's available to them here in California there's an amazing one called The Rundown by Iman Wilkerson and she actually tipped us off to some of our favorite affinity group running clubs there's a group in San Diego called the Santa mujeres Latina Runners so yeah check out the rundown in California and points Beyond but otherwise you just gotta check your local community there are these we've been blown away there's run for Chinatown Harlem run eight six go across the country there are these incredible proliferation of small groups yes and with that one aspect we were kind of maybe hoping with the book was that now giving maybe some resources for people to start their own clubs and their own Crews and and having maybe a systematic way about going about it from from a training perspective yeah yeah yeah yeah so awesome man well I'll link up all your socials and websites and all that kind of stuff and obviously where to get the book and all that and you know you guys are probably coming to a city near the audience at some point you're kind of on a tour you're going to go home but you're going to go back out around the book when this comes out and I'm sure it's going to be a hit and it's been lovely talking to you guys I appreciate it I'm at your service anything I can do to help you guys out in the mission this is really fun man thank you thank you thank you yeah cool awesome peace yeah that's and thanks for the Panola right yeah right those bites are tasty one thing I was gonna ask you we're still rolling right um this is sort of a mic a true thing but you know when you had to move the market on chia seeds when Born to Run came out I'm sure you get asked this all the time like you could have started a chia seed company and completely you know dominated that market it's kind of funny I was trying to track how many companies went on Shark Tank based on something out of Born to Run right and uh my daughters are having acai bowls and they're putting Qi on but they hadn't soaked it you have to soak it they go no you don't you don't understand I invented I was a guy yeah right right there's teenage disdain for you I don't know dude it was kind of funny I look back on it and you're not quite sure like I'm happy to take all the chips and thing I'm you know the cause of everything but I don't recall Chia being around at all until after born and run came out and then suddenly bam it was off it went yeah no I don't remember hearing about it before that but you know I make damn sure I put those in my smoothie or on my cereal pretty much every day yeah do you soak them first you put them on dry depends on how how much time I I I sometimes I don't I know that I'm supposed to and I'm like yeah I should probably suck those but like I gotta go you know so you just uh have him ground up right I just I like them ground yeah ground and dry yeah yeah okay yeah to me you gotta soak them in into those tadpole you know things but yeah it's kind of a funny thing and then with Pinole I was getting blitzed by people saying I want the thought I'm out of superfood like where can I get a dude Chihuahua that's your only answer and then this kid uh Eddie Eddie Sandoval send them all how do I keep forgetting his name in Kansas Wichita Kansas created a company and so again we're not affiliated at all uh but I'm just a fan of the fact that he took the ball on piano and started to run with it yeah it's very cool all right man thanks yeah come back again sometime share some more right on appreciate you guys [Music]

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 135,355

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, fitness podcasts, spirituality podcasts, mindfulness podcasts, mindset podcast, vegan podcasts, plant-based nutrition

Id: cCfs7rLZeSk

Length: 124min 21sec (7461 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022