Training vs. Exercise | Rich Roll Podcast

[Music] Chris out back in the house for another edition of Coach's Corner yeah we've gotten a lot of good feedback from it there's a lot of demand yeah episodes are super popular so it's good to reprise this version of the podcast man good to see you my friend yeah good to see you I'm finally up at the house I know all the years that we've worked together and done everything you've never even visited before I think maybe there's probably some people that don't that I think we live in the same city but we don't know no and I'm always down in Santa Monica when I come visit cuz I see a few other clients as well and so you've always come down there right I think every podcast we've done has been in a hotel room actually that's true right they've all been in the Georgian and after until Oh we did it yeah in a cramped room sitting on the bed yeah so now you have this functional studio it's good excuse to get you up no actually we did it at the house in Tahoe oh that's right yeah but technically I was kind of like yeah exactly I forgot about that I still gotta get Caroline on the show yeah she's cool so before we launch into it tell me how you're doing man what's going on I'm doing great it's uh it's been a busy year I've signed up for a variety of events yeah and just sort of want to see what the body can do this year mm-hmm so you're planning on returning to either to the are you doing Iron Man Iron Man first so I haven't done that and a couple of years either right um I did 100k run a couple of weeks ago mm-hmm sort of a ten-hour thing how did that go well um I want to be careful this year because as many ultra endurance athletes know it's gonna be a long year if I get into Ultraman and that's a big if right and it's not that big of enough well I'm keeping my fingers I'm holding the line on that you'll be you'll be telling the line this year okay good good and I'll be crewing but that yes you will be yes that's November and so if I'm to fit or doing too much now or taxing the body too much now I'm worried and I'm from past history of knowing that I can't maintain that until you know November mm-hmm so I wanted to be real smart during that first trail race of the season and I just go out there and keep steady energy for what turned out to be 11 hours but that's fine right then you got an Ironman coming up so you're back on the bike yeah in there in a real way for the first time in a long time yeah and I lost a lot of fitness I mean last year I didn't do any real cycling we got ready for too low I did a half ironman in there but I mean you can sort of fake your way through to two and a half hours of biking but not through five yeah six hours of biking and then Hotel cheating on me with the new I checked with you yeah no it was cool I gave you permission yes you did this polyamorous relationship and then yeah and then it would be going to the Big Island yeah that's cool is he honest doing Pattillo again this year that I don't know that I did not studies do an ultra matte but he's still an ultra man yeah it's interesting it'll be fun and you know he'll be at Attila even if he's not taking parts of the horse there'll be some trees did it this past year with his wife yeah so I'm sure I think he's done in every year hasn't he I'd be surprised by him that he doesn't do it this year but remember he did say to us last year at the dinner after he's like I'm done I need a browse to delirious never I barely remember that conversation but he'll he'll be there and he'll want to rub it in a little bit yeah well on the subject of Ultraman and we were talking before the podcast with respect to you know the volcano right now I'm you know that that that's going down on a significant part of the day to bike course like I've ridden through that area I know that area I believe lava has flowed over the red road which is where I crashed my bike it's the one part of the race where the crew vehicles cannot follow you because it's so pristine and they want to preserve it that way so you know it's insane what's going on there this year no indication that the eruptions are gonna stop anytime soon and yet by all accounts Ultraman is still planning on going forward at this point so they're clearly gonna have to reconfigure the course yeah and I was saying to you before the podcast that that's sort of intriguing too because it's gonna create this new course and new dynamics and you know maybe different strategies at different parts of the course parts of it three days yeah without a doubt I mean the the course really dictates how you you know attack and plan so but I think they'll keep the distances exactly yes it's easy to do that in my mind on the island to get us back to Javy on day two despite the riding up the volcano a different volcano on day one so because there's only really that one main road to go around that side of the island so it's not like you can go around it some other way they're gonna have to backtrack and figure out a different route that remains on the western side of the island yeah I would think but didn't they they had to redo the course one of the years that Gordo did it we had different washed out or something out right yeah so it's not the first time they've had to do that but it's gonna be interesting they know what they're doing yeah cool well I put it out on both of us put it out on social media the other day that we were gonna get together and what we wanted to do was answer some listener questions so we put it out on Twitter and Facebook we got a ton of ton of questions Chris and I need some notes and we're gonna go through to the best of our ability you know a few of them I mean there were some consistent themes that kind of emerged from that so they're gonna be more kind of like topic specific that's then then like super specific questions but before we do that I thought I would do something a little bit different which is read this post that you sent to me the other day called meaning can I do that yeah I didn't I didn't know what you said first of all you said to me in an Evernote note but you should put this you should publish this why don't you put this on your blog what because it's these are thoughts that are streaming through my head lately and I trust you in a lot of ways with regards to having perspective with all this and sharing with you I thought would give me some good feedback if it's worthwhile so clearly cool all right we'll read it it's kind of long so I don't know take me five minutes to read it but I think it's worth reading because it's super good man I think this is great stuff so it's called meaning and it goes like this I feel as though there are so many out there looking for meaning not in a deeper spiritual way but instead that they are missing something something fulfilling something that sets their wires straight I think that is why ultra endurance and endurance world of adventures events and expeditions has gained so much appeal of late I believe it satisfies these needs this sense of purpose sense of living to our potential this self realization that there is more to us than sleeping eating and working / career of course there is time for family and in more rare cases unfortunately for community and church and more but one thing is missing in all of this the self the time for self the time for self help self health the time for spending time with thoughts reflection elevated heart rate muscular activity and most importantly fresh air nature endurance events allow for this and more a connection with nature with the environment with its beauty its ability to revive us we are hard-wired for nature to be outside to live connected with our environment to feel it to play and struggle in it to be challenged by it and therefore challenge ourselves this sense of adventure challenge struggle and realization is what pulls people to becoming endurance athletes to discover their potential at first maybe not a huge step but seeing what we are capable of and growing from there to a new potential and all the while connecting to our truest raus inner self how we are hard-wired as animals to nature to the outdoors to a sense of feeling alive in it via activity everything is active around us in nature and of course we as humans are part of this nature part of this growth and vibrant balance and as the athlete continues to grow to new challenges which then adds some fear and curiosity and uncertainty to it which again brings us back to our true raw self that human living with the outdoors surviving outdoors and feeling most alive when we are truly challenged physically and mentally via nature and our endeavors in it nothing can replace that as it is our truest raw self it's very deep down there but the more athletes connect with it the more they realize how much that dormant self was in them and they want to unlock and unleash more it makes them better more energetic healthier happier more creative more efficient more connected and therefore caring the stewardship of our environment and nature begins with loving our self in it and feeling this connection to it how can one relate to environment and it's the environment and its destruction if one is foreign when in it but when we have felt how we are truly part of it that is a deeply connected and wired part of us we begin to unlock this hardwiring and allow it to fire more and more in order to feel alive and joyful and happy and motivated in our days not only to get out and spend time in it again but revitalized for work and family and community and more because our own tank of self-care is full and we are connected and seeing and feeling our potential physically and emotionally we need the fresh air for all of that to fire as I heard the other day in order to love others we need to love ourselves we can't give more love than we are able to give ourselves so knowing that we have this emptiness and missing component in our lives makes living generously and giving very hard we are missing something that huge piece is our hardwired self for outdoor adventure physical activity and with that comes curiosity with what we could be capable of awakening the endurance athlete within the one that is curious if they can achieve that goal and once seeing that growing to a new level of appreciation of that better healthier more confident beautiful vibrant energetic self that close outward because on the inside the fire of that missing component has been lit the challenges we feel this imbalance we can't we just can't identify what it is we have become so disconnected with our potentials that we don't know how to explain what it is but most once outside in nature training with a healthy fear to an event on the outer edge of their current capability start to understand I was reading the other day about how we no longer have these rites of passage that young men and women used to go on out in nature surviving on our own living in the world of our environment off the land for days to really feel it sleep in it awaken it live off of it and immerse ourselves in it we no longer have this and it might be leaving a curious hole in our soul that is missing why is it we are so curious and mystified by the outdoor life adventures raw ability in nature when we see those pictures or here are the stories that it tugs at us that it leaves us daydreaming because we are drawn to it it is who we are how we are hard-wired from thousands of years of living in nature in balance with it surviving in it being challenged by it being overwhelmed by it feeling alive on the ocean or in the woods in the mountains or the desert it all has its effect on us we all think back to the beautiful moments outdoors alive have we been sterilized to our fake lighting fake transportation fake shelters fake space we call our property we have ignored this fundamental part of us for too long where is our danger our use of all our senses or unease our unease where are we truly challenged in body mind and soul not at work not at home but in play in the outdoors or anything close to it your senses come alive ever so gradually all the components and cells of your body start weakening and firing because that is where we are originally from land sea air coming back from this dose it fires all our senses no treadmill or gym can replace this their time passes slowly laborious ly in nature time passes quickly because we get lost in ourselves and our thoughts in mind and spirit in listening to our body and soul it's all happening there how do you think we feel after a marathon or 50k in the woods mountains or beautiful terrain how do you think we feel after a day on the oceans or lake rowing sailing swimming fully powering ourselves across terrain mountain biking through hills and meadows across streams repeat any of these actions for a few days in a row and our sense of self changes our priorities shift our soul exhales and relaxes to what it knows is an integral part of it nature challenge raw beauty and immersive inputs all around us we all have an impulse to be more an impetus we often don't know why or where it came from but it is their adversity creates morality it shows our human side vulnerability and therefore empathy that's beautiful man thank you thank you that's poetry that different hearing it yeah someone read it ha ha ha it's very powerful that yeah it's great man well that's the first time I've like read something on the podcast and went off on a monologue but I was I was moved by it I'm touched by that and I thought it was worth worth reading so well thanks how many more well I just I've come across so many athletes over the last two three years that have different adventures planned in their lives and how they communicated to me and the excitement they explained it with is less about getting a placing or a result or qualifying for something or you know hitting a certain time it's more about finding out who they are achieving a desired outcome a lot of times I've been talking less about goals for people and more desired outcomes because it keeps it flowing it keeps it moving and it shows the growth and a lot of times the athletes that come to me they realized they didn't know what it was that was tugging at them but something they're more curious about and I believe it's this piece it's finding out ourself potential or what we can be and like for example the other day I'm listening to the podcast with you and Michael mm-hmm you guys would talk about optimization and self-realization and that growth right and I think in many cases people don't know what that is tugging at then to optimize to grow but there's this part that's been missing and then we're all hardwired to be outside alive immersed and like I was writing when we're out there you notice it when you're cycling 20 30 40 minutes and you start to notice cars around you without hearing am I seeing them you just get your senses are all alive when you're in water for a while swimming open water or even in a pool things change in your body as well as your mind we're meant to be out there doing these things and that's what I love this curiosity people are realizing I want to find out what I'm capable of what's out there what's more in me and grow that right yeah I think you've completely nailed it and you know we were also talking before the podcast about how more and more of your athletes are now embarking on you know adventures of their own self styling or you know bizarre things that you've never coached anyone for it used to just be you know a marathon an Ironman an Olympic triathlon or something like that and now you're seeing much more diversity and creativity in this space and I think it's exactly what you're talking about and I also think it's that yearning for more like that person who maybe doesn't understand self-realization or doesn't really have their finger on the pulse of what exactly is tugging them their first impulse might be like they have that yearning they don't know exactly what quite what it is so I'll sign it for a race I'll do a 10k like I'm I want to be in the top of my age group but that's not really what it's about yeah it's that piece that's missing inside of them to connect with that part of who we are who we've always been that's the pole right and once you've kind of explored some of those races and then you go yeah that was cool and I did learn a lot about myself but like how can I get more out there how can I get more in touch with myself and that comes through you know these these adventures that are much more about Nate and like that was one thing that was beautiful about Attila like yeah it's a race but it was it was about the surroundings and this incredible landscape that I never would have visit there you know so if when it starts to become more about that like your your your blinders come off and you're kind of consciousness expands and I think once you've had a taste of that that's really where the allure comes from and you think less about the results right and you think more about being out there and this is a this is an evolution for you as well as an athlete it's a super hardcore yes you know German raised yeah precision machine many people have said that to me like Melo are you yeah now I have the title of this podcast the mellowing of Chris yeah and it's it's it's been really fun to watch that change not only in me because I'm able to coach people differently um more in the mindset and more getting them out there and more balanced right there's another thing a little and maybe a little more empathy yes that was a that's a new word yes I used it it's the last word in this entry and I was like wow wow Chris is using the word empathy but it has it has come into it a lot because as I talk more and more about balance with regards to family with regards to career and this ultra-endurance world that we're in it's hard to be able to continue to do all three at a high level yeah it's just not possible and like I keep saying I call it the three-legged stool and one's career one's family and ones are personal sports endeavors or whatever interest hobbies say well it doesn't need to be this crazy ultra endurance thing and I don't necessarily think it always needs to be a level one leg of the stool can be shorter and the other one can be longer but the stool is still in balance you might have more family demands sickness family issues whatever that will require more of your time the other two will have to back off a bit mmm right doesn't mean this law isn't balanced or there's a time in your life where we have time to do a lot of ultra endurance to find the hours to do this stuff and then the other leg shortens a bit but you can't keep those things at bay for too long in a perfect balance otherwise they will all give ya and a perfect example of that is why I'm not racing Oh Atilla with you this year people right well why aren't you going back it's like alright well one one is I did it so I don't I don't have the same poll to return to that but there's a season for everything and this year I had other things that I wanted to focus on and and because you know balance is a fickle lover for me like once I commit and I'm all-in it sort of blinds me to other other things in my life and and that's what I love about it like I can go all-in on something and I want to see how I'm going to perform but this year I wanted to attune that level of attention to other things in my life and I'm travelling like crazy like it just didn't it wasn't gonna be you know a positive outcome for me to try to do all of that this year you know next year there's something that I want to do and and my balance equation will shift towards that but this year it's just about traveling we just got back from Italy and I'm on the road like all the time and I've got kids that are aging up and you know there's other things in life that are important to attune to and I say that as somebody who who's not great at the traditional notion of what balance is and that's something that you know I talked to Michael about on the last podcast and he had a great answer which is forget about balance like worry about being present and whatever it is that you're doing or that you choose to do and with this balance because I like to call it balance is um that you don't feel guilty or overwhelmed that you're not doing all things great there's times when other things require more of your attention right like currently your work and travel and all that is requiring more of your attention you're okay with putting the ultra on side cuz you've been there you know you can turn it up again or turn it down again it's not that foreign to you and so it puts you more present for what you're doing now yes right and then career mine our family might change the dynamics and you need more time there but again I know I can dial up career I know I can dial up interns I can dial that back and that calmness that ease that you have inside without that guilt of oh my god I'm gonna miss a workout yes you've been there we've all been there words like I don't anything that take away from my hours of the week like it's impossible to live like that you can't keep pulling from that well in that resource it will drain and dry out yeah I mean you can do it for a short truncated period of time but it also it creates a lot of stress and anxiety depending upon you know how busy you are on the other areas of your life and you wake up a couple years later going what was I yeah I just did the same thing for the last seven years and I know that's that battle you can't stay in the same spot so as somebody who's bit who's always been an athlete I mean you literally never retired you went straight from being an Olympic swimmer into professional being a professional triathlete now coach continuing to compete ultras like you literally have never you've gone through phases of varying intensity but it's not like you ever took a break and stopped so what is it that you still continue to learn about yourself and others by virtue of being immersed in this world there's always something I'm learning these events are also all so different that there's always something new to add to the portfolio of learning with regards to coaching as well I mean what we learned last year in attila the whole concept to swim run and that as cross-training for a lot of other events is has been very valuable yeah I think the biggest lesson that you learned at Attila is like patient it was the first time you had to do a race with somebody else and I was dragging you down and you had to learn how to like be cool with that which my own you know it's important and hardest lesson for you is just gonna say the same thing like that was a very meaning like when I look back many months ago about what happened there I learned a ton from that if anything I have to thank you because I learned to just let go and not just be focused on my outcome and of course it was always our outcome together but I identified with her with a result and wasn't the lesson that I was that I really wanted to be teaching you that day but again there was something we learned in that and so back to your question with regards to what am I still learning these days my athletes are bringing me so many different adventures I mean there's not a week that doesn't go by where my athletes aren't researching what they want to do next and they send me this bizarre race in like Mongolia and I'm like oh that's sort of cool how would we prepare for that and so then I start going out and doing some of the training blocks for that out of curiosity to how I'm responding to that and now order and then to apply it to them right I mean that the part that I need in my coaching is having gone through it because it really allows me to connect with what I'm thinking what I'm observing and then can connect with the athlete to calm them and build confidence in them that we're gonna do this because I've been there I've felt it and we'll be fine right from the experience in Sweden last year and as somebody who's going back this year what did you what did you take away just sort of tactically and training wise that you're incorporating into your preparation for that race this year because you know we talked about this before but the whole the the technical aspect of the running totally threw me for a loop it was like I thought we were gonna be trail running you know and it wasn't anything like that and I was like man I would have done a lot you know a bunch of different kind of strength training stuff which I'm doing this year a different type of strength training um and as well as more vertical and lateral stuff with regards to our the jumping that we did the side rocks box jumps moving sideways burpees the other day we had a swim practice what we had to get out of the pool not just do the push-up but completely get out and sure enough I had everybody in my lane doing burpees because if we're gonna do this if we're gonna get out might as well do some intensity and I heart rate with it yeah I'm and then go back in and swim the 400 and so forth but no I think it's more being able to handle the impact and stresses of that day on the lower legs core stability lower leg strength and so forth right cool all right well let's uh let's take some questions from the audience yeah you want to do that so we made some notes here and there more like I said they're more like themed attic or topical but you know maybe the first thing that we can kind of talk about and we have a whole list here I don't know how many we're gonna get through but we're not doctors that's what they know yeah there are a couple very specific questions that require somebody with medical education that yeah and and it's not our place to give advice even if it's high-level advice on that because when it comes to certain things you want to have clear insights from a medical professional with regards right heart rate there was one question that that I think was worthy of discussing because there's a lot of confusion around it which is stretching should you stretch and if you should should you do it before you workout after your workout what's your thoughts on that because there's isn't there was like a conventional wisdom swimming around for a lot like when we grew up the swimmers it was all about stretching yes and then there was a period of time where it was like if you're a runner you should not stretch it but I think this attention to stretching is now coming back yeah yeah I'm I'm definitely a believer in stretching I don't believe in the old school stretching before you're even warm enough and going right if anything the muscles have to be warmed up loose supple and you're able to use the effect of a of a warmed up muscle to stretch it I personally prefer and recommend my athletes stretch after their workout in order to we tune themselves with their body see where the niggles are sort of get that recalibration going did you ever experiment or buy into that idea that stretching is bad I did you did I did I've made plenty of mistakes yeah over the last 25 years and you know the part that why I brought it up is where I've noticed stretching can cause issues that if the muscle is not warmed up you are doing little micro tears yeah and the likely injure yourself the likelihood of those micro tears in the muscle goes way up I'm not saying you will but it goes way up the likelihood if you're not relaxed loosened up warm mmm blood flow yeah I was somebody who's always been super flexible naturally and that lent itself you know in swimming where flexibility is a big part of it and then for for a couple years I did that thing where I was like okay well they're saying that if you're running a lot you shouldn't stretch and I didn't do it and and then I lost a lot of that flexibility and I've been trying to get back to it and regain that because I think that that lack of flexibility has led to some imbalances and some problems that I've had to work through so I think it's super important and you know when your time crunched it's the thing you don't want to do or you want to blow off or what-have-you but I think it's super important yeah and I'm a proponent of anything where you're tuning in with your body you're taking a moment to listen to it and hear what's going on and stretching will tell you that where you're looser where you're tighter what side you can do something on you can't do it as well on the other side little things like that they're just part of that bigger picture of listening to your body what it's expressing itself to you right recovery huge huge fan of recovery so for somebody who's who's just trying to wrap their head around maybe they're new to the world of endurance sports their time crunched what is what is some I mean this is this tricky to get into because it's so persons specific like how hard are you training how experienced are you like etc but if there are some general principles guiding principles around how to recover and some techniques around recovery that you could share well sleeping is by far the most important component there what happens in your body while you're sleeping cannot be replaced by any supplements by any shakes by anything out there ma I'm also a big proponent of recovery days it's so hard for so many athletes to just take a day off and the constant theme and the feedback from those days is well I almost feel worse on days I'm not doing anything I like to just get a little blood flow going and be when I come back to training let's say after a day or two off I feel lethargic and slow and disconnected well that just shows how far in a hole we probably were it's like that adage you go on vacation and you don't set an alarm clock and then you notice actually how much sleep you need it's the same thing with a day off or two days off from especially an ultra endurance training because we get to the state of I wouldn't call it numbness but it's this overall fatigue that we don't realize how deeply fatigued we are until we take a few days off and get some good sleep yeah and I think in the in this world it attracts a lot of very driven type-a personality people and it requires a different kind of discipline to put the brakes on and slow down and I think the kind you know the extent of your recovery comes with like understanding how much you how much recovery you need and how to do it really just comes with experience it comes with experience and again back to the theme that we're probably gonna have on all these questions is listening to your body there's a lot of ways beyond your morning resting heart rate beyond beyond your general data that you can use to see how you're responding to the training and therefore if you need recovery one of those being how much you're eating your hunger is a huge sign of how you're you're absorbing the training load or not your sleep needs and what time you're going to bed as well as how you're waking up and how lethargic you are your heart rate during the training if it's super low and suppressed and just won't respond despite doing some higher intensity efforts those are all starting to be signs that you're on the far end of what I call overreaching you're not overtraining but you're getting to that edge you're overreaching the edge right and as we know from a variety of publications out there is currently stress plus rest creates the performance gains not just the stress which is called training yeah you get faster and stronger in the periods between your workouts out during your workout but I think one of the kind of underrated or underappreciated aspects of participating in in in these kinds of sports is that it really does Drive you to connect with yourself in a way that most people don't like we're just we're all in our heads you know we're in our cars we're earbuds in we're sitting at our desks and we're not sort of inclined to pay attention to the signals that our body is sending us and it's not until you sign up for a race and you start taking your preparation seriously that you be cut like this extra sense comes alive where you start to like paint like why am I feeling this way and and the more you can kind of journal that and and really listen to those signals you know it doesn't happen overnight but you get to learn you know and over doing this for many many years like I know you know like I know exactly when I feel a certain way like when I need a day off and I know it's like I think that the hard part for a lot of people is that dividing line between I'm just lazy and I don't want to do it versus when you are over drained I think those people I will say like I'm over trained when they're really just making an excuse for themselves but then there really is you know overtraining is real and you can run yourself into a rut and get sick and injured and all that kind of stuff so understanding which is which really just comes with time and and you know years of listening to yourself yeah listening takes practice whether it's in training and sports or your partner or however it listening takes practice and being able to hear your body's signals takes practice that's why most people freak out in a taper because the volume comes back ever so gently gradually and they expect because the volume came back they should suddenly feel better right well I've had three lighter days why am I not getting faster yet well you're so far removed from your fresh self it's gonna feel awful for the next few days yeah and your body's gonna be sending you all kinds of mixed signals it doesn't know are we going back up in volume here after these three days off like we have been or are we going all the way down or it's just completely confused and usually a good taper I would say 72 to 48 hours out you start feeling good right now before that yeah and many think oh I have three fighter days or two recovery days I should be flying right and you start panicking exactly yeah yeah and I think you know look sleep and nutrition are the most important things as a sexy as they are you know we want to talk about Norma tech boots and you know whatever crazy new technology is is happening or ancient technology cupping and acupuncture and all of those things are great and they have their place and they're beneficial but ultimately like if all you can do is ensure that you're getting eight eight hours of sleep and you're eating real food yeah then you know you've got it you're 90 to 95 percent there yeah I was just gonna say that's more than the 8020 rule if you're doing sleep and nutrition to the best of your ability you're 90 percent there right and the main remaining 10% yes that's when you're really looking to dial it in and add that last component but again if we're looking to complete an ultra endurance adventure do the 90 percent yeah don't worry about that last time yeah especially if you're on a budget or your time cause all that kind of stuff but on the subject of technology like a big kind of recurring question thread was all about the gear right do I need a heartrate monitor what kind should I get you know every time I post on Instagram like a picture of my watch from a workout it's like thirty crotchet which what watch is that one push is that what yeah there's a lot of focus on the gear power meters and then the data what can we learn from the data heart rate variability and all that kind of stuff and we've you know we've explored this at length you know in the past but I think it's worth kind of you know refreshing some perspective on this these are tools and they they they have their place in the toolkit but once we become dependent on them or we we become focused on them or we feel like we have to have them in order to train I think you've kind of lost the plot and you know I'll turn it over to you by just saying this like when we were growing up as swimmers you know you become so we're talking about that like my body you know connection that you get I know and you know that after many many years of swimming back and forth in a pool that if somebody said okay you know do this hundred in a minute or do it in 55 or do it in 110 that you could hit it within a second and it would also know exactly what your heart rate yeah without any devices because you're just you that connection is so strong and I think these tools can help you forge that connection but if you're using them and you're so reliant on them that you're you're not connecting with yourself in that way I think you're missing the point yeah they're tools they shouldn't dictate the workout they should help you do the workout better right and so if you want to be in a zone whether that's on to zone 3 zone 4 they will help calibrate your sensations with what's actually happening and the to calibrate itself you don't need one to dictate the workout just because it says zone 3 or zone 4 but you're getting sick you're getting injured you're completely fatigued you didn't get a lot of sleep last night you have young kids and got no sleep whatever there could be a zillion reasons where you say you know what this might not be the best choice right now in how I'm doing this workout I'm gonna listen to my body and when it comes back in tune and the heart rate monitor and so forth it works well right just a quick question by the way why hearts is swimming I was thinking today because I just swam do you swim with your eyes open or closed eyes open okay I swim my eyes closed do you yeah because when you were just saying we know exactly with a minute or 58 I was thinking today I'm swimming with my eyes closed in a completely random pool right Polly hi in this case um and I just know when to open my eyes for the turn just cuz I'm so used to how many the timing of I'm getting close to the other end and I open my eyes back up I don't really have you always done that i I pretty much remember exactly how in 50-meter pools I always loved it because I can close my eyes longer right that's amazing I didn't know I mean I love a peek a little bit to make sure I'm on the black line with or not on the box you can't be doing that when when they're on a ground line but even they're really yeah wow that's crazy man that's why I was just thinking about that when you said that closed eyes swimming yeah so do you still train with you know power and heart rate and all that kind of stuff or lessons yeah I just tested a few weeks ago to get my our zones and that's manly again just to see where I'm at a lot of that my athletes ask me well what is your test mean or what is my test mean it's just a snapshot of who I currently am and where I need to Train and in order to maximize the limited time that we all have it's great to have some inputs to quantify and dig deeper into this will have the most effect in the limited hours of training we have right well on the subject of training zones maybe we could talk a little bit about zone 2 everyone wants to talk about zone 2 it's the constant theme yeah and and because I wrote about it in my book maybe I didn't explain it as in-depth as you would have I feel like there's a lot of confusion out there and some of the questions were about you know do I train in zone 2 if I'm training for a 10k or a half marathon should I be you know this idea of like slowing down to go fast to create efficiency and aerobic capacity what's your perspective maybe in a kind of just a general sense and then we can drill down on a some more specific aspects of it well the important thing with regards to zone 2 is as you're getting fitter you're getting stronger and in that heart rate zone you're going to get faster now it might not be the numbers and speed that you want to see for your half marathon or you know shorter events and so forth but you're building a platform to then be better at the zone 3a tempo pace running your ligaments your cartilage your blood flow your capillaries all that is gonna work better because you created a better foundation at zone 2 I think there's also confusion about how to figure out what your zone 2 is and you know because I said in my book that mine was like you know I kept my hurry at 1:40 that's my zone 2 or at least it was a while ago yeah I don't think we tested in a while for somebody who's listening your zone 2 could be completely different you know that the top end of your zone 2 might be a hundred and seventy beats per minute it might be 120 and really the only way to determine that is to be properly tested the ideal way to do that is to get a formal proper lactate test that you can do most big cities or university towns there is the capability to do that but if somebody's listening and they want to do their DIY version of that what's the best way because people ask me that all the time I've found that doing five one mile repeats for the Europeans I would even do two kilometers but you can keep it to 1600 meters at a track with one-minute rest at 90 to 95 percent effort so about 10k effort not 10k pace because you don't want to start these 5-1 mile repeats at an at a pace because in your monitoring you're controlling the output it should be pretty hard and the average of that pace and the averages of that heart rate it gets us pretty close to what's called threshold heart rate zone for in this case and around there's your anaerobic threshold anaerobic threshold others know it as lactate threshold and from there we deduce back to zone 2 and over the years I've gotten to a point where it's not only quite close because I've done literally thousands of these that after a while the athlete actually says do I really need to pay $200 write data but also I also separate the zones by five to seven beats so that people don't get into the gray area between zones so when you do that you get your zone four then you can dial it back to see where zone three is and Zone two is and it works quite well it's usually a good 30 40 35 beats below you're a lactate threshold zone for anaerobic threshold all right so you're doing these mile or two kilometer repeats so we're certain you run hurry home nurse best-effort right and if you're recording your heart rate after each and your pace after each and we don't necessarily use the pace to determine the zones or we don't but when you do the tests again on your own in six to eight weeks you want to see the pace have improved either at the same heart rate zones or same pace but the heart rate zones are lower usually very rarely do we see the heart rate zone and zones go lower at the same pace because you're still going at almost best-effort so the heart rate is still gonna kick really high right and so the pace goes down and it's always startling because the athlete will say that's strange because I did zero speed work yet I'm getting faster mm-hmm at these high efforts by just doing zone to work and that answers that half marathon question - you are teaching yourself to become so aerobic ly economical that going faster will become more efficient as well right that's the thing that people have a hard time believing especially when they begin this journey and they realize like to remain in their zone - they're literally walk crawling yeah and and most people don't have the discipline to stick it out like they abandon it before the miracle I described the zones when they when we often do that track test before I put them into a lab right because it might be a little bit overwhelming for somebody who's brand new to this to ask them for blood drawn or like they've not like just long ago man I just want to do a 10k freaking exactly so empathy Chris can see look look yeah I'm growing but I'll describe Zone two as so I'll say zone to the heart rate zone and I say the description is you should be frustrated on how slow this is it should feel like a waste of a workout mmm then you did zone - perfect right okay and as you become more and more adept at it over somebody's been doing this for years and years and years what is amazing is that yeah you start out like oh I can't you know if I go faster than a 10-minute mile my heart rates too high yeah this is ridiculous you know six months later you're running nine minutes you know a year and a half later you're running eight minutes and then you're down to seven minute pace and it doesn't feel as easy as that ten minutes it feels hard or not not super hard but your heart rate is still in zone - you know like how is that possible when I didn't do any track work when I wasn't like busting 400 meter repeats or anything like that so you truly do get faster it's a long game though well yeah playing the long game here playing the long game but the the results are all so long because the work that you're doing inside your body the oxygen uptake the blood flow and so forth the mitochondrial very long last thing yeah now if you stop doing everything it'll go away in a couple of weeks but the the platform that you're building allows you to take on so many other stresses from a physical standpoint from training that it is really long-lasting with regards to what you're capable of I have athletes who say I haven't done any type of mountain climbing in years but then they'll do something crazy up in the mountains all off his own to training right yeah and you know I'm I'm you know everything that I was able to accomplish was by sticking to that plan at some point when you reach a certain level of vacuity though then you can build in the speed work as well sure yo sure so it's not just only that for whatever you're trying to course not absolutely not no you want leg turnover you want higher intensity stuff you want things that really stress the system it's just a question of how much time you're doing that you know 80% of the time zone to 20% of time zone 4 or above or 90/10 or 60/40 and then that's where it goes into what kind of race you're doing right if you're doing an Olympic distance triathlon or if you're doing a marathon run or if you're doing you know a 3k open water swim well then it's probably more like 6040 5050 zone to time and then intensity time mm-hmm but if you're doing something super long you're gonna increase that zone to aerobic activity but you still want like turnover you still want that the o2 effort so that your oxygen uptake also gets the other side of the spectrum it's just so taxing on the system that you have to be very careful on how long they are how much recovery you're getting and how frequently you're doing them right and I think another kind of benefit of the zone to training is it prepares your your joints and your ligaments over time to manage a greater load as you begin to escalate right rather than just going out and hammering it that it provides better consistency because you stay healthier and you can come back the next day and repeat the workout day after day after day build layer upon layer upon layer and the other discipline it builds is your mind if you can show the resilience early on to stick to your zones mhm your ability to stick to your pacing for an 8 9 10 15 hour event will be a lot better right because you're gonna be able to start slow and finish fast yeah everybody thinks discipline is being super hardcore but it's really just control it's how you modulate all of this and being able to you know sit the ego down and do you know what is on the piece of paper for you to do even if you think like oh I want to go harder or I want to go slower well and and in the endurance races that are out there whether running swimming biking triathlon whatever it is finishing fast feels way better than getting past and slowing down and your ability to not slow down as we've said before that you can work through that in your mind but also motivationally getting past continuously and beat up and I want you to last in this sport I want you to sign up for the next event because you felt good and energetic and enjoyed it and you were passing people over the last few miles right that's gonna keep you in this sport keep you healthy keep you growing your endurance keep you motivated not walking and you know nothing worse than she the cheers of you can do it you're looking great and doing it yeah you know you are and what and you know you could technically run but you just pasted it wrong right and those tears aren't for you to finish your those tears you're feeling awful your head is down and you're miserable yeah we don't want that so just to put the nail in the coffin on this subject and for people that are perhaps brand new to this podcast or to Chris and I the thing is is that most amateur sort of armchair newbie triathletes marathon runners runners make the mistake of spending ninety to a hundred percent of their training time in what is affectionately called the gray zone yeah it's that of effort that leaves you feeling good if you go out and run for a half an hour 45 minutes or an hour it's a good strong pace and when you finish you feel like you accomplished something but in truth you're really undercutting the your optimal sort of accessing your optimal potential because you're going too fast to truly develop that aerobic engine you're above z2 but you're not going hard or fast enough to truly develop the anaerobic engine so you're kind of in the middle you're getting a little bit of benefit from both but ultimately if you persist in just doing that all the time you will quickly plateau and you will never actualize your potential as an athlete I think that's the number one mistake that most most most of the kind of new people to the sport make yeah the classic too easy on hard days too hard on easy day so you're stuck in that grey zone there was grit just another article out there on that I sent out to all my athletes addressing exactly this I mean it's constantly being reminded of us that if you're gonna train like an athlete that means that you're gonna train smart and deliberately then you need to go hard enough on hard days and therefore you'll be begging for the easy days but you can't go too easy on hard days and too hard on easy days yeah I think people even when they understand that they still go too hard on the easy days yeah and then when you show up for that hard day you're not sharp enough to really push it as hard as you could otherwise and you're unmotivated once again the motivation wanes when you don't see the progress that you want to see or your others are beating you are going faster than you and you're like what am I doing wrong right I call it exercises exercising versus training mm-hmm people who have no deliberate outcome with regards to their workout with regards to their training with their eyes to their zones and just go do their exercising but training has a prescription training has a desired outcome training is a puzzle piece that fixing it fits into the bigger picture and if you're going too hard on easy days and too easy on hard days you're exercising yeah it's really an exercise in as well as in in checking your ego yeah especially in the era of Strava you know everybody wants to post you know the epic workout and if you're on a program and it's an easy day like you can't go for that kom or whatever you can't be thinking about like what your friends are gonna think and you gotta let that other person pass you and again it goes back to having that kind of discipline and intentionality what is the purpose of that workout and are you meeting that and how does that fit into the week because on Thursday or on Friday you might have a really important workout that you've been eyeing and your coaches been eyeing and you're excited to do but if the lead-up isn't done right next thing you know that's not being absorbed properly and it has downstream effects right and again then you're not training then you're just going through the motions and a lot of times athletes they struggle with confidence already because they're new to this whole ultra endurance world as well as just being athletes at this stage in life and so confidence is an important part when we do the simulations I want them coming out of that having learned something gained confidence and excited for the next phase of training if that's not happening because they're going too hard well we're just treading water because they're not getting more confident they're not having the adaptations we're looking for and then I'm looking at the training plan going what am I missing here what did I do wrong I I started asking did you eat what's your nutrition like are you sleeping yes check check check and then I start seeing right this drama files there you go all right here's a question from Paris Lyle's what are the top five most important things you should be doing if you are new to endurance sports five five can you come well number one is consistency right you want to be able to find the ability to do it back to back to back to layer upon layer and it doesn't need to be a lot of hours I mean we have people that think they need to train 15 to 20 plus hours in order to do that but thirty minutes a day twenty minutes a day is plenty good but if you can come back the next day and do something aerobic again and remember aerobic doesn't mean you're only cycling or run or swimming your heart doesn't know which activity you're doing as long as you're in that zone right you can be doing jumping jacks hmm if your heart rates up in that zone it's just pumping it's doing its work but it could be any of many sports so consistency is important the recovery in the sleep I think is very important I think nutrition more important vital that is to any type of performance that we're asking from this amazing tool called our body right you've got to fuel it effectively and a lot of people seem to think as younger people like I can throw anything and I'm training tons of hours and it doesn't really matter well you wouldn't put crap in your car right right or and ask it to do well at the track same thing with fueling your body and taking care of this precious thing because in 20 years from now it's gonna wonder what you did to it so now we're three you have anything add four four and five while I'm thinking about it I think a big one is not getting caught up in the gear I have to that's the first one because that acts as a barrier or an excuse for a lot of people like well you know I can't get into it yet because I can't afford this or I can't afford that or what's the best running shoe and those become those become impediments to just getting out and beginning yeah so don't worry about the gear work with whatever you have yeah that stuff comes later if you get more enthusiastic and more kind of invested then you can have that conversation and explore that but but just begin I think is the other thing and that kind of dovetails into the second point that I was gonna make which is you don't need all of your questions answered but we're beginning either especially when you're new yeah you want to know exactly where you're heading what it's going to look like every question that you have and you're gonna have a million questions and that's normal will be answered as well over time and so again don't use that as a barrier to just signing up for a race and getting started yeah yeah and beating yourself up about the workouts too much is a big issue and sort of what you were just saying getting started is the key but then life will get in the way and you will miss a workout and therefore you didn't get all the layers going as you want that doesn't mean you can't restart or get three days in a row or get four days in a row or go back to two days in a row it's all making a difference right I like flexible in value exactly well that whether that comes with balance as well as what I always like to say is progress not perfection be a little bit better today than you were yesterday and that 20 minute jog makes you better than yesterday because it accumulated on where you were yesterday and progress not just perfection it starts this this snowball to an avalanche of getting fit what about people that you know can't afford to hire someone like yourself they want to run a marathon they want to do an Ironman whatever it is that they want to do there's so many training programs online I mean I haven't really because I have you I don't go and look at all that kind of stuff I know there's tons out there and I'm sure some of them are good and some of them aren't so good so if somebody's trying to figure that out for themselves what is your advice well there's two things one is back to that progress not perfection a lot of the training plans that are out there just because you're not hitting every single last detail doesn't mean you're not getting a benefit use it as a guide and do the best you can it will help you just to get out there and do it consistently and then you know if you're looking at a training plan to do a sub three hour marathon on your first marathon that might not be the right thing so you know horses for courses find your proper book or find the proper online program that sort of is more conservative if you train too slow it won't hurt you if you train too hard it will likely hurt you you'll get injured you'll get demotivated or you won't have the progress that you're looking for are there any training programs that you're aware of like specific ones that you think are good that you can recommend or now it's hard for me because I never ever look at those things myself I mean I purposely and and you we've talked about this before and I've talked to a lot of other coaches about this before whether it's at conferences and so on I look at nothing I look at nothing cuz I like to keep it really creative and individual to me and the more I know what others are doing or how they're doing it it makes me lose sort of how I'm trying to apply it off the things I'm experimenting and learning from yeah I mean one of the things that I've learned through you is it's it's a dynamic you know it's a partnership and it's dynamic and it's evolving and it's it is it's responsive to where the athlete is so it's not like oh right you're doing Ultraman well here's your plan all the way to the end it's like you kind of plan it out 7 or 10 days ahead and then you're like well let's look at where you're at and then I can decide what you're gonna be doing for the next I mean there is a meta like I know where we're trying to get and I have an idea of these training blocks that I want to put in but it's not like you've scripted the whole program no way to the yellow everybody's so individual and has so many different needs and things that get in the way and many of my athletes know the wording of wedge week that I call it we get sick a project at work something of our children I call it a wedge week those weeks we're gonna fall off and volume that's fine take a wedge week and relax about it don't get overwhelmed and frustrated and stressed about it and now I can't do the event it's just the week won't get you fit again that's not the issue and the other thing that you were saying before which I wanted to get back to with regards to the nature aspect not all of us have access to nature the way we do with regards to getting out and running and cycling in open roads but if you can get it every now and then every 2 or 3 weeks if you're living in Manhattan getting north out into upstate New York or getting out over to New Jersey getting some fresh air and getting out there it makes a difference not just the treadmill not just the indoor cycling classes you know and not just an indoor pool so with regards to means and not having the availability whether financially or just location wise still try to get that invigorating immersive experience occasionally because that will help you deal with being back in your basement on the trainer or on the treadmill injury let's talk about that for a little bit kind of came up a second ago there were a bunch of questions about persistent injuries somebody was like my calf keeps and getting injured or coming back from injury so first of all let's take that first piece like people who are consistently persistently getting injured in the same way time and time again yeah I would look at your training your habits on how you're training I would definitely look at nutrition and I would also look at some other imbalances in the body on why this keeps coming up oftentimes just because you have a calf injury doesn't mean it's in the calf absolutely and so once you sort of again start listening to your body and sort of ruling out certain things and being smart about recovery and resting when niggles come up because in ultra endurance training and we were talking about this earlier in ultra endurance training the volume that you're doing eventually even if you're just starting out it's new to you so it is volume for you the body the the volume will find the injury it will find the weak spot and if you have a hip injury or if you have a knee thing or if you have a shin splint or if you have a potential for a stress fracture coming out it's coming because the volume will find it the pounding on the body will find it so when you listen to your body and you hear it coming you've got to take action right and not just dr. Google but rest right not right away I think the sky is falling rest and see how your body responds to that rest and allow it to come back and with regards to coming back from injury again patience and discipline and allowing everything to come back in a more holistic way with other imbalances being worked out and core instability I have an athlete currently she has a stress fracture in her femur and she was very upset you know it's like her season is definitely limited now right but instead we had a conversation listen I'll get you fit again this is not a question of getting you fit let's use this time for opportunity catch up with your family catch up on other things shame on you I know I know how dare I say that um you know spend some time volunteering doing different things work on your swimming take some you know knitting lessons whatever it is but just use the time to sort of say you know what I'm gonna turn this injury into something positive mm-hmm and coming back you have to be really smart like not just pound right back in but really have a deliberate plan over six eight 12 weeks at which point I want to be back to par fitness what I call it mmm and depending on the injury and your body and what you know of your history that might be 12 weeks away so now how am i structuring the next 12 weeks so that I'd gradually build up come back down again gradually build up more come back down again all the while listening to how my body is responding hmm yeah Buerkle was a great example of that because she's been in that freakin boot for like a year and she's a racehorse you know so to tell a girl like that Olympic athlete like you just you can't do all the stuff that you're used to doing all day long every day it was I think it was a really huge emotional challenge for her and she chose to kind of share it openly on social media which I thought was really cool like like how difficult it was for her but also to treat it as a growth opportunity yeah to grow in other areas it's really cool and it's like look if you're in the game for you know any extended period of time stuff like this happens yeah and out of fairness to her is that she's also been wired all her life that a people have taken care of her injuries because she's in the sort of the Olympic system and there's people with eyes on it and paying attention and monitoring and blood tests and you know so forth but also that her wiring has always been okay I recovered now I trained again yeah right and in our sport of swimming it's pretty hard that when there's no pounding on the body to really not gradually just jump right back in and so with something like running and where our full body weight is back involve things are dramatically different yeah on the subject of the persistent injury you know in terms of coming back I think that you know obviously you know taking enough time to rest is important but on that subject of like imbalances you know when you said like well if it's the calf it's not necessarily the calf it's an imbalance like if your spine is out of alignment if you have one hip where your muscles are too tight it's creating this weird asymmetry in your body and that might be fine if all you're doing is walking around and living your life but when you're doing the pounding and all of that over time that's gonna manifest in that injury and you can rest and let it heal but it's gonna happen again the follow you know if I rest that and and really figure that out and that goes to you know the stretching and and the function will strength work to make sure your core is strong and whether it's going to a cairo and looking at your spine and seeing if you have a curvature there like they can really evaluate if you're a little bit often even if you're even if your hips are tilted you know a centimeter now if you're trying to train for an ultra like you're gonna have a problems and because of strides absolutely and you know good sports medicine physical therapists they can quickly test a lot of strength components on your body how your hip flexors are firing how your hamstrings are firing how your calves are supporting how your plantar supporting they within 45 minutes can give you a protocol that basically shows you these are your imbalances these are the things you need to work on in order to create a more balanced body right so even if you don't have that you know you have a curved spine and you're if you did an x-ray it looks like everything's in check if you're weak in your core or in your functional strength when you go out and train and you start to fatigue your technique denigrates right you start to like each over when you use the big muscles right and then that's gonna lead to a problem where that weaker muscle is going to contribute to an injury yep so it'll find it it'll find it it's just because of the hours and the time out there the body will find the injury when you're doing that much pounding 40 times your body is what running is mom the ankles on the knees and so forth so that's a lot of weight to consider that your poor joints have to carry that and how that sort of shoots through the rest of your body whether it's hip whether its knee or there it's lower back right and if there's an imbalance it'll find it right all right we got time for a couple more here one I think that would be good is is how to maintain your enthusiasm stay engaged with the sport after you've just completed a race or perhaps when your motivation is waning yeah well I mean for me I've a lot of my athletes know this I'm just such a big believer in the journey and what we're doing and why we're doing it if we're looking for just that specific outcome and we don't know that life goes beyond on after that certain day it's gonna be really tough when that day comes and passes and you feel no different sure you're proud of your accomplishment and don't get me wrong I believe in being proud of the work you've done I'm putting meaning behind it and purpose and belief behind it because if it's important to you that's good enough right but as we're training through these ultra endurance events what I was writing about is it's that beauty it's feeling that alive and invigorated and if you're missing that you're not listening to your body you're not being present like we talked about with how lucky you are to do be doing this training outside in nature immersing yourself in it and feeling that dopamine release that will want you coming back if you're just doing it in the gym in a box somewhere you don't get that same release you don't get that same stimulus and you don't feel that vibrancy that is in you that you get from finishing a long workout you might be tired but you still feel awesome yeah I also think that it's important to really inventory the extent to which you're kind of growing as a person by virtue of doing this like are you becoming a better person is it enriching your life because I think there's an epidemic in endurance sports of people using it almost like a drug to run a away from other aspects of their life whether they're in an unhappy relationship or they hate their job or they have just some you know trauma in their life that they can't gather this drink to confront so you can use this sport as a distraction from your life and I see that a lot and I think it probably doesn't get discussed enough so it really is important for you to be honest with yourself like are you using it are you participating in it in a healthy way motivation will wane at just the nature of motivation it's a short-term thing but how you are in the sport why you're in the sport I ask all my athletes the meaning of why they're doing this what's their meaning behind it not their goals not their but what connects them to it why did they choose this why that event what's the meaning behind it and many don't have that answer but when they do go through the exercise of understanding yeah why am I doing this yeah I think they grow as athletes like you were saying and then they have a whole different appreciation for it because guess what that Kona slot once you have it life goes on on the other side yeah it's not like I mean you know yeah you still are going back to your life out of that right yeah so what is your life look like yep you know alright last question do you sleep in a tent no I know you don't Chris is not although Chris probably spends more time out camping in in nature than I do I definitely like it outside yeah yeah when I was thinking about remember I was talking to you about running the John Muir Trail this yeah so that hasn't come up it's still something I want to do and no not for some sort of you know fastest known time or to put some sort of record out there but again just to be out there and not that I'm again like what you were just saying getting a lost from anything or from hiding from anything but more because I love being out there and experiencing it and feeling it and having an opportunity come back then and share that with others and inspire them through my energy to get out there as well cool awesome man so I think I want to close this down by sharing a few thoughts on a blog post that I came across that was written by Jason coop mm-hmm and we're both friends with Jason's an amazing ultra runner as well as endurance coach at Carmichael systems I got to know him when we were pacing Dean Karnazes at bad water so I spent a couple days with him super cool guy incredible athlete and he wrote this post that I'll link up in the show know it's called best advice eight coaches give their single best tips and he basically just conducted a recent ultra running camp and he asked all of his sort of fellow coaches that were hosting this camp like what is their best single piece of advice and there were some really cool nuggets in here the first one was don't count yourself out right so what I think about that well it just be confident in yourself and the other aspect what he's probably I'm talking about there is it's a long event and just because you go through one Valley there's plenty of Peaks ahead and you can have a slow first half and still win a race mhm you know that's the beauty of ultra endurance nothing is over until way way way further down the line yeah I just had des Linden in here two days ago so we're talking about that very thing like you know she was like this race is not happening for me and she starts sacrificing herself for everybody else except herself only to find herself you know within striking range at you know with at Mile 22 and takes the lead I know it was incredible right so yeah the peaks and the valleys just because you feel lousy it's a long day it doesn't mean that you know it's gonna it's it will change and you could come back to life you hear it all the time in the fitter you are the more time that you have spent in zi2 the more likely you are to be able to resuscitate yourself and come back I think so not judging yourself and like ganging up on yourself emotionally obviously when that happens it's an emotional day in general so of course there's gonna be peaks and valleys it's so immersive and there's so much going on and you sacrifice so much to get ready for this you should be emotional but allow yourself the full event mm-hmm embrace what is difficult and uncomfortable and love Darcy Murphy I love that it just makes you stronger right your ability to deal with adversity right and like I was writing earlier your ability to deal with adversity and be vulnerable just makes you a better person on the other side learning how to swim for the first time doing your first ultra feeling foolish doing something on a bike not knowing how to clip in your pedals all those things feeling vulnerable just makes you realize oh man maybe I should be more empathetic to people this great epiphany that yeah it's crazy amazing I mean that was a big theme of my recent conversation with Jessie it's leur who I know you know as well you know his his his constant you know sort of push to put himself in uncomfortable situations and when you do that time slows down like because you're and you you come alive in a way that you just don't when you're stuck in your routine and what I said earlier what do we have these days that really create fear and challenge in us a work project doesn't create fear and challenge our family and life and community life doesn't really create fear and challenge but we as human beings as animals we are wired to deal with fear and challenge and that just makes us more alive and connect with parts of us that we didn't even realize we had because we've overcome adversity and embrace those challenges but it contradicts every message that were exposed to every single day that pushes us towards luxury and comfort and ease it's like it's an intuitive it's part of it yeah and part of it it's part of it yeah mm-hmm this one I love for every one minute you spend training your body spend two minutes training your mind yeah that's means a great way to say it but I also think you get the benefits of one-to-one like you don't literally have to set the clock but you're training your mind at the same time all the time and understanding and listening again to your mind is a very hard thing to do and that's why the longer you go into ultra-endurance the more you have that opportunity to spend some time inside your head when you're running through the night or you're out in a trail for hours upon hours whether you're hiking running however you're cycling in the middle of nowhere your brain starts working inwards and starts just listening to what the thoughts are and clearing things out it's a very meditative process but it's also very important for us and every time you confront and overcome some kind of mental barrier or you accomplish something that you didn't think that you could that's like push-ups for the soul right you've then had that experience and your perception of your capabilities and what is normal shifts yeah the new normal the new floor right what used to be far a 10k now you're running marathons you think 10k I can do a 10k and it continues to grow like that brain is the same way the iron cowboy James Lawrence was in town the other day giving a talk so I went to introduce him just kind of you know provide a little introduction to him and do a little host a little Q&A after his talk and I'd never watched him do he does like a full keynote like presentation and I watched him deliver like it was really it was it was it was quite something like he really figured out how to tell this story about doing 50 my man's in 50 days in 50 states and you know very well but the predominant kind of overarching theme of the whole thing boils down to you know really the mental game like what he had to confront in his mind in order to accomplish that and that really took primacy over the you know we all think of it as being this impossible physical challenge but it was his mind that really allowed him to carry it and understanding how to develop that level of like mental resilience is the differentiator between people like him or David Goggins or these other people that do all these amazing things and everybody else yeah I mean your ability to come back and deal with the pain and deal with the adversity and deal with the fatigue and also deal with the unser t-that builds incredible strength incredible strength that you can apply everywhere mm-hmm you know the next one on this list is cultivate grit which is kind of similar to what we just talked about yeah yeah be vigilant though is a big part of of grit and that is not allowing the internal narrative to talk you out of anything mm-hmm surround yourself with good people good code you ought to be good coaching that's certainly one person that you need but you also don't want to be around people that pull your dreams and desired outcomes of ours right energy-sucking versus energy giving and that believe in you and grow your confidence because again if it's meaningful to you that's enough be proud of that accomplish that goal and be proud that you stuck stuck your mind you're yourself out there in order to accomplish the goal and did it it's a great thing there's the adage that you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with which I think speaks to that but beyond that I think also it's worth stating that whatever challenge you're facing you know endurance challenge ultra endurance challenge that it is you and it is an individual sport and yet it's not it's yeah it is a team sport you know whether you need formal crew or you don't it doesn't matter the people that you have surrounded yourself with that you're spending the most time with whether they are directly or indirectly involved in the pursuit of that goal the quality and caliber of those relationships are integral and and often determinative in terms of whether you're going to achieve that goal or not and it's part of that balance if you're out of balance there and you take too much energy from your support around you your family your work you're not going to be able to sustain it yeah the next one is kind of obvious be really really physically prepared well yeah I mean it's sort of what we said last year furtillo right I mean I'd rather be over-prepared mm-hmm and deal with the things that I can't control on race day versus be underprepared and sort of flailing right yeah there's an the idea of lining you know it's toeing the line at the start line knowing that you're not physically prepared and many people have something I have the ability to do that yeah figure it out but their desired outcome is usually not being met the next one is from Jason adapt you know you there's many things in ultra endurance events and especially ultra running which what he's talking about that you cannot control on race day on event day I call it I don't like to call it race day an event day because weather and terrain and competitors in your stomach and niggles all those things can come up right and we've trained so much for this one day for this event day and you have to be ready to adapt and to all the things that will go wrong things will go wrong it's too much distance it's too much terrain it's in the middle of nowhere usually you're not doing a 50-miler in on a track in downtown San Diego so be ready for that but that's where the Fitness ties in if you have the fitness and a really strong platform to go from you will be able to think better and adapt to make better decisions when those things go wrong right that's what why I believe so much in the this huge level of fitness is your thinking ability becomes stays really strong when things start going right and and part and parcel of the mental preparation for such an event requires kind of mindfully developing your emotional agility so that you're not even if you are thinking clearly it's you could still be an emotional wreck and get them out of your game so the more you can kind of train yourself to roll with whatever gets thrown in your direction the better off you're gonna be able to quickly adapt I mean sometimes you can kind of physically adapt but if you're so like sort of distraught over what you just had to do to get back on track that's gonna take its toll the more you can just be like a river you know and flow with whatever comes every day is an opportunity to improve to be better than you were yesterday and it might not just be in training it's the things that you're talking about being mentally more prepared for adversity today than I was yesterday because I went out there in the rain or I dealt with that blister while I was running today or that flat tire happened I fixed it and I kept riding although usually I would call for a ride to get home there's a zillion ways we can spin these stories but there's always a nugget in there that makes us stronger makes us better perfect prepared for the event or just in general makes us a better prepared person right rather than getting pissed when that happens in training oh here's my opportunity to learn how to deal with this stuff better right the next one is learn to love the process and I think that's great because it speaks to the why that we talked about and I think it's important if you want to stay in the game and have any kind of like longevity but I think where it gets interesting is where you bifurcate loving the process with being attached to you know an outcome because on some level if you set a goal like that that can be a very important driving force like I want to have this happen and that's what gets me out of bed in the morning balancing that against being sort of detached from that outcome because that's not really the real reason that you're in it yeah I mean but also what you just said is actually interesting I want this to happen that's not saying I want to get second place first place this time because placing you don't control other people who will be there right a time you don't control the weather or the conditions that day or you know a lot of the things that are part of that wanting something to happen is still sort of a desired outcome there's ways to shift that and I'm not saying to take to take your goals and sort of make them less meaningful but if you don't love the process the trainings gonna be very difficult in the ultra-endurance world because what the one thing that I would have probably added to that list that coaches have all learned is what your traits are in the rest of your life at work or with family they rise to the yes in ultra endurance training you can't hide from you know and so if you don't believe in the process and Trust the and embrace the journey you're gonna keep talking yourself out of things and you're gonna stumble on the same things you stumble on in communication at work or you know with your family or it's just all our traits come to the top right and and that's why you know endurance sports ultra ultra endurance I mean they're really a metaphor for life and all of these tips are equally applicable to you know if you're not an athlete and you're listening to this like these this is good advice or whatever it is that you're dealing with or whatever it is you're trying to accomplish in your life and let's before we say something that we lose a couple of listeners anybody can be an athlete an athlete to me is being is a mindset it's how I'm gonna prepare for the workout that's how I'm gonna execute the work out how I'm gonna recover from a workout that could be for your first 5k or that could be for the Olympics what makes you an athlete is how you think you prepare for it and think about it and get through it not because you're some sort of elite status or you have a certain physical stature or something like that anybody can be an athlete that's beautiful man I'm glad that you pointed that out and I think it's a good place to end it with one caveat which is that there is one more piece of advice on this list yeah and what's so poetically beautiful about it is that the last piece of advice is practice self empathy so you ended your post with the word empathy and this list of eight pieces of advice from Jason ends with a little coming together yes it's all coming again so yes practice self empathy empathy for others but empathy for self yeah forgive yourself forgive yourself you can't you can't do this if you're looking to be too perfect you're gonna make a lot of mistakes I've made so many mistakes in 25 years you're doing this and I continue to make them every day mm-hmm awesome Matt great to talk to you any any uh any parting words you wanna know I'm just still blown away by hearing you read my words that was pretty I wouldn't had anybody do that now you have to publish it so I can link it up in the shoto so everybody can read it yeah well so you'll have to teach me how to do that alright well we'll talk about it offline yeah awesome man thank you so much or super helpful inspirational and always great to see you my friend yeah cool so if you want to connect with Chris the best way to do that is a iymp coaching comm or an at AI MP coach on twitter weekly word podcast that's right weekly where I was your podcast it's very good it's actually going great I answer all these questions you do every single time if you know about right right right to it and and we should point out that in going through all the questions Chris had said oh well I just answered that on my podcast so there was a bunch that we skipped over so if you feel like your question was not answered what Chris does on his podcast is really dive deep and get into the into the weeds on all of this kind of stuff that you guys out there who want to geek out on endurance sports would love so the weekly weekly word podcast and get it on iTunes wherever you listen to podcast yeah cool all right man until next time yeah peace [Music] you

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 95,666

Rating: 4.8899713 out of 5

Keywords: rich roll, vegan, health, fitness, diet, nutrition, athlete, podcast, inspiration, motivation, plantpower, plant-based, wellness, mindfulness, self-help, endurance, chris hauth, AIMP, ultrarunning, ultramarathon, otillo, swimrun, ironman, triathlon, training, mindset, performance, sleep, self-improvement, sport, rrp, coach's corner, olympics, swimming, running, marathon, ultra, ultraman, coach, coaching, mentor, leadership

Id: yiKLpAtjZng

Length: 90min 35sec (5435 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 05 2018