How to Start Strength Training with Coach Sarah Scozzaro | Koopcast Episode 114

trail and ultra runners what is going on what's happening welcome to another episode of the KoopCast as always i am your humble host coach Jason Koop and this episode of the podcast is with one of our very own coaches and that is sarah scazzaro sarah has been absolutely instrumental in helping not only me but our entire coaching department out specifically with how to properly strength train with all of these endurance athletes that we have sarah has a very specific strength and conditioning background as well as a corrective exercise background she also helped me design most of the strength training chapter within the second edition of training essentials for ultra running which is out there you guys go and check it out get your hands on it if you do not have it already and since this is the time of year that athletes everywhere are getting back into the gym gym memberships are flying off the shelves everybody's cramming in there we wanted to answer some of the most practical questions that you guys have out there in the audience so we took some drop holes on instagram on twitter and we brought them into this conversation that really centered around how do you start if you are a reasonably well trained and have some strength training experience

but maybe not have strength trained over the course of the last several months how do you actually start what things should you go do in the gym how should you set up your strength training program to kick it off on the right foot that's the thesis of a lot of what sarah and i talked about throughout the course of this podcast but i don't want it to end there i do want to build more podcasts off of the strength training theme because it is one of the most popular ones that i get questions on instagram and out in the field every single day every single week so expect more from the strength training theme from the KoopCast in 2022 i think this is going to be a big part of the content that we put together but enough of that i'm going to get right out of the way here's a conversation all about how to start your strength training with coach sarah scazzaro so you and i we did this kind of like you know ad hoc straw poll in advance to kind of get ready for this and i don't think we needed to do it because we kind of knew what the results were going to be i'm always flabbergasted when we ask people about strength training because ultimately the questions that are the questions that kind of get filtered back to us are hyper specific yeah like really and i know people want they want to know what the thing is like exactly for them but for whatever reason it's strength training it just seems to like this like hyper specificity

is even more enhanced and i've never been able to like place why that is why is that yeah i don't know if it's because there's so much out there and trying to like distill it down into like what do i need to do or if it's the um the secret sauce like there's got to be that one thing once i unlock it because isn't that what every athlete's hoping for the one thing or the one exercise and i think strength training is just so much more broad it's just it's not ever just one thing right i think that that's it i think because it is so broad i've said this before and i kind of made mention of this in the book if you pray if you remember right that we put we cast this overly broad umbrella across it and it can encompass anything from a one rep max olympic lift right like you would see in the olympic games where you know they've got you know way more weight than you and i can lift on on the end of those bars to physical therapy exercises with the band yeah and there's a whole it's interesting too because like you know if you spend even five minutes on social media then you'll get into the the different arguments of not they won't consider any of that ladder stuff that's not strength training you know unless it's hard heavy weight so it's you have all these conversations going amongst all these different populations and nobody can even necessarily agree what they want to have be under the umbrella of strength training what's you know what i mean does that count i don't know at least ultra running i think most of us can

agree if it's over a 50k and it's check an ultra marathon um but strength training is just so does that count and i think sometimes people get kind of caught up in that the details of that of rather focusing on maybe whether it's beneficial or not to the runner yeah for sure well you know the voc i don't know this is my own hang up so we'll step off this soapbox eventually but the vocabulary irritates the crap out of me because i've i can't tell you how many conversations i've been in with people where we're talking about strength training and it takes like 10 or 20 minutes to like figure out that we're talking about two wildly different uh imaginations in our mind about what that strength training is i'm talking about going in and doing you know three sets of five or something and somebody else is going in and doing olympic lifts and the other person is going in and you know using your monster walks and things like that it's just you know my favorite exercise we're gonna talk about that but it's just okay the fact that all three of those can kind of mean the same thing it that just that's just i don't know i just can't get over it that's my own hang up so well and i think that's part of the confusion and kind of circling back to why do people they like tell me what to do because it's so it can be so varied um and those are conversations i have to have with my athletes too because they'll be like well i want strength training i'm like well what what where are you coming from when you talk about needing strength training like where's your point

of reference because you may be someone who's only ever experimented with stability ball and never touched a barbell whereas someone else could be like dude i've done years of crossfit and so they're they're wildly different for sure okay let's get over our own hangups and we're going to get down to like the practical things so i think the way that this conversation is going to get set up is we're both going to kind of offer our own opinions on different aspects of this right both as coaches in the space practitioners in the space and some of those opinions are going to be similar and some are going to be different and that's kind of the beauty of everything right yeah so the the framework that i want to use initially and it's really good that you already started to paint this picture of where is the athlete coming from because you you get painted a lot as the quote unquote strength training coach and so when our good friend dominic right our good friend dominic our athlete services manager when he's looking at the incoming athletes and who to match them up with coaches you're on the top of the list whenever somebody mentions hey i i quote unquote need strength training i'm emphasizing the word need very deliberately we'll come back to that too i'm sure no we're gonna talk about right now we're gonna talk about right now so you are the recipient of those athletes the athletes that say hey i need or i definitely want one of those two strength training to be an integral component of my training so the first piece of framework that i kind of want to start out with is does every single endurance athlete need in capital letters bold font strength training to be

a part of their over of their overall run training or how would you actually kind of grade that and suss that out since you're on the recipient or since you're kind of the recipient of that of that question a lot yeah so okay that the emphasis there is on the bold letters capital letters of need right so strong word doing is a strong word i think most people can benefit from it but there's varying shades of that right and we're gonna i'm gonna get i'm gonna commit to something here so i'm not gonna dance around it but i think a lot of that is what that comes from is and we talked about this before is what are you giving up in order to make time for that strength training so if somebody comes to me and when someone's coming to me under the umbrella of hiring me as a coach or hiring anybody else as a coach and they want to include strength training their first and foremost generally coming to me is i want to complete x y or z race this is my i'm training for lead bill i'm training for western states i'm training for this 50 miler and i need strength training okay so when we set up the architecture of your run training because that's what our focus is how do we plug strength training in to be an enhancement of that versus a detractor of that so if someone's already coming to me and saying i don't even get five hours a night of sleep okay adding an extra 30 minutes to an hour of strength training is probably not gonna like where do you have the time for that if you're not even prioritizing sleep yeah does that you know that is right those athletes are poor candidates for monster walks we're gonna pick on that because those are so demanding um but just it's like they're

they want to add more there's somehow this feeling that adding more onto the plate is going to complete them as an athlete when they're actually neglecting some of the key parts that are going to be more beneficial for them um so now if someone's like i'm like yeah they get everything they need and and the strength training would be beneficial i i do believe it is something that is pretty valuable for for overall like durability and with some issues with some you know some overuse issues with injury not all you know um and i do believe that you know within the right context strength training has its place but i think someone who is trying to use strength training as the i'm gonna go ahead and say it the poor man's physical training physical therapy yeah it's not that's not you should be going to a physical therapist you know i mean i i get people that'll ask me like oh i have this what should i do and i'm like well have you seen a physical therapist no okay go see a doctor a physical therapist get a diagnosis make sure you know what you're dealing with don't just make strength training like i'm gonna cure myself with this so it's not so it's kind of back to the original question it's not a need right you don't need it to complete or to be successful in ultramarathon you don't need much right shoes maybe not even shoes you don't really need those right yeah depending on who you talk to yeah that's true i mean but but but the benefit there is a benefit yes and that benefit and that benefit has a range i think that's that's the right framework for things now and that's very individual

to the athlete yes okay so you know me i don't i don't let our coaches get away with the answer it depends right i think that's a cop-out and there's always an it depends on and we should know better on what it depends on you already mentioned one criteria right if other areas will make a bigger difference than strength training you go from five hours of sleep to six or seven hours of sleep a night that two hours extra sleep is probably going to do more than an hour in the gym correct i believe that what are the other it depends pieces so that we can kind of like grade the value of strength training for each individual once again this is something you do because everybody comes in and says i need it i want it you're on the recipient you're on the recipient end and say okay for this athlete we're going to prioritize it here in the list because of these reasons for this other athlete yeah let's let's wait you know eight weeks and get some other things established before we do it and that whole range of things take the listeners through kind of how you're how you look at that landscape yeah um so absolutely i'm looking at each individual athlete when they're coming to me so if they say i'm training for this event and then we talk about their training availability the recovery all the other pieces that go into that first and foremost too if somebody is coming to me that's been cleared from like a physical therapist but has been told to work with a coach and include strengths training in their routine then we're going to make that a priority because

i've actually been told to that's a very impactful thing that could be used for their further training especially someone who has known asymmetries or imbalances working through some strength exercises could be very beneficial depending on the situation for the individual depending on i emphasize that just for you um so after that if someone's like i get eight hours a night of sleep i have plenty of time for training i want to i want to do strengths training you know they're they've got the perfect situation which like we could talk about how often that happens but i mean you know you've got a big athlete base you just put a like spitball percentage on how that how often that happens maybe of that perfect everything being perfect less than 50 percent yeah less than 50 percent that's a that's fair that's fair in my experience i mean that where they're getting adequate sleep their job and work family balance yeah um then it's a matter of to use a kind of a the dosing like how do we program at the prescription how often do we do the strength training right to the beneficial for the individual so are we talking and again it comes back to that what is strength training to each individual is it i'm having them do core work and monster band walks a couple times a week or are we doing heavy squats and dead lifting and that's i have an opinion of what is best during the season for an athlete i think we talked about that refer to KoopCast versions one and two those links will be in the show notes i'll mention that in the intro

where we talked about you know when to lift heavy when to do more moderate kind of mid-season lifting if someone's coming to me four months out from the event it's going to look different on how i recommend strength training if they come to me six seven or eight months ahead of an event and what is that what does that difference like generally look like generally how the the prescription of reps the volume reps sets loading exercise selection um the needs of the athlete where their current volume is if they're up if they're totally doing awesome with their run volume and recovering well and we've got the room to put some strength training but if they have massive deficits in their basic endurance we need to it's our priority for their run programming so when you have an athlete though for a longer period of time are you general and we're going to get into the periodization piece a little bit later are you generally like favoring a more periodized strength model with those athletes versus the ones that don't have the the time or the time availability or is it just or does that even come into the fold meaning if i have somebody so we've been together for the past year and starting a new training cycle versus someone who's coming to me and we have no like no i still there is a certain level of i guess what you could consider periodization but it's more of where i know to start the person so if i've been working with someone for a year that periodization is much more organic it's much more um i should say straightforward we're starting an off-season lifting program in december and your race isn't until late august so we're so we talk about

this a lot in training right uh we we design the structure or the architecture of training around two points where the athlete is and where the athlete is going and where the athlete is is like 80 of the equation right because they can only build up so much so fast and where they're going it matters a whole lot more in the last you know several weeks i'll say um that specificity as we get specificity side of things so let's kind of start here now you know we're sitting here we're recording this the the end of january and everybody's got their new year's resolutions they just signed up for you know their subscription to the gym that's around the corner they might have built a gym in their basement which is what i just did over the holiday season that was a christmas present for my wife and i right so we're getting on yeah we're getting on that bandwagon as well so there's a there's a lot of i guess my point with that is is there's a lot of listeners out there that are that are they they're starting to wrap their heads around it they know they want to try to incorporate some sort of strength training where should they start in terms of reps and sets or whatever the whole thing like sarah where should i start that's not a fair question when is their event what is their training history what let's just put some i know coaches always hate these things i hate answering these questions too let's put some parameters around it just to give you some some some go with their training for 100k ultra marathon in july they have a reasonable training background they've been training over the

winter probably about 70 percent of what they maximally train at so they're coming into they're not coming into it with like zero fitness but the strength training component is either new to them or will be recently new to them meaning they didn't strength train for the last six months or they haven't strength trained at all since they were in college okay so we're we're six months ish out then from a late july race so this is an appropriate time so as an athlete like that i'm going to go with that specific situation is someone that first i'd make sure i know what if they don't have a what is their training history in terms of that helps with exercise selection do they know their way around the gym do they are they comfortable and that's something i ask actually in my intake of how comfortable are you with like squats and lunges and deadlifts and if someone's like then that's a different track whereas if someone's like yeah i'm pretty confident or i'll hire a person in in person person to help me check my form which i think is valuable if somebody is not sure of their proper form um i do a good week or two or three of let's get in there let's get moving make sure the movement patterns look good make sure you're comfortable let's see what some of our loading is then i would start them in that heavier heavier phase of kind of that periodized where we're going to start with the heavier loading um appropriately obviously heavy is different to everybody but they're not going to be doing all monster band walks in the beginning we need to

this is gonna we're gonna we need to get t-shirts poor monster band walks i that's the joke is when i program them people are like coop's favorite we need to explain the joke before let's just take a quick sidebar on explaining the joke so the reason why it's funny is is like i always feel that this is the de facto exercise that everybody gets for no reason at all other than the fact that it's like the exercise du jour for runners yes there's no logic and i wouldn't say there's no logic but it's haphazardly thrown around i guess and that's why i'm like i would agree absolutely yeah it's it's people find this thing and then that's the thing and if you do your lateral mount you know your monster band walks your lateral walks all your woes will be cured plus it's monster right it's like monster okay so here's the thing that's probably surprising to a lot of people let's get this back on the rails you're the initial prescription for you is going to be a higher weight lower rep right heavy types of weights after a making sure the athlete is comfortable and competent in the gym so someone who has never touched a weight ever ever not even in college it's probably not the time to start going like okay now you're going to do back squats and you're going to do them heavy deadlifts let's do this so that was coming from the specific point of the athlete you mentioned if somebody comes to me and they're like i don't i've never even purchased a dumbbell help what do i do different different person different prototype a different

person um also another factor i feel like it's important to note there is um and this is really big with how i program for my athletes is what equipment availability and access do they have are you someone that can go to a gym and have the full array of all the weights or do you have two sets of kettlebells or one set of dumbbells in your basement a stability ball that's gonna but does that affect the exercise selection and the set rep combo or more of one or the other both okay if you think about it because there's certain things that you can't do with say one dumbbell and also if if the point were to go to five reps and you have a 20 pound dumbbell you're probably not going to get the stimulus for the adaptation we're going for in a truly heavy set you know like if we're going for heavy lifting that's not going to be accomplished with that weight so we have to work with what the person has okay so let's let's whittle this down yeah let's let's whittle this down because i think i think by going through this whittling down process the listeners will identify with one stage of it and and what i mean by the whittle down is we'll go from the most ideal to like not the least ideal but less than ideals kind of situation or realistic option for them like where are they at yeah so you've got your we've got our prototype which we would probably describe as a reasonably experienced strength trainer strength trainer strength training athlete an athlete with a reasonable amount of strength training experience and good and good run experience right yes they have access to

the olympic training center behind my house yeah what does that look like when they initially start out with ball like ballpark yeah ballpark like three to five exercises set rep combination and then we'll kind of and then what we'll do is we'll like narrow down the equipment availability from there to paint the picture of okay well i don't have that so here's what i can do okay yeah so generally speaking um with that athlete and they have that amazing amazing setup they're going to be able to pretty much do anything i i'd like them to do but we are going to work on a lot of the basics squats deadlifts bench press things like that because those are going to be the most demanding in terms of the loading and they're furthest away from the volume that we'll be having with the running as that increase we've talked about that before that that as one increases the other has to decrease um that's also an appropriate time for plyometrics so you have them both do the traditional squat bench press and plyo or moving from not necessarily okay yeah you can include a plyo at the end during that session at the end during that phase if prescribed appropriately that is the appropriate time to do it or during that week like it doesn't have to be in that session but within that phase so that is appropriate kind of against what you think about when you talk about building volume and intensity with running like we don't increase both at the same time but it's a little bit different because that's more of um the intensity that goes in with that we don't want that in the middle of the season so that's going to be more appropriate

okay so for example's sake pick four to seven exercises and then the set rep combination that you would probably use in that scenario okay so if we're going to go with that and we're going to stick with like our push pull squat hinge lunge situation so a push like an overhead press a pull a row like a barbell row um you've got your squat you've got your lunge which you can do with barbell or um dumbbell that could be done with either one uh dead lifting i don't usually have dead lifting and squatting on the same day so you'd have those on different days those will be your big your big moves yeah um reps reps and sets here can be anything from one to five reps from one to five sets or one to four sets kind of in that range so you're doing lower heavier um now i will say that if i'm starting with an athlete this is not like week three where i'm like bang five by five you know what i mean so there's a little bit of nuance we're building into this we're getting making sure the athlete's comfortable but that's going to be in this time of the year so if it's right now athletes that have events later on the year and have the accessibility to this equipment that's more of what their training is going to look like that's what i'm trying to get at that's a really practical prescription that a lot of people can write on the back of their hand right now hopefully they're not driving don't drive and write on the back of your hand at the same time or if they're running stop and take a note on your phone really quick stop and take a note on your phone there you go and they can and they can kind of take and they can take it in the gym and if they have a reasonable strength training background those exercises will be quite familiar to them now a little bit more nuance within the

prescription so you're using sets of uh sets of five reps are those to failure about the max yeah that's that's a max is that to failure or and this is a common question that we get right is that a failure or is that a certain percent of your certain percentage of your max it's going to be more of a certain percentage you always want to leave one or two reps in the tank i think most people i i'll find it for you there's actually a really good um somebody put on the twitters but it's actually a really legitimate calculation of how to get your one rep max based on kind of what your normal lifting is because a lot of people don't even know what that is and they're going to spend a lot of time trying to figure that out so a practical way is do you have one or two good reps left in the tank yeah that's what i thought that's what i prescribe as well then then you're at an appropriate level of loading if you finish your you know five by five and you're like could have done 10 more of those you weren't loading it appropriately yeah but if you can barely barely squeeze out your last rep then that's not what we were going for exactly and in that session just like just a practical just like we describe endurance intensity you just get it close the nano precision of am i at 162 beats per minute or 160 beats per minute that that that uh yeah level of precision kind of gets lost in the in the wash yeah just get it done and get it close yeah so think of these loads if you're doing rpe that's like closer to your nine on some of these lifts eight nine i mean that's going to be heavier up in that area but you're not full out fo2 max as much you know it's

probably some some could dip into the tens but i think trying to nuance it's just the best approach is do you have one or two good reps left in your tank then you're loading it appropriately don't get over worried about your max your one for this we're talking about ultra runners we're not talking about power you know what i mean who need to know their one rep max well so i'll tell you i'll tell you that you're leaving 80 of the olympic training center gym completely untouched with that prescription which is probably the right the right way to go with with an ultra and that's the thing it's it's this is my athlete right my athlete is an ultra marathoner if my athlete were a football player if my athlete were a gymnast or an ice skater or something different it might look different depending on the sport but i'm prescribing for my ultra marathoners okay so let's take your ultra marathoner i'm going to be selfish because i'm going to use my home gym as the example of it and my home gym consists of a bench okay yeah you can write this down i'm putting sarah on the spot by the way for those of you who really don't recognize none of this was planned this is not planned a lot of times i do in the headlights for a second a lot of times i do elaborate outlines with sarah i know i can get away with a real skinny one so my home gym is a bench a set of dumbbells that goes from five to 65 i think nice okay a few kettlebells and bands what's your heaviest kettlebell uh 45 pounds

okay and bands so you can prescribe me all the monster walks you want so what is which and the reason i mentioned that is it's not entirely selfish so a little selfish not entirely selfish that's a reasonable home gym some some dumbbells a kettlebell a band and a bench like yep yeah and if you have a stability ball or stability board that might be an extra thing but that's a that's a reasonable home gym setup so sarah same setup normal runner normal strength training background they're limited to dumbbells and some bands and a bench what is that athlete going to do right out of the gate at the end of january right out of the gate this athlete whose name happens to be jason i imagine we'll just call him jason sure go ahead we'll call this athlete jason okay is jason able to use oh god the heaviest end of his dumbbell range where is he at in that come on i can i dumbbell bench press those all the time yeah of course okay i'm just saying for like your squats and your lunges where are we i can pick those i can pick the weights up that i have let's put it that way you mean jason can jason can jason can pick that amount of weight up it's not gathering dust let's okay good so i just have to make sure just because you have it available doesn't mean you can use it um so that would look different because chances are um and this is me assuming a lot so please correct me if i'm wrong if you know differently but for instance if you're doing a goblet squat

generally speaking for most people their upper body is going to be the limiter not their lower body so when you're holding a weight for the goblet squat it's not the lower body that you're having a problem with that weight it's whether or not you can use that so when you have dumbbells or kettlebells your grip strength and your upper body is going to limit what you can access from your lower body so in cases like that we have to make sure that we are using a way of holding the weight that allows you to get the most out of the loading for the intended body part and also that will impact that will probably change those reps and sets for you you're probably going to be doing and when i say more reps i'm not talking about you know 20 reps but that's probably going to be in the 8 to 12 range generally three to four sets so you're working around this limiting condition of you can't get the right low you can't get as high of a load because you can't put for for a squat at least because you can't put the bar on your back right yeah yeah so you just work you're just working around that so that's with that exercise right so you change the set rep combination for that particular limitation how's that look down the rest of the exercise set down the rest of the exercise if you can challenge yourself so this is sometimes where i do a periodization well not periodization programming it's a little differently so maybe the first exercise is a bench press and you're can be pretty challenged with a bench press with the weights that you've got or not i'm sorry you only have 60 you have 65 pounds hey that challenges me a lot what are you trying to say now you're a runner um that was a joke

runners can be strong i get five reps out of those 65 pound dumbbells so that would be instead of doing a superset we might have you do an upper body like that at a say four by six or five by five or something like that or whatever parameter we've got with a heavier load allowing you to really push hard and heavy with that exercise maybe pair it with something lower body that you were going to do more reps with what you've got but the exercises that we can utilize or the loads that we can utilize for the exercises we're going to do as much as possible with those during that time to get the best most benefit but i'll also say just checking your list here that if the benefit okay this is general strength in the beginning of the season right so we're like core and making sure the body's balanced and we're strong and all of that but most things that we want to apply the stimulus to get the adaptation if we want to go heavy and if if you're at home it's just fine we just that's when you have to manipulate more with the with the actual time under tension we call it so the tempo so you're using other variables right to manipulate so so instead of a squat it'll be a three count squat with a two pop you know three count down two count pause one count you know get up you know so it's like that's you're not using momentum so there's ways to kind of work around this so i guess my i'm jumping around here but my point is for most people i don't ever want someone to think

i only have a set of dumbbells or i only have this i can't possibly strength train or there's no benefit well there there can be we just there is you just have to do a little bit of flexibility and it's fun challenge it's just programming it's just programming so when you're using you're essentially using speed or the movement velocity to manipulate the load are you trying to keep the set rep combination intact or or more intact i guess is the way to put it so for example like we will use the squat thing for an example because this is what we're just going through i normally back squat i'm just going to the the athlete so i can take it out of my personal deal the athlete normally back squats 150 pounds right okay they can't they can't hold 275 pound dumbbells in their hand to replicate that with dumbbells so instead what they're going to do is hold two in the set rep combination is let's just say three by five right three sets of five reps so instead of doing three by five normal squats with 45 pound dumbbells which which is what they can hold because the load won't be enough they're manipulating the speed of the lift going down slowly pausing and then coming back up at whatever tempo sarah prescribes and still getting close to that three by five combination as opposed to doing three by 12 which is probably what that athlete can do with 45 pound dumbbells yeah it's just a way of

utilizing the weight they have to try to get more of that that utilizing the tempo and that velocity and that slowing of momentum to get more out of it now some people would say i my prescription and my approach would be more of the doing more of the reps with the heaviest load as possible it's it's it's preference and it's also what works best for the athlete and if they can hold on to those 45 pound dumbbells for 12 reps and where they are in the season but it's uh yeah it starts to get really nuanced well i mean i understand that that kind of like discrepancy it's kind of like you're just trying to do i've always i've always viewed as you're just trying to work with what you got and at the end of the day if there as long as there's some load manipulation yes you're probably going to get to a better result yes as opposed to just doing three by five the entire year of whatever correct yep yep and because that's how do we get stronger if you're always just doing three by five or three by ten and you never the goal would be that you can lift heavier eventually you're you're getting a stimulus you need to be an adaptation we need to be able to that's that's the hope but again in the context of ultra running why are we doing strength training in the first place yeah exactly enhance our running right exactly to be so if you're gonna take that you know because people will i love social media discussions with people because they'll say oh that's you know you're not gonna get strong like

like well but i'm doing this because of this is my sport and this is my focus and this you know if your focus is to do that that's great but our program is gonna look different it's just gonna look different let's put it let's i let's put a pin in this discussion what is detrimental like what types of strength training would be detrimental to the endurance training and then how because i want to i want to come back to that and i'm gonna forget it if i don't mention it to you so write that down on your sticky note i'm gonna write it down on on mine as well beautiful mind over here exactly let's keep working down our order of of of perfection here so we had our olympic training center model we had coops home gym model and now you know what i'm going to nothing right i ain't got nothing available right body weight stuff so how same person reasonable strength training experience what does that person get prescribed that person is it's there's really no that's you can never say no there's limited benefit to having someone like that do by three by three or five by three sets of push-ups they're doing okay so they've done 15 push-ups that's fine except that maybe three by 12 or three by 15 or three by 45 seconds or something like that is going to give them more of the challenge and the stimulus that they need is going to give them more of the benefit of strength training you don't have to have equipment it just makes things incredibly easier and you can't get certain

adaptations without certain amounts of loading now whether that's your own body or if that's an external load but it's hard to deadlift air so you have to that's going to be the audiogram right there it's hard to deadlift air what time is there probably at 40 50. but uh so all the benefits that could come with deadly and there are many there are many reasons why we would deadlift if you don't have anything to deadlift it it's hard to get the benefit of the deadlift now you so what can we do so what can we do what can we do so what can we do to help and they have no bands no bands no stability nothing well let's just start let's just say like they don't have anything if there's a reasonable simple basic set of equipment that you would encourage them to do go do this because you're going to get 80 of the way the floor is yours to try to like yeah knock that out if if there are things that they can utilize nearby that are safe to pick up and use heavy objects uh i've got cats you know cat litter box you know not the actual box but the boxes of the litter or heavy uh you know milk water jugs get creative kids kids work well kids small children small dogs i'm sure so um so never forget that that those are options but saying that there is also reverse lunges squats wall sits push-ups dead bugs bear holds i mean there are plenty of other body weight moves that while they won't

give the same level of what you know in the early season of a five by five programming for strength they're certainly going to give you good core you know if you do things barefoot you're going to get some good proprioception if you're doing you know balance work these all have benefits to the trail runner and the ultra runner so they're not for nothing just because you don't have a rack of dumbbells or a olympic training center so at that point you're kind of being non-specific and i'm trying to put you on the spot here which is put me on the spot it does yeah does it really need any specificity to it or can you really just do a bunch of random stuff at 20 wraps 15 wraps and have it have it have it had impact i'm trying to get back to like a minimal prescription yeah yeah exactly i'm trying to get back to a minimal prescription that'll actually have a quote-on-quote benefit and we're going to rack and stack these benefits in a little bit to try to help the listeners kind of like tease it out in their head give that context yeah but but is there like what would that look like if you wanted to try to get like maximum benefit out of somebody who had very very minimal equipment like practically what does that look like and where are we at in their training cycle same same same thing same January yeah July type of time frame or training for an ultra marathon reasonable strength training background i never think okay at this stage in training doing a lot of different things

isn't necessarily going to be a detriment but it's going to be it could be just a time suck right so if you're doing the wall squats and the squats and the reverse lunges and the single leg bridges you're doing it's like you're so far away from your volume loading none of those are going to be taxing enough that they're going to destroy your legs but is it necessary to do all of that from a time perspective and i can't you know the specificity i generally like to look at are we hitting a front of the body exercise a back of the body exercise lower for lower body so like more quad focused more glute hamstring focused are we doing a push are we doing a pole you only need one or two generally one of each of those and you've got a well well-rounded program it's almost like kind of what i'm getting from you is is you almost have to be more sensitive to your time in that situation because the potential for like a null equation is higher that and it's just a it's i sometimes think when people lack equipment they think they'll make up for it and with volume tons of i mean but then but then i know someone listening to this is be like yeah that's how we roll but i could totally also see someone listening to this going wait a second it's totally i see it people go to the gym and have all these toys so i want to overload everything so i could see that too but if you're if you're lifting i guess what that non-equipment equation the one challenge with that is when you are loading appropriately in the gym you don't need

a ton of exercises before you're like yep but when you don't then it's just a lot of time where you're just throwing things at yourself and they don't necessarily have a benefit beyond a certain point maybe that time would be better spent elsewhere that so that statement sarah right there is is that's the best way to put it i think that once again we we're all limited on time every single one of us that's the hottest commodity that there is out there and we can it's non-renewable it's not you don't get it back exactly we could try to extend it as much as we want to but there's still an expiration date and uh whether you're looking at a daily expiration date or a lifetime expiration date um but uh it to when you have unlimited options or it sometimes is very easy to let that to let the time kind of escape you and i think people get and fall into that trap of well i can't do this that way so i'll just do all of the things and somehow i'll just broad brush stroke it and i'll cover my bases and it's not necessary okay so let's try to rack and stack this right okay because we get um we we we have as coaches an unlimited number of interventions that we can use you just mentioned sleep and strength training right right out of there sleep is an intervention right we can use that in an as an intervention to improve performance particularly for people who lack sleep we can use strength

training we can use uh recovery modalities like the normatech boots we can use physical therapy as an intervention we can use nutritional interventions we have all of these different things and they all have a time cost associated with them to ping off of our earlier theme can't you mentioned that we're doing strength training to improve our run performance and i don't want to discount the fact that there are also tangential benefits to strength training outside of the aq run performance we should not discount those you want to be one of which being some people just like to do it i'm one of those people i just love to strength train me too so yeah and there's i have no shame on that spend five minutes on my you know any getting to know me and you'll be like oh yeah she likes to run and lift me too and i don't yeah uh but but i guess my point with that is is we we kind of have to come fund come back fundamentally to our coaches and most of the most of our athletes are coming to us with the primary goal not the exclusive goal but the primary goal of improving their run performance for whatever events that they're that they're training for yes we need to be holistic it's the word that kind of gets thrown around or more comprehensive about their overall health and well-being as absolutely a role of a coach but we but i think for i think for the i think because we are getting so nuanced in the prescription and the performance has a lot to do with why we are getting

nuanced in the prescription we would be remiss if we didn't start to kind of like kind of practically rack and stack these which is a really hard really really hard thing really hard thing to do yeah is there a way this is either no we didn't so i'm gonna open the floor up to you right as and i'll pose it i think the easiest way to do it sarah is to pose it as a question from an incoming athlete because this is what we solicited out out kind of in the social media space if i incorporate strength training how much am i going to improve okay so a couple ways we can talk about this um this is not okay we have talked prior about there is a very negligible amount of improvement with running economy when it comes to strength training right we've we've covered that base i would say can i interrupt you really quick negligible in most normal circumstances if you're talking about very elite track and field performance yes it could that's that negligible turns into monumental so a couple of percent exactly but an ultra running for the for the average of average to above average just ultra runner someone who's like ultra this is my sport right with running economy as applies to ultra running so we've we've talked about that i do believe that there is an argument though in terms of percentage like we talk

about this in your book with injury prevention which i think is why a lot of people come to strength training is i don't want to be injured i don't want to get hurt okay we can totally come back to that because there's a lot of nuances there too i do think there is a benefit to the just core overall strength balancing out weak areas of the body proprioception all of these things that can be that strength training can enhance for the ultra runner can i put a percentage on that for you at this moment no i cannot i cannot say you work with me fair question yeah we were you work with me and it's six weeks i'm going to improve your running by 10 i mean i you can't and it's also where is my runner coming from is my runner never done anything well like anything somebody that's never been coached somebody that's never done anything somebody that's new to will see leaps and bounds in their performance and in their their gain of um gosh i can't think right now but can you put it in i'll interrupt you you can kind of gather your thoughts yeah can you even put it in a bread box no i don't think you don't think you can really you don't think you can even put it i mean what do you mean like it's an actual percentage or like here's a package of like if you strength training this is what it will give you yeah i mean reasonably yeah i think we just i just covered that so i what that can do here here's kind of what i think i i think it's between zero and ten percent okay if i boil it down to brass tacks well if you screw it up it's negative but it's assuming you

don't screw it up which is easy to do let's say they don't and that's another thing it's easy to do it can be a detriment it can be two year old to running but i think like so so people will practically think okay if i'm a 24 hour lead bill finisher at the very most it's gonna get me two hours that's like the that's the edge of the bell curve right two and a half hours on a 24 hour lead bill finish you split the middle of the bell curve and it's like 40 minutes you go to the other side of the bell curve and it's zilch and it's time it's kind of a time suck at that point maybe maybe i'm being too generous with that one to ten percent but i mean if somebody really tried to pin me down on that question i once again i'm trying to be fair because it's an unfair question so i'll answer it too i think that that's it and the reason and the reason i say that is is it's not 50 no no and we just genuine to ever tell somebody that it is unless here's the caveat unless there's something fundamentally from an injury perspective that you're fixing that increases training availability though those situations outside we're talking about our normal runner they're healthy they just got their gym membership in january they're reasonable they're ready to go just the prototype that we've been talking about that athlete says hey what's the reasonable proposition i wanted you know i think strength training will help me with my performance i want to do it there's these other lifestyle benefits what how's that going to improve my time i'd give i i would feel confident giving them that bread box and that's a big one i that's i would i would not

put it outside of that limit like that to me i think is very i think i don't think generous but well i know but i appreciate that you gave it that much because you know some people but i i agree with you and and that's not a promise or an assertion i think people should make when it comes to strength training you know of like hey you work with me and i'll get you you know by strength training alone we'll get you to knock three hours off your hundred you know hundred mile time i don't think that's here i don't think you can do that here's why this is important though we just talked about all the different interventions what's the cost to getting the benefit from intervention a versus the cost to getting a benefit from intervention b versus the cost to get intervention c and so for this case right it's a few hours a week reasonably speaking right yeah a couple hours a couple hours two hours yeah we'll give it to two now i have two hours a week to get you know maybe a few percent you know improvement and then you gotta weigh that the athlete has to weigh that and then the coach has to kind of like weigh that out versus any of the other things that they could be doing sleep you mentioned that's probably a much heavier hitter than one to ten percent absolutely amongst the people that are sleeping for five hours a week that's probably a 30 percent gain right there maybe yeah um people that don't do strength training inappropriately um during the right time of their cycle can be left too sore and fatigued to actually get the benefit of some of their high quality runs

they're too sore to do their to do well on their intensity runs they're too sore fatigued to be able to do well on their long runs you know these critical runs depending on where they are never run there's never one critical run but you know what i'm saying that they just can't they're not able to hit the marks on their runs they're not able to complete them because they're constantly feeling fatigued there's a there's a chat there's a problem there yeah that's not yeah so i i this is just a soapbox opinion i think i think getting it i think getting it right is more complicated than not more complicated but it's just it it requires a level of precision that i don't think that i think goes underappreciated and what i get what i mean by getting it right is the prescription that we were just talking about set wrap how does that modify throughout the year and things like that i realize now we're going to have to come back like three months from now and pick up our prototype for when they change phases right um but also the prescription in terms of what day during the week and what time of day are they actually doing that in order to actually enhance performance as opposed to be as opposed to being a detriment you you started this conversation so let's pull on this thread a little bit okay what are the terrain traps to avoid like what are the things that are going to unwind the training processes as a whole either from a running perspective or a strength training perspective that athletes should be wary about either when they're starting strength training or kind of as they're going through it yeah um gym like gym literacy comfort you know and movement patterns

like are you are you doing a squat appropriately and correctly are you doing that like are you can you do the movements do you need someone to help you learn how to because if you're loading if you can't do a good squat with body weight or under lower lower loads you should not be doing heavier loads you can hurt yourself so injury there can be injury that comes from weight training um inappropriate loading in the sense that you're going too hard all the time um so you're sore constantly people that do too much intensity and i hate to pick on this i'm not going to pick on this but i'm going to mention it is i see this most often with ultra runners with crossfit oh all right you can throw crossfit under the bus and it's not gonna hurt my feelings crossfit it's a hole under the bus but but no and that's fine i mean that if they but that where i think that comes into play if somebody is very very good and very educated on being able to modify things being able to know how that fits into the architecture of their training being able to adjust versus going to these classes which can be benefit i'm not i'm talking in the lens of ultra running they can be very very any high intensity class crossfit whatever you want to call it can be too intense and if people are doing this too close to high high volume sections of their training that can be very detrimental well so the mismatch right the high load on top high load right high high run training load and high strength training load yeah if crossfit is i get why it's i'm not again not

it could be social it's fun it's community it's all these things but if you're doing it in the two month window before you're a race hundred miler and you're not having any concern from modifying the the loading there could be a challenge it's always maximum load right i think that's the point that you're trying to communicate is typically typically when you're going into a crossfit class i'm not saying everybody does this no but the prototype as the the crossfit prototype is it's a maximum workout every time you step in the box and depending on the gym or the box yeah and the coaches and you can get some amazing coaches just like anything yeah that paradigm is starting to break because the boxes are starting to fall out of love with the crossfit uh brand which is a good which in my opinion is a good thing that's another and you've got some amazing coaches that work in boxes that are really good at being able to scale things for their athletes but so i think so going back to my train traps question right one of them is to make sure that you're that that you're not having a load a load mismatch where you have high either high acute meaning on the day or high chronic run load paired with high strength training load you need to be able to modulate both of those so that no so that they're not overwhelming each other essentially yeah i would that would that makes sense yes okay what other what other we went through movement literacy which i think is a big one and we can let's actually let's kind of stay on that okay how do people figure that out if they don't

if they've never been in a gym before well a good thing to start is to there's always gyms that have trainers or people that are there that you can start there and asking someone to show you the right movement you know how to do it get a hire a coach for strength which i know for some people is cost prohibitive maybe they can't do that there are some great amazing resources that you can utilize online there are great tutorials the internet is vast it can be a very scary place but there can be a lot of good information um i think it's also just knowing where you are that self-awareness of being realistic with like if i don't know how to do a you know a clean and jerk you probably should either go get someone you know what i mean like don't don't just like that looks cool yeah but i i think utilizing setting the movement patterns doing the the groundwork early getting the good foundational movements i think is key learn the right way but here's my here's my issue with just go to a gym i don't trust the personal trainers there i know a lot of personal trainers and they're i know a lot of really good ones yeah but it's like one to five like for every one that i really that i'm really confident in i can go into any gym anywhere and one of them is good and five of them suck and yeah i can tell i can tell the difference you can tell the difference but somebody who needs who needs who needs uh coaching with their squad or queuing with their squad

does not that's a fair point so how does how do people how do people navigate that i i've struggled with this question for forever yeah because if you don't know what you don't know no no no this is good this is good because it's you know with athletes that i have i always am like send me a picture of you doing a body weight squat and i can help give you some cues and tell you what you need to wear so like i'm comfortable with athletes that i have that i can help give you know i'm not there in person but i feel very comfortable with giving form checks but if somebody is not comfortable with that where do you go when you don't know if you can trust the source for the information what are you so can we peel the curtain back a little bit on what you're doing with cts right now yeah i think this is appropriate so so sarah's writing uh or designing i guess is a better word for it because it's not just content so sarah is is working in collaboration with some of our other coaching staff to basically design cts's strength training everything like how our coaches kind of like learn and prescribe strength training how like it's infancy so we're still working on the details very very very early stage but it is not as it's not as an it is not an easy problem because everybody's coming to the table with different with a different level of literacy right to use that terminology that we're using earlier the ultimate goal and correct or you can add some you can add some nuance to this if you want to but the ultimate goal so our coaches are

competent in prescribing strength training in the same way that they're prescribing endurance training we are coaches are very competent in prescribing endurance training that's kind of the thing but we have a vast array of competency across the strength training side of it and the goal is is to to increase that competency within that movement literacy teaching the coaches to essentially teach movement literacy which is a whole different thing is there any way you can kind of like fundamentally like divulge on how we're going to try to do that because i don't know the answer to it yet i don't know and we're still that's no i mean it goes to say how hard it is it is and i think also too is that keeping in mind that scope of practice right because it's like i can give as an ultra running coach i can give some nutritional guidance in terms of like race prep and long runs and things like that and here's some but i can't ever go as deep as someone like stephanie who can go really deep because that's her scope of practice it's the same thing with strength for a coach who doesn't have any background in strengths or personal training or strength and conditioning it's probably best for them to be like hey i'm going to use this program that is developed by this coach over here who i trust implicitly that i know is good use this versus them programming it themselves so that's where that's one aspect of it is having coaches in-house with cts who we know it's their bread and butter and that they're it's their competency and their strength pun no pun intended

and that they can then pick that off and and share that plan with their athletes now now well that coach if that athlete's like i don't know how to squat what do i do how do i know if my squat looks good that's where it starts to go okay what do we need to have you know because you can't assume everybody knows how to squat it's really easy when you've been in a certain um field for so long i've been doing this for a while now we don't need to say how many years but when you've been doing this a while it's easy to forget that oh some people this is all new to them so you know you don't want to forget that is the point i think the take-home message for the athletes is is like being able to teach these movements is not something that many of the endurance coaches out there have as a skill set and i and i can i can confidently say that knowing the landscape of coaches that are out there and you sarah you and i have had so many conversations about this but it irritates the bejesus out of me when i see coaches working outside of their scope of practice particularly the two things that irritate me the most are with strength and nutrition and the reason is is 100% the the the the the reason is is the potential for harm is actually real in those yes um so athletes be wary let's let's kind of put that i'm not saying that everybody's bad or anything like that but but be wary and when in doubt go find a second opinion go find somebody that you know is is

is is used to this stuff and just see if you can match it up it is a difficult landscape to to navigate if you're if you're but if you're nervous about if you're nervous about learning the movement patterns or don't feel that you have good resources yeah what then right you go into a gym you don't trust the personal trainers there you still want to learn how to squat yeah so our our there are some good resources on the internet as scary as that can be there are people that know what they're talking about there are some good you know trainers and specialists and people like yourself people go to you for ultra for ultra training they know that you're like a name in the industry there are people that i feel are confident like this is a good person to you know watch or look at um i feel like with enough if you have the ability and a little bit of patience there are ways to find people that can help you in your area if you are in like pod i don't know if that's not if you're in the middle of nowhere and you have no options well who can you connect with and just look for people that have certifications from very reputable yeah sorry i mean that's what i would look at if someone is nsca or ac you know that have these certifications or yeah cscs or cpt or they're they're gonna be people that have had to not only have a college degree in order to sit for a test but they they take

it very seriously so therefore hopefully and this isn't always the case but hopefully they know what they're talking about they're more likely to you know uh one of the i'll give an account out because i like doing it i have no affiliation with this account at all but i think they have really good content is whiteboard daily yeah um on instagram i'll i'll link that up in the show notes um and it's exactly as as as described it is a whiteboard it is it is instagram posts of a whiteboard but with stick figures and how to do all these movements and if you scroll through enough of them it i mean i think that that's reasonable guidance i've actually helped athletes kind of like curate like okay we're going to do these movements and here's some examples of what you can kind of look at using using those things but anyway whiteboard daily look look them up yeah no that's a great one and if i um you know i'm happy to share some more i can always shoot with you and you can put them in the subject notes too if you'd like or some you know resources or i can share um but yeah good i like okay we've got our general frame more i like this yeah we've got our general framework for the people that want to start in january right we're going to do generally higher loads if you've got the olympic training center a reasonable gym in your background you have a reasonable set of exercises if you need to modify them you can modify the tempo right uh to achieve the to achieve the same load and then when you get down to the body weight stuff you just have to be really judicious with how you're going to actually use your time and be very very surgical with that if you're implementing those things i promised you a

banter question sarah because it's so fun right you know where i'm going with this i did cue sarah up with this so if the answer is barely i got it this morning everybody shouldn't need much more than that um i was going to make fun of you if the answer was all an l in in eloquent or uneloquent all over the board we're going to make fun of you but i guess i can't anymore i really didn't give you you can it will still probably be here's the so we so here's the here here's how i can set it up okay we typically look at the way to design training for endurance athletes through this lens of what their limiting factors are and we we we tease those limiting factors out through a number of different ways sometimes we look at a physiology test and we say okay the aerobic system is the limiting factor the amount of hydrogen ions that they're generating is the limiting factor or fuel availability is the limiting factor or core temperature is a limiting factor sometimes we go out in the field and we ask athletes hey what you know caused you to slow down you know was it this was it that did you hurt and things like that and the latter is more common in an ultra marathon situation than the former we know a lot about the what i would call the traditional endurance sports cycling triathlon track running marathon running and things like that because we can measure to a very to a very delicate degree what those physiological limiting factors are and then since we know that we can

train athletes to get better at those limiting factors so they can run faster for kind of whatever whatever given distance i i would say we're just starting to tease this out in ultra running um guillame mie who has done a lot of work in this area has proposed an initial piece of framework and i use that that kind of visual um in in my book where he's got you know vo2 max and muscular fatigue and neuromuscular fatigue and thermal control and there's probably a dozen different things that kind of go into into ultra marathon performance but the thing that i sent uh sarah beforehand was this survey that uh marty hoffman and kevin fogart did so for the listeners marty hoffman is the former western states medical director and has done a lot of research uh in this area and go ahead i was gonna say years and years ago when i was living in california i actually ran with a group and i got to run with him and had these long conversations with him and i didn't even realize it was him until afterwards that was embarrassing it shows up in the research right here and one of them i promise we'll get done painting this picture before we can kick it back and forth so one of the pieces of research is he just asked finishers of the western states 100 and i think it was vermont as well what what were the factors that impacted your race performance it was just a question and you could say anything you could say multiple things right you could say ah well my hair was on fire my shoelace came untied and i took a

wrong turn and you know it was just basically a bitch session you know if you want to think about that in in a research design and i and i use this a lot i use this this uh this a lot i'll link the paper in uh in the show notes it's it's it's kind of a classic one and the specific table that we're looking at is is table five where the respondents will where the respondents will come back and say these are the things that limited my race performance and i'm going to list them in in order and then divulge why we're talking about this in the strength training conversation right so the the problems that limited ultramarathon performance according to both finishers and non-finishers of the western states 100 and the vermont 100 are in order blisters or hot spots on feet with 40 of the finishers listing that as a problem nausea and or vomiting 36 percent muscle pain 36.5 exhaustion 23 percent inadequately heat acclimatized 21 inadequately trained 13.5 muscle and we're going to come back to inadequately trained by the way 13.5 everybody remember that muscle cramping 11.4 injury during the race nine ongoing injury 7.5 illness before the race six percent started out too fast five percent a pacing error vision problems 2.1 percent difficulty making cutoff times 1.8 percent other not categorized and this is the dog ate my homework and i took a wrong turn and you know i had i didn't have my

peanut butter my organic peanut butter oatmeal for breakfast or whatever whatever other crybaby excuses king clover would say people would come up with but my but my point with that my point when i do this in presentations this is why i'm so familiar with this chart is that inadequately trained is kind of in the middle of the pack right 13.5 percent of people are saying that the fact that they were inadequately trained is a reason that their race performance was impacted and i look at that as a coach i was like you can train all this stuff so somehow we're not communicating the fact that you the fact that you're getting nauseous or vomiting you can train that if you're getting muscle pain you're inadequately trained if you're exhausted you're inadequately trained if you are inadequately heat acclimatized you are also inadequately trained inadequately trained should be a hundred percent they should also mention that so anyway that's the context that i that i use this in presentation but my question for sarah since she's a strength training expert in the room is oh in the room in the room definitely in the room all the rooms that i'm in to be honest with you when we look at strength training from a performance perspective and how it impacts the factors that can impact race performance right the limiting factors for ultra marathon race performance what specifically does strength training improve or alleviate amongst any of these or the ones that you can't think of that are in the other not

categorized area because that's what kind of coming back to the performance piece right they want to know how it's going to impact them yeah so i mean i wish i knew what they considered the others to be i'd love to just see that that list that would be fun um so you want me to point out which of these i think strength training could have an impact and then we're gonna pull them apart and you're gonna tell me i just think what's the fundamental proposition right we can't you mentioned you mentioned earlier a lot of people would come out with injury prevention okay a lot of people would come out that's one i mean that's probably the first one you expect me to say yep so injury prevention on here is kind of in the middle of pack nine percent of finishers are saying injury during the race specifically specifically we're not talking of non-finishers 10 percent 10 of non-finishers so yeah 100 agree with you that there might be some some advantage strength training offers to not getting injured specifically during the race also probably also there's a likelihood that strength training has an impact on overall training availability and perhaps limiting injury during the training process okay so that's one and the missed work the missed training that you like you said you know when you are injured and you're missing training then you're less prepared for your event because you're missing training because you're injured yeah so that kind of circles back yeah okay so what other race limiting factors do you think that strength training affects ongoing injury potentially we already mentioned that ongoing injury yeah i thought you meant like

injury during the race oh okay sorry ongoing injury mentioned that one okay i wish i knew what muscle pain what they're referring to but i'm gonna guess are they referring to that more of like overtaxed muscles versus yeah i mean any sort of earlier onset of i was gonna say dom but that's not that's not true uh earlier onset of muscle soreness i mean everybody's had everybody's had that sensation who's run a mountainous ultra marathon where your legs just become dead towards the end of it this is just muscle pain right is is a more clinical way of saying i have dead legs so yeah so is that one that you would say theoretically strength training could alleviate i know you're kind of those of you that are not watching the youtube visit video go back and watch yeah go back and watch sarah's faces during this why the face so so that's important actually why the face because we've had conversations about this and and and how like the loading for quads with downhill running when someone isn't able to run and train with lots of downhills and the dosage of that we've had coaching calls with this and we've discussed this and we always come back to we circle back where people always assume like oh do the strength training for it and it's like well no sometimes there's more specific things that people can do so i think there could be some strength training benefits to some of that but not all of it because the specificity of that muscle pain is probably their lack of being prepared for the course conditions and the actual loading of the course and i'm not sure strength training in that case i mean that can you it's

blasphemous to me to say that is no it's not i think that i actually think that's spot on i mean you should be talking to people that are going to take this advice and go to training with it sarah come on now i'm always honest i don't you know but i mean i feel like people would always assume coming from me that i'm like strength training is it's it's disingenuous to say strength training is going to cure all your woes it doesn't take care of a lot of these but it can take it can potentially address some of them yeah so that that's the that's the issue that i normally have with people say well you know if you have dead legs at the end of the race you should just squat more and that's not specific right so yes that can be part of the intervention that you're using that's probably a very light hammer meaning it makes maybe a tiny teeny tiny bit of difference in that problem your bigger difference just go run downhill like yeah and it could be too like earlier in the season if you're able to do heavier weights and you're working on force production and the things like that can then prime your near your body so that you're stronger during the runs that come later but the actual in season strength training you're better served and this comes back to kind of in the beginning of the specificity of your training and you've got to make sure you're hitting the running first before you start adding is the ultra running going to enhance what you already can do yeah so maybe not an in place of it's not an exchange of that's a brilliant way to put it it's not in place of and i would i you know me i always like to rack and stack things because that helps so are my faces worth it that's totally worth it because if you make a sour face i'm like i'm

raking that low if you get like the yes with a huge smile on your face i'm like okay i'm gonna rank it a little higher because sarah has a good reaction to it okay so some muscle pain probably you know let's pop there could be could be me training's more important way more important training's more important ten to one nausea and vomiting i don't not so much blisters or hot spots on feet i mean you can train barefoot but that's not it's not gonna do the same as what about muscle cramping because i have heard this in the training and in the coaching world strength train so that your muscles don't cramp well is our cramping coming from that or an adequate hydration and electrolytes and fueling or just bad training or just bad training just being inadequately trained i mean yeah i mean i wish i wish it could be i mean we could say that there could be some potential again i'm saying some because i don't know the numbers here but i think good training is probably going to take care of more of that you're not going to be out on the 100 mile course going damn i wish i did more squats my legs are cramping that's a good way probably not it's probably not why that's happening yeah um i've yeah so and i think the way i think the way in terms of this research i think the way that that would come out is what you don't see is muscle strength right you don't see you don't see the like

the problem which is the first column right in this table blisters nausea muscle pain blah blah inadequate muscle strength is not a problem that people are citing as as a limiting factor or something that impacts their race performance now whether it is or not is a different question they're not bringing they're not citing it it's not something that they're coming out with and saying yeah to your point they're not in the middle of the western states course going damn it i wish i would have done more squats somebody's ever said that i would have beat that person i'm not going to rule it out but i don't think that that's a common i don't think that that's a common uh kind of a common saying so the reason i bring this up for banter at the end is to bring to light something that you just mentioned sarah is that it's not going to cure all of your woes and you have to be we have to be very cautious with where we place it in the context of all of this performance yes we can be advocates for it yes we can think it you know makes a big difference in your life and things like that but let's not oversell what is actually going on here from a performance perspective and that's the key if it's for the health benefits the pure enjoyment the satisfaction i won't argue any of those but if it's the performance aspect of ultra marathoning then we have we can't don't make it more than it is

perfect it's not the cure-all quality training will will win over every day perfect okay we can put a pin in that banter i think that's perfect what did i tell us to come back to i already forgot you wrote it oh gosh i have it on my notes hold on this is what happens when you go off the cuff too much no i have to rely on the guests to bring you to bring it back seriously oh wait oh detrimental to training i have that oh we already talked about that okay perfect i talked about that we're good you guys can stop listening sarah thanks for coming on the podcast thanks for having me on since you just changed your social media profile you might as well give it to everybody so they can give you a follow what is it oh it's the same name it's just a different picture what's i'm saying it's a different picture yeah oh oh um dirty runner drty runner is on instagram and the twit the tweeters but i don't tweet very often so i always get confused because her profile picture was upside down for a while and now it's right side up now it's right side up i'm not going to recognize her go give sarah a follow sarah thank you for everything that you're doing for your athletes but also for our coaching department i can't wait to see and unwrap that gift that we have been trying for so many years to get on the right i know it's something i couldn't solve i i definitely left that on the table but i think i think we'll crack that code eventually for sure so thank you for that prematurely i hope so yeah you're welcome it's a pleasure thanks for having me on all right folks there you have it there you go much thanks to sarah for coming on the podcast today

and indulging me in some of the rabbit holes that we went down we can only plan for those these things so much and it seems like 20 of the outline goes to plan and then the rest of the 80 is just whatever we want to talk about and i know coach sarah is always game for that because she is an absolutely fantastic coach we're proud to have her as a coaching colleague at cts this episode of the podcast was largely a result of a lot of the questions that i get on social media sarah gets on social media as well as we both get out in the field and so in that vein you all have the opportunity to record a question that will be played back live in a future episode of the KoopCast if you happen to be out at february's black canyon 100k i will be out there supporting a number of cts athletes and i will bring along my mobile recording studio i'm going to set it up in the van at the aid stations all you have to do is pop your head in close the door hit the record button record your question and i will filter through them and answer them on a future episode of the KoopCast i would love to see if any of you all are out there i absolutely get tickled whenever i get to meet athletes out in the field that are listeners to the podcast or just happen to be fans of the book it brings a lot of joy to my life and there's always something that everybody wants answered so if you're out of black canyons 100k

go look for my van it's pretty easy to spot pop your head in record a question i'd love to hear from you if you're not out of the black canyon 100k hey i appreciate the heck out of each and every one of the listeners out there you can always share this episode of the podcast on uh with your friends and with your family and with all of your training partners it means a lot to me personally that is it for today for this episode of the KoopCast as always folks we will see you out on the trails so Thank you.