In last week’s podcast about recovery, our guest Natalie Brown told us that there were 3 key elements to good recovery - sleep, nutrition and stress management.
One area which many athletes (and non-athletes) are keen to explore is a plant based diet. There is certainly plenty of anecdotal evidence about how it can improve health and performance. In his book, Eat and Run, Scott Jurek attributes a change to plant based eating as being instrumental to his success in the ultra running world.
What better way to find out about how to combine running with a plant based diet than talk to someone who advocates just that?
Coach Claire Bartholic has helped hundreds of runners chase their dreams and conquer what they never thought possible. Her coaching philosophy combines science-based training, plant-based running nutrition, and proven mindset techniques to unlock every runner's true potential.
She's a certified running coach, sports nutrition specialist, mom, and borderline obsessive plant lover.
As an athlete herself, she went from a 4:02 first marathon all the way to a 2:58 finishing time at the age of 42, entirely plant-based.
She coaches vegan, plant-based, and plant-curious runners to achieve the same dramatic success, from those on a walk-run program, general fitness, up to high-level athletes.
Conversation topics include:
- Plant based vs vegan vs vegetarian diets
- How to successfully switch to a plant based diet
- Plant based eating and weight loss for runners
- Strength training for runners and why it’s almost impossible to gain weight
- Plyometrics, HIT and Z2 training
To find out more about Coach Claire please visit the following channels:
Website:The Planted Runner
Author of The Planted Runner: Running Your Best with Plant-Based Nutrition
Host of the top-rated Planted Runner Podcast
Instagram: @theplantedrunner
Email: claire@theplantedrunner.com
Some other resources you might like to check out:
'Forks over knives’ documentary which inspired Claire to try a plant based diet
Claire talked about a plyometrics video on her YouTube channel
The Planted Runner Podcast: 5 ways strides can transform your running
**To get a free copy of my personal daily mobility routine, please click HERE**
To contact Beth regarding Life Coaching, please visit her website at BethanyWardLifeCoaching.uk.
Sports Nutrition questions - if you have a sports nutrition question that you would like answered on the podcast, please email it to me via
Beth@TheTriathlonCoach.com.
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Purchase a copy of my High Performance Human e-book featuring more than 30 top tips on how to upgrade your life.
If you would like to help offset the cost of our podcast production, we would be so grateful. Please click here to support the HPH podcast. Thank you!
Visit Simon's website for more information about his coaching programmes. Links to all of Simon's social media channels can be found here. For any questions please email Beth@TheTriathlonCoach.com.
Hello folks welcome back and if you're a new listener welcome to the show. You're listening to the High Performance Human Podcast and I'm your host Simon Ward. Today's guest is Coach Claire from the planted runner and we'll be talking all about plant-based diets and running but before then I'm not sure if you've picked up on this but one thing that I and other guests have also mentioned in recent podcasts and one of the critical elements of good human and athletic performances you get older is mobility. Now I must admit it took me quite a while to fully get this message but for the last four years I've spent 10 to 20 minutes every morning working through my daily mobility routine. Now if you'd like to get started but you're struggling for some inspiration then I've put together a short plan which should take you no more than 10 minutes to work through and covers all the main joints so if you'd like to use my plan and you'd like to get hold of a copy please have a look in the show notes at the end. Okay back to this week's guest Claire Bartolik from the planted runner. Claire wasn't always a runner she started running in the mid 30s simply to get in shape for her school reunion. It wasn't about getting faster or racing and in her words it was to be honest mainly about vanity but in the conversation she admits that she didn't really like running at first seeing it more as a means to an end but something changed in her and her mind as the miles slowly added up. The reunion came and went but she carried on running and she was already plant based and she finished her first marathon at age 38 in a very respectable time of four hours and two minutes and she was immediately hooked. She became a student of the marathon with dedicated coaching and training she successfully lowered her marathon peer to two hours 58 minutes and she did so without getting injured and being entirely plant based. Claire's a multiple-time Boston marathon qualifier state master's marathon champion and a competitive master's athlete so she really does walk the walk. Amazing as it was for her to accomplish so much in her own running her greater passion is helping others achieve their dreams as a coach she shares the tools and techniques she's learned to help athletes reach their goals that they never thought possible and with her plant based eating passion she also shares that and how you can combine the two. So in this conversation Claire will answer some of the common questions she gets asked by athletes who want to switch to plant based eating and we'll also talk about her own run coaching philosophy which as pleased to hear is very similar to mine so let's crack on and here from coach Claire hello Claire welcome to the show and thank you for joining me hi Simon happy to be here should I call you coach Claire because that seems to be how you refer to yourself sure yeah go ahead okay so I was really interested in the title of your business your podcast the planted runner and as a triathlon coach and a running coach and I read a little bit more about you and saw that you promote a plant based diet so I wondered if planted runner was referring to that or whether it was play on words to do with foot plant. Not really with foot plant but yes it is all about plant based running but I also do like the plan words where when you're planted it's all about growth so it is not just about eating plants and running it's about putting down some roots and growing right where you are and and becoming better at running nutrition anything else that you'd like to do and and to me planted also means balanced right and when I talk to great coaches they always talk you know we're right in the middle of the Olympics now and yeah I love watching all that I get so enthusiastic and it's right in our time zone being in Paris so we can watch it all day but when I've talked to coaches who've worked with Olympians they they always refer to that almost knowing who's going to do well because they know that they have balanced lives and they have planted roots and all of that stuff so it's a fundamental principle really isn't it of good human and athletic performance yeah yeah I think I have I have a sort of complicated relationship to the word balance I think that it's impossible to be balanced all the time and especially when you're trying to do something great whether it's the Olympics or something great for you you really do need to be unbalanced for a period of time if you zoom out you know your whole life maybe you can look at it as balanced well I was training for this marathon during those times and then you know I stepped back a bit I had kids you know so maybe there's balance over the macro level but over the micro level you really aren't going to get anything amazing done without sacrificing something so you know balance is kind of tricky for me and if we're talking about physical balance I'm I'm very pro and practicing that but overall balance sometimes I think is it's tough to achieve when you're trying to get the best out of yourself in one particular area no I absolutely agree with you there and I've had several guests who've sort of challenged me on that and I often like to think about it for folks who are mindful they know what harmony in their lives is and where they're able to spin all the plates but like you say if you really go in after something you have to but perhaps it's a conversation you need to have with people so I'm going to concentrate on this for a while now so I may not be able to concentrate on that but we will equal everything out a bit later on so the mindfulness enables you to know what balance looks like and how far you've moved away from it and how to get back there as well 100% 100% it's more rather than balance it's more purellization you know you have to have periods of time where you do this and periods of time when you do this and periods of time when you do that I think our you know culture is is oh you need to be balanced you need to be great at everything well that really means that you're good at nothing you know when you're trying to be great at everything so pick one thing at a time to be great at yeah and of course if we really talk about balance and you try standing on a slackline or a tightrope you're never really perfect still are you wobbling around and sometimes you fall off and then you have to get back on again so yeah I think you're right balance balance doesn't really exist for very long in our lives but knowing what balance looks like is probably a good good thing to have having your mind as well so you have an interesting story to become in the planted runner right yeah you weren't always a runner were you no you know I dabbled in in it as a kid my dad was always a runner but he was never competitive he would just go out and jog three miles every other day he would write his mileage down on this big calendar on our kitchen wall and I saw him do this growing up all the time he never raced he never did you know did anything more than just stay in shape with running but he definitely was an inspiration and so I got into it you know a little bit in high school I was very it was the very last person on the track team and ended up quitting and then you know I came back to it a little bit in my 20s after a breakup I decided to run a half marathon and then after I ran that half marathon ended up getting back with the the guy so stopped running again after that and then you know no more running for a long time and it wasn't until I wanted to get in shape for my high school reunion and I was like well maybe I'll try running again and I'll tell you Simon I hated every step of it I thought it was miserable you know I was doing it not for the joy of running I was doing it to try to alter my body and get in shape and it just was drudgery but then you know I think it was I don't know eight months later the reunion came and went and you know I achieved my goal I thought it looked pretty good but then at the end somehow along the way I was like well I definitely don't want to lose this fitness that I've earned and maybe I kind of like this so I wanted to try that same half marathon that I did in my 20s you know a dozen years ago at this point and just see how see how it goes and I did end up beating my time by a few minutes and I was like well if I can run a half marathon I can run a marathon and why not Boston and I really didn't realize that you have to actually qualify to run Boston but I learned that eventually I didn't make it my first try but I made it on my second try and by that point I was head over heels in love with running and I became a student of the marathon it just fascinated me all the things that you needed to do you know you don't just put your shoes on and go out for a run there's so much more to it and I was just like a sponge and I just read everything I could at the time how to get better at the marathon what kind of training what kind of workouts what kind of food what all of that stuff I was just deep deep deep down the rabbit hole and so that's all how it started and you know the quick version is you know my first marathon was in 402 and my last marathon was in 258 when I was 42 years old what do you think it was then that allowed you to start running were you doing something different was it just the fact that you'd been running for long enough that you could go out and have an easy run and it didn't you didn't come back feeling exhausted or was there something else I mean I really just took it one step at a time with my training I just kept day by day going out there doing it over and over again I would say that the way that I did it I probably wouldn't recommend to others I increased my mileage fairly quickly but I never got injured so it worked for me um so I was able to handle some high mileage um you know I was up to 70 to 90 miles a week um close to the end because it just it worked well for me um for most people that doesn't work but um I don't think it was anything special you know I just did all the things I did the training I was strength training twice a week I was recovering I was eating you know like I was doing all the things and it just took you know it took about four five years from the first to the last one and it just you know it really was a gradual progression but I also wanted it really really bad and I think that's part of it where I live is right by the canal so we have a lovely tow path that's flat and it goes on for miles and we see lots of people running past our house every day you know we have some of the Olympians that run past here because it's a nice measured place for them to train and and then we have a lot of people who you know for instance in um during the pandemic people couldn't go to work so you'd see people out running every day and cycling the bikes and you know I've been doing triathlon for 30-40 years and running most of my life and I see people running and it looks like they hate every single minute of it they're in they look to be in so much pain they they've got the headphones on to distract them they're just looking down at the ground counting every step and I'm wondering what their why is and but then occasionally I see people that just look so relaxed and in tune with the world and happy and I think that that's a shame that everybody can't be like that but I wonder I often wonder what's in their head or what's in their life that makes one person scowl and one person happy well and that can happen to the same person depending on the run you know some runs even to this day I'm just I would rather not do but I do them anyway you know so it's and I don't know I don't think you have to have this glorious why all the time you can have really selfish vanity reasons and that can be enough to get you out the door but I think for a lot of people who start hey I want to lose weight or hey I want to get in shape along the way it transforms into something deeper and you know and you know because when you're doing it for like a physical thing like I want to look better that's and that gets old after a while you know like when do you actually achieve that magical day okay well I'm at my goal wait why am I not happy you know so it's got to be something more than that but you know I never sort of disparage the people who come into our sport for those reasons because first of all that's the way I came in but also because you know if you do it long enough you can realize there's more to it than just how you look no I agree I agree and then I agree entirely that you won't ever want to disparage somebody who's running regardless of how unpleasant it looks because it's better that they were running than sitting on the couch watching the telly right absolutely so you talked about losing weight and get for folks wanting to lose weight by running and you talked about getting in shape for your reunion I'd like to come back to that in a moment because I'd like to touch on the plant-based eating was that something that you were doing from a long time ago or did it did that become a thing after you'd started running so I was what you would call a flexitarian for a long time you know so I was mostly vegetarian but I ate you know birds and fish right and then along the way I actually you know watched one of the documentaries a long time ago about plant-based eating and for me it was just like that black and white so it was forks of her knives it was 2012 and I really was like that's it I'm going vegan and I really haven't looked back at the beginning there was maybe a few little slip-ups when I would eat my kids goldfish crackers but besides that really haven't looked back since and I've been plant-based the whole time but I started running you know after that so this chapter of my running and my adult life has always been plant-based so I get that question a lot you know as plant has going plant-based improved your running and it's like well I was plant-based the whole time so no the training improved my running not so much being plant-based but for some people it it's a massive transformation and at what point then did the planted runner become a thing you know where did you start to mold these two passions together yeah so well I had a running group that I was a part of and I you know would always talk about these things so like I kind of got started mostly wanting to document my journey but also I like to sort of DIY things so I like to make recipes that are dupes of commercial products so I have a DIY you can recipe I have a DIY you know gel recipe all of these things like I like to sort of make those up because well it's a creative outlet but also because I'm cheap and I don't want to spend the money on those kind of products you know how much how expensive those get if you're taking all those gels and all of that so I'm like how can I do this cheaper and I started you know just making some of this stuff in my kitchen and my friends you know at the track would be like you should start a blog and this is back when blogs were cool and I was like sure I'll start a blog and honestly that is how I started and then shortly after I got hired by one of the biggest coaching companies online running coaching companies because I was their athlete and long story short they saw my blog they saw that I could had some kind of tech savviness and they're like hey we're hiring would you like to come on we'll teach you everything that you need to know and I was like yes so I did that part time I was still doing my other full-time job but I was working for them and I stayed with them how long did I say six years six years seven years a long time doing it part time and by the end I was having clients my own clients on the side which was totally on the up and up I was an independent contractor it was fine just to start my business on the side and eventually my business grew bigger than well not bigger than theirs there's a still really big but big enough to go out on my own and be really successful so do you coach people in person do you still have a running group or is it mostly online I don't coach anybody in person I have several people in my hometown in Asheville North Carolina that I coach but I don't coach them in person other than when I have a running retreat so each September I have invite whoever wants to come to the running retreat four-day retreats here in Asheville where we run together we do coaching we do you know strength training gate analysis the whole the whole nine yards so that's the only time of year that I coach in person mm-hmm okay and you you have a podcast as well where you can obviously use the the modern version of a blog right to share your ideas and thoughts and philosophies that's right I still write on my blog and I share the newest blog post on the newsletter every week but yeah the podcast really is my baby it's the planted runner and that I do solo episodes that are more coaching kind of podcast episodes so you know my goal is to make you a better runner by the end of the episode so I do a deep dive into one little topic or I invite on a guest to talk about one topic as well so I don't do an interview that's this style like you're doing like interviewing me about my life I generally don't talk to the person about their life so much unless they're like an Olympian or somebody famous then I will but you know I really make it so that it's hey you know Simon you are a sleep coach let's talk about how to get better at sleeping as an athlete so that's the kind of podcast that I would do okay let's get digging a bit more then um you've talked about plant-based now for people who are new to not eating meat and fish um there may be a bit of confusion between plant-based and vegetarian and vegan there are so many terms use these days and you talk about flexitarian and pescatarians and trending trenditarians as well yeah um so does plant-based mean vegan sometimes good answer okay can you explain yeah let me explain so vegan means that you don't consume buy or use animal products so it is about what you don't eat what you don't consume it is not about your health it is all about the animals or perhaps you know the environment you know a lot of people are vegans because of the the impact on the environment that animal agriculture has so so vegan is all about what you don't do or eat as a vegan you can eat Coca-Cola french fries Oreos you know non-dairy Ben and Jerry's you can have a very junky kind of diet as a vegan it is not about being healthy at all plant-based on the other hand that is when you base your diet around plants I use the term plant-based to mean 100% plant-based so no animal products at all but the main thing that you're eating is plants but other people use it as oh I mostly eat plants my base of my diet is plants but I might have a few animal products thrown in sort of as a condiment you know so some people use it that way I personally use plant-based as 100% but it's really splitting hairs a little bit I coach people that are not 100% plant-based and that is okay with me because you know really if you get your diet 80 percent 90 percent right you're doing awesome what you do with the other 10 percent honestly does not matter that much if you are really doing the job 80 to 90 percent of the time anything else really doesn't make a massive difference on your health so I think you can have an omnivore diet that is very healthy I choose not to do that and I choose to be a 100% plant-based but I think most people out there can agree that you really should have a lot of fruit and vegetables in your life you should have a lot of whole foods in your life that has been shown by science over and over and over again to be the best kind of eating habit for you know longevity health performance all of that so whether you're 100% on board with plants is probably not where we need to be focusing we need to be focusing on that 80 percent what are you doing 80 percent of the time because that's what really matters and within that plant-based and you said you don't have anything that's from an animal so that does that mean you don't have any milk eggs butter dairy products no dairy so no milk eggs no meat no cheese none of that stuff so there are lots of ways to sort of have a similar experience there's as you know you go to any grocery store and the plant-based milk section is bigger than the dairy milk section these days so I use either soy almond sometimes black seed milk and you know don't I don't eat eggs and and yeah fruits vegetables whole grains nuts legumes seeds all of that good stuff hmm it's I love talking about nutrition I've talking about diet I think sometimes the issue is it can become a bit tribal county talking about nutrition you know I yes I am some friends of mine of egans one of them actually is coaching one of the Olympians at the moment in the triathlon and his wife's or his partner's vegan my physio louise who's been on this show a few times was vegan so we had all three of them on and we were talking about the vegan lifestyle and you know how it isn't just about what you eat it's about you know not wearing animal-based products so you shouldn't have a down jacket you shouldn't be wearing leather shoes if you really want to buy into the whole lifestyle and I thought all right what I'm going to do here is I'm going to try and get Paul Saladino on who's written the carnivore code or Sean Baker who's written the carnivore diet and see if we can have the opposite side well yeah I posted this in a blog right that I was trying to find some people to talk about it and several people wrote back and said you lost me at carnivore I'm out I don't want to hear any more from you and I'm like well okay I appreciate your choice but I'm trying to put a different perspective here that's all I'm not saying that one's better than the other I think but it just seemed to get it just seemed to be angry for some people it definitely does it definitely does and I I am not one of the vegans that is preachy I'm not trying to convert anybody I'm here for the already converted or the plant curious people that know that they want to have more plants in their diet it's completely non-judgmental I would say for the carnivore people sure that is a different perspective 100% there really is not good science that backs up eating just meat or eating just animal products there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that say that plants are good for you there is not I will say there's not overwhelming evidence that 100% plant-based is any healthier than 80 to 90% you like I said being an omnivore eating small amounts of meat and dairy and fish and eggs can be a part of a healthy diet if that's what you choose but I would be very hard-pressed to see anybody in the scientific community coming out and saying this is real you know double-blind gold standard you know peer-reviewed study that says human should only eat meat it just doesn't exist so you know I'm in total agreement with you there I I'm a meat eater but yeah and I get all of my meat from a local butcher who can tell me exactly what farms they come from how they look after the animals and all of that stuff and I like to eat nose to tail so I won't just buy the best cuts because I think even if you do think that meat is a great you know addition to your diet people are wasteful with food you know they don't eat like the hunter-gatherers that we often talk about so anyway let's let's move on I love the fact that you talked about vegetarian or vegan curiosity because that's the reason I'm here that's that's the reason I like to talk to people is to educate the listeners by talking to people who are invested in this in a particular type of philosophy and and then peeking that curiosity so they can think actually I might like to give this a try and see what it's all about so I thought we could explore a few questions that I think runners or triathletes might have if they're thinking of switching from an omnivore diet or you know a flexitarian diet to plant-based yeah so I guess the first thing is there's a lot more fiber consumed if you're eating a lot more plants and so people might think oh if I'm eating a lot more fiber and I'm running that might give me some other complications when I'm actually out running so are there issues for runners and what advice would you have for those people who do want to change sure I mean we can start with fiber so we all know that fiber is something that is absolutely essential in our lives for gut health for good digestion it is something we need so we should not be avoiding fiber no matter what kind of diet we have in fact most people the vast majority of people are not getting enough fiber in their diets but you raise a good point do we want to have a whole bunch of fiber and go for a run no okay so the timing of your fiber intake is massively important so you don't want to have fiber right before you go on a run that's when you should have your simple carbohydrates that this is advice for all runners and triathletes you know no matter what kind of diet everybody is vegan when they're running right nobody is eating you know steaks and hamburgers and while they're running down the road nobody is we're all eating very simple carbohydrate food right before we run and right and during the run okay so but when you are changing your diet overall you should do it gradually because yes if you have a low fiber diet right now and all of a sudden you're eating beans and sweet potatoes and corn and all this stuff that you've never really incorporated into your diet your gut is gonna be like whoa hold on a second right so incorporate it slowly don't just be like okay i'm going all in and just completely change your diet because your body's not going to be used to it so do it slowly over time and whether that means start with a meatless Monday or however you do it don't just go from zero to a hundred right away because yeah you will feel some side effects especially when you go for a run but you know if you're a morning runner like most people do you'll have to think about what you have the night before and so maybe you don't want to have a high fiber meal the night before because some of that will still be in your system in the morning you also want to make sure you wake up early enough to use the bathroom you know i have i had a client who was saying hey you know i'm running in the morning i'm eating before my run i have something small and every single time i go for a run i have to go to the bathroom what should i do and i asked her a few questions about what she was eating and it was all fine and normal and then finally i was like are you waking up early enough to actually use the bathroom before the run and she's like no i hadn't thought about that and it's like that's important and it's something that we don't talk about make sure you're on empty before you go for the run okay sounds like simple advice but if you don't know you don't know right and you think that you're running is causing the issue it's like well yes and no yes jostling around while you run can cause gi issues of course so go ahead and you try to use the bathroom first so slowly when you're incorporating it good advice but but fairly standard isn't it it's like when trying something you introduce things slowly don't just like go from one to the other like you said all in or otherwise as you just said it'll come all out as well while you're on a run so exactly and we definitely don't want that and i know you said earlier that you were already following a plant-based um diet before you started running so you really couldn't speak of the benefits for yourself of how that dietary approach impacted your running but i guess you've got lots of um clients and people you've worked with that have changed to a plant-based approach after they started running so can you can you speak of some of the benefits that they've told you about yes yes i've had um i mean from a health perspective i've had uh runners you know men in their 50s who came to me who were running already but decided to go ahead you know inspired to go plant-based who had high cholesterol high blood pressure a lot of those kind of cardiovascular issues even though they were runners and a year later all of those levels dropped into healthy um numbers so i see that kind of stuff all the time um but i don't like to to say oh you know my client came to me and they switched to plant-based and all of a sudden they're getting PB after PB is that the training or is that the diet we can't separate that because you know we can't do like controlled trials on individuals so i don't like to say hey go plant-based and you'll start running faster maybe but i promise you it's the training that's more important if you are fueling enough that is more important than exactly what you're eating that's the number one goal no matter what you are eating is you eat enough calories and i would say that's one of the biggest pitfalls for people who are really active athletes and they say oh i want to start um being a plant-based athlete and what they do is they just remove the meat and so they have a plate of you know maybe it's chicken and rice and broccoli and they just remove the chicken and they're like oh i'm plant-based that's not going to work because you're not going to get enough calories you're not going to get enough protein you're going to be hungry all the time you're going to be irritable all the time and then you're going to say oh plant-based didn't work for me and it's like well no no no you need to educate yourself on what a strong healthy plant-based diet looks like before you say oh it's not working for me just like you need to with an omni diet my friends that i mentioned earlier that had been on the show that was one of the things points that they were really keen to emphasize was if you are going to change to plant-based um from flexitarian let's say uh it's really important to educate yourself from where you're going to get quality sources of protein from because that's that's the one thing that they found people were lacking on and um but i you know to your point about what is it that helps people to improve to have those sort of metabolic improvements and the hormonal improvements or the running improvements um i i think also that if you're going to be mindful about your food and research what you're eating and looking for that healthier dietary approach you started to think about what you're doing to your body and putting in it whereas i think most people go through life sort of sleepwalking in there's that food available there i'm going to pick it off the shelf i've read the article that tells me i just need to get out for a run so they're not they're not really being i don't like to use the word mindful and overuse it but they're not really engaging with what they're doing it's sort of sleepwalking along and a change of nutrition and maybe adding exercise seems to sort of flick a switch that gets them to think more about oh actually maybe i should be going to bed a bit earlier as well and you know maybe i should maybe i should be doing some more stretching and mobility maybe i should be warming up more purposefully absolutely absolutely and i think it's impossible like i said to separate all of these things like let's say you have the perfect diet whatever that means which there's no such thing you have the perfect diet you are training perfectly and you're only getting five hours of sleep at night are you going to reach your potential absolutely not are you going to be a cranky person every day yes you are so you know if you're lacking in one of these areas you're never going to reach your potential and you're i'm not going to say you're wasting your time but in some cases yes you know maybe you shouldn't get up quite so early for your run if it means that you're not getting enough sleep i think you know you have to look at all these things and i think when you decide hey i'm an athlete hey i'm going to train for this big goal whatever it is once you start identifying as one of those people you're going to say i'm an athlete and i need sleep i'm an athlete i need to train i'm an athlete maybe i shouldn't have that second beer i'm an athlete i need to go to bed at nine o'clock at night you know hopefully all of these habits are going to stack on each other if you really want to reach that goal and if you really identify as an athlete earlier on we talked about weight loss now i like you i had a personal training business many years ago and a lot of people came along i said i've started running to lose weight now are you talk to most experts in the world of nutrition and they will say if you want to lose weight it's about 80% dietary and 20% exercise so yes you are going to burn calories but it's mostly about changing the diet so what's your position on folks who come to you and say i want us to take up running because i need to lose weight and because there's also sorry i'm going to add another layer in here because that's also difficult isn't it because at a time you're burning more calories you're also trying to cook calories and then we get to that situation you mentioned a few moments ago where you're not actually eating enough and so that's causing some issues for the rest of your body yeah yeah so the first thing i want to say is number one you absolutely can lose weight with running it can be an important part of your weight loss journey number two i am not a weight loss coach i don't enjoy coaching on weight loss but it comes up all the time people come to me all the time so i am fairly well versed in it and what people tend to do with me because i i really do focus on the marathon i you know from 5k to the marathon is my specialty so people come to me and they say hey i just signed up for my first marathon and i want to lose 50 pounds and i just say okay hold on which one do you want to do because they're two opposing goals first of all if you want to lose weight training for a marathon is a terrible way to do it there are much better ways to do it from from a physical point of view yes 100% agree with you that 80% is diet but in order to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit and when you're in marathon training it's really smart to be in a calorie surplus or in maintenance so and the tricky part is those numbers are moving all the time so even if you measure everything you eat even if you measure everything you run it's the numbers are are not going to be accurate they don't they'll be close but assume they're 20% off you know both intake and and what you spend and so if you lost 20% of your body weight that would be a huge number so using numbers that are 20% off you might as well not use them right so it's so if you want to lose weight with running i would say yes it can be done do not do it while you're training for a marathon because you'll want to do different training namely less running more power and more strength those are things that rev up your metabolism not going out for a run for five hours that is going to break you down more than it builds you up you're going to need to fuel the whole time you're going to get back and you're maybe you won't be hungry right away but afterward your your body is going to ramp up your hunger signals and i've got to tell you i don't know what the percentage is but there is a good chunk of people that actually gain weight while training for the marathon yes they actually can come become faster at the marathon even if they gain a little bit of weight but the people who are like oh running a marathon that's so much exercise i should lose weight i promise you it's not the best way to do it and it's definitely not the best way to get the best performance so if you are trying to so let's say it's not your first marathon but it's your second or third or fourth and you say oh i want to get better at the marathon and i'd like to lose the last 10 pounds it's like okay well again you know at the beginning of the show we were talking about balance and and taking cycles with things so do a marathon cycle in a calorie surplus and then after you recovered if you want to focus on weight loss then you can do a cycle where you're in a very slight calorie deficit and you're lifting heavy things because that is going to help ramp up your metabolism and burn a lot more fat than just you know jogging for three hours that's not going to get the results that you want so really they're two opposing goals yes you can lose weight with running but it has to be about a slight calorie deficit and which you should not have when your marathon training yeah i think you know advice i've always given to people because i get i get triathletes to come along particularly men saying i'm going to go on the keto diet and i'm going to train for an iron man i might look training for an iron man is a huge stress on your body and the sos are changing to a keto diet so you're just doubling the stress there so that's going to make your recovery even harder i much prefer the advice given by a previous guest of mine um doctor tommy wood who said you should eat as much food as possible without putting on any weight right great great you know and that takes a while for people to process eat as much food as possible but actually if you're training for a marathon and you are satisfying your body's natural requirements for you know sustaining your bodily function and for providing energy yeah your body will take care of itself you don't need to give it any additional help it will start it will actually start to lose that weight naturally without you helping it but you'll stay healthy you'll stay uninjured and you'll improve as a runner to show you listening to right now and all of my others that provide you with amazing real-life advice and guidance from top coaches athletes and successful humans well making it takes me a lot of time but i feel it's well worth it and all in the name of helping you to improve your health longevity and performance and all i ask in return is this please send a link to this podcast to somebody you know who you think will benefit and if you haven't done so already please click follow this podcast on whatever platform you're listening to right now so that you don't miss any of our future episodes thank you let's get back to the show i don't know you can tell me Simon how many professional triathletes and professional cyclists who are keto while they're performing i don't i don't know if there are any but you know those guys on the turn of france they are not keto they are eating 10 million calories right of carbohydrates a day absolutely no no no i i don't know any that a keto and to be quite honest i don't know any peep i don't know any people that are keto for whom it's been sustainable over a long term and that's me whatever nutrition philosophy or choosing it needs to be sustainable it needs it needs to be enjoyable it needs to be something you can do while still going out with your friends you know because we've probably all got that one friend who's a keto and you go to the restaurant and they're going ah i can't eat that and they want to have a conversation with the waiter or the chef and just everybody's sitting there rolling their eyes and why do you invite them you know that well that's that's not sustainable if you have to go to 15 different shops around the neighborhood to find the products that you want to follow your super specific diet you're going to get bored of that very quickly so the only people i know that are following keto in the long term are people who have health conditions that if they don't follow it that will make life a lot worse for them and them therefore the the outcome is favorable for most people it's just it's a trend it looks good on instagram and that's about as far as it goes yeah yeah i mean same in the running world too there are you know a couple of ultra runners that pop up every so often who are keto but honestly they're not top of the podium you know the top of the podium men and women are eating lots and lots of carbohydrates i promise you yeah i i talked to um talk to Jason coop who wrote me a running book and Jason said the same thing he said you won't find many at the top end that and even if they are there they might be there for one race and then they're injured but you don't hear from them so they just go off the uh they just go off the radio let let's um let's talk a little bit about running then because i know that with your podcast and your blogs you uh you get lots of questions from folks about how do i how do i become a better runner what sort of training should i be doing um i guess that underpinning all of the advice you give us some fundamental principles so i'd like to just dig into those a little bit if we can yeah for sure okay so let's start with absolute running 101 for long distance is you're probably running too fast most of the time you want to have most of your runs absolutely aerobic so aerobic means with oxygen and that means you can talk just like i'm talking right now while you are running and if you cannot do that then you need to walk that is what aerobic means that is what builds up these huge engines that oxygenate your muscles that eventually allow you to run faster so you need to pay the bills with lots of jogging so embrace the jog and uh that is the number one thing that i would tell people that whole that whole thing there about walking that insults some people senses doesn't it because they're gonna come back with you saying oh hold on a minute i'm training for a run so why would i even want to walk but of course you know your responses yeah i think walking is the most underrated tool that in a that somebody can use and i'm not just talking about beginners yes for beginners i love to use run walk because it actually prolongs the amount of time that you're physically able to run just like intervals on the track allow you to run faster for more minutes than you would if you did it all at once using run walk is great for beginners run walk is excellent for people coming back from injury again you're a lot you're able to run more in little chunks than you would be able to run all at once and then even for the best of the best the fittest runners adding walking instead of an extra run is going to still provide the aerobic benefits without all the pounding so if you're looking for cross training walk it is great for you so i'm a huge proponent of walking i am not the biggest fan even though saying all of this i'm not saying i'm going to be like a galloway proponent you know run walk during the race it's good for some people for sure and don't love the super long training runs in the galloway method so i'm not saying you have to switch to run walk if you can run for you know 20 miles or whatever you don't have to break those up but walking is so underrated you know there's a book called born to run i think it should be called born to walk humans are born to walk the low level aerobic activity is immensely helpful to any kind of endurance athlete or human i have been read that book many years ago when it first came out and then listened and read about all of the people who'd followed the advice in there and bought bought the you know the barefoot shoes the barefoot shoes and got injured i think you're probably right that if the book had been called born to walk there'd be a lot less injured people around that's right that's right i i bought the shoes too my first marathon was in barefoot shoes i know it how do that work out i don't recommend it i do not wreck and never again i like them for strength training though well i i was just going to come to that point i have a pair of five things that i wear for strength training i wear them for walking um i bought them because i was wearing orthotics and i wanted to get away from orthotics so the whole purpose for getting them was to strengthen my feet and protect my feet because you know walking barefoot quite frankly in the modern world isn't probably um good advice either so in terms of achieving that goal not having to wear orthotics strengthening my feet using my feet in a natural way rather than being too protected and they definitely tick that box but i've and i've tried running on the grass and i've tried running on the beach but now that i've had three knee operations my knees don't like the lack of cushioning for running so that's out for me um okay so we've got we've got um running easier i like that principle um what what's your other fundamental principle yeah so 80 so 80 percent of your running should be slow and aerobic so what do you do with the other 20 percent so you obviously if you want to run faster you have to run fast at times so um some of that should be at your very high end or sprinting um i love to give my runners strides at the end of an easy run at least once a week um i've done an entire podcast just on how to do strides and you know the the short version is that it's just an acceleration up once you hit about 10 seconds you're in the middle and then you decelerate down it teaches your body how to run fast without having to have recovery time so i love using strides then i'd love to see um runners do some track work and when i say track work it doesn't mean you have to go to a track but if you have access to one that's great you can also do it on the treadmill but it's just intervals or little chunks of faster running and that would be spaced out with either stopping walking or jogging and what you do during the rest will completely change what kind of workout you're going to have so know the why of your workout before you you go and put your shoes on and then there is going to be some medium running so medium to medium high running we you know we can get technical and talk about aerobic threshold and lactate threshold and all that nonsense but it's to simplify it it's really a medium running to medium high running and you want to do um some kind of mixture of those so the exact percentages of what you're going to be doing will depend on your fitness ability experience and goals so there's no magic formula that you can say works for everybody really depends on who you are and what you're training for but you need to do some speed work at times to get faster i like it i like i like the strides they're some of the quite a lot of the sessions i have for folks are like zone two run and i'll either have them doing a chunk of zone two work and then they'll find somewhere flat where they can measure out 50 meters and they'll do a set of strides in there just to just to get them back into the swing of a nice pickup and a nice relaxed running temper and then back to zone two or i'll have them doing the zone two work like you said at the end and during a recovery week i do a lot of strides for folks so instead of going to the track they'll do some stuff on the fields um and again it's it's running it's running fast and relaxed so they might be running at a 5k pace but for 20 seconds that's not going to be much effort and the goal is not to create any fatigue or soreness but just to give them to let the body understand how it feels to move quickly 100% i'm a massive fan of strides yeah definitely 100% it's less about how fast you're going a lot of people are like oh my gosh i've written you know my mile pace i'm so fast i mean those numbers are fun to see but as a coach i don't care about those numbers i want your brain and your legs to talk to each other that is what we're really working on is the mechanics of fast running so that when you actually run fast your brain and your legs can communicate quickly that's the biggest thing about it yeah a lot of the running coaches i've spoken to so Bobby McGee was one and there's a chap called Shane Benz in the UK who wrote a book called um the lost art um the lost art of running which i if you've never read it i'd thoroughly recommend that um but they don't talk they don't talk about being running coaches they talk about themselves being movement coaches because for them being able to move effectively having all the vertebrae and the joints stacked on on top of the other having good high hips nice posture good head carriage good arm carriage um is what is what creates good running skills and so they talk about they talk a lot about movement skills and and where are you on that that particular principle yeah i think when you're a beginner the most important thing is running will make you a better runner but you'll get to a point where you're i don't like to call them bad but let's call them bad habits will you know get worse and worse or let's say you have you know some kind of not injury but some kind of thing that your body compensates for and so those things the more you go along uh in your running journey those will get amplified if you keep doing it so i think it's very difficult if not impossible to fix your running while you're running you need to do that in the gym or before and after you're run so strength mobility plyometrics all of those things will help you become a more efficient runner so you want to do those things with your mindset thinking of how they'll make you a better runner but as soon as you start running all of that goes out the window because you're thinking about what am i gonna have for dinner tonight or you know what am i gonna do at work today you you physically can't think about those stuff those things for more than i don't know 30 seconds before it's all out of the window and you're doing your quote-unquote bad habits again so if you teach your body you know if you're able to extend your hip extension if your big toe becomes stronger if your ankle has more flexion if you learn how to create more mobility in your thoracic spine if you do all those things outside of the gym or outside of the run i mean your running is going to be so much better and it's not because you're consciously thinking about all those things while you're running no i agree and that's the same principle we would use when we're working with swimmers is there are some drills that you're not doing drills just for the sake of doing some drills and for entertainment the drills are there to work on a specific thing that you aren't doing so it might be the shoulder rotation it might be catching the water in a different place but everybody has certain things that they don't do as well as they could and that will improve the swimming and then some of those drill skills might be limited by a lack of mobility around the shoulder so there might be some dry land work we need to do or there might be there might be tight in the hips and so there might be some hip mobility work we need to do um but as with running attention to those things will have a positive impact generally and i i think also movement skills and posture will have a positive impact on your everyday life won't they not just on your running oh absolutely absolutely and you know we can talk about training you know till the cows come home but that is only what an hour maybe two hours out of your day what are you doing for the other 22 hours you know are you sitting at a desk all day are are you parking as close as you can to the store or i love the people who like fight over the best spot outside of the gym you know you're you know you're going to work out and you're like i got to get that spot you know what are you doing with the rest of your life and that is you know like i was talking earlier about walking are you going for a walk after dinner are you playing basketball with your kids are you carrying a bunch of groceries like what are you doing in the rest of your life when you're on when you're on the phone you got a work call are you walking around are you sitting at your desk so there's so much that um we can be doing to add life to our days it's not just about what we're doing for that one hour that we're training each day have you heard of the concept of the active couch potato no i haven't so there was a group of Australian researchers looked at the daily life habits of people who went to the gym or the pool or whatever and trained early in the morning and so a lot of those folks would go for their hours run before work but then once they got to work they would sit at their desk all day and when they looked at the movement during the rest of the day eight hours sat at the desk and all of the hormonal metabolic changes that happen you know as a result of that versus there what they would consider sedentary colleagues who do no formal exercise but get up from the desk every 45 minutes go to the water machine go get a coffee go to the bathroom and go outside and get a bit fresh air and they actually had more movement during the day than the people who were working out in the morning who probably felt a little bit superior to their sedentary colleagues um yes and i that that concept is is directly related to that person who wants to lose weight running a marathon because you'll do exactly that you'll be like oh my gosh i'm going to increase my activity level by doing all of this running and then when i get home i am on the couch because i'm exhausted after my long run and wow i just ran 10 miles i'm gonna have an extra brownie today and all etc etc etc yeah we become more sedentary because your body is doing it on purpose it's not your fault it's you know your body starts to um you know lower the non-exercise activity thermogenesis you know your need starts to go down when you ramp up your exercise your hunger levels start to go up when you ramp up your exercise the couch looks more inviting you know the cookies look better all of that stuff you know it's not to say you can't have a cookie but you know so many people who um you know do all these heroic exercise things reward themselves with either food or more real relaxation and that can add up well on that point that's you know we talked earlier about losing weight at the same time as you're running when unless you're really tracking your food intake there is nearly always an overcompensation isn't there in terms of calories and the nutritionists will notice this when they get food down to some people that folks just naturally compensate particularly if you go for a run or you go to the gym and then you go to the store on the way home because you're gonna pick up a butter you get um a bit peckish i can't wait for tea time so just gonna get a few cookies and nibble those and by the time you get home the whole packet's gone right well and the other thing that happens is you actually do start to lose weight running and then you're a smaller person and your body doesn't have to work as hard to move around every day so your you know your resting metabolic rate starts to go down just because you've lost some weight it's easier to move and you become a more efficient runner once you start running and so it's not as hard to run anymore because you're better at it so you don't burn as many calories so it is this cycle of your body trying desperately not to starve so the only way that you can do it is to trick your body you have to sneak up on your fitness you have to gradually do it and not all at once you talked a little bit i think when we were talking about intensity in the 80/20 approach so that that sort of really speaks to the the aerobic stuff is what what's very popular the moment it's own tooth training isn't it so good to hear and i i don't know if you ever come across film maffetone but he has yeah math training and i was you know i've done quite a few podcasts we feel and i was a big fan of math training getting to saw sorts of arguments with people about this isn't you know scientific but the principle is it's just trying to make you run easy and learn to run easy that's what it is and maffetone never says it's that scientific it's based on a lot of his anecdotal stuff um but i like i like the principle of running easy really yeah and that's what i prefer to call it running easy i don't like the term zone two and i think the maffetone method has its merits but it's sort of extreme zone two you're running very very slowly i am not a fan of heart rate training at all i don't think it's accurate i don't you can use your heart rate but unless you're using a chest strap your watch is not going to be accurate and it's not accurate while you're running so it can help you after the run to understand what your heart is doing i don't like using heart rate training during the run for many reasons it's very variable this that's a whole rabbit's nest that we can or rabbit hole that we can dive down on but i prefer just to call it conversational running easy running there's no zones sure there's zones you can call them zones but it's just really about a conversational pace you know i think maffetone is great but it's maybe way too much of the slow side like he really wants you to stay there for many many many weeks before you're even allowed to do any fast running i think that um is the slow way to go um long term i think you can do some slow running and fast running in the same week even if you're a beginner i don't think that your body needs to graduate the way that his program is set up but but overall the concept of running easy and aerobic is bread and butter well i i think i'm with you on you know i've tried heart rate training i've tried pace training for me that you know when i started doing triathlons when i started running there weren't any heart rate monitors everybody had that if you wanted you had a stopwatch and a pencil and a piece of paper um but probably before 1985 we had we've had you know hundred years not quite hundred years of Olympics but almost an Olympic champions and gold medalists and world records and none of those folks were using the technology now of course i know a lot of people like data and technology and they love the numbers and they love the heart rate zones and they love to see that but it also frustrates the L out of them when they can't get the pace and the heart rate in that little sweet spot um and yet what they are missing is if you talk to any of the Olympians distance runners they will be really good and really precise about judging a pace and an effort level based on how their body's feeling and what their breathing is and so i think what i what i think is important for a lot of runners particularly if you're new to it is start off by just understanding your body and add some technology later because you can triangulate those and get like what do i feel like what does my heart rate like what them where's the best place to be but if you want 100 percent if you understand your body first then technology will fail you at some point and you'll still be able to rely on your body yes and i'm glad you i'm glad you brought up breathing because you can learn what your unique breathing rhythms are and you can use that to gauge your pace so you can a lot of people will count their steps you know if you're running easy it might be four steps for an inhale four steps for an exhale then if you you know speeding up each each kind of run can have its own individual breathing rhythm so forget about your watch and try that see what your breathing rhythm is how many steps are you taking per inhale per exhale obviously your cadence is going to matter here so it's going to be different for each person but if i think breathing is such a better indicator than heart rate because it's it's not it there's no way for it to be inaccurate it's your breathing right and you know you don't have to look at your watch you can just count and you can be like oh i'm running a tempo right now i'm doing two one breathing or whatever it is you know and if you start memorizing those things that's a really easy way to start understanding your body so no matter what's happening with your watch you'll know exactly if you're in the right effort level just by counting your breaths yeah i do the same with my cycling you know i know when i'm riding along on the flat i can nose breathe out and chat and i'm not really stressed on my breathing if i'm riding up a steady incline i can probably do three breaths in two out if it gets a bit harder it gets a bit steeper i'm on two two i know that if i'm in that v o two mag zone i'm just basically trying to get air in and air out and it's very noisy very ragged and i'm not talking to anybody and i can't sustain it for very long so i've but i think i could probably tell quite well what my heart rate was just from years of experience at learning what it feels like right how my chest pounding at whether my head's hurting versus um you know the effort level so exactly before we go play i i wanted to get you your thoughts on a couple of other things you've touched on strength training a few times i know that with triathletes in particular they will push back against the suggestion for strength training because they feel like they'll lose they'll gain weight and that's then going to have a negative impact on the performance now i'm a strength coach as well so i have my opinion on that how do you feel when you're um when you're asked about strength training okay if you're going to gain weight it is not going to be from strength training while you are training for a triathlon or a marathon it is simply not going to happen so how do we gain muscle well we have to be in a calorie surplus with enough protein and we have to lift heavy things okay that is not going to happen if you are running swimming biking and doing 20 minutes a week of strength training you are not going to grow that much muscle you look at me i strength train five days a week do i look like i'm gaining you know i've got these huge arms no it is not going to happen i am trying to gain muscle and it is you know very very difficult so sure there's going to be some body types that gain muscle more easily there are going to be some body types that do not gain muscle very easily i promise you you have especially if you are a woman or if you are you know a more slight body type gaining a bunch of weight that is pure muscle is extremely hard you have to be working on that more than you're the rest of your training so stop thinking that that is scientifically impossible it's not going to happen um especially when you're doing so much catabolic work which is all the other work that you're doing you're not creating enough anabolic stimulus for you to gain muscle it is not going to happen but you do want to build strength for your main activity you know running swimming biking whatever it is you want to be able to support the structure of your body to be able to handle the rigors of the event that you're training for you want to make it be durable and you want to create power you want to you know get as balanced as you can which is impossible between both sides of your body so that you're not compensating for a weak glute on one side you have strong glutes you know your body can power you through the demands of you know the event so strength training is absolutely essential if you want a strong durable body for a long distance brilliant music to my ears yeah yeah on the on the strength training then um one of the niche parts of that i think you did mention it earlier is plyometrics and particularly um simple things like skipping and hopping on the spot and and uh not necessarily jumping off a box and onto another one um is plyometrics something do you recommend to your um to your athletes absolutely absolutely and i i created a a quick 10 minute video that's on my youtube channel just the planted runner on plyometrics and so you can do plyometrics every day if you wanted to do it you can do it a part as a part of your warmup before you go for a run or you can do some longer sessions once a week every other week um you know depending on what type of time you have but you should absolutely not skip it and i think the reason people skip it is because they think that they have to do these crazy box jumps and box jumps are great sure if you can do that if that's within your repertoire go ahead but it's just literally jumping up and down so jumping up and down and two feet jumping up and down on one foot hopping going laterally side to side going forwards and backwards i think we are over complicating this into something that we you know it's got to be instagram worthy it does not so what you're it does that it's literally just some hops so um you know i think that the athletes that i train who try my 10 minute video they look at it and they're like okay she's just hopping on one foot how hard can it be i guarantee you most of them cannot get through it the first time 10 minutes go ahead and try hopping on one foot for two minutes and then hopping on the other foot for two minutes it is more difficult than you think if you've never tried it before so maybe don't try it if you can't do it take it down a notch but um absolutely important i you know i saw statistic i can't remember the absolute numbers but i think something only like 30 or 40 percent of marathon runners actively use biometrics in their training and the difference between people who do apply metrics and those who don't is phenomenal so if you want to just if you want a shortcut if you want a hack if you want to be better at running do some plyometrics two three times a week two three minutes a day that will absolutely transform your running and i mean if we break running down it's it's essentially a plyometric activity isn't it right you're going to go one hundred percent step off one foot land on another then bounce back to the other one um that i've ruptured my ACL back in February and so part of my rehab is some skipping and it is some very gentle plyometrics and even the action of drawing a line on the floor and hopping from you know i'm on my left leg so i'm hopping to the outside and my left foot so i'm hopping left and then landing and then pausing on that landing um and actually nailing it and to start with because i don't have the stability in my leg then i'll land and i'll immediately feel like i'm off balance and so you know that's because i don't have the stability well that challenge that you just mentioned about getting people who don't do plyometrics do that challenge them can you hop across this line and land on the other foot and maintain your balance and then because because yeah and keep doing that and then take it hop forward so hop take a step and jump off your right foot and land on your left and then just pause on the landing and pause and freeze because when you hear the commentators on the telly talking about a runner looking beautifully balanced that's what they mean it means that they're able to land from one foot to the other without having to correct those small micro changes and yes if you're having to do that for a marathon there's an awful lot of wasted energy over four or five hours isn't there yes i guarantee you that everyone we are watching on television this week in the olympics on that purple track i guarantee you there is not a single one that is not doing plyometrics or strength training or strength training yes they are all doing it every single one and none of them will be on keto diet right none of them are on keto lots of carbohydrates in the athletes village for sure indeed one final question male and female runners um different approaches to training or is it very much down to the individual and their goals and their lifestyle it definitely individual is more important than gender differences sexual differences for sure i think there are a few things in science that have been shown to be slightly different um women for sure do not tolerate fasted training well at all um men possibly can handle it but i still do not recommend fasted training for men either but women's hormones are much more sensitive to fasted training so any woman especially who is fasted training i have a little sit down then we talk about that but i don't recommend it for men either but i will say women are more sensitive to that and then of course women we have babies and menopause so those are periods of life there that training is 100 percent going to be different but i can't say oh well during pregnancy you should do this during um you know after you have your baby you should do this and perimenoma perimenopause you should do this and after menopause you do that i cannot say anything um that works across the board women are so individual when it comes to these things and so it really is just going to be about the individual woman documenting talking about what is happening oh well this time of the month i feel this that time of the month i feel that you know some women can run all the way through their pregnancies i was not able to i had to swim that was the only thing that i could do i could barely walk to the end of my driveway when i was hugely pregnant and but other women are running till the day they give birth some people bounce back very quickly other women do not same goes for perimenopause and menopause women just all have very very different experiences and so it's important to take note of what you're feeling and what you're doing and how you should be training with men they don't go through any of that stuff right they are um they have their own issues of course we're all aging and so there are some generalized aging issues that of course apply to men but their hormones aren't going up and down up and down up and down every month they're pretty much a lot more steady so they don't quite have as much fluctuation in their training so those are the main differences but it's really up to the individual so i can have men who can't handle high volume well where there are women that can handle super high volume and then vice versa so there's not one way to train because you're a woman or because you're a man it's really about the individual i know uh stacy sims talks about doing less zone two doesn't she and less less easier training and a bit more high intensity stuff but again you have to be able to tolerate that in order to be able to add more in um and i have female triathletes i've worked with who um prefer mentally they prefer the long steady stuff so again it's all right saying you should be doing this but if they don't like doing it you can't force them to do it and and some of them will just say i don't respond well to it so i think for me it's always about what does the individual want and need and like doing you know if if they need to do it and you prescribe it but it's going to turn them off the sport that's not a good outcome um so you know always always a little thing you have to eat your vegetables you know you have to do some things you don't like if you don't like strength training because you're a distance runner do a little bit of strength training it's you know there are some times where you gotta eat your vegetables right but the overwhelming experience should not be negative you should be doing the thing you want to do 90 percent of the time but you know the people who are like oh i just love to run i'm not going to strength train at all yeah i don't i gotta i gotta prescribe some strength training let's find a way to like it you know let's find a way and you know for me the bottom line is for anybody whether you're an olympian or somebody who just wants to you know be like you don't just run three miles every other day it's like you're a runner now but you might not always be a runner but you're always going to be a human being and you are going to need human function when you get older you're going to need to be able to pick your shopping bags up walk up the stairs getting an out of the bath um you know sometimes if you are lucky enough to go to the airport the elevator might be broken and you're going to have to carry those bags up the stairs so you have to have some level of functional strength and fitness which overrides all of that athletic performance stuff 100 percent yeah agreed well it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show thank you so much for sharing um all about the planted runner and your lifestyle and philosophies it's uh it's been great and i hope that the curious folks in here who want to give running a try or want to give a plant-based diet a try um can check out what you do and your resources absolutely absolutely and if anybody's interested i have a free fueling guide that they can get and you just need to go to the planted runner dot com slash join j-o-i-n and i will break down um what you need to fuel before during and after your runs well we will make sure to put those links into the show notes clear so uh i will promote that when we publish the episode for you so there's no problem there lovely thank you for being here again and uh hopefully we can do this another time absolutely thanks simon thank you again to claire for being my guest on the show this week if you've ever thought about switching to a plant-based diet to help your health and/or your performance i hope you now have enough information to get you started if not then i'm sure the claire would love to answer your questions and you'll be able to find her contact details in the show notes below if you want to drop an email or check out some of those resources you mentioned please also check out the show notes for links to the other topics that we talked about as well as the links to my free daily mobility plan to make sure you don't miss out on any future episodes please go to iTunes search or any other platform that you use search for high performance human try a fun podcast and click the subscribe button and once you've finished listening maybe you could think about sharing this episode with just one person who you think might benefit and if you've got a couple more minutes plus you could leave me a review on your chosen platform that's all for this week and will as i always promise have another great guest in seven days time and i hope you'll be able to join me but for now happy training and enjoy your week
