You're listening to the Human Kinetics Podcast, the leader in physical activity and sports publishing, providing authoritative coaching resources for over 50 years, featuring educational and engaging conversations on the most relevant topics in fitness, strength and conditioning and sports performance. Enjoy the show. Thank you everyone for joining us, whether you are listening or watching. Today, I have the opportunity to talk to Ben Reuter. As you can see, Ben is an associate professor in the Department of Exercise Science and Sports Studies at PENWest University, California. He earned his master's degree from Old Dominion University with an emphasis on athletic training and went on to earn his doctorate in exercise physiology from Auburn University. He is a certified strength conditioning specialist with distinction, also a certified athletic trainer. Ben is an associate editor for the NSCA strength and conditioning journal with a specific research interest in injury prevention and performance enhancement for endurance athletes, which we're going to get into quite a bit today. So he is here to share all of his knowledge, maybe not all of his knowledge, but a lot of his knowledge. In his new release, developing endurance of which he is an editor and a contributor in addition to a lot of other coaches here. So again, thank you so much Ben for spending part of your day with us. I really appreciate it. Oh, thank you. And I mean, I think not just my knowledge, but the knowledge of all of the authors who contributed to the chapters and also a recognition to the NSCA. You know, when I first joined the NSCA, the idea of endurance sports and strength and conditioning were kind of separated by a football field, but now that recognition is the benefits of strength and conditioning, not just for strength and power athletes, but also endurance athletes. So it's kind of come full circle. And one of the questions that I have for you. I mean, you touched on a little bit of, you know, kind of how, you know, endurance training or the idea of endurance training has gotten more popular. I gave a brief introduction on kind of your education and experience, but what specifically interested you in endurance training and kind of getting into this specific area. What interested me is what I was in college is actually what started me becoming interested in strength and conditioning. I was a, and I've told the store before. So some people are going to laugh and some people are going to think I have an altered perception of reality. But I was a junior varsity division three soccer player. So that means I was not very good. And I quickly recognized that and getting stronger didn't really help. And I quickly learned in exercise science classes that I probably was predisposed to the majority of single twitch fibers or slow twitch fibers, which probably accounted for my lack of speed. And I just kind of fell into recreational running and biking and triathlons. And back in the late 90s actually had the opportunity to write a few articles for inside triathlon. And, in the late 1990s or early 2000s, I said to Jeff Chandler, the editor of the strength and conditioning journal, you know, we should do something involving endurance athletes and he said, well, write a column or write some columns. And that's really how it started with having the opportunity. The NSCA obviously has become more aware of it. Not so much the national office, but more and more members are joining from a broader base of interest, whereas originally it was mostly football coaches. And even back in the early 2000s, they actually sponsored a couple of endurance symposiums in Colorado Springs, where a number of the authors of this developing endurance book spoke or attended. Okay. Now I think you, you kind of alluded already to, you know, originally started out as, you know, majority football coaches and I think when people think of training or resistance training in general, we think of more, I guess, sports or events where we, you know, directly associate strength and power and that type of thing. People don't always associate that with endurance sports, even though, as we know, you know, you do need a lot of strength and power to participate in those sports. So I think endurance athletes and people in general are coming around to the idea of resistance training and how that will help their performance. But I would say even even 10 years ago or so from my experience, I know that some endurance athletes were reluctant to try any type of resistance training. And I think maybe there were some misconceptions that went along with that and they had their specific reasons why they didn't want to do that. But how have you kind of seen this evolve over the years and how important resistance training really is for endurance athletes. Great question. I think back 10 years ago or even longer as you noted, it was the minority of endurance athletes who recommended or recognize the importance of strength training. But I remember back in the early 1990s and I'm aging myself a US marathon or Steve Spence was well regarded for squatting heavy and he was in runners world and various other magazines kind of as this strange runner. But it worked for him number one, he was able to win a medal at the World Marathon championships. Obviously he had some talent and had the endurance training also. And number two, up until a few years ago, he had a self reported record of running a sub five minute mile for 20 or 30 some years. So I think the last time he did it was sometime when he was in his 50s. So I think all of us know the importance of maintaining muscle mass as we age outside of the athletic population because as we get older, you know, people say, well, I can't do that anymore. The difficulty of elderly people standing up or walking or getting out of a chair. And like it or not, for the most part outside of say cross country running and some of the distance events in swimming, the majority of endurance athletes have a tendency to be older. Because it is a relatively, or they are relatively expensive sports to be. I mean, even running races are quite expensive. So as you get older, you have the sarcopenia, you have the loss of muscle mass. And let's face it going out and running and biking or swimming or doing obstacle course race training for hours at a time is not the best way to build muscle mass or strength and power. However, if you can maintain your muscle mass or increase your muscle mass, not only can that have the health benefits across the lifespan, but it can make you a better performer in the endurance sports, make you faster, make you more resilient to injury. And quite honestly, when I added in resistance training, when I started dabbling in endurance sports after failing as a soccer player, it's amazing how much less sore I was after hard running workouts or doing races because I had a larger base of strength to work from. Has it maybe been some of the successes of individuals like what you were just talking about that have kind of shifted the mindset of some endurance athletes that you've seen or what has it really been to kind of shift that perspective. I think it's twofold. I think it's, first of all, as people gain more knowledge and as the importance of strength and conditioning becomes more visible outside of the profession, you know, any men's magazine or women's magazine as you pick up, you know, men's journal, very women's health, they're going to have some sort of article on strength training, almost every issue. So I think that has something has become more visible to the general public. I think also when you look at professional organizations such as NSCA, I know that joke among me and some of my colleagues used to be you go to ACSM and before the events which you would see as you would see a whole bunch of people running, you know, one of my mentors early on was the late Mel Williams, who was a well-known exercise physiologist and sports nutrition and exercise science. And Dr. Williams was a runner. And, you know, many of these colleagues, many of the famous people in ACSM that you've heard of, you know, who have written the textbooks, et cetera, were longtime runners. On the other hand, as we mentioned a few minutes ago, the home of the National Strength and Conditioning Association was football coaches, that's how it started. And as we expanded the certifications into tactical training, the personal training certification, you started to bring in more people, whereas 15, 20 years ago, somebody may have been a runner and said, boy, I'm really interested in coaching athletes and doing something like this. But the NSCA isn't good for me because it's just for football coaches. While you have a broad spectrum of people, not only strength power, but strength endurance, we're recognizing, hey, I can be involved with colleagues who understand the importance of strength and conditioning, and still have my love of endurance sports. I think one of the things we always, as strength and conditioning coaches or certified personal trainers, we have a responsibility for the athletes that we work with, whether they're a professional, but even more importantly, if they're the general public, to do something that has a benefit in the long term, you know, if you're making millions of dollars, you may say, I'm making a decision that I'm going to affect my health for a number of years to maybe set up generational wealth. But if you and I decide that next year we want to try to compete with Roger Earl, who wrote our obstacle course training chapter on obstacle course racing, we're going to also have to continue to work our everyday jobs, work with our families and do other things. So it's important for us to maintain our health and maximize our performance. And that's where I think strength and conditioning come together and specifically resistance training with people who want to be involved in these atypical strength sports. Definitely. And some of these sports that you specifically mentioned there, I love that the book goes into, you know, training different endurance sports and events and you mentioned, you know, swimming, running, cycling, you mentioned obstacle course races. I know this is kind of a broad question, but what does training look like for each one of those specific events. I think if athletes or coaches are kind of looking to put together a program, what are some similarities for those specific sports and what are some differences that they might consider. I think a multifaceted answer, first of all, if I can refer to the readers, I know they're all going to want to go out and get the book. Krista Schultz did a great chapter on triathlon training and she did a great job of looking at different training programs depending on the distance. And whether you're triathlon training, obstacle course training, swimming, running, biking, you know, a five pay runner is an endurance brother. By the same token, there are people out there who are running 100 mile races or 100 mile trail runs. They are also endurance athletes. So obviously the longer the events, the greater commit time commitment is going to take the shorter event, the less time commitment. And that's one of the reasons why if you notice five kilometer races, 10 kilometer races and running have become so popular. Half Ironman distance triathlons have become popular because you can train and still maintain a life. If you're going to be a well balanced individual and you're going to compete in these Ironman distance triathlons, which if you're really, really good, almost at the professional level, eight and a half hours. Some of these extreme obstacle course races are going to take you the same distance or the same time frame, you know, we can fathom out 100 miles. If you're doing one of the 100 mile races out West, if you finish within 24 hours, you get a belt buckle. That's a serious time commitment. But for most people who are looking at it, you're looking at as a just a base frame. If somebody says, you know, I want to dab on this. I, my goal is to finish a sprint triathlon or do a 5k. You're probably looking at from the aerobic aspect, just as a general rule of thumb, a minimum of three aerobic workouts a week. Obviously, if you do more, you're going to have a more enjoyable experience, especially this longer. And what's especially important, not only for the performance to reduce injuries, because depending on, if you look at running, for example, depending on the statistics, you look at up to 80% of individuals who are runners miss one or more days a year of training because of injury. Something goes wrong with their body. So the stronger you are, the more resilient you are, the better you're able to resist that. And I would say, when you talk about that bare minimum of three times a week of aerobic training, you also should be looking at a bare minimum of 20 minutes of resistance training. And to shout out to another author, the gentleman who wrote our running chapter, Richard Balgrove out of England, had a specific suggestions in his chapter four. I don't want to downplay this compared to the chapter on resistance training, but it was quick easy. If you're a runner and you don't want to commit to periodizing your training program for strength and conditioning also, which we both would agree was probably would be beneficial. But he has some suggestions for some quick workouts. And I think one of the benefits is there is the potential with endurance sports for information overload. You know, you have people who are maybe recreationally training for a five K because their goal is every fourth of July, their family runs a five K, which is phenomenal for, you know, community and family time and then you can enjoy the rest of the fourth of July weekend. But do they really have to spend time saying I'm spending 30, 30 minutes in zone one, 20 minutes in zone two, and, you know, five minutes in zone five for my interval training and I'm doing a little facetious here when they're actual training for that five payer 3.1 miles works out to be about two and a half or three hours a week. So I think when we say the minimum of say three sessions of aerobic training. Obviously more than that, if you get into the multi sport activities such as obstacle course racing or triathlon and a dirty little secret for some triathletes who excel at once for because many triathletes come from a running background or a swimming background. I know a number of high level triathletes who are swimmers and the dirty little secret is they do minimal swimming because they've built up such a muscle memory and they cannot swim for a year, get in the pool and still go significantly faster than those of us who are doing four or five swim sessions a week because we started swimming competitively and I say competitively with air quotes when we were 22 years old, we said, Hey, I want to try a triathlon. So that's the beginning. If you're somebody, some of these age group triathletes who are trying to qualify to go and race in the Ironman World Championship. So some of these runners who are trying to compete in some of these ultra trail runs that are 100 miles, they may be committing to training 20 to 25 hours a week as opposed to that five pay runner. So there's a huge extreme and the triathlon chapter does a good job of this. Also, the running chapter does a good job of giving sample workouts as well as the cycling chapter for different distances. Obviously everything is individual, but many of us jump into these endurance sports where we see something and say, Oh, I think I could do that. And rather than information overload, if we can go and look at one source, we can say, Okay, it's a good idea to start at this. This gives me an idea. But I also recognize that maybe I need a little bit more and maybe I can use this information to start out as self coached, but also talk to somebody who's qualified as a strength coach or certified personal trainer with a background and endurance sports to bounce some ideas off of it because the book gives you a great idea, a great starting point. What's the basics? But if you're like me, emotions often take place and you want to look at the training recommendation for, you know, to do a century ride and say, Well, that's okay, but I'm different. So if you could have somebody, whether it's a trusted friend, I've got a gentleman who's a chiropractor, the best word he ever said to me has been your training like it was five years ago, you're coming off knee surgery and a year and a half off, back it off like 15 or 20% and you'll do a lot better. And it's like the light bulb went off of the angel saying it's like, Oh, I was looking at this emotionally. This is what I imagined myself. I am or somebody who maybe ran a marathon in 2012 and now their kids are older and they're doing it. So the book gives you a good background, but also really hunt down a professional. The NSCA is a great source of finding people. Any of the authors in this book are excellent providing feedback. So somebody can give you emotionless information and saying, Hey, you know, you're just starting a running program, deciding that in six months you want to run 100 miles, probably isn't the smartest thing to do for quality of life, injury prevention, and actually being so what you do what all of us do so much is we love these endurance sports, whatever they are being outside being in the pool and just doing that aerobic activity. I think everything that you said there is so important. And it's so important to make that distinction between, you know, beginners and pros. As we're doing this right now. I mean, we're in the middle of the summer Olympics. So I think a lot of people. I get excited for, you know, the endurance events for the for the running events swimming, whatever it is. And I think sometimes we watch that. And if we're not experiencing an event, we think, Hey, I can do that. But everyone has to put their own. I guess specific situation into perspective and saying, maybe I can't do that yet but here are tips in this book where I can work my way up to that or at least to make some progress so. I guess you did a great job of covering, you know, those, I guess, more traditional, you know, endurance sports, something that's become a lot more popular and you mentioned it already is that obstacle, obstacle course racing. Can you kind of explain to the listeners exactly what all is involved in that and really the the the spread, the stress or the extra demands that I'll race like that might put on your body compared to some of the other events. Sure. I think first of all, I believe this may be the first book with the chapter on obstacle course race training. Managing editor for this book, human genetics that I worked with on a Roger Earl wrote the chapter on it. And one of the cool things when you do these projects is you learn about other people and I've known Roger for 20 some years. And I just learned like two years ago that he was a national ranked obstacle course racer. And you know we all see some of these shorter obstacle course races or adventure races you know I participated in some of the very short ones that may be encompassed five kilometers of running and you might do a long carry and you might have to climb over a small rope ladder. But some of these longer events are pretty significant you've seen some of them on like ESPN to and some of the other sports channels, they may last eight to 10 hours and cover as long as 30 to 40 mile Wow. So imagine if you were a trail runner, you know I was fortunate enough back in the day a few years ago to to run a 45 mile trail run and it pretty much killed me. It was probably one of the toughest things that are done it was really enjoyable it was in the fall. But imagine doing something of that distance and rather just completing it putting one foot in front of the other at whatever your speed. Your three miles in all of a sudden you have a 25 pound sandbag that you have to fill up figure out a way to seal the sandbag sling it over your shoulder continue to go. And maybe a mile down down the trail they decide that well in addition to holding the sandbag you have to climb up over this pile of logs. And maybe they've decided they're going to make the pile of logs a little bit more difficult by spraying it with water. So you finish that and okay you're pretty much exhausted from that you want to note that if you're a trail runner, you're probably don't have the upper body strength to do that so you've already added additional training aspect in your training program to add in that upper body stuff. You run another couple of miles and then you see there's a 45 or 50 foot stream that you have to get across without going in the stream whether it's by swinging from ring to ring or swimming swinging from rope to rope. Most of these events especially the longer ones are taking place outdoors. Many of them take place at during the summertime at ski resorts so you can imagine the elevation both at ski resorts at elevation and climbing up and down the mountain. I remember seeing one where one of the events was they had to fill a five gallon bucket with rocks and gravel no shovel they had to do this by hand and figure out how to carry this five gallon bucket up the ski slope and down the ski slope. And you may think well that's pretty easy but that five gallon bucket the handle probably isn't going to work. So you've got those things added in and as I said the longer events may take eight plus hours and that's for the best people. So you have the requirements of an endurance athlete the aerobic capacity but you also have to have to have to have the strength power and the ability to recover to do things that require much more strength and power than the average endurance athlete has. There's a requirement for a tremendous amount of upper body strength for some of these events that the Tour de France just finished up if you have seen some of the upper body strength of these gentlemen who are some of the best aerobic athletes in the world. Their upper body size not to be insulting is probably no larger than a 12 or 13 year old prepubescent boy because it's not a requirement of the sport if they're carrying extra mass of the upper body, it doesn't help the sport. However that mass could be beneficial in a endurance event such as obstacle course racing. So would you say then if someone's looking to do an obstacle course race I mean that this sounds like an all encompassing full athletic event. Really is what it is I mean you you have to like you described you have to have full body strength you have to have endurance really is kind of have to train all parameters of being athletic, having maximal endurance everything. I think I agree with that I think the chapter is a great job to outline some of the physiological requirements. I think for any endurance sport that you look at to what's so important is there are differing distances so if you decide you want to do an obstacle course race you may not jump immediately into one of those six eight or ten hour events. There are ones that are planned to be completed you know where you're going less than five kilometers you're doing four or five different obstacles and somebody who is recreationally fit can do it and enjoy it and maybe that's the thing that they find. And they say oh I want to go longer I want to go longer I think one of the things that we see in society today is the immediately I want to do this now you know you see the Olympics you mentioned it we're going to see the triathlon we're going to see the marathon we're going to see some of the swimming the 1500 meters and you may say boy I want to do a marathon. But and this is where the strength and conditioning especially the strength training is so important aerobically you can get fit to do many of these events in eight 10 12 weeks if you have a baseline of fitness. However, especially with the weight bearing sports the time that it takes to equip the muscles the tendons and the bones to withstand that pounding force or the force that's required to propel the pedals. May take longer so the advantage of starting its shorter distances as a case example before I did my first iron distance triathlon I will not say I raced it I completed it. I also made sure that I was comfortable doing a hundred miles in this 45 mile trail run that I did because my figure was if I could do complete a 45 mile trail run and not have a mind all three experience. Then I can complete a marathon at the end of an iron. The other thing that I did in addition to having all of this knowledge as an exercise physiologist is I hired a coach because I don't think you can over emphasize the importance of hiring the coach to avoid getting injuries. And somebody to give you that non emotional you know yes your training program says that you're supposed to race next weekend, but your back hurts you've been sick, your wife is giving you a hard time because you're training too much. For quality of life for health for life for long span this might be a time to say okay we're not going to do this event will do something different. So having a coach who's qualified who can give you that emotionless feedback where you can't just say I'm just going to power through this because it isn't just a crush. And I think with many endurance athletes is the secret is getting to the starting line healthy, rather than getting to the starting line injured where I think I can finish but I may have to drop out. Yep, I'm glad you mentioned that I was going to say competitors want to compete and if you're doing anything like this you are a competitor. I think one of the drawbacks I've been guilty of this myself a lot of the athletes that I train are guilty of. They want to keep going if they you know feel feel something they think well I just tweak my ankle or my knees a little messed up right now but I can keep going. Something that's so important that you that is mentioned in the book here is the importance of you know rest recovery making sure that you're not over training so can you speak to that please. Really emphasize the importance of that because I think really regardless of the sport but definitely endurance athletes just kind of have this mindset that you know I'm competitive I don't want to stop because I don't want any any setbacks. Yeah, I can't overemphasize enough that we're talking mainly age group recreational athletes I mean if you're an elite athlete this is an entirely different realm because you're going number one for performance. But the goal is to stay healthy and you know if you're trying to train when you're sick or when you're injured you know it can have long term effects you know one of the things that happened a few years ago with COVID is they found that people who are trying to train too hard without allowing adequate recovery from that we're running into some cardiac problems. Well that's life changing you know whatever you're doing you want to be able to continue to do it hopefully until the day that you got. And the chapter on overtraining and recovery is a is an excellent chapter first of all because it defines or explains what's overtraining or overreaching and what causes it. And one of the things that I think is really important to remember is everything that we do in life is a stress good stress or use stress if you remember back in your basic psychology class distress and bad stress. So you can sit there and you can look at a training program and I can write you a training program to complete a marathon in the spring and I can outline what you're supposed to do every day resistance training what you're supposed to do for your aerobic training. What zones you're supposed to be in, but I can't account for what human kinetics is going to say to you hey we've got this project that you need to do or your family to say hey you know my daughters got this opportunity to go to swim me in Hawaii and we're going to go because that's a life experience for her, or you get sick, or you have a baby in that sleep that you were thinking you're going to get eight to ten hours a night isn't going to happen. The other thing that I think is important with this chapter is in addition to explaining what overtraining is and how it occurs is the importance of recovery, because it's really easy and we all have had this where you go out for whatever your work, work out is, or whatever your event is, and occasionally you just have one of those events where it's just absolutely everything is perfect it feels effortless, and you say to yourself oh well this is what it is I'm going to lead athlete now I'm really good my training is finally working, and you don't understand that every time you do something that's a stressive, and you have to allow enough time, so the recovery, the nutrition, the active or passive recovery you know when you talk about the variety of things that are available you know some full rolling to some of these massage guns, to infrared treatment, to cold therapy, to float tanks, all of these things can help not reduce the stress or change the stress, but help you manage the stress. And you know one of the things that we don't have in our chapter on purposely is on nutrition because everybody with nutrition should consult somebody who has a specific level of knowledge or registered dietitian, hopefully with the CSSD to sport certification, who can give them very individualized training or excuse me very individualized nutrition recommendations based on their whole life not just the two or three hours a day or less that they're training. But the recovery I think is something, and this is why I'm excited about this chapter, that many endurance athletes and other athletes miss out on you know sleep, it's a badge of honor if you say well I don't need that much sleep. But most of us need more sleep than we're getting. Most of us, if there's one thing we're going to give up, we're going to give up sleep as opposed to giving up a workout or giving up an event. And although it just touches on and begins to get into it there's a lot of information out there where you can use some of these tools out there, the aura ring, the woof, et cetera, to look at physiological parameters, and they're just tools. But I know for example when I get sick, my heart rate is going to be elevated, my breathing rate is going to be elevated, my body temperature is going to be elevated and I personally use the aura ring, and this gives me the tools to think of it, or to see it, and at least I like to think that I'm at least smart enough to look at it and after two or three days if I see all of these things elevated, and my heart rate variability way way down I'm going hmm, maybe I'm getting sick or maybe there's some sort of stress, for example I'm in the middle of moving right now. It's kind of a long term thing. I'm 10 days into a new puppy. Guess what I'm seeing, I'm seeing that my HRV is down, my resting heart rate is up, my sleep quality is a little bit less, and at least now I'm smart enough to say okay I want to still work out I still want to do these endurance activities, but I'm doing less than I was doing a year ago. And psychologically on the one hand this is very hard to accept, but smart wise and now as a 56 year old, I can say okay this is good because in three or four months when all this is behind me, I'll still have a level of fitness and I'll be able to do something. When I was 20 or 25 I probably would have said well I can just power through this I didn't get much sleep last night. We all know if we go to a college track meet on the Saturday morning, there's going to be a pretty distinct smell of alcohol coming from some of the athletes. Maybe even at higher levels and we know that that's going to affect performance and I think understanding and looking at the chapter, it gives you the information so you can make a conscious choice. What am I doing that may be leading me to over training. What am I doing that may be affecting my recovery. And I think it gives you the tools to at least start saying these are things that are at least important as doing that interval training session before the race. I think that's such a great insight obviously and definitely in the book for everyone listening that we kind of get stuck into this route like you mentioned that we have a certain training schedule that we want to keep up with. But I mean if if we don't listen to our bodies if we don't listen to all the things that are going on around us, then we might end up injured and then we're going to get off that training plan anyway and then we're going to be completely off base and we're going. I guess the irony is that we're going to end up in this situation that we're trying to avoid by just pushing through to begin with. And that's why I really I've emphasized this a lot. And somebody or somebody who is a good sounding board. Not somebody who's going to say Aaron you can push through you can push through don't worry about that last night asleep you can still do that marathon somebody who can give you that objective advice and say hey, be smart about this because you know all of us when we look at it you know all the chapter authors, all of us who do endurance sports we do it not because we're making money at it but because we love whatever the activity is. And I know I talked to one of the authors just recently at the NSCA convention and they were injured and they hadn't been able to train they want the way they wanted to train for a couple of months and you could tell it was just eating them up. Injuries are unavoidable. But the more information you have as far as having a well designed training program, giving yourself adequate recovery and understanding that there are stresses outside of the training. The longer you can go without having a significant injury so you can be doing the activities that you love not just now, but across your life span. Again, such great information. I know we've been talking for a little bit of time here and you've given a ton of information in this relatively short amount of time. So I do want to thank you for your time and hopping on here talking about endurance training and endurance sports in general. If you're watching or listening this definitely get your copy of developing endurance. You won't regret it. You can get it on our website us at humankinetics.com I know it's available on Amazon, probably numerous bookstores as well. You're going to find tips and guidance like we talked about today and a lot more like like been mentioned, you know, he's a contributor. He's an editor, but there are also a lot of other, you know, strength coaches, professors that have contributed to this resource that you are definitely going to get great benefit from. So again, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. And I will give you the last word here so you can kind of wrap it up and maybe let everyone know where they can follow you or continue following and, you know, reading all the information that you're putting out. Sure. First of all, I mean, this would not have been possible without the NSCA embracing the opportunity to provide endurance training information, strength and conditioning. The authors. This is actually the second edition of this text. So we have thanked the authors, some of the authors repeat authors, some of them are new authors, but, you know, the first authors for the first edition in 2012 their contributions can't be overlooked. And I think the best thing to say is this is a great source of information. If you're interested in endurance sports, a number of the authors on this have Instagram accounts or Facebook accounts where you can follow them. And it gives you an idea that they are credible sources with good information. You may not necessarily agree with everything that they say, but you know that their information is solidly based and it gives you the opportunity to maybe assess what you're doing or say, Hmm, maybe I was wrong or looking at it from a different way. You know, most of my Instagram or social media posting is on endurance sports coffee dogs and riding my bike, you know, at our EUTVH as they can see from this. But you know, if you have questions message me, I might not know the answer, but I can probably direct you to somebody. One of the great things, you know, all this got stipends for doing this. But if you average it out per hour, we're doing this not only because we want to contribute to the profession, but also this is the sort of thing we love. It really is a profession and not a job. And you find that when you go and you talk to the various various people, you spend part of the time talking about your profession part of the time talking about what excites you and just working with the authors on this book really excited me about strength and conditioning strength and endurance sports. And I just encourage anybody out there. If you're thinking, you might want to try to try an event. Try something shorter and you may find something that really enhances your quality of lifestyle. Yep. Again, great information as always. Great way to close it out. So thank you again Ben. I really appreciate it. And I will talk to you soon. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you too. Thank you for listening to the Human Kinetics Podcast. For more information on this and other topics, visit our YouTube channel as well as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X. For additional resources, visit our website, us.humankinetics.com. [Music] (music)
