Coach Tina interviews Jay Dicharry in 2017.
Jay is a renowned expert in biomechanics and physical therapy and is also the author of Anatomy for Runners. In this episode, he challenges us to reevaluate parts of our accepted, conventional training and running wisdom.
He does a great job of deconstructing clinically complex concepts into easily understandable ideas and examples. He breaks down things like Strength Training versus Power Training and the differences between joint limitation or blockage, shortened tissues, stiffness / sticky tissues, and dynamic mobility.
Our conversation covered a lot of ground and included many additional resources as noted by the links below. This may very well be an episode that you will want to listen to multiple times to explore these and evaluate what changes you may want to integrate into your own personal program.
“There’s still the folks out there saying ‘Running is going to kill you and you need to stop’.”
“I don’t like being the person paving the way; I like being the person helping people.”
“ ‘What’s the ONE thing to do?” and the reality is that life isn’t that simple, right? If it was, then nobody would have problems.”
“There is very good research out there to show that running does NOT make you strong. Running efficiency DOES improve when you improve the way that you carry yourself.”
“At the end of the day, the runners who are serious find a way to get in the weight room. The runners I work with, the people I’ve introduced to this, I don’t know any of them who have STOPPED doing this at all even from a novice up to an elite level.”
“The goal is to build a running-specific plan to RUN better, not just to lift more weight in the gym.”
“If it’s not improving running economy and making your body more robust in terms of injury reduction, then you shouldn’t be doing it.”
“If you’re a soccer player and you’re more accurate in shooting goal with your right foot, that’s fine, right? But, when you run both legs have to show up.”
“I’m not looking to train a muscle; I’m looking to train a movement.”
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Mentioned in this podcast:
Run To The Top podcast with Max Prokopy
The American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Christopher M. Powers, PhD, PT, FACSM, FAPTA
Irene Davis, PhD, PT, FAPTA, FACSM, FASB
2017 UVA Running Medicine Conference
Jack Daniels's Run Smart Project
Run To The Top podcast with Dr. Santos
Run To The Top podcast with Drew Watts
Saucony Stride Lab app for iOS
Steve Magness Amazon Author Page
Runner's World Article: How to Use a Lacrosse Ball for Recovery
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Keira D’Amato is a world class runner who broke the American record in the 10 mile and clocked an incredible 2:22 at the Marathon Project this past December, but incredibly, she’s a full-time realtor and running is her side gig.
Keira, an unsponsored Realtor and mom of two from Virginia, unexpectedly placed 15th at the Olympic Marathon Trials last February, emerging onto the American running radar after a comeback mission that spanned over a decade.
Keira was a rising star at D1 American University, even beating future Olympians Molly Huddle and Amy Cragg. Then an ankle injury and subsequent surgery seemingly ended her running career for good.
Switching gears, Keira started working at her mom’s real estate company, started a family, and called herself a “hobby jogger.”
She started training hard again to fulfill her life-long dream of becoming an Olympian, continuing to get faster and faster even as the pandemic shut down the world and Tokyo postponed the Olympics.
In 2020, Keira got an unofficial Olympic standard in the 5K, ran a blisteringly fast 4:33 mile, and in November, Keira became the fastest American woman in the 10 mile. To cap off the year, Keira clocked a truly world-class time of 2:22 at the Marathon Project last December, coming in second place behind Sara Hall, a 12-minute improvement over her time at the trials.
As remarkable as all that is, running is still a hobby for Keira. She remains a professional realtor, not a professional runner. She talks to Coach Claire about running at an elite level while being a full-time realtor and mom, what 2020 was like for her, including the Marathon Project and her PRs, and how she trains for both speed and distance. As a bonus, this fun and inspiring episode even includes some corny mom jokes! Enjoy!
Questions Keira is asked:
4:14 What an amazing year 2020 turned out for you in running! After what you call a decade of "hobby jogging" you have emerged as one of the best American distance runners, breaking the American record in the 10 mile and clocking an incredible 2:22 at the Marathon Project in December. Can you talk about what last year was like for you?
5:43 It’s easy to think that you just came out of nowhere, but you ran Division I in college, you were coached by Matt Centrowitz, even beating out a few future Olympians in races back then. What were your plans for your running career back then?
7:06 I imagine it must be such a mind shift to think, “Okay, my life is headed in a certain direction,” and you get injured. “Well, my life is not going in that direction.” And then to get a second chance. Not many people get a second chance like you got.
9:39 You have become one of the distance moms. The field of American female distance runners right now is so deep, and most of them are moms which would be unheard of not that long ago. How do you feel that motherhood has intertwined with your running? Do you think there’s something to do with it that makes you a better runner?
11:34 When your kids were younger, did you do the running stroller thing?
12:46 Let’s talk about the Marathon Project last month. You had a massive PR and came in second place. What about your training said that “Hey, I can do this. I can get a sub-2:30. I can get close to 2:20.” What kind of workouts, what kind of things were going on in your mind that told you, “Yeah, I’m a contender?”
14:22 Did you have any thoughts of running out with Sara Hall and going for the American record at the time?
15:13 Not only did you kill it in the marathon but you got a new 5K PR and a mile PR this year. How does training for those shorter distances, or at least testing yourself at those shorter distances, how does that relate to your marathon, and what would you say to that 20-yr-old girl that you used to be that you’re pretty much beating all the time now?
17:57 Would your advice to somebody who is let’s say plateauing in the marathon be to do track work? What would be your number one tip to get a breakthrough like you had?
18:45 Speaking of your training, you are on Strava and your Strava feed is like a corny mom’s joke, so I would love to hear what’s your favorite corny mom joke?
20:16 We have something else in common besides running. You are a realtor. I’ve been a realtor for almost 19 years now so I can relate to that. You still work full time as a realtor and you’re not sponsored as a pro runner. Tell me about that.
22:35 That’s a great point. You think, “Oh, you’re an elite runner, you should just get signed and have running, running, running all over your life,” but the fact that you can be riskier because you have real estate as your income source, running isn’t about money for you.
23:58 I read somewhere that you do real estate negotiations while you’re on a run, on an easy run.
25:06 You said multiple times in this conversation that you are going to be an Olympian, so what’s next for you?
25:29 You’ve hit the Olympic standard in the 5K, right, but it was unofficial? Is that correct?
Questions I ask everyone:
26:30 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?
27:41 What is the greatest gift running has given you?
28:27 Where can listeners connect with you?
“I think through all the chaos, and all the hurt, and pain, and just everything that happened in the negative space in 2020, I really clung to running to be my hope, to be my good time, to be my goals.”
“It’s important to keep the mileage up and to make sure you’re getting your long runs and your tempo runs too, but I think just developing your speed. Like when I first did a marathon, I think that was like my 5K pace too, and then I’ve been able to drag my 5K pace down so much that now I feel really comfortable running marathon pace, so I think that that’s the key.”
“I live, I train, everything about me is elite athlete. If you look at my life, I have a very similar structured life to the elite athletes but just instead of taking as many naps or having some downtime and going on Netflix binges, I’m doing my real job.”
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Keira D’Amato – Stone Properties (stonepropertiesva.com)
Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community
Follow Keira on:
We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.
The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.
The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!
Nathan Martin just broke a 41-year-old record at the Marathon Project held this past December. He finished in 2:11:05, making him the fastest US born Black marathoner of all time. He placed ninth, beating out Olympians and professionals with far deeper pedigrees.
In addition to being a super-fast runner, Nathan is also on a mission to give back and inspire others, especially the kids he coaches. Instead of leaving his high school coaching job to turn pro and join an elite training team, he decided to stay and continue training with his college coach Dante Ottolini at Spring Arbor University.
In this episode, Nathan discusses how he first started running, the tragic deaths of both of his parents, and his unlikely path to record-breaking running success. He also shares his thoughts on why there are comparatively few American born Black runners in long distance running and how he sees that changing in the future. Lastly, he talks about his next goal which involves hopefully setting a huge PR!
Nathan Martin was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois and raised in Three Rivers, Michigan. He started running Cross Country in Middle School after doing well in the gym class fitness test. He quickly discovered he had talent, and with the encouragement of others, kept with it. He was able to excel at the high school level, breaking three different school records and finishing runner-up at the MHSAA D2 state finals in the mile.
At Spring Arbor University, Nathan majored in Recreation and Leisure Management with a minor in Computer Science. As a freshman, he came in underdeveloped as far as training goes. However, after a couple of years of hard work, his potential started to show. By the end of senior year, he became a National Champion in three different events and set the NAIA Marathon record.
Post college Nathan continued pursuing running to see how far his talents could take him, which ultimately led to an incredible opportunity to coach at the MHSAA D1 level, as well as substitute teaching in Jackson County. At first it was just a way to keep a flexible schedule, but he quickly fell in love with it and his and his coach’s new focus became how to make everything work together, which inspired them to create the Great Lakes Running Club.
Through this process, Nathan was still making huge gains in running, most notably the 2019 20k Championships where he finished runner up, and now, his finish at the 2020 Marathon Project where he finished 9th with a 2:11:05 putting him 49th on the all-time US Marathoner list and breaking a 41-year-old record set by Herman Atkins, making Nathan the fastest US Born Black Marathoner.
Questions Nathan is asked:
3:20 You made history at the Marathon Project on December 20th, by becoming the fastest US born Black man to run a marathon in 2:11:05, breaking a more than 40-year-old record. What does that feel like and did you even know about the record before the race?
4:16 Can you give us a recap of the race in Arizona, how it went, what your strategy was, all the details?
5:36 There’s two sets of pace groups in that race, the 2:09 group and the 2:11 group. What made you not want to go ahead with the 2:09 group?
7:35 Easing up on your pace a little instead of staying with the 2:09 group left you out in no-man’s land for a little while, didn’t it?
8:22 You ended up in ninth place, which is obviously very impressive on such a fast course where so many guys went 2:09, so congratulations for that. It must have felt amazing to have such a PR and to crack the top 10.
9:28 I’d love to hear a little bit more about your back story. How did you first get into running and did you like it immediately?
11:15 You ran through high school and you ran in college, and you worked with a coach that certainly changed your life. Can you tell us a little bit about your coach and that relationship?
12:31 Dante Ottolini is still your coach today, right?
12:36 During college you lost your parents to cancer. How did running help you get through those hard times?
14:32 It sounds like your team really had your back when you lost your parents. That’s amazing.
15:03 After college, you could have left Michigan to be a pro or train somewhere else, but you stayed and became a substitute teacher and high school coach. Why did you make that decision? What does coaching bring to your life?
16:36 It sounds like you get more out of coaching your athletes than they get from you.
16:50 Do you think you would ever consider turning pro?
19:21 Have you considered staying in Michigan and maybe joining Hansons-Brooks?
19:59 One thing that I wanted to ask you is do you have any insight as to why more Black Americans aren't involved in distance running? Black Americans dominate track and field but are not as well represented in the longer distances. Do you have any thoughts of why this is?
21:41 Why didn’t you switch to basketball or football or something like that?
22:28 As a coach, how do you keep kids motivated when the other sports come calling?
23:12 Obviously running, at least in the United States, is not as glamorous as the NFL or the NBA, so I think this is an issue all across the country no matter what race you’re from, so how do we get more people interested in running? And I don’t know the answer. I don’t know if you have any insight on that.
24:02 What was the reaction when you came home from Arizona with your athletes, people in town, your coach? What did they say to you?
24:58 What are you training for now? What’s coming up next?
25:38 The Olympics 10k standard is 28 minutes so that would be a big PR for you. What’s your PR right now?
26:16 What are some of the specific things that you would do to run the 10k in 28 minutes, or is that still a mystery?
27:01 Are you basically the fastest guy in town or do you have some good training partners that can help you out?
Questions I ask everyone:
27:58 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?
28:49 What is the greatest gift running has given you?
29:34 Where can listeners connect with you?
“So I’m like, You know what? Hey, we need to be smart about this race. We’re looking to hit a huge PR. If we can stay with this 2:09 group, we’re going to do it but I need to protect myself and make sure I have a good day and don’t let others affect that.”
“Always, whatever I’m doing, I want to make sure that I’m connecting with people and finding ways to impact them. So if I did leave to a training group, it’d have to be more than just faster or to get to the Olympics type thing.”
“Most people enjoy hearing what they’re able to do and that’s definitely what I would try and make sure I do with my athletes.”
“You need people you can look towards. In one sense, I broke a record. Great for me. But in a whole ‘nother sense, it allows somebody to see somebody who’s achieved something and say, ‘You know what, that’s what I want to achieve. I think I can do that.’ And then they carve a path to find a way.”
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Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community
Use Promo Code RTTT for 20% off Sweaty Betty at www.sweatybetty.com/RTTT
Follow Nathan on:
Nathan Martin’s Olympic Trials Countdown | Facebook
We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.
The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.
The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!
Happy New Year! Did you resolve to lose weight this year? Running burns a ton of calories so it should be a great way to melt off the pounds, right? Well, maybe not. Dr. Kyle Flack, a weight-loss researcher from the University of Kentucky, conducts studies on how the body responds to exercise and how much you really need to work out to work off those extra pounds, and it turns out you need to work out a lot more than the current recommendations suggest.
Dr. Flack was recently featured in a New York Times article on exercising to lose weight and he shares his research results and provides insights on why weight loss isn’t as simple as burning more calories than you take in. He explains how body chemistry can seemingly work against us, thwarting significant weight loss, especially for fitter people, and why it’s not uncommon for people to actually gain weight while training for a marathon.
Through his studies, Dr. Flack has found that people overcompensate for the calories they’ve burned pretty consistently, and he shares what the average calorie overcompensation amount is and how much exercise time is required to overcome it to really drop pounds. He also talks about how long it takes to make exercise a habit, he compares strength training to aerobic exercise for weight loss potential, and also reveals whether it’s possible to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. If your goal is to lose or maintain your weight through your running, this is definitely a must-listen-to episode!
Kyle Flack grew up in a small town in Vermont where, as a 4-year starter on the varsity football team, earned All-State honors twice and won two state championships. He left to play college football at Ferrum College in Southwest Virginia, earning a BS in health sciences 4 years later. He continued his education at Virginia Tech in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise, where he earned his PhD in 2014.
Upon beginning grad school, Kyle also turned over a new leaf in terms of his exercise routine, going from 280-pound power-lifting football player (who got winded walking upstairs) to a runner. He devoted an entire winter and spring to this newfound training, lost 40 pounds, and completed his first marathon, Vermont City Marathon in 2008.
From there he was addicted, running two marathons each year for the next 5 years throughout grad school and dropping another 30 pounds. Each marathon was a new learning experience, a new opportunity to get better, and always ended with the goal or running the next marathon faster!
After grad school, and after finally reaching that sub-3:30 goal (he did the Marshall University Marathon in 3:27) Kyle shifted his attention to triathlons, which he has been at since 2014. Kyle completed a Post-Doctoral research fellowship with the USDA in Grand Forks North Dakota from 2014 to 2017 and has since been an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky in the Department of Dietetics and Human Nutrition since 2017. Kyle is an RD (registered dietitian) and primarily focused on researching weight loss physiology, how exercise may affect eating behaviors, and how exercise can be more appropriately used for weight control.
Questions Kyle is asked:
4:52 You are a researcher at the University of Kentucky specializing in how exercise affects eating and weight loss. And you don't just study it, you used running to lose weight yourself. Can you share your experience?
7:27 You were already an athlete with football so it wasn’t like you were obese or overweight and just wanted to lose weight by running?
7:58 Let’s get into some weight loss science. It seems that weight loss should be easy. It’s "calories in and calories out." What makes it more complicated than that?
10:00 When you lose weight, you’re obviously lighter so there’s less of you to move around. Is that correct?
10:30 Why isn't exercise generally effective for weight loss?
11:37 Overcompensating for calorie expenditure due to exercise is not entirely all our fault. This is not entirely a willpower issue or something like that. Our body’s working against us. Is that correct?
14:28 What you’re saying is when you go for a great run and you get all these endorphins flowing, you’re feeling really good, the entire pan of brownies tastes even better, right?
15:15 Many athletes that I’ve coached have actually gained weight when they start training for a marathon. They are burning a ton of calories and for whatever reason instead of losing weight, they gain weight. How is that possible?
19:34 I did a calculator once to figure out how many calories I burned running a mile and it was something terrible like 56 calories, and I’m just like, “What! That’s not fair.” Why is our body doing this to us?
20:17 In a recent study you did, you and your team found that in order to lose fat, the participants in the study needed to burn 3000 extra calories per week. Can you talk about this study?
21:52 In your recent study, were the participants moving less in their normal lives when they weren’t exercising? Were they slowing down?
23:27 The exercise you put the test participants through, was it just walking? Is that what you had them do?
23:51 Any other differences would you expect to find if you did the same study with athletes rather than obese, sedentary people?
25:01 Does the type of exercise matter? How about duration, frequency, or intensity?
26:44 The results of your study show frequency doesn’t matter. That’s good news for the weekend warriors, right?
27:19 You’ve also done some studies about the reinforcement value of exercise and I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can make exercise a habit that we can stick to.
33:27 You’re talking about a significant amount of exercise, five, six, seven hours a week for most people to get addicted to exercise?
34:11 One thing about exercise studies and nutrition studies, there’s some inherent difficulties in studying human beings because we’re not rats and you can’t put us in cages. So what kind of limitations did you find in some of your studies? What are the challenges that you find in this kind of work?
39:36 Nutrition labels, they don’t have to be perfectly accurate. I’ve heard that you can be 20% off on your nutrition label and it still be okay with the FDA. So calories in aren’t always perfect, right?
40:12 What about strength training? How does that differ from cardio when it comes to weight loss, hunger, the afterburn? We hear that when you strength train, muscles take more energy to sustain than fat does so you’re burning more just standing around if you have more muscle mass. Can you talk about that?
42:59 Can you gain muscle at the same time as lose fat? I’ve heard that that’s not always the case. Is that possible?
44:18 What questions are still unsolved and what kind of research are you looking to do in the future?
Questions I ask everyone:
48:39 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?
49:46 What is the greatest gift running has given you?
50:19 Where can listeners connect with you?
“If you lose weight, we would expect you to decrease your total energy expenditure, but what’s really been found is that if you lose weight, you decrease it more than what we would anticipate.”
“We need to exercise more to overcome that obligatory 1000-calorie-a-week compensatory response so we can actually see useful weight loss. So that 150-minutes-a-week recommendation that we hear actually isn’t enough to overcome that compensatory response.”
“With aerobic exercise, you can put someone on, ‘You’re going to exercise at this heart rate for 30 minutes,’ and you can do that for everybody and they all have the same workout. But if you say, ‘Okay, you’re going to go to the gym and lift weights for an hour,’ that’s going to look completely different from one person to the next person in terms of muscle activation, what you’re lifting, how heavy, how intense.”
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New York Times Article - Exercise for Weight Loss: Aim for 300 Minutes a Week
Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community
https://runnersconnect.net/focus/
Use Promo Code RTTT for 20% off Sweaty Betty at www.sweatybetty.com/RTTT
Follow Kyle on:
Kyle Flack | Human Environmental Sciences (uky.edu)
We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.
The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.
The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!