How to Train for Performance with Justin Jones

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 272. Today I'm sitting down with coach Justin Jones, and we're discussing how to train for performance. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner, and this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and today I'm sitting down with coach Justin Jones, and we are discussing how to build out high performance plans for ultra runners, marathon runners, endurance athletes, as well as Iron man, as well as building out the strength program for high performers. Whether you are a ultra athlete, you are an athlete that is training for for a profession, or you are a active person with an athletic goal. So if you're working clients and you're curious about how to program for performance, this episode is for you. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive in. What's up? Justin, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you doing?

I'm good. I'm excited to be here. How are you?

I'm doing so good. Luckily for you, I've already messed up. So now you know you just can't mess up.

Yep.

Okay. So I'm super pumped for today. So for those of you who have not been introduced to the pleasure of your work, I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there.

Yeah, totally. So, Justin Jones, owner of Assemble Performance. We serve mostly athletes and people that are interested in increasing their performance in sports, in like lifting, running, triathlon, or just in everyday life. Just focused on living fuller lives through increasing their performance. A lot of people I've worked with have had some rocky history with, like, diet culture and just feeling like fitness was very restrictive. So I've always been really interested in performance. Thinking back about when I was in high school, even coming up with sports and stuff, you've got like social media at the time was very focused on bodybuilding, very focused on aesthetics, and that wasn't something I was interested in. So I, you know, CrossFit was also coming up at the time and so focusing on that more performance aspect, less just focused on how you look. And then I was always looking up at like athletes, you know, none of them look like bodybuilders, but they perform great and they look, you know, still look athletic. So it's something I've always been interested in. As I've gotten into the coaching, I have kind of stepped right into that with my athletes. Feeling like I found my, you know, my people that are interested in just increasing their performance.

Yeah, I love that. So for, you know, I'm just curious, just for context, how do you define the word athlete? Who's an athlete to you?

So I'm kind of broad with it. I think of an athlete just as somebody who's like training to perform some task. So I see you've got the typical athlete like sports, you know, whether that's an endurance sport or a strength sport or obstacle course racing or whatever. And then with my more gen pop, like people that just want to live a healthy life, I like to frame life as an athletic event. If you look at even some of the ground reaction forces that you experience on a day to day life, they've done some studies where they've put like wireless force plate insoles basically in people's shoes and had them do daily tasks. And some of those can approach like two times body weight, which especially as you age, you know, aging, aging well is really a skill. And as you age you get a lot of this, a lot of this frailty that comes if you haven't trained, you know, and even carrying the groceries in, walking up the steps, chasing after a kid that runs out in the street. The forces that your body experiences sometimes aren't even that different from an athlete on a field. So. Hmm.

Okay, great. So you were talking a little bit about aging well as a skill. Can you unpack that a little bit?

Yeah. So I've been really interested in like health and aging. If you look at some of the big things that keep us from, you've got basically lifespan and then health span. So you could live a long time. But if you live a long time and you're unhealthy, like that's just a bad existence. So not only do you want to live longer, but you want to live healthier longer. And when you think about, you think about like you've got a competitive athlete, their goal is to win games and then you have like, if you think of an Asian athlete, their goal is to be able to do as many tasks as possible for as long as possible so they can live a life that they enjoy. So you look at the things that kill people, right? Cardiovascular disease, number one. So when you train the cardiovascular system, right, heart disease, that's one thing you're attacking. But then as you get older, people will fall, they break their hips, they can't pick their kids up, they can't walk up, up and down the stairs, whether it's a mobility issue or a strength issue. And then lean muscle mass really starts to decline as you age. So doing strength training to keep that. Increase your strength and lean muscle mass and then hold onto it as long as you can. And then cardiovascular training to make sure that you're aerobically and metabolically healthy to live just a long, full life. That's how I like to frame it to my, like, clients that are just interested in living healthier lives, you know.

Yeah. So what I'm curious is, in your experience, when do you really start to notice that there is a shift in. In people's attention from, you know, focusing on the aesthetics, as you were saying, versus, you know, getting really clear or. And prioritizing lifespan and health span? Like, when does this start to. Have you noticed it starts to transition their priorities and focus?

I think it really depends because, you know, some people think about it earlier, especially if they start, like, having children and stuff, they're like, okay, I have to, you know, I'm gonna have kids and grandkids one day, so I want to be able to be around with them. So I've had these conversations with people fairly young, depending on when they have kids. And then other than that, focusing on, like, depends on their goals and like, their community. Right. So you've got some people who grew up in fitness, was only bodybuilding, and they're kind of tired of that, and they maybe join a run club or go, you know, join some other sport, and then they're around a lot of other people, especially some of the, like, longer endurance sports, like ultra running is becoming big and like triathlons, those tend to be older sports, like, as far as the average or, like, mean age of the people that compete in them. But younger and younger people are getting into them and they're kind of getting experience with that community of people that are on that other side of, you know, they're. They now have, like, older children or like, maybe some younger grandchildren. And, you know, that's obviously more on the forefront of their minds of how do I be around a long time able to do all these activities with my family? So.

Yeah. Okay, you. What's. I have a couple of things That I, that are coming to my mind that I want to ask you is that you were talking about ultra running. What's ultra running?

Oh, yeah, ultra marathons. Yeah. So it's any distance over a marathon that you would run. So they range from, you know, 30 mile races all the way up to 250 mile races. They have, they've got a race out In Utah that's 240something miles and you just go out and, you know, run.

Wait, wait, wait. Who does that? Why would you do that?

I mean, there's a lot of people, There's a lot of people that do it. The community is super welcoming. So a lot of people like the community of it, you know, because road races sometimes can have this feeling of like, very competitiveness and ultra running. Like everybody's just out there to have a good time with each other and.

Push themselves 250 miles, like without stopping.

Okay, that's. Yeah. I mean, that one's a more extreme example. They. I'm pretty sure that race has a five day cutoff, so you, you can sleep. Like people do sleep. They have cots and aid stations.

Okay, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on. You're telling me that people, forest gump it style, five days running, no breaks, and then they break.

I mean, they'll, they'll stop and sleep in cots. Some of them, I mean the people that win normally, like the, the elite racers will do the whole thing at one time, but some of the, you know, like, if I was to people that run my pace, you know, they, they'll stop and sleep in a cot. I think you can stay at each aid station for like five or six hours. So like get a full like three, four, five hours of sleep and then get up and run again. And they'll just do that for like.

Five days, get a full night sleep. Three hours. Okay, wait, stop. Okay, I need to just. Really. Have you done one of these?

Not that long. No.

Okay. What's the longest amount of time you've run?

Like five hours.

How many miles can you do in five hours? And this is not like, oh, you're. I'm just, I'm just trying to get my bearings around, like how much, how many, how much mileage is that? What? Or. And you could give me ranges. You don't have to give me yours.

Yeah, that was a little over 20 miles on trails. So obviously it depends, like a road versus trails. So trails are generally going to be slower. You have more technical terrain. And then depending on where you're at, you'll have elevation. So.

Okay, 20 miles, five hours. What do people typically do on marathons? Forgive my, my ignorance.

It depends on your pacing. Obviously. Like the elite runners are running just over two hours and then like all the way. I've got a few people I know that run like six hour marathons, so.

Okay. I mean 26 miles is the most I've ever done and I could never even imagine thinking about 250 miles. I just, that's ins. I mean in the best way. Like, listen, if that's your thing, then like, hey, no shade. I just, my, my mind is bending now. Okay, so now how does someone prepare for that type of, of performance? Like 250 miles? Like do they just run all day every day? Like how do you prepare for that?

Yeah, that's a interesting topic. So the longest athlete I've trained so far has been for a 50 mile race in the mountains. But they say if you can run a hundred miles, you can run 200 miles. Like if your body's ready to run a hundred miles, it's mostly mental. The second hundred miles. With any ultra runner that I train, my goal is to at least one time in their training get them into a bad mental spot because they're probably gonna get in a bad mental place during the race and so they need to be able to work through it during training. So the training is generally a combination of like strength training for, you know, just to make durable legs. And then we'll do a lot of back to back long runs on the weekends, like three hours on Saturday, a couple hours on Sunday. Maybe when we're peaking, it's like four or five hours on Saturday and like two or three hours on Sunday just to get their legs used to that back to back pounding.

So I'm curious about how you incorporate a strength training program because usually you, you hear, you often hear, traditionally speaking you'll be like you're training strength in the off season and then when we're going running season, we're focusing on running. So I'm curious, what is the integration in how you program and how you think through the performance plan for your, your runners of all ranges?

Yeah, so it depends on what race they're doing and what their terrain's like. So the guy trained that just did the 50 miler, he trained in Florida and the, the race was in Colorado. So he had like flat nothing to train and the race had 10,000ft of elevation gain. So strength training is used a, to strengthen his legs for the elevation during the week, but also kind of as a pre fatigue mechanism. So like if you can't, for instance, you're training, training to run an ultra marathon, but you don't want to ramp your mileage up too fast. So you can utilize like a leg session and then go into a shorter run to get used to running on really tired legs. It's not quite the same, but it helps. And then for some of his long runs we would do like 30 minutes, 100 body weight lunges and then another 30 minutes, like every 30 minutes we'd break and just do 100 body weight like walking lunges.

I just keep thinking about that.

It's not quite the same but it can help with like the same muscles, like muscles that you use for elevation. So yeah, it helps with the legs. So then if somebody's got enough elevation to train on though I, I'll prefer the specificity of training on the elevation. But strength training is still like, I still use it as kind of a strength injury, injury prevention like mechanism during the week. And a lot of runners, they want to get low weight and high reps is what they want to do. But you're already doing a ton of volume running. So the way that I like to approach it and a lot of coaches approach it is actually heavier weights, lower reps. Because if you're already doing a lot of running volume and then you throw a lot of lifting volume on top of that, you're probably just going to hurt yourself.

So how do you navigate that? Meaning how do you know like what those lines are? Especially when you're preparing people for a race, like when you're just kind of doing everyday stuff, right? There's this barrier, It's a barrier you don't want to hurt, get hurt. But it's like a different type of I don't want to get hurt. When you're preparing for something like a 50 mile race. So how do you find those lines in terms of, and deciding whether or not it's like, oh no, you just didn't eat enough or sleep enough versus like oh, maybe we're over training. So how do you decide that? How do you figure that out?

Yeah, so I don't, I haven't dealt with anybody yet who's come to me and been like, I want to run a race in a month. So I've, I've normally had a longer like Runway and what I like to do is start what I know they're gonna be able to handle. So it might seem actually have pretty much everybody, they're like, hey, this isn't Enough work, like, there's no way. And I'm like, just give me a little bit, you know, like, we're gonna ramp up and. Because we don't want to start really high and, you know, you get injured right away. So I typically start with less volume than I think they can even handle, and then slowly ramp that up. And I keep an eye on their nutrition. Most of them, you know, they're athletes and most of them, like, track their macros and stuff. So I'll keep an eye on that and give them some guides of, like, once we start getting over this long on our run, you're gonna wanna, based on your body weight, be taking in like this many grams of carbs per hour and start, you know, practicing with that kind of stuff. And I'm not afraid to text somebody and be like, hey, you have to eat more. Like, just eat more.

Yeah, that's interesting. So now what? I, I, oh, my gosh. I have so many questions. Okay, something else that you said, and I do wanna get to the nutrition component, but something else that you said. You, you talked about two things, and I definitely want to circle back on it. So if I don't remind me, I want to talk about. The bad mental one I wanted to talk about is you said that ramp them up too quickly in terms of mileage. Why?

What was the. You broke up a little bit. What's the first thing you said?

I said? I said you had mentioned that you don't want to ramp someone up too quickly in terms of getting to their mileage too quickly. So why is.

Well, just because the body can only handle so much. So really, when you're looking at ultra running, like, it's how much can you recover from? You know, and so figuring out how much somebody can recover from, and then you're familiar with, like, progressively overloading somebody. So as you stress the body, the body gets stronger and adapts, and then you can place, you know, more stress on the body. And it's the same way with running. So if I put too much stress on them, something's gonna either soft tissue, muscle, tendon, or like stress fractures even with the bones. Like, you don't want to run somebody in the ground like that too quickly, right? Correct. Because if you appropriately stress the body and increase week to week, their body's going to adapt with the training. And so they're not going to get injured, they're going to get stronger.

Got it, got it, got it. So now I know that there's a difference between, like, learning how to do Things from reading a book and then, you know, versus, you know, actually implementing and doing the clinical hours. When you were first starting, did you ever feel. And you were working with performers, like, right off the bat, did you ever feel nervous in terms of trying to find that boundary of what is overstressing? Or did you. Or. Or did you just innately know it with your background?

No, there's definitely a learning curve. I. I mean, I've run my whole life, so I'm pretty comfortable when it comes to, like, running and what you can handle. But there's always a learning curve, and with every new person, it's like everybody responds differently, which is why I start people at a lower volume and kind of progress them up slowly at the start, just because as much as they're adapting to the stress, I'm learning their body. So.

That you want these performers to hit or these. These athletes to hit in terms of their performance. Like, what are the mile markers? Like, do they need to reach the peak?

Sorry, no. I don't know if it's my Internet or what it is.

I don't know. It might be mine, but it's all right. My question was, what is your. What are in terms of the. The. The. In terms of the actual progression and how you are mapping out people's performance? Like, what is your typical markers for? Oh, we need to reach this mileage. And I know this is all going to be in context of the goal, of course, and how much time you have, but typically, where are you wanting your athletes to be up until race time?

So I typically don't like to increase. I'll either increase like 10% mileage per week, or what I'll do is keep the mileage the same for a few weeks and then do a larger jump. So, like, say if I would originally progress, like, roughly 10% mileage per week, I'll keep the miles the same for a few weeks and then jump the mileage maybe like 20 or 25%. I mean, you know, roughly depending on how many miles are already doing and then also depending on how much strength training they're doing. Because if we're doing, say, two days a week of. Of strength training, that's also load and volume on their legs. So really, with ultra running, you're looking at the total cumulative volume, not just running volume, but also lifting volume. And then, so it really depends on their history, too. And like, I have some athletes who run ultras on less mileage and then some who, like, need more mileage is just like, you know, that. That's just kind of how their body responds. So I typically like to taper though before the race. Like two weeks roughly, maybe a little longer depending on the person which. So what a taper looks like is we'll reduce volume but keep the intensity there. And then we'll, we'll reduce volume but keep the intensity into the race. And then for lifting, we'll keep the lifting, we'll just reduce the, the weight. Because what I don't want to do is have somebody lifting their whole training block and used to lifting and then cut that out. Because the lifting, if you're doing full range of motion lifts is like mobility work as well. So I don't want to cut lifting out for somebody the week before the race and then them just feel way off cuz they're not used to it.

So how many mileage, how many miles do you usually want under someone's belt before they go and perform it again?

Yeah, it depends on their race. You don't typically, you don't have to like for instance, if you're running a hundred miler, you're probably not going to put in a hundred miles a week, you know. So for the athlete I just trained for, the 50 miler, he wasn't hitting 50 miles a week. He, he was a decathlete in college and had some medical issues from some sports and so volume is hard for him. So he was, he was doing like 35 miles at his peak, which might not seem like a lot, but also when you add strength training in, you know, it helps. And so then for another athlete that I trained that's an ultra runner, she did a 12 hour ultra marathon a few weeks ago and she was, she was running like 50 miles a week. You know, she's run for a long time, she can handle higher mileage. So.

Crazy. How fast do these people go through shoes?

Yeah, it depends on the person, but fairly quick. Yeah.

Okay, so what, what would you say And I want to go back to, I want to go back to your bad mental space. You said that you want to get them into a bad mental space. Can you. At least once, because it's going to happen on the race. So can you describe what that means? What are some, like what exactly do you mean when you say they're going to be in a bad mental space? What are some of the things that come up and then do you prepare for it?

Yeah, like normally it's as the mileage as we're like peaking for the race is when that kind of happens. Cuz you're you're getting worn down and what it I mean a typical example would be going out for your long run and things just feel off. The whole run feels horrible. The middle of the run, the, the demons are just there. You're like I don't need, I can't do this. Like I shouldn't be doing this. Like who am I to run this race? You know maybe they have some GI issues cuz in long endurance races you have to eat. So maybe like they can't keep food down for a little bit and you know it's just this spiral of like I should just quit right now, like this is a waste of my time, like I'm just an embarrassment. It obviously it's different for each person but you can get to some really dark places in these long races and so like being able to have gone there and then push through it and then know that it's just a temporary thing that you deal with is something that's really important and if you haven't had that before you get to the race it's really really hard because you don't know what the other side of that looks like yet.

Interesting. So how do you find it? How do you prepare someone for that?

Yeah, typically just like harder training longer races maybe again sending them into their long runs fatigued already. So because they're going to be fatigued at mild. There's a saying in the ultra running community that like a hundred mile race is really just an 80 mile warm up in a 20 mile like race because the the whole race is getting to the mile 80 where you feel horrible but the end isn't in sight yet. And so if you properly program stress you can have lifting and running during the week and then they can go into a Saturday run already fairly tired. And for me if I do those back to back long runs, the Saturday run, you know, maybe they're still tired from the week and then they get you know they do like a three or four hour run on Saturday, go to sleep, wake up sore as hell on Sunday and then still have a two or three hour run to do. Like you know you have to be tough to do that.

Yeah, I would say. When do you rest?

Typically if we do back to back long runs we'll rest on Monday and then I'll typically do a upper body day during the week too just to give their legs complete rest at least twice a week, sometimes more depending on the person and then you know if they're used to running like the one girl, she's run Multiple ultras already. So. And she loves running, like, every day, so she gets less rest than somebody else.

Easy. I mean, after one day of rest, are they amped? Like, are they actually recovered?

It depends. I mean, if they're actually recovered, like, not necessarily. So you're building, like, as you train, you're accumulating fatigue, and you're building fitness, but the fatigue is masking the fitness, which is why you tapered. So when you taper for a race, you do lose a little bit of fitness, but that fatigue drops down, like, exponentially. So that fitness is then able to be realized, you know, and you feel great. So the fitness was always there, but it was masked behind the cumulative fatigue that you've built up. But mentally, like, depending on the person, most of them, you know, they're kind of crazy. They run ultramarathons. So they're like. They're like, hey, like, can I run every day? Like, I don't need a rest day. Like, I need to get out and move, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Okay, so what I am now curious about, and I. I do want to say, you know, transition, because at the beginning of this call, you had talked about how. How you think of every, you know, active. Anyone who's preparing for, like, a triathlon, a marathon. Like, obviously there are some everyday people who, like, have lives. And not to say that ultra marathoners don't. Okay, that's not what I'm trying to say. But I could never imagine, like, being, you know, having to do the schedule that I have to do and run a marathon. I would never. An ultra run. I would, like, things would really have to shift severely for me, and maybe that's a limiting belief that you can shift, but that's my belief right now. Okay, so I'm curious for your people who might not yet even necessarily identify as an athlete, even though they are. What are some of the biggest differences that you have to help get them on board with that are different than, like, say, an ultra marathoner?

Yeah, I mean, it depends on what they're coming to me for. If they're coming to me and they want to run a marathon or do a powerlifting meet or something, it's a little easier to have that conversation because they're training for an athletic event. But if they're just coming for. To me and they're like, hey, I want to lose a bit of weight and be healthy, like, I've got this kind of rocky past with diets and stuff, and I'm just not happy with how things are then it's a little more complicated discussion. So clearly with the person who's got an athletic goal, it's pretty straightforward. Like this is an athletic goal. Like we're going to train you for this goal. Like we would if you know, you were doing this as a day job just with your life stressors taken into account that maybe a professional athlete wouldn't have. But for more of the I just want to be healthy, like gen pop type person, I, I bring it up like, I brought it up to you. Like a lot of the things you do in your day to day life, the forces that your body experiences aren't too dissimilar from some professional athletes. And then I explained to them how, you know, if you want to be at this level when you're older, then you have to be at this level now. Right? Like you can't be an exponential older person if you're not like up there in your 50s, 40s, 30s, you know. And then I kind of depending on what they're interested in, if they're not super interested in, in their like long term health, I won't talk about that as much as like immediately like what they can do nowadays. And then if they're more interested in like yeah, I want to be able to play with my grandkids, then I can extrapolate that out like I explained earlier.

Okay, so what I, I guess part of the thing that I, I am curious is how what is the level of capability and capacity that, that gen pop people don't fully understand. Like for me, I remember back in the day like before I became a trainer, I was like, oh, I like running, I'll just run a marathon. And then like have no real idea that, that what that actually takes and entails. And I feel like there's a lot of gen pop people that are like that. So how do you prepare them? How do you help them see like, oh, this is going to feel like 50 miles to you.

I love the, I love the, like I'm just going to do an attitude. There's a lot of people I know like my, the guy trained around the 50 mile has never run more than 20 miles before in his life. And before we started training together, he'd never run more than 10 miles, you know, like he was a power sport decathlete and he was just like I'm gonna go do it. Actually one of his friends signed him up for it because his friend's an ultra runner and he said we're gonna do this together and didn't Even give him an option, so. And he would. Yeah.

That's amazing.

Yeah. So I love that attitude. I like to. I think most people are capable of a lot more than they think they are, and no matter what your goal is, even I have an athlete who came to me and just wanted to lose a little bit of body fat and just live a healthier life. And we set a 5k goal for her, and she never thought she would be able to run more than a mile in, you know, since high school, she was like, for years, I've never thought I could run more than a mile. And every, like, week, I get a text with the workout. She was like, I never thought I'd be able to do that. I looked at that workout and audibly laughed and, like. But then I did it, you know, So I just love helping people, like, find that their limits aren't really where they think they are.

That's so good, so powerful, and what a. What a fun thing to focus on. Except besides weight loss.

Yeah. Like, the way I like to frame it is, like, for her especially, and for a lot of the people that just want fat loss, they're used to, I have to restrict my diet. I have to exercise to burn calories, and I have to restrict my diet. And their life feels very restricted. And instead of being like, hey, you can't eat this because this is a bad food, I like to say, let's add some protein in, let's add some fat in. Let's add some, you know, salads in. Let's look at this as, like, how do I build a healthy body? Because what's the point of. You know, everybody says I want to lose weight, but I like to reframe. Like, you want to lose body fat, you don't want to lose weight. You want to lose body fat. Right. And so what's the point of losing all this weight if we feel horrible? And, you know, the point of it is to live a better life. So let's focus on adding good things in. And when you eat something, is this going to make me healthier? Is this going to make me a, you know, stronger person? And then exercise makes us cardiovascularly fit and stronger. So everything is about adding and, like, not taking away and feeling restricted, and the outcome is still the same. You know, they're still losing body fat, they're still gaining a better body composition, but their mindset is totally different.

Yeah, that's so good. And so I'm glad you brought up nutrition, because I'm just curious, you know, what are Some of the nutritional challenges and or differences that you notice that you are communicating with someone who has an active goal versus, like an ultra running athlete. Are your conversations mostly the same?

Yeah, they're very similar. Just an ultra runner is gonna need a lot more food and more carbs, especially on their long days. And an ultra runner is gonna have to take in mind, like, on these long days, we have to take in intro run carbs, and even sometimes fats and protein, depending on how long it is. But the conversation is largely the same. A lot of people are very used to all the back and forth, like religious nutrition talk online. Like, carbs are bad, this is bad, that's bad. And I like to take a more of an 80, 20 approach. Like, and people are so used to having bad foods, and they're like, I have cheat days, I have binge days, I have cheat meals, which I don't, you know, I don't like at all. That actually purports a lot of eating disorders too. Like, so I like to just keep a very balanced approach. And no food is bad by itself unless you're literally drinking poison. So no food's bad in itself. It's just all in a balanced approach. And then, yeah, an ultra runner just gonna need a lot more food and a lot more carbs than a regular person.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of the general population or a lot of athletes, in my experience, they're not nervous or have any concerns about eating carbohydrates. They're very happy to eat the carbohydrates. But the gen pop, who is traditionally conditioned, especially if they've been focusing on fat loss for so long, how much work is it to get them to take in more energy?

Yeah, I had a girl who messaged me and we were working together and she was like, hey, I'm worried about, like, blood sugar spikes, and she's not diabetic or anything. So I kind of explained to her that, like, that's a normal response to your blood sugar to spike. And she was asking about oatmeal, and she was worried about oatmeal. And I was like, you know, oats are, like, very healthy item for breakfast all the time. And then the next day, she sent me a protein bar and she was like, what do you think of these protein bars? I was thinking about getting them, and I pulled up the nutrition facts and screenshotted them and sent them back to her and said, these have, like, more carbs and sugar than those oats that you have. But you were scared of the oats. And you're excited about the protein bar because it says protein. Like yeah, you know, just like keeping everything in context. You know, the marketing is really, there's so much money in nutrition marketing.

Yeah, it's true. That is true. So I, and I, I'm also curious in terms of like, you know, your, your. You also see a lot of like people who will. Speaking of, you know, marketing, but you'll see a lot of people on the Internet that are like you, you are, you're not, not athletic, you're not fit. If you're running, you can't, you know, running is bad. You need to lift. And then they'll show their stories of like how awful and terrible they felt while they were running their at, you know, marathon or whatever. And it wasn't until I hit my strength that I look amazing now. So I'm curious for you and for your perspective, like what do you have to navigate or deal with that at all with the gen population? Like what how do you prepare them so that they don't like run their body into the ground literally?

I mean I really focus on a lot of strength work and even if it's just like to compliment the, the running. But then yeah, I mean from a nutritional aspect that's normally what it is. Runners aren't like eating enough. So I really have to like show them like hey, you know, you're eating the caloric requirements of a six year old, right? Or like, like I had a girl send me, she did in body scan and she was like, yeah, I'm eating like 1400 calories a day, I still can't lose fat. And her in body scan showed her like which, okay, those are not, maybe not 100 accurate but it said her BMR was like 1396. And you know, there's some tolerance for inaccuracy there. But I was like, you're literally barely eating more than your body needs to survive. If you laid in bed all day and you're training for a marathon, like your body is starving for food. Like you need to eat more. You know, like she, because she was like yeah, I have all this fatigue and I don't know why. And I was like, well this is why you feel like crap and have no energy all the time.

Yeah. And so now for the like for her as an example, right. Would you know, if she, if she feels that she has energy on her body to use, it could be nerve wracking for her to want to increase her calorie intake. Especially when you've got everyone saying law of their thermodynamics, you have to eat less than you consume. There's no such thing as starvation mode. Right. Like what, why then are people plateauing?

Well, I mean there's a lot. Like for instance, she was like, she was also like snacking but not really logging. You know, you get a lot of the snacking that you don't really know. But the snacks were not like fueling her training. So no wonder she felt horrible, you know, because the potato chips that she forgot to track aren't really doing much.

You know, the bites, licks and, and death by a thousand paper cuts. Yes.

Yeah. And then I mean also the, the body is super resilient otherwise. Like people in throwback countries that really don't do that much, they wouldn't, you know, be there. So like your metabolism does like adjust some because your body just wants to stay alive. But then again, like you're not going to feel good, you're not going to perform well, you know, so. Yeah.

So how often like or how quick does it turn around? Like if she's feeling like crap, is it, is she like one good meal away from turning our body around? Feeling better?

Yeah. I mean normally after a few days I'll, I'll get a text and it'll be like, I feel so much better. Like I was totally undereating, you know. And then really after a few weeks you start to see the, a trend of like the, the weights going up, the run times decreasing or just they're like, hey, I don't feel awful when I wake up in the morning now, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So true, so true. So good. Okay, so now we, now we talked a lot of the differences between the ultra running and mirrors. Like does the training differ for something like an Iron man, for example?

Yeah, yeah. So with an iron man you also have you still there. Cool.

So yeah, absolutely.

With an Iron man you've got obviously swimming and cycling to do. And so you don't want to just take a marathon program and a swimming program and a cycling program and put them all together because that's going to be way too much volume and you can't recover from that. So it does differ because you have to basically cut out some of the fluff. The nice thing is they're all aerobic sports and your aerobic like lower intensity training, that fitness kind of transfers over a little bit and swimming is actually super great for the legs on recovery. So you can put swimming in a little bit easier because it's like, okay, your legs are dead from cycling and running. So a swimming day is going to, you know, help your swim performance and also be really nice on your legs. I don't know if you've ever gotten in the pool on sore legs, but you get out and you feel great afterwards.

But I've gotten to the pool with a sore back.

There you go. Yeah.

Yes.

So, yeah, typically you're cutting out to what is essential from a cycling and a running perspective. And it, I really enjoy it because it forces you to cut the fat a little bit. Trim the fat a little bit.

Okay. And then what about now? What, what about other performance style sports? Like, oh my gosh, I want to say powerlifting, but it's not powerlifting. It's a form of powerlifting. Like strongman. That's what I was thinking of. But like strongman stuff. Are you also incorporating cardiovascular endurance training?

Yeah, I mean, I don't train, I haven't trained anybody that competes in strongman. But the general idea is that you should do some form of cardiovascular training because, you know, there's a funny meme that another coach that I, I know made and it was inside of you. There's two wolves. One is an athlete and the other one gets winded walking up the stairs. Like, so he, he's got a talk title putting the C back in S and C. Like everybody should have some form of conditioning, whether that's running or cycling or rowing or swimming, like, just from a general health perspective. But also there are coaches that argue that, you know, recovering from lifting is an aerobic activity. And so in like powerlifting, you have to squat, bench and deadlift. And so if you want to be able to show up on that third attempt at your deadlift, you have to be able to recover from this, you know, very, very high, like max effort squats and benches beforehand. So there have been anecdotally people that say, you know, I started training my power lifters with more cardio and they instantly PR their deadlift in a meet because they were better able to rec.

Okay. And that comes from the cardiovascular training. I just feel like everyone gets so dogmatic. Especially if you look in the social media world, they're like running is. Is skinny fat. Then you'll see people that are like, if I my cardios lift weights faster. Right. So I just, I'm curious your perspective and like, how do you navigate those very different approaches?

Yeah, I mean, outside of being an elite athlete, you have a lot more room to play with and, you know, maybe make mistakes. And make something not as optimal because you're not on that cutting edge of performance. I mean, as with anything in life, there's two extremes and the truth is somewhere in the middle. And so I like to try to bring people back to center of like, look, you've got all this other stuff going on in your life, right? You have kids, you have a job, you have all this other stuff that influences your trading. And like, you know, can, you know, if you only slept three hours because your kid was up all night, your training is gonna be impacted more than if you just did an extra day of running on top of lifting. You know, like, people are can losing the forest for the trees with optimal. And then they're getting paralysis analysis and not taking action and then their program hopping. So I'm like, I like to remind people, like, you know, a suboptimal program that you follow through to the end is better than 10 optimal programs that you just start and then jump to another one, you know?

Mm, yes, I do. I know it very well. I'm also, I'm also curious too, in terms of, you know, off season for runners. I feel like there's no such thing as an off season. So do you bake in an off season? Like, how do you, like, what are your cycles?

It depends on the person has. You know, that's the A joke online now. You know, it depends is the answer to everything. But like, some people will have it defined, like, hey, I want to take these months off and focus on strength training more and focus on just like recovery. And typically it's more over the winter because there's all the holidays. But then you got everybody that wants to run like the turkey bowl or, you know, the 5Ks, all that stuff. So we'll set have you. I don't know if you've heard of a, B and C races, but in. In endurance sports, there's like an A race and you should only have one or two of those a year. And that's like, I'm gonna train hard for this. I'm gonna taper for this, and this is gonna be like my super bowl, you know? And then you have B races, which are like, hey, I wanna perform well at this, but it's not like a priority. So it can be within the middle of a training block. And then C races are like, we're not going to tape over this at all. Like, I'm going to go into this fatigue, like, and it's okay. I don't really care how I do. I just want to Go out and have fun. So like I have a girl who runs half marathons and she'll go and run a 5K, a local 5K, and then she'll just keep running and hit her half marathon, long run for the weekend or whatever. Because it's like I just want to get out and be in the community. So that would be like a C race. And so we can incorporate some of those. Like we'll get out and have fun and be in the community, but we're not going to be like killing you during this time frame.

Do you ever think that there is like a benefit to having a prolonged, you know, downtime for the body to recover or do you think that it can be as, you know, go hard however you want?

I think that you can go hard in different areas. I think that you need to shift focus sometimes, you know, so if you just go hard all the time at running, you're going to run into the ground eventually. But you can take, you know, an extended period of time and reduce your running and say increase your strength training or increase your cycling or swimming or something else. Because a lot of people I work with, they're like, I need to do something. They're like very driven, like I need an activity. So. But shifting, just shifting that activity for a little bit and giving your body a little bit of break, I think is beneficial.

Okay, great. So, you know, if you just out of curiosity, if you could go back, you know, what is one thing that you. That as you were beginning to program for clients, what and, and learning how to do this, what's one thing that you wish someone had told you when you were first starting out?

One thing I wish someone told me when I was first starting out. That's a good question. That's a good question.

You know, I ask those hard hitting questions.

Yeah, I do, I do. Oh man. I would say maybe just that you.

Can'T get this wrong. Just I would say something you wish you knew.

Yeah, I would say maybe just the practical experience like trumps you just sitting there and learning all the time and that a lot of the people that you. Especially before I started coaching, a lot of the people I looked up to as coaches, I've. As I've learned more, I've realized that like a lot of the things that some of them say are very wrong and it's like, oh, that's very interesting, you know.

Yeah, yeah. Nothing beats experience like you could learn. I'll never forget the times I used to like. But my insertification book said that this should work. And that's not what happened. And back in the day, I mean, when I was. Oh, my gosh, I. You know, you swear you're never going to be that person, but I mean, we used to be. This was like, no Internet. I'm like an older millennial. I'm in that, like, medium land where you were like, you didn't have social media to, like, go and search, which has its benefits. Right. You had to wait for the certification to roll around again. Otherwise you were just like, well, hope you don't get hurt. Thank God that body is resilient.

Yep. Yeah. It's so funny studying for certifications and stuff. You've got like, this is what you need to know for the test. And then this is what's actually, like, practical application. That's very interesting. But I mean, they kind of have to make their systems for those certifications.

You know, and they were so good, right? So good. So good. Okay, so this has been awesome. And I want to be mindful of your time. So for those of you who want to go deeper with you and want to, you know, learn more about you, where are some of the best places that I can send them?

Yeah, I'm on Instagram. Justin S. Jones on Instagram or Assemble Performance is my company's Instagram. There's not as many posts on there. I post mainly on my. My personal one. And then assembleperformance.com right now is just a coming soon page because we're redoing the website. But that'll send you to the newsletter. And you can also go through the Google form to apply for coaching. If you're interested, you can always DM me. Justin assembled performance.com is my email too. I'm always available there if you just want to. You know, if you just got a question, I'm happy to answer it. If you want to jump on a call, I'm doing calls right now to, you know, I can help you get some clarity on some of the problems, things you might be running into. So I'm just out here to try to help people. So.

I love it. Okay. And we'll be sure that we link all of that up inside of the show notes. So thanks so much for hanging out with me today. I'll catch you later.

Yeah. Have a good one. Thank you.

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