#124: Ryan Hall 2.0 on Strength Training For Runners, Lifting Heavy & Trail Running

I think we get hurt because we lock in the same movement pattern over and over and over again. Muscles get tired when they get used the same way.

For those listening who are now only doing road and they want to become more of a well-rounded athlete implementing strength training, you have any advice there?

I want to run downhill without my knees hurting, so let me do weighted step downs, heel elevated front squats, goblet front squats, and try to make my quads freaking strong as crap. That was the least beat up I've ever been coming out of the canyon. I was lifting the heaviest and the hardest. You need to do the things that you don't want to do because they're probably what you need to do because you probably suck at it, which is why you don't want to do it. But in other way, you need to also have fun in there. Tracking is, is helpful when you don't get emotional with it. You can just be like a scientist observing it, and curiosity is such a great guide, you know. If you don't know what to do, just freaking follow your curiosity.

Ryan Hall is one of the greatest American marathoners, running a 2:04:58 at the Boston Marathon. He became the first American to run under 2:05. He's also an established running coach. What's fascinating is what happened after his pro career, where he went from 127 pounds, skinny runner, all the way to 190+ pounds, completely reinventing himself through strength training. In recent years, Ryan has really been into trail and ultra running too. In this conversation, we talk about strength training, about identity, and how to evolve as an athlete. Quick break before we dive in. 12 years ago, I read an article by Rhonda Patrick titled "Are Saunas the Next Big Performance-Enhancing Drug?" This article was super eye-opening to me, and in 2014 I started taking saunas on a very frequent basis as part of my routine. Better recovery, better sleep, heat adaptations, and just feeling more relaxed and balanced overall. Lately I've been using a Heavenly Heat sauna and my friends and I absolutely love it. The difference is that this is infrared heat. So it warms you from the inside out, not just through the air. And it's not extreme temperatures either. This sauna warms up to about 165°F, which is 74°C. No glues, no weird smells, built with 100% Canadian hemlock wood, and low EMF, which was very important to me. And it was super simple to set up with a friend. For me, this is part of a holistic approach to running and to health. Improving your training, your recovery, your sleep, your stress levels, it all adds up. If you want to check out the saunas, check out Heavenly saunas.com, and you can use code FLO for 6% off. And that code stacks with any sitewide sales too. I'll make sure to put the link in the description. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Ryan Hall.

We're here in your backyard, and this is where my dogs like to get rid of their food.

I literally just had to kick some dog poop around.

We are like in their favorite spot.

Yeah, I feel like we're sitting right there. Classic. We just had a nice little strength session over here in your gym garage, and it started out hanging upside down, adjusting my back, straight into some other proper exercises.

Yeah, you got to find what's the high— when I'm going through my day in my mind, I'm like, what is the highest priority? Start there, do that one, work my way down. And usually I only get to like half of it. There's a lot of unanswered emails.

Well, at least you got your strength workout in, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Do you normally work out in the morning first thing?

You know, I play with this a little bit. I'm trying to find what's right for me, and I like to get up and have coffee and study a little bit, make my kids some pancakes, and then go meditate is what I usually do. Because I feel like I got to start again, like, what is the deepest part of me? Mm-hmm. And go in there and then do everything else from there. Rather than let me go to my body, which is not the deepest part of me, and start working that out without coming from the inside. So to answer your question, I do both.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, but I prefer to meditate first if I can.

What kind of meditation do you do? What works for you?

Yeah, dude, meditation is funny because I hate to sit still. Like, I hate it.

No, I see you're moving around. We've been here for a few hours and you're on the move.

Which is exactly why I need to sit still, because I'm like very much on the go, like to train, like to be active, you know. Uh, and then when you're that way from the time you're a kid, pretty soon you don't know how to sit with yourself and not do anything. And then you start doing that, and the first thing that you uncover is a deep peace that you've never felt before. And it can be almost like disorienting because you're like used to just like going, and then all of a sudden it's like you're out of it. The contrast between go, go, go, go to now, like my only job is to listen to my in-breath and out-breath. And it's like, it's a very cool experience because you get this deep sense of peace right off out of the gates as a beginning meditator. And then usually like your knees start hurting really bad, your back starts hurting, and you get pulled out of it, you know? So it's, it's cool. Meditation is very similar to running where you got to be like the whole package. It's not enough just to have a strong mind. You have to be a strong mind that is in a body that can sit comfortably and actually be at complete rest so that it can rest into its meditative practice, right into that single-mindedness that all meditation is really after. So I mean, to answer your question, there's a lot of great meditation that you can do. The best one is the one that you're going to do every day or twice a day. Like, ideally, I try to go twice a day if I can. Like, I try to book in my days with it in the morning, some point either before or after the workout, usually before. And I try to end my day that way. It's kind of like you want to keep things sitting in a good position when you go into sleep because that's when your body's repairing everything. So think about if you go to bed and your back's all twisted up, and like you're all super tight from the workout and then you're just doing stuff all day and then you just collapse in bed versus like, now let me go and just like sit and clear the mind, like let it do its thing, but let me teach it to just be focused and let it find peace and let my whole body just fall into peace. And then it's crazy, sometimes I'll be sitting and then at various times I'll feel my spine adjusting itself. And it's just from— it's finding it. It knows what to do. All you gotta do is just sit there and be quiet. And so like, my form of meditation is any one that leads you into that kind of peace.

It was interesting, like earlier we jokingly, half jokingly but not, we're doing this upside down exercise. So you were guiding me through my body and you're like, all right, now we're gonna really tense all of your muscles up to 80% and really focus on that, and then release, and then we go through left arm and we do that and then the left leg and we went through the body. Which is also like just that body-mind connection and really like focusing on that awareness, right? And you don't have to do that upside down. Even to those listening who might want to get more in tune with the body, I think it's a wonderful way to see what's going on in the body, to tense it but also release it. And it brings us in an absolute relaxed state.

Right. Because it takes practice to— it's hardest to let go. It's easy to grab hold of. It's hard to, like, let go and then let go all the way. Because oftentimes we think we're relaxed, but we're not. And so, like, how do you be efficient? How does a muscle not get tired fast is if it gets breaks, if it's not always holding tension, right? So that's where, like, the space between your strides is almost more important than when you impact the ground and the muscle turns on and then it does its thing. But then what happens after that? Are you able to empty it completely of all that energy? And that's that beautiful flight phase that we feel. You know, everyone has felt this who's a runner or a little kid. Take them out to a park and watch them get in this flight phase. And it's because, like, they're able to relax completely between the strides. But then as we get older or whatever happens, you tend to get tighter and tighter. And that's why, like, a distance runner's main objective is to stay relaxed out there, no matter if you're running 400 meters, 100 meters, 5,000, 10,000 1000 marathon. I'd say it becomes more important the longer you go though.

So for anyone listening who wants to do this exercise that you just guided me through—

I'm falling into the pooper.

Careful now, we changed to the outdoor studio because it, it was nice weather over here in Flagstaff. So it is nice, but, but for anyone listening here who wants to do some of this exercise without even having to hang upside down Tell me more. How can they go about this? Because I think it is a wonderful way to implement some of this in your training outside of running, outside of strength training or mobility, really.

Yeah. I mean, I would suggest that the first thing you do is just find curiosity, you know, like let your intuition lead you or let your mind lead you. If something's really bothering me, for example, like say, like I'm like, dude, I freaking tweaked something bad. I'll be doing that exercise, I'm going throughout my whole body, and I'll get to one part and I'm like, dude, that one is not wanting to let go, you know? But instead of being like, let— oh, I suck at this, I'm gonna stop doing it altogether. Instead, I'm like, okay, let me put some more time here and get it to see if I can get it to relax. And sometimes I can get it to relax, sometimes I can't. But using your intuition to guide you to wherever it is that you are holding tension the most, I would go there first. And just practice. Just squeeze it to 80, let it go, squeeze it. And if you can, put visualization to it, put words, mantras, whatever you need to so that your mind is completely there. Because if you're doing this exercise but you're thinking about what you're gonna have for dinner, it's not gonna do much for you.

And you even said close your eyes and think about your third eye.

Uh-huh.

What was that about?

Yeah, and so that's like going towards like what state of consciousness do you want to be doing the activity with, right? So if you look at pictures of holy men and stuff like that, you'll notice a lot of them have their eyes oriented up, almost like as if they're slightly looking up. And it just is in nature, we see things grow up, right? And so if you want your state of consciousness to raise up from like our material body, for example, you just want to have that kind of perspective where you're looking just like you're just gazing slightly up. And that's how I meditate as well. And the thing that that really does is it keeps you awake, because if you close your eyes and then you let your eyes drift down, I fall asleep every time. Yeah, but you keep your eyes up like that, it puts you in a heightened state of awareness. So In a way, your consciousness is shifting just because of the posture of your eyes. So it's like meditation, it could seem like woo-woo out there, but it's like actually just very simple scientific, like how our bodies are made. Like everyone knows that posture communicates a lot.

It is like whenever you feel the busiest, that's when you need to meditate the most. And that's the hardest part sometimes. I didn't know, like you mentioned earlier before we started recording, that when you went from your running career to much more lifting, that you read Arnold Schwarzenegger's big book and you studied that A to Z. One of the things with Arnold was that he started meditating twice a day, 20 minutes, later on in his career, and he said he was the most productive when he ended up doing that.

Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I like to think about this way in the weight room. It's like, quality of repetition matters immensely. Like I was telling you, I could do 1 rep and tire myself out the same as if I do 40 reps. And that's just, just by my mind, like how hard I'm choosing to contract.

Yeah, yeah.

But I could do it just standing here and tire out my chest just as hard as if I'm under a whole bunch of weight. And actually, that's where I got like a lot of lifting being a form of meditation from was from Arnold. He always— or no, actually it was from, uh, who was this guy? He was so good when I was first getting into it. Uh, Green, his last name was Green. He was like, like Mr. Olympia, but he was all into, um, concentration when he was lifting. He's like, it's all about just like put your mind fully into every single rep. And if you can train that way That would be the biggest doping advantage you could ever possibly have. And that's why, like, that's why I'm doing this and not coaching now, is because I was like, I don't think I'm gonna find what I'm looking for out there because I think it already exists inside here. So then how do you access it? You learn from people who've been trying to access it for thousands and thousands of years, you know, in India. Meditation's been going on for— yeah, those guys are— they know the mind from the inside, you know. And I know that like I'm controlling what is happening here all up top. So let's like get this working right and then figure out the rest after that.

And that even for those listening, there's a lot of endurance athletes listening, this will positively impact your running as well. It brings it back to awareness again. It brings it back to you being in tune with the body, right?

And just being present. Like, where you're gonna find the most peace is wherever you are doing whatever you're doing, fully there. That's where the peace is. It's not like a thought that you need to be thinking about, you know. It's just being like fully in what you're doing. And that's what's great about things like we're gonna get to do tomorrow, going in the Grand Canyon, because it pulls you in, man. You go into the dropping in, the sun's coming up or whatnot, and it's just, whoa, it takes you into it, you know? But can you do that also if you're putting shingles on a roof, hammering butt down, shingle after shingle, hour after hour, hot sun? Can you be just, just there and just be okay with it? Not be judging it good or bad, just observing it?

Just see, like, even, yeah, even the everyday thing, indeed, like doing the dishes or brushing your teeth or something.

Yeah, you want to run from the present But it's the—

that's where it's happening.

That's where the good stuff's at.

So we recorded a conversation 3 years ago, and it was interesting. At that point, it really talked about strength training for runners and how you went from 127-pound, like, skinny runner to, like, at that point you were about 190, I think you were.

I was at the peak.

Yeah, you were like in the peak. Yeah. But the interesting thing is, one thing that stood out from that conversation was towards the end, I asked you something and you brought it back to find out what truly brings you joy in your training or in your racing. And that doesn't have to be sign up for another marathon. And at that point you refer to like, one thing I'm interested in is you see that mountain in the background. I want to go from where I'm now to run to that mountain in the background. And literally that was about 3, 3 and a half years ago when you started doing some more adventuring.

Right.

And here we are. Look what has happened over the last several years. You have followed through to what you were excited about. And like, yes, you're still lifting.

Yeah.

But you've really gone into the trail running, into the ultra running, into the climbing. Like, you've become a really diverse, well-rounded athlete.

Yeah. Again, like, curiosity is such a great guide. You know, if you don't know what to do, just friggin' follow your curiosity. Because my curiosity brought me out there and then I liked being out there, you know, and then You're like, oh, what would it be like over there? Let me check that out. And you just keep venturing out. And yeah, it's like one thing blossoms into another, you know, it's like, it's crazy. I wasn't ever planning on doing rim to rim to rim. And then my buddy texts me, he's like, hey, I'm doing it on this date. You want to go? And I'm like, yeah, sure, let's go. And then we do it and then do it every week for a month. Your curiosity takes you down there. You like it, follow it. But yeah, it's been super fun. I'm curious to see where it can go from here. But I think it does remind me, like, don't get married to this either. Like, I'm going to be changing the whole way through this game of life, you know? And so it's like, freaking ring out whatever season you're in, you know? Freaking enjoy the crap out of it as much as you know how to do it. You know, go as deep in and as far into it as you can get and then realize you're going to change and you're going to have to pivot and move to the next.

And that's the thing. Like a few hours ago, I sat down with Molly Seidel and we were talking about some of her unexpected career changes as well, where she really thought she was going to be running short to middle distances. Then it became marathons. Then it became from there on bronze medal at the Olympics and then like getting injured and going through all of that to now going into ultras.

Yeah.

And she is going with it all. Like she was indeed saying, I would have never expected that it would take me here. But you have to be open to where this is going to take you.

Yeah.

And I think for anyone listening over here too, it's like, yes, you might be road running right now. That might be your thing, but be open to what else is out there. And you might be surprised how you can get drawn into some of these most unexpected angles, really.

Right. Yeah. Don't like say yes to some things that you maybe wouldn't say yes to, or maybe you're like, do I really want to do that? Like instead of being like, nah, I got other stuff to do, like just go, you know, just go. Like your friend is randomly down at Sedona and wants to run some trail run. Instead of being like, oh, maybe next, or things aren't perfect, just like, just go and see what's like.

Lean into that. Yeah, that's, that's a big one. What, what advice do you have for road runners looking to get into trail?

Oh man, I would say go find come out to the Grand Canyon and run down to the bottom and then run up as hard as you can.

You're going to get some people killed, dude.

No, that's what I'd say to do. And then just eat your humble pie right out the gate and then realize that it's like a totally different sport. Dude, it's crazy because I know what kind of shape I'm in and I'm not in good road shape at all. If I were to run a marathon on the roads, it would not be pretty, right? But I can run up South Kaibab pretty well. It's like a totally different thing, you know. So I think most runners, road runners, don't realize how technical the terrain is, and they just see the Strava maps. Like, do you run 10-minute miles out there? What are you freaking having lunch while you're running or what, you know? And they have no idea that you're freaking like jumping over rocks and like doing whatever to get through this super gnarly trail, you know. So It's an adventure out there. It's super fun. I, I'm glad I didn't find it earlier because I would have just been gone way earlier.

Do you take Sarah out on the trails too?

I do, yeah, we do some stuff, uh, but she's kind of where I was towards the end of my career. When you're road running, you can't be— you can't recover if you're running up and down mountains. Yeah, it's really— the two mix well in the sense that I think I think a trail runner would be better off doing, say, like a speed day or maybe like hill sprints and some faster running because in the trails, I mean, everyone knows how it is running through the trails. Your stride's weird and short and different every time. And so I do enjoy sometimes just like hopping on the treadmill and let me just run like 6 by mile flat and just get my like legs moving normal again because I've been running with this super weird stride for 26 hours.

It is kind of interesting, the whole pace perception, how it changes, right? Like you become very sluggish after a while. And then even a regular road mile just feels, feels way different. Indeed.

Yeah. And then like even within the trail community, it's like one trail can feel so different than the other. Like in Crested Butte, we do a ton of power hiking, ton of power hiking off trail, and that is like a totally different skill than running even, say, South Kaibab. So I'll go to South Kaibab and then I'll go to like Ecuador and run up a volcano there where it's mostly I mean, like Tyler Andrews can run it, but pretty much no one else, man. It's a lot of power hiking, you know? And every time I get out there, even if I'm super fit in the canyon, I'm like, dang, this is different doing the power hiking. Or even up here on Snowball, I get on some— you get on the backside of the mountain or some different ways up. You can get in some nice power hiking out there too. But it's a way different skill than even like running up a 13% grade.

For those listening, who are now only doing road and they want to become more of a well-rounded athlete, implementing strength training, implementing maybe some trail adventures and whatnot. Do you have any advice there besides just going balls into the Grand Canyon?

Okay, that was for professionals, though, right? Or was it not?

This is for recreational runners.

These are recreational now. The other one was the advice for professionals.

Okay, let's clarify that part of it.

That was, that was the professionals because they think it's gonna be easy and it's way harder. Okay, for recreational, no, I would just start like, I would just start with easy runs out on the trails, flat. Actually, I might have to put a disclaimer on this conversation. Okay, actually, I think running out on the trails for easy runs is great for people who are track runners, who are like high-level road runners, I think they're better off to go run in trails than to go run on the roads all the time. I think we get hurt because we lock in the same movement pattern over and over and over again. But where do we go for our easy runs? We go onto a dirt road usually, and you have the same movement pattern. The trails, like with the rocks, and it makes you more athletic and balanced. So I find that like people won't get hurt as much running out in the mountains, but then you put them on track or road and like the likelihood of injury goes way up because the, the movement isn't as athletic, you know, it's just the same rep again. Muscles get tired when they get used the same way over and over again. So even like if I'm doing like power hiking, I might even just like face my shoulders one way for a while and then face them the other way just to get my muscles just a little bit of break. And then you'll feel better when you go back to it, you know. But I think trails really do balance things out for like those high-level road runners and, and track runners. But for recreational people, yeah, I just start like flat easy runs, fun trails that you want to go, uh, that you're curious about. Go check them out, go get on them, gain some confidence. Yeah, just start. Oh, so my first like big trail run in Crested Butte, I go up, I go up there with my buddy and we're gonna go up on Ruby Ridge. It's a 10-mile ridge and it's like there's some places on there where it's very knifey and lots of exposure, and I have no idea what I'm getting myself into. And I'm up there in gel Kayanos, like road shoes, you know. And we're gonna be on these like little knifey rock formations and stuff. And I get myself on this ridge and we're like, we've gone a couple miles, so we still got a long ways to go. And I'm like humping this ridge and I got, I got my road shoes on and I look down this ridge and it just seems to go forever. And I'm just humping this ridge like this. And I was like, dude, I'm out. So me and my friend bailed off the ridge and we went down a different way and I didn't make it until now. Now I did that same ridge by moonlight this last fall on the fall full moon.

Still humping or no humping?

There's me a little bit, but I was good with it.

There you go. Yeah. Well, right now you can keep up with Killian on some of the trails.

So, well, what Killian did was super cool, but he was so smart. He freaking was not caught up in his ego at all. So even though like everyone's probably looking at his routes and be like, oh, I wonder if he's gonna get the record on the Elk Traverse, the part that I joined him for, at least the last 5 mountains of it. But he's just smart. He's like, for me to feel good tomorrow, I can't push it too hard today, you know? And so I was, I was impressed with like his, his self-control was evident because you know that he can— I mean, that guy's the master. You could just freaking start charging whenever you want and be like, let me show you something right now, young pup. But he didn't do that one time. He was just methodical. I was with him for like 12 hours and the whole time it was fun. Casual, methodical, but moving through it at like a decent pace to where he's not going to be out there for— I mean, the Elk Traverse could take you like 4 days.

So the whole approach for you to go from road running now to trail running and trail adventures, what are like some of the biggest differences other than obviously you have to change the pace like that? You're out there for much longer. Like things like nutrition and stuff, did that take you a while to get into?

Like, yeah, I'm still learning a lot about nutrition. I'll probably take like— we have this like sensor you can put on your heart rate strap and it measures your sweat loss off your skin. So we're kind of playing with stuff like that right now. Honestly, I've kind of trust issues with a lot of this stuff and make sure that like you're actually getting good readings off it because like I have like this wristwatch does not give me accurate readings. I'll be out there running in the canyon and I look down, it says my heart rate's 200, and I'm— I put a chest strap on, it's like 135. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. So it's— you got to make sure that what you're seeing, you know what it is, you know. Um, but yeah, the biggest difference is that I have had to learn to trust myself in a way that never had to trust myself before. So like when you're out and doing these routes and you're by yourself and you're on a ridge and it's the middle of the night and you're trying to find your way and you're getting turned around, like, what are you going to do? Is it going to help me to freak out right now? You want to have a freakout party by yourself?

It really is, right? You have to stay calm. You have to. And like, I've literally talked out loud to myself. It sounds strange to say that like this. Yeah, but when— because you were with Kilian a few days after I was with him, and there was a lightning storm rolling in, and, uh, he was on the other side and I was here, and I was just waiting like hidden under some rocks while a lightning storm is coming in. I literally had to tell myself like, okay, you're in a t-shirt and short, just go into your bag and grab your jacket right now, make sure you don't get hypothermia or whatever, like, and it's But you're so present. And talking about awareness, what we did earlier, I think that's the beauty of trail running. That's the beauty of—

and, and the— that's when you have to be so alert that that's when you have these moments that transcend. Your consciousness gets transcended. And I was talking about this with Killian, and he was like, dude, I've had these moments out here where it's like I was above my body watching myself do this stuff. And he's like, I get them, but they only come when it's freaking real sketchy. And for him to get sketched out now, I don't want to be with him if he's even like mildly sketched out. Because we did the traverse and finish and he was like telling people like, oh dude, no, it's, it's not bad, like easy, you'll be fine. And I was like, dude, this guy— I took a video of him on a GoPro and he's like leaning over this thing with the backpack on and like pulling himself up, and it's just a ledge where if he falls he's done, dude. But that's again, like, do you trust yourself? And you trust yourself by going out there and having those moments at a level you can handle and then just go at the level that you're ready to go out there and be smart, of course, you know. But there's— I mean, I was friggin lead climbing up a route yesterday in Sedona, and I don't even know that much about climbing, but I'm like going up to it. I'm like, okay, like, this is super easy. Like, you could do this 100 out of 100 times, but it seems really scary right now because down there there's nothing but air and no one to catch me.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna freaking break my leg on that rock. I'm not gonna die, but I'm gonna break my leg on that rock if I fall, you know. But does it help me to think about falling, you know? Yeah.

Where does your energy go?

Yeah, exactly. And it's— I, I was ready for the— so you're just like, okay, This is where you, you're entertaining a distraction thought because there's an emotion tied to it, and that emotion is fear. So you take out that emotion and then you just analyze that thought for what it is, because sometimes it's leading you the right way and you need to listen to it and back out of that situation because you're not ready, you know? Yeah, like, you're not going out there to die, but you do want to learn to develop a trust in yourself and that you can work through those moments, like you kind of go out there for those moments where you're kind of on the edge, you know, and you get on that ridge and you're like, you're thinking about it for hours before you get there. And then you finally get there and you're like, deep breath, here we go. And then my favorite thing to do right before those moments, I'm always like, this is my favorite part.

Yeah. And the interesting thing is you were saying like Kilian is on a whole nother level where that is, right? And for you right now, that's also on a knife's edge. For some people, that is toeing the line of their first marathon, toeing the line of the first 5K. That feels— they've never been there before. It is unknown, and we don't know what's going to happen. And there's a leap from what you've done in training to what's going to happen. But that's also where you feel alive.

Exactly. That's also where the bliss is at. So we, we're drawn to changing things. So that's where, like, I feel like God has to change. Because if God didn't change, we'd get bored and it wouldn't be God anymore, you know? So the ever expansiveness of God is good because we're drawn to that, you know? But then you don't want to— it's kind of like when then you get to that point, you're like, I don't know if I like it here. Yeah, it's kind of scary, you know? And then you gotta kind of coach yourself through it, talk to yourself through it, sit down. My and friendly, likes to sit down, have a snack, and just like— I like to get to high places and then meditate in them because that, to me, that removes all the fear. Yeah, if I can be sitting someplace, because I don't like heights myself, like I've always been like slightly scared of heights, but I've worked on it a ton. And one thing that's really helped me is like, like be on places that make me feel uncomfortable and then just sit there and then find peace there. And then once I've done that You almost feel like you kind of like conquered that.

You moved your barrier of comfort to another level. I've been using the Somnus Lab sleep cooling system to improve the quality of my sleep. And sleep is really where the recovery happens. You can train hard, you can eat well, you can do everything right. But if your sleep isn't dialed in, you're missing a big piece. Here's how it works. This is a temperature-controlled pad that sits on top of your mattress under the sheet, and there's a small base unit next to the bed that circulates water throughout the pad so you can heat or cool your bed to the exact temperatures that you want. For me, sleeping cooler has made a big difference. I fall asleep faster, I stay asleep longer, and I wake up feeling more recovered. What I really like is the dual zone control, so if you sleep cold and your partner sleeps hot, you can both set your own temperatures. The setup is super simple. You put the pad on the bed, fill it with water, plug it in, and you're good to go. No more complicated installs and no subscriptions. Check out somnuslab.com— that is S-O-M-N-U-S-L-A-B dot com— and use the code FLO, F-L-O, to receive 10% off your order. See also the link in my description. Okay, let's talk about electrolytes for a minute because tomorrow we're running the Grand Canyon. We're running 50K. It's going to be scorcher hot towards the later part. You and I were texting and you're like, yeah, let's get that dose of electrolytes over to a point that my eyes are going to be puffy in the morning. Tell me more about your electrolyte strategy on longer days.

Right, this one I played with a lot, and again, a lot of this comes from bodybuilding because those guys are super into hydration, and strength athletes are super into hydration as well, because if you're a little bit dehydrated, um, your power goes down significantly in the gym. So like rule number one is like don't lift dehydrated.

Really? I did not.

Yeah, you're gonna get hurt or injured.

I got thirsty lifting actually.

Yeah, you don't want— you know, no, drink more. Yeah, drink more water. Like I always say, so when I start my day First thing, 20 ounces of electrolyte water down the hatch every day. And then I have a huge coffee after that. But now I got electrolytes in my system. I'm holding water, not just passing it through. If you just get up and just drink water, I notice I just freaking pee it right back out quick and I still feel like dry. Like 2 hours later, you're like, what the heck? I just drank all this water. But how you take it in is important. So having electrolytes to go into it. But I've had to learn a lot with this because I'd usually When we go out in the mountains, we just use filters a lot when we're in Colorado because there's water everywhere. So you don't even bring a bottle, you just bring a straw and you drink out of like creeks or whatnot. It's freaking awesome. I love that part of it. But you're not getting electrolytes that way if you're doing that.

So you got to take salt pills.

Yeah. So I was running with Jim Walmsley in the canyon a couple of years back and he's like, do you should maybe take some electrolytes with you? And I was like, oh yeah, that's a good idea actually. So now I surround myself with other people who We learn from, right? Yeah. I mean, he knows because that guy freaking runs in the canyon all the time and grew up in Phoenix, or he knows how to run in hot conditions. If you want to learn from someone about running the heat, like, just go down to Phoenix and talk to people. Have it dialed down there, you know? But the electrolytes are— the canyon, I've never been a place where it dries you out more than the canyon. I will come from Ecuador, I can do a 5-hour run on a half a liter bottle fine. Not even cramp up at all. Run 20 minutes in the canyon, cramping, dude. Like, it's— it cooks you. It's like the rays are bouncing off the walls and you're in the middle of this oven and it just freaking roasts the crap out of you. So you want to make sure your electrolytes are heavy but not too heavy. So when I did rim to rim to rim 4 times, I kind of messed with electrolytes every time. And so my first time I don't think I took any. And I was just— I just eat candy when I'm out there. A lot of candy. Like, I bring like 400 calories per hour of candy with me.

There you go.

It's a lot of candy. But, um, so in that time, I didn't get dehydrated, but I also wasn't running that hard. The next time, I ran a little bit harder and took a little bit more electrolytes, felt a little better. And the next time, I ran as hard as I could, quick transitions. Dude, I was just like like, just see how fast you can do it, you know. And that was my best one. And I think I took like 4 salt tablets out there over the course of about just shy of 8 hours. It was about only 4. Yeah, something like that. So it wasn't high.

That's not much.

But then the next time I went with a buddy and I took a bunch of electrolyte tablets, made my drinks like super concentrated because there's, you know, uh, places you can fill clean water with so you can powder with you. So I had a bunch of powder and then I was just drinking, and I came back and I was like so swollen up.

You're even more swollen?

Yeah, but it's weird because you can get all swollen and then it's like still not getting into you. You're still dehydrated and you're freaking all— so anyways, I took it too far that time and had way too much. But I think for, depending on the conditions, like looking at like 500 milligrams of sodium to 1,000 per hour for me, roughly, in the canyon. So I want to get like, you know, 3 or 4 servings in. But I think a lot of it depends on how hydrated you are starting out.

And I think even for anyone listening here, I've done that myself too. The day before, or like leading into it, the morning— like the day before, the morning of, like properly hydrating with electrolytes, it makes a difference.

Like, yeah, because when you don't have hydration going. That's why people feel so terrible coming up South, Kaibab. I think it's— I mean, your legs are beat up from the descending for sure, especially if you're not used to it. But then you get dehydrated. It's weird. It's sometimes hard to tell what's making you tired. Is it your muscles are tired or they're dehydrated? Or it's probably some combination of it too, you know. But if you can remove the dehydration part, then you'll definitely be running way better and just feeling way better too. Like, it's funny that you don't get sometimes thirsty out there. I feel like when you should, you can't necessarily just like listen to your— you know, you got to know— your mind knows what's coming, your body doesn't, you know. So you gotta prepare it for— make sure you give it what it needs.

I want to talk about strength training some more because I do— personally, I'm really fascinated by it and I'm more interested in doing it more consistently lately. But I know you have gone through that whole journey of being a professional road runner to really getting into lifting. I think there's different reasons that people get into strength training. Like, first of all, yes, it can make you an overall better runner. It's obviously like, as you age, you lose muscle mass, and it's healthy from that perspective. For me, it was also like a mental component where sometimes life happens and you have highs and lows and there's different stages. And I found strength training to tremendously help with mental strength too. I'm wondering when you started going hard on the strength training component, what was your reasoning behind it?

I think the reason why I went to it is because I was craving it the most. And it's weird because I never liked lifting. I was always the guy who was like, hurry through the weight room. And my heart really wasn't in it, mainly because I was just super tired all the time, you know? But it was like my body was like, you got to give me the opposite of what you've been giving me. And for me, that was strength training. So yeah, I think it was, it was just like my body was craving. But also my personality is one where I need challenge. So if I don't have something, a mountain in front of me, a challenge, something I need to be— I don't know if it needs to be a challenge necessarily. It needs to be something that I'm going after with as much as I can bring to the table, you know. So it could be a lot of different things, but at that season, it morphed into weightlifting. It went from running to weightlifting. It was like, okay, now let me learn as much. It's fun to learn too. It's always fun to learn new things. I was talking to a buddy about this. He's getting super into canyoneering in Sedona, and he's freaking just loving it, you know, like learning all the knots and learning all the gear, routes and all that stuff, you know.

It's a new challenge again.

Yeah.

So just looking at some numbers, you went from 127 pounds, then went to a high of like close to 190, 195. That's when we recorded last time. And then you started trail running and adventuring more and you kind of came down a little bit again. Yeah.

Now I'm back down to like 165. And honestly, my knees would like to go another 10 pounds lighter.

You're at 165 now. That's interesting. I'm heavier than you right now.

Are you?

So you're 5'10", I'm 6'0". Or like, according to your machine, I'm 5'6".

Let's not talk about how tall you are. We don't need to get into that.

No, but an interesting one. Like, so from my own journey, like, before I started running, I was like, at some point I was about 180 when I was drinking quite a bit. Stopped drinking, started running consistent, and it came down to like my race weight at some point was about 140. And that was skinny. Like, I started getting people to ask me like, hey, are you sick? Like, and then you know you're close to race weight.

Like, yeah, when you start looking sick.

And then you know you're there.

Great.

At some point though, I like naturally noticed I was feeling better energy-wise. Like once I was closer to 155, like somewhere over there. But then even in recent months, I started paying much closer attention to eating more. And as I started training more consistent, and you and I've talked to some extent about this, like just deliberately eating some more calories. Like watching what you're eating and starting to lift consistent.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, literally from earlier in the year to now, from 155 to close to 170, it's like wild how with some consistency and like focusing additionally on, on nutrition, it's like, yep, and you're in the fun phase. That is a really fun phase. It really is.

No, the first like year of lifting, or even 2 years it's like the honeymoon phase, dude, because your body's just gonna eat stuff up and you're gonna just put on— you're gonna get way better, you're gonna get way stronger, you're gonna feel way better, you're gonna see rapid growth. And it— and everyone— I was always like, 3 years, dude, we'll see about that, in my mind. But for me, the data got confusing because what happened, I think, is I got to ride around that 300— that 3-year period, and everything was like like I was getting better, but it's starting to be like by like 2.5 pounds. I was like, get out the 1.5. Yeah. And I got— I was getting to the upper end kind of, I think, what I could get to because I tried a lot of different training philosophies, tried getting fatter too. I mean, if you want to get strong, you can just also just get fat. I mean, that— and, and also I will say like I was never getting stronger if I wasn't putting on weight. I was only getting stronger. I was only making gains if I was putting on weight. If I was running, I was probably losing weight and I was not getting stronger. And then you're just trying to kind of maintain strength.

Well, and that's what we were talking about earlier too, right? Like, what's the purpose of the strength training? Like, from one perspective, it can be to like supplement your running. For some, it can really be to like gain significant strength and like just gain weight. And there's a variety of different ways you can do it for you.

Now mine is like, okay, so I want to run downhill without my knees hurting. So let me do weighted step downs. Let me do heel elevated front squats, goblet front squats, you know, and try to develop to make my quads freaking strong as crap. You know, I think that's why, like, when I was running down the Grand Canyon, when I was lifting, I didn't get sore because I was doing freaking heavy front squat, heavy squat, and my legs were strong. They were ready for that. And they didn't beat me up. That was the least beat up I've ever been coming out of the canyons was I was lifting the heaviest and the hardest.

Yeah. And it does, like, it does make a massive difference in how it feels. Like, it, it definitely makes it running easier in particular, like hills.

Oh, and sprints. Sprints are the best if, if you can open up your stride. Like, if you have the mobility to do that when you've been lifting a lot and you're heavier, it feels good to sprint. Like, I never had experienced anything like that. I, I'll never forget because We were out on the beach with my family and I, I wasn't running at all. I was just lifting my brains out as hard as I could. But you know how it is when you get out on the beach and you see the water come up on the sand and it gets all hard and perfect for running on. I was seeing it do this and I was like, do I got to go out there? And so I go out there and you just start, you know, running through the waves, trying to not let them touch your feet, you know, along the waterline.

Oh, that's fun.

Yeah. And so I started doing that and pretty soon I was like, oh dang, dude, this feels good. And I was out there for like 30 minutes just sprinting like crazy. And the next day my hamstrings were done. I was like, why did I do that? But it felt so good because I wasn't used to— I'd never felt that much power in my legs ever.

I think the mistake though, like that I even caught myself up because several things from my first conversation about strength training for running, I kept that in mind. So one was like you had mentioned in particular, when you're doing the strength exercise, especially in the beginning, go high reps, lower weight, start doing the exercise correctly, and then just build momentum with that. And then over time, like, finish, finish the set and still be able to go 10 more if you had to, kind of, right? And so that really helped, especially at the beginning, just getting familiar, because a lot of these exercises, I didn't know what I was doing really. And so just becoming more familiar with it.

Yeah, and you're not— your muscle's not even used to like, oh, how do I take the weight down from here? I've never had to do this. And if like all you just try to like pop in there and do the movement and your body's like, whoa, what are we doing? Yeah, you want to like, when you're first getting into it, you want to feel how your body is. Where is it at when it's in strong positions compared to weak positions, you know? And then it even becomes like a posture thing. It's like when you're sitting, do you sit with your shoulder out? Sometimes I catch myself driving like this sometimes and I'm like, what are you doing? Yeah, like, get that shoulder back where it's supposed to be, you know? So it changes your posture. That changes even how you feel about yourself.

Yeah. And then I think from there on, I'm not going to lie, I've gotten really excited sometimes to start hitting PRs. And from there, I've also recently for the first time, I really felt like I had to take a day off. That, or like I had to take 2 days off because normally I do Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And I was like, let's actually hold off on the Wednesday sessions for a little bit. Something started feeling off in my elbow a bit. I was like, I just don't want to push through it right now.

Yeah. And that's—

and then back off a little bit. But there is still this wiredness, like in running you like to run faster and even in lifting you want to at some point go heavier. But what, what advice do you have for people? How do you know when to to add to some extent and when to kind of pull back. Pull back. Because ideally you do it before it starts hurting, right?

Right. Yeah. You don't wait till you get hurt to do it. I think it's— that's where tracking numbers is helpful. So if you stop seeing progress and I might— I kept really intense.

Yeah. All your notes and everything.

Yeah. Like I was logging, so I knew exactly like, how was my bench today compared to 2 weeks ago when I did it? Did I see progress or not? But you don't judge it off one workout. You got to look at like 2 or 3 workouts, you know, but you can kind of get the trend like, am I absorbing workload or not? Am I seeing growth or not? And then if not, you can kind of use the like P90X principle where if you switch, you can hit something but switch the movement pattern just a little bit and you'll find you'll get sore again. You're like, oh dang, I wake up, my core's all sore. Oh yeah, I hadn't done that core exercise in like a month or whatever. And so throwing like kind of new movement can elicit that growth again, but it can also just like give that certain, uh, muscle pattern that you're working a lot, give it a little bit of a breather and come back to it. But you're still developing the tissue through a different exercise. So say like, for example, if your bench was going stale, then maybe like you work on dips really hard for a while and like don't even worry about benching. Or maybe you do barbell bench, or maybe you do a lot of flies, or Like, like for me right now, working through a shoulder or something, I'm like, okay, so it hurts when I do this, so let's not do that. Or any exercise where I do feel pain. I think letting pain be your guide when it comes to injuries is really important. You know, just be aware of your body. And if something's hurting and what you're doing is causing it to hurt worse, then stop doing that. You know, very simple. But also some things like when you're running will hurt and they actually need load to help it heal, like tendons So like, for example, my upper hamstring, it'll feel better if I hit it with a reverse plank, for example, compared to if I just let it sit. I'm just like, oh, it hurts when I do that. I'm never going to do that exercise. And then it keeps gradually getting worse and worse because it actually needs load to grow and respond and get better.

I have some questions about nutrition because I think there's an interesting one. There's quite some people listening who might be like, oh yeah, it's hard to lose weight and I have to put in all this effort to lose weight. Whereas for some people it's actually the other way around too. In particular, once they start going from running to wanting to lift a bit more and wanting to actually gain some muscle. At the other hand, you also want to not go up too fast, right? Because at some point when I was in this example, from like literally in a 3-month period going from 155 to 170, it's like 15 pounds, but only 10 pounds or 11 pounds of that is muscle.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Which is a good rate, I would say.

Yeah, but indeed, at some point you probably want to slow down the weekly gain, right? Like, how do you first of all go about nutrition with like how many calories do you need and then how many more do you want to eat? And then how do you even track that? Tell me a bit more about that because that's honestly— I'm just asking a bunch of selfish questions that I'm really interested in myself, but I assume some people might find it interesting.

I mean, this is where like the bodybuilding method actually works really well for strength training as well, because you're going through this phase where you're building, you're eating a ton, you're putting on muscle, putting on a little bit of fat too, and then that kind of plateaus out and all of a sudden you're not really making gains. Then it's time to like come into like a, say, cutting cycle where you're like, okay, now let me get rid of this excess fat, bring the calories down. But then the mistake that a lot of people make is they keep lifting super heavy and then they get hurt.

So you even got to cut back to—

Yeah, you just got to watch the intensity again. Like, rule number one is just don't move anything around unless you feel secure in that movement pattern. You know, like, feel like everything's locked in and good and I'm not going to get hurt by picking up this dumbbell right now, you know, or taking it through whatever motion, like as long as you have it under tension, the weight should never move you. You're always moving the weight, you know, always in like real good control of the weight. And then just move in a way that you know is the right movement pattern for your body, because everyone's a little different, especially when it comes to like, say, squatting, for example. Like, runners are gonna have a hard time squatting. It's just—

I noticed that in the beginning, like, even It sounds messed up to say this, but even for me, like running proper mileage, going up and down mountains, for me to just do a few rounds of squats without even weight at the beginning or doing lunges, I felt so fricking sore.

Right.

And then fast forward 3 months and being able to do it with quite a bit of weight. It's wild how you can build that up in a short—

That's great.

Relative short period of time.

It's great that you're able to feel decent doing that because oftentimes when you smash yourself in the weight room, then you go out there and run.

Oh dude, it's like that, that was one of the biggest things I had to get used to, like doing legs and then going for a run or the next day, and you're like, oh, I gotta have heavy legs.

How to fit it all in is very tricky when it comes to running and lifting at the same time for every level of athlete. So like, I'll go home, I'll run the Grand Canyon sometimes, and you know, I'm 90 minutes away, and so I can go in run to the bottom, run back out. It's like 3-hour trip, drive back here. I'm here, back here like 1 o'clock or whatever. So it's not like I'm gone forever and I'll come back. Sometimes I'll lift afterwards because when am I going to do my leg day? Am I going to do it tomorrow when my legs are all super shot? No. Well, when am I going to do it then? The next day? No, because I need to recover more and then I'm going out again the next day. And so then now it's been like 5, 6 days since I've done any lifting on my legs. So instead of doing that, like, I'll do like more like functional lifting. Like, I have sled pushes that I'll do, I'll do yoke carries, I'll do something a little bit different than just like— if I were to come home from the canyon and squat, it'd be like the ugliest squat anyone has ever seen. I need something under my heels like to put me—

yeah, yeah.

But with that said, like, a front squat's a nice variation for runners with with the feet elevated.

Yeah, so you put a 10-pound dumbbell underneath it.

Yeah, they can usually get into that position better, and I'd say it helps them more. But I also say there's a lot of different movements that you can do. You can do kettlebell swings if you don't like squats, and it's hitting like— like, I almost think a kettlebell swing's better than a squat.

I don't know. Um, how do you know how many calories you're eating in a day?

So I kind of, you know how you know what your favorite snacks are and then you just kind of figure out like, okay, what's in that favorite snack, you know, in terms of macros. So like I, when I was first getting into it, I would track on like MyFitnessPal or whatever and I'd freaking weigh everything with the scale and stuff. I still weigh my coffee for sure. Every morning's got to be exactly right gram for water ratio. But then you kind of know, okay, when I eat this snack, it's about 600 calories, it's about 40 grams of protein, it's about 100 grams of carb.

So you kind of go through the exercise at the beginning.

Uh-huh. So it's very helpful, I feel like, to track because I feel like most the time, like, people underestimate how much they're eating when they're trying to lose weight and vice versa, you know. So you just get a good picture what's actually going on when you weigh it all out and you're like, oh dang, a tablespoon and small.

Yeah, for me, one of the things that helped a lot was meal prep. So on Sunday around 3 o'clock, I'll start doing a bunch of meal prep and just make meals for the whole week. And I typically have like lunch and dinner, at least 14, like, and, and at least I can kind of know if I literally buy X amount of chicken, I can literally see like this is how much protein is in there, at least in this part. And At the beginning though, there were some rookie mistakes with eating too much protein and being a fart machine and all that, dude. I'm sure you've, you've been there.

You gotta find the right formulas. Yeah.

So there is a bit of a learning curve. What about, what about other specific snacks that work for you kind of in between?

Honestly, like, I think keeping it really simple is important because otherwise it's hard to like stay on track with these things because life happens, you know. Because I'm not even like a professional athlete. So I have a lot of stuff that I have going on. But I would— so I just do like friggin peanut butter jelly sandwich and a protein shake. Done, you know? And if I'm like trying to put on weight, eat 2 sandwiches and add a little bit of protein. But usually, I mean, I was getting— and I still— I think, I think regular protein consumption is really important, especially as you get older. For muscle preservation stuff, especially if you're out running a lot. Sometimes I come back from some of my runs, I look at my quads and I'm like, I think I just lost an inch.

So what ratio are you aiming for?

Or like, for recreational athletes listening, if running is the goal or putting on strength, like putting on—

let's talk about both.

Okay. If running is the goal, I don't think you need like to hit the protein I would go like 20, 30 grams of protein and then make sure you have some healthy fats, carbs to go with that, you know. And then if I was lifting heavy and hard, I would go like 40, 50 grams of protein every single snack.

So what is that on a daily?

So it'd be 250, 300 if I'm lifting heavy and hard and trying to put on muscle. And then if I'm running, it's like, say, 200 or something.

So still 200 grams of protein even for a runner. And that would be at a weight of 170 or—

Yeah, I'm 165 if you wanted to use me for a model. But, you know, everyone's different.

Yeah.

You know, like, I think the best diet is the one that's right for your particular constitution. And your constitution is different than my constitution. So I could be like, dude, freaking vegetarian diet, I feel like a million bucks. And then you're—

some people are responding much different. Yeah.

And you're like, dude, I feel like trash. What are you talking— yeah, you just have different bodies. So you gotta, you gotta really— nutrition is one that you play with, but doing what you're doing is great. Meal prep, make your snacks easy, and, uh, and stuff that's easy to travel with. Do you guys have protein bars a lot? And I'll take them with me when we go out tomorrow. I'll more than a couple protein bars, you know, to where I'm getting like 20, 30 grams.

I think that's an interesting one. When I first started getting into longer running, I was always just like carbs, carbs, carbs while running, right? And then I looked into it more, and there's definitely a time and place for protein after anything over 3 hours kind of thing. Yeah, I was like, yeah, even from a recovery and feel perspective.

And that's what I think about when I'm out there. I'm like like, yeah, I'm gonna be out here for a while, but eventually I'm gonna go back and life's gonna go on, and I want to make sure I come out of this okay too, you know? I mean, I'm not racing out there, so that's where it's a little different. Like, my pack looks a lot different when I'm out there for 40 hours or something like that compared to, you know, tomorrow we'll be out there for 9 hours. Yeah, yeah, actually, that's still long, but like, if I'm, if I'm going Like just like down and back quick mission, then I would just bring straight carb. If my— what I've noticed is if my heart rate is going to go up, I need carbs. But if my heart rate's under, say, like, so for me, I'd race a marathon around 167 heart rate. If I'm going to go up in there above 155, I need carbs for sure. But I could run for a long time on like just fats. And like I did this actually in the canyon one time with my buddy George. All I did was took ketones and coffee, of course. Ketones and coffee, no breakfast, and then just drop down. And I had a full pack, dude, of candy. Like, I just robbed my kids' like Halloween sack, you know, like all their Halloween candy is all around. It weighed like 10 pounds and I'm running with it the whole time. And I was like, I'm just gonna wait till I get hungry. Like, as soon as—

oh, the ketones suppress it like no tomorrow, man.

Like, as soon as I get hungry, I'm gonna eat. I can't wait to eat.

I think the other one that I thought was interesting was seeing Kilian literally bringing olive oil on his adventure, meaning like he is running on a lot of his low intensity there, but for him kind of increasing fats while still being able to take quite a bit of carbs in too, right?

I mean, his issue is getting in enough calories to sustain his body for losing 5,000, 10,000 calories per day. Like, he had to be eating a lot. And so yeah, you need like calorically dense food.

Yeah.

And then again, that's why he shouldn't be pressing it these high levels if he's running mainly on fats. And he was, he was taking a fair amount out there though. He was eating a lot. He's doing a good job. I was talking to him about that. I was like, dude, how much weight do you think you're gonna lose while you're out here? I wonder how much he lost.

You know, he looked fairly skinny towards the end, that's for sure.

He had to be. Could you imagine that?

No, no, I imagined it for 5 hours and that was more than enough.

It's really unbelievable. I mean, like, the route that I went with him the last 5 on, dude, like, most people doing that route is a big deal. Like, I don't know how many people do that every summer, but it's not a lot. Yeah. And that was just one stop along the way.

I know, it is wild.

Have you, have you messed at all with like peppermint extract in drinks as a cooling methodology?

I have not, but please tell me more.

I just learned about this from this lady down in Sedona that I met yesterday who was climbing with my buddy, and she was saying putting peppermint extract in your water can just— like, it goes like kind of like how menthol— menthol? Yeah, on your chest if you have a cold, and it kind of makes it feel like really cool on your chest and nice. Your mom would put on there and you smell it.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, like that. But like inside as it's going down into your stomach and so it just drops into your whole core and it just like helps cool you down.

Really? I've not heard of that one. I did hear of the part of cooling your hands that that would make a big—

Yeah, that came out of Stanford.

Yeah.

Palmer cooling. I've played with that one a lot.

So then that was even with whatever it was, faster recovery or heavier lifts or anything like that, right?

Yeah, it's really interesting actually. I played with Palmer cooling a lot. And I really believed it would work super well, and I tested out a number of times, and honestly, in the gym, I didn't see that much of a difference from it.

Mm-hmm.

Teach your own, try it out. Yeah, do you think it's worth a shot? I mean, there's a lot of really good research behind it, and we do— I like to mess with it more for like running. So like, for example, for some marathons, we've had a cool pack packs. Yeah, you break them. Yeah, we put it on Sarah's bottle, so she grabbed her bottle.

That's a good idea.

And she'd break the pack, put it in one hand, pass it to the other just for like 30 seconds, a minute, throw it away. But does it work? I don't know.

Well, once again, going back to the placebo thing we were talking about offline. Exactly.

Like, what do you see? What do you— yeah, exactly.

What do you— what do you feel?

So placebo effect is so powerful. But I just put some peppermint extract in that water Are you feeling it? No, I don't feel it. See, I got to get in there. And this is why you try things, right? It's like it could work really well. Yeah, maybe the dose is wrong. I just put like 4.

You're going to be running 5-minute miles down that canyon tomorrow, man.

Freezing cold. I have a jacket on.

Classic. A few last questions about the whole strength training. Let me try some of this internal. Try everything new before race day or big adventure, they say, right?

Peppermint extract. I promise. That was way too much. She said do one drop at first.

You just gave me 10 drops. You're gonna have diarrhea all day tomorrow, dude.

I don't know, maybe so.

Well, YOLO.

There's only one way to find out. I have twice as many drops as you. What do you think?

My lips are all oily.

It's starting to work, I think. Yep, it just takes a second to kick in. You just got to do about 10x what she prescribed.

Yeah, we're going to run 10x faster.

All right, it's usually the case, do 10x the prescribed dose, perfect.

All right, um, I have a few more questions about strength training because we keep going back there because I'm really drawn to it, but I want to make it applicable to the listeners do. So let's say there's some people listening. I think one of the key things that comes up often, people like to run and they initially don't like strength training. However, I've discovered going over the hump and getting really into it.

Yeah, that I improve.

It's fun to be bad at something that you literally wake up and you're so stoked to go to the gym to be able to do strength training.

That's awesome.

So What can people do in order to start enjoying strength training?

You really need to create a balance because you can't just do whatever you want there in there, you know. You need to do the things that you don't want to do because they're probably what you need to do because you probably suck at it, which is why you don't want to do it. So in some ways, you need to walk in the gym and be like, go do what you don't feel like doing. Do that one first because you suck the most at it and you're going to get the best by improving it, you know. But in other way, you need to also have fun in there. So if all you do is like things that you suck at, you're going to look like a fool and you're going to walk out of there not that happy. You'll probably never come back, you know? So you also need to like, okay, so I need to work on this issue with my right hip that I'm having. Once you learn the exercises, then you can just rifle through them in your mind. Like 10 different exercises hits your right glute med. Which one seems like the most fun right now? Yeah, let me go do that one. You know, and then progress too. So throwing new novelty in there, I think, is important. Although some people really love routine, they just want to do the same thing. And that's not necessarily bad or wrong. I think routine can be your best friend. You know, you set yourself in a good routine and it's a balanced program and it's working for you and you're sticking with it. That's going to take you to the end real nice. Just stick with that, you know. But I'd say for most, they do become more engaged with it when there's some kind of novelty to it. Sliding 5 pounds more on the weight, manipulating things, measuring things, following your curiosity with different exercises. That's also the nice thing about not like, you know, I'm in my home gym and it's kind of nice because I can look like a fool in there and do all kinds of weird exercises and it's just me. But when you're lifting in, say, another gym, you might not want to do that stuff, but you can pick up other exercises for the other people are doing. There's a lot of really great stuff out there and people are, you know, doing some really high quality exercises that you're like, oh, that looks like fun. Then go try it.

And I think at the beginning you have to kind of leave that ego at the— my lips are, by the way, oily and I'm feeling like this is just warmth going, minty warmth. I don't know. You know how to describe— I don't even know what you just said. I'm just focusing on my lips over here.

I got it too, right here. It's kind of nice though.

Yeah, no, there's something special about it.

This might become my wind-down drink.

That and ketones, uppers and downers.

Oh yeah, put some ketones. We should, we should pitch to, uh, Ketone IQ a peppermint flavor.

There you go, might as well.

Plus maybe some caffeine, heat the system up and cool it down at the same time. Perfect balance.

Yeah. Yeah, I really think sometimes, in particular at the beginning, walking into a gym not knowing what to do can be intimidating.

Heck yeah.

So I think even whether you go with a friend who has a little bit more experience or you sign up with a coach or you follow some kind of online program or follow-along routine or something along the lines, like what I ended up doing, I just talked to my friend Nick Dompierre. He's a strength coach and he literally like, as much as I had several different follow-along exercises along the way from different people, that I tried and it worked to some extent. I wanted to just have a simple program: Monday, Wednesday, Friday for the next 4 weeks. Here are 6 exercises to do. And it was very simple and it was a very simple app to use and just go through it and you check the box and you feel like you're making progress. You write down what weight, what reps, and then you do like Monday a different exercise than Wednesday and Friday. And then the following week, Monday, you repeat the Monday again and you see how is it feeling. And then once you start feeling a little bit of progress, you're like, ah, it becomes easier. I can add in some more weight, what you were saying. Yeah.

Yeah.

And like, that's when I think you start looking forward because there's something about progress, right?

Yeah. I mean, no one likes to put in work and think it's not going to do anything, you know, and then get nothing for it in return. So either the action itself has to be pleasant or the results have to be pleasant and you're willing to do the action in order to get the pleasantness later. Yeah.

Yeah, but you have to do some kind of tracking over there.

Yeah, I think tracking is helpful when you don't get emotional with it, you know, like the more you can just be like a scientist observing it instead of being like, do I suck in the bench today? What the—

what's wrong?

Just being like, oh, that's interesting. And then you start going back through like, why might that be? And then it's like a puzzle you're trying to figure out, but someone else's puzzle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's where it's helpful to have a coach and is helpful for a beginner. 100%. Like, I started with like programs off of bodybuilding.com, you know, when I didn't know what to go. I was like, this is where everyone goes, I guess. Let's try out this program. And then I did like a 10-week program, and then I was like, okay, now it kind of took me to a place where I felt ready to fly a little bit. And some people will get ready to fly, and some people don't like to fly. They just want a simple program. Yours sounds like it was really well designed if you're the way they did.

Yeah. And then like after 4 weeks it was like you get new exercises again and you're like excited for the new exercise again. And there's some overlap and there's some change.

Yeah, I think that's perfect.

Yeah, I think it's one way to go about it. So any other advice just beyond the initial excitement phase? Because you're talking like, ah, you're still 3 months in.

Yeah.

So like what to somewhat expect? Because I don't expect —like you kind of have to at the beginning, like this, you see a lot of progress in a variety of different ways, and at some point you're going to hit plateaus or like even some setbacks or whatnot. But how do you navigate that? And what do you kind of see that road be for athletes? Yeah, yeah.

I think just to always be thankful for where you're at, you know, number one, like if you're walking around like happy about yourself, then you're gonna have a good life. Yeah. So whether you get to the destination or not becomes less important, you know. The destination is kind of like used to draw us to, but like, so I guess what is the destination? Does it just have to keep going up, or is it okay for it to transition to somewhere else?

Because that's even what's happening in your world, right? Right. Like, your goal might not be always to lift heavy or do more, but now even seeing how much joy you seem to be getting out of all these other adventures Right. Yeah.

I'm like, well, where do I want to feel good? Because I'm not going to be my strongest self and my fastest self at the same time. Like, that will never happen. And I'd say that doesn't happen probably for anyone, you know? So what do I want? Do I want to feel light and strong and not have stuff hurting out there and be able to go for a really long time? Or do I want to be able to squat £400 and deadlift £500? And, you know, those are like like two very different experiences and you can have both, but just not at the same time. Yeah.

So what is that now for you? Like, what are you— are you considering at some point racing ultras?

Not really. I mean, I like to— I do like to measure. So like, for example, like this route that we'll go on tomorrow, like I've done that route pretty much every week for a while, except for when I wasn't in Ecuador. Uh, so maybe like 10 times, 10 times or so this in the last like 3 months or so, you know, like a lot. I've been on that route. I use it to measure my fitness because I like it. Yeah, I love that route and I love it. For me, it's the perfect, uh, I'm gonna get crushed on a runnable trail, crushed. But then this is like, but this is like a different game. Yeah. And then you put poles in my hands and now I'm feeling pretty good, you know. But I'm gonna get crushed on a runnable trail, and I'm gonna get crushed on the way down. I can't believe how fast people run down this trail. They run like— the average pace is like close to 6-minute pace, which is unbelievable on something rocky and steep like this. Like, I don't know if you're taking chances or full send. Yeah, unbelievable. So on the downhill, I'm like, pretend like you're a feather, and then I'll go down in 70 minutes and I'll come up in 72 minutes. Oh damn.

Yeah, but tomorrow we might not go over 70, man.

It's not the day for it. It's going to be warm. That's the thing too, though, honestly. Like the reason why I put like time trial in the canyon all winter long and then springtime, like done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll see you again in the fall.

Time to go to the mountains. Classic. Classic. Cool. Where can people find more about you? And tell me, tell me also more about the latest of your foundation.

Yeah, yeah, we're, uh, we're in a little bit of a holding pattern on a lot of it right now. Um, we were just trying to do some work in Ethiopia and it's kind of in the works, so hopefully something going down there in the near future, but we're kind of not sure, kind of figuring it out still. Um, but people can find me, I'm on Instagram sometimes, not Not very much. I post occasionally. There you go. And not professionally. Oh, but that's looking for professional, go somewhere else. I'm not gonna find it here.

But that's better. We keep it non-professional.

Yeah, it's a non-professional. But like, I did an AI, uh, image actually recently on Instagram. Yeah, how did that go? Impressive to myself. Well, I did it at this condor right here. So this is an Andean condor. So, oh, the tattoo. Yeah, so rad. An Andean condor, you familiar with these guys? No, not the full story. So they live in, um, in the Andes in Ecuador. There you go. So I saw one one time. I'm not gonna get into the full story of it, but these are one of the biggest animals that can fly on the planet. It's like the third or fourth one. Their wingspan is like 10, 11 feet across. Oh wow, they are massive animals and they weigh a So this is why I'm resonating with it, right? They're in the high mountains, one of the few birds that can survive in the Andes in the high altitudes, which I freaking love the high altitude. And then how do they survive at the high altitudes? And they're one of the biggest birds, which you think would cost the most amount of energy to flap your wings. You gotta move all— and you're flying in the sky. You better be light and efficient up there, right? And so these birds, they're so freaking smart. They live on the cliff and they wait for the sun to come up, and then it starts getting warmish and they start feeling the thermals coming up. They take their beak, they pull out a feather, they throw it out, and if that feather floats up, it's time to go. And then all they do is just step off their home, spread their wings, hang out, and they can go hundreds of miles without flapping their wing one time. Whoa, they're just riding thermals.

I had no idea, and I want to look them up.

They're freaking super cool. They're a little bit weird looking, which is why not many people have huge tattoos on their arms. But I love this animal because number one, it's kind of like, uh, in their culture it's seen as, uh, someone who goes between the material world and the spiritual world. So the spiritual world is always kind of seen as like the clouds are up in the sky or whatever. I think it's different than that. But, um, the bird is kind of in between the two worlds, like a mediator. But then it's its efficiency and its playfulness that gets it places. I love that. So it won't even freaking go down and get a bite of eat to eat down here, and it can see these things from like 2 miles away. They have like razor eyes. But it won't drop down to something if it knows it can't catch a thermal out, because they'll go down and eat this thing like— yeah, and they'll put on too much weight, they can't take off. You only make that mistake once, dude. That's classic.

These animals are smart.

Yeah, they're really cool animals, but they're efficient because they're big and they had to learn to be efficient. And so now I'm big and I have to learn to be efficient.

Yeah, well, you seem to have found a way.

Yeah, I'm still figuring it out though. I mean, just like everyone else, you know, we're all on the path. And oftentimes when I'm running, the mind drifts to a lot of different stuff, but efficiency is a big thing. And it's cool because that's what ultra running really is all about. It's not about how much weight can you move in the gym. I mean, you need to have a strong, durable body, and I think you can get it in the gym better than you can get it out here. Um, but you need to be as efficient— you need to use your power like wisely and efficiently.

So what is that way to become a more efficient runner?

I mean, I think there's a lot of different ways to look at it. Nutrition is a big part of it. You know, you got to freaking have the right building blocks inside of you to make it work the right way, you know? So you got to have— again, according to your own constitution, you got to be completely glucose fueled, which interesting enough, being bigger, you can hold more glucose. So I would say it's definitely a disadvantage being big and running in the mountains. But there are some advantages, and the amount of glucose you can hold in your body and the amount of water you can hold in your body is an advantage in some ways. Now, how about putting an extra 20-pound weight vest on and catching your— your quad is catching that every single time, and you're dropping 10,000 feet of vert like that? Like, that's going to take an impact toll. So You know, it's not like being super big, you have all this extra and it's all good. It's, it's not good most of the time, but it's a fine, it's a fine line. A few positives where you can hold some more water and have some more fuel on board. But I think trying, for me, a lot of it now is trying to remember how to be light on my feet. Because when I was 137 pounds, it— you don't have to try to be like, yeah, you just are like, you just are the feather. But now I'm like, pretend like you're the feather, even though I don't feel like a feather anymore. I feel like heavy underfoot. Um, so a lot of that is like preserving power in your legs, having like good return off the ground. So I'm working a lot on jump roping.

I just wanted to say, literally, like when I felt like I needed to be lighter on feet, jump roping helped. It's the one.

I think it's the best. I think it's one of the— there's a lot of pliés, there's a lot of different stuff you can do. But like, for example, Um, an athlete, a former athlete that used to coach, he comes over and we'll do the SkiErg, and we'll do— he'll do 250 on it. So that takes about a minute, give or take. And while he's doing that, I'd be like jump roping, and then we switch. Jump roping is tiring too, man.

Even just 1 minute of jump roping, it tires you out.

Yeah, I usually do it as part of my warm-up. And yeah, every time, like even 30 seconds of like vigorous— you're I'm like, am I out of shape?

Yeah, yeah, seriously, seriously. Oh, I did a—

I did an Instagram collab with, uh, this girl. I'm blanking on her name right now. I'm sorry, I forget your name, but she was like world champion jump roper.

Oh, that is— she was brutal.

She was unbelievable, dude. The stuff she could do was— and she made it look easy.

Yeah, they're like just dancing, right?

She's like, she's like skipping and like doing like 6 times around in one jump.

Funny enough, I got into jump roping for a while. It was a few years back, and instantly what I did was Google, how long is the jump roping world record? And I was like, oh, never mind. It's brutal. I don't remember what it was. It was many, many hours. It's like an ultra of jump roping.

I want to see a picture of their lower legs, their calves. And actually, you got to be careful with jump roping, though. Like maybe this plate— Sarah had like a lower leg something that came because I was like telling her how great jump roping was, how much I was like doing it, and I was just like— I forget how long I told her to do it for, but it doesn't seem like a long time. It was like 2 minutes or something.

Just go for 15 minutes, honey.

Well, yeah, I used to have my, my athletes, I'd do 5 minutes. That's so long to be jumping. I'd never jump for 5 minutes anymore. But now what I do is I like doing— I do 100 So I'm just warming up, you know, do 100 double. But I think the, the perfect one for runners to do is the single leg jump because you're practicing loading that leg single leg every time and you have to fix imbalances in your body as you're doing that.

That's a great one. Oh, I love—

so I do 100 double and then 10 on the right, 10 on the left, just go back and forth for 100. And then I try to do 100 high knee ones, but I usually don't get there.

Yeah, those are, those are good. The other one I liked a lot was like a 4-box, like just with crayon on the ground, like basically 4 and like just single leg jumping in each of the boxes. Yeah. So you kind of have a few different angles there.

So I think jumping is like the thing that you don't want to do as you get older that you really need to keep doing because otherwise you feel like a bag of potatoes.

Like you literally like kind of lose that springy ankles. Yeah. And like, yeah.

And then you go to the track, like I was out at the track in Flagstaff today, and you're watching like, like people are 25 years old and at the prime of their track, and man, are they reacting to that ground quick. Pop. Everything is tight, you know. And then you feel yourself— like I was running on the track afterwards barefoot and just jogging around there, and I've just been watching these gazelles go around the track for the last like 2 hours, you know. You know, and I hop out there and I'm running and I'm like, dude, I feel so heavy afoot right now. I feel like I'm like collapsing into the grass. Classic.

The smell of this water, it is so strong. It makes my eyes teary.

But yet you drink more because it reminds you of Christmas.

Yeah. All right. Last question. And then we're going to wrap this up because we got to Eat some food and go to the bathroom. We're going to get to bed early too, because I think we're waking up at like 2:30 to run the canyon. So last question to make it applicable. So there's some takeaways for the recreational runners looking to improve, wanting to become a stronger, healthier, happier runner, wanting to implement some strength potentially. Do you have any high-level thoughts or any closing thoughts besides drinking mint water?

I mean, try the peppermint water out. We're getting mixed results. We can't even tell what's happening over here. So put your comment below what you think of peppermint extract water, whether or not it works. We'll hold a poll. Um, but before you do that, go for your run and take a mental note of everything that you feel in your body that's a little bit off. So you know how like sometimes you're like, dude, my hip's kind of hurting? Well, pay attention exactly like when does it start hurting during the run. What causes it to hurt? What's contributing to it? And then try tweaking stuff with your form to see if you can make it— the, the pain or discomfort or the feeling off, like things are off— see if you can tweak it. And then if you can't, think about what exercise could I do in the gym, or better yet, what, what muscle do I need to strengthen to correct this imbalance that I'm experiencing in my body right now? So this is what I do when I go out running a lot. I'm like, okay, take an inventory. What's wrong? And I'm making mental notes. Sometimes I'll record voice memos while I'm out. I'll be running in the mountains in the dark at like 2 AM. I'm like, right now my right hip flexor is getting a little bit tight. I think it's coming from an ab exercise that I did yesterday, you know? And I'm like, remind— because when at the end of 20 whatever hours, you're not going to remember that. You think you will, but Well, so I take little voice memos sometimes, but just take an inventory of like, what is off and what do I need to do to correct it in the gym? And then when you go to the gym, start with those things so that next time you go out running, you're feeling more in balance. Because injuries come as a result of you with your own particular measurements and physiology moving in a balanced, proper way. And only you can feel. I mean, you can see it. People who are good of eye, they could get you on a treadmill and be like, look, like he's— yeah, he's like protecting this, he's trying to get around this. But you got to be like really good to see stuff like that. But you, when you're the one running, you know better than anyone else, like, dude, this hip is not feeling great.

So honest awareness and then somewhat journaling probably as part of this, and just to start start paying attention to it and then, yeah, taking action.

And now it's easier than ever too to pull on things like AI, like be like, my right hip was hurting when I was running, and then it starts asking you questions. Yeah, you know, and then it can help you figure— I mean, it's not, it's not ideal or anything. I still think, you know, obviously expert opinion is the best, but it can go a long ways in helping you figure out, okay, Hey, right hip is hurting. It's probably coming from this. And then you could ask it, what are the best exercises to correct this problem? And how often should I do these exercises? And pretty soon you have like a plan that you just don't need, you know.

Awesome. Ryan, thank you so much. That was a wild conversation that went in a variety of different ways.

The first time you have an interview in the pooper, the conversation goes everywhere. Well, thanks a lot.

And we'll run more miles tomorrow. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening. That was such a blast to record. I had no idea where that conversation was going to go, but I was genuinely interested in some of the questions that I asked. And we definitely went from left to right with plenty of laughs in between. I would love to hear from you. What was your favorite lesson, takeaway, or quote from this conversation? Ryan Hall has a chapter in my book Running Breakthroughs on page 95 to page 100, and he shares a variety of different additional insight about strength training in there. You can find it through my website florisgierman.com or on Amazon worldwide. To learn more about our Personal Best Running Club, the online community and coaching program, check out pbprogram.com. Incredible to watch all of the different breakthroughs that members are experiencing in their running and life. Next week, I'm sitting down with Sarah Hall, who also shared a tremendous amount of insights about her running journey, about advice to recreational runners to improve, and several other unexpected angles. Can't wait to share that with you. Have fun out there on your runs. Bye now.