#40: Heart Rate Training, Speedwork and Running Volume with Floris Gierman

focus some more time on your actual recovery, because during recovery is where the real adaptations of training happens. That is not, not during the stress that you're putting on your body. And I think too many people forget about that. And that's why I like this more holistic training approach more. It's not just looking at the running component, but looking at the stress levels, the recovery, the sleep, the nutrition, the hydration, all of these other elements that come into place of becoming an overall healthier athlete. I focus more on my time off feet. And eventually, once your fat burning is under control, once your nutrition is under control, once your mindset is under control and you're actually healthy, the speed will follow. But I think too many people focus on the end result, the speed, without having some of these other elements in place there. Hello there.

My name is Floris Gierman and welcome to another episode of The Extra Mileage Show. On this podcast, I speak with different guests about ways to become a stronger, healthier, and happier runner. I actually just came back from 3 days of running and hiking around Zion National Park. What an absolutely incredible place that is. If you ever make it to Utah, I can highly recommend this place to run and to hike. It has been really awesome to hear all the positive feedback on several of the last podcast episodes. It really means a lot to me. 2 more episodes are coming up soon with Nate Helming from The Run Experience and with Tony Prezek Gibson from Endurance Planet Podcast. Today is going to be a little bit of a different show. I visit the Running and Fitness Podcast with Raj for me to be a guest on his show. Normally I'm the one interviewing, but this time the tables were turned. We discuss heart rate training, speed work, minimum amount of hours for athletes to improve. We talk about strength training, recovery, nutrition, nutrition, and much more. Raj is located in Mumbai, India, and he has hosted a variety of great guests in the endurance space. You can subscribe to the Running and Fitness with Raj podcast on all of the major platforms. See also the links in the show description. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Raj.

Our guest today is Floris Gierman from California. Floris is an outstanding runner with a personal best timing of 2 hours and 44 minutes in the marathon., and he's an accomplished coach as well. Over the last several years, Floris has both followed and also has been a big advocate of low heart rate training to improve your endurance. He has an excellent podcast and YouTube channel called Extramilist, and he also has a website, extramilist.com, where you can find his training programs, podcasts, and other materials. Personally, I've been following Floris over the last few years, and I have incorporated many techniques that he talks about. And just to name a couple, like training at low heart rate as much as possible. Nasal breathing is another example I can talk about. So welcome to the show, Floris.

Thank you very much for having me.

I'm honored to be here on the show. Delighted, Floris. So, uh, can you tell the listeners a little bit of your athletic background as well as, uh, you know, how you progressed and then obviously a bit about your coaching, uh, which we will get into in greater detail, uh, a little later in the show.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to. So my name is Floris Gierman. I'm 38 years old and actually grew up in Holland. So in the Netherlands, just outside of Amsterdam, lived there until my early twenties. And then I moved over to Los Angeles and I've been here for about 16 years now. And when I grew up, I was really into playing tennis and into skateboarding. And I was only doing some running at that time. I wasn't really running that much. Then eventually in 2007, I decided I want to run my first marathon. I didn't really know what I was doing, so I was training for it, but it was pretty inconsistent. I really didn't follow a plan or anything, and I went out there on race day and I bonked really hard, like around mile 20, so about 32K in. I really hit that wall and I thought I was going to die, and I felt like I'm never going to do that again. Then I took a break from running for several years again, and then I kind of started getting out of shape. But then once my wife was pregnant from our first child, so in, in 2013, I was like, I don't want to be an out of shape dad. And it really motivated me to get back into running again. I did notice I had joy in doing it initially. And then I was like, I kind of want to get back to that feeling again. And so I started training, but this time I went about it a little bit more differently. So I joined a running group. That was really helpful and motivational. And I also started learning more from different coaches. So I have my own running coach through that running group. And I also started listening to a lot of different running podcasts, just like the podcast that you're listening to right now. And so basically purely to educate myself more on the different types of running, the different types of training, because I felt there had to be a different type of training that didn't feel so miserable because I saw a lot of people around me actually running quite comfortable. And I wasn't at that time, especially when what I remembered from the previous marathon. Eventually I started listening to a Trail Runner Nation podcast, and although this is focused on trail running, there was a lot of great advice about road running on there as well. And there was a podcast with Dr. Phil Maffetone, and that really clicked with me. This was the first time that I was like, this sounds very interesting. I'm gonna experiment with some of the things that he mentioned. And two of the key things that stood out here was one, the importance of low heart rate workouts. And I can talk in much more detail about this later. And the second was improving your nutrition. So really you are feeling like basically what you're putting in your body. So much more cutting out some of the junk food and increasing your real nutritional natural food intake. And when I started experimenting with this, so instead of always running at a high heart rate, I started slowing down my pace significantly. All of a sudden I started noticing that I started getting some more joy in my workouts. I finished a workout and had energy left in the tank and it started improving quite well. Actually, I started to have more joy in my workouts. I truly, like, all of a sudden it wasn't that no pain, no gain mentality, like pushing yourself to the brink of like not being able to go further or throwing up to like finishing the workout of feeling like you could do that workout again and being able to recover faster.. And so throughout this process, in a relatively short period of time, probably about 4 or 5 months, I was able to lose about 30 pounds. So 15 kilos. And then like, so the first marathon that I ran in 2007 was a 4 hours and 11 marathon. And when I ran my next marathon, just after one training cycle, I was able to run it in 2 hours and 55 minutes.

So I shaved off like that.

An incredible jump. Yeah. So that was like an improvement of about 76 minutes just from one marathon to another. And what I did, I actually wrote down some of my experience, um, in a blog post on my website. And this kind of kickstarted my blog, theextramileist.com. And I can actually send you a link to this as well. Um, and that article just explained my journey of the different things, the different changes that I've made throughout my training. And what I noticed is this didn't just help myself, but some other people around me in my running group started improving as well by implementing some of these different things that I talked about. And some of the strangers from online who have read my blog posts actually reached out and they were like, hey, I've started to play around with this and I'm really starting to notice improvements. And so that kind of motivated me to start writing some more too on the Extra Mileage website. And then I just kept training this way. So I ended up seeing my actual, my running pace at the same heart rate kept improving further and further. So with that 2:55 marathon, I had qualified for the Boston Marathon, which has been a dream at that point to run that. And then my next marathon after that, I shaved off another like 10, 11 minutes. So I ran the next marathon in 2 hours, 44 minutes there. And that was in very stormy weather with a lot of like headwind, like 20, 30 miles an hour headwind.. And then from there on, I really got the running bug. So I started doing a lot of even ultra races, started getting into that from 50Ks to 50-mile races. I did my first 50-mile race and I got 3rd place in that. So that got me really excited again. Then started running my first 100-mile solo race. This was like an unsupported run from my house all the way to San Diego. And I ran that in about 17 hours, 45 minutes. And the fun thing is I just kept documenting all of these different things. So I brought a little GoPro video on my 100-mile run and I just filmed while I was talking to put the video on YouTube. Didn't expect much of it. And now that video has got about 100,000 views already. And it's been pretty fun to like, I've just been talking about this low heart rate journey and for what some of the things have been for me. What I've noticed. And I just kept kind of talking about it and putting some videos out there. Like another video I put out there was, I'm just talking into a GoPro saying like, oh, I'm going to run a sub-3-hour marathon and I'm going to bring you along the ride and I'll share some marathon running tips. And I did that and I ended up running the marathon in 2 hours, 57 minutes while sharing some of these different running tips. And so from there I ended up getting a lot of different questions actually. So like, hey, can you help me improve my marathon times? Can you coach me? Can you? And I simply like, it was exciting for me, but it would also take me a lot of time. So what I did, I started the Next Mile Facebook group where I said like, ah, anyone who has questions, like join the Facebook group and I will answer some questions. And I know there's other people who like this approach and everyone can learn from each other. And so that group over the years has grown to about 4,000 people in that group. Um, and then eventually, like after I kept getting more questions about the coaching program, I was like, you know what, I'm going to develop a program that I feel is right. So I developed an online coaching program focused on the marathon distance and focused on the 5K to half marathon too. So we have two different programs and that's all based on the different fundamentals, the different things that I've learned over the years and the different things that I've come across throughout my podcast from many different guests that I've talked to as well. Um, yeah, it's, it's been really fun to see it across the board evolve right now. What started as a little experiment just has grown over the years and now In our coaching programs, we have runners from about 40 different countries around the world, all talking about all of the different breakthroughs that they're experiencing and how much more joy they're getting out of their workouts and all of a sudden not having the injuries that they used to have and not having that burned out feeling. And so, yeah, it's been a really fulfilling journey. And I honestly think we're just getting started with this right now.

No, I agree. And in fact, you know, all the resources that you mentioned, like your YouTube channel, your podcast, uh, your Facebook group I am part of. And it's such an enriching community, right? I mean, other— you know, it's not just, just you sharing your personal experiences, but in the Facebook group, for example, others share it as well, including the highs and the lows. So it's all not rah-rah and, you know, everything worked out well, but people share their frustration. So it's, it's absolutely fantastic work. Now, you touched upon two aspects. One is low heart rate training, and the other is nutrition. So let's take this, uh, one, one at a time. What are some of the key aspects of low heart rate training?

So there's, there's basically, I think it would be good to take a little bit of a step back over here because I think the main aspects here from low heart rate training is you try to, for a period of at least 3 months, to run all of your workouts at a low heart rate training. So you're trying to avoid some of these higher intensity workouts, some of the speed work, some of the faster finish workouts. And during this period, you really want to focus on improving your fat burning abilities. So your ability to use body fat as an energy source. So there are two main energy sources for endurance sports, and this is sugar. So the glucose, and then there's the stored body fat as well. And the thing is you only have a limited amount of sugar, like glucose available in your body. Whereas like you have an unlimited amount of stored body fat available for hundreds and hundreds of miles, if you are able to tap into that well. So many athletes, they train at a heart rate that is much higher than what their current fitness level is. And they also constantly use that sugar, that glucose as an energy source. And they never really developed that ability to use body fat for energy. And so what you will notice is those athletes who have poor fat burning abilities and who go out there and race hard on race day, they will get into trouble around the wall. So around 30K into a marathon, where they simply don't have enough energy and you can only take in so many gels, so much calories for, for that, uh, difference to make up for that. And so there are like, I kind of want to take a little bit of a step back here because there are many different ways that you could calculate, like, so what should that heart rate be to be working out in, right? So you can go to a medical lab and you can get like either a lactate threshold test or a gas expel test done. The thing is, some of these tests are pretty pricey. They can be, let's say, about $200 here at some of the labs in the US. Also, with some of those tests, you actually have to go out and you gradually increase your running speed and your running intensity. The thing is, for some athletes, they simply are pretty injury-prone. And for some of those athletes to go out and to give an all-out effort it could really be dangerous for them. And they might actually like get certain injuries that they could have avoided if they wouldn't have ran to that level. Right. The other thing I've noticed with some of the lab tests is sometimes people are somewhat nervous to go into that. Like recently I got someone's lab test results and he said, yeah, here's my lab test. And I looked at it and his resting heart rate on the test was already 100 beats a minute. And I asked him like, is that normal for you? And he's like, no, normally I'm at around 50. And I'm like, so look how skewed some of that data is going to be if you're nervous going into one of these tests.

Right.

It's not always a natural way of running on a treadmill, getting poked in your finger every 5 minutes. Some people are just, what are you scared of needles? Or you just feel some nerves or just not used to it. Right. I mean, yeah. And I've personally noticed that as well, that when I do some of these lactate threshold or like some of these, yeah. Uh, LT tests. In a medical lab, all of a sudden I do notice my heart rate is already higher than it normally would be when I'm running relaxed outside. So there's different variables. I think a medical test is a good way for one data source, but I think it is good to start looking at a few other data sources as well. So there are many different formulas available that you can use. The one formula that I've, I've experimented with a lot has been Dr. Phil Maffetone's 180 formula. And so basically you subtract your age from 180. So for example, I'm 38. So you take 180 minus 38 is 142. And from there, you modify this based on your health and fitness background. So for example, if you have more than 2 colds a year, you subtract 5 beats. If you have trained more than 2 years consistently without any injuries and you have actually improved in your MEF test, you can add 5. But let's say for the simplicity of things, the number is 142, right? So your training zone is 142 is the high end, and then 10 beats below it is the low end. So 132 to 142 would be your training zone. And so you basically aim for at least 3 months of working out in that training zone. And many athletes notice that they have to de-stress first, like they, they, but they are able to run a bit more consistent. They're able to improve their fat burning ability and you start seeing your pace actually improve at the same heart rate. And that's very fascinating. So for example, for me, the first month when I started out, like I used to do all of my runs pretty fast and that used to be like, ah, fast breathing. I would finish my run, be out of energy. All of a sudden when I had to stick to this lower heart rate zone, I noticed for me, I had to slow down to, let's say, an 8:30 minute mile. So a 5:17 minute per kilometer. The thing is I trained at low heart rate for 4 weeks. Then I did another test on a track, um, to see what my math pace was. And all of a sudden that had improved by about 19 seconds per kilometer. So about 30 seconds per mile. So all of a sudden at the exact same heart rate, I started running faster. And so you, I used basically less energy to be running the same effort or yeah, running faster at the same heart rate. And so I kept training initially at low heart rate. And then after a while I started implementing some speed work, but we can talk about speed work later. Uh, but after 18 months I was able to see improvements of all of a sudden my Maff pace became 6 minutes and 11 seconds. So that's like a 3, 3 minutes 51 per kilometer. And so that's quite an improvement. Yeah. And that is at the same heart rate. So go figure, all of a sudden you can go out and run at a relative easy effort and you can still like, uh, be able to comfortably talk and yet still your pace has improved significantly. And so, so there is absolutely a time and place for speed work in this. Um, and I think that's kind of a misunderstanding of this training approach. People think like, ah, it's just low heart rate training. How about race day? How about, um, like just being familiar with running at a faster pace? So after about 3 months, or when you start noticing you're no longer improving, then there's absolutely time and place to do some speed work. So this can be 1 to 2 times a week that you start adding in some speed work. And whether that is 400 repeats on track, 800 repeats during a mile, or doing it more time-based, whether you do higher intensity for 5 minutes or 8 minutes, or you do more of a speed play fartlek, whether you do that on the road or whether you do that on the hills, there's a lot of different options for speed work that you can, can add in there. But, but once again, I do absolutely think too many people feel that you need to add in a lot of speed work to become faster. And I think the main takeaway message from this training approach is like, if you do an extended period of time of actually cutting out the speed work to improve your fat burning, and then when your body is stronger, when your body is— the fat burning abilities has improved and actually your joints are stronger, your muscles, your ligaments, your tendons, your bones, once they can handle the actual increased training stress, then you can start adding in some speed work, but not the other way around.

And typically, uh, it takes about what, 3 to 4 months for an athlete to build this good base?

Yes. And this to some extent depends because obviously every athlete is different. I have, I have noticed that athletes who are a little bit older, let's say in their 50s, 60s, 70s, they can improve much longer aerobically without even doing any speed work than younger athletes. I've noticed athletes in their, let's say, 20s or 30s. They might hit that plateau a little bit earlier. So maybe after 8 weeks, 10 weeks, they start plateauing and they're no longer improving their actual math base. And yes, absolutely. If at that point you feel like you haven't had injuries, you feel your energy levels are good, you're excited to add some speed work in, absolutely go for it. Start adding in some speed work, like ease into it. Like don't right away go all out for like an hour and a half speed work. No, like start out with All right, you first do some drills, you start doing some faster pickups, you do like a minute of fartleks, and then gradually over time, you can start increasing that a little bit more, um, and start, start playing around with that.

So, uh, let me come to some of the frustrations which even, uh, you know, I feel, because the one obvious one is, uh, people who have been till then running at a much faster pace I mean, just to give you a personal example, the last marathon I ran, I ran at 7 minutes and, you know, 35-second per mile pace. Now, obviously, that was run in, you know, much cooler conditions in Chicago. I am right now training in Mumbai, which is much warmer, more humid. All of that is there. But my MAF pace is like 10 and a half minutes. And, you know, I So, you know, in my case, it's more like, let's say, 10 minutes and 30 seconds per mile. And I take a couple of walk breaks. You know, I'm not egoistic about it, but it is a frustration, right? I mean, you think about— think back, you do— you are doing most of your runs at 3 minutes just to meet the MAF target. So how do you— how do you tackle this, both from the training perspective as well as the mental frustration? And I'm sure I'm not the first person asking this question.

It is the number one question that comes up and it is the number one thing most athletes have so familiarized themselves with. This is my running pace and this is what is my normal running pace. And their body and mind just feel like that is what they should be running at. And when all of a sudden you start slowing down significantly by several minutes per mile, per kilometer, Yes, you feel like you're not moving at all, or you feel like you're going on a very slow shuffle, or you feel your running form might not be accurate, or you have to take walk breaks to keep your heart rate within your max zone. Absolutely, it's very normal that some of these challenges come into play. And then especially once you start adding in elements like heat, humidity, hills, altitude, wind, any of these can come into play that make it additionally These are added stresses that will increase your heart rate as well. Right. And so I think like to, to talk through this for a little bit, the first thing to keep in mind, I think, is learning to slow down and actually learning to find some enjoyment in slowing down because so many people are focused on running pace and running distance. How far can I run in this time? What is my actual running pace? Whereas I would say is stop looking at that for a while. Just put in your mind, like, I'm going to take a time right now to actually invest in my longer-term health and my longer-term aerobic development. Right. It's a short-term investment in longer-term rewards because this base is not going to go away either. Like, you're going to be able to build on top of that even for coming seasons again. And so this is where I would almost say, like, leave the ego at the door. Like, don't be afraid to post slower times on Strava. Don't be afraid to get passed on the bike path by other runners because that's just a mental switch. You almost have to overcome that ego. However, you know that you can run faster, but on purpose you're almost holding back for a bit so that you can stimulate your fat burning systems more. And this is also where I think start looking at even on your watch, instead of having your pace on there and having your distance on there, just put your heart rate on there. And put a heart rate alarm at the max of your heart rate zone just so you don't have to continuously keep looking at your watch. But once you hear the watch beep or vibrate, you just slow down your pace a little bit that way, or you take a walk break. And I think eventually, once you start becoming more aware of your surroundings too, once you start focusing more on— I'm going outside, I'm more present, I'm listening to my breathing, I'm listening to my environment, I'm listening to my footsteps on the ground instead of always listening to music. You actually start listening to your body more. And all of a sudden you start to become much more in tune with your body. And I think we live in this 24/7 society where everyone is on the phone all the time, everyone is on their computer all the time, everyone is always busy, that we're not used to slowing down, not just in the running, but even in our regular daily life. And I think just by able— being able to slow down a bit, you become more present, more aware, and you can find joy in that as well.. And also keep in mind, you're not alone in this. Many other people experience this as well, and this is temporary. Your pace is going to improve once your fat burning abilities start improving.

And so clearly, I mean, I'm seeing obviously the benefits of that already, and I'm quite confident that, you know, when the weather cools down later in the year and the early part of the year, early part of next year, uh, you know, for the same effort, uh, A, I will have had more improvement because I will be putting in a, more months of work, and b, the conditions, the external conditions will be, you know, more conducive to slightly faster pace. So, you know, that's a very valid point, which leads to my next question. See, you, you touched upon this, you know, aspect of not focusing on your pace or distance. So initially, is it better to think in terms of the number of hours you do the math training, like you know, just go out and run for 45 minutes or 1 hour. That's it. Forget your distance, forget your pace. Is it— and related to that is the question, is there a minimum number of hours per week, for example, that you need to train at MAF for it to actually have an impact?

These are, these are great questions. And like, I'll start out with the first one. As far as for your mind, often knows like, ah, I have this much time available to train. And so when, let's say you have 45 minutes available and then you have something else to do, it's, it's easier for you to go out and dedicate your mind towards 45 minutes versus I'm going to go outside and I'm going to run 6 miles, 6 miles or 10K or whatever you might set your mind to. If, if you all of a sudden have to slow down your pace and you start getting frustrated by running slower, then all of a sudden the distance might take longer or your, your, your mind starts playing different games with you versus like, whether I go outside, like even yesterday I went for an hour, like last night I went for an hour run and I knew I had about an hour available to run and I went to the trails and that it, you never know what the pace is going to be. Like there's heat involved, there's hills involved. There's like different rollers. Like we came across some wildlife. We ended up taking some photos. When you take the speed out of the equation, all of a sudden, like, it is much more calming on the mind. It's almost like a bit of a switch that way. Um, so yeah, that's why I absolutely love looking more at the hours and the time that way versus actual distance. And that's the same with speed. I focus more on my time off feet. And eventually, once your fat burning is under control, once your nutrition is under control, once your mindset is under control and you're actually healthy, The speed will follow, but I think too many people focus on the end result, the speed, without having some of these other elements in place there. And then going to your second question about, uh, is there a minimum amount of hours per week? That really, really depends because some, some people I've heard them say like, oh, you need a minimum of 6 hours per week for MAF to be successful. I would have to disagree with that because I see some people who are just getting into running who for them, 2 hours a week might be the maximum that they're able to do at this point.

Right.

And so for them, I would say if you go out 4 times a week for 30 minutes and you're on your feet for 30 minutes and you start doing that consistently, that right there is already a beginning stepping stone. And from there on, if you can start building it up more, people within 4 times, 30 minutes can already start seeing improvements. But it is all about patience, consistency, and not thinking about how am I going to, how's my pace improving in 2 weeks? No, start thinking a little bit further out. Start thinking 2 months out, 3 months out, 6 months out. But with that consistency and patience, improvements will start happening. And yes, I will also say like, see what your, what your body is able to handle and how much time you can dedicate to running as well. For some people who have now kids at home doing homeschooling and who have a full-time job, who are working now remote because of COVID and whatnot, they might be able to run less than some people who don't have kids, who have an easier work setup or a more flexible schedule. And so if, if you're putting your entire schedule always full of running hours and you don't allow enough time to de-stress, enough time to sleep and whatnot, it's not going to be beneficial there either. I see some, some people coming into the Extra Mile Facebook group who are like, I'm not progressing. And I look at their training and they're literally running 12 hours a week. Let's say like almost every day for an hour and a half or 2 hours, and they're not improving. Right. My advice would actually be run less, work out less, and focus some more time on your actual recovery. Because during recovery is where the real adaptations of training happens. That is not during the stress that you're putting on your body. And I think too many people forget about that. And that's why I like this more holistic training approach more. It's not just looking at the running component, but looking at the stress levels, the recovery, the sleep, the nutrition, the hydration, all of these other elements that come into place of becoming an overall healthier athlete.

So in terms of the progress in MAF training, you know, you mentioned the fact that, uh, you put in consistent work, take care of the other externalities like, you know, getting adequate sleep, adequate rest, and controlling other stresses in life, most athletes should see progress. Now, how do you measure progress? Is it by means of a monthly test which you do either on the track or a road? What, what, what would you advise?

How can I test my progress? So yeah, there's a few different ways that you can can test progress. I think one data point that is very easy to measure on a consistent basis is called the Maff test. And I will take zero credit for this. This was all Dr. Phil Maffetone who came up with this. And I've, I've started using it myself and I've seen many other people use it. So what you do is ideally you go to a running track, um, and you do a warmup of let's say 15 to 20 minutes. And from there on, you start measuring if you run X amount of laps, what is your time going to be? So you can either go to a running track and run for, let's say, 5 miles or 8 kilometers, and every mile or kilometer, take your time splits. Or if you're— if that is too much for you at that stage, you can also go for, let's say, 2 miles or 3 kilometers or 3 miles, 5 kilometers. And you take your actual splits. And so what you will notice is the first mile is typically the fastest. Yes. And after that, your pace is going to get a little bit slower at the same heart rate. So you want to run as close to the top of your MAF number. So earlier we talked about, for me, my MAF number is 132 to 142. And so you would want to do a MAF test as close as possible to that 142, not really going over that. And then so you will see the first mile, you're, let's say, uh, an 8-minute per mile. The next mile you might be an 8:30 minute or like an 8:20 minute. And it just slows down every mile. What you will notice though, is over time, your math tests should start showing improvements. So you should start becoming faster, like your average of the 5 miles or 8 kilometers, or your first mile per kilometer should start getting faster., as you do these tests on a monthly basis. And what, like, once you start noticing like, hey, I'm no longer improving, then you can ask yourself the question, like, is there something going on in my life right now? Do I have really high stress levels? Is it very hot right now? Is it more humid than normal? Is there other external factors that can cause something to have an upcoming cold, to have a recent illness? All of those factors could actually impact your overall MAF pace. If all of those are under control and you don't feel it's that, it might actually be time for you to start adding in some speed work because after a longer time of low heart rate training, there's absolutely a time and place to add that speed work so that you can kickstart your engine again, almost to get to that next level.

Understood. Okay. Now this is very, very useful and you advocate doing this MAF test if possible.

Every 1 month, right? Yes. The main reason why, why 1 month is good, I do see quite a few people getting data obsessed and they would get out there every week and they will start doing a math test and they get frustrated once they don't see improvements on a weekly basis. Whereas like at least allow some time in between and some, some days you just have better days than other days. So don't, don't stress out if 1 week is going to be different than another week, So that's why it's better to kind of look over a bit of a longer period of time.

Okay, now, uh, what about other aspects of training, like strength training, uh, for example? Uh, where do you incorporate this? Uh, because I've heard some athletes, uh, talk about strength training in fact acting as a detriment to MAF training. I mean, do you agree with that, or is there a time and place for strength training as well?

I think there's absolutely a time and place for strength training. Um, and in particular, I do think you have to be aware of what type of strength training you do and to what extent, to what intensity as well. Sometimes I see people who are trying a certain training approach of low heart rate, yet they're doing CrossFit 5 times a week. With CrossFit, you just get your heart rate up really high. You get high cortisol stress hormones, which is all good and well, but it's counterproductive to what we're trying to accomplish here. And so there's still ways to integrate strength training without pushing your body all the way into that red max zone all the time. So I'm, I'm actually a big proponent of doing more sort of strength training throughout the day. So I have a kettlebell laying around here, I have a pull-up bar, and I can just do some strength training throughout the day. And I don't necessarily want to bulk up, but it does still maintain and strengthen your muscles. Other, other ways for me are like right now I'm standing behind a standing desk. So for 10 hours a day, I'm standing by the standing desk and I go between standing on a standing desk and sitting down on the ground. And I think that is really good mobility work as well, because I think strength training is one important component. Mobility and flexibility is another very important component as well. And you can integrate that very easily throughout the day. If instead of always sitting on your butt on a chair, you actually sit on the ground and then you stand up again behind a standing desk and then you move around. I think it's all about moving throughout the day as well versus being very stagnant. Because during, during running, the more flexible and the more mobile you are, like it definitely becomes easier for your body to move that way. Other ways of strength training that I really like is going on hikes or runs on steep trails. So for me, even last night when I did an hour in the hills, like, yeah, we ran for an hour and we did about, that was like 400 meters of gain throughout that hour. And we're walking a little bit and we're running a little bit. And like there's downhills, you can go really fast on the downhill. Your heart rate is still relatively low. You can go on the uphill and you can either, if you want to push it, your heart rate will shoot up and it's very easy to get your heart rate up without necessarily all the wear and tear on your body too.. And so I think there's, there's a lot of functionality of even to become a stronger roadrunner, do from time to time, do some trails, do some stairs, like mix things up a little bit.

Okay. And, uh, you use, uh, things like an ice bath and a sauna combination as well as meditation.

Can you talk to us a little bit about those?

Yes.

So, I mean, there is quite a few different benefits and advantages to sauna training. Um, as far as some of the things that I've noticed is it actually helps develop your sweat glands. So for me, if I go outside and run here in the summer in California, if I'm well heat adapted, my heart rate just stays a lot lower. Like if you truly look at where does your energy go to, two of the main things that it goes to, actually the number one thing it goes to is your body thermoregulation. It is not your muscles moving forward. That's number two. Where most of your energy goes through. So if you are able to be well adapted to both heat, and for me also cold during the winter months, I use less energy of cooling down my body and I can actually use more energy of my body moving forward. And so yes, a few— I have a sauna downstairs, um, and I have an ice bath next to it as well. And several times a week I would jump in there for about 45 minutes and I have an infrared sauna, so it doesn't go as high,, but it still ends up warming the body from within as well. And not only do I notice it becomes easier for me to run in the heat, it also becomes much easier for me, like, to get to a deeper sleep state as well. So if I do this about an hour and a half before bed or an hour before bed, when it's more of a calm down time, I do some meditation in the sauna and I might either jump in the ice bath or take a cold shower afterwards.

And within minutes, I'm in a deep sleep state as soon as I hit my pillow. Okay, so yeah, so that, that, that's really helping with your recovery as well, right? I mean, through the sleep as well as the benefits it gives this whole combination, which is an entirely, entirely, you know, separate podcast by itself, I'm sure. Let's just talk a little bit of around nutrition, please, because these are the two aspects at the beginning you talked about, and we went through a lot of detail on the training per se. But can you tell us what are some of the adaptations you have made and some of the basic principles that, that you advocate?

Yes. So I think a lot of people are actually eating like refined carbohydrates. And so the sugar, the processed flour, and that comes in many different ways. And I think too many people don't realize how much bad ingredients, how many bad ingredients are in so many of these processed foods. That once you start making some of these changes, once you start cutting out some of the breads, the pizzas, the, the, the pastas, like all of these different things that many athletes are carbohydrate intolerant where they actually notice some of the bloating happening or they might not digest that food properly. And it can add additional stress as well. And it can actually be blockers of some of your fat burning abilities. Um, when I started really getting into this, like in early 2013, I think the biggest impact for me was, yes, there was the low heart rate training, but for me it was really changing the nutrition around significantly. And all of a sudden, like my energy levels used to be all over the place. It used to be like right after lunch, I would notice I would have a dip in energy. And then around 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon, when I was in the office, I would feel like I had to have a coffee or I would fall asleep. And I would have frequent, like, cravings of food of like, I need to eat right now because my stomach is growling, or like almost a sugary jittery feeling of like, I need to eat. When I changed more towards like eating a little bit higher fat intake, I don't go crazy with it, but a little bit higher fat intake, even through like things like avocados or like like eating much more vegetables, nuts, some fruits, but eating much more unprocessed foods. All of a sudden. Yeah. Whole foods. Indeed. All of a sudden I started noticing the energy levels were much higher. All of a sudden I didn't have that wake up feeling and you feel like hungry. And all of a sudden I would go on a run, come back and don't have that feeling right away of feeling like you're starving kind of thing. And that made a big difference. So I think, this whole, like, nutrition plays a really big key role in this. There's no one size fits all though. And this is where I think experimentation comes into place as well. Cause I often see people talk about like, ah, low heart rate training, you have to eat high fat, low carbs, or you have to do ketogenic approach. So you have to, I will tell you, that's not the case. Like for some people they can get away with eating much less carbs than other people can and their body responds better to it. So I would say become aware of the signals of your body, start experimenting with some of these different things and see what your body responds to. Well, some people respond well to certain foods and other people will not. So it's just testing that. And I think writing down some of those things as well in a journal, I think is a very important element of this overall training journey. Not just what are you doing running-wise, but what are some of these other experiments you can do on the nutritional front, on the sleep front, On the stress management front, like writing down some of those things and starting to recognize patterns over time is very beneficial there.

Okay. What can you tell us about your Marathon PR program and the Extra Mile List website and other resources?

Yeah, so the Marathon PR program, we launched it about a year ago and like it really is an extension of what we have just talked about. So it's really for people who like this training approach, who are open to experimenting with different things. Here are all of a sudden a lot of different training schedules for, uh, if you want to finish your first marathon, if you want to run a sub-4-hour marathon, sub-3-hour marathon, all of these different schedules are in there for the base building phase, for like the higher intensity integrations, when to jump over from a base building phase to a higher intensity to the city phase. There's a lot of different videos. I think there's about 50 different videos in there. We have occasional Zoom calls where we get together and people from around the world are all sharing their experiences and their questions. And we have a private Facebook and Strava community. And so yeah, that's been really fun. That, that is either on the marathon distance or on the shorter, like the 5K to half marathon distance. And like I said earlier, I feel like we're just getting started with that. So those are like two different programs there. And then we had the extra mile group as well that like has so many different runners from around the world sharing their experiences and also encouraging each other. And, and like, like you said earlier, it's not just sharing all of their wins, but also some of their frustrations, some of their challenges. And I think that is what makes some of these communities so powerful, that surround yourself with like-minded people who have gone through certain things as well. And you feel like you're not alone. 'cause sometimes you might feel like I'm the only person in my running community trying this. And some people don't necessarily believe that this approach could work, but all of a sudden you're surrounded by hundreds of other athletes from around the world who are also sharing their journey and encouraging each other that way.

Absolutely. As I said earlier, you know, I have personally benefited and continue to benefit from these groups. I will put a link to all these resources in the show notes. So other than your resources, which you talked about, share with us some of the other material that you like, like books or other websites that you follow or podcasts or any other resources, YouTube channels for the listeners.

Yeah, I think there's, there's a few different ones that I, that I look at frequently and this is not necessarily always running related, but also very much mindset related, habits forming related and whatnot. One person that I recently am really into, his name is James Clear from Atomic Habits, and, or Atomic Habits, he wrote that book. I find it fascinating to see how he often talks about making small tweaks, but doing it consistently over time, ending up in really big results, like 6 months, 12 months, 18 months out. And I think it's so in line with our training approach here too. Too many people think, 1 month ahead, 2 months ahead, but start realizing that you can only accomplish so much in the short term. But like, if you're realistic what you can accomplish in the short term, but actually really set big goals in the long term. If you truly want to run high running goals, you can get there, but set those goals further out and gradually work your way towards that with patience, with consistency, with determination. So I think James Clear is really good at talking about some of those details. And then there's Minimalist Matt as well. I forgot his last name. Matt something else. If you punch in Minimalist Matt on YouTube, he has more than a million followers on YouTube or subscribers on YouTube, and he often talks about different habits forming, different habits creation. And I find his videos very beneficial, very educational to that extent.

Okay, I will link these as well.

And what's the best way to get in touch with you, Floris? I would say through, like, if there's any running-specific questions, I would say join the Extramile Facebook group and just post the question in there. There's many different runners from around the world, including India. There's many different runners from India in there. And so I'm looking in that group daily as well. I can only respond so much. There's more questions that I can't respond to there, but that's why it's such a great community. Um, and then there's the Extramilist website as well. That's extramilist.com. There's links to the different training programs. There's links to the YouTube channel, to the podcast, everything there.

And I think there is a contact form as well there, right? I mean, if somebody wants to directly send a message to you.

Yes, there's a contact form there. And every day I'm on Strava and the Floris Gierman as well.

That's probably most active on Strava and on YouTube. Okay, excellent. So I will obviously link, uh, link all of this. So thank you so much for your time, Floris. That's really appreciated. And thank you for all the great work you do. And, uh, you know, hopefully you will continue to help us runners and, you know, endurance athletes generally in the years to come.

Absolutely. It was a pleasure to be on the show.

Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for listening, and thank you Raj for letting me repost our conversation. All of the links from this episode number 40 are available at extramileless.com/podcast. To learn more about the training programs mentioned over here, check out marathonprprogram.com or 5ktohalfmarathon.com. That is the number 5ktohalfmarathon.com. Coming up soon is a new episode and video with Nate Helming from The Run Experience where we discuss detail running injuries, mobility, flexibility, and strength training, and so much more. This is really something that applies to everyone listening. You made it all the way to the end of the episode. Then I would just say have fun out there on your runs, and we'll see you on the next one.

Bye now.