#90: Dr Rangan ChatterJee | 6 Habits Every Runner Needs

I'm effortlessly running quicker times now. I'm not even trying, but my body's got more efficient. Go for a 10-minute run. Go for a 10-minute run and do that regularly. You'll build up very quickly. Whilst you're making that hot drink, could you do 10 squats, 10 lunges on each foot, and 10 calf raises? I promise you, if you do that for 7 days, you do that for a month every morning, your legs are going to be pretty strong. You will adapt very, very quickly. What I'd often find is in my Instagram DMs, people will say, Dr. Chetty, I'm really, really confused, okay? This expert said that's the right diet, and this other expert said this is the right diet. I don't know which expert to trust. So is it true that running is bad for your knees? I don't believe that is true. Eliud Kipchoge doesn't ignore a little niggle. You shouldn't also ignore a niggle.

Absolutely. The body will often whisper before it screams, and we gotta listen to those.

Some people become obsessed with the data. They can't function without it. They, they stop tuning into themselves at all. But I wonder, can I get really in tune with myself and start to feel when I'm on that inflection point? Listen, you've got to start becoming your own experts.

Welcome to the Extra Mileage Show. My name is Floris Gierman, and on this podcast, we explore different strategies and ideas to help runners become a strong stronger, healthier, and happier athlete. Today's guest is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. He is one of UK's most influential doctors. Over the past two decades, he has inspired countless people to transform their health through small, sustainable lifestyle changes. Dr. Chatterjee, he is also a runner, and I like that combination of having a doctor who actually runs. So he's definitely one of us, he understands us. He's also the host of one of the top-rated podcasts called Feel Better, Live More. And we have several different guests in common, such as Eliud Kipchoge and Laurens van Lingen. He has interviewed them as well. A lot of common ground that we have covered there. He is the author of 5 bestselling books, and he's coming out with a new book soon titled Make Change That Lasts. We're covering several different topics from that book in this conversation as well. We dive into strategies for creating lasting habits, overcoming challenges, and optimizing health, not just for runners, but but also as a whole individual. Before we dive in, I'm excited to share the launch of our monthly accountability challenges for all of our Personal Best Program members. Each month we'll dive into different topics, as in consistency in training, optimizing your sleep, implementing consistent strength training or mobility. All of these different topics we'll cover, we'll have the group accountability under the guidance of PB coaches with daily check-ins with other PB program members from around the world. If you would like To learn more, check out pbprogram.com. These are the letters pbprogram.com. See also the link in the description. This episode was brought to you by LMNT, a delicious electrolyte drink mix. You guys have probably heard me talk about LMNT quite a few times because I really do love the product and I use it every single day. Now that the colder months are here in the US and many other parts of the world, you can enjoy LMNT as a hot beverage as well. The Chocolate Madly is only available for a limited time when the temperatures drop. You can enjoy them on their own, you can mix them in with your coffee, or you can get creative with other recipes. Each box includes 10 chocolate raspberry, 10 chocolate chai, and 10 chocolate mint. For a limited time only, you can get a free sample pack with 8 different flavors when you go to drinkelementtea.com/flow. As always, Elements offers a no-questions-asked refund policy, so you can try it, and if you don't like it, you can get your money back. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Chatterjee. Welcome to the Extra Mileage Show. I'm glad that you're here.

Floris, I'm very excited to come on your show.

Absolutely. We just had a nice run over here.

Yeah.

That was wonderful. It's a good way to warm up into a conversation like this.

Yeah, it's great. We get to chat a bit, get to know each other, and certainly the California sun's helping my mood at the moment, that's for sure.

Nice, nice. You're coming out with a new book. Make Change That Last. So we have a lot of listeners on The Extra Mileage Show that are looking for ways to improve in their running. And sometimes when they're trying to go about making some changes with their habits, they might go pretty rigorous. They try to make pretty big changes at once. Yet sometimes you talk about the importance of actually taking small steps. Can you talk through that a little bit more?

Yeah. So look, a lot of your audience may not know, Floris, I've been a medical doctor for 23 years. Okay. So I've seen tens of thousands of patients and What I'm passionate about is this idea that 80 to 90% of what we see as doctors is in some way related to the way that we're living our lives. I'm not putting blame on people. I understand that life is difficult and many people struggle and there's all kinds of pressures on them. But nonetheless, the consequence of the way that we live means that many of us are getting sick. So a huge part of my job for many years with patients, but also with my public communications, was about how do you help people, whether they be runners or patients or whoever they are, how do you make changes in your life that actually last? Because the truth is that we can all make changes for a few weeks, maybe for a few months, but often they don't stick, right? Or often they're not made in a healthy way. And I kind of feel a lot of runners often make changes in not such a healthy way. What I've learned from seeing patients in all walks of life, in all kind of socioeconomic groups over the years, is that there's a few principles that tend to work most of the time and for most people. And the scientific evidence actually supports that as well. So I think if you want to bring a new behavior into your life, there's 2 or 3 things you need to think about. Okay? What I call the rules of creating healthy habits, right? What's rule number 1? Rule number 1 is you gotta make it easy. Now, many runners make their behaviors really, really difficult. Not all of them, but many of them. Why do you have to make things easy if you want to bring them into your life and make them long-term changes? It's to do with our motivation. Many people assume that motivation is what we need to create changes in our life that last. But it's not technically true because in the research they call this the motivation wave, right? Motivation goes up and motivation goes down. Now, if you make the new behavior that you want to do really difficult, you will do it when your motivation's high. Give you an example, the first 2 weeks of New Year.

I just want to say, like, you always see that at the beginning.

Yeah, everyone at the— on New Year's Day People wake up and they think, right, this year's gonna be different from every other year before. Why is it gonna be different? Why? Because we think it's gonna be different or we want it to be different. But often we're taking the same approach. And if we take the same approach as we took before, it's unlikely that we're gonna get a different outcome. So going back to the motivation wave, if you make a behavior really difficult, you will do it when your motivation's high. But when your motivation drops, as it always does for every single person, you will no longer do that behavior if it's difficult. And that's why making a new behavior easy tends to be, for many people, one of the secret ingredients of habit change. So that's rule number 1, make it easy. Rule number 2, which I think we need to follow, and again, I've seen this play out with patients so many times, Where do you put that new behavior into your life? Many of us think if we want it enough, it's gonna happen. And that can happen, right? Some people can make big change. I'll tell you who I've seen make big change in my career. If someone has had a really significant life experience, a divorce, a bereavement, a health issue, right? Yeah, I've seen sometimes overnight people can change their whole life starts. Unless you have that powerful reason behind you, it's very unlikely that this big change is going to stick, right? So going back to rule number 2, where are you putting that behavior in your life? Rule number 2 for me is what trigger are you using to actually do that behavior, right? So what do I mean? Let me make it really simple. Everything that we do in life, every human behavior requires a trigger., right? So for me to be here today with you in this room, meeting you, going for a run, recording with you, I needed a trigger. Now, a trigger could be my memory. Memory works. It's just the most unreliable trigger that exists. Okay. The next best trigger is like a reminder, like a Google Calendar notification. Ah, I, I said to Floris I was going to meet him today at this time. Okay. That works. That's great. But the very best trigger for a behavior as evidenced by the research, is when you stick on that behavior onto an existing habit. I do a 5-minute strength workout every single morning, and I've rarely missed a day in 5 years. And it's got nothing to do with motivation. It's simply because I have applied those 2 rules, right? I've made it easy. It only takes 5 minutes, right? If I said it had to take 20 minutes or half an hour, On some days, I would go, "I don't have time." So, by making it 5 minutes, I can never say, "I don't have time." But then the key thing is, where do I put that? Well, when I get up in the morning, one of the things I do pretty soon after I wake up is, in my pajamas, I go into my kitchen and I make coffee. That's a habit, right? A habit is an automatic behavior that you're doing without any conscious thoughts. I don't need my assistant to phone me at 5:30 and remind me to make coffee. I don't need a Google Calendar notification, right? And I'm, I'm illustrating this point to really land it because I think this has real relevance for all of us. Me making coffee is a habit. If I stick on my workout, what happens? I weigh out the coffee because I'm a bit of a coffee snob these days. Okay, good. And then I put a timer on for 5 minutes. In those 5 minutes, I don't go on Instagram, I don't go on email, I don't go on the news. I do a workout in my pajamas, and I've rarely missed a day for 5 years. Now, people will then often say, well, what's 5 minutes a day going to do? Well, let me tell you, 5 minutes a day does a huge amount. I'm not saying don't go to the gym, right? But for me, this is the equivalent of me toothbrushing. Right? We all brush our teeth, I hope, for 4 minutes a day. 2 minutes in the morning, 2 minutes in the evening. That wasn't a habit when we were 3 years old. We built it up over time. Our parents reminded us and kept saying, no, you have to go and brush your teeth. Now, as adults, we do it. It's easy. It's done at the same time every day. We don't have to think much. That's why it happens. And so I do the strength workout every day And I'll tell you how I can interplay this with running. For almost 5 years now, I've been working with this incredible movement coach called Helen Hall, who's been on my podcast several times, right? Helen has revolutionized the way that I run and frankly move.

Yeah, I've watched several of your conversations.

They were— she's amazing. She's like, you know, I know you've had another amazing guy, Laurence van Lingen, on this show who, you know, Laurence and Helen I think are, are very rare in the movement world. Like, they look at the whole body me holistically. I've also, like you, had Florence on my show, and I also do the flow rope each day since I met Florence. But often when I see Helen, I've got little exercises to do that I need at that moment in time to help my running. Now, she says to me often that, Rangan, you're one of the most, um, motivated clients, if you will, or people that I coach. She says so many people don't actually do the exercises. They go and spend the money, they go and see her, they do the whole assessment, but they don't come and do the exercises. And I imagine there's people watching right now who've been told by a running coach that if you do these things, it's gonna help you running, and they don't do them.

Or they might do it for 2 weeks and then fall off the wagon.

Yeah. And I bet, and my challenge to anyone listening right now would be, think about a behavior you've tried to bring into your life in the past, and then ask yourself, Did you follow those two rules? And I bet for most people, they didn't follow at least one of those rules, right? They really, really work. Toothbrushing, toothbrushing is the prime example. And I said there's three rules I like, okay? So the first rule was make it easy. Second rule was stick on the new behavior onto an existing habit. And there's, you know, there's many rules you can talk about, and these are all evidenced by research. But the third rule that I think about is have an environment around you that supports that behavior. Let's use that 5-minute strength workout example. I have a kettlebell and a dumbbell in my kitchen. Now, that's really important, right? This plays into rule 3, but also rule 1. I have made it so easy that I can barely give myself an excuse not to do it. Even if I have to move it out the way to go and put the kettle on, I'm still lifting it up. So By having it there, I'm visually being triggered by my environment every morning when I come down to the kitchen. I'm seeing it there, right? I would have to ignore it and go, "No, I'm not gonna do it today." And honestly, my wife a few years ago said, "Hey babe, listen, are you gonna leave that stuff in the kitchen?" And I said, "Hey babe, listen, if I put it in the garage or in the loft or in the cupboard, I'm never gonna pick it up. If we want to use it as a family, it has to be visible." So not only do I use it, She on occasion will pick it up, right? And also my kids, right? And this is the thing I'm proudest of the most, because as a dad, you know, I've been a dad now for 14 years, and the key thing I would say I've learned is that kids don't do what they hear you say, they do what they see you do. And so my kids have grown up with, you know, constantly seeing Daddy lifting weights in the kitchen, right? So What do they do? They lift those weights.

It is so spot on. I have an ice bath at home. I've been doing ice baths for about a decade now, and it's very similar. It's like I've been going in the ice baths. My wife has sometimes been going in the ice baths, and then now even the kids enjoy going in the ice baths. It's literally at first it only becomes dipping the toe in the water. Yeah. And then it becomes like putting the hand in a little bit longer. And before you know it, they just want to experience it just like you.

Yeah, I completely agree. And you know, for my wife and I, how we bring up our kids is the most important thing to us. It really is. And I know you have a lot of listeners who run. My son loves to run and we run together so often. He's 14 now, but we do parkrun together. I don't know if you have parkrun out here, but it's huge in the UK.

It's getting more popular here too.

We've been doing that for years together. We did a, a trail 10K together a few weeks ago and 'cause he's only old enough now that we can actually do an event. 'Cause I don't know, insurance or whatever, you're not allowed until you're a certain age. And he was so excited. So we went and did it together. And again, it was not about the time. We genuinely, and this is something I've changed in my own life, we weren't competing for a time. We just wanted to have fun together. Like we did this event together and it was priceless. It was, the truth is it was raining, it was windy, it was cold, it was a bit of a mess. British autumnal day. We got out of the car, it was like, oh man, you know, this is not great weather, but we had such a good time together. Yeah.

I want to speak a little bit more about something we talked earlier on our run about finishing times and focusing on the process and focusing on the journey. Sometimes runners can get very obsessed with, I want to beat this time. I want to beat my personal best. I want to like, this ultimate perfect race to go after. Sometimes it can suck the joy out of things as well, of getting overly focused on that part. Can you speak through that a little bit more from your own perspective of setting yourself up for success?

Yeah, it's such a good point, Floris, and something I've had to wrestle with in my own life. So for much of my life, I feel I was driven by external validation, and I've spoken on my podcast many times as to where that I think has come from the way I was brought up. You know, I, I love my parents to bits. I think they did a really good job of bringing me up, but certain things that happened, I interpreted them a certain way, right? So my parents were immigrants from India to the UK. They believed that the way for us, their children, to not have the same problems that they faced was to excel. And so I remember clearly as a kid coming back from school with like 19 out of 20, and it was never, oh, well done, that's, that's really, really good. It was always, what did you get wrong? Did you come first? You came second in the class? Okay, who came first? I, I processed that. I've had to process that over the last few years because I realized that a lot of my wiring from a young age was to want external validation. And I've gone through therapy and all kinds of things. I've come out the other side where I have a real peace with it now. Now I understand what my parents were trying to do. So there's no blame there. And I realized that every situation in life has multiple interpretations. They wanted the best for me. They're like, you excel, become a straight-A student, you become a doctor, you won't have any of the problems that we had. That completely makes sense. But for me, as, as a little boy, I took on the belief that I was only loved when I achieved. And therefore, my whole life until the last few years where I really made peace with this and made some really quite significant changes, I realized that I can validate myself. I don't need external validation in the way that I used to. I also became very competitive, but I'm not competitive anymore because being competitive was an adaptation to my childhood. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. If you don't feel good enough or you don't feel you're getting love unless you're the best, well, developing the traits of competitiveness is a genius adaptation because it's going to it's gonna make sure that you do become the best, right? And I used to only do sports where I could become the best at. I also, when I really got into running a few years ago, was looking at times. I wanted to beat my times. And after a while I thought, why? What, why do I want to beat that time? And I think underpinning this question, uh, Floris, to me is this idea that everything in life has a cost. There's an upside and there's a downside. Right, so the upside of looking at your time and trying to beat it is that it drives you to train and to be better and to measure yourself and see, can I improve? But what's the potential downside? Well, the potential downside is, is that you're always constantly trying to almost run that mythical race. I'm not sure there is such a thing as a perfect race. We are never the same. Like every time we go and race or run, we're different. We've slept differently, we've had different levels of stress, we've had different nutrition or whatever it might be. So actually trying to go in and compare yourself to how you ran that particular course 2 years ago when the weather was different and you were different, I think that for some runners has a real potential dark side there. I, I've spoken to many runners actually who I think their obsession with their times is problematic for them. I can't say for everyone, I would never say it's problematic for everyone, but I would ask every runner to ask themselves honestly, maybe when they're on their long run, maybe switch off the podcast and the music and just think, hey, is my desire to beat a certain time, does it come from a good place or not? An idea that's in Make Change at Last and something I think about a lot, and this goes beyond running, Floris, is that it's not the behavior, I think, that determines the impact on us. I think it's the energy behind the behavior.

That's what's key.

100%. So I can't say to someone that you wanted to be at a certain time is good or bad. It depends what the drive is. If the drive is, I don't feel good enough in who I am as a human being, and if I can beat my 5K time and go under 20 minutes, that it will say something about who I am as an individual, I think you're playing a dangerous game there. Because let's say you do beat that time, let me tell you, the joy of that will last you a few hours at most. I've seen it, I've experienced it myself. I tell you what, Floris, have you ever— have you heard of Jonny Wilkinson? Yeah, maybe 2 or 3 years ago, Jonny Wilkinson came to my house, he came on my podcast. And for people around the world who don't know who Jonny is, he was one of England's best rugby players. And in 2003, in the rugby World Cup, in the last minute of the final, he scores the winning goal that gives England, I think, their first World Cup. Now, if you're a kid, that's the thing you dream about. You know, you're playing on your parents' drive, kicking the ball around. Oh, it's in the final minute. The scores are tied. Kick the winning goal. He achieved his dream. The problem is that dream decimated him. The achievement of that dream caused him 10 years of mental health problems. And what he said to me is he can still remember, I think the scores were tied, final minute, full crowd in Australia, full house. He said as soon as the ball left his foot, before it even got into the goal, he said he started to come down. The following morning, he could barely get out of bed. You know, and this is the key, and I think this is the key point, Floris, to me. And I suspect that your audience will relate to this. He said, wrong, and I used to play rugby as a kid for fun, for joy. It was an expression of who I was. And at some point, maybe when I was 17 or 18, my relationship to rugby changed. It was no longer about fun and joy. How I performed on the rugby pitch was a reflection of who I was as a person. In a nutshell, that says it all, right? I'm not saying that trying to beat your time is a problem, but the drive behind it is where the issue may or may not lie. I've got a really good friend here in California who used to be a really, really good runner, competitive runner, really good times, and he still cannot make peace with the fact that he's not the same runner as he was 10 years ago.

It is such a dangerous trap though.

It really is. So he doesn't run much. He says, I can't really go and do these events anymore because everyone knows what I used to do. And I'm like, oh my God, that's a really problematic relationship with the sports because you've got to remember, at some point we're all getting older. There will be at some point where we start to get slower.

That's why even age divisions, I think it's one way where that kind of mixes it up a little bit. You're not comparing yourself to the overall category, but there's a 50+ category or a 60+ category or even that part. But once again, like, I think sometimes In our running program, we talk about some runners have certain running goals, and let's say it might be like, oh yeah, I'm going to run my first marathon. And then there comes a second part of the goal, and I want to run it under 4 hours. And it's like very often as PB coaches, we just say back of like, go through the experience, go through what is it like to get to 42K of a marathon, 26 like miles of a marathon and see what is that like. And then time will fall into place, like just enjoy the process. And the time eventually, you just need to gain some experience.

And over time— and here's the other thing I was thinking about, because a lot of runners I've noticed have their PB on their profile, let's say on their Instagram page, you know, I'm a, I'm a 3-hour marathoner or 5K 22:21. And hey, listen, It's interesting to observe that and go, okay, that's great. And again, it's not about being critical at all, but we've got to realize that if our PB is something we make part of our identity, that's when you're in a really fragile place. Because let's say you have an injury, or let's say, I don't know, work stress is busy, or, you know, I shouldn't say many, but some distance athletes are using distance and endurance as a way of escaping from really important issues in their life. Maybe I shouldn't say that on a running podcast, but I kind of feel it's true. Not for everyone, but for some people. I've had patients like this who I'm like, hey, listen, your marriage is crumbling, you've never seen your kids, and you're struggling with your mood, and you're finding time to run for 8 or 9 hours a week. Okay, no problem. But your marriage isn't going to fix itself. Do you know what I mean? And I say that like with an open heart, with compassion, because it's— I think it's really important to understand why we're running. Running is neither good nor bad. I think I love running. I think running is a fantastic sport. I think it's a fundamentally human activity. But I think our relationship with running and why we do it and what we want to get out of it, I think it's really important to ask ourselves. And maybe the reason you started works 5 years ago but maybe it needs to evolve now. And the other problem I think with sometimes an over-obsession with time is that you can constantly feel inferior. Okay, let's take a hypothetical scenario. Let's say you're a 5K runner and your best time is 25 minutes, let's say. Okay, and then you make it that, you know, I have to break 25 minutes, I have to break 25 minutes. You could run one day the most beautiful race where you're in flow, your body feels fluid, but it's cold, you're against the wind, right? You've had huge amounts of work stress that week, so you haven't slept very well. You might relatively have run a better race than on another day when you hit 24 minutes. The number at the end of the race doesn't tell the story of that race, or it doesn't tell the story of who you are. Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely. And so for me, as someone who is, um, who knows that my Achilles heel in life is when I look for external validation, I've now moved— maybe for the last 6 months, I, I don't wear a watch anymore. Okay. And it's, again, don't get me wrong, I love seeing the data and the time and the splits, but again, it's an experiment for me to go, okay, You've tried it with a watch. What is your experience of running like without a watch? I go, Bonnie, I've gotta be honest for us at the moment, I'm really enjoying it. I'm not saying I'll never wear a watch again. I also have a competitiveness inside me. I like to get better. But at the moment I'm playing around with this idea. What happens if I just pay attention to how I'm feeling? What if I, instead of, you know, you've made so many videos on low heart rate training, Right? And I've watched them all, right? A few years ago, I—

I love hearing that.

I binge-watched. A few years ago, we were in Greece one summer with my wife and kids. And what I love to do on holiday in the summer holidays is when my wife and kids are asleep, I love getting up early and I love going out for a long walk or run, like, while they're all sleeping. In Greece, it's so hot. I'd go at like 5 AM. And I think I discovered you on YouTube and was watching all your low heart rate training stuff. I bought all the gear and I was checking out my heart rate time and doing my lactate testing. Again, I love all that stuff and I'm not against it, but I like to experiment with myself and actually pay attention to how certain things make me feel. I've realized, I'm like, okay, well, yes, you can do a lactate test and you can look at your heart rate and you can track it, and I think it's brilliant to do that, but I wonder, can I get really in tune with myself, I start to feel when I'm on that inflection point, when my breathing starts to go up, when I start to pant a little bit. I'm not there yet, but for me, I'm like, and then if I can bring back the watch and marry it up, but can I, can I start to feel it myself? That's where I think technology gets really good, when we help, when we use it to help tune into our own signals.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm actually glad to hear that, that you went through that whole process of low heart rate training and discovering how to get more, I think, sometimes in tune with the body. Because I think when you actually have a measurement device, sometimes we have no idea even of like, all right, if I'm running and I'm just going out and I've been running, most of my runs have been in zone 3 or zone 4, and I might actually be I have ran way too hard for a long time and actually learning to slow down and all of a sudden like tuning more in with the body and mind, I think it's pretty eye-opening there.

Yeah, I mean, chapter 1 of this book is called Trust Yourself, right? And it's probably one of my favorite chapters in this book because, you know, as a doctor, as I mentioned at the start, one of the things I often have been doing is helping my patients change their behaviors. One thing I've learned in 23 years of clinical practice is that there's no one thing that works for everyone. It just doesn't. Like, we're all different people. We've got different beliefs, different cultures, we've got different stresses, we've got a different health history. So the same advice doesn't work for everyone.

You know, I've had a podcast for 7 years now, and phenomenal podcast, highly recommended for, for anyone who hasn't listened to it. I'll make sure to, uh, to link to it.

Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I love the show, Floris. It's It's like one of my favorite things that I do in life.

Oh, I can tell you're thriving on there.

I love it.

I literally love it.

Great podcast guest. But one thing I noticed, I spoke about nutrition one week, right? And let's say you have a really well-credentialed guest talking about nutrition and they give you one piece of advice. And let's say a few weeks later you talk to someone else about nutrition, again, someone really well-credentialed who has a different opinion. What I'd often find is in my Instagram DMs, people will say, Dr. Chetty, I'm really, really confused, okay? This expert said that's the right diet, and this other expert said this is the right diet. I don't know which expert to trust. I think they're asking the wrong question. I think the right question to ask is not which expert should I trust? The question should be, why do I no longer trust myself?

Yeah, who do you feel most drawn to and what feels right?

And also, through the lens of diet, and I think this has real relevance for runners, 'cause there's all kinds of advice out there out there on what kind of diet you should follow. And it's not all the same, right? People have different opinions. If you're a, you know, if you're Phil Maffetone, you're a low heart rate guy, or you're Professor Tim Noakes, you know, you may be more biased towards a low carb approach and getting adapted and getting keto adapted, right? There's other athletic coaches who say, no, you need high carb for endurance, right? And there's many shades in between. What do you do with that? Well, in my view, you listen. You pay attention, you go, "That sounds interesting. That's why they've got that viewpoint. Oh, that sounds interesting. Let me experiment now with myself. Let me try this for 4 weeks and pay attention on my runs. How do I run? What's my energy like? How's my recovery? How do I sleep? What's my mood like? Oh, okay. Let me try it a different way now. And for this month, let me pay attention to myself." You will then know what is the right approach for you at that moment in time. And so that whole chapter is about saying, Listen, you've gotta start becoming your own expert. You probably need less external knowledge and more internal knowledge, that self-awareness and that insight. And as it happens, I think that's one of the things running can give us if we start to pay attention to ourselves as we run. Like, you get to know yourself through running, don't you? You get to know. Absolutely. You know, when do you, when do you wanna stop? Like, what, you know, are you someone who can lean into that? Um, you know, once you really lock into flow on a run, you start to process all the stuff in your life that you, you sometimes struggle to when you're in your life.

Yeah. So yeah, what in, in, in the book you actually also talk about kind of going into extension of what you were saying earlier. Something works for some people, doesn't work for other people. What, what comes to mind also is like a habit tracker. For some people it can work, whereas for other people it cannot. Same with like other devices. I have an Oura Ring. I track my sleep. Yet sometimes it spits out data and it like— here's an example from last week Friday. I woke up and I was feeling an earache and something just didn't feel right. And sure enough, I felt something was off. Something might be coming up. And then I actually looked at my Oura data and it actually said, you slept perfect, you feel great, you should be feeling great. It's time for a proper workout or something along those lines. And I was like, I felt like garbage. I felt low on energy and the last thing I wanted. So once again, you have to take all these things with a grain of salt too. Like sometimes it can be right, but sometimes it can have a negative impact on how we actually perceive some of it too. Like sometimes I don't look at some of these trackers right before a race because I know I'm going to be nervous on race day. I know I'm going to have a poor night's sleep. So it might tell me on race morning, Floris, you should have a step back day. That's the last thing I want to hear on a race day, right?

Funnily enough, when— I mean, we've both spoken to Kipchoge on our podcast, right? I spoke to him a few years ago, the week after he'd broken the world record in Berlin. So he'd come to London after that and I went down to London from Manchester and I was very lucky to get a long-form interview with him. And I asked him about his Oura Ring, 'cause he also wears one. And I said, Ali, do you look at that thing the morning of a race? And my recollection is that he said never. Like, I think his whole thing was it's irrelevant on that morning. Like, in training, fine, and to see what's going on and are you keeping up to speed? Be with you asleep and everything. But on that morning of a race, it doesn't help him to know whether he crushed his sleep or whether he was nervous all night. Yeah. And so, and we know actually there's research that I talk about in the book where I think, I can't remember where this research was done, I think it was the States. I think they had a group of people, they were brought into a lab. One group was slept for 5 hours and the other group for 8 hours., but then they split up the groups in the morning and they told some of the people who slept for 5 hours that they slept for 8 hours. And some of the group who slept for 8 hours that they only slept for 5 hours. And what they were told not only affected how much energy they had in the day, I think it affected their physiology as well, which really speaks to the power of the mind. So I actually have a little section in the book on, in that chapter on wearables, 'cause I also have one on at the moment. Mm-hmm. But I didn't for many years. Because I didn't want to become dependent and overly reliant on these things. I think they can be really useful for some people, but not for everyone. Some people become obsessed with the data. They can't function without it. They, they've stopped tuning into themselves at all, and everything is about what the app says and what the Garmin says, or what the Whoop says, or what the Oura says. But other people, like you perhaps, or like me, can stay a bit detached and can go, oh, that's interesting. I'm using it to learn about myself. How am I recovering to training? Ah, that's interesting. When my HRV is good, hey, you know what, I'm also feeling like a load of energy and I'm not emotionally reactive. Okay, so I think they're great if they help you learn more about yourself, because the goal should be, I believe, that we can start tuning into our own signals. And I, I really do believe as runners, that's a real skillset that we can bring to ourselves. Because here's the other thing, sometimes this stuff ain't gonna work, or the battery will run out. Mm-hmm. Or you'll be in the middle of a race and I don't know, it's time for a change. Like if you are so dependent on that thing, you may find in one race when you're crushing it, it suddenly starts working and now you don't know how to pace yourself.

Yeah. It has happened to me before at the start of a race that I've been training the entire training cycle with a heart rate monitor and the heart rate monitor died at the start of a race. And all of a sudden I had to fly in blind. Yet when you have to, you can find a way. Like it's just more— sometimes you're almost so addicted to that part that once you disconnect from that and you truly learn to tune into itself again.

Yeah. And look, I'm just expressing my view and my opinion. I can only speak for myself and what I've seen in patients. And I've had many patients over the years who were runners. Right? So I, I'm, I'm very interested in people. So I'd always talk to 'em about, you know, their lives and their relationship with running. So I've seen for some people these things can become problematic cuz on the, on the outside, very simplistically, we're not moving enough as a society. Right? So you could say, well, running's a good thing now, and I believe running is a good thing, but I think sometimes people can overtrain and I've, I've seen that loads where they can start getting sick and run down their immune system cuz they're overtraining or, they're so obsessed with that time and the plan, they sometimes follow it when they should be listening to their bodies. Like a medical friend of mine on Twitter, now called X, who a few years ago, I remember, I think she was being serious, like she was training for the London Marathon, and she put on Twitter back then, hey guys, I'm 4 weeks to go, I need to do this run today on my plan, but I'm really so run down for work, I'm exhausted, I'm not sleeping well, 'What do you think? Should I do it or not?' Sure, she could be doing it for engagement, but I think she was genuinely asking the question. And I see this a lot where people rigidly stick to a plan even when their body is screaming at them to stop. I'm like, 'No, no, no, at this point, I think running is not helping you in your life.' Yeah, this is where I love Courtney DeWalter.

Like, had her on the podcast here a few months ago, and her approach on every morning, she grabs a cup of coffee and decides, 'How do I feel this day? What is my training going to be like for today?' And I think more people can benefit from that approach for sure. I want to transition to your first marathon.

Okay.

Because I'm always fascinated by people have a perception of like, ah, this is what a marathon is going to be like. And then real life happens. So tell me a little bit more. 2021, you ran the London Marathon. How was that like for you?

How long have you got? Okay. So let me just give a bit of background to it. Okay. So January 2020, my third book had just come out and I was doing the press for that book in London. There's a really popular radio show in the UK called the Chris Evans Breakfast Show. And I was on Chris's show talking about my book. We had a great interview. I thought we were done. And at the end of the interview, live on air, there's a few million people listening. Chris says, hey, Rangan, okay, so before you go, we have a challenge for you. I was like, okay. Okay, all right. So, or he says something to that effect. And essentially on air, he challenged me to do the London Marathon. You know, there's an inner competitiveness in me, like there has been from a young age, which I've explained where I think it came from. So yeah, no problem. Okay. I was, all I was running then was like maybe parkrun once a week, a 5K. I said, yeah, okay, sure, I can do that, but I don't have a place. He goes, don't worry, we've already got you a place. I said, okay, yeah, sure, I'll do it. I came off, I went downstairs, it was at London Bridge. I got on a taxi to my next interview. And I remember phoning my wife or a friend saying, "Hey, when is the London Marathon?" "It's in 12 weeks." I was like, "Oh my God, what? 12 weeks?" I was like, "Oh my God, I'm getting right hammy discomfort at the end of my 5K, and I've just agreed on national radio to actually do the marathon now." COVID then happened, right? So it got pushed back. But what actually happened in those 12 weeks, initially I was like, okay, I'm very lucky because of my work that I know a lot of incredible people. So I phoned a few people and said, hey, listen, can you help me? Because like I need your magic to help me be able to do this marathon in 12 weeks. And one of my friends, Gary Ward, who's been on my show many, many years ago, who's just an amazing guy about looking at the human body, He said, Rangan, listen, you've gotta speak to Helen. I said, who's Helen? He goes, I'm telling you, Helen is amazing. And she's who I'd recommend you speak to. I said, Gary, if you, if you are telling me that, I trust you. So he arranged an appointment with Helen. I had a session with her. It was great. I thought, oh my God, this lady is phenomenal. And we were then working for a bit and she was figuring out, well, it's not ideal to have 12 weeks, but we can figure out a plan. And it was gonna be using a walk-run strategy to help me get round. And anyway, COVID happens, the marathon got canceled. And so, okay, the marathon wasn't happening, but I would continue working with Helen because I thought, this is incredible. She's like identifying all kinds of things in my body and helping me improve them. One thing that we really struggle with, and again, I'm not trying to go into the whole detail of this, but I think this would be quite interesting for your audience. When I was 7 years old, I had an emergency appendectomy. 'Oh, when I was on holiday in India with my family, with my family, seeing family.' What's really interesting, Helen notices, because she looks at the whole body holistically, and she's got this, this kind of measuring tool. There's only, I think, 4 in the world, and she has one of them. Nike have one, someone in America has one, but I think she knows how to use it better than anyone. Like, she obsesses with this machine and what data it gives you. She said all of your movements, at no point 'Will you close down your right groin where my scar is?' She goes, 'Your body will do anything to avoid closing down that area.' And when she started to touch it, it was really sore. Like when she, when she went into my scar really deeply, like that is tender. That operation was like when I was 7, like over 30 years ago. Look, there's a lot more to this story, but in essence, Part of my work with Helen at that time was actually trying to sort of relax that scar area and to convince my brain that it's okay to go into it. I don't need to avoid it. Now, here's the thing. 3 weeks before the marathon, I went down to see her, and suddenly, for the first time in a year and a half, I closed down. I compressed that scar area in movement. She's like, we've been, that's what we've been trying to do for a year and a half. Like I've had to be patient and it came. Problem is, and we didn't realize it, well she did, I didn't quite realize it at the time, is that suddenly now me going into that area meant my, the way I was running was completely different. My body wasn't trained on this new way that I was moving. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. I just thought you had to get adjusted. Yeah. And I, I suddenly got a marathon. So here's the thing, like, well the actual race was agony. Right? I started it, 3 miles in, I was starting to feel my right groin. Oh, already? Yeah. Now I've never done a marathon before. Yeah. And I thought, oh, this doesn't feel good. I'm sure it'll just wear off. Okay, stay calm, don't worry. It kept getting worse, kept getting worse. I think I phoned Helen at one point. I said, Helen, this, she's like, okay, do this exercise. Let's see what happens. Kept getting worse. I saw my kids and my wife at mile 9. And when I saw them, I just burst into tears. 'Cause I was in agony and my wife's like, hey baby, you okay? I'm like, like the problem is, is that if it wasn't the London Marathon, if I wasn't a well-known public figure in the UK, I think I would've stopped. But Chris was talking about me doing it on the radio. Everyone knew I was doing it. People were saying, that's Chachi, we love your podcast, keep going. And the truth is that external validation that I, I needed for much of my life, I thought, there's no way in hell I'm not finishing this marathon, right? I am finishing it. By mile 10, Floris, I couldn't lift my right leg. So I remember this clearly. When you go to the water stations and there's—

This is only mile 10. This is mile 10. Normally they say the first 20 miles is just a warmup.

Yeah, this is mile 10. There was a water station and there's bottles on the floor, but you'll know this from doing them. I couldn't actually lift my right leg. I had, with my hands, had to lift my leg up to get it over the water bottles. That's how bad it was. I don't know how I got from 10 to 26, right? It was with the power of my mind, right? Now, you could argue I should never have done that, and I accept that. At the same time, I believe that all my work with Helen taught me how to manage my body really well, and I'm really proud of myself that I managed to manage that and with my mind go through it, but I felt no elation when I went through the finishing line. I, I can remember going through it. You go past Buckingham Palace, you come round, and I was like, oh, thank God that's over. Now here's the thing, I went to hospitality, had some food. We were meant to be going home to the Northwest, to Manchester that night. And I said to my wife, I said, babe, I can't get in a train tonight. There's no way with my leg I can get into a train. I don't want to. So we, we booked an extra night in the hotel. We went back there, I had a shower, and then suddenly my feelings started to change. And this is the magic of something like a marathon. Honestly, like I had such a feeling of inner wellbeing. Like I thought, wow, what an experience, right? This may surprise people who are runners,, but it wasn't the fact that I completed the marathon that was the most amazing thing for me that evening. What was the most amazing thing was we've been told all the time that we're living in an increasingly divided and toxic world, right? We see this online. I'm talking to you a week after the US elections. There's so much division and controversy. People are being pitted against each other. Well, let me tell you what I saw at the London Marathon. I saw people who didn't know other people smile, give love, give joy all around that course, even in some really poor parts of London, around some of the council estates. These families had made cakes and sweets and biscuits, and they'd brought them, and they were giving them out to runners. And I thought, this is who we are as humans. When you don't go on the line, and have these algorithms dictate what we're doing and what our behaviors are. When you put human beings together, they're kind, they're compassionate, they're supportive. I thought half of these people probably have different political views, but you know what? It doesn't matter. They're just coming out to support other people. Runners are supporting other runners. The public are cheering other runners on. Would I have completed that marathon if there weren't crowd members there cheering me on? Probably not, unless it was to save my children's lives, right? Probably not. But that power of community, that's what the London Marathon taught me. Yes, on a personal level, I experienced challenges. I got through them and completed it. Although I'll be honest, and in my head, I still don't consider myself to have properly run a marathon. Yes, I've got the medal, but to me that didn't count. I will do one, or my intention at this moment is to do one at some point. But I'm really dedicated to the process. Like, I am moving, Floris, so much better than I've ever moved. But I'm playing the long game here. Yeah, I'm not rushing back to a marathon. I'm moving better. Like, Helen has shown me on her machine, like, my movement looks really fluid often. With Lawrence, he's like, man, you're moving well.. Like I feel I'm moving well, but I'm gonna build. So I feel one thing I do have is patience. Now, although I'm 47, I believe that when I'm 50, I'm gonna run faster than I've ever run before.

I really do believe that. And that's the beauty of it. Yeah. Like I see so many people running their personal, personal strongest races in their 50s and 60s if they go about it the right way.

And look after their bodies. Yeah. Yeah. And now because of what I've learned with Helen and with Lawrence, I know that at the moment, like, the way I look at movements and human movement is— because look, we always talk, you know, I'm sure you talk about on the show as well, strength training, all these things are important. But here's the thing, right? If your foundation is wonky, think about it like a house, like across the road there. If that building is unstable and it's not quite even and balanced, and we start adding more and more load on it we are just waiting for a problem to happen. And I think one of the problems in the marathon world that I see at least is that people sign up to races without enough time to prepare. And then because they've signed up to the race, even if they're not ready for it, they do it and then they're injured for 6 months afterwards. Yeah. And I'm like, is that worth it? I don't know. Only that individual can ask. It goes back to what we were saying before about our relationship with time. I'm prepared to play the long game. I can feel the benefits. I can see the benefits. Like when I go and run 5Ks at my local park run with my boy, I'm effortlessly running quicker times now. I'm not even trying, but my body's got more efficient. I'm just gonna keep doing the work. And when I'm ready, there's a busy few months coming up. I've got a book coming out. I'm here in America. I'm doing 2 weeks of interviews. Then I go back to the UK, I'll have 2 or 3 weeks of press. Then I have a UK national tour in March where I'm doing 15 dates. I love my work. I love trying to help people live happier and healthier lives. But I've also got to acknowledge that for these next 3 or 4 months, running is there not to stress me out, running is there to help me balance my life. So lots of kind of low heart rate runs where I'm using it as a way of helping me switch off. I don't need the pressure at the moment of training for a marathon when there's already stress in my life. And I think that's another thing people don't realize sometimes when we take on things. Exercise or running a marathon can be a stressor on the body. If your life is already very stressful, you've got to sit back and go, is this what I need at this moment? Yeah, absolutely.

I want, I want to share one experience from my own world. So I have— I absolutely agree with the long-term vision of things, right? I've been running mostly with low heart rate for about 12 years now. I feel pretty in tune with the body. Wow. And then about a year ago, started getting more consistent in strength training. And even though I know the importance of gradual buildup, and not putting too much weight on too fast, like trying to lift too heavy weights too soon, trying to make sure we have enough recovery in between. Still, there's sometimes like, ah, things start to go better, you start to see some results, and before you know it, sure enough, oh, I think I kind of overdid it. My right elbow is starting to hurt. Oh, my right shoulder, maybe I gotta dial back. Like, So how come we sometimes know we got to build it up gradually, yet we still push towards that edge, right?

I think it's a human condition, right? And I think, again, we, we can't be too harsh on ourselves. Like, ultimately, life is a series of experiences. And then on top of those experiences, we can either choose to be a victim to them, or we can learn to, or we can choose to grow. You can learn from that and go, oh, okay, I know this. I keep saying it. I teach my athletes I'm coaching. And I've fallen into that trap. Okay, it's a nice reminder now, just be a bit more careful. Yeah. But as we're talking here, it reminds me of another point that I think is really important for people. And the first thing I'm gonna share is, I remember when I spoke to Eliud Kipchoge on my podcast, one of the things that's remarkable about Eliud, until recently at least, is how infrequently he got injured, right? Because that's what you need to be a really good endurance athlete You can't afford injuries that take you outta the game for 2 or 3 months. It's that consistency week after week, month after month, year after year that builds that power, that performance, that base, right? Mm-hmm. And again, I haven't heard that conversation in a while now, so forgive me if my recollection is slightly off, but I was asking him about that and he pays close attention if something starts to niggle at the end of a run. He doesn't ignore it. Now sure, he's a Nike-sponsored athlete, he's a professional athlete, he's got a team there, but I think we can learn from that principle. He won't then go and just run on it the next day without seeing someone first. What's going on? Is there an imbalance? Do we need to do something else? So I think we can all learn from what Kipchoge does. I think so many of us, like as a recreational runner, we, we kind of ignore these niggles. We do the run, our left Achilles is hurting a little bit, and we think, oh, we'll just ice it a bit and rest it and then keep going. But actually it's probably a signal that something is off, that there's some imbalance. And if you are getting a left Achilles issue on your 5K, you can be damn sure you'll be getting it on your 10K or your half marathon. It's not gonna just magically vanish because you want it to. Of course, there's many reasons for that, and I appreciate that not everyone has access to a movement therapist or a physio or, or whatever. But the principle is, like, let's pay attention. If you are running 'cause you enjoy it, it helps you balance out the stress in your life, you enjoy going out on the trails, you don't want to be out for 2 or 3 months, don't ignore little niggles. I'm not saying stop necessarily,. But if you enjoy running, pay attention to go, wow, my body keeps telling me that after a certain amount of distance, this part of my body is taking the strain. People think that it wasn't there at 2K. No, it was there at 2K, but you hadn't put enough strain on the system for it to show up. The imbalance was still there. And therefore they can listen to your podcast or my podcast or do the stuff that Laurens van Lingen recommends or Helen Horne. There's so many resources online. That people can use to try and self-identify what's going on here. Can I do something to improve? Maybe it's strength training. Maybe I'm doing something funny with my arms when I run and, you know, my right shoulder's higher than my left shoulder. Maybe my head is forward and that's putting strain on my left knee. So maybe I need to get my head back on top of my shoulders. You know, whatever it might be. We can do a lot ourselves, but don't ignore it. Eliud Kipchoge doesn't ignore a little niggle.

You shouldn't also ignore an ego. Absolutely.

The body will often whisper before it screams, and we've got to listen to those. Yeah. And again, I'm not saying I'm perfect. I probably ignored things in the past, but I've learned from that. And that's why at this stage in my life, at 47 years old, and I feel honestly, Floris, I feel about as good as I've ever felt in my life. I'm happy. I'm contented. I feel really healthy. I feel my body's in a good place. My mind's in a good place. And I wanna enjoy running for years, so I don't need to put artificial pressure on myself. I got all I need to do and beat this time in the next 2 months. I know that if I keep doing the work, I keep doing my 5-minute strength workout, you know, ironing out imbalances in my body every morning with my coffee. I keep seeing Helen and doing the prep work that I need to do. I keep looking after myself. With the right nutrition, the right sleep, the times are gonna come. They're gonna come though because I'm not chasing them. They're gonna come as a natural consequence of looking after myself and doing the work to have my body move as efficiently as it can. Yeah.

So, so well said. Based on all the experiences that you have had now, you have written 6 different books, you have had your own training and racing journey. Is there any advice that you would give to someone in the, in the beginning stages of their running journey for those looking for more consistency in their training, for more healthy habits set up? Like there's so many fundamentals that you talk through, but high level, what are some of the key takeaways that you want someone to walk away with?

So if someone is brand new to running, and they've identified that, you know what, I've been thinking about this for a while, but now I want to commit. Okay, that's a very powerful place to be, right? For whatever reason in life, you've now chosen to make the decision that you want to run. Although running is an innately human activity, and I do believe passionately that humans are born to run, Unfortunately, our modern lifestyles are pretty unhealthy. So I believe that the reason so many people get injured when running is not because running is a problem for the human body. I don't believe it is. It's because that you are likely to have imbalances in your body and the way it moves from the way that you live, from sitting down all day, from being hunched over your phone, whatever it might be. There's, you know, we can all think of a million different reasons why we don't have this beautiful fluid movement. That we often see these top athletes have, you can probably get back to that, but it's gonna take time. So I would say like, it really depends who that person is and what they're hoping to achieve. Like in the UK there's an app called Couch to 5K. Mm-hmm. I dunno, maybe it's here as well that builds people up slowly to get to that 5K. But I think the principles we've been talking about completely apply to that individual. Think about why you are doing it. Right? Are you doing it for a time, or is that a hangover as how you used to exist as a kid or when you were a teenager? Like, how will a time help you in your life? Will it? Is that important for you? If it is, great. Okay, work with a coach and try and get towards that time. If, for example, you think that your legs are weak, maybe some strength training, like some squats and some lunges and some calf raises, are going to be some some basic things where you don't need to buy equipment that you can start to get stronger? Well, maybe then apply those principles that I said at the start. Could you, or could this runner, do a 5-minute strength workout every morning specifically for their running? What would their life look like if they did? Okay, let's make it really practical. Let's say you don't want to do 5 minutes. What would your life look like if in the morning— many people, most people have a hot drink in the morning, right? Not everyone, but many people. If that's you, whilst you're making that hot drink, could you do 10 squats, 10 lunges on each foot, and 10 calf raises? You may not think that's much, but you do that every day. Okay, it's not much for most people, of course. For some people, that will be too much and they have to modify it. But let's assume that you can do that reasonably well. I promise you, if you do that for 7 days, you do that for a month, every morning, your legs are gonna be pretty strong. You will adapt very, very quickly. So I would say yes, figure out how you're gonna get running into your life. When are you gonna run? Okay. You know, it doesn't have to be 1 hour or nothing. I'll sometimes go for a 10-minute run and I've noticed this, this goes beyond running, Floris, but there's something about culture these days where it's quite black or white. If it's not 1 hour in the gym, it doesn't count. If it's not a 1-hour run, what's the point? No, go for a 10-minute run. Go for a 10-minute run and do that regularly. You'll build up very quickly. In fact, in some ways it's better for you because you're not going to strain your body enough. You're going to, you're going to adapt slowly. So, you know, without knowing the individual and what their goal is, it's very hard to give specific advice. I'll tell you the other thing I've learned, and this is primarily through my work with Helen over 5 years, is I always always do a 10-minute walking warm-up first. Now, I never used to. I used to be, what, walking warm-up? Why do you need all that stuff? But maybe because, you know, I say I'm getting older, I feel young, right? I feel in really good health. I feel like I've got more energy than when I was 30. Yeah, it looks like you're thriving even though I'm 47, right? But I'm like, yeah, okay. Helen really helped me see that. Look after your body, right? Your body needs to be told and prepared that the fact you're now gonna run, the, the blood needs to be diverted, you know, to your extremities so it's ready now for your run. And I'm like, yeah, that kind of makes sense to me. And I have had injuries in the past, and I think some injuries could be prevented if we actually took the time to warm up. So I'm a huge fan of walking warm-ups and walking warm-downs, and that's something I've learned from Helen. And, you know, Helen's been coaching for about 40 years, right? She's got a lot of experience. She also believes, incidentally, I don't know if you ever covered stretching on the show before, because stretching is also something with a lot of controversial views both ways. Yeah, yeah. And, and I think sometimes it can be very helpful, but what Helen has taught me, and I really do believe this, is if you get to really beautiful, fluid, efficient movement, which of course many of us struggle with for a variety of reasons, because when you get to that point, she doesn't feel that stretching is necessary because your body is actually self-doing it as you're moving as nature intended you to move. The problem is I think many of us don't move in that way. Therefore, we're having to stretch to kind of loosen up things that get tight. But honestly, like these days when I run, I, I don't stretch. I haven't stretched in maybe 2 or 3 years. I don't stretch anymore. And I don't get tightness. Yeah, but I spend a lot of time working on the efficiency and the fluidity of my movements.

I think the dynamic stretching is a big one. Yeah. And even if you have warmed up properly, let's say you walk for a little bit, you go for a jog, and then eventually sometimes I do sprints of like 10 seconds. And after 4, 6, 8, 10, those last few, you really feel like— you're getting longer. You're getting longer. You literally have like a dynamic stretch while running. And I feel like that right there was your stretch.

Yeah. Mid-run. And it— yeah, it's quite fascinating. And I've noticed if I go straight from a run back into my study and on the laptop, I can feel tight later. And I'm often tempted because like, even though I know this, I'll do the walking warmup, but often at the end of the run, I'm like, I need to get back to work now. And if I skip the walking warm down, I tend to feel it. And the next morning going down the stairs, I can feel it. But when I give myself a 10-minute walk back to my house, I feel, oh, I really, I warmed the body down. I cleared all the waste products, right? We actually forget how good walking is for us. Not just, oh, walking's good for our health. No, there's stuff that specifically happens when we walk., right? Your lymphatic system, which basically drains a lot of the waste products that are made up in your body, one of the best ways to get that moving is through walking, right? A lot of us know that the heart pumps out blood around the body through something called the aorta. But what brings blood back to your heart from the feet? If people did biology when they were at school, they might remember there's no pump. It's through the movement of your legs that it compresses it. And actually, what's the thing that gives it the biggest kind of push, it's walking, is when you put your heel down and roll through to the front of your foot. That is the most powerful way of returning blood back to your heart, right? So think about that in terms of recovery and what we're doing at the end of the run. Walk, a walking warm down is, I believe, one of the best things you can do to kind of process that run. But hey, look, we're living in this chronically stressed out world where we're all trying to fit in a quick run. I guess one of the things I've learned, Floris, is that if I have an hour to go for my run, it's much better if that's a 40-minute run with a 10-minute warming warm-up and a 10-minute walking warm-down than a 1-hour run. But it takes you a while to get into that mindset because it's kind of the Western mindset that I've got now. I need to, I need to get the most out of this 1 hour. Yeah, but I've realized that I get the most out of that 1 an hour by having 20 minutes of walking and 40 minutes of running.

Totally. And what you were saying earlier, I think, was spot on too. Sometimes going for a 10-minute run or a 20-minute— like, you and I, before we started recording, we ran for 15-20 minutes and then we walked on the way back. Yeah, it was a wonderful way to like catch up and get some—

like, it's so refreshing for the body. 2 AM today with jet lag, right? And we're in the afternoon, but that really energized me. Yeah, like, I feel great now. Yeah, I've got no reason to feel great, but I'm sure that that run/walk we did together, which wasn't taxing, I think that's a huge part of it. And I think that's the gift that running can give us if we're, if we're kind to ourselves through the process of running. Running's not a reason, I don't think, to beat yourself up and make yourself feel bad and go, oh, I didn't make that time, I'm a failure. You know, some runners are like that. That's how they talk to themselves. I don't think that's a great way of having like a long-term relationship with this beautiful sport that nourishes you. I think most people who are listening and who run, I'm betting they wanna still be running when they're 70 or 80 or 90, and I believe that they can if they look after themselves. Absolutely. So think about the cost of that short-term goal when you've got a niggle and you are pushing through because you signed up for that race a year ago and it's a part of your identity. You told your friends you were gonna do it, so you're gonna do it. Okay. But at what cost? Is it worth the cost? Might you be better delaying for a year, doing the work that you need to do and doing it when you're ready? The prevailing narrative in culture, Floris, says, no, no, you do it. 'Cause then you can put it on your Instagram or you could tell people what a great, you know, that you did it in this time. Sure, if you want to live like that, you're entitled to, but there is another way. You can play the long game. You can treat yourself with respect through the process of running that I believe running will keep giving you back for the rest of your life.

I'm so glad you brought it up because literally that was part of a conversation we had last week in one of our calls. I was like, shall I do this run or shall I not do this run? And like, it was someone who had niggles who was gonna run a race in a week's time and was considering pushing it out, but kind of similar to your friend, what you were saying earlier. And the only thing I asked her was, what advice would you recommend or would you give to a friend if this would be a friend? And she's like, yeah, I would tell her not to run it and just take the long, long game approach.

And that's very much in line there. Yeah. And of course, we can take everything to an extreme because if we look at the population, the population are physically inactive. Right? So we can take being kind to ourselves to an extreme and do nothing and sit on the sofa and go, yeah, I'm looking after myself, I'm playing the long game. I'm not saying that. I'm saying if you are engaging, it's great that you're engaging with running. It's a brilliant sport. I think it's a gift. Yeah. Right? And it's a gift that can keep on giving, but you gotta pay attention. You gotta look after yourself for sure. How many runners do you know who no longer run? I know loads. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Said, yeah, yeah, I can't do it anymore. My knees, my knees, or whatever it might be. Now the question is, we know that in some of these tribes, people are still running long distances in their 80s. So is it true that running is bad for your knees? I don't believe that it's true. Like, I, I had a long conversation with Daniel Lieberman recently, and it, and we're gonna put it out in January on my podcast, and We went into this, and I've gone into this many times on my show, the evidence doesn't really support that running is bad for your knees. If you run inefficiently and with poor form, sure, certain joints in your body can take a strain, including your knees. But I don't think it, I don't think it's a given that if you run regularly, you are going to have bad knees. I don't believe that to be true because there's plenty of examples where that's not the case. And I think it comes down to, How are you running? Yes, what surface are you running on? Of course these things play a role, but also taking it really holistically, also how are you eating? Like, if you are eating a modern Western diet that's pro-inflammatory, we know that increases joint pain. We know that. I've seen it when I've changed, patients' diets before from like a standard Western diet to a whole food diet, whether that's low carb or vegan or whatever, a whole food diet. I have seen joint pains go so often. And so again, if someone's listening and they've had niggles for a while, yes, it might be structural for sure, but have you considered that maybe the things you're putting in your mouth are making that pain worse? I have seen that so many times where it's like, ah, if you change your diet and stop putting in the highly processed foods, the pizzas all the time, the beer. Like, for some people, wheat— not everyone, but for some people, wheat can really drive up their joint pains. I've seen so many patients, when they have like a 4-week trial without, some of their joint pain starts to go. So again, I'm sharing that in case it helps one person who's listening, who's thinking that they might have to give up running.

I would say, are you sure you've tried everything? Everything is connected there. I mean, it's connected the way we train, the way we eat, the way we recover and sleep, stress levels. It's all, it's all connected. One of my favorite videos of yours are on your Instagram, a conversation between you and Gaber Mate. It has more than 80 million views. I think half the internet has seen that video by now. So at some point, Gaber is reflecting back on his life and he's saying, I wish I wouldn't have worked this hard. Like, he has always focused, hyper-focused, put a lot of time and effort into work. And sometimes he forgot about the playful part and the importance of that. He also talks with you about one of the initiatives that you have taken several years ago where you actually take your family for the summer break and you go off social media for several weeks at a time. Can you tell me a little bit more about the reason you're doing this and what some of the things have come up for you from this learning experience?

That conversation with Gabor Maté was the fourth time he'd come on my podcast. And I remember walking up to the studio to talk to him, thinking, how are we going to make this different from the previous three? Okay, where do I go with this incredible gentleman? And I decided to frame the conversation about The Five Regrets of the Dying. Love that book. I love it too. And I was so lucky to talk to Bronnie Ware last time she was in London. We had the most beautiful conversation about these 5 regrets. And for people who don't know, these regrets are things like, I wish I'd worked less. I wish I spent more time with my friends and family. I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy. I wish I'd lived my life and not the life that other people expected of me. I mean, how universal are these, right? But these are people on their deathbeds with cancer. They know they're going to die. These are their regrets looking back. So that conversation with Gabor I started to go through each of the 5 regrets and take Gabor's take on them. I thought that'd be interesting. It was, I think it was the most downloaded episode we've had this year. It, I think half the internet did watch that video. It was ridiculous. Now at some point I asked him about his own regrets because I know Gabor works incredibly hard and he has admitted many times that he's a workaholic. So that was a very powerful bit that we then cut and put on Instagram where he You know, he basically said that he, he wouldn't live his life this way if he could have it all over again. Despite all the success, despite the New York Times bestsellers, despite the respect and prestige he has all over the world, he wouldn't live it this way again because the cost was huge, right? The cost of not being there perhaps for his marriage in a way that he would have liked to, the cost of not being there for his kids in a way that he might have liked to. The fact in that short clip that you're talking about that he forgot to play in his life. Everything was really serious, and that play that he used to do with his wife when they first met, that has started to go, right? It's very, very powerful. So the question for everyone is— and, and if you don't mind, I want to ask this to your audience— like, if your life stayed the same as it is right now for the next 5, 10 years, like, what are you going to regret? Are you gonna be on your deathbed thinking back like all these other people? I wish I'd work less. I'd wish I spent more time with my friends and family, right? So I've been thinking about these concepts for many years, in particular since my dad died in 2013, which is a, like for anyone, you know, when they lose a parent, when a parent dies, it's huge. I used to care for my dad for many years. That's why I live in the northwest of England. I moved back to help my brother and mum look after him. He had lupus, he was on dialysis for years. And I really struggled when my dad died, but I now see my dad's death as a gift, Floris, because the things I've learned from my dad's death have really changed me as a human being in terms of what I teach my children, what I teach the public on my channels in terms of their health. Like, I've learned a lot of that through Dad's death. And so I now reframe that. Yes, it was, it was an unpleasant experience, but I believe that life is made up of the stories we tell about our experiences, and we get to choose the stories. So the story I choose to say now is my dad's death was a gift. He gave me a gift because what I've learned through that process has made me the man I am today, and I thank my dad for that. Now, one of the things my dad did in his life, he was an immigrant to the UK in 1962, and to give us the best life, and he, he really did give me the best start in life, he worked full-time and he worked 4 nights a week. So for 30 years, my dad only slept for 3 nights a week, right? No word of a lie. I'm not exaggerating. 30 years he slept 3 nights a week. And given what I now know about the human body, of course he got lupus when he was 57. Of course he got sick, because you cannot keep beasting yourself week after week, month after month without consequence. It will come and bite you. I've seen thousands of patients over the years who kept thinking they could keep pushing it until they get sick. And believe you me, when you get sick, you wish you'd addressed this earlier.. And that's why I'm saying to people, pay attention, pay attention. Are you pushing too hard? Do you need to run as much as you do? Can you ease off? Do you need to go full out high intensity every run? Or can a few runs just be nice and relaxed? Or you're just using it as a way of unwinding, right? So going back to your question, and this relates to that clip with Gabel Maté, and it also relates to my dad's story. My dad had all these dreams for retirement. He was going to see the world with my mom. He was going to go back to India and start off street clinics for people who didn't have anything. He did none of it because he got sick. He lost his vision. He was chained to a dialysis machine for 15 years. So a few years ago, as I'm doing the inner work and I'm assessing my life, I'm like, hey, Dad maybe didn't have a choice. Dad came to the UK with nothing. He faced discrimination like many immigrants did back then. And he had to fight to where he got to. The tragedy would be if I repeat what my dad did, because I don't need to. I don't need to make the same choices he actually had to make. He is— and my mum have given me a great start in life. And yes, I'm lucky I'm doing well in my career at this point, okay? I, I have a job that I love. I know many people don't. I get to do a job job that improves the lives of a lot of people now. And I feel very lucky and very fortunate for that. And I earn enough money. And one of the quotes I think about all the time, Floris, is from the Tao Te Ching. True wealth is knowing what is enough. I ask myself that question every week. What is enough? Floris, I have enough. I'm more successful than I ever could have dreamt of. Now, I could keep pushing and working and trying to prove myself, but I don't need to. Like, I don't need that external validation anymore. Now, because I'm lucky enough to not have a boss, I decided a few years ago I want to take every summer off, 4 weeks, sometimes 6 weeks. And I go with my wife and my kids, we go on adventures around the world. My kids are young. I recognize, I really recognize that these moments are priceless. And I also recognize that not everyone everyone has the luxury of being able to do this. I do acknowledge that. At the same time, there's many people who could and they choose not to. They keep pushing, they keep working through. And I've realized, yes, could I earn more money if I didn't take 6 weeks off? Yes. Could I have more followers and more downloads and more listeners? Yeah, sure, I could have all those things, but I'm okay not having those things, right? Someone said to me in the podcast world, because, you know, I'm very lucky I've got the most listened to health show in Europe, right? So we have a lot of listeners each week. Get 'Well, aren't you worried, right? They say in the podcast, well, you've got to keep releasing because if you stop, someone else can take that slot.' I thought, okay, that's a really good question. And then I had to ask myself, why are you doing this, Rangan? Are you doing this to help people, or are you doing it for your ego? If you think it's to help people, which I genuinely am, then why does it matter if someone finds in that break a different show that they prefer to mine? That's a good thing. Great, that individual's found something they prefer better. Great. Like, I genuinely mean that, hand on heart. Now, it's easy to say that when you've got success behind you. Again, I acknowledge that. But nonetheless, that is my reality. I'm okay with that. So I've made the choice to sacrifice, if you can call it a sacrifice, some, you know, work success. But what do I get in return? I get the most wonderful summers. Where I spend quality time with my wife, my children. This year we went to Kenya for 4 weeks. That looked incredible. I mean, yeah, just the most unbelievable time. I do not take it for granted. I recognize I'm lucky to be able to do that. I really do, because I know that someone's going to be listening and thinking, good for you, mate, but I can't do that.

Yeah, I recognize that. But even if it's for a week, even if it is for—

and it doesn't have to be in Kenya, like, yeah. And again, I built up to this. Yeah, you know, I wasn't doing this. I was slogging away, applying for annual leave with my boss for years like everyone else. But now I do that. I go off social media, so I delete all the apps off my phone. And you said, what do I learn? I learned so much, Floris. We do not realize how much our thoughts and beliefs are influenced by the thoughts and beliefs that we're consuming. But we do not have any idea. We think that going on Instagram and Twitter each day is passive. Hey, I do that, right? But we don't realize we're getting all these opinions constantly going into our ears, and we're absorbing them. So sometimes our views are not really what we think, they're what the people around us think. One of the key things I learn every summer is I start to tune into what I think. I've quietened down the external world so I can start to my inner worlds. I could start to hear, oh, what do I think about that? How do I want to live my life? Is that still aligned with who I am? So I could talk to you for an hour about what I learned, Floris, but the key thing I learned in those summers is I learned to tune into myself and hear, like, what's going on inside.

And I tell you, that's priceless. I can only imagine. The part that I find wild sometimes is when we're in the go, go, go mode. And sometimes even when I'm, for example, on an international airplane ride and 10 hours there's no internet connection. And even that part of just grabbing a journal and writing some of the thoughts on paper and listening to some music and just not having that outside input, what you're talking about, even that part alone. Exactly. Can already be a complete reframe again of the situation.

And then we can look from the outside into our daily life instead of always being in the same routine. Yeah. And, and, and on that point, Floris, don't let the fact that I go away for 4 weeks in the summer put you off. The principle is what you just said. You need a bit of time to step outside of your life to reflect on your life. Running can give you that. For, I would argue one of the best things that running gives me and many people is that step outside their life. How many times do you solve problems when you're out on a run? Run, or things that you can't quite figure out in your life, you figure them out on the trail, right? And there's a reason why, right? You may— I don't know if you've covered this on your show before, but there's a part of your brain called the DMN, the default mode network, that kicks into gear when you're not actively focused on a task. And that part of the brain does many things, but one of the things it does is it tries to solve problems for you. So if you can go on that run and just switch off your brain is going to start to give you the solutions that you're looking for.

You've just got to allow it to do it. And I have noticed that— not wanting to toot the horn of low heart rate training always— but I have noticed that occurs more for me at a lower intensity versus when I'm running pretty high intensity.

Yeah, because it's— the whole physiology is different. The stress response is amped up when you're doing a really hard run. Your focus is narrow. It's like you're really focused, you're running away from that tiger, right? But on the low heart rate run, it's not. You can see more peripheral vision, you can see what's going on around you. Your stress response is not being amped up to anywhere near the same degree. And so your brain and your mind can start to wander.

And that's what we want. We need more mind wandering. Yeah, absolutely. So well said. I really appreciate you writing this book and I enjoyed reading it. Thank you for letting me read it already before It was out, that made a big difference there. And the part that I like about this is that it has very direct actionable items that you can apply to your daily life. And so I'm sure it was a lot of work to write this book. I can tell that you put a tremendous amount of effort into this.

Where can people find this book? I mean, everywhere. Like, it's, it's out in the UK, in the US, in Canada. It's called Make Change That Lasts. I mean, in all the usual retailers, you know, you can go to my website, Dr. Chatty.com, but frankly, it's easier just to go to your local bookstore or Amazon and just type in my name in the book and it'll pop right up.

Absolutely. And I'll make sure to link to that in the show notes as well. Any closing thoughts? Any last recommendations? There's a lot of people looking to become a stronger, healthier, happier runner.

We've covered a lot of different topics here, but any closing thoughts you'd like to share with the audience? I guess my final thoughts, Floris— we've covered a lot today, and so there's something I think about a lot is this idea that if someone's heard this conversation and there was a part of it that resonated with them, maybe they recognized an unhealthy relationship with their times, or maybe they recognized that they use long runs to escape a difficult relationship that needs some work. It's great if you've had that realization, but just taking that realization and not doing anything about it won't lead to any change, right? Inspiration without action doesn't lead to anything. You have to take action. So my ask to everyone who's listening right now is, if there was one thing that you resonated with in this conversation, and we covered so many different topics, so hopefully there was at least one thing. Don't just forget about it and get on with your life. Actually have a plan in your head. How am I gonna address that? You don't have to address it all at once. Maybe you realize that as a runner, you're not doing enough strength training, but maybe you're someone who knows that you'll never get to the gym twice a week. Okay, maybe what I said about a 5-minute workout every day whilst your tea is brewing or your coffee's brewing, maybe that's something you can bring into your life. Just remember, no one thing works for everyone. Take what we've discussed, put it through your own filter, and ask yourself, is this right for me? If it is right for you, I'd encourage you to take action.

And if it isn't, then don't. So well said. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

I look forward to many more future runs together.

Me too, Floris. Thanks for having me. All right. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Wow. He surely shared a lot of great takeaways right there. What was your favorite lesson, takeaway, or quote? Please let me know in the comments over here on YouTube. If you would like to learn more about our monthly accountability challenges that we're launching soon here with the Personal Best program, check out pbprogram.com. This is a great way to hold yourself accountable at the start of the new year So we're going to dive into the topic of consistency in training. We're going to dive into strength training, into optimizing your sleep, into mobility. These accountability challenges really help check in on a daily basis, get feedback from our coaches and from other Personal Best members in the community. Thanks so much for listening and have fun out there on your runs.

Bye now.