Does strength training actually make you a better runner?

All right, welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I'm your host, Coach Chris Newport, and I have a special guest, Alyssa Barber— Dr. Alyssa Barber, I should say— who is our newest addition to the Endurance Edge team. And y'all, I found a fellow nerd, so I'm super stoked that she is with us. And so thanks for coming on the show and introducing yourself, Alyssa.

Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be on here.

Yeah, awesome. All right, so I want people to get to know you a little bit, uh, what your background is, and again, how much of a special nerd you are, because you are. And I hope you take— I hope you take that in the greatest, like, compliment. Okay, good, because everybody who's listening is also like a special kind of data nerd. We love exercise physiology and all things like health and fitness and nutrition and all that kind of stuff. So Um, what originally got you into exercise phys? How, how did you start this journey?

Perfect. Yeah, good question. I think my original, like, fascination was— it started with just kind of anatomy and just the human body first. And in high school, I took a really fun anatomy class. And then I was an athlete my whole life, so I was a runner. And so then just kind of wanting to know, like, what's happening inside my body While I'm doing this workout, or how can I get better, you know, physiologically? What is the reasoning for X, Y, and Z? And so that kind of geared me to major in exercise science for the next 10 years of college.

Isn't that wild? Oh my gosh. So all 3 of your degrees are exercise-related?

Correct. Yes. Yeah. Little slight variations, like different specialties and things like that, but under the general umbrella of Of exercise science, yes.

Yeah, so cool. Okay, and let's talk about your dissertation.

Sure, yeah, so I did my PhD at East Tennessee State University, and so it's a really great university because their program is actually sports science. And so slight difference between, you know, exercise and sport, right? You know, exercise is what kind of the general population does. Sport is actually a different definition, you know. And so I wanted— I knew I wanted to work with athletes, and so there Every grad student was paired up with a team at the school. And so because of my background in running, I was paired up with the track and field team. And so we were their strength coaches. And then in return for that, we got to use them as our dummies, not dummies, but our participants.

Guinea pigs.

Yeah. Our participants for our dissertation research. And so for mine, I had a great variety of athletes because I had distance runners, sprinters, throwers, you know, I had like the whole gamut. As opposed to other people who, you know, kind of just had one type of athlete for that sport. And so my dissertation, it was an entire semester of them lifting. So I would prescribe them their lifting programs, and it was a little bit different, obviously, for distance runners, the throwers, and the sprinters. They have different needs. But what I did was 3 times throughout that, we would measure body composition, the same exact thing we do in our lab here. Yeah. We would measure, um, their kind of their vertical jumps as well. And so with our vertical jumps, we had force plates. And so we could not only see the height, but also the force that they were producing into the ground during their jumps. And then we did something called an isometric mid-thigh pull. So mid-thigh pull, just, they have a bar and it's stabilized so they can't move it, but they try to pull it up and they're on those force plates and they're pushing force into the ground. So those are like measures of strength and power too.

Yeah.

And the good thing about that as well is that it's 2 force plates, so we can see asymmetries between the left and the right side. And so that's kind of the main point of my dissertation was showing that strength training can help to decrease the asymmetries or improve the asymmetries. Mm-hmm. And that the stronger you are, the less asymmetries you have, and that the less asymmetries you have, the better you perform. And so that was kind of my hypothesis. And over the 4 months-ish of the semester, we were able to prove that, that at the beginning of the semester, they all came from summer break, so they were weak. Yeah. And so we got their baseline measures and then they continued to do their strength training, to do their running training as well. And so we measured at the end and saw that the ones who were stronger had less asymmetries. And they're also the faster ones out of the group if we kind of categorize them into weaker, medium, stronger. And so this is all kind of developed to kind of nudge the community, specifically the distance community and the distance coaches, like, hey, you still need to strength train. Strength training is still important for your distance runners because not only is it making them Stronger, it's making them have less asymmetries, and there's a lot of research that, you know, being more symmetric helps with your running economy and efficiency, which helps with your overall performance. And then one of the bigger ones is it helps prevent injuries, and we know overuse injuries are really prevalent in the long-distance community. So just showing that research and kind of connecting those dots that strength training can help with A lot of those big components that drive overall performance and not just sprinters, you know, sprinters, we know almost all sprinters lift. So this is mostly geared towards the distance community, but I just had the sprinters there because I just wanted more data. Yeah. And so, yeah, for really for the distance community and it helped with their body composition as well. Stronger ones were leaner, but not too lean, obviously. Um, so overall it just, it showed that strength training kind of helped improve all those components, uh, that we consider like under the umbrella of performance.

Cool. Were you going off of their times from the team or did you guys do any like VO2 max testing before and afterwards or? No.

So we just went, yeah, I wanted to do, you know, straight to the, to the performance that the coach would care more about, which was their race times. Okay. And so for, for the men, it was, I believe I picked 4 races that they did throughout the cross-country season, each person, because they had to have competed at least 4 times to be included. So I had to take people out if they were injured, redshirting, things like that. So for the, for the men, that was 8K, and for the women, that was 5K. And yeah, averaged their times for, for those. So obviously they got better throughout the season. Um, but I got their, each person's average for their, for their race times. So I thought that was what the coach would wanna see, you know?

Yeah.

Um, we know VO2 max does predict good performance in endurance running, but it's not, you know, the telltale. So their actual race times is what, you know, the coach is interested in. Interesting. So seeing that the stronger people were the faster people, they were the people who weren't injured cuz they were able to compete at the races and things like that. Um, and then they also had less symmetries during During the jumpings and the force production movements too.

Yeah. And you had men and women, right?

Yeah, men and women. Yep. So that was important as well because they do adapt differently. So they, and they did adapt differently. So men got stronger faster, which happens, but we still did see significant changes in the women as well. And so because women are unfortunately you know, have less muscle mass than men. They were a little bit weaker, but we still saw them get stronger, saw them improve in their asymmetry as well over the 4 months.

So what kind, like what, what did some of their protocols look like? What were some of the strength things

you

programmed for them? Yeah. Yeah.

So not very, not really different actually across like movement-wise. They did a lot of similar movements as the sprinters. So they did still did power movements. You know, I like, Uh, my professor, he was really like kind of keep it simple, stupid. I love it.

I love it.

Especially with distance runners. I say this with love because I've worked with so many. Um, they might not be as coordinated to do, you know, a clean and jerk or to do, you know, stuff like that.

That always fascinates me watching. So, you know, we're located inside an aquatic center. Yeah. And when I watch some of the Um, let's call them kids because they're teenagers, try to do, you know, cleans and stuff. Yeah, that is— that's next level for them. I mean, you did— that's a lot of coordination.

Yes.

Yeah, it's a very highly technical lift.

Yes. And so a lot of them didn't have a background in lifting either, so you have to work with that as well. Um, and so, so there's absolutely nothing wrong with just Squats, bench press. We still do upper body too. That's still just as important. RDLs. And even if it's just with dumbbells, some of the freshman women, right? They didn't touch a barbell sometimes because they didn't have proper form that I felt like they should be able to do it. But you can still get a lot accomplished with kettlebells and dumbbells and medicine balls. Those were—

Yeah.

Those were kind of our 3 main things for a lot of the freshman women, but they still are doing power movements. Squat jumps too, even if it's just body weight, they're still doing box jumps, even if it's just kind of to the middle of their shin. So the differences with them was, you know, the sets and reps and the resistance, obviously, between the endurance and the sprinters. Yeah. Sprinters can handle a little bit heavier weights. They can handle more complex movements too. So they did additional plyometrics and things that were event-specific for them. So I had to, you know, with the coaches, in order for the coach to allow me to do this, he had to approve of the plan. And so I had to always keep in mind, you know, their success on the track and not just my dissertation. Yeah. And so I still had to, you know, make sure that I was setting them up for success on the track as well. And so, you know, the high jumpers did something a little bit different than You know, just the regular sprinters and stuff like that. But I tried to keep the basic, like I said, the core movements very similar so that the actual strength gains were kind of comparable. And then the accessory movements were more, you know, event specific for them that they, that they needed. Yeah.

This is really cool. This is truly like, because I find so much research and, you know, there's nothing wrong with it, but so much research is almost like in like a little petri dish. And then how do we pull it over into The real world, and you're literally bridging that gap and working directly with the coach to say, can I please do this?

Yes. Yes.

I'm going to track you guys and then actually see what's the result in terms of real-world application. So,

yes.

So cool.

It's hard to find. Yeah. If you know, all of our nerds out there reading research studies, it's, it's very hard to find things like this out there, uh, which was why—

Especially with per— with human performance, because it's so human performance and nutrition I find are 2 of the hardest things to study.

I

mean, it's just, it's just hard.

Yeah. And there's so many other factors that can affect them as well, especially with nutrition.

Yeah.

You know, recording bias.

Oh, bless. Yes. There's so many different things. And now that we are able to look deeper into like genetics, you know, uh, there's that piece too of who's getting stronger faster and Obviously men, yes, but where's the genetic component to that? And, you know, so interesting. Cool. Okay, so it sounds like a lot of jumping, plyometric types of movements. Was there any other, I don't know, like core movements or things that you did that were more, I don't know, like knee extensions on the machine or things that maybe we think of with more standard lifting?

Good question. Um, We would do, I'm trying to think, like I should have re—

Reread your dissertation. I feel like once you finish it, you're like, never again. I don't—

Yeah, I haven't opened it.

I'm so done with this now.

One emphasis that we did that I think gets overlooked is a lot of single leg activities because running is unilateral. And so some people, I think, tend to forget that, you know, which is a basic squat. You're, you know, so we did do a lot of unilateral exercises as well, like rear foot elevated squats, even if it's just body squats, because those are hard, um, for an 18-year-old female who's never lifted in her life. Yeah. Um, so yeah, so a lot of single leg activities as well, just because, yeah, when you're running, you're producing force on one side at a time. And so you have to kind of be able to get used to that. And you're producing a lot of force when you're running, like almost depending on the person, but 3 times your body weight. And so that was an emphasis that I don't think a lot of people look at either when, you know, you're lifting for, for running. Yeah. Is to make sure to get at least one day where you incorporate unilateral exercises. And like I said, they don't have to be heavy. You don't have to have a barbell and do single leg squats. You can just Pick your foot up behind you and do some bodyweight squats. Yeah.

And they are not easy.

No.

Yeah.

And even lunges are a good opportunity to do that. So just walking lunges, even step-ups onto a box are a good opportunity to do that. Anything that's just one leg producing force at a time is going to be really helpful to kind of graduate into progressively getting a little bit heavier.

Yeah, so cool. So it sounds like at the end of the day, it worked.

It worked. And again, it worked for this specific team, but there is a lot of other research that shows it does work and it is helpful.

Yeah. What I mean, you know, you had such an interesting lens of looking at, you know, sprinters versus, you know, 5K, 10K, whatever distances of I mean, it almost seems to me as you're describing some of the unilateral work that maybe sprinters have more— I don't necessarily want to say like kinesthetic awareness, but it's just, it's just a different sport within a sport, you know? And I don't know, you are welcome to say yes, perhaps they do have more. It is true.

It is true. And so that, that also goes into their strength. So there's also my My friends and colleagues, right, when I was doing my dissertation, they were working with lots of other different sports and we'd help each other collect the data and things like that. Golfers, actually, the stronger they were, the better, not just at driving, right, which takes pure force, but also at putting too. Wow. So the stronger you are, the better your like fine motor skills are as well. The better you are at like kind of firing those neurons and being able to like use your motor control a little bit more efficiently too. Yeah. To like, you know, it takes, it takes less than a, you know, a split second to do it, but to plan movements and plan your like motor patterns. Yeah. Which has to do with coordination and yeah, being able to do a hang clean and like those complicated movements. So studies have shown that the stronger you are, you're, you're able to do that even better.

Wow.

Yeah. So, yes, sprinters are typically stronger, and they have more practice, right, doing those movements. They're like, even just like doing A skips and B skips and stuff. Those little like plyometrics are going to help them be a little bit more coordinated. So I had my endurance runners doing A skips and B skips.

Did they get better at it? Yeah. Okay, they did. Okay. You see a video of it and I'm like, that doesn't look that bad. And then you try to do it and you're like, oh, this is This is different. Very different. We'll have to, we'll have to maybe, uh, you and I are meeting on Friday. Not that anybody, not that that matters to anyone who's listening because these come out on Thursdays. Um, maybe we'll take some videos. I hope you do A skips and B skips well because I don't particularly do them well.

We'll link it. Yeah. Oh, I'm great. I still make sure I know how to do them.

Okay, good. Yeah. Because, um, uh, yeah, I mean, we, I feel like our Folks who come into the lab or just generally are, um, you know, obviously collegiate runners is very different than a more recreational endurance athlete. Um, but it's— there tends to be a lot like— well, I find that we have a lot of shufflers, just kind of, you know, maybe they're picking up their feet, maybe they're not. Of course, I want to get everybody on the trail and they're like, oh, I fall all the time. I'm like, because you're not picking up your feet, you know. So like those types of things are—

Yeah.

Good to help them pick up their feet, which, speaking of longevity, whether you're in your sport or not, you gotta pick your feet up as we age.

Yes. Yes.

Right.

Like, and that goes back to the, the motor planning. So, so, you know, longevity, yes, you wanna have a high VO2 max, but also lifting is gonna help maintain that muscle and also helps maintain that brain connection to your muscles to plan like, oh no, I'm falling. Let me try to brace and catch myself, or, oh no, I'm off balance, let me put this foot out here to catch myself. And so the stronger you are, the more muscle you have, also your brain works a little bit faster to tell your limbs what to do as you start to age as well. And so not just like focusing on heart health, but also focusing on your muscles because that's gonna help prevent falls, prevent injuries and things like that.

Yeah, definitely. So with these, Variations in sprinters versus, you know, longer distance athletes. Could you tell any degree of like enjoyment or, 'cause I'm sure the sprinters are bought in, like they're like, I know if I do this, this will make me better. So like, did you notice some sort of a, like, oh, I have to do this strength training thing?

Good question.

Right? Like you probably didn't research that, but maybe just observation.

No, just observation. Yeah. So I, um, The sprinters, yeah, they, they understand. They've been doing it in high school. They understand the importance of it. They were at 6:00 AM, so there's a difference between— we lifted at 6:00 AM. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were like, whatever. The distance runners, the females were a little, not that they didn't enjoy it, but a little more cautious because they haven't been in a weight room before. Am I doing this right? Is this, you know, I'm not gonna say scared, but yeah, more cautious about if they should go heavier. So that specific group was me watching them. Hey, you can add a little bit more weight to that. Don't be afraid. Yeah. So that was, you know, the distance boys. They loved it. Oh yes, I get to use the weight room. Like, awesome. Love it. Like, the weight room originally was just for, you know, the strength power athletes, and now we get to use it. Love it. So they, they, I think they enjoyed the lifting because It was a change in environment for them, a change in pace as well, you know, as opposed to running long miles. They get to kind of do something a little, a little bit more exciting, a little bit more sexy.

Yeah. Okay. All right. And then maybe it's, um, did you notice that there was a social aspect at all? Like, did they kind of enjoy hanging out or like cut up with each other? Or, because, you know, when you're running, especially if I see a group of Collegiate athletes at like Umstead or something, like they're on a mission.

Yeah.

Like they, their eyes forward. Like we are doing a thing. It's not like, hey, we're just gonna chat about the weather today. You know? Yeah.

And I think that's, yeah, like I think that was a little bit of a, part of the enjoyment with them too is like, I'm getting a workout in, but I can still sit here and talk like while waiting for our next set and still catch up and stuff like that. So like they thought of it. Not as an easy practice, or it's kind of a fun, yeah, fun part of their practice was coming in and getting lift in and not having to run 12 miles. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

And not being able to talk at the end of that 12 miles.

Right, exactly. How did— which, speaking of, how many times did you have them in the weight room? Was it a couple of times a week or?

The distance team was 2. They're both actually 2 days per week. Yep.

Okay. So like, y'all, that's not that much.

Mm-mm. And it's like 5-minute warmup, 35 to 40-minute workout, 5-minute cooldown. We had to, we had 1 hour total in the weight room cuz we had to share with all the other teams. So yeah, we had to be in and out, like including the warmup, including the cooldown. So it was not, not a long time. Yeah.

Yeah. Get in, get out.

Yeah.

Get on with your day.

And that's how my workouts are still too.

Yeah, right. Seriously. Yeah. Sometimes I'm like, what, what are you guys doing for 2 hours? I don't know. Like,

you don't

need to. Okay. Yeah. Um, any, was there anything else specific that you did with them in terms of, I don't know, did you have more like circuits or supersets or, um, cause it sounds like you were pretty efficient, so probably not a ton of breaks.

Yeah, we had to be efficient, especially with the amount of people. It was a very tiny weight room. There was just 3 squat racks and a good amount of dumbbells and things like that. So yeah, we had to be very efficient with our time. Um, and we had to, some, you know, some people were buddies and things like that, but I would actually group them up based on like their strength levels.

Yeah.

So that you wouldn't have to keep changing the weight on the bars and things like that. And so I'd be like, okay, nope, you guys are over here. You're over here. You're over here. Because these are the, you know, you're matched up with people of your own strength level.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so that, that was, yeah, a time efficiency thing. Um, not, yeah, not a lot of supersets because it was such a small space. Sometimes we would get like the first 2 big movements out of the way. So like the squats, get those out of the way first. Then we can kind of break up and do everything else out of order if you please, or just like a circuit style since there wasn't a lot of equipment and there was a lot of people. But I like to get like the first 2 big movements that are gonna cost some more energy out of the way first. And like, they're kind of like the most important ones of the day. And then do all the accessories afterwards. And they can do kind of change it up and do them in circuits.

So it sounds like probably doing more like a, like a squat first and then maybe like a Single leg RDL and, or some of your Bulgarian split squats or things like that. Correct. Yeah. Whatever. Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. People, you know, people want specifics, Alyssa.

I know.

I'm gonna write my workout.

We can, we can post it. We can post it.

Ooh. Okay. Yeah. Like I'll go back and look at it. This is your workout. Oh, we're, we're making you look at your dissertation again. I'm so proud.

But yes, a lot. So like just the most commons were like Squats, bench press, push press, or overhead, you know, shoulder press. And then, yeah, the single leg, either RDLs or split squats. Those are like big, big movements, especially for the distance runners. For the sprinters, same thing. And then like hang cleans, more like moving the bar a little bit quickly for them as well. Okay. And then we typically avoided deadlifts. At this age, or not age, but this kind of level that they were and how much experience they had had with lifting, I didn't think it was— I thought the risk-reward wasn't there. Yeah. Because if they were to throw out their back, then they're out for a season. And that's,

that's,

that's bad on me.

Yeah.

So we would typically avoid kind of those more riskier movements that I didn't think were worth it and where I could Felt like I could get some benefits and strength from other movements to kind of compensate for that. So yeah.

Cool. And then any core type of— oh yeah, I mean, obviously you're using a lot of core in the movements that you're describing, but there were— there more specific core?

Yes, we always did 2 core activities at the end, but yeah, you're always using core throughout all of this as well, but always 2 specific core activities at the end. I usually Like had a list of 5 or 6 and I let them choose. If they kept choosing the same one over and over— Oh, really?

Okay, so they got to have autonomy.

Yeah, if they kept choosing the same one over and over, I'd be like, now my turn to choose. But we would do a lot. We wouldn't do like the basic crunches and things like that. We would do a lot of actual like rotational core.

Oh yeah, okay.

Because that helps kind of stabilize the trunk and helps with like running posture as well. So you're not like Yeah, I can't see me, but dropping the shoulders and things like that, like running. So like we did a lot of rotational stuff where you had to work on your posture as well. So actually medicine ball throws, rotational.

Ooh.

They love those because you can partner with each other and we would go outside. So they, they kind of like doing that. And then, um, yeah, like with resistance bands, so like Pallof press and things like that. Um, so a lot more upright, not so much like on the ground doing crunches and things like that, more upright, making sure that our posture is also accounted for while we're doing the, the core exercises.

Yeah, that's, um, especially in our population, more of your not collegiate athletes.

Yeah, posture is important for everybody.

Posture is important for everybody. Absolutely. But you know, if you're sitting at a desk all day and, um, I do find that it's important to either videotape yourself or Do it with a coach because that is a, you know, I'll catch our athletes who are just like, like, I'm doing a Russian twist, is this right? Like, you know, again, if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see that my shoulders are all rounded, but, but they don't necessarily feel it. Yeah, they need to be reminded.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Pull your shoulder blades down, you know, like open up your chest rather than Being all slouched and collapsed and be like, yeah, but I did 20 reps. I'm like, but they were not quality reps at all. Yeah.

And then like a lot of hip flexors too, because that's kind of attached as well. So we would do like, like leaning up against the wall and doing like walking bridges and like faster kind of quick feet, we call them, too, um, to help with, with the hip flexors as well. Like overhead med ball stuff. It's just standing there and like marching. It's like core posture and hip flexors too. Just giving you ideas for all of your, uh, your—

I know. Yeah. So good. So good. Okay. Love this. All right, cool. So now let's transition to what you're doing with us here at The Endurance Edge. How, how has that transition been? And tell us about it. Like, like, how has it all been?

It's been great.

Yeah. Cool. So yeah, I Me fishing for a compliment. That's not what that was. But you guys, like, Dr. Barber is freaking brilliant, and you guys need to come see her because—

Come see me.

Not only, as you can see, she's very personable. And no offense to the exercise phys world, but sometimes it's a little bland, you know?

It can be more on the nerdy side than even than us, and I have Beloved colleagues that are more on the the data science side and the numbers, and they just look at computers and they love it and they're good at it. But yeah, I I love this job. This is like when I graduated, I became a professor. So I was a professor for a few years working at small colleges, and I loved it. It was fun. I still worked with athletes and things like that, but. And then a job opportunity came up to work at a lab in Boston. And then I, so I, I had that job and I oversaw it and it was amazing. It was very similar to this job. Yeah. So I was in Boston and then I had a baby and we moved down here to be closer to family. So I took like a year hiatus and then I saw this and I was like, oh, this is the, this is the dream job. Mm-hmm. So I love being able to combine my love for exercise science and all things nerdy and helping athletes because I was an athlete. I guess I still am trying to be. You are, you are, it just takes a different shape. I love combining those 2 loves. When we were in college, we called ourselves the jockey nerds because we were all very athletic. We all love sports. And that's why we wanted to learn more about our bodies because we wanted to help others in their sport and help ourselves train for our sports. And, but we were super nerdy because we, you know, learned all this stuff. So we're, we're jockey nerds. Um, and so then combining, like, I love teaching. And so explaining these principles to people and helping them learn about themselves and their bodies. Um, 'cause it's not common knowledge. Everybody listening here has done their own research and, you know, you didn't just learn this in your basic gen ed courses.

No. Or, or you've long since forgotten it. And yet, you know, like I talk about ATP sometimes in my sessions and the Krebs cycle. And people look at me like, they're like, please, for the love of all things holy, don't make me remember that biology class in 9th grade.

Right. And so, yeah, I just love explaining, you know, on like a, a broad general umbrella, like, this is what's happening in your body right now. Yeah. And some people really love it and they wanna learn more and I'll sit there and nerd out with them. Some people are like, all right, cool. And that's it. And that's fine. But I just, yeah, I love answering questions and helping them learn and also encouraging them, you know, on how to. Get better and improve and things like that. And so being able to combine like all of those into this, like, one is a dream job. It really is.

Well, so good. And that's really why I created it as an opportunity to not just— because yeah, you can get your VO2 max tested. Yeah, you can get your lactate tested. But what does it all mean?

Right, right.

And there's so many general things out there and generic recommendations. That people I find, and you probably have already found this, is that people are like, "Well, I want to know what my zone two is because I keep hearing that zone two training is you know the bee's knees." I'm like, "I mean, it's part. It's yeah, but also it's not the whole thing, and you don't have the answers until you actually do the testing to see where are you at and what principles do you need to apply now to improve in what you need for your body, or what's what what are your overall goals? And it might be to." Do an Ironman, or it might be to like play with your grandkids. I mean, and good on you. Yeah, whatever that is.

I love the variety of people that I get to see too, as well. Um, yeah, I had a— I think I told you a few weeks ago, he was 80-something years old.

Wow.

And I was like, this is great, like, this is amazing. And he just wanted to know where he was, like VO2 max-wise, and he just wanted to make sure that he was on the right track. Because he wants to live much longer. And I'm like, great, this is amazing. And then you get super elite athletes who just want to find that 1%, right, to get even better. And so the conversations are different and the vibe is different. And I just like that, the variety as well. And then everybody else in between is fun too.

Yeah.

So it's never the same person every day, obviously, but it's never the same conversation either.

Yes.

And never the same, like, topics that you're talking about either. We weren't talking about race strategy with him. We were talking about longevity and healthspan. And then with the, you know, the people who are racing, we're talking about threshold paces and, and things like that. So being able to talk about everything just in the span of one day is fun.

Isn't it cool? Oh yeah. I, I think it's so great for people to get those very specific answers and have those specific conversations that are not. Um, computer generated or, you know, um, yeah, AI generated. Yeah. Like, hey, we're real people and we're here to help you do great things in whatever shape that looks like for you.

Yes.

So cool. All right. Well, I think everybody's, uh, oh, we did, we need to do some like rapid fire, um, like get to know you questions.

Okay.

Um, uh, okay. So you already mentioned that you have a 1-year-old. So we know that about you. And let's see, favorite food. What's your favorite food?

Favorite food, rapid fire. Mac and cheese.

Mac and cheese. Okay. Um, favorite running shoes?

Running shoes. Um, I've always been a Hoka girl. Hoka Clifton.

I don't know why. Okay.

Like I started that right when they came out a long time ago and I just like, I always go back to them.

You're, you're stuck. You're attached. Okay. Favorite sports-related food?

Sports hot dog. Good old, good old baseball hot dog. That's like my husband and I. He went to the Canes game the other day and he's like, I had 3 hot dogs. Weird. But only at sporting events. You can't make

me— Otherwise, not so much.

Yeah.

Okay, good. Um, what is your favorite current activity to do?

Current activity, I've really gotten back into lifting. Um, we're gonna talk about my swim run later in a different episode. So I did a lot of that, but I've gotten back in more lifting focused right now. Yeah. Which I, I really enjoy cuz of all the reasons we said.

Yeah. And how different do you think fitness is now, um, that you have a 1-year-old versus pre-1-year-old?

So different. So different.

Yeah.

My body. Yeah. That's another episode too. But yeah, time management. body goals and the reason that you're lifting and things, especially a former athlete versus lifting now. There's different goals I have for reasons. Yeah.

Because what sport did you play?

I was a hurdler in college, so I ran the 400-meter hurdles.

That's so cool.

I was not a distance runner. I was a sprinter. That's why I still have this love for lifting and power and things like that. But obviously I don't have to sprint 400-meter hurdles anymore. Yeah. I'm doing more functional movements so I can pick up my baby and things like that. Yeah.

Love it. So cool. All right. If you could send people away with 2 tips based on what we've talked about today, what would be your 2 tips for them?

2 tips. Lift. Uh-huh. Because it's important for everybody, like we talked about, not just athletes, But longevity. And the second part is, I guess it's like a 2A, but the best exercise to do is the one that you'll actually do. I think I would always say that to people. I can prescribe you a really complicated exercise program, but if you're not going to do it, then it's a waste of time. And so making sure that if you're writing your own workouts or you're even working with a coach and you're reading the thing and you're not into those movements, tell them, because then it's— you're just wasting time. So like, the best exercise is the one that you're going to do. So make sure that you want to do it and you know how to do it and you'll actually do it.

Love it. It's so good. Dr. Eliza Barber, thank you for introducing yourself to the world, to the community, and sharing your gifts of your love and ability to translate complex exercise physiology terms into actionable items that we can take. So if you guys want to hang out with Alyssa— I'm here. Yep. So head over to our website, theunderinsides.com, and you can find under services metabolic and sweat testing and choose. We even just created a little quiz of like, what are the things that you're looking for? Because we do have a lot of testing options. So to make that simpler, we created a little quiz. It's like 2 to 3 questions and you say, what are your main goals? And then it'll directly exactly what What you need. And, uh, you even have testing on the weekends.

Yes.

Nice to meet people where they're at.

No excuses.

That's right. That's right. Let's go do the things. Cool. All right, Alyssa, thank you so much for being on the Find Your Edge podcast, and we are going to have you back. This is going to be a more regular nerd-out time that you and I are going to have to share with the rest of the world. So I'm looking forward to that and hope everybody else is too.

Yes. Thank you so much.

Yeah.