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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Endurance

161. The Other Side of Endurance

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When you think about “endurance”, what comes to mind? Since you’re most likely a runner, your mind probably conjures up images of slogging out miles and miles on the roads or trails. And you’d …

Continue Reading about 161. The Other Side of Endurance →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 161 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. Today I’m talking about the other side of endurance. So, when you think about endurance, what comes to mind, since you’re most likely a runner listening to this podcast, your mind probably conjures up images of slogging out a bunch of miles on the roads or on the trails, and you’d be correct.

Building this kind of physical endurance is one of the keys to being a healthy fit human being. But there’s another side of endurance one that doesn’t get discussed much. This other type of endurance is one of the most valuable life skills that you need to learn and master. So today, I’m going to explain exactly what this other side of endurance actually is, and why it’s so important to you becoming your most badass self.

But first, listen to this. Most people, even runners think that gaining weight is just a fact of life. And I understand why the average American gains an average of one to two pounds of fat per year from early adulthood through middle age. And even if you’re an avid runner, you’re not immune to these stats. The reason most people gain weight isn’t that they’re, you know, they’re not trying hard enough, or they don’t track their food properly, or they’re not running enough.

People gain weight because they’re eating what they think is a healthy diet. But it’s actually not, you know, you’ve probably been told to eat this high carbohydrate diet full of cereal grains and sugars and industrial seed oils based on the food pyramid or my plate or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days. And it just doesn’t work, right?

So listen, it’s not your fault. You’re just doing what you’ve been told to do, but it just doesn’t work at all. Okay, continually gaining weight as you age is not a fact of life, it’s actually something you can control with the right approach. In my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, I’ll put together a personalized plan that works for you based off of your goals, your personality, your lifestyle, your likes and dislikes.

And then I’ll help you stick to that plan so that you can actively hit all of your weight loss and your running goals. And all you have to say is Patrick, yes, I’m ready. Let’s do this. To learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And you can get started right away.

Alright, let’s talk about the other side of endurance. So most people, especially runners understand what endurance means. And of course, we’re talking about sort of that physical side of endurance, right? If you’re a long-distance runner, building endurance means being able to run longer, being able to run farther, pushing the limits of how long you can last out there on the roads or the trails, right. And I’ve done this many times.

When I first started running many years ago, I could run like a mile. And I didn’t think I could ever run three miles without having to like stop and like completely catch my breath. And so I didn’t think I could ever run like a 5k until I did. And then I never thought I could run a 10k. And I remember training myself to run three miles and four miles and five miles, and then finally being able to run 10k, and so I did that. And then I just kind of skipped the whole half marathon thing and then just went from the 10k straight to the marathon. That’s just me, but I didn’t think I would be able to run a marathon.

Never in my life was somebody who was like, oh, yeah, you know, go run a marathon. I was drinking and smoking cigarettes and eating the crap diet and I was way overweight. And in those days, there was no way I thought, you know, if or be capable of running a marathon, but then I did. BTdubs, I you know, quit drinking and quit smoking and quit eating junk food and stuff like that.

And as part of this whole process of being a long distance runner it’s really hard to like smoke cigarettes and be a long distance runner at the same time, just so you know. But then I pushed myself even farther, 50k, 50 mile, 100 mile. So I’ve constantly pushed myself to see what I’m capable of, how much endurance can I handle?

And so over the years, I’ve actively built my endurance. So how do you build your endurance physically, right? You have got to improve your cardiovascular system, right, you have to build that aerobic engine. And one of the ways to do this is just to run a lot and run a lot of miles and continually increase the miles that you’re running.

And you’ve got to do this the right way, you don’t want to injure yourself, you don’t want to increase your mileage too, too much too soon. So increase your mileage slowly. But over the years, I was able to increase my ability to endure while running. Right. And this means that you’re more aerobically fit, this means you can get out there and you can run longer distances. And you’ve really built a strong aerobic engine, right?

So we kind of understand this whole idea of endurance from that standpoint, right. There’s a couple other things about building endurance that you may not have thought about, maybe you do know some of these things. But getting more aerobic than fit also helps you physically in other ways, for example, you know, you get this improved cardiovascular health.

So your whole cardio cardiovascular system, your body’s ability to pump blood through your system and you know, pump blood to working muscles, and deliver oxygen to working muscles improves dramatically, you can lower your blood pressure. So regular aerobic activity helps to lower blood pressure is why most experienced runners tend to have pretty low blood pressure which helps you to regulate blood sugar.

So improving your cardiovascular system helps regulate insulin levels to keep blood sugar normal. Improving your aerobic engine also helps improve sleep. They did some studies, and they’ve showed that people that who exercise aerobically regularly have better sleep quality and and better duration of sleep. And then obviously, better sleep means less stress.

So, you’ll be more likely to lose weight as well, which is awesome. Having a strong aerobic engine means that you have a strengthened immune system, because being more cardiovascularly fit increases the amount of antibodies in the blood, these antibodies are called immunoglobulins, which is just a fun word to say.

So you get a stronger immune system, you get improved cognitive function, you know, having a better aerobic engine helps to boost brain power. And it helps slow the brain deterioration as you age. And I love this one so much: it makes you feel happier. Improving your aerobic engine will help stave off the feelings of depression, and boost your mood almost immediately and make you feel happier. So you get this immediate mood boost when you do some aerobic activity. I think we’ve probably all experienced that. Right?

So there’s lots of reasons why we want to improve our aerobic engine, why we want to become more aerobically fit, why wouldn’t we want to build our endurance, right? Endurance is about going longer. And just a little sidebar on this. The preferred fuel source for long distance aerobic activity is fat. So when you switch up your nutrition regimen, and you get fat adapted, this is going to greatly improve your body’s ability to burn fat, which means you’ll improve that aerobic engine even more, you’ll become sort of an endurance badass, right?

Fat is an amazing source of fuel for endurance athletes. So the longer you’re fat adapted, the more efficient you become at utilizing fat as fuel, the more your endurance improves. So just understand that, you know, one of the reasons why we switch our diet and get off of all the carbs and all the sugars and all that junk food is that we want to just create a much more efficient fat burning machine in ourselves, right? So just understand that that whole idea of becoming fat adapted has a lot to do with being able to run longer distances being able to endure longer. Okay.

So physical endurance, like we’ve been talking about, like being able to run long distances. It’s important, right? It’s vital to your life if you want to be a healthy, happy human being. But there’s another side to endurance that most runners and a lot of running coaches and people in general don’t really talk about. And that is not the physical endurance required for running hours and hours, but rather, this is the mental and emotional endurance that’s required for accomplishing just about anything that’s worthwhile. Okay?

When we talk about challenge of accomplishing big goals, big goals are challenging, right? If they were easy, everyone would do it, right. That’s why we call these big goals because they are hard, right? An example would be like losing weight and keeping it off for good, or starting your own business, or qualifying for Boston, or passing the bar, or maintaining a healthy, happy relationship with your partner.

All of these things are hard. They all present big challenges. And they all take a while, sometimes years to achieve, you know, I know, people who have been trying to qualify for Boston for years, they’ve put in a lot of hard work to do that. And it’s really hard sometimes to achieve these things, right? Nothing worthwhile comes easy. We have to remember that, right?

It’s the challenges that change us. It’s the challenges we overcome, in the process of going after these big goals that cause us to grow, to evolve, to level up to become those badass runners that we want to become. So, you have to understand that big goals come with big challenges, right?

In order to achieve these things, you have to develop that other kind of endurance, the mental and emotional endurance that’s required to get you through those big challenges. Another way of saying this, another word for this mental and emotional endurance would be mental toughness. Mental Toughness is your ability to endure all of the challenges, all of the stressors that come along with, you know, accomplishing something big.

Mental Toughness is what’s going to keep you going when the going gets tough. And it always does, the going always gets tough, right? Mental Toughness is actually something you probably do already, because it’s required for running, especially running long distances, right? You need mental toughness to get across the finish line. Because sometimes, you know, there’s this point during a race, it could be a hard 5k, or a half marathon, full marathon or ultra, whatever, there’s going to be a time during that event where your body just wants to quit, your body is like this is not a good idea what we’re doing here, your body’s going to tell you this is not something I want to keep doing; your mind has to override your body at that point. That’s mental toughness.

Your mind has to override the pain and the misery that you’re experiencing. Your mind has to override that natural tendency that your brain has to just seek pleasure, seek pleasure and avoid pain to seek comfort and avoid discomfort. That’s mental toughness, right? That ability to override what your body is trying to tell you in that in those moments, right. So mental toughness is required for running, it’s required for being able to finish a marathon or qualify for Boston or to like I said, lose weight and be able to keep it off for good. It’s, it’s required for all these things that are hard that are challenging for us.

Mental Toughness separates the finishers from the quitters, the people that quit, give up, not mentally tough. The people who stick with it no matter what, mentally tough, they have built that mental and emotional endurance. So this mental emotional endurance, it’s required to achieve any kind of goal that you want for yourself, right. And I mentioned an example of like losing weight and keeping it off for good, this is hard to do.

This is why I coach on this. It’s not something that is easy to do. If it was easy, you wouldn’t need me you probably wouldn’t be listening to this right now. So what would this look like? So having this kind of endurance, developing this kind of endurance is mental toughness means that, you know, let’s say you want to lose 50 pounds, right? It means you’re gonna have to develop a food plan, you’re gonna have to develop a nutrition plan that fits your lifestyle that also helps you achieve your running goals because, you know, we got to be able to do both.

You know, this isn’t about like restricting calories like crazy or doing the cabbage soup diet or something like that, right? You got to focus on protein, you gotta get enough fat in your diet. Like we got to make sure that we’re focusing on the right kinds of carbs and things like that. So we’re gonna put a plan together and then that mental toughness is required for you to stick to that plan.

That mental and emotional endurance is required. If you want to stick to your plan every day, no matter what. It means you’ve developed the endurance to stay on track. Even when it’s hard, even when no one’s watching you, even when you’re having a bad day, even when you’re just stressed out, or when you just don’t feel like it.

That mental toughness means you’re willing to do the hard things, and you do them consistently. That doesn’t mean that this is always hard, it doesn’t mean that sticking to your plan is always hard. There are times when it is hard, though. But you don’t quit. You don’t quit because you’re tired, you don’t quit because you don’t feel like it, you only quit when you’re done.

So that’s what we mean by building that mental toughness, that other side of endurance. And what it really means is that you are being in integrity with yourself. So you’re actually doing what you said you’re going to do. So what most people do is this, they say they’re going to eat right. And they don’t, most people say they’re going to run consistently. And they don’t. Most people say they’re going to you know, they join a gym and they say they’re gonna go to the gym three times a week.

And then by February 1, they stopped going all together, because they made this New Year’s resolution that said they were going to go to the gym three times a week. So they join that gym that had the great special going. And then they quit. This is not being in integrity with yourself, right? This is the opposite of that. Being in integrity with yourself means that your actions, the things you do, your actions are in alignment with your goals.

So if you want to lose weight, you stop eating junk food, and you stick to that plan. You don’t occasionally eat a bunch of junk food, you don’t binge out on junk food, you don’t, you know, swing by Wednesdays on your way home from work just because you’re having this craving, right? You act in alignment with your goals.

Your goals are, I’m not eating junk food, I want to lose this weight, I want to keep it off, I want to change my whole relationship with food, stop eating junk food, I want this to be a thing of the past, then you need to stick with that plan. That’s what it means to be in alignment in integrity with yourself. Your actions are in alignment with your goals, right? This is simple, right?

Not being in integrity is when your actions are not in alignment with your goals. So you want to lose weight. You know, you got to stop eating the junk food, but you keep eating the french fries and the pizza and ice cream. And you keep guzzling all those post run beers with the running group, I see you out there.

These actions are not in alignment with your goal to lose weight, right they are, they are going to keep your body packing on the pounds. So you’re going to keep packing on weight if you keep acting that way. So that’s not being in alignment with yourself that is not being in integrity with yourself. And this idea of being in integrity with yourself, it requires mental toughness. Because it’s hard to stick to your plan.

It’s hard to not eat the french fries, it’s hard to not eat the pizza, it’s hard to not drink all those beers after a run. It’s hard to eat right and do it consistently. But this is the work that you have to do. You have to learn how to develop this mental toughness not just for running. But for every goal that you have for yourself, everything that is important to you. That’s just like another type of training that you have to do. Right, you want to run longer distances.

So you train your body to run longer, you continually push yourself a little bit you build up your mileage, you improve your cardiovascular system, you improve that aerobic engine, and you keep doing the training so that you can build that endurance for running so for running longer and longer distances. Well, you have to build mental and emotional endurance the exact same way.

So with all my clients, we work on this we work on developing mental toughness. We work on developing the emotional and mental endurance required to help them stick to their plan to help them to stay on track to keep them moving in the direction of their goals to keep them making progress toward their weight loss goals and their running goals to so we work on doing the hard stuff of consistently acting in alignment with their goals.

And here’s the thing I wish I could tell you that this was super are easy, and it doesn’t take much time. And you’ll get it right away. And you’ll never fail. And it’ll be perfect. I wish I could say all that. But that is not the case at all. This is the hard work that we do. And sometimes this takes a while. You know, I mentioned someone that was trying to qualify for Boston has been trying for years. And they keep trying, they’re not going to give up. And you know what, they’re going to accomplish that at some point, because they’re not giving up.

Here’s the thing I have to say about this, though, this is probably the most rewarding work that you can possibly do for yourself. When you work to build mental and emotional endurance, then there’s almost nothing that you won’t be able to accomplish. You’ll set your mind to accomplish some huge, quote unquote, like impossible goal, something that today feels too big for you to too huge, it’s impossible for who you are today. And then what you’re going to do is you’re going to get busy doing the work required to get you there. And then staying on track with that plan, it’s not going to be a question. There’s no question.

Of course, you’re gonna stay on the track, of course, you’re gonna stay on the plan, because that’s what you do now. That’s who you have become, you’ve become a mental toughness, badass. You’ve developed the mental and emotional endurance you need to stay on track no matter what. And that big, huge impossible goal will be possible for you someday.

So, improving endurance. Improving your endurance means you improve your cardiovascular system so you can run longer, yes; but it also means building the mental and emotional toughness required to stick to the plan so that you can accomplish hard things like being able to lose weight, once and for all and keep it off for good.

Yes, endurance will help you continually improve your overall health and fitness, you’ll be able to run longer be fitter, you’ll even be happier. But when you think of endurance, I want you to think about this other side of endurance, the mental and emotional endurance, the mental toughness, and start building that along with your ability to run longer, start training yourself to develop that kind of endurance, okay, because that mental toughness will enable you to confidently accomplish anything you set your mind to. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

160. Should Runners Lift Heavy Weights?

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There’s a bit of a debate going on out there in the running community around whether or not runners should be lifting heavy weights. Some people think no, runners should never lift heavy weights …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 160 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today should runners lift heavy weights? So, there’s a bit of a debate out there in the running community around whether or not runners should be lifting heavy weights.

Some people think no, runners should never lift heavy weights. And they give a bunch of valid sounding reasons why others think that runners should always lift heavy, and they have their own logical point of view on the topic. And the two sides both have some good points. Today, I’m hoping to clarify this for you and give you my stance on the subject.

So in this episode, I’m going to definitively answer the question should runners lift heavy weights. And before we get into this topic, I want to give you a quick recap of my personal weight loss journey. I’m sharing this with you today because I want you to understand something I want you to know that I get it that I’ve been there and that I’ve come out the other side.

So a few years ago, I found myself around 40 pounds overweight. Very recently, I was running like a madman and I was trying to burn off all these calories. And it just wasn’t working. I was logging all my food. I was doing these like whatever the latest fad diets. I was running every day, and still nothing was working for me.

My cravings for sugar and junk food were like crazy off the charts. And I was seriously riding the struggle bus. And then I did something that changed all this for me. So I went against everything I’d been taught as runner like you need sugar to run, you need carbs to run. And I finally got off the struggle bus.

I started fueling differently for running, I began lifting weights consistently. And I fixed my mindset so that I could make all of this a sustainable way of life. I ended up losing the 40 pounds, running became way easier. I’m stronger now than I’ve ever been. I have more energy than I know what to do with and my cravings for junk food are basically gone.

So, this is what I do. Now I teach runners like you how to stop struggling with your weight and start living like the healthy, strong, lean, badass runner that you know you can be. Of course, it’s up to you, you can continue to struggle like I did for a long time there. But listen, when you’re ready to be done with all that, I’m here for you.

If you want to learn more about coaching, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a quick application, we’ll have a quick chat, see if coaching is a good fit for you. Cool! runningleancoaching.com/apply I hope to see you in the Running Lean Coaching Project.

Okay, so let’s talk about this: should runners lift heavy weights? So, the reason I’m bringing this up today is because I think there’s a little bit of a debate out there. And if you look up, you know, hey, should runners be lifting heavy weights, I think you’re gonna get some mixed opinions about this subject. And especially if you talk to other runners, or you talk to people at the gym, don’t talk to people at the gym about this kind of stuff.

I get it, butI always hear people say oh, I was talking to this guy at the gym and I’m always like, oh boy, here we go. Right. Some expert quote unquote expert at the gym. So why am I talking about this? Well, a lot of runners think that they should never lift heavy weights like they should always do very lightweights lots of reps and others you know have a different opinion they think you should always lift super heavy and so like what are you supposed to do?

Like how do you decide as a runner, what you should do? And it doesn’t matter which you know, side you kind of fall into. I want to help you kind of make this decision clear today. Okay, so the first thing I want you to think about is this. What are your goals? What are your goals?

First of all as a runner: so, are you planning on running your fastest half or full marathon? Are you running your first ultra or your fastest 5k? Maybe you are you’re a miler, maybe you’re running your fastest mile. Maybe you just want to run every day, maybe you just want to run and continue running forever and that just wants you just want running to be part of your life forever. And you want to stay strong for that. Because your goals as a runner will a little bit determine like which way you want to go with this. Okay.

The other thing I want you to consider is what are your overall health and fitness goals? Like, are you trying to lose weight? How much weight; 10 pounds, 50 pounds? Are you trying to get stronger? You should be. Are you trying to build some lean muscle to improve your body composition? Like lose some fat and gain some muscle weight? Or you just want to live longer, like be very, very clear on your personal health and fitness goals.

Okay, because at the end of the day, you get to do this however you want. And I’m going to give you kind of my opinion here today. And I feel very strongly about certain what I think about this in my certain approach. But I just want you to think about what are your goals, okay.

So how you lift, how often you lift, how much weight you lift will largely be affected by your goals. So, think about like what your personal goals are, as we’re talking about weightlifting and talking about how much weight and how many reps you should be doing and stuff like that. Because if you want to build some muscle or maintain the muscle that you have, there’s a little bit of a different approach you want to take to this, okay.

But whatever your goals, whatever your goals, there’s a place for strength training in your workout regimen, or at least there should be. Lifting weights should be something that you do all the time no matter what. So, there’s nothing really inherently bad about weightlifting. But the interesting thing is that most runners are notoriously bad at weightlifting, they just don’t do it or they don’t do it right. They think that they don’t really need to lift weights because they run. This is very, very wrong. And I’m going to tell you why in just a second.

If you want to be a healthy fit runner, if you want to be a healthy fit human being, you need to be doing some sort of resistance activity, you need to be lifting weights, right? Running is just not enough. In fact, running is catabolic. It’s a catabolic activity, it breaks down muscle, long distance running is amazing. I love it so much. It’s like my life, you know, I love running.

And there’s a lot of people who think that running is enough to build muscle like, Oh, I’m just you know, I run a lot. So, I’m good to go there. And I’ve got some bad news for you. Running is what’s considered a catabolic exercise. So, anything that is cardio considered like cardio or aerobic exercises, especially over long, longer durations. These are great activities, cardio, aerobic exercises, these are great for helping you to improve your cardiovascular system, helping to build a healthy heart helping to improve your lung capacity. But they also cause you to lose some body mass both fat, which is good, and muscle, which is bad.

Running effectively breaks down muscle over time, this is very important for you to understand: is that running is a catabolic activity. Over time long distance running will break down muscle tissue. In order to offset this, you need to be doing anabolic exercises regularly. Anabolic is in the state of muscle building that’s building muscle growing muscle getting stronger.

So, what you really want is a good balance of the two to maintain a healthy, strong, fit body to maintain that lean body mass and we’re talking about not just you know, bigger muscles, we want stronger muscles. So too much catabolic exercise without enough anabolic exercise and you lose muscle you lose strength. And this is going to affect running negatively, too.

Okay. So it’s very important that you understand this concept that running is a catabolic activity. It will break you down over time. So you need to be doing something to offset that. So here are some of the here’s the flip side of this right here. Here’s some of the positive benefits of weightlifting of doing regular strength training for runners. Right, so the first thing you have to understand is that when you do regular strength training, regular resistance training, you’ll lose more weight and faster so the more muscle mass you have, the more fat you burn.

Carrying around muscle requires more energy than carrying around fat. So, your metabolism actually increases just by getting slightly larger, stronger muscles. Building muscle also speeds up the whole fat adaptation process, which will help you burn even more fat. And you know, like everything we talked about here, we’re all about fat burning, right?

So, lift weights, get a little bit stronger, build some muscle, and you increase your metabolism, you burn more fat, boom, this is awesome. Building strong muscles also means that you’re at a much lower risk of injury, especially from what we call connective tissue issues. So like, most runners’ muscles adapt pretty quickly.

But your connective tissues like ligaments and tendons take much longer to get strong. That’s why you see most running related injuries are ligament and tendon injuries, not necessarily muscle injuries. So, building strong muscles will also improve and strengthen those connective tissues and prevent running related injuries. So if you want to run injury free, one of the biggest things you can do, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to get stronger.

Also, when you get stronger, your endurance improves. So your ability to run longer distances before fatigue sets in is vastly improved when you’re stronger. So you can become a long distance running machine. But you need, you know, good strong working muscles in order to do that. Also, you get faster, carrying around a little more muscle means that you are stronger and your power to weight ratio improves the stance substantially.

So you get a little bit leaner, you lose some of that fat weight, you gain some muscle weight, and now your power to weight ratio has gone up, and you’re more powerful and lighter, and you’re able to run faster at higher intensities for longer distances, right. So as far as improving your running performance, getting strong is one of the best things you can do for yourself, you’ll get faster, your endurance improves, you get lighter, your power to weight ratio goes up, all those things are amazing.

And then lastly, when you lift weights regularly and you get stronger, you will live longer. Evidence continues to point to the benefits of strength training. And a new meta analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine has concluded that people who do strength training regularly are less likely to die prematurely than those who don’t, even when they don’t do any aerobic workouts. So they’ve kind of factored that even if you don’t do any aerobic activity whatsoever, strength training will lead to a longer life.

And of course, doing some aerobic activity, improving your cardiovascular system, helps you to live longer as well. So you want to live longer: strength training. Okay. And so there’s all these amazing benefits to weightlifting for runners, right?

So here’s what I hope for you. I hope that your biggest takeaway from this episode right now is that you have to get into some sort of regular strength training routine, like you just have to get stronger. This is what I want you to take away from this, it doesn’t matter what your goals are, it doesn’t matter, you know, where you fall on the line of whether or not you should be lifting heavy weights or not.

I think the most important thing is that you are doing some sort of regular strength training, it has to be part of your weekly workout plan. Doesn’t matter what you’re training for. Make time for it. It’s that important, okay? Okay, so what happens when you lift weights, so let’s get into kind of the, what’s happening in your body when you lift weights, okay.

So before we talk about how heavy you should lift or how light you should lift, I want to explain what happens when you lift weights like, or at least what you’re trying to make happen in your body, okay? So your muscles will grow as a response to stress. So, you stress out a muscle or a group of muscles, essentially, you overload them. And then because of that overloading, they have an adaptive response.

So they grow more muscle fibers are produced those muscle fibers band together, they get stronger, the muscle grows a little bit and, and they grow. So you have this adaptive response. This is called the overload principle. Overload a muscle and in response, it gets stronger. Do this over and over again and you get bigger, stronger muscles, right? But in order to overload the muscle, you need enough resistance.

So resistance can come in many forms. Resistance could be your own bodyweight: hold a plank for a minute or two. See how long you can hold a plank just with your own bodyweight, or do push ups. Do some pull ups, these are all bodyweight exercises that are pretty hard, you know, you’ll find yourself getting pretty fatigued pretty quickly. With some of these bodyweight exercises, right.

Then we have free weights, we’ve got dumbbells and kettlebells, and barbells. And all kinds of machines at the gym, they’re designed to work certain muscle groups. And then we have resistance bands, things you can attach to a door or two, or you don’t even have to attach to anything, you can just pull on them, step on it, lift it up and create the resistance. That way, you can even use logs or rocks or heavy books or milk jugs filled with sand, it doesn’t really matter, you can literally use just about anything to create resistance, right?

The important thing is that you have to have enough resistance in order to over load the muscle if you want it to have that adaptive response, if you want it to get stronger. So the way you overload the muscle, as you get to muscle failure, you have to get to muscle failure in order to create that adaptive response.

So you can get to failure a couple of different ways you can overload that muscle in a few different ways. But you’ll you know that you’re there, when you can no longer lift that weight, like you cannot do another rep with good form, like you just your form breaks down, you start cheating, so to speak, you know. So for example, you can get to overload by lifting a one pound weight lifted like 100 times I promise you, you know, at some point, you’re going to probably get to overload with 100 with a one pound weight if you if you lift it 100 times or you can lift a 100 pound weight once or whatever amount of weight you can lift one time that will get you to that failure place, right?

So then we say like, okay, which is better? Should you lift 100 times should you do 100 reps? Or should you do one rep, like, what’s the right number? Like should you be lifting heavy? Should you be lifting super light? So, let’s look at what each of these kinds of looks like. Kind of looks like here.

The first one let’s talk about light weights; light weights, lots of reps. So, think about what it looks like and feels like to do a lot of reps with very light weights. So, lots of group workout classes are based on this approach, right? Everybody grabs some light little dumbbells and you’re lifting them and you’re like, you know, doing a ton of reps. And at the end of the workout, you’re like, oh, that was fun, you know, and you’re tired and you know, you’re probably, you know, pretty sweaty and things like that.

So you’re doing a ton of reps, you’re using very light weights. But what is this? This is mostly a cardio workout, right? Here, you’re really working out the cardiovascular system, you’re adding a little bit of resistance. But really, you know, it’s a cardio workout, right? And there’s nothing wrong with this, right? But as a runner who does pretty much nothing but cardio everyday when you go out and run, do you really need to be doing another cardio workout? Do you need to be lifting super lightweight a million times and making it some new some other cardio type workout? I don’t believe so.

I don’t believe you want to be doing that. You don’t need to do a bunch more cardio. Remember that you’re already engaged in a catabolic activity. And you need to be doing something to offset that. So more cardio is not going to be the answer. Even though you might be using some weights, it’s probably not enough resistance to make a difference and offset the amount of catabolic activity you’re doing from already. Right.

So the other thing to think about is you’re probably never going to see someone in a workout class like that get to muscle failure, you’re just never going to see somebody get to failure. So that’s, that’s a sign that that’s probably not the most ideal approach. Okay? So if you’re doing some kind of workout and you’re lifting, let’s say 10 pounds for the duration of the workout, and you really never get to failure, there’s no overload happening. There’s no adaptive response happening.

You’re not growing muscle fibers. You’re not getting stronger. What’s the point of all that? Yeah, it’s a good cardio workout. But you don’t probably need to be doing more cardio, okay. It’s good to improve your cardiovascular system, right? It’s good to do that, right, but that should not be your goal from weightlifting. Your goal with weightlifting should be to overload your muscles so you get stronger period.

Okay, so let’s look at now the other side of this, which is lifting heavy weights, right? And you’re probably thinking, I’ve kind of figured out, Patrick, this is probably your preferred approach. And yes, it is. Yes, it is. And I’m going to explain why. So when you lift heavy weights, you will absolutely get to muscle failure. So I want to make this very clear: to failure doesn’t mean it’s hard. Failure isn’t like, oh, man, this is really hard. I can’t believe I, I’m doing these reps, oh, gosh, this is really hard. This must be failure. No failure means you cannot do another rep with proper form. Failure means you’re trying with all your might as hard as you can to lift that weight, and you just cannot move it any longer. It should hurt. It should look ugly, feels terrible. And it’s pretty amazing, all at the same time. Okay.

So failure means you cannot move the weight. Again, you cannot finish that rep. That’s what failure is not oh, it’s hard. It’s like you cannot do it. Okay. And then heavy, lifting a heavy weight heavy is relative for you. It’s just, it’s heavy for you. It’s how strong you are, it’s relative to how strong you are. Heavy means that you can only do around six to twelve eps before you hit failure. Six to twelve reps is a good amount of reps to fatigue the muscle enough to stress the muscle enough to produce that adaptive effect.

You don’t have to aim for a one rep max like bodybuilders do and power lifters do. Although I do like doing this sometimes just to see how strong I’m getting. I’ll do a one rep max on bench press. And what have I been doing like bench press and deadlift? I’d stopped kind of doing the squat one rep max because my knees are a little bit jacked up right now. But I want to get back to that as well. And I’m seeing some progression happening.

So I can see that I’m getting stronger with the one rep but you don’t have to just do a one rep max. That’s not what we’re getting into here. Six to twelve reps is where you want to be. So aim for six to twelve and do a full body workout. And you only need to be doing this twice a week, you don’t have to become a gym rat, you don’t have to spend two to three hours every day in the gym.

And I have this very specific strength program that I teach my runners, my clients, and it’s a full body workout, it’s twice a week should only take you about 20 minutes each time. And it’s enough, it’s plenty. Like it doesn’t have to be super time consuming, okay. But the important thing you have to understand here is that you really want to get to muscle failure. And in my opinion, it’s just much more efficient and better for you to get to failure with fewer reps. So aim for that six to twelve rep range, lift heavy weights, there’s you don’t have to worry about getting too big.

This is one of the biggest fears around lifting heavy weights that I hear from runners is that and you’ll hear people say this all the time. I don’t want to get all big and jacked and like I don’t want to be carrying around tons of extra muscle weight. You know, I don’t want to look like one of these big bodybuilders. Listen, remember I said running is catabolic. Lifting heavy weights is a great way to offset this.

In fact, it is very, very hard to look like a bodybuilder it takes years of very hard work to look like a bodybuilder they lift five, six days a week, they’re in the gym for hours, they eat a ton of extra food, you know and they really limit the amount of cardio that they do in order to gain all these muscles and stuff. Okay, so please do not worry about getting too big. Do not worry about gaining too much muscle or looking like a bodybuilder, it is extremely hard to gain that much muscle.

We want to offset the amount of running that we’re doing with some good strength training, we want to build some muscle we want to get stronger. So lift heavy weights, aim for that six to twelve rep max, get to failure with each exercise. If you really want the best bang for your buck, from resistance training, lift heavy weights, save the cardio workout for all the running that you’re doing.

If you want to become a stronger, faster, more powerful runner, if you want to burn more fat, lose more weight. And if you’re interested in living longer, lift heavy weights. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

158. Building Your Aerobic Engine

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I get a lot of questions about how to improve running performance and one concept I keep coming back to is building your aerobic engine. Before you can run longer or faster you have to improve your …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 158, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, building your aerobic engine. So I get a lot of questions from people in general and clients about how to improve running performance.

And one concept I keep coming back to is building your aerobic engine. Before you can run longer, or run faster, you have to improve your aerobic fitness. So building and maintaining a solid aerobic base should be the goal of every runner, regardless of your running experience. But many runners skip this step, because they just want to get to the faster running the higher intensity running.

So in this episode, I’m going to explain how building your aerobic engine is essential to helping you improve both your running speed and your endurance. And Happy New Year everyone. This is the first episode of 2023. And is this going to be a new year and a new you or a new year and the same old, same old you?

So I want you to think about this, where do you want to be this time next year? When you look back? Over 2023? What do you want to have accomplished? Where do you want to be with your health and your fitness? Do you want to make this year the year that you finally lose the weight and learn how to keep it off for good?

So I really want you to think about this, what do you really want for yourself this year, because here’s the truth. Whatever you want for yourself, it’s available to you, it’s achievable for you. So let’s get you there together. When you sign up for coaching with me, you get all the knowledge, support and accountability you need to achieve everything that you want for yourself in 2023.

So let’s make this year 2023 your best year yet, to learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a quick application. You and I will get on a call, we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. If it is, boom, we’ll get you started. And we’ll start making this the best year yet for you just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply.

Okay, so lots of people who are new to running, especially the newer runners, want to kind of skip the part where they have to focus on building their aerobic base, or what I like to call the aerobic engine. And this is a good time of the year to be talking about this, because I think a lot of us are just about to start marathon training, or maybe half marathon training, a lot of spring races happen in the United States.

And so the beginning of January is when a lot of training begins. The problem is that most runners don’t do a really good job of building their aerobic engine properly. At the beginning of a training cycle, lots of runners, even very experienced runners who are maybe following some sort of training plan.

So they may have some sort of marathon training plan that they’re doing. They just begin by, you know, doing all their miles at a kind of medium hard intensity, and they end up kind of maybe getting burned out or getting injured. A lot of overuse injuries happen, especially with new runners, but even with experienced runners.

And a lot of these overuse injuries happen kind of at the first half of the training cycle, which leads me to believe that when we start our marathon training or start our half marathon training program, you need to be you need to have developed a good solid aerobic base, you need a good solid base on which you can build, right?

So you want to start with a good base, start with a good aerobic engine, and then you can get faster and build your intensity levels on top of that. So what does it mean when I’m talking about your aerobic engine? So really what I’m talking about here, as I’m talking about increasing the efficiency of your cardiovascular system, right?

The cardiovascular system is the different functions of your body that can combine to enable you to run for longer distances, right? Your cardiovascular system is, you know, your heart, your blood, carrying oxygen to working muscles and organs to every working part of your body. So it’s mostly, you know, how, how efficient is your heart? How much blood can your heart pump out at a time, like how much blood volume can you pump out?

Because the more blood volume in your heart can pump out, the more oxygen you will be delivering to working muscles, the better you are at delivering oxygen rich blood to working muscles, especially those muscles used for running, that easier running becomes. So we want to improve this system. And it’s something that you can absolutely improve.

Now, if you’re a new runner, and you’re just starting out, and you get out there, and maybe you’re training for your first 5k, and you get out there and to run a mile is takes everything you’ve got and you feel completely winded at the end of that mile, that is fine, that is normal. If you’re just getting started with this, then that is something where if you continue running, and you continue doing the right kind of running, you will find that running a mile becomes very easy.

And then running two and three miles becomes a no big deal. And then all of a sudden, you’re like, I’m just gonna go ahead and, and run a half marathon or trust our training for a marathon, right? But don’t get ahead of yourself. Work your way up to that slowly. And I’m going to be talking about that in a minute here.

So really, what we’re talking about when we’re talking about your aerobic engine, is your cardiovascular system, you know, your body’s ability to deliver oxygen rich blood to all the working muscles and organs and all the functions in your body that help you to improve your running efficiency and your running performance.

Okay, so why do we want to build an aerobic engine? Like why is it important to build this? Well, you know, you just can’t expect to go out there and run a fast half marathon or a fast marathon. Without doing the work to build your cardiovascular system, you can’t improve your running performance, if you don’t start with a good base, right?

So you need to first build a solid aerobic base, then you can work on getting faster, and increasing the intensity of your running over those longer distances. But I want to make sure this is very clear, do not skip this step, do not skip the part where you build that aerobic base. And something that is actually kind of counterintuitive. But I’ll explain why this works in just a minute here, you will actually get faster, just by improving your aerobic engine.

So by doing more slow, easy running and improving your cardiovascular system, you will become more efficient at running and you can actually run faster at the same intensity levels. This is one of the huge benefits of building a strong aerobic base is that you can improve your running efficiency, you can improve your running speed.

In fact, there are many benefits to improving your aerobic engine here. So when your cardiovascular system gets more efficient, when you improve your aerobic fitness, running becomes easier. This is like one of the number one reasons why we want to do this, it just gets easier, right? You can run longer distances and you can run faster at the same perceived effort level.

So let’s say you go out there and you run out a perceived effort level of a three or a four and you’re like this feels great, it feels pretty easy for me. And you might notice your pace is a 10 minute pace. For example, over time, if you build your cardiovascular system the right way, if you build your aerobic engine properly, over time, you can run at that same three four effort level.

Oh, this feels pretty easy. But now your pace is a 9:30 or a 9:00 minute pace because you’ve improved how your body is fueling itself and how your body is using oxygen and and how much blood volume you’re pumping out there. Okay, so you actually get faster at the same effort level, which is amazing.

Another reason why we want to improve our cardiovascular system, or our aerobic engine is that it actually increases the number of mitochondria in your body. So this is the powerhouse of your cells. And you can actually increase the size and strength of your mitochondria as well. So this right here is going to give you an edge and this is one of the reasons why you run easier and you can run faster at the same effort level.

You also get denser capillaries and you can deliver more oxygenated blood with more capillaries working in your bloodstream. So your working muscles will actually get more oxygen, which makes running easier. Another kind of benefit of improving your aerobic engine is that it helps to build mental toughness. So as you improve your cardiovascular system, you start to feel more confident. So you can go out there and run three miles and it feels tough.

But as you, you know, increase your running volume as you increase your distance as you increase your aerobic capacity and your aerobic performance, then running becomes easier and becomes more confident you can run 8, 10, 12 miles and and feel like well, yeah, I can do this. And it makes you more mentally tough because it pushes you, enables you to push yourself a little bit harder, enables you to shoot for higher and higher goals. And next thing you know you’re running a half marathon or you’re running a marathon, you’re starting to train for an ultra marathon.

Another benefit of improving your aerobic engine is that it helps to improve muscular strength, you know, you’re delivering more oxygen to muscles, you’re able to run longer, you build more muscular strength, you improve your running economy, you improve your running efficiency, you become more energy efficient, you know, you’re using the same kind of you have the same inputs, but your output is much more efficient. And then you get faster, you know, you’ll be able to perform better at races.

So all these reasons are why we work hard to improve our aerobic engine, okay. So do not skip this, we absolutely want to make sure that before you begin your training, or the first phases of your training for any kind of endurance events should be to really build a strong aerobic base. Now some people like to do this in the offseason, they like to spend, you know, four to six weeks building that aerobic engine, even up to 12 weeks, you know, really building a strong aerobic engine before they get into their training cycle.

But you can absolutely do this at the beginning of a half or full marathon training cycle. So how do we do this? How do you start building your aerobic engine? What are the keys to improving your aerobic fitness and improving your cardiovascular efficiency?

So the first tip I’m going to give you here to improve your aerobic engine would be to increase your running volume. Right? The simple fact of running more will help you to increase your aerobic capacity, increase your running efficiency, just running more and increasing your volume helps to improve your running form and helps to increase your cardiovascular system.

You build stronger muscles. Running becomes easier, just by running more. But the caveat with this is you don’t do too much too soon. This is one of the biggest rookie mistakes that new runners make is increasing their volume too much too soon. So the standard sort of rule of thumb has always been to increase by no more than around 10% a week in your weekly volume.

So that means if you’re starting out and you’re running about 10 miles a week, you know, for the first few weeks, I would only increase that by like a mile each week. So maybe week one you’re at 10 miles and then you build up to 11, 12, 13. Maybe you can jump up to 14.5 or 15, 16, 18, 20. But you don’t really want to increase volume too quickly.

So people get excited when they start running and they’re like oh running is amazing. I feel so great doing this and your muscles might be ready to take on the miles but your connective tissues, your tendons and ligaments are not quite ready for that yet. And a lot of the running injuries that people experience are tendinitis issues or strained, you know ligaments or tendons. They tend to be more connective tissue issues than they do with muscular issues.

It’s pretty rare to strain the muscle from running in the beginning especially. It’s more common to have these connective tissue issues so definitely be careful and don’t do too. Too much too soon try to keep it around that 10% increase in weekly volume, then, you know, if you’re a more experienced runner, you can increase that from 10 to maybe 15 or 20% per week. The idea is that you have to do what feels right for you. And don’t overdo it. That is the key here. Less is more in this case, right. So just slowly build your volume, but definitely increasing your volume is going to be one of the best ways to improve your aerobic engine.

Another way of doing this is to run slower. So when I talk about running slower, there’s different ways we can look at this. So running slower means you’re running in, maybe you’re running in a zone one or two. From a heart rate standpoint, maybe you’re someone who likes to just use RPE, rate of perceived exertion, the scale of 1 to 10. And you might like to stay in the one to four range.

That would be nice, easy running, maybe you’d like to just run at a conversational pace, you’d like to just, you know, go by if you can carry on a conversation or not. The idea here is that you need to slow down, and you need to do a lot of running slower. When you do a lot of running slower, you increase your distance, but if you keep the intensity levels very low, you are at lower risk of injury. And you put less stress on your systems, you put less stress on your bones and muscles and those connective tissues like I talked about.

So slow running is one of the best ways to build your aerobic engine, it’s one of the most effective ways to build your aerobic engine, you’re not going to be able to get more aerobically fit by just cranking out every workout, you can’t go out there and do every workout hard or medium hard, you know that you have to spend a lot of time running easy and rolling slow.

So something I noticed here, so I took about three months off of running. And since August, so August, September, October, getting into November, I’ve been running very consistently since the middle of November in my room or maybe like Thanksgiving, let’s just say. And I’m noticing that I’m paying very close attention to my effort level and my heart rate.

And I’m noticing that I’m staying very consistent from an energy standpoint, very easy running most of my runs, I would say 90% of my runs right now or at a very easy conversational pace, probably that one to two zones, and the heart rate zones, and maybe three to four on the RPE scale, or two to four somewhere in there and that our RPE scale.

But one thing that’s interesting here is I noticed that my effort level is staying the same, my heart rate is staying the same, but my pace is increasing. So I’m getting faster, at the same effort level. So this is a sign that I’m building a strong aerobic engine. And this is what I want for you too. You should notice that over time, doing a lot of running 90% 80% of your runs at this slower pace, just slowing things down, will help you to increase your aerobic engine and help you to get faster.

So now as I get to the place where I’m you know, going to get into marathon training here, and I’m training for an ultra marathon event here in May, I will continue doing a lot of this slow, easy running and see my pace continually increase, you know, to a certain degree here, okay? The other way that you can really increase your aerobic engine is by running faster.

And I know that sounds a little bit counterintuitive here. But doing higher intensity, like short, higher intensity workouts is another amazing way of building that aerobic engine, right? So why these work is that these workouts put a very high amount of stress on the cardiovascular system, very high amount of stress for very short intervals. This elicits an adaptive response where your system improves.

Think about it, like you know building muscle, like if you lift heavy weights, and you do you know six to eight reps of a very heavy weight. And you get to the point where you just cannot lift one more rep of that weight.

And then you stop and so that’s a short interval but very intense. Your muscle is going to have been put under a high amount of stress for a very short amount of time. That muscle is going to have an adaptive response. It’s going to get stronger. It’s going to grow. You’re gonna see some growth rather than that muscle, and the next time, you’ll be able to lift a heavier weight.

The exact same response happens in our cardiovascular system. So we put high stress for a very short amount of time on that cardiovascular system that improves, this isn’t there’s an adaptive response, your body’s like, hey, we need to, you know, change the way we’re doing things here, we need to increase the amount of blood we’re pumping out per heartbeat. So increase our blood volume, you know, we need to deliver more oxygen working muscles.

And this is another very effective way of improving that aerobic engine. And especially when you combine it with your longer slower runs, right, your very easy lower stress run. So very low stress, long runs, and then very high stress, short runs. So running fast and hard for short intervals, like this could be like, one to three minutes, a very hard running 4-10 minutes of moderate intensity running maybe 12-30 minutes.

For tempo type workouts, these are just examples of different intensity levels that you can add in there. But you know, anything short is one to 30 minutes, maybe. And it just kind of depends on the event that you’re training for. But high stress for short intervals, and low stress for the long runs equals a badass aerobic engine, right there. Okay?

So those two combined are a really, really good way of improving your cardiovascular fitness. So the slower runs focus on 80-90% of your runs at that slow pace, and then higher intensity, shorter workouts, you know, 10-20%, depending on where you are in your training cycle, when we’re talking about building your aerobic base here, I would I would focus on more of a 90/10 breakdown there, okay.

And then probably the most common method people think of when they want to improve their aerobic fitness would be the long run, like improve the length of your long run. And when I say long run, it depends on what you’re training for, again, so this could be 30 minutes, if you’re training for your first 5k, that could be a long run for you, or six hours, if you’re trading for for a 50 miler, you know, so, long run is very subjective. So it just kind of depends on what you’re training for.

Most of us, if we’re training for a marathon, let’s say, most people are going to be doing a long run anywhere from an hour to three and a half hours, something like that, okay. So when we’re talking about in increasing the distance of your long run, the effort level has to be low. So we’re talking about, you know, heart rate zones wanting to wonder for on the RPE scale, this is a conversational pace, this is a easy, I could run all day at this pace.

Okay, this is gonna be one of the most powerful ways of improving your cardiovascular system. So we’re, we’re not just doing one of these things. By the way, we’re not just picking one of these things and saying, like, Oh, I’m just going to improve my long run, I’m just gonna increase the distance on my lawn, or I’m just going to do some HIIT workouts or I’m just going to run slower.

No, you got to do a mile, you got to increase your running volume, you got to run slower, you got to run faster for shorter distances, and you got to increase the distance of that long run, you got to do all these things. But when you do and you combine them all, you’re going to find that your aerobic engine is pretty badass. Okay.

And then the last thing I’ll add to this list is really just getting better at burning fat. You need fuel for running. And when you’re especially running slower and running at these lower intensities, the preferred source of fuel your body’s going to want to use as fat, the better you can get at burning fat, the easier running is going to feel for you.

Listen, we as human beings, we’re naturally good fat burning machines, we’ve just gotten very far away from that state. You know, we’ve been eating a diet that forces us to use glucose as our main fuel source. And granted, it is a very easily available and very quick burning source of fuel especially for running but you run out of that fast and your body isn’t using a whole lot of glucose. When you’re running at these lower intensities fat is going to be the main fuel source, so you got to get good at burning fat.

I suggest you get fat adapted stop using sugar and carbs as fuel. stop relying on glucose as a fuel source. Start training your body to tap into your own stored body fat as a source of fuel for running run in the fasted state. That means you don’t need to fuel up before you run. Maybe for a long long run or a high intensity run, yes. But for the most part, you know, you don’t really need to feel up before the runs, train your body to get good at burning fat.

And this isn’t about like zero carbs or anything like that, this is just about using the right kinds of carbs and using carbs properly. Keeping the carbs pretty low, though, okay, so get better at burning fat. Listen, we’re great at storing fat, right? We’re really good at storing fat, we’re just not good at tapping into our own body fat for fuel. And if you’re somebody who has, you know, 10-20 pounds to lose, you’ve got way more than enough body fat to get you out there and run for many, many, many miles for days, days.

I’m pretty low in the body fat percentage, and I’ve got hundreds of 1000s of calories of body fat on my body right now that I could use, I could literally run for, you know, weeks at a time or something like that. So get better at burning that fat. And you’ll find that your aerobic capacity, it gets better too. And just running just becomes so much easier. Okay.

So remember, we want to build our aerobic engine, we want to, you know, we only want to be delivering more oxygen to working muscles. The way we do this, as we increase our running volume, we run more just more often, we want to run slower, keep it in those zones wanting to keep it in the fat burning zone, right? You know, RPE should be, you know, one to four, run faster, do some HIIT workouts, do some high intensity, but short workouts run longer, like increase the distance of your long run, and then get better at burning fat.

And when you do these things, and you combine all these things, you’re going to be well on your way to being a fit faster, more efficient runner, running is going to become easier for you, you’re going to be able to get faster, and your spring marathon or spring race, whatever it is that you’re training for, will be a huge success for you. Cool. Awesome. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

156. There Is No Finish Line

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There’s a powerful principle that you absolutely must embrace if you want to continue growing, evolving, and becoming more. That principle is this: There is no finish line. This means that …

Continue Reading about 156. There Is No Finish Line →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 156, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, there is no finish line. There’s a powerful principle that you absolutely must embrace if you want to continue growing, evolving and becoming more.

And that principle is this: there is no finish line. This means that whatever you’re doing to improve yourself, you must continue doing for the rest of your life. Now, if this idea scares the crap out of you, rest assured you’re not alone. Most people do not live their lives this way. Why? Because it feels too big, it is too daunting.

Most people think that there’s an end to eating healthy or running consistently. And then they can get back to their comfy cozy life. But the truth is, there is no end. So today, I’m going to explain why there is no finish line, and how this is actually a good thing and the key to you becoming your most badass self.

And if you’re one of these people who thinks that constantly improving yourself is too overwhelming or too daunting, and it feels like it would just be too hard. And you just can’t wrap your mind around that I totally understand, I get that. That’s kind of why I do what I do as a coach.

My job as a coach is to help you set big goals for yourself goals that you don’t think that you can accomplish right now, maybe it’s losing 40 or 50 pounds and keeping it off for the rest of your life. Maybe it’s running that ultra marathon that you’ve been thinking about forever or running that half marathon that you’ve been thinking about forever, whatever it is that you want for yourself, that thing that’s looming out in the distance that feels impossible for you. Let’s work together and let’s make that happen for you.

Yes, you can lose the weight. Yes, you can keep it off. Yes, you can run further or faster than you ever thought you could before. You just need the right plan. And I’m here to help you with that. So if you’re interested in becoming that most badass version of yourself, and you want to make it last, and you want to understand the concepts and the principles of how to make it last and how to make these changes are just part of who you are, what you do, then I’m here for you. Okay, this is what I do. This is my jam. This is what I do as a coach.

This is why coaching works so well because it’s you and I working together, setting big goals, putting together a plan, and then helping you stay on track to reach those goals and helping you develop the mindset, the habits to make this last for life. This isn’t about the short term. This isn’t about quick fixes. This is about long term health and fitness. And the only way we do that is by really changing your lifestyle. Okay, so this is what I do.

If you’re interested in working with me, I’m here for you, this is a great time to get started. Let’s start 2023 on the right track and set some big goals for you and start working towards those goals. Cool. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a quick application, you and I’ll jump on a call. I’ll explain all about the program, and we’ll get you started.

So I think there’s a big misconception out there. When it comes to making changes, like we talked about a lot here on the podcast, you know, we talk about changing your habits, changing your eating habits, changing your diet, we talk about changing the way you approach exercise, we talk about changing your approach to running.

And I think there’s this big misconception where people think that these changes are temporary. Even the term diet itself is a very temporary thing, right? I mean, just the concept of going on a diet means you’re probably gonna go off that diet at some point, right? That’s why I try to stay away from that word, because I think it has some negative connotations. It has some limiting connotations or some temporary connotations. So I don’t really use the word diet too often anyway.

But the thing is, we think I think for the most part, we think that doing these things is something we do for the short term and somehow we’re going to improve our health, we’re gonna improve our fitness, and then we can go back to doing things that we used to do and go back to, you know, our life as we knew it before.

And I think we got to really just, I say it right at the beginning here of this podcast, which is like, that is not how it works. That’s not how it works. When you make changes and start improving your health, let’s say you start running consistently, and you start improving, running, and you and you start lifting weights, and you change your diet and you start eating properly, and you start feeling better, and you start losing the weight.

And then you get to this place where you’re like, yeah, this is pretty good. I’m feeling good. I’ve got to my goal weight, or, you know, I ran that marathon that was so big for me is such a huge accomplishment for me. And then you think what, you’re done? Are you done? Are you just gonna like, give up and throw in the towel and go back to your comfy cozy life? Is that the way that this works?

The answer is no. It’s not. When you make these kinds of changes for yourself, that is bettering yourself. When you set big goals for yourself, and then you accomplish them. Oh, my gosh, that is amazing. These are great accomplishments, celebrate those things. But then ask yourself, what’s next? So you do what you do. And then you do it again, you do what you do to become more. And then you reach that next version of yourself, that next level of yourself.

And then guess what? It’s time to level up again, there is no finish line, there is no stopping. And another concept we have to get out of the way here at the top of this episode is this, like life is hard. And it’s supposed to be hard, life is not supposed to be easy. And I think that this is a big misconception that somehow when we change our diet, or we, you know, start running more often that somehow, you know, you’ll never have any cravings for junk food again, or like running is just going to be so easy. It’s going to just feel effortless.

I’ve been running for a long time, I’ve run a lot, a lot of miles. And running is never easy. It’s never like effortless. You know, there’s some effort involved with running, always. And when it comes to food, I still struggle sometimes with some cravings or with you know, I guess peer pressure is the right word for it, you know, social pressure from others. Peer pressure is so funny, it reminds me of like middle school, right? You know, hey, try cigarettes, good. What’s the same thing?

People are like, hey, just eat some french fries, patties? Fine. Everybody else is doing it, just do it. And I’m like, dude, what is this? It feels like junior high. But I digress. So there’s this concept that like, at some point, you know, eating and choosing the right foods all the time is going to be simple and easy. And there’s times when it doesn’t feel easy. And there’s times when it is hard.

There’s times when I just want to like dive face first into a gallon of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, because that was my jam. And that was something that really made me feel good, you know, eating that much sugar all at once. Boy that lights you up, I’ll tell you what, you want to forget your problems for a few minutes. That’s a good way to do it. Right?

Of course, it comes with all those negative consequences. And of course, I don’t do that. But I still have those feelings. You know, I still have the struggle at times. You know, of course, it’s easier. And of course, running is easier than it was 5 or 10 years ago. But it’s still challenging. I actually just got done with a 10 mile run here this morning. And it wasn’t I would not say that there was really much during that run that felt really easy.

Now I did notice my heart rate was low the whole time. And I was running pretty slow. And I purposely was just making this an easy run. We’re supposed to get some terrible weather here in Cincinnati in the next few days over Christmas. So I was just like, It’s a Thursday morning. I’m gonna go get my 10 miles done now. And I’m not, I don’t normally run 10 miles on a Thursday morning, but I did it. It was cold. It was raining and windy, but you know, there was no part of that where I was like, oh, this is great. Like, this is so easy and effortless.

No, you know, I’m building my endurance again. I had to take some time off because of an injury. And coming back to running has been a bit of a challenge and it’s hard and I thought to myself, this is hard, but it’s okay. It’s hard, but it’s okay. And I approach food the same way like sometimes it’s hard but it’s okay. That can be hard. Life is supposed to be hard. It doesn’t really get easy.

I think we’re missing the point if we think we’re chasing some easy life. I think the opposite should be true. You should be chasing a hard life. You should be chasing hard things constantly in your life, this concept of there is no finish line. That means there’s no end to doing hard things and accomplishing hard things so that you can level up so that you can become more easy, it is easy, everybody can do easy.

It’s the strong, it’s the unique, it’s the dedication, the discipline to achieve hard. And that’s what you want to do. If you want to level up, you want to get outside your comfort zone and become a different person, you got to do the hard things, right? Hard is where you want to live, you want to you don’t want to live in easy, right? You can do hard things. So do hard things.

And life should be constantly a challenge for you, you should be challenging yourself to do harder and harder things. So combined with this concept of there is no finish line, when we are constantly pushing ourselves and constantly setting the bar higher for ourselves, and we’re constantly leveling up.

This is great, because it means you’re constantly growing and evolving and becoming more and becoming stronger and accomplishing more. And this isn’t just about running or losing weight. This can be about every area of your life, relationships, work. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re building a business, this is hard work. Trust me, I know, I’ve been doing this a long time. It’s not easy.

In your spiritual life, you know, sometimes it can be very hard to have faith. You know, in your family dynamics, your family relationships, dealing with kids. It can be challenging, and it should be challenging, and you should be setting the bar higher for yourself constantly and constantly leveling up. We always want to be leveling up. This is a way of life, right? becoming healthy, becoming the best version of yourself, becoming stronger, becoming your best.

Your most badass self is not a destination. It’s how you live your life. It has to become who you are at your core, it has to become part of who you are at your core. When it becomes who you are at your core, it no longer is an option to stay small, it’s no longer an option to stay in the comfort zone. It’s no longer an option to not go after bigger and bigger things for yourself.

When you constantly level up and constantly push yourself beyond your comfort zone, where all the new stuff is because if you have it already, it’s in your comfort zone. But if there’s something you want that you don’t already have, it’s outside your comfort zone, right? By definition, it’s uncomfortable out there, though, right?

But by constantly pushing yourself, you know, this idea of who you are at your core will continue to drive you. There is no longer a debate in your mind of whether you should stay on your healthy eating plan. There’s no longer a question in your mind, whether you should put on your running shoes and go outside and run even though it’s cold and windy and raining outside.

You do it and then you do it again. You level up, you accomplish something, you set another goal for yourself and then you do it again. There is no end. There is no finish line. This is who you are. Recently, I was running with a friend of mine. And she had another friend, you know that I didn’t know. And she said oh, you know, Patrick, this is so and so. Patrick is an ultra marathoner. He’s one of those guys that runs, you know, these ultra marathons.

So she introduced me as this ultra marathoner. And I thought to myself, like, is that really who I am? At my core? Is that who I am today? Because I haven’t run an ultra marathon in a few years. And so I kind of thought to myself, like, is that still who I am? I think the last time I ran an ultra was two years ago, in December. Yep. But is that who I am? If I don’t do this consistently, does that mean I’m no longer an ultra marathoner?

And I had to think about that for a minute. And it really made me look inside and see like, am I leveling up consistently? And if I’m not, why not? Why am I not pushing myself and creating bigger and better goals for myself so that I can continue to become more and continue to grow and continue to see what I’m capable of?

I’ve done some pretty amazing things in my opinion, you run 100 miles, that’s pretty amazing. Finished an Ironman. I ran 50 miles, I’ve done a bunch of 50k ultra marathons. This stuff is great. But is that like, am I done? And so the last couple of years, I’ve had some setbacks. I’ve had, you know, some injuries, some surgeries, and you know, had to take a lot of time off from running and stuff.

And I thought, you know, now I’m feeling pretty healthy, I’m feeling pretty strong, I’m building mileage. Again, my cardiovascular system is really improving. And my endurance is improving. And I’m just feeling pretty strong where I am right now. I’ve stayed consistent with strength training, which is awesome, but I’m feeling very strong from a running perspective today.

And, and I’m like, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna continue leveling up as an ultra marathoner and continue pushing myself to see what I’m capable of. Does that mean I have 100 miler in my future or a 50 or 12 hour, 24 hour? I don’t know. But I’ve got some ideas. I actually have an idea of something I’m going to be doing this spring, and you’ll learn more about it later.

But I do have this big goal for myself, that I decided, you know, if I’m going to continue leveling up, if I’m going to practice what I’m preaching here, then I need to set some big goals for myself. So I did and I have this big goal that I’m going to be working towards. And again, like I said, when I’m ready to share more about that I will with you guys, right, but I’m just not ready yet.

But the thing is that I want to continue becoming more, I want to continue evolving. I want to continue leveling up. What does that mean for me? And so you have to decide for yourself, what does that mean for you? Who are you at your core, who do you want to be and then act accordingly. So for me, if I want to be the ultra marathoner guy, then I need to be running ultra marathons regularly. And that is who I am at my core.

And that makes me feel like kind of a badass about myself. And it’s not an egotistical thing. This is just like me being confident and feeling good about myself. I’ve accomplished a lot in the running world. And I feel really confident in my ability to go out there and run 50 miles or 100 miles or whatever it is. And I want to continue doing those kinds of things. I want to continue to see what I am capable of.

So with all of this, there’s that underlying idea that there is no finish line. And in this idea that there’s no finish line means that it’s actually a good thing, because you are constantly leveling up, you’re never going to be stagnant, you’re never going to stay dormant. So you decide who you want to become. You set big goals for yourself, then reach those goals, like work hard to get those goals, like accomplish those things that you want to accomplish for yourself, absolutely.

But decide who you want to become. become that person, then you get to decide who you want to become next. And this reminds me of just the whole concept of like leveling up, like in a video game, you know, you get to this place where you have reached the next level, things get harder, you know, you got that new boss, you got to face and defeat, you know, and this is true for us as well.

Things do get harder as we push ourselves. And we push ourselves further outside of our comfort zone. But what’s cool is that when we push ourselves further outside our comfort zone, what we thought was uncomfortable, what we thought was impossible becomes possible for us becomes more comfortable for us. And we kind of surprise ourselves and what we’re capable of. But if you think that you’re going to be done with this at some point, like an actual video game, where I guess there’s an end, I don’t know, video games even have ends anymore. I don’t really know how they work anymore.

Back in the day when I was doing the PlayStation1, I don’t even know when that was, back in the 90s I guess. But the idea that there’s not a finish line can feel a little daunting for some people, it can feel like why even bother if I just have to do this for the rest of my life. But no, that’s the wrong way to think about it. The right way to think about it is yeah, I’m doing it because there is no finish line.

I’m doing this because this is who I want to be in if I want to become this better version of myself. If I want to become the most badass version of myself. That means there’s no stopping and it’s okay. Embrace that idea that there is no finish line, embrace the idea that this work continues. Embrace the idea that you’re constantly leveling up. And I promise you this, when you do that, when you embrace the idea that this work does not end and that life is going to be hard, and it’s you’re going to continue to challenge yourself and you’re going to continue to push yourself.

When you embrace this and just accept it all, it actually becomes easier because you’re just convicted and dedicated. And the discipline is there, the motivation is there, you don’t have to be convinced that you need to do this, because this is just what you do now. You don’t need to ask yourself, well, do I really feel like running or not? Because that question has been answered. Yes, you feel like running? Yes, you’re gonna go do your run. Even if you don’t feel like it? Yes, you’re going to commit to that healthy eating plan that you said, you’re going to stick to? Yes, you’re going to commit to that training schedule that you know is going to get you to the finish line of that race.

But the thing is, this work continues, you’re never done. That’s okay. Embrace the idea that you are always leveling up, embrace the idea that you’re always going to set big goals for yourself, always push yourself to that next level, always pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, always reaching for more. And when you do that, you become more. And then you guess what you do it again, you set a new goal, you set a higher bar, and then you achieve that. Think about where you could be in your life, if you just embrace this idea that the work continues.

Where could you be in your career, in your relationships, financially, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically? Where could you be, if you just continued to push yourself and continue to level up, this is what I want for you. So think about this, as we begin a new year, think about this idea that what you want for yourself is achievable. With the right attitude, with the right discipline with the right consistency. And sometimes you need help, and I get that sometimes you can do it on your own. But if you want help, I’m here for you. But what you want is achievable. And then you got to like pick the next goal. So just keep that in mind.

I know I’ve talked to a lot of people who have these goals for a spring race, they want to do the spring marathon ultra marathon. And, and I’m encouraging them to, you know, kind of yes, let’s, let’s work towards that goal. But then what’s what’s after that, start thinking about that, thinking about what’s next, what’s around the corner? So that you’re always driven so that you’re always moving towards that next thing. Okay, constantly leveling up.

There is no finish line, this work continues. We’re constantly in the work of becoming more and becoming the best version of ourselves. And then once we get there, we set the bar higher and we do it again. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean, happy holidays and parties.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

133. Being an Example to Those Around You

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Today I have a bit of a different podcast episode for you, it’s going to be more of a call to action. I believe that each and every one of us has the ability to make a positive impact on this …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 133, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today being an example to those around you. So today, I’ve got a bit of a different podcast episode for you. Today, I want this to be more of a call to action. So I believe that each and every one of us has the ability to make a positive impact on this world. And you don’t have to be a celebrity, or a social media influencer in order to do it.

Being an example of those around me is a big part of my mission. It’s how I make a positive impact in the world. And it drives me ever forward. So my hope today is that you listen to this episode and then take action. And I’m going to encourage you to do something today to start being an example to those around you. And then maybe just maybe some of those people will do the same.

And just imagine the ripple effect of positive changes we could make if we all lead by example. But first, I’m going to talk quickly about the Running Lean coaching project. This is my coaching program, my immersive coaching program. And something I want to mention today is that the way that I do coaching is a little bit different from other people, I don’t just hand over a plan and say, here’s what you’re going to do. And then you’re kind of on your own.

This is about creating new habits, it’s about creating a different lifestyle. Because what you’ve been doing up to this point, probably hasn’t been working for you. Or you’ve tried a bunch of things in the past, a bunch of other diets, maybe even had some other type of nutrition coaching, or dietary advice or dietary coaching, that really hasn’t worked for you.

And so I do things differently. What I teach in my programs is all about longevity, it’s all about sustainability. It’s all about maintaining good healthy eating habits and good exercise habits. For the rest of your life. It isn’t about the short term, it’s not about losing weight as fast as possible. It’s not about some quick fix. This is about the long term.

Remember, being healthy isn’t a destination we’re trying to get to, being healthy is how we live our life going forward. And I teach you exactly how to do all this in the Running Lean coaching project. Right. So this is my immersive coaching program, you get group coaching, IT support from the group, it has support and personalized guidance from me, the one on one coaching with me, they get tons of access to me.

And this, this whole program is designed to help you get results. It’s about results. It’s about you accomplishing your goals, whatever those look like for you. So it’s a personalized approach that helps you accomplish your goals, and is going to look different for you than it does for somebody else. And that’s cool, because there is no one size fits all when it comes to becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. There just isn’t. That’s why I do what I do.

And if you want this for yourself, if you want to learn how to become the best version of yourself and how to maintain that forever, then just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, fill out a short application, you and I will jump on a zoom call. I’ll talk to you all about the coaching program, I’ll explain exactly how it works. And we’ll just see if there’s a good fit for you. Sound good? runningleancoaching.com/apply, I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project. Okay, so on to this topic today, being an example to those around you.

And like I said at the beginning, this is a bit of a different episode, I’m going to share a little bit about how I ended up where I am today. And the power of being an example and what that means to me. And then I really want this to be something where you take the information I’m going to share with you today and then you do something with it.

So be sure to listen to the end of this because I’ve got a call to action for you towards the end of this episode. And I want you to actually do something starting today to move in that direction of being an example to those around you. Okay. So be sure to listen to the end.

So here’s how I got to kind of where I am today. So 20 years ago, I was a very, very different person. I was significantly overweight. probably pushing 235 or so, 240. At my heaviest, I was very much out of shape. I couldn’t run at all, if I tried to run, there’s just no way even if I had to save my life, I couldn’t run a lick.

I was constantly sick, I was using alcohol as an emotional management tool, because I had no emotional management tools other than food and alcohol. I mean, that’s how I dealt with everything. I just numbed out everything. I was pretty miserable all the time, never felt good, I had zero energy.

And to be honest with you, I really felt like a disappointment. I felt like I was a disappointment to people around me, to my kids, to my family, to my friends, and especially to myself. And at some point along the way, I made a decision that I was never going to be a disappointment to myself or to anybody else, again, that I wasn’t gonna live my life the way I had been up to this point.

And so I started doing things differently. I quit drinking, that was a tough thing for me to do. But I had to make that choice for myself, that that was a problem for me. And that was something that was getting in the way of who I wanted to be. And it was really causing me to feel terrible all the time.

And, and not allowing me to grow, you know, mentally, emotionally. Or to become the healthiest version of myself, there was no way I could get there if I kept drinking alcohol. Because for me, once I start drinking, I can’t stop and have that same relationship with food, especially sugar, carbohydrates, that once I start eating that stuff, I can’t stop.

And I’m the kind of person who would go and get, you know, massive amounts of food I was an overeater as well. Massive amounts of food, people would look at me like, dude, seriously, you’re eating that much food? It’s like, yeah, lay off me, I’m starving. And I ate and drank in a way that was very unhealthy. Right?

And those two things were really combined especially to create this like very unhealthy version of myself and things were not good in my life. You know, I was going through a divorce. And I made this decision to change all that and I cleaned up my diet and I quit drinking and then one thing I did that helped more than anything else was I started running.

And I ran a 10k. And then I signed up for my first marathon. And I did that. And then I was kind of hooked, I got that running bug. And that was sort of a catalyst for me to start doing things that challenged me that were hard that required me to step up my game from a bunch of different viewpoints.

You know, I had to step up my mental and emotional game, I had to step up my nutrition game, I had to step up my fitness game, if I was going to be like this marathon runner, right? So you know, I cleaned up my diet, started running, I got stronger, I started lifting weights. And I really began working on my mindset. A big part of my transformation was the mindset piece.

And listen, I made a lot of mistakes along the way, I would love to sit here and tell you that everything has been rainbows and unicorns, since I decided to kind of get healthy, but it really hasn’t been. And I don’t know if you guys can relate to this, but I’ve had some starts and stops.

You know, I’ve experienced tons of ups and downs, places in you know, times in the last 10, 12, 15 years where I’ve had lots of successes and lots of failures. I’ve had triumphs, and I’ve had tragedies I’ve experienced, being in the best shape of my life. And then, you know, getting out of shape again, during that period of time, you know, lost a bunch of weight, and then gained most of it back and then I had to lose it again.

I’ve been in the best shape of my life and then other times not so much. I dealt with all kinds of challenges of life. And I’ve dealt with these things with courage and determination and grace at times. And other times I’ve had challenges that I really struggled to deal with. But here’s the thing, honestly, today looking at my life the way it is today, I wouldn’t change a thing about my past, I wouldn’t change any stuff that I went through. Because all that hard stuff I went through all those challenges that I experienced have made me who I am today.

You know, it’s the challenges that really cause us to change and grow and evolve and become more, we don’t grow and evolve and become more by staying in our comfort zone, we have to get out of our comfort zone. And sometimes we are forced out of our comfort zone by things that happen to us, you know, death in the family, or another divorce, these things are very challenging. And they can really throw us off.

Or we can step up and face them with courage and determination and move through them. Because the only way to get through challenging stuff is to move through it can’t go around it. You can’t avoid it, a lot of times you have to go right through it. But those are the things that make us who we are. So all that stuff I’ve experienced in my past, I can look at those things and say, yeah, I’ve grown because of that, I’ve become a different person, I’ve become a better person because of that.

And looking back over my past and over all the stuff that I’ve been through, I can see that throughout all of it, throughout all of it, I was being an example to others. Now, I wasn’t always being a good example. A lot of times I can say with complete honesty, that a lot of times I was being an example of what not to do. Okay. Overdrinking, eating junk food, getting incredibly overweight, losing a bunch of weight, gaining it all back and losing it again, don’t do that. Okay, that was sort of like the message.

I think some people were saying they were like, dude, I don’t want to be like this guy. Right? But at some point along the way, I decided that I didn’t want to be the example of what not to do. That I wanted to be a good example to the people around me. You know, at some point, I decided to be an example of what is possible, a positive example of good health, and happiness.

Now, when I talk about being an example to those around you and making an impact in this world, I’m not talking about, you don’t have to be a celebrity in order to impact the world, you don’t have to have a you don’t have to be a social media influencer with millions of followers, right? I can still make an impact on my world, my sphere of influence. And so can you.

And my sphere of influence is quite small. I have my kids and my family, I have my friends. And I have my social media, friends and social media followers and my listeners you. But here’s the thing, even though my sphere of influence might be small, I can make an impact by helping one person at a time.

And when I help one person to become better to become the best version of themselves, and then people in their world see that they want to follow suit. They have then become an example to their sphere of influence to their world. And you can see how the ripple effect starts to take effect here.

And so my mission, my mission in life is to make a positive impact on this world, to transform as many people as possible, to help them to become healthier, happier humans, I want to help you to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. I say this all the time here on the podcast, why?

Because this is my mission. This is why I do what I do. This is my calling. This is what gets me up in the morning. This is why I show up for you here every week on his podcast. This is why I show up for myself too. And in order to fulfill this mission, I have to be an example. I can be an example. And I can help one person at a time. And I know this is a slow process. But that’s okay. I’m not in this to be you know, to be to do it fast.

So I want to help you become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And then I want you to be an example of what’s possible to the people in your world to your sphere of influence. And then each of those people become an example to their people in their world and so on and so forth. Right? This is the ripple effect. So we can change the world.

Me and you, we can do it. It just takes being an example, it takes living your life in such a way that the behaviors that you engage in on a daily basis, are in alignment with that best version of yourself. Because when the actions that you take and your behaviors are in alignment with your goals of becoming that badass version of yourself, that’s when the good stuff happens.

Now we all have, like, we all want to be our best selves, right? I mean, I think we do talk to people all the time, we want to become their best selves. But their actions, their behaviors don’t always line up with that. They’re doing things that are really the opposite of that. And that was me, and I get it.

You know, overdrinking for me, was not a behavior that was moving me towards the best version of myself. So I had to cut that out of my life. Eating sugar, for me, is not something that works for me. And it’s something that moves me away from becoming the healthiest version of myself. So I’d cut that out of my life. So what I do today is in alignment with who I want to be.

And so for me, it’s about becoming the best version of myself in every area of my life. And there are four key areas that I coach on in my program. And when you work with me, you’re going to improve in all of these areas. And they are nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset.

Nutrition. Am I eating real food? Is the food that I’m eating? Does it still look like food? Or is it processed garbage? Is it full of chemicals and sugar and seed oils? Or does it still look like food our ancestors have been eating for thousands of years? Am I fueling my body like an athlete? Or am I just eating like a couch potato?

Am I using food as an emotional management tool? Because I used to do that a lot. You know, am I dealing with my emotions? Do I feel good about my food choices? Am I in control of my food choices? Or does my eating feel out of control? These are ways that I can kind of check myself and say, okay is my nutrition on point?

And then strength. So at 55 years old, I’m in the best shape of my life, I’m the strongest I’ve ever been, you know, I have changed my body composition. Over the last few years, I’ve gained like 20 pounds of muscle. And I’m down to about 12% body fat. And I’m getting stronger all the time. I keep improving this.

I’m actually in this phase right now where I’m trying to gain weight, I’m trying to gain muscle weight. And so I’m eating a little bit more protein, I’m eating more calories in general. And I’m not gaining fat or I’m not gaining body fat, I’m gaining muscle. And at 55, the fact that I can do this, should prove to you that you can do it too. So this is me being an example for you.

Endurance, I’m still running strong. I typically do one to two marathons a year, I have for the last 12 years and I’ve done countless ultra marathons during that time. My body’s holding up. I’m not injured, I don’t get injuries and strength. The fact that I have built so much strength over the last few years helps immensely with all of that.

In my mindset, this is one of the most powerful things that I’ve changed for the better for myself. Because mindset drives everything. So your mindset, this is your thoughts, your feelings, your attitudes, it’s your mental and emotional state at any given time. And a lot of the a lot of the behaviors that are engaged in the damaging behaviors that we engage in, like overeating or overdrinking is because we’re using those things, alcohol or food as an emotional management tool.

We don’t want to deal with our emotions. So instead we eat over them or we drink over them. But learning how to manage emotions without eating junk food or drinking alcohol, or smoking cigarettes or doing you know, heroin or whatever your drug of choice might be. This is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself. Because armed with the right mindset, there’s really nothing you can’t do.

So between my nutrition, strength, endurance and mindset, these four key areas I have become at this point in my life, I’m the best version of myself I am and I’ve got some goals. You know I’ve got goals I want to improve in all these areas still, and I will and I continue to move in the direction of my goals. I’m always working on myself, and you should be too.

And this isn’t about like ego or vanity, I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone else. I don’t need to prove my worth to anyone outside of myself, I stopped trying to do that years ago. It’s not about comparing myself to anyone else. I only care about comparing who I am today, to who I was yesterday, am I a better version of myself today? Yes or no.

And I’m not trying to impress anyone, either. My goal is to lead by example. And that’s it. Instead of trying to impress people by what I do, I want to inspire them by who I am. So here’s the call to action part. I want you to do something today, to move in the direction of you becoming the best version of yourself.

I want you to do something today to inspire somebody around you, you can make a positive impact on this world, you can help create healthier, happier humans around you. This could be your kids, your family, your friends, your followers, whatever. You can do this, you have that power. And you are takes, it just takes doing something yourself to move in the direction of you becoming the best version of yourself. When you do that, you will show people what is possible, you will be an example of what is possible to the people around you.

So what is one thing you can do today, to be a positive example. Maybe you could make a healthy meal for your family. Simple, right? Maybe you can go for a run. And then post about it, post about how good you feel. You know, I know people are like, geez, we need to see you posting on Facebook about your runs again. But listen, people tell me all the time. They’re like I’m so inspired by you.

And people were telling me this long before I was doing what I’m doing today years and years and years ago, I would post pictures of me running or post about running. And people say I’m so inspired. Just by sharing little vignettes of my day. Here’s what I did today, I got up early and I went for a run, people see that. Maybe you could skip dessert tonight. And instead, take a walk with your kids or your dog. Maybe you grab a friend and you head out to some trails and do some hiking or some trail running.

Maybe tomorrow morning, you get up early and you hit the gym, you lift some heavy weights, you could read a book on personal development, a couple of my favorites would be Atomic Habits by James Clear, or The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday.

Maybe you get a good night’s sleep tonight, that could be something very simple to do. But you can be an example to others. When you get a good night’s sleep and you feel more well rested. When you wake up in the morning, maybe you start your day with some meditation, or some journaling. Or take a yoga class.

There are countless ways that you can improve your own personal health and happiness. Whether it’s nutrition, strength, endurance or mindset. But what I want to encourage you to do is to do something, take action now do something today. And then tomorrow, I want you to do something else. Okay. Here’s where I’m going with this. So it doesn’t stop.

This isn’t a one and done. Right? Every day, we show up for ourselves to become the best version of ourselves. And when we do that, when we do that, you we can’t help but to be an example to the people around us. Because people will notice. People will notice what you’re doing.

And listen, I talked to clients all the time who start to feel really good. So we’ve cleaned up their diet, maybe they started lifting weights or something and they feel so good. And they want to tell everybody about what they’re doing. And they and they see friends and family and they’re like, oh, and they might make comments like you should really be doing what I’m doing.

But here’s the thing, nobody likes to be told what to do. I’m just going to tell you right now, even though, you know you feel good and you’re excited about it, you know how you feel and you want to share this with everybody. But nobody wants to be told what to do. Nobody wants to be told what to do.

But people will see what you’re doing. If it works for you, they will see you becoming healthier, maybe losing weight, feeling better, getting stronger, looking amazing. Rockin that bikini in the summer, whatever it is, they’ll see that. And they’ll want that. And they might ask you about it.

You know, for years, my son Colin was overweight, you know. And for years, even though I’m a weight loss coach, I never talked to him about I never told him what to do. I never pushed any kind of agenda on him. At some point, when he was ready to change, he just came to me because he saw what I was doing. He saw how I had lost the weight and kept it off. And he saw how I was helping countless other people to do the same.

And then one day finally came to me and asked if I would be willing to coach him. Of course, I said yes. And of course, it was like a huge, proud dad moment for me. But this is how it works. You see, we lead by example, not by proselytizing. We inspire others by who we are, by how we live our life, not by impressing them by the stuff we do.

We become the healthiest and most badass versions of ourselves. And then those people around us, they will see that they will see that and they will see who we’ve become. And some of them not all, but some of them will want to follow suit. So you have your marching orders. Get busy today doing something, just one thing today, to move toward that best and healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And then tomorrow. Do it again. Cool. All right. That’s all I got for you. I love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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