4. Chris Wissman on Functional Fitness, Proper Running Form, and The Myth of the Perfect Diet

Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Hey there, and welcome back to the podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host. And today I’ve got a really cool treat for you. I’m talking with my good friend, Chris Wissman. Chris is a personal trainer, he’s more of a movement and lifestyle coach. That’s what he calls himself.

And Chris and I can have conversations that just go, who knows where, and they’re awesome. We talk about mindset, we talk about physiology, about physiological load. In this particular show, we get into running form and posture and how important that is, and what happens to your body when you don’t have good form.

We talk about things like being hunched over all day sitting down and what that’s doing to us, maybe the importance of having something like a standing desk. And we talk a lot about diet, too, and how there isn’t one diet necessarily for everyone, there’s not one diet that’s perfect for everyone. And then it’s important for you to figure out what your metabolic diet type is.

Chris has a wealth of knowledge on all this stuff. And like I said, we could go in many, many different directions here. And we could talk forever about some of this stuff. We don’t talk forever, but we do talk about a lot of different things. This is really cool. I love love, love talking to Chris. And then at the very end, he gives us a couple of simple, very simple tips for endurance runners to help us to be more efficient in what we do.

So you have to wait until the end of the podcast for that one. But before we get into that, I wanted to quickly go over something I’m very excited about. And I just recently launched Inner Fire Tribe’s group coaching program for runners. So this is a comprehensive online training program.

And it’s designed for you if you’re a long distance runner, if you’re a half marathon or marathon or ultra runner; it’s designed to help you bring your mind and your body into alignment so you can get the results that you want. It’s designed to show you and teach you how to train your mind like you train your body. So you can get those powerful results. So you can reach your goals, whatever those may be, they may be running faster than you ever have before or completing a distance you have never done before.

So when you become a member of the Inner Fire Tribe, you’re gonna get detailed training plans. So we’ll have comprehensive half and full marathon training plans. And then a training library that’s going to continue to grow. So new training plans will be added all the time, you know, we’re going to be adding 5k and 10k. And you run your first ultra plan that’s going to be coming very soon. You’ll get mindset training.

So I will do weekly, live mindset training, so you can learn how to train your mind to work for you. You know, the key, the key to success in all of life, but especially in running is to get your mind and your body into alignment. If your mind is fighting against you every step of the way, running is going to be very challenging for you. So as a master mindset coach, my focus is helping you build the mental toughness that you need to make running easier, you know, get faster and actually have more fun doing it.

You will get live online coaching. So I do a live coaching in a private Facebook group. And let’s face it, running is hard, right? There’s a lot that goes into becoming a successful long distance runner. And not everybody’s needs are the same. So what I want to do is some one-on-one coaching with you in an environment where other people can benefit from it. You’ll also get that supportive community of the Facebook group. It’ll be comprised of runners just like you. So it’ll be fun, I’ll be supportive. It’s a great place to ask questions, get help about all things running nutrition, gear building, mental toughness, and so much more.

And then everything we do, becomes archived into a comprehensive video library. And then we’ll be adding to that video library all the time. So we’ll be covering main topics like running forearm strength training, stretching, recovery, nutrition, fueling for race day, proper nutrition, hydration, pay strategy, tapering, all the things that go into running rain, seems easy enough, right? Just put on your shoes and head out the door.

But when we get into the sport of running, and especially the sport of distance running, there’s a lot of factors involved. And you can almost not have too much training when it comes to that. So this video training library will be ever growing. Now, here’s the best part about joining Inner Fire Tribe, this is not something that is going to break your wallet. Okay, you’re gonna get the training plans, the mindset training, the instructional video library, live online coaching, and a supportive community, you’re gonna get all of that. It’s less than $1 a day, you can find $1, you know, right now in the couch cushions, probably.

So when you join the Inner Fire Tribe group coaching program for runners today, it’s only $26.2 per month. And here’s what’s cool about it: it’s a subscription based system. And the longer you stay, the more valuable it becomes for you. Because we’re always gonna be adding new strength routines, new exercises, new training videos, new coaching sessions, and more and more and more, get in on this today, because it’s only going to get better.

And I can’t guarantee that I’m going to keep things at this low price point. So it’ll probably end up going up soon. So go there today, there, you got nothing to lose, really go to innerfiretribe.com/coaching. And you can sign up today, come and be a part of the tribe. I would love to have you there. All right, cool. So let’s get into my interview with Chris Wissman.

Today, I am joined with Chris Wissman. Chris is a movement and lifestyle coach, and just kind of all around badass. If I can say that, of course. Chris, why don’t you tell me and tell everybody else a little bit about what you do.

Chris Wissman
So at Real, Jen and I owners of a company called Real Human Performance. So we really focus on specifically the gym floor, just corrective movements and making sure everybody’s moving for their kind of individual approach. We also do stress management courses and workshops, outside of real and different corporations to the city. My passion is becoming more and more oriented towards kind of helping people through their, like changing their lifestyle factors.

That way we can like what you’re focusing on, help people ease the load, so their mindset can be even stronger and better than it’s ever been. So we approach it from kind of a pillar standpoint. And we can get into those pillars as we, as we were we record here, but um, movement, and then just like lifestyle factors and I help people with that.

Patrick McGilvray
Cool, so you’re different from the traditional gym or from, you know, traditional, yeah, something like CrossFit, you know, so explain a little bit about the differences and how that would relate to somebody who’s let’s say, an endurance runner.

Chris Wissman
So running is the perfect thing to compare that or to relate that to, because CrossFit tends to stay in what we call the sagittal plane, which is just up and down movements, a lot of barbell movements, a lot of burpees, they’re not really incorporating the way that our core is originally designed to move our core is meant to propel us through locomotion is we’re meant to locomote and to run.

And that’s why I love this approach, because with running, you oftentimes see posture starts to either deteriorate depending on how you’re built, or just be stronger than it’s ever been because of that rotational ability that we train on the gym floor. So a lot of the things that we do on the floor, are oriented back towards restoring our core function and our back functions so we can locomote better. Locomote just meaning walk and run, just go through that plane of motion.

So do a lot of rotational drills, a lot of anti rotational drills, a lot of ground based movements, stuff that’s really designed to restore that style of movement and just recognize that not everyone needs to do the same thing. And everybody’s starting in a very unique spot. And we have to be very intelligent about how we deploy these movements to people to make sure benefits them because what use of it is that if we’re not if we’re not benefiting that person.

Patrick McGilvray
I want to go back to something you just said about posture. And for me when I think of that when it comes to running I think of running form. For sure a lot of people have what you would consider like terrible running form, terrible posture so they may stand like they may be really hunched over over, you know, their shoulders are up in their ears. They may be rounded at the back, or, you know, they may be flailing a lot, you know, and I see this in long distance runners, especially, you know, because we spend a lot of time out there running together, and you see some people you’re like, how’s that guy able to run a marathon like that?

Yeah, and some people are pretty, you know, they seem like they’re pretty fast runners. But my guess is that they could be a lot more efficient for sure and probably stay injury free. Like talk a little bit about the importance of posture.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, exactly. So that posture, you talk about that anterior rolled, forward posture has a lot to do with being seated. Unfortunately, we’re both seated right now. I usually try to sit on like a Swiss ball or something that keeps me active, that way, it stimulates my posture throughout the duration, which is just a big exercise ball for, for lack of a better term.

But um, basically, when you see that for rolled posture, and that kind of head for neck, it’s something that I still suffer from. And that’s kind of why I went out on a limb and tried to learn so much about it. It’s a lot of times that dysfunctional breathing pattern, when we start really heavily mouth breathing and getting exhausted, the musculature on the front side of our body, and our chest will start to constrict and just pull ourselves forward.

Which makes us have to try to keep our head up, our head is trying to do our head and eyes are trying to do anything they can do to stay in the horizontal plane of motion to make sure that we’re not going to fall over, right.

So as our chest falls forward, our head will start to come up. And that’s where you see what’s called back kyphosis, which is just lack of thoracic extension, lack of keeping what I’ll cue in the gym is just like, hey, keep up, keep up proud chest when we’re down there. That way, we can restore some of that extension to the mid back.

And when we’re able to train ourselves to maybe not so much panic, breathe throughout the day, use our nostrils, you’ll and just be very cognizant of our posture, you’ll slowly start to notice that improving. Again, it’s something that you can’t just fix overnight. Keep in mind how long it took us to develop these postures and, and so you have to really reinforce it every day, with everything that you do.

And that has effects way deeper than we know and has effects on our nervous system. It has effects on our digestion, it has effects on how our feet strike the floor. It’s very, it’s a, it’s a feedback loop from up, up and down and down and up. And it’s constantly talking to itself to help us try to find balance.

Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, that sort of proud chest that you know, sitting up straight, basically, right. It’s kind of a, it’s kind of a trendy thing right now, because there’s all these gadgets that you can wear, you know, that’ll bind you to, yeah, right. I’m like, okay, why is this all of a sudden a thing? You know, are we really that bad hunching over? And I guess we are.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, we are and, and that kind of pulls us back to it makes us a really quad dominant runner as well. And as we become quad dominant, then our glutes, and the hamstrings kind of start to relax or not do what they’re supposed to do, which is the pulling part of the movement. So the more anterior we are, the more front of the body we are with our posture, the more that’s going to go down the chain to our feet, and our knees, our quads and our shins. So you could see shin splints because of this knee problems, and all of that. So it’s kind of just a cascade of effects, if you will.

Patrick McGilvray
So really just stand up straight when you’re running with a proud chest. That’ll really help a lot, right?

Chris Wissman
Oh, for sure. For sure. There’s some really good people in the city if you want to get down deep in the nitty gritty with this. But I mean, generally speaking, we want to try to strike the ground with ease, we don’t want to be slamming down. We don’t want to be landing too much right on the heel immediately, we want to land kind of whole foot or maybe even front foot. And again, everybody’s really unique in that regard. It’s just about doing it, like you said, efficiently if it sounds and looks not efficient, and probably isn’t.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I don’t know how people get through like 26 miles running the way they do sometimes. Well, I’m not saying I’m perfect at all, but…

Chris Wissman
I’ve seen like good posture, you hold really, really good posture while you’re moving. You’re a lot better than I am. So that’s great.

Patrick McGilvray
Well, yeah, and just full disclosure, I do work out with Chris. So that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to get him on here to talk about this is because we talk about this at the gym extensively. And I’m like, dude, we just need to get a conversation or record it and share it. It’d be awesome. So here we are.

Chris Wissman
Heck yeah.

Patrick McGilvray
So you mentioned like sitting on a Swiss ball is something you do to stay active while you have to sit because I mean, let’s face it, we do have to sit sometimes, yes. Or there are alternatives like a standing desk. Have you seen people having actual results from that? And what are the results from that, because everybody’s talking about, you know, they’re telling me like Patrick, you should really have a standing desk. Because I sit a lot.

Chris Wissman
I’m very big on the approach of individuality and almost like in everything that we talk about. And if we have bad posture, and if we’re not using our, our glutes or hamstrings, our knees, and if we have a dysfunctional breathing, pattern standing, and sitting really don’t make a difference.

In my opinion, if we’re able to stand upright, correctly, and be very long in the spine and access our proper breathing mechanisms, then yeah, it’s awesome. And it’ll keep us active throughout the day. If you’re someone that’s not getting enough movement throughout the day, it gives you a chance to just slide side to side, and it gives you a chance to stretch and open up. But I guess, standing desk with awareness, awesome, without it could lead to some long term things. But they’re great for some people.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And you’re touching on something, though, that I think is important for us to all remember, which is that it’s different for everyone. Yeah, you know, everybody has their own needs. Everybody has their own things that work for them. And, you know, I’m in a lot of groups, and I see people post questions in groups, like, what’s the best way to do x? Or what’s the best shoe for x? Or what’s the best watch to where it’s like, dude, who knows?

Whatever works for you, you know? Yes, it is the best. Anyway, and I like your approach with that, like, when we do work out at the gym, you’re very much about the individual person and what their needs are. It’s not just about like, everybody do the same thing, no matter what. Yeah, you know, you take into account what people need, you know, I need certain things, and somebody else might need something completely different. So that’s cool. For sure.

So we’re talking about building strength, right? Yes, you’re talking about becoming stronger. You know, what are, what are some of the benefits of strength training for runners, because here’s, here’s something I’ve heard before. You know, runners, you know, you don’t want to bulk up. Because, you know, you got to stay lean. So, you know, the standard thing is, like, just don’t lift heavy weights.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, I think there’s benefits at certain times for that heavy lifting category for certain people. The main benefit that I see with the model that we use is restoring the transverse abdominis and your inner unit, so your, your core and your back and the way that functions, I don’t see a lot of people teaching humans how to rotate.

And there’s a ton of different ways you can approach this and it’s really not all that come left, you just have to know how to not go too far. So basically, you would teach someone how to resist rotation, via just like a planking platform or a box plank platform. And then you would slowly start to maybe lift a hand or a foot and make sure their hips don’t die from side to side, we can get activity in that deep pelvic floor, then they’re ready.

And I’m kind of fast forwarding a bunch, but then they’re ready to use resistance on the rotation. And if we can really learn how to powerfully rotate, then we’re going to go through that gait cycle fast, and you’re going to be very strong in it. So that’s really my focus on strength training around running.

I mean, there’s all the normal things such as, you know, just having more strength, your muscles, more endurance, the remote tools, you’re going to build, like stronger ligaments and everything around that joint. That way, that joint works better. And we’re at less risk for injury as long as we’re safe on the gym floor. But my real focus is restoring that rotation because we don’t do enough of it anymore.

Patrick McGilvray
And what a lot of people don’t realize is that running is a very rotational activity. Yeah, yes. You’re rotating. Yeah. You do use your core a lot if you’re doing it right.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, if you look at like these guys that are on the track for like, the Olympic athletes, you’ll see them literally, chin to hip. They’re ripping their hands as they go through and they’re doing our T spine is meant to have a ton of rotations. That’s why we’ll start our day off with mobility drills such as like the 90/90 sweep to open up the ribcage and intercostals and get everything available to move again, because it’s so stiff from just being forward all day. Seated and watching TV or in the car on the cell phone. Everything is just very stiff and rigid. So it’s just like let’s build some rotation back in this game and then people tend to do better?

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I know that when I first started distance running, I was not focused on the core at all. And then I started doing some core work and started to realize how important it is. Especially the outside. Your oblique slings, man.

Chris Wissman
Those are obliques. Yeah, you’re good at that you have the anterior and posterior oblique slings that connect. And this is why we go through a gait cycle that connects your shoulder and your hip. So it’s a big cross pattern from the front and the back of your body. And that’s what propels us through the so when we can if you look at a six pack on someone, this is like the most desirable thing to see as a six pack and someone that might not be the most functional. That’s our rectus abdominis. That’s like the top layer. And that doesn’t really have anything to do with the way we were built to rotate. It’s just kind of our protection mechanism for our organs. So it’s really good in that regard. But as far as locomotion, a six pack, isn’t that functional.

Patrick McGilvray
So interesting. Yeah. So it’s all vanity.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, many people picked up on it. And they just want to keep it and so I get it.

Patrick McGilvray
I get it. Good. Well, then I’m gonna stop. Yeah, I’m going to stop going for the six pack, then there it goes. I know. It’s just a vanity thing, you know, strong oblique slings.

Yeah. That’s cool. So let’s talk a little bit more about that. The gait pattern, you know, in that whole gait cycle, because it’s fascinating to me to just kind of learn a little bit more about, you know, propulsion, and how we are, what we’re actually doing when we’re running. You know, I’ve heard it said that running is like a controlled fall, you know, you’re sort of falling forward, you’re leaning forward at the, at the ankles slightly. And so that your body is just sort of controlling that fall, you know. So anyway, that’s just one way of looking at it first, talk through that a little bit.

Chris Wissman
So there’s a really awesome woman that I studied through, named Katie Bowman. And she’s got a couple of books, one of which is Movement That Matters. And there’s another one called Move Your DNA, she talks about that, you can see people that lose their core propulsion.

And while they’re walking, it’s like they are falling, and they’re just catching themselves every step, and that’s pretty abrasive to the joint. So if you can take that, that controlled fall and make it more fluid, and I’ve heard it explained to me like you’re Spinning the globe, if you can make it be very easy, that will help that control fall. And that will propel you forward.

Ultimately, you really want to see at the end of that fall, aka push off your foot, you want to see full extension. And we practice that a lot when we’re doing our, our drills from from deadlift to overheads or whatever they might be, is extending through the hips, and pushing and plantar flexing off the ground and really learning to get as long as you can, the more we learn to extend, the more using that your posterior chain, your backside, your body, your hamstrings, your glutes, and you’re really able to fire them.

And that will help that fall that you’re talking about. Just be powerful. So extension, in regards to power will help you a ton. And there’s a lot of drills that you can do around that as extension base drills. So for power extension up, up, up those drills man, they’re my favorites.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I don’t love them. No, they’re good. It’s good. I know I complain about the workouts, Chris, but I know.

Chris Wissman
You really don’t, man. I noticed when you came in, when you were really interested in starting this and have you started it, you had a different energy about you entirely. You literally were, you’re glowing. It’s a you’re a different Patrick than the one that I met, not that you weren’t a great human before. It’s just like, do you see Patrick? He’s dude, he’s radiating like he’s fired up. I really really like what you’re doing and everything. So that’s why I was stoked that the mind approach is what you’re choosing because it’s so important.

Patrick McGilvray
Well, that’s a good segue. Let’s kind of talk about that. So you know, I’m, I’m under this I’m operating from this place of like, mindset is everything. Okay? Yeah. Like everything that you want in your life was, you know, first created as a thought, and that our thoughts create the things we feel the emotions that we have. And it’s those emotions that create our behavior or actions, okay, so when you say or inaction.

You know, so when you say like, why did you do that? Oh, I felt like it or I didn’t feel like it, you’re talking about an emotion. Why didn’t you feel like it? What’s the thought that was telling you that you didn’t want to work out today or you didn’t want to go for that run, it might be some belief that you have about yourself that, you know, you’re not a good runner or something like that.

Anyway, so our thinking creates our emotions, our emotions, determine what we do our behavior, and then our actions or behavior gets us our results, okay, you want better results in your life, change your thinking, you know, that’s where I’m kind of, yeah, that’s where I’m operating from here,

Chris Wissman
It’s literally that because with your thoughts, you’re changing your hormones, and that, and that is what propels our emotion. So hormones, control emotions, emotions, control what we do, and then reinforcing them by embodying that thought. And it’s, literally, it’s the most powerful thing that you can, you can change. And it’s, it’s incredible. It really blows me away.

Because it is, the higher it is, the top notch in the hierarchies scale on what we want to address. When it comes to lifestyle coaching, if you’re constantly in an automatic negative self thinking, then you’re going to just repeat your cycle over and over and over again. And it’s not like I’m perfect, I still struggle with it in multiple categories. And the best thing that you can do when you’re in those thoughts is just stop the thinking and interrupt it with something that you really think is positive, or you want to it’s an affirmation, essentially.

But with that information, I found it really important. And Elliot Horowitz kind of reinforced this to interrupt it with something you’ve experienced very positive in your life, something that, like I used to ride BMX and dirt bikes a ton, and I can just visualize myself flying into the woods. So that is just like, my utmost flow states.

So if I can reinforce my affirmation, with a feeling that I got was riding dirt bikes are as close as I can get, then you’re more likely to achieve that positive thought or what it is that you want to do. And you’re interrupting that negative thought, right now, and with some success.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and people really think that this is more complicated than that, you know, and, like, and it really isn’t. So, you know, being happy or being confident, you know, those are just states, their states of mind, you know, and if you want to be happy, go back to a time when you were super happy, like go float back into your body.

In that time, close your eyes, float back into that time, see what you saw, hear what you heard, and feel those feelings of happiness. Once again, I guarantee you if you take 30 seconds to do that, you’ll have a big smile on your face, for sure, man now, but what happens is we choose different thoughts. We choose thoughts of stress and anxiety and fear and hurt and sadness and guilt and shame. Like we choose these things. I think about choosing them.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, I think the statistic on that is like, like 90% of the population today is 90% of the thoughts are negative.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, it would have something like 60,000 thoughts a day? Yeah. So think about that, like, okay, what’s 90% of that? I don’t know, 50,000 of your thoughts are negative. What are we doing to ourselves, you know? And then we wonder why everybody’s on Lexapro or whatever, you know.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, with those thoughts, you’re not only reinforcing a negative mindset, you’re feeding an overall disease. I like the disease that broken down like that because it is just that, it’s a disease. And with just, I remember at an old company, I worked at the stress that it gave me and went off to get into the details of it but I had a chronic ulcer and I had just really really bad stomach pains really bad digestion and the day that place stopped my stomach problems, I stopped right along with it.

So these can manifest as anything like headaches, stomach aches, actual joint pain. If you have a vulnerable spot in your body and your real for reinforcing a negative thought, that vulnerable spot like I will know if I’m experiencing something out of the norm or negative via my diet or my mindset if my knee starts throbbing, like just like, hey, here’s here’s a sign for you. Something’s a little off you know, pay attention because I’ve beat my knee up so many times it’s very vulnerable to inflammation and we’re creating inflammation with the reinforcing negative thoughts and debt and bad lifestyle factors.

Patrick McGilvray
It’s crazy. Yeah. So your thoughts create these, this release of hormones and chemicals, right? Like serotonin. I can’t remember the other ones.

Chris Wissman
It’s complex, but you’re right on. I can’t really remember them either. But adrenaline…

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, stuff like that. And they can have an effect on you. So you can think yourself into, you know, a panic attack, basically, you can think yourself into that fight or flight kind of, right, where you’re, like, so anxious, and so fearful that you, that people actually have a panic attacks have to go to hospital, just because of thinking, you know, isn’t that wild? Like wouldn’t it be in our best interest to think something more positive instead?

Chris Wissman
Yeah, you’re right on and with that, that psyche is like the hierarchy of, of everything that we do, like I said, and therefore, like also reinforcing that you’ll also be you’ll see people that have that, that panic attack kind of mindset also, or those same kind of people that maybe are casting blame, or holding, like forms of resentment towards other people. And that really reinforces that anxiety. Yeah, it is crazy man.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and Bruce Lipton talks about this, in his book, The Biology of Belief. I don’t know if you’ve read that one yet. I actually haven’t. But you’ve told me about it. I will.

So you know, he basically just talks about this relationship between the mind and the body, and that we think ourselves into health, or we think ourselves into disease. And, you know, he goes on to talk about how most disease and especially chronic pain, any any pain that lasts more than like, 90 days, or something like that, is is all based on our thoughts, our beliefs, and that you can change that and change the physiological makeup, you know, the chemical cocktail that you got floating around in your body, and cure yourself?

Chris Wissman
Yes, yeah, without a doubt. And with that comes like, the other things in life. And this is where I, I’d love to kind of dive into the other things that make our mindset vulnerable are like just just things in our modern day world, whether it be sleep or eating out of your diet type, or moving too much or too little or not, or having too many stimulants, you know, and breath is a huge one, we talked about that a little bit.

The environment that you place yourself in the actual environment, with the people you surround your wit itself with, and the environment via like, the things we put on our skin, the things that we breathe, the things that we put in to our mouth, the things that, yeah, just the actual, like the physical environment that you put yourself, put yourself, then it’s, they all play a role in our low, or what you and I’ve talked about before, are physiological below to potentially compromise our mindset.

So if we can reduce the that load through any of the number of like pillars that we work on, then our mindset has a better chance of like, hey, let’s take you know, maybe we can have 80 or 80% of our thoughts be negative instead of 90, and then slowly work your way into just being a person that really believes what you say, and what you say is a positive thing to yourself. Yeah, I’m really interested in Bruce Lipton’s work, I’ve heard a lot about it.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, it’s pretty wild stuff. There it is. It’s just really fascinating. Like, I can go, I’ve read a bunch of books like this, and I can just get really deep into that rabbit hole of like the mind body connection. It’s fascinating.

Chris Wissman
You are, your mind is your body, man.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, it really is. I mean, it’s like, it’s like the central processing unit. You know, it’s the CPU of your body, you know, it’s controlling everything. So you mentioned something in passing just now. I want to go back to that a little bit. You said something about diet type? Yeah, that.

Chris Wissman
So everyone has genetic makeup. And we all have what’s called a metabolic diet type or something, also referred to as bio biochemical individuality. So our gut is predisposed to absorb some things better than others. And when we have more eating out of our diet type, and really now, we have so many availabilities to eat healthy foods.

It’s more about not eating like the processed garbage and trying to eat foods that you know where they came from, you know, they’re clean, they’re not doused with herbicides and pesticides, and then that will help us and help our gut not be inflamed.

And if you can even take it a step further and do some diet typing questionnaires and you get really in the nitty gritty with what kind of vitamins and minerals that you might be an excess of or are not an excess of you can really dial in your nutrition and be right on the money with backing up your genetics.

So like people from like extreme northern climates would have like. It’s a shame that keto has gotten such a bad rap, but also a good rap because there are some benefits to it. Maybe if you’re an Eskimo I had the mistake of like, of getting wrapped up in the rabbit hole being keto, and I, I really messed up my gut.

And I don’t want to deter people from trying that because there are some definite benefits of having fats in your diet, but they have to be the right fats. And you have to know who you are, individually, if you’re going to get benefits from that. And so, it’s really more about just taking a step back and talking to yourself after you have the food.

And just see how you feel like I’m the weird person in the grocery store going, Hey, Chris, do you want do you want that? And like, you get an answer right away? You do, you do? I swear if you just, if you stop for a second and ask, you get an answer right away.

Like there’s sometimes that this company Jackson’s Honest, has these really good corn chips that are just it’s literally sea salt, blue corn and coconut oil. And sometimes my body’s like, yes. And other times, like, nope. And it’s just you just talk to yourself and your innate wisdom knows what you need.

Patrick McGilvray
My body always says yes, when I’m standing in front of the ice cream display. Patrick, do you need this? And I’m like, yeah, do you know, it feels so good.

Chris Wissman
I got really caught up again, when I sort of learned all this stuff. I got really caught in a rabbit hole just thinking all that was bad. And like, to kind of back up the mindset. Like if that eases your mind. And that’s something that is a treat to you and you really enjoy it. If the juice is worth the squeeze mentally, and you don’t feel terrible, like maybe not make it a habit, but enjoy that, like, enjoy the Graeter’s, you know what I mean?

If you’re gonna do it, enjoy it, don’t beat yourself up about it. Because that will really throw you down a spiral. And I’ve seen a lot of people, including myself, not get the benefits from that. Yeah, it gets a little tricky. So I kind of live and this is kind of a popular thing. But I kind of do live by the 80/20.

And just been taking a step back and asking myself if that’s what I wanted, that’s what I needed. I’m actually more of a carbo type if I were to do my metabolic diet typing, so I do really well on on like good carbohydrates. So I will have like Ezekiel bread, which is a great source of like sprouted soaked seeds and grains.

And for a couple of years ago, you wouldn’t catch me eating that because I thought that was bad. And it causes inflammation. And it sounds like it’s got gluten in it. It’s got gluten and, and to gluten is defense, everyone that has been tested, like they get a couple of controlled studies and everyone that had gluten showed gut permeability, which is like inflammation. So there is some truth to it.

But that was American gluten. Keep that in mind. We could go down a really deep rabbit hole here. And there’s American gluten and basically American students got a bad rap. Oh, it actually doesn’t have a bad rap. It’s bad because it’s been sprayed with so many chemicals and actually mutated what it is. So if you find an organic source of gluten, you might not unless you’re celiac, you might not get that effect.

Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, I mean, corn apparently is a good ancient grain. That’s low in gluten. Yeah. Yeah, man. So Metabolic Typing, this is very interesting. I’m interested in doing this, you know, like, how would I go about doing this?

Chris Wissman
So there’s an actual book called Metabolic Diet Typing. And the company that I do my training for, the Czech Institute, has their own version of it that I like. And so if you’re ever interested in a questionnaire, I’m more than happy to pass it to you. I like some things from the Czech Institute. And I like a lot of things from the diet, the diet typing from the book is very in depth.

So if you want to go down the rabbit hole, I’d go that route. If you don’t, I would just just ask yourself some questions, you know, and just be really honest with yourself about what’s benefiting you and what’s not.

Patrick McGilvray
Okay. So I did a quick search here on Amazon, like the Metabolic Typing Diet. Yep. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, that’s it. And Walt, and Trish Fahey. You got it.

Chris Wissman
It’s been around for a while. And, you know, there’s, again, a lot of questions when you start to identify your diet type, but it’s really intuitive, and it’ll help you. And keep in mind, our diet type will change seasonally because our ancestors had different foods available at different times throughout the year.

We have the luxury now to just eat food from anywhere at any time and just go to Whole Foods and grab whatever. So if you got down into the nitty nitty gritty of your diet type you may change your food according to like, when it’s wintertime or when it’s spring or summertime, you know, you might eat a little I’m hotter and heavier in the winter, and more dense foods and in the summer of cooler, lighter foods, and it just, we crave those things, and we crave the soups, you know, in the winter, and then the salads in the summer.

Patrick McGilvray
So, pumpkin spice chai latte, fall in.

Chris Wissman
That’s, that was I think that was programmed later.

Patrick McGilvray
I don’t know, it’s pretty been around forever. What I love hearing you say is that, like diet, it depends on you. And I love this idea of just like figuring out what works for you, because so many people in the fitness community have kind of a one size fits all, you know, everything’s a nail, and they’ve got the hammer, you know, approach for diet, you know, it’s got to be keto, or it’s got to be, you know, paleo, or it’s got to be, you know, plant based, or it’s got to be, you know, whatever, or no carbs, or whatever it is. And I’m like, you know, it’s not that simple. You know, we’re not one size fits all people, you know?

Chris Wissman
Well, and when you when you start to make your, your transition into caring about what you how you treat yourself physically, and mentally, you’re gonna get some things that you identify with, you want to be like, that helped me like, so starting to clean up my diet and getting rid of X, Y, and Z, eating more of a paleo heavy fat approach was something that helped me and I identified with it.

And that was a part of the growing process. So I can really relate to where people are there. But it would be really sweet to start seeing people take a step back and just understand how different we all are. It is extraordinary how different of human beings we are, our gut microbiomes are totally different.

The way we move is different, the way we sleep, the way we act throughout our day, and our requirements are all different there, there might be some people that are just naturally deficient in vitamin A and others that aren’t at all. So you know, like, finding that kind of stuff out takes a little bit of work, but it’s well worth it. And just acknowledging the differences, I think is really important in it. And it kind of sets the ego aside for a minute. And, and allows you to relate to people and understand where they’re coming from.

Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, no, I love that. And, you know, I went, I was on a standard American diet for a long time. And that led me down the path of a lot of diseases, you know, me is what changed my Yeah, and I changed my diet. And I went from like, you know, pescatarian to vegetarian to plant based. And now I’m not as hardcore about plant based, I’m still vegetarian, I don’t crave eating, you know, meat at all.

And I don’t have anything against people that do. And I’m not saying one way is right or the other, but it’s just for me, I don’t have that desire for that. Yeah. So like, yeah, and I do like to have like a little cheese on my pizza, sometimes, you know, or, of course, whatever, you know, whatever. And I don’t beat myself up about it. Like, I have to do it this way or that way. So when people ask me, I say that I’m like, 98%, plant-based, you know, and that 2% is like, some Graeter’s every now and then you know, and cheese pizza, and I enjoy that it’s fine. And that way when I go to a party, and they’re like, have a cookie, I’m like, sorry, you noticed that it has butter in it? I’m like, Sure, Alex.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, my family just, oh, man, it’s been really accepting of it. But I can see the frustration on their face when I choose. I’m like, so every year that goes by, I experiment with a little more and a little more and, and I’m like, okay, I’ll try this this year. They’re like, why you’re gonna you’re gonna eat. I’m like, It’s not that I don’t think your food is good. It’s delicious. Which is like, since I’ve cleaned up so much when I do introduce something out of the ordinary for me, I just get, like ramifications sometimes. It’s like having a hangover. It’s not worth it.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, well, that’s a whole nother topic. So, just to kind of recap, like, I love this approach of like, do what feels good for you. Yeah, ask yourself, Do I want this? You know, and I think that can apply, you know, to a lot of things, you know, we could do that in our training. We can do that. You know, am I is this hurting my body? Is this form hurting my body? Is this long run good for me right now?

And it’s probably good for us to you know, ask those questions of ourselves on a regular basis, you know, and just just kind of check in with our mind. You know, what do you what does my body need here? Because your mind is so powerful that it really does know your your subconscious mind actually has a a blueprint of your of your body at perfect health that homeostasis.

Yeah, so it knows what that looks like for you. Yes. And if you can just tap into that, if you can just sort of like, let it be, you’re going to be much healthier, you know, for sure. Your subconscious mind is always trying to get you there. And we fight it, we fight it every day, we have a lot of this has to do with us wanting just wanting to feel good, we just want to feel good. I want to eat that bag, you know, of potato chips, because that’s salt in the ocean fad is just gonna make me finish sugar from the, you know, she’s gonna feel so good.

Chris Wissman
They have actual scientists that are behind, like, like flavor profiling now, so they don’t, I don’t even think they do nearly as many taste tests as I used to, they know it’s gonna taste good. It’s gonna, it’s gonna trigger our brain, and we’re gonna want more of it. And it’s already sugar. Yeah. And you have the brain addicted, the Holy Trinity, right?

Yeah, we can talk about something. So you mentioned the standard American diet. And what the standard American diet for you and I did was create disease, it may not have showed its face and shown its face. It’s like an actual, like a modern day disease yet, but we probably had a lot of different things going on with us, whether it be mood dysregulation, or aches and pains, or maybe weight gain or whatever it might have been.

But when our gut gets that much stress, it starts to become permeable. And you’ve heard everyone talk about leaky gut. And that’s kind of a really common topic to talk about. But the thing that I really love to dive into is something called visceral somatic inhibition. And those are just a bunch of fancy words for saying, when our gut is inflamed, that it’s taking over the nervous system response, the blood flow, and the hydration from the surrounding musculature.

The musculature is connected on those on those different on those nervous system pathways to protect itself. So when our organs are in bad shape from something like the standard American diet, or from maybe negative self talk, then our core, our transverse abdominis, and all these things don’t really have the opportunity to run at maximum capacity.

But when all the nutrients are taken away from the musculature and put in towards the organs, our liver and our in our gut and our small, large intestines, then we’re losing the availability to even use our core properly. And then we go down that rabbit hole of like, this is potentially where low back injuries come from, you know, our inner unit shut off, it can’t even work, right.

So it’s just all these stabilizing muscles up our spine that are responsible to take all the load of the spine and support us. And I’m sure they get mad, you know, and they want to shut down as well and take a break. So it’s very interesting to see what all these stressors can do on our body. And one of them is shut our core off. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s wild. And so like you said, though, the most powerful things in line if we continue that positive mindset, you can heal your gut through that. Just know that.

Patrick McGilvray
Fascinating. So give me one tip that we can take away as long distance runners. So if I’m running a half marathon or a marathon or an ultra marathon, you know, what’s something we can do? What would you recommend if you just met somebody at a party and you were like, Hey, do this one thing that’ll help you a lot.

Chris Wissman
Sleep and breathe, sleep and breathe. The more we can, but those are going to be really important as far as our availability to perform the next day, no matter what. Like your lifestyle prior to the couple of weeks before the race is going to be what it is. But if we can get a good sleeping pattern set, set and balance our circadian rhythm. Like you mentioned, we can come back in homeostasis relatively easy enough, we can start reincorporating diaphragmatic breathing, which would just be breathing down the deepest layers of our lungs and quit the panic breathing up into our chest. If we can breathe low and not high, then I think it would really set yourself up for some good endurance.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, how long does it take to for that sleeping pattern to kind of have an effect like is it right away?

Chris Wissman
I mean, I mean think about it the next day after you sleep eight hour you feel infinitely better than if you slept five. Especially again, everybody’s really different. Some people can get away with less but I wear an aura ring. And I know when my REM sleep is off. I know when my heart rate variability is often when my heart rate is elevated and it’s and really I don’t even need it because I can just tell it’s funny because I knew I just needed some reassurance and sleep affects so much. It’s so important to just sleep in a cool dark room. Try to get rid of the blue light before you go to bed and just get a good night’s sleep. And that’s helps me more than most things.

Patrick McGilvray
And then diaphragmatic breathing, that’s kind of like what you would call belly breathing. Is that right?

Chris Wissman
Yes, yeah. And you can get really complex with it. But if you just train yourself maybe lying on the ground, and expanding 360 degrees around your stomach, your back and your hips, and then coming back in, if you could expand 360 degrees, you know, efficiently learn to essentially diaphragmatically breathe. And my partner Jen is a expert with breath, if you ever want to talk with her, so she can, she can niche out on that.

Patrick McGilvray
I’ll be getting her on here, for sure. Cool. Is that something we can do while we’re running to that diaphragmatic breathing is that?

Chris Wissman
Yeah, it definitely will help. It will definitely help. And as long as you can handle maybe trying to train yourself to nasal breathing. I’ve read that that really helps her endurance. I don’t know, I don’t want to speak out of context. I don’t know the science behind that. I think Jen would be able to speak to that better. But no matter what I know that the guy frantically diaphragmatically breathing will help you whether or not you transition from nasal to mouth while you’re running is something that I’m not as familiar with yet.

Patrick McGilvray
I’ve done the nasal breathing while running. In fact, Jen and I, she gave me some tips when I was training for my 100.

Chris Wissman
Oh, cool.

Patrick McGilvray
So she yeah, so she helped me with that. And it worked for me for slower paces, you know, because you get to a point where you just I couldn’t get enough air to my cells.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, you have to oxygenate.

Patrick McGilvray
And so it was like mouth and nose and ears, anything I could just open up to get as much air in. But then there’s a lot to be said about that. Nasal Breathing. So we’ll get into that later. But that’s cool. That’s cool stuff. Heck, yeah, man. All right. Thanks, Chris. for hanging out with me. I know, I didn’t really know where this conversation was going to go. And it kind of went in a bunch of different directions. And that’s awesome. I just love to have these conversations with you. Where can people reach out to learn more about you or to learn more about Real Human Performance?

Chris Wissman
Real Human Performance on Instagram spelled out just like it sounds. And that’s where Jen and myself are and there’s a couple of our co-workers that are awesome coaches there. And my personal Instagram is @wissmansworld. But I do all my business there, so you can check both of them out. I do my weird stuff on my personal page. I’ll do like ice plunges and ice cold showers, and just act like a wild man and get out in nature and then keep it more professional at Real.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you don’t have to keep it that professional. You’re not that, why is that wild? Honestly, good. Okay, cool. So thanks again. This has been awesome. Looking forward to having another conversation like this with you sometimes.

Chris Wissman
I really appreciate the opportunity to vomit my thoughts everywhere.

Patrick McGilvray
We love being the recipient of your vomit.

Chris Wissman
What a way to end.

Patrick McGilvray
Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.