14. Sarah Buckley on the Myths of Strength Training for Runners

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 to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host, and I’m the life coach for runners. And I teach you how to stop struggling, how to stop struggling and start getting results in your running in your weight loss journey in your life. And it all starts with managing your mind. And that’s what I created this podcast for. That’s what I teach you here.

I want to teach you how to manage your mind so you can create the life that you love, the life that you really want whatever that looks like for you. Today, I’m sharing a conversation I recently had with my friend Sarah Buckley. Sarah is a badass personal trainer. She’s the owner of Persist Fitness training here in Cincinnati, and she’s the creator of a program called Run Strong Cincy.

And that’s a strength training program that’s designed specifically for runners. It’s awesome. Now, there are a lot of myths around strength training and running. And today here Sarah breaks it all down for us. And she explains why strength training might be kind of misunderstood in the running community. Especially in the long distance running community. It’s kind of an eye opening interview.

Sarah and I discuss how managing your mind is the key to every good thing you want in your life from building muscle to overcoming food addictions to running a marathon. It all begins with mindset. I’m actually very excited to share this interview with you. So I’m gonna stop talking now. Here’s my interview with Sarah Buckley.

Today I am talking to my friend Sarah Buckley, about strength training specifically for runners. And she’s going to share a bunch of awesome knowledge with us today. Sarah, how are you doing?

Sarah Buckley
I’m good. Thank you, Patrick. I appreciate you having me on today.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so tell us just a little bit about you know, who you are and what you do?

Sarah Buckley
Sure. So I am a strength and conditioning coach or personal trainer. I have been in the business going on nine years. And I own Persist Fitness. That’s my business. And I work with a lot of runners. I’ve been working with runners my entire career as a personal trainer, and I have a significant running history myself, which is why I feel very passionate about working with that population. You know, I have been running since I was little. I competed in college, did the marathon half marathon kind of stuff post grad. And when I moved to Cincinnati, I didn’t know anybody. And so of course, my running community was the first place that I plugged in. And as they say the rest is history.

Patrick McGilvray
So what is it about? Well, like why do runners come to see you? What do you see? Is there kind of some of the main issues that they come to see you?

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, so I actually kind of accidentally developed this program, when I was training for, you know, half marathon marathon and triathlons and I started playing around with my own strength programming. Because I was having a resource issue. And that resource was time, I had to get my mileage in. And I love lifting weights. So I didn’t want to quit.

And I also understood how beneficial it would be for my health and my performance to continue lifting. So I started to really take a critical look at my programming and my exercise choice. So that every single movement and every single exercise that I was doing was giving me the absolute highest return for my health and performance as a runner.

And so that program started out as me working with myself and then bringing in the rest of my running community. I have probably trained over 100 runners easily in the past six years, and I have a really strong group that has stuck with me. And so yeah, we are focused on health and performance and optimizing those two, while also accounting for your running programs. So You know, you have your miles on X, Y and Z days, you are tapering for this specific race and the strength. Part of your training runs directly alongside that as a complementary, rather than a competitor story, kind of part of your training.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I think that’s good that you have that perspective as a seasoned runner yourself, to be able to coach people and train them to get get to their race goals, because a lot of trainers are not, you know, half marathoners or whatever, and they don’t understand what it is to go through that training period, how you peak at a certain point, how you taper and things like that. And so having that knowledge under your belt, I think gives you definitely a great advantage to help people.

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, thanks. I agree. And then just also, I think the running mind is a little bit different than some other athletes. And so I think having, you know, been an avid runner, having been both a competitor and a recreational part of that community for a long time, I really feel you know, connected.

And I feel like I’m in a unique position to communicate kind of the benefits. And I really deeply understand their why. And I can find that, you know, what I have to offer is really strongly connected to their why, it’s just a matter of having that conversation.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, when you’re talking about the mind of a runner, you know, I always say that running is 20% physical and 100% mental. And then I follow that up with saying like, and we runners were very mental, you know, we definitely have a different sort of mindset when it comes to goals, fitness, endurance, all that kind of stuff. We’re a little little out there sometimes. And we like it. We like being out there. Not everybody gets us. So and that’s okay. Yeah, we’re okay with that.

Yeah, so I know that there are some kind of myths or misconceptions about strength training, because I’ve heard a lot of people say things like, you know, you can’t build muscle while you’re, you know, training or as a runner as a long distance runner, you know, you don’t really even need to go work out at the gym and things like that. Have you heard some of these myths?

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, definitely. And these are conversations that I have with my runners frequently. There’s a lot of information out there. And I think sometimes the strength conversation and the running conversation are happening in silos. So neither is really considering the like applications of the other, even though when we’re working with a real live human athlete, as an individual, we can’t operate in silos, because all of these things holistically are forming this athlete.

So for instance, the example of you know, putting on muscle because I’m like, way more, and then I’m going to slow down. That is something that I try to dispel immediately when I’m having conversations with runners, if you’re a beginner, in the gym, if you’re a beginner for strength, it’s very likely that you are going to build some muscle, you are your body and might actually recomp, meaning you might shed some body fat, and kind of put that weight that scale weight back on with muscle.

However, as far as the weight that you’re carrying, muscle is so much more valuable for your health and performance than that other weight is. So if you had to choose between the two, I would want you to have the muscle. And also of course, there is a point of diminishing return.

However, from a scientific standpoint, your nutrition number one and that’s a very important kind of separate conversation would have to be very, very dialed in for you to put on, you know, the maximum amount of muscle especially as a training endurance athlete, because those are kind of competing energy systems. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying you have to really be dialed in on quite a few different things to move that needle forward.

And secondly, muscle even if you’re, you know, just for general health, it is healthy, it’s safe. It’s protecting your body so it’s protecting your joints, it’s making you more resilient. You know, your organs are underneath. If you have some muscles in the front, you know, even like a fender bender, having some muscle in your structure can actually protect you from the world.

So it’s not something that we need to worry about. I’ve never worked with a runner who I thought needed to shed some of this muscle, you’re carrying too much around, in seven years.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s definitely one of the things I hear a lot people talking about. Or that, you know, you can’t build muscle as a runner like it just you’re, you know, it can’t happen, it’s impossible to do. Like, what do you say to that?

Sarah Buckley
So it’s not impossible, I think we said there’s some things that would need to be dialed in. And that would be a kind of a nutrition conversation. Just, you know, protein is something that builds muscle. And so if an athlete is interested in putting muscle on, there’s gonna have to be some, you know, kind of broad nutritional guidelines that would need to be followed in order to put muscle on.

That being said, there’s scientific protocols that basically do what’s called hypertrophy and hypertrophy is the scientific name for putting on muscle. So as long as an individual is consistent and over a long enough timeframe, so say, three to six months, depending on that individual, individual variables like age, gender, those types of things. As long as they’re hitting that rep scheme, and that volume scheme, they’ll put muscle on, especially someone who’s training age, meaning how long they’ve been strength training is low.

Patrick McGilvray
Okay, that’s awesome.

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, we call those beginner gains, because you get super strong super fast, because everything is new. So your body is on the fly there. It’s adapting very quickly.

Patrick McGilvray
Hmm. And so how would this help a long distance runner?

Sarah Buckley
Great question. So when we look at the physical demands, kind of zooming way, way in on what’s required of the body to actually run? First of all, it’s very high impact. So most of us who are in the running role, understand that conservatively, every single step when you’re running is three times your body weight, plus overcoming momentum, plus overcoming gravity, and each leg is landing about 1000 times per mile.

So this is a quite a high impact sport, which is, which is okay, that’s fine. But from the strength side of things, we need to look at how we can stay safe when we’re constantly pounding, constantly pounding, and all sports are reliant on one major foundation, and that’s being able to maintain correct position for specific amounts of time.

So for endurance athletes, it’s being able to maintain proper and efficient running biomechanics for a very long time. So you have this high demand for muscular endurance. So strength training is absolutely necessary for an endurance athlete, because simply running does not put the appropriate external load on your body is necessary for a scientific adaptation to take place for you to actually get stronger within those positions.

And secondly, running also requires almost all of the different ways you could move your body, it requires single leg strength, it requires Single Leg level change, where you know, you have knee bending and hip flexion, those kinds of things, it requires both stiffness and mobility in your joints.

And it requires rotation, that’s basically all of the components of movement that the human body allows for. And it’s all happening in an extremely short window of time, over and over and over and over and over again. So if that’s not an opportunity for over usage to happen, I don’t know what is. So we have to train that body to be prepared to do all of these necessary biomechanical things to run efficiently.

And like I said, you might be, it might be an hour and a half, it might be five hours that you’re required to maintain these pretty high level positions of your body. And strength is the only way that you can get to that place.

Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean, the way you’re describing this and the way you’re describing the mechanics of running, just makes it sound like it’s so hard on your body like how could you not want to be stronger? You know what I mean? Because it would just make you be able to absorb all that impact to be able to push through the the repetitive motion and get to, you know, you know, have a successful workout or a successful race because without the strength involved have, oh my gosh, I could see how this could be, I’m could see why a lot of people get injured.

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, absolutely. And I don’t want to discourage people from entering into the running world, I think the running community is one of the best and strongest and most accepting and accessible fitness communities that is available. And I absolutely love it for that. But just like a runner, who goes from one mile to three miles and three miles to five miles, and so on, and so forth, until they’re running their marathon, you have to earn that mileage.

And I think something that people don’t consider is that they think, oh, running is just walking like, but faster. And it really isn’t that simple. It’s highly complicated. When you kind of look at it, you know, the way that I’m looking at it, I’m looking at it from a human body perspective. So I would love people to think about their strength in the same way that they think about their progression of mileage. Which is like, I’m not ready to run five miles, because I haven’t put the base work in.

Similarly, like, I might not be ready to run at all, because I have, I don’t have these kind of specific strength prerequisites, in order to maintain position, keep my joints healthy. You know, and especially for a starter performance aside, the main goal is going to be health and sustainability in the sport. And then we can talk about performance, once we have this pretty significant bass, similar to how a runner, you know, would approach their first say, half marathon or marathon, I don’t think as much work as necessary for maybe a 5k. But you know, the longer distances certainly.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, what are some of those like beginner type of injuries that you see people coming in with? Like, what is kind of the main thing where people are, are, maybe they don’t have the right mechanics, or they don’t have the right strength in the right areas, like what are you seeing?

Sarah Buckley
So I see a lot of kind of random knee and that it’s really nothing, there’s no diagnosis, but it hurts all the time. And it’s probably like arthritis, or bursitis, or tendinitis, these things that are caused from, you know, doing the same thing over and over again. And, you know, consistent loading on a joint the same way over and over again.

So I see a lot of joint stuff. So hip, knee, even like ankle or foot things, is probably the most common. And I have to say almost every kind of pain, I want to say injury, because a lot of it is more just kind of chronic aches and stuff like that is coming from upstream, it’s coming from the hip. And the hip joint is very special and specific to what runners need, it needs to be able to, you know, rotate in it’s ball and socket, but it also has to be strong through its entire range of motion.

Or else you have a very significant energy week, which is going to likely come out in the knee because the knee doesn’t really it doesn’t. Of course, it does something. But as far as when we’re talking about performance and health and running efficiency, the knee is kind of just like following up with what the hip is telling it to do. So the hip isn’t healthy and strong, the knee isn’t going to be able to kind of execute on that follow up, and so on don’t down the line.

Conversely, if you have a lack of foot strength and toe dexterity, it can move up the chain. And that’s when you kind of start to see ankle issues. And again, knee issues, shin splints, I get a lot of plantar fascia stuff. And I truly believe that just just even just gaining some general strength, not even specific to your sport, but just lower body strength, stiffness, and bracing and breathing capabilities in your core will take the load off of those areas.

Because truly, you know, our body is designed to absorb and distribute forces through our core. And when I say core, I kind of mean like, from your armpit to your armpit and down to your hip towards your other hip and then on your back as well. So your torso is your core. That’s where forces come from in your body and that’s where we can absorb them. So the more stiff and strong we are in our center area, the less our joints have to absorb. So just some general training in the beginning can certainly start to reduce, you know, pain and discomfort in our limbs.

Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. And I know that there’s a lot of different exercises that people can do and different strength training circuits and things like that they can do to build up all of those areas and strengthen the hips and strengthen the glutes. and strengthen the hamstrings and calves and all this stuff.

And you know, you get the whole thing abs, whatever. What is like one exercise that somebody could do just like at home since especially we’re all locked down at home right now anyway, like what would be like the one thing you would say that people could do that would give them kind of an overall good strength exercise or whatever?

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, great question. So for all of my runners, regardless of whether we’re in the gym, or if we’re quarantined at home, I prioritize strengthening our posterior chain, which is your back and your vectors, which are the muscles that surround your spine, and they’re responsible for protecting and keeping your spine stable, your low back, your booty, your glutes and your hamstrings, because those are a runners engine, and those are a runner’s brakes.

So those are likely areas where I see energy leaks. So any movement that is a hinge. So one example would be a deadlift, where you have a soft bending of your knees, and you’re pushing your hips back and your belly button down and kind of reaching towards mid Shin, you’ll feel your hips load up, because you’ll start to feel a stretch in your hamstring.

When we’re at home, something that works great if you have a little bit of equipment, you can just stand on a band. And you can hold the band on the outside of your legs and do your hands movement from there. But also, I actually just made gallon weights by using old gallon cartons that I just taped and one of them is filled with sand and basically dirt and it’s a little heavier and more dense. And then the other one I filled like three quarters of the way with water. And it’s a little bit unstable because the water sloshes around, and I secured it with duct tape. It’s kind of whatever. But it’s working for me right now. Awful items. But I think nailing a hinge pattern, being able to lengthen your hamstrings under load is the absolute first priority for any runner, I don’t care if you have been running for two days or 20 years, you have to be able to load your hamstring in a lengthened state.

Patrick McGilvray
And doing that you said to do these bent over hinges or the deadlifts?

Sarah Buckley
Especially, you know, if you were to Google ‘deadlift’, you’re gonna see somebody probably doing it with a barbell, but the movement is the same. And it’s you’re acting as your hips, if your body is a door, your hips are your hinge, and your upper body is the door and your legs are staying in the same place. So they’re the doorframe so your upper body is opening and closing your hips will be pushing backwards as your belly button going down, and you have a soft bend in your knee, that’s the biggest thing I see is that people bend their knees all the way and they do more of a squat, rather than being a very so think about your the knee bend that you’re looking for is the same knee bend that you would have on your landing. When you’re running. It’s not very deep. It’s a tiny degree.

Patrick McGilvray
Gotcha. Like would this be like a Romanian deadlift?

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Romanian, or RDL or deadlift, do like the same thing, but different ranges of motion. So yeah, exactly. Patrick.

Patrick McGilvray
Cool. That’s good. I’ve done a few of those.

Sarah Buckley
Good. Yeah. Good for everybody.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, they suck. No, that’s actually a really, it’s a really good strength training any I’ve found, and from what I understand any type of squatting, like that is going to help a lot for runners just because you’re, you’re strengthening that whole posterior chain also, you know, you’re hitting the glutes, and you’re hitting the hamstrings and the calves and the hip flexors and all that stuff. So that’s all good.

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, and I really like compound movement, meaning it’s one movement that checks a lot of boxes. Yes. Efficiently from like a weight loss standpoint, I really like it because it’s not ice. Like it’s not a bicep curl. Your bicep is like three inches of your whole body versus your RDL, your deadlift, which is literally recruiting all of your muscle fibers for your entire body. It’s quite a bit more of a workout. So from a resources standpoint, I really liked the compound lifts. Not that we don’t hit isolated stuff we absolutely do. But again, if we had to choose one, and we’re prioritizing, it’s gonna be the compound lifts.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and I think maybe a good rule of thumb for people when they do start going back to the gym, is to avoid the machines because those are very isolating and to do more stuff, just on the floor, you know, on the using the rig or whatever they got there, right.

Sarah Buckley
Yeah. And, you know, I don’t use a lot on machines, I don’t train within one specific kind of like program, I’m more of a hybrid. So I would consider myself working within a system where multiple tools can be brought in depending on the needs of an individual. So I will never say no to machines.

However, like you had said, they’re very isolating. So it’s unlikely that you’re going to get the benefits from a compound movement. And also, it puts you in a prescribed range of motion that may not be what you’re ready for, or be structurally what you have the capacity for. So I know a lot of people, particularly with shoulders that have big time trouble with machines.

So I would recommend having a coach look at your movement. Dumbbells are king for stability. I love using dumbbells. And I would recommend that over any machine any day, for any individual, except for maybe somebody who’s either doing like powerlifting or weightlifting, specifically, but even those folks are going to use the dumbbells for their accessories.

Patrick McGilvray
And I think what you just touched on something that’s so important, which is having somebody like watch you, that knows what they’re doing. And that can help you. I’ve seen some people the gym, the way they’re lifting weights is just terrible. And you’re just like, oh my god, you’re so doing it wrong, you’re going to hurt yourself. And we don’t want that. So having somebody to watch over you to help you to create the movement that works best for your body type for your shape for what your goals are. I think that’s so important.

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, absolutely. And I actually think that kind of hits on another, like myth as well, which is where I hear a lot of my runners saying two things, one of the things that they say is that they want to get in shape before they come to work out. And then secondly, you know, because I think of, and I again, love the running community.

A lot of the reason that people are plugged into running groups, or become runners is because it is so social, and it is so supportive, and it is so inclusive, and I think you can find some of those same markers in group fitness type classes.

And when we’re talking about getting assessed and using your resources wisely, and getting kind of in shape, that would not be the route that I recommend for runners based on what kind of energy system they’re trying to train based on progressions that I would be recommending for them, because you haven’t been assessed on your individual needs. So we don’t know where you stand.

We don’t know what your strengths are, we don’t know where there’s opportunity to grow. And we certainly, you know, the emphasis is on the individual to say when they’re ready for the next thing. And all of those decisions can be made by a coach who’s working with somebody because the variables are, you know, they vary.

So it could be someone who’s coming off of an injury or could simply be someone who’s having a hard week at work and their stress is really high. And there’s really no value in continuing to stress that system. All the way to okay, you have a race in two weeks, so I’m tapering you in the gym. So that’s something that those kinds of circuit, specifically kind of timed circuit based classes, I don’t necessarily recommend those for my runners because it is very depleting to their recovery tank. And it is not adding value to their long term goals, because of the lack of assessment because of the lack of correct progressions and variations for themselves.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, it’s really not a one size fits all, you know what I mean? It’s just like, it’s so individual. So individual.

Sarah Buckley
Communities are wonderful, like I said, for the workout, but when we’re talking about training, just like your training for your race. There’s a difference between going to a workout class and going to train for you, for yourself, for your goals, for your why.

Patrick McGilvray
That’s a very good point. Yeah, you touched on something else earlier that I want to kind of mention, which is you you said like doing these compound exercises are better for your kind of for your, like weight loss goals. And one of the things that I firmly believe, and I think it’s kind of one of those myths about running in general is like if I just run I’ll lose weight, you know, and when it comes down to it, running is not a very effective way to lose weight.

I think exercising in general is not a very effective way by itself to lose weight. The problem, a couple problems with it are number one, people tend to work out or run and then they overcompensate with what they eat. And so they’re just they’re negating any kind of gains they may have made at the gym or out on the road.

So another problem is that the main reason we are overweight, especially here in the United States is that we overeat. And the over eating has to do with, you know, social cultural things. It has to do with psychological reasons, hormonal reasons, but it’s mostly like there’s physical, mental and emotional causes that are sort of hidden, and that have kind of programmed us to be overeaters, you know, and no amount of running is going to fix that.

And so, you know, I tell people, like you have to address the underlying issues, if you want to lose weight and get to your, you know, natural weight, not everybody needs to like fit some perfect airbrushed model version of whatever people think reality is, but like, what is your natural weight, where should you be, if you’re not there, then we need to address those issues.

So you know, but I do, but here’s the thing, here’s where I’m getting to it, this long, roundabout way of saying it, is like running is a part of that, it is a part of staying healthy and staying fit. Running makes you feel good, you get that release of dopamine and endorphins and adrenaline and like it just it’s, it’s a good, it makes you feel good. It’s good for your mental health, it’s good for your physical health, it’s good to get outside and get some vitamin D, get some sunshine, how does strength training play into someone’s overall, you know, kind of weight loss goals for the people that are interested in losing weight?

Sarah Buckley
Sure, so just to kind of touch on what you just kind of left off with, with the running. The reason that, you know, I became a strength coach, and I push lifting the weights so hard and believe in it so deeply, you know, my, my tagline for my business is empowerment through movement is because I truly believe that pursue personal emotional mental growth far surpasses the physical gains that you will have in the gym.

And it’s a way to do something and to have success on something that you’ve never done before. And you feel amazing, you feel like a badass, you are able, you’re you feel very capable. And so there’s all these other, like high value, things, high value words that you’re getting from your lifting experience, that I think are going to again, we can’t work in a silo.

So from a holistic standpoint, that checks many boxes when I start to think about mental and emotional health. And I think, at least for me, I provide a safe, accessible place for people to come do those things. Because I understand like, it can seem intimidating. When you just go out on the road, you’re by yourself. Maybe people in cars see you but you know, you’re very separated from them.

Versus in the gym, you might be face to face with someone who you feel like it’s watching you. And so I think that, that that’s why I’m here to be on that journey with you. And that’s kind of the soft science things, and anecdotally why I believe in doing it that way. But the hard science absolutely supports that as well. So yeah, running in and of itself, weightlifting in and of itself, these are tools towards weight loss, whether you have just strictly an aesthetic goal or a weight loss goal that’s tied to help. Both are great.

So doing the high, you know, compound movements that’s recruiting a lot of muscle. You know, it’s just, it just makes more sense, wouldn’t you rather burn this amount of calories doing a compound lift and this amount of calories, doing 50 bicep curls, and only targeting one part of your body and the rest of your body now is not getting what it needs.

So and also it’s a great way to put on muscle and build muscle is to do those compound movements because you are using every muscle in your body. And so we know that having more muscle is helpful to weight loss. Even though you know muscle weighs more, I say it’s helpful to fat loss, because that scale number could potentially go up but your percent body fat is going to go down.

So that’s something that I was mentioning earlier. And so it’s the quality of the number that we see on the scale. And you’ll look different and you know your body is going to change. But the weight that you are carrying is working for you; it is adding value to your life every single day.

Versus on the other side. Maybe there’s risks that are involved with the weight that you are carrying. And so I think that you again, all those conversations need to be happening. That’s why I said this kind of nutrition is very important. But it’s kind of separate because we need to, you know, be talking about emotionally, why is this happening? It’s not just about eat this, don’t eat that, like, why are we eating what we’re eating? What, what history do we have with food? How do we address behaviors at a behavioral level? And those are probably just manifesting themselves in overeating, binging restricting those kinds of those kinds of behaviors.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and you know, I call that buffering. And that’s where you’re putting a buffer between your, your emotions and your and your mind, you know what I mean, you’re trying to stuffed those things down, so you don’t have to experience them, maybe it’s a negative emotion, some kind of feeling you don’t want to feel and so you just eat the whole bag of potato chips, or the whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s, or you sit in front of the TV and watch Netflix all day long.

And it’s a way of numbing yourself and feeling good, because you kind of it replaces that kind of dopamine hit that you would get from doing something like working out or running, you know, so it makes you feel good for a moment. But then when you’re done with that, but with that buffering experience, whatever it is, we finish the pint of ice cream, you’re gonna come down crashing from that, and you’re still left with feeling the emotions, and now you’re beating yourself up because you were you ate something you knew that was bad for you.

And it’s actually making you gain weight instead of losing weight. So, yeah, it’s, it’s just such a, there’s a, there’s a lot of factors involved here, there’s no like, you know, there’s no magic bullet. And here’s the thing, people want a magic bullet, they just want to be like, you know, I’m just going to eat these five things and work out three times a week and run three times, and I’ll be fine. Like, and a lot of times, that doesn’t work.

And they need to understand there’s so much more going on under the surface that they have to like, be willing to uncover and look at, it’s like these dark corners of our minds, and our emotions that we don’t want to look at. But once you start bringing those things up, you know, it, it’s not, it doesn’t feel good at first. But once you start to realize you can like feel your emotions and not have to eat over them or, you know, just, you know, sit around because of them. Like you can be such a more well rounded and healthy person mentally and physically.

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I mean, I’ve shared this with you before, but I have a long history of every eating disorder, disordered eating, those kinds of things, different behaviors. And I, myself, I worked on it, you know, big time in a kind of concentrated area, and then every single day, similar to other kinds of behaviors, you know. Whatever your age, I’m in recovery is how I would describe myself, like, you know, so there’s things to work on every single day. But you’re right, it’s so nuanced.

And, you know, for me, it has just been, you know, running, you know, I have a history as a runner, and now I’m more of a lifter, but those two things complemented, my, you know, emotional, well being journey. Because they’re unlike everything else, they’re very constant. You know, one mile is one mile, always. And it’s always, like, accessible to you, you know, even if it’s slower, or even if it feels crappy, you know, it’s still one mile.

That’s similar to how things are in the gym, you know, five pounds is always five pounds. And so, you know, and it’s always just a, you know, something else with running. I mean, I think some people are at the level where yeah, they are trying to beat somebody. And that happens in the lifting world as well. But you know, it’s a way for you to just kind of be with yourself. And also both things are really hard.

And I think it’s important for us to put ourselves in positions that feel really uncomfortable, even if it’s extreme physical discomfort, because that is going to train us to be unable to adapt to emotional discomfort and just be in our feelings, you know, mental discomfort feels like out of control. So, I really think that there’s so much carryover to physical training when we are dealing with like you said, those dark corners.

Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, that’s such a good analogy to the you know, getting uncomfortable getting outside your comfort zone because that’s the only time you can actually learn that’s the only time you grow that’s the only time you expand your consciousness that you expand, you know that you grow who you are, and become you know, a different person when we stay in our comfort zone.

We just stay stuck in the here and now and that’s it and we can never grow and be you know, we have these dreams of like, here’s who I want to be I haven’t you know this person I want to be but I’m not willing to be uncomfortable at all to get there. Guess what? You’re never going to get there. And so it takes getting uncomfortable out on the road when you’re running, it takes pushing yourself farther and, and faster and running up that hill 27 times.

It takes going to the gym, and embracing how bad it’s going to suck for those first few weeks at start doing that, but the results on the other side of that are just so good and so amazing and, and it works with our feelings to let but like when we’re pushing down our emotions and not wanting to feel them because it’s uncomfortable.

We just stay stuck there, you know, in that emotional childhood, so to speak, you know, in order to grow and become an emotional adult, we have to be able to sit with our feelings, experienced them, process them, manage them, and that will allow us to grow when we get really good at managing our, our emotions, man, we can do anything, there’s really nothing we can do if we’re not if we’re willing to feel our emotions.

And I think we get so stuck in trying to stuff all that down. And we have all these excuses why we can’t do things like, you know, go work out at the gym or, or you know, run a half marathon or whatever, we have all kinds of excuses. You know, a lot of it just has to do with us not wanting to get uncomfortable with our emotions. It’s crazy, but this is really awesome. This has been a really cool conversation, Sarah just so cool.

So where can people like find out more about you? Or like, what can they do? I know we’re kind of in a situation now where it’s can’t go to the gym, but what can people do right now to connect with you?

Sarah Buckley
Great. Yeah, so even though gyms are closed, I’m still running. My run has been strong since the strength program over zoom. And I’ve had people who are good with it. And you know, the doors are open here. I’m welcome to have additional participants. We have a couple different times a day a couple different times a week to kind of accommodate everybody’s schedules right now. So you can find information about that at persistfitnesstraining.com You can also email me sarah@persistfitnesstraining.com. And, yeah, I’ll reach out to you ASAP.

Patrick McGilvray
And this is for anybody whether they live around the Cincinnati area or not, because you’re doing it on Zoom right now. Right?

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, and actually, even when we go back to the gym, the way that my running program works is that it’s extremely flexible. So people can come in and be in the gym with me or they can train remotely. So there’s an opportunity for them to have programming delivered to them. And but we are still coaching, um, you know, we’re still communicating about their needs. And so, you know, kind of depending on where you are physically, geographically where you are in your fitness journey, those things will all be accounted for.

Patrick McGilvray
So you can do some kind of personal coaching and assessments over zoom with people, right?

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think it’s everything, of course, now it’s a little bit different with the assessments. So typically, I would have someone come in and run for me and do all of these things. But I’ve been able to do like, what’s something that’s very important for me is to look at as joint health, we talked about the hips stuff.

So that is something that I could get a pretty good handle on over zoom, just by directing people to move a certain way. I mean, I’ve been looking at, you know, human bodies move for seven years, and my hobby is exercising. So I, you know, I’m training with a bunch of people. So I’m looking at people move for like, many, many hours a week. So over Zoom, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn close to what we would be able to do if we were in person together. This is the situation we’re in.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s cool. I’m glad you’re still offering this service to people because I think it’s really important. I think it’s important for runners to get stronger and to realize that it’ll only serve them in a positive way to, you know, get stronger and build that strength and muscle fitness. Yeah.

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, absolutely. And similar to your running group, we have our community too. So you know, you get to see your people. Oh, and I forgot to mention that anyone who’s interested in joining, especially now when we’re doing during quarantine, I will be gifting you equipment that you will need because I understand people don’t necessarily have access to everything and I want to accommodate for that.

Patrick McGilvray
No way. What, you’re gonna like send them stuff like in the mail?

Sarah Buckley
I’ll send them something if they’re not in Cincinnati. If they’re in Cincinnati, I’ll come and drop it off on your porch.

Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, that’s awesome. Yeah. You’re so awesome, Sarah. Hey, this has been really awesome. We’re gonna get you on another time and we’ll continue the conversation because there’s a lot of things I want to talk to you about here that come up here. Yeah. So we’ll do that another time. But in the meantime, you guys go check out. Persistfitnesstraining.com, sign up for one of Sarah’s remote classes. You can do it no matter where you are in quarantine right now. So awesome. Thank you so much, Sarah.

Sarah Buckley
Yeah, thank you for having me on Patrick. I loved our talk.

Patrick McGilvray
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