Running Form Tips for Injury Free Running

 

Full Transcript 

Rich Ryan: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to the reinforced running podcast. And if it’s the first time, just regular old welcome. So Josh and I, we dropped some knowledge today on a few things. The first thing we talk about is running form tips and how you can take these specific tips and implement them into your own training so you can have a more efficient and injury free running stride.

[00:00:24] A lot of cool stories there, I believe in running form. Very much and I’ve changed my own and dropped a few tips and how that process works. Then we touched on a new study that was just released this April that was conducted around the ketogenic diet. And how it affects women in their training. And you might be surprised in some of the things that we found, uh, that the study did reveal.

[00:00:43] So some brand new stuff there that will be really interesting if that is something that you have kicked around the idea when it comes to your training and the ketogenic diet. Our post. We also dropped a free ebook in the show notes that provides a full program and how you can improve your running form.

[00:00:58] So a lot of things that we do talk about, you can grab this ebook and implement that directly into your training as just a guide and a process and a system that will help you get better running form. So should get that right now. Okay, cool. Here’s my friend Josh Reed.

[00:01:20] Josh. Hello. Perfect.

[00:01:24] Josh Ried: [00:01:24] Good morning, rich.

[00:01:25] Rich Ryan: [00:01:25] Hi. How was your Memorial day?

[00:01:27] Josh Ried: [00:01:27] It was, it was chill. Worked on the garden, went for a bike ride. Oh, the day was good. I didn’t do Murph. I was like, I’m going to, I’m going to save my legs. I got some very specific and valuable training I’m trying to get done this week, so didn’t want to spoil it

[00:01:43] Rich Ryan: [00:01:43] with 300 weighted squats.

[00:01:46] Have you done Mark before? I had, I did it

[00:01:49] Josh Ried: [00:01:49] two years ago. I borrowed my nephew’s weight best and, uh, got it sweaty as heck. Sorry. Sorry, bro. Uh, but yeah, I did it. I did it at a. At a field and I like hung a TRX from a field goal and did stuff partitioned and like super strict. My time was like 52 yeah, it was awesome.

[00:02:08] Rich Ryan: [00:02:08] Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. I did it yesterday. Oh, you did?

[00:02:14] Josh Ried: [00:02:14] You’re still feeling like pumped from it

[00:02:16] Rich Ryan: [00:02:16] too? Yeah, I’m sore shit and like just that, those volume. Like that amount of volume of squats. If you ever done a workout like that and starting to feel sore, like during the workout, you could like feel yourself kind of blowing up.

[00:02:28] You could feel like the Dom’s but not delayed, like the immediate immediate onset muscle soreness. I am

[00:02:35] Josh Ried: [00:02:35] absolutely, absolutely. I’m like back to a time I did like 600 lunges in a row or like when in high rocks, like at the wall balls at the end. Oh yeah,

[00:02:44] Rich Ryan: [00:02:44] yeah, yeah. Something like that. So I was feeling after like the.

[00:02:47] Early to a further six round and I was like, Oh no. Cause I did a partition as well. My situation’s weird. Like I’ve been going to a park and there’s a train trust. So they’re high enough. It’s probably just. I’m like a foot over my head, so I’m still kind of having to bend at my legs and then it’s, it’s flat at the top, right.

[00:03:09] So it’s not like a bar not grabbing it. So essentially I’m like kind of

[00:03:11] Josh Ried: [00:03:11] the 90 degree

[00:03:12] Rich Ryan: [00:03:12] holding any degree I hold for my pull-ups. So I was like, ah, doing 100 straight pull ups like that. I’ll just be like, what’s wrong? I’ll just be like waiting around and be like, I wouldn’t. Do anything. It wouldn’t be an, it changes the workout once, like that one just in complete muscle, just completely fatigued and can’t do anymore.

[00:03:30] Like you’re just kind of resting a lot.

[00:03:32] Josh Ried: [00:03:32] Fingers hurt. Just thinking about just thinking about this.

[00:03:35] Rich Ryan: [00:03:35] Yeah, my group’s a little blown up, but you know, doing it, if you do 20 rounds of Cindy, which is five. Pull-ups, 10 pushups, 15 air squats, which is exactly what I did. If it wasn’t too bad, I was able to do five of those every time.

[00:03:47] And the pushups weren’t bad either. I was surprised about because I did wear a vest. Um, but the squats, yeah. I just like, I was blown up after like the fifth or sixth round and I had to be like real careful and real. And just a real deliberate in my air squat, so it couldn’t be aggressive.

[00:04:04] Josh Ried: [00:04:04] I saw this infomercial, I don’t know.

[00:04:06] So these weird commercials come up, you know, on the internet. I don’t watch TV. So just like the phone’s listening to you and it comes up with these things. I don’t know what I said to make this pop up. Maybe it was just like truly organic, but it was this attachment dude. It was like a reverse knee knee brace.

[00:04:19] So instead of, or like a knee pad. So instead of the pad going over the patella, it was this contraption that ends up that you tape it one strap over the quad, one strap over your shin, and then it has a. Bring behind your knee and it helps. It helps extend your knee and it has like people running and squatting.

[00:04:36] It’s like, makes it feel like there’s one third, the gravity. It’s like, what in the hell is that? How is that comfortable? Is that the future? Like, man, you got to get that for the, for the squats. Just hide it under some like baggy shorts. You know what I’m saying?

[00:04:48] Rich Ryan: [00:04:48] That’s true. Yeah. Just wear like a pair of Dickies.

[00:04:50] Like you just, just how you do Murph is in a big baggy work pants. Yeah. What if we could put pop that in for some DECA fit? Maybe that’ll help the box jumps all my bionic knee. That can’t be good. I mean, that’s like, dude, unless you are actually,

[00:05:06] Josh Ried: [00:05:06] it’s a terrible idea.

[00:05:07] Rich Ryan: [00:05:07] Yeah. Unless your muscle is

[00:05:09] Josh Ried: [00:05:09] sketcher rocker shoes.

[00:05:11] Oh yeah.

[00:05:14] Rich Ryan: [00:05:14] Well, yeah, unless your muscle is actually damaged and you can’t use it anymore like that. Just eliminating any type of strength training that you could potentially benefit from. But it would have helped yesterday, cause I w I was, I was really blown up. Um, but, uh, it, it held, it held around. Okay. I did my time was 33 40 something.

[00:05:33] Oh, very nice. Partitioned. Yeah. Uh, and, and, and that’s the best I’ve done with a vest. And. Either way, doing a vest straight through. I’ve never done like a vest, like how do you watch Hunter?

[00:05:45] Josh Ried: [00:05:45] I didn’t watch it, but I heard you did 33 that’s very strong, man. So I was curious about that. Right. So Hunter, I’m doing this like with quotations, like he set the record.

[00:05:54] Did he?

[00:05:55] Rich Ryan: [00:05:55] I don’t know. I’ve seen some things that he set the record, but he seemed really disappointed in his effort and it didn’t seem like he did as well as he wanted.

[00:06:03] Josh Ried: [00:06:03] I think he went faster in practice. I don’t know if that’s because he didn’t have a rep calling out, no reps or he had to do things more strict this time around, or if he just did slightly too much volume leading up to it or what.

[00:06:11] But I also saw that like, um, Matt Kempson had a faster time. Is that cause he did it partitioned. Or no, or did he do it straight up and they just didn’t recognize it? It was like, Oh no, Hunter’s going for the official world record.

[00:06:22] Rich Ryan: [00:06:22] It was kind of like that, like if you watch the video, so I heard that Kempson was there to essentially be a rabbit for him, and I don’t like being like this, but his reps were.

[00:06:33] Very, uh, like I was very skeptical of those reps. They hunters or mats? Mats? No, he didn’t have, he didn’t have a judge there with him. So his butterflies were a little bit short and his pushups were kind of funny. So I think he was just trying to keep up and just kind of be with him and just kind of rabbit him out there.

[00:06:51] But yet his time was faster. His time was like, they were doing like 33 and 34 on partition, which is like

[00:06:56] Josh Ried: [00:06:56] crazy.

[00:06:59] Rich Ryan: [00:06:59] Yeah, because I mean, I mean, my first mile was fast. It was like five 37 and my second one was like six 20 something. So my running was good. Um, but yeah, coming out of those squats, coming out of all of that, going into that second mile, you like can barely move.

[00:07:14] You’re like, Oh my God. I was like starting and I was like eight minute pace. Like, Ugh,

[00:07:19] Josh Ried: [00:07:19] I just must’ve done something wrong. Then when I did it the first time, I think I was just like kinda sissy foot in it. And just kinda like flow in, cause I did the second mile, literally like five seconds slower than the first one.

[00:07:29] Rich Ryan: [00:07:29] Oh yeah. I mean you don’t, you don’t know. You don’t know what to, how to pay something like that. You don’t know what it’s going to be like. So it’s hard to go out super aggressive on the first one. Cause

[00:07:36] Josh Ried: [00:07:36] are you wearing the hyperlight

[00:07:38] Rich Ryan: [00:07:38] hyper vested deal

[00:07:39] Josh Ried: [00:07:39] that things like got a nice fit. Right.

[00:07:41] Rich Ryan: [00:07:41] It’s good.

[00:07:42] Like if you, you pull the sides and you can make it tight and you kind of tie it so it stays tight. But yeah, if you, if you tied up nice, it doesn’t really bounce very much. Nice. Yeah. So it was, it was sweet. So I’m sore. Definitely. So from, from doing Murph, I don’t know what it’s going to do to my training for the week, but I’m not too worried about it at this point.

[00:08:02] And there was more race delays. Did you see Palmer chain got pushed?

[00:08:06] Josh Ried: [00:08:06] Yeah.

[00:08:08] Rich Ryan: [00:08:08] And they’re all, they’re all on the same weekend now in the fall.

[00:08:11] Josh Ried: [00:08:11] Canceled. I believe so. That’s probably the only one I’m not bummed about because it was a mountain series race, but I mean, it was like a, it was a sprint and it was a huge drive for me and I was like, that’s stoked about that one.

[00:08:23] Rich Ryan: [00:08:23] Yeah, that happened two years ago when I did the mountain series. There was one in Minnesota and it was a sprint, same deal. So I had to fly out there and do the race, love Minnesota, but it’s not the most exciting mountain race. Three miles in like a. It was like, it was pretty steep Hills was that as there is a ski resort there, it was like pretty steep.

[00:08:45] I was surprised. But yeah, not as exciting.

[00:08:48] Josh Ried: [00:08:48] Dope. Well now I’m like considering maybe I’ll do Murph and like a few weeks after I’m satisfied with a couple more challenges, but I, uh, that I hit,

[00:08:58] Rich Ryan: [00:08:58] I’ll let you know how bad I’m blown up cause right now my, my whole back is just. Destroyed. It’s like my quads are sober.

[00:09:05] I can deal with that, but my back is just like lit

[00:09:08] Josh Ried: [00:09:08] one bar. Or upper back, the whole thing, top to bottom. Nice.

[00:09:14] Rich Ryan: [00:09:14] Yeah, for sure. And I also wanted to give a shout, um, if you’ve ever watched NASCAR.

[00:09:19] Josh Ried: [00:09:19] No, no. Probably just like the horrendous crashes that have occurred. Like, you know, one night on YouTube just watching like the videos and next thing you know, you’re watching biggest like crashes.

[00:09:35] Rich Ryan: [00:09:35] So there’s a race in. Charlotte, I don’t, I rarely follow, but I followed this specific thing. This women, I coach her, her son was, uh, in the military and, um, was actually killed in the military. And this race in Charlotte is called, um, Coca-Cola 600. And it’s four. And every driver gets a, uh, essentially they’re assigned a.

[00:10:01] Fallen hero to represent during the race, and this woman’s son, Donovan, was. Like there is one driver, his name’s Brad Keselowski and he’s very pro-military. He’s very active in it, so he kind of seeks out the stories and we’ll reach out to the family and we’ll represent these people. And he represented, um, the athlete.

[00:10:22] I coach Lee’s family and Donovan, her son. And he fucking won the race and went out and won this race. It was the craziest thing ever. So I just wanted to give a shout out to that and look that, look that up. If you haven’t seen Brad Keselowski, he’s a good dude. He’s my favorite driver now,

[00:10:36] Josh Ried: [00:10:36] Brad,

[00:10:38] Rich Ryan: [00:10:38] number two, Reverend the Miller light number two Ford.

[00:10:41] Josh Ried: [00:10:41] Yeah. That leads me into a question, rich, what’s the fastest you have ever gone. Not including in an airplane,

[00:10:47] Rich Ryan: [00:10:47] not in an airplane, like in a car

[00:10:49] Josh Ried: [00:10:49] and a car, a motorcycle. I don’t know what your style is.

[00:10:52] Rich Ryan: [00:10:52] There isn’t a motorcycle. I wouldn’t be able to, I wouldn’t be able to do a motorcycle. Um, I don’t know. Not fast.

[00:10:57] Not fast myself. I was definitely a passenger.

[00:11:00] Josh Ried: [00:11:00] That’s terrifying.

[00:11:02] Rich Ryan: [00:11:02] I know. Maybe a hundred, 510 and like, it was like bad. Like when I was like. Dumb ass. The high school friends that you know, only been driving a couple of years, going way too fast. What about you? Have you done anything crazy fast like that? I mean, you, you said you have had a motorcycle, right?

[00:11:17] Josh Ried: [00:11:17] Yeah. I got rid of it after I hurt myself.

[00:11:19] Rich Ryan: [00:11:19] Yeah. Not, not a that that’s pretty self aware to be like, yeah. Let’s get rid of this

[00:11:25] Josh Ried: [00:11:25] thing. Yeah. I’ve, I realized, I was like, I was watching too many videos and I realized like, Oh man, drift in and would do like some sweet monster energy, like Moto X stuff. And I was drifting around one day and the back tires hit a rock bounce around, flipped me around that landed and ended up messing up my labor and my shoulder.

[00:11:39] I thought it was dislocated. I like picked up my arm and flopped it on the handlebars, like pick the bike up and rode, rode home. And then I was like, ah, I think I’m just going to go to the ER and they’ll pop it right back in. I’ll be

[00:11:49] Rich Ryan: [00:11:49] totally on your shoulder against the

[00:11:52] Josh Ried: [00:11:52] wall.

[00:11:52] Rich Ryan: [00:11:52] I’ve seen this on TV.

[00:11:54] Josh Ried: [00:11:54] Yeah.

[00:11:54] Unfortunately, it wasn’t dislocated. It was like some torn muscles and labor, and I was like, okay, not so simple. So that hurt for a little while, but got rid of that. That was a smart move on my part. Got human powered bicycles after that. And, uh, uh, but the fastest I ever went, I had an Audi, a four V six thing with sweet.

[00:12:15] Uh, I had that back in high school and there was one day I was on the throughway at like 2:00 AM I was like, let’s just see what it can do. You know, it’s all semi trucks in the right lane. Like there’s no one in the left. I’m just going to cruise it. Dude. 150 it was like one 49 you know? It’s just like, it was like a slight uphill.

[00:12:34] It was close. It was close. Almost like, Oh yeah, dude. Have you seen the fast and furious.

[00:12:40] Rich Ryan: [00:12:40] Uh, I seen the first one when I was in high school,

[00:12:43] Josh Ried: [00:12:43] but the only one that matters in my opinion. Okay. That was my

[00:12:46] Rich Ryan: [00:12:46] thing. The entire series. Have you seen all, was it like nine, eight, nine now?

[00:12:50] Josh Ried: [00:12:50] I didn’t see any of the ones with, uh, with Dwayne Johnson.

[00:12:54] They like the new ones. I think I saw. Yes. I’m seeing like three or four of them. And they were, they were entertaining it up. Like the first one is that classic, absolute classic, but like, just to see when they hit the nitrous and everything goes blurry. That’s kind of an exaggeration, but like also not, but

[00:13:08] Rich Ryan: [00:13:08] not really

[00:13:10] Josh Ried: [00:13:10] into a tunnel.

[00:13:11] And that’s

[00:13:12] Rich Ryan: [00:13:12] crazy. It’s so scary.

[00:13:16] Josh Ried: [00:13:16] It was bad. I mean, but luckily, you know, three ways, like super straight line, it took forever to get up. I mean, it was, it wasn’t the fastest, the fastest car. It took a couple minutes to get to that speed.

[00:13:27] Rich Ryan: [00:13:27] That is still terrifying. But you know what else. Is also terrifying. Is running with poor form.

[00:13:36] Ooh,

[00:13:37] Josh Ried: [00:13:37] segue. So

[00:13:41] Rich Ryan: [00:13:41] for real running form for me is something that is, I’ve gone almost like in a journey, like where I never really thought about it very much, and now I think about it all the time, and I thought it was something that was just natural at a point until I actually. Made a decision to change it.

[00:13:58] So, Josh, when did you decide running form was like important?

[00:14:02] Josh Ried: [00:14:02] I think I decided running form was important when I was, I was 21, I think I was 24. Yeah, I think I’m going on five years now. It’s like, it’s funny, you know how there’s like a BC and Ady for time relation, right? Yeah. Mine’s like before smoking and after smoking, it’s like, like before smoking was just, yeah.

[00:14:22] Yeah. So, uh, pretty much. Zero zero AAS, like I quit smoking, I decide I want to learn how to run. And then all these things kinda came back to my memory about the coaches that I had in the past. Cause like I was on cross country in middle school, but I never really listened and I wasn’t, I wasn’t like. Good.

[00:14:39] I was back in the pack, but I still like watched the kids and like just things came back. And I remember people saying things about like your arms and uh, it’s not bouncing so much when I would be running, cause I bounced a lot. I had terrible for him. And uh, yeah. And then I just, I went on YouTube and just watched loads of videos cause I realized if I want to get.

[00:14:57] Great, good at this. Do it right. Cause I at least was already weightlifting and I had, I knew that like form is a thing. Do you want to get strong at dead lift? You have to get good and precise in your mechanics and performing it so you can perform it safely and with the most amount of power to the floor.

[00:15:11] So it’s like why would running. Being different. So, yeah, five years ago really started to, uh, to focus on it, watching videos of like, uh, Elwood, Kip Jogi, all the marathoners. I’m watching like lots of track videos, trying to get those sweet follow cams they have along the track, like at the Olympics, like watching the slow-mo videos and everything.

[00:15:27] And like, there’s lots of difference inform, you know, it’s like Prefontaine was running way more different than, uh, than, yeah, like LOL or some of the other mountain runners. So just, uh, taking, taking what they were doing and I didn’t even really understand the mechanics. Like, I think we do more now. It was more so a visual thing, like, Oh, they’re just moving like that.

[00:15:50] So I’m gonna try and emulate it visually. Yeah. That’s for me. Well, what about for you? Cause you’ve been running for a while and you’ve had multiple coaches, like from school.

[00:16:00] Rich Ryan: [00:16:00] Yes. It was funny when I was coming through. Any of my formal coaching, never. We talked about running form 0% of the time. Not once was it ever brought up.

[00:16:11] Like the only time it would be somewhat mentioned was like, Oh, at the end of the race, make sure that you are like using your arms or, or like driving through and drive your knees high. And that was kind of just what it was accepted and everybody had a different running form. And I mean in high school. I guess I can’t imagine like trying to teach every high school kid better running form.

[00:16:35] It would be advantageous, but it’s more just. Get these kids out the door and make sure they don’t get hurt. And in college we didn’t talk about it at all. And I think there is a, a fear of changing running form when it comes to competition because there is definitely a learning curve and there’s like a get worse before you get better.

[00:16:54] And if these kids were, you know, division one athletes or they’re. The best kid in their high school, the best kid in their conference, you know, rescuing their state, like things are already working well, so they don’t really kind of mess with it that much with when kids are at that high of a level of performance already.

[00:17:11] And sometimes, and there’s plenty of runners that don’t change it ever, and there’s no, there’s no problem. But I would get hurt. I would get hurt a lot. I didn’t get hurt in high school just cause we didn’t do enough volume or intensity. But in college I got hurt all the time and then I started to get her after college and I would do all of the other things.

[00:17:26] I would strength train like crazy. I would do tons of mobility. I would do all of the things that you’re supposed to do for injury prevention that you kind of get, like that gets shoved to you whenever you Google. Running injuries, everything’s, Oh, we, we glutes. Or maybe it’s this, maybe it’s a soft tissue thing.

[00:17:43] And every PT exercise did it that all, and I never really was able to string it consistent work together until I changed my running form. And that was, I actually went to a CrossFit endurance seminar and they teach the pose method. Hmm. And that’s really what I stick with now. Um, and there, there’s definitely a nuance to everything, and there’s not one specific way, but I’ve found that the pose method in general has really.

[00:18:10] Like the principals are really strong and they’ve helped me and a lot of the athletes that I coach as well, uh, learn how to put themselves in, in better positions so that they’re able to absorb the work a little bit better. Um, so when you think about running from Josh, like what are you doing? What is important.

[00:18:29] What

[00:18:29] Josh Ried: [00:18:29] is important? Well, uh, trying to think about the most fundamental things, uh, I think would be to re reduce vertical oscillation, which is there’s going to be individuals. Some people will just have more natural, a of a bounce, which is also going to be, um, as a result of their foot strike. Or maybe they’re just a little more slinky in the knees.

[00:18:48] But yeah, trying to reduce vertical oscillation cause that’s going to ultimately reduce the ground. Ground force cause you want your force to be moving horizontally more than vertically and then just checking it. The other thing is making sure that the hips aren’t slinking from side to side too much.

[00:19:01] There’s not too much twisting in the spine. You want a little bit, not a lot. You don’t. There’s they say, I’ve, I’ve heard, I’m sure you have as well. You don’t want your arms to cross the center line of your body. I’ve heard multiple things about that and if the, if they’re kind of making up for the torso.

[00:19:17] And there’s balance in the spine and the hips, then maybe that’s okay for the arms to do that. Ah, I like my arms to go a little more straightforward. That just happens to work more for me. But yeah, ultimately trying to get your energy to put it simply moving forward rather than it be involved in horizontal movement, vertical movement, or in twisting.

[00:19:36] Rich Ryan: [00:19:36] Totally an incident and talk about a lot with the athletes who want to improve their running form is the amount of like wasted motion. It’s like the more efficient we can be with the motion and have it all. Pointed in the same direction and having the same end goal of running forward faster, the better.

[00:19:53] So if you can eliminate those sides aside things on the vertical oscillation for sure. And just like stride length in general, where you are kind of stepping way out in front of your center of gravity, that would cost that side to side motion. Right. A lot of it is, to me, it seems to be all kind of tied together that way.

[00:20:09] And the. The first thing that I think is most glaring when it comes to most runners is that stride length, and there tends to be this way to kind of reach out in front and few slow down. Pretty much any runner, there’s most likely going to be landing with their heel coming toward the ground first and their foot out in front of their hips.

[00:20:32] So really you can land however you want, but if is on your foot, but as long as. That foot is underneath your hips. That’s going to be a more advantageous place to land so that everything is moving forward and that your body, in the positions that it lands in is going to be able to absorb that contact from the ground and to, like you said, return that energy and keep you moving forward.

[00:20:56] So. When people had this big, long stride. I think it’s a lot of things. It’s just, it’s just natural for people. Like they kind of walk heel to toe, so they start to run heel to toe, and then the footwear that people are wearing allows them to land on their heels, right? Like that’s kind of how these shoes are built, is that, you know, the thick and cushion.

[00:21:16] So when you land on the Hills, you don’t want to feel it and you’re more prone to have that excess motion. And a lot of times that’s called overpronation. Um, which is more or less a running shoe term. Um, where did that ankle collapses down? And a lot of times that ankle collapsing down with too much force pulls the knee down and uh, with it.

[00:21:37] And that’s why people are like, Oh, your glutes are weak cause they’re not supporting your knees and ankles from collapsing down. But a lot of times it’s not a mat, a matter of strength. It’s a matter of position in my opinion, is that if you are in a position where your glutes are able to engage and support your knees and ankles, then.

[00:21:55] It’s not a matter of strength, right? Like if your foot is, so if you’re listening right now and you want to do like a quick exercise, like if you stand up and you put your foot directly out in front of you with your heel touching the ground first and your toe points it up and try to flex your glutes on that on the side.

[00:22:11] Of the foot that’s out there and then pull that foot underneath and put directly underneath your body flat on the ground, and then try to flex your glute. And that’s a world of difference, right? Like you won’t really be able to flexibly when it’s out in front of you. And that’s really what it comes down to.

[00:22:24] And it’s like people always like strength, glute strength, food strength. It’s like, it’s more like glute positioning, so that overstride to me is really detrimental. And the footwear that people are wearing, it doesn’t even allow them to. Register that how they’re feeling during their run.

[00:22:41] Josh Ried: [00:22:41] A hundred percent right.

[00:22:42] I mean, one of my favorite quotes is we run off the momentum of those that came before us and a, I mean, a shoe. That’s a great example of it. It’s like that was put there for us. Put on a platter, look at this beautiful, Oh, look at the cushion.

[00:22:52] Rich Ryan: [00:22:52] Look at the 12 millimeter drop. This is what

[00:22:54] Josh Ried: [00:22:54] you want, and then you wear it.

[00:22:56] And then due to the shape of that, you just, and the comfort of landing on the Hill, it’s like, Oh, well why wouldn’t, why wouldn’t I run like that? Right? We don’t, and these people don’t even know what they don’t know. So, yeah, I mean, I couldn’t agree more. It’s, it’s like the two things go together. It’s strength is one part.

[00:23:11] But if you put yourself in the proper positions enough times and repeat that enough times, in other words, you go for a run. You take so many steps with good positioning of the foot, you’re gonna end up building the strength through those ranges of motion. So rich, when you talk about. How dry Lake might be too long.

[00:23:27] What do you think is like one of the easy ways for people to correct

[00:23:30] Rich Ryan: [00:23:30] that? Yeah, good question. And this, there’s like kind of a three step process that I would typically take, and the short answer is to make your cadence faster and pay attention to what that cadence looks like. So there’s seems to be like this universally accepted number of one 80 and that’s strides per minute.

[00:23:47] That will be a short enough stride that you’re not able to overstep unless you’re extremely powerful that, uh, you won’t really be able to overstride when you’re going to Kansas that fast. Most people, if they haven’t ever paid attention to this, they’re gonna be around one 61 fifties even then that’s that typical long looping stride where they’re landing on their heel.

[00:24:08] Um. So in improving that cadence of having that turnover is really something that is an easy low hanging fruit to, to, to. To change right from the jump, and you can do that with a metronome or like you get all that data right from your watch and it’s really just a matter of stepping quicker. Do you pay attention to your cadence when you run?

[00:24:29] Josh Ried: [00:24:29] Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s something that I’ve definitely sped up over the years, and I did a little bit of a Slingshot effect where I. I was definitely more in the like the one fifties and then I scooted myself up to one eighties and I still spend time at one 80 depending on the type of run that I’m doing.

[00:24:44] If I go out for like a barefoot run and I’m doing super, super easy jogging, I’ll just focus on the turnover. But when I’m going out for a, say a math run, I ended up falling naturally around one 72 one 74 so just a little shy, but that ends up being a, that is being super comfortable for me.

[00:25:00] Rich Ryan: [00:25:00] Nice. And like I mentioned, it’s, it’s not.

[00:25:03] A universal number in. If you are landing in a proper position at one 72 like then that’s where you should be. And that goes along with that. When you’re shortening your stride, there’s a couple of things you can really do to help with that. It’s a kind of cue what you are doing during your stride Q. The pose method Q.

[00:25:24] The pose method. Yeah, and like the first thing I talk about a lot is the, is the pole like pulling with your hamstring instead of like pushing with. Uh, your lower legs and like driving forward with your hip flexors. So to me, what really registered with this is like, if you just think about the size of the muscles that we’re talking about, like the hamstring is going to be more powerful and it’s going to be, you know, there’s going to be more to train for endurance as opposed to your lower legs like your, your chin, like shin area, and like your hip flexor.

[00:25:54] They’re just. Much smaller areas to work with. So if you are pulling with your hamstring, like pulling your foot directly up underneath your butt, that is engaging in the hamstring, engaging in a little bit more and taking that, the burden off of those lower legs and like the hip flexor area. Um, and for me that was something that.

[00:26:12] Where I would get her often would be Achilles tendonitis. I’ll get shin splints. We talked about that. I freeze my shins with frozen peas and then like a hip flex. I’d have really bad hip flexor stuff and sometimes like piriformis stuff. So it was always around my hips or my lower legs is where I would get injured all the time.

[00:26:30] And so changing that was what was really helpful in learning how to engage in my hamstring and literally. Pulling my foot directly underneath my butt. And that will naturally shorten your stride because when you watch someone with a longer stride, that’s the separation from the front foot, from their back foot is vast, and it ended up being a huge kickoff and the big looping stride and just a natural, like you said, that quote, what was the quote the.

[00:26:57] Josh Ried: [00:26:57] Well, we run off the momentum of those that came before us.

[00:26:59] Rich Ryan: [00:26:59] Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. And as you’re running with that moment with momentum, you are swinging your foot forward. You’re pulling with your hip flexors, and you’re absorbing most of the shock with that lower leg as opposed to, um, the muscular skeletal system that there’s going to be helpful.

[00:27:13] So pulling with your hamstring too. The short net stride has been really helpful for me. Um, do you think about that and you and your stride, or is that something that has just naturally come with you?

[00:27:27] Josh Ried: [00:27:27] I, uh, the, the thing that I’ve noticed with myself when I videotaped myself. And I highly recommend to anybody that has it.

[00:27:35] It works better with the treadmill. They don’t have to have someone follow you and videotape you, but videotaping yourself, running on a treadmill cause it’s stationary and you can control the speeds and the grades. I think that that’s been really valuable for, uh, for me and also in being able to work with clients and see what they’re, what they’re doing.

[00:27:51] Uh, even though a treadmill isn’t, is not a perfect translation to the road. It’s pretty darn close. It’s pretty darn close, especially when you put it on an incline. But anyways, yeah. Something I noticed about myself is I didn’t lift my heels up high enough behind me, and what they ended up doing is I was increasing the length of my lever, thus when to bring my leg forward, it was a longer lever and that put more strain on my hip flexor.

[00:28:12] So something that I recognized was lifting the heel up a little bit more, using my hamstring a little more out of the back. Rather than pushing off my calves as much, and that has relieved my calves of their efforts. They don’t, they don’t get fatigued as quickly. And yeah, I’m utilizing my hamstring a little more appropriately, getting my heel a little bit higher so that when I drive my knee through that lever short end, and it’s less fatiguing on my hip flexors, uh, as I continue to run over time.

[00:28:36] Rich Ryan: [00:28:36] Right. That’s a great way to put it. And that’s the exact concept behind it is if you can use. Gravity essentially with your advantage as you’re pulling that heel directly underneath your button, shortening a stride and kind of leaning into the stride. It just makes me feel a little bit more gentle. You don’t need to have that, that pull all the way through with your hip flexors, which is a part of, of this process, which is hard to.

[00:29:02] Grapple with because you’re shortening your stride and it goes faster. And so it’s like you’re doing a little bit more work, but you’re not really going anywhere because you’re not really driving through the ground and like you’re used to. So you have to kind of learn to lean into the, the run and just kind of believe that you are replacing your center of gravity and just using it and just leaning into your strive so that gravity is what’s taking you forward.

[00:29:29] And we’ve talked about that. Tire poll a couple of times. Right, and that’s a good, it’s good feedback to get in that like that, leaning into something to help you really understand what that feels like. So you can do somethings like the tire pole, or if you have a friend and they can put like a band across your hips and then you can lean into that band because the lean isn’t from your shoulders.

[00:29:49] It’s more from from your hip. So if someone was to, yeah, like. Throw a lasso over you and pull you from your hips. It’s kind of like that type of lean, like you’re just leaning forward with like your belly button and then replacing and essentially falling and just replacing the. So you don’t fall replacing, what’s the word I’m looking for?

[00:30:11] Josh Ried: [00:30:11] You just keep trying to get your foot under you so you don’t fall, and you have to keep doing that to keep yourself from falling. I was like, Oh, I’m gonna fall. I better get that next foot in front of me. Oh, there it is. Oh, but I’m still,

[00:30:20] Rich Ryan: [00:30:20] Oh, thank goodness. Exactly. And that’s what it, and that’s how that faster cadence is going to help with that is just.

[00:30:26] Being able to replace that. And that’s kind of what they say is what will happen is the faster you want to run, the more you lean forward. This is more of the language of the pose method. I haven’t really found this, but yeah, the more you lean forward to have, the faster cadence will have to become so that you don’t fall, and therefore the faster you’ll run.

[00:30:44] Um, I’m not exactly sure about that, but that’s kind of how they, they put it in.

[00:30:49] Josh Ried: [00:30:49] Just a quick note though, while we’re talking about like the lean, um, for. For folks that might understand that or, or maybe you don’t. Just when you think about that lean you, you want to try and keep your spine pretty neutral still so you don’t want to like hunch over at the shoulders to kind of move your, your body weight over the hips a little more.

[00:31:10] You don’t want to like. The head to drop. You want to try it. And you also don’t want to lift things up and then lead with like and really lead with, you know, like your rib cage. Cause then you have a lot of lower back arch. And that’s also gonna like put you in a position where it’s more difficult to use your glutes and your hip flexors, uh, aren’t going to be as functional.

[00:31:24] So try to run with a nice tall posture. I think it would be some good advice. Try to get tall.

[00:31:34] Rich Ryan: [00:31:34] Yeah. That’s a good cue. That’s a good cue for that because, yeah, the lean thing can, we could definitely two people in at their shoulders or, yeah, having a broken lower back, like you said, so yeah, running tall and leaning into it.

[00:31:46] Josh Ried: [00:31:46] Yeah. Videotaping yourself will be super helpful with that as well to just see what your tendencies are.

[00:31:51] Rich Ryan: [00:31:51] Totally. Yeah. If you haven’t ever done that, like just taking a look and seeing if any of these things do pop up, chances are you’re most likely overstriding so even you don’t even know it. So just taking a look and seeing where that heel, uh, or where that foot is landing.

[00:32:06] Uh, speaking of that, do you have a, have you consciously decided, like, made a point of where on your foot you want to land?

[00:32:15] Josh Ried: [00:32:15] You know, I, I used to, uh, I definitely. Went from heel striking two to four foot striking. I was one of the fortunate ones that moved into a more minimalist shoe and didn’t see a lot of injury.

[00:32:29] And that’s, I probably attribute that to just running fairly easy. And also at the time, I just wasn’t really running that much at all. Anyway, I was doing 12 to 20 miles when I first started. Um. But when you run into very minimal issue, it’s painful to run on the heel. So naturally you kind of get more up onto the, onto the ball of the foot where you have more suspension.

[00:32:51] So there’s less impact when you reach out to put your foot on a rock, or if you’re just running on asphalt. Uh, by the way, it’s another great way people can practice things. It’s take your shoes off, go for a run on, on some asphalt or something, and you’ll probably fall into a shorter cadence, less impact naturally.

[00:33:08] Rich Ryan: [00:33:08] A hundred percent and that is, that’s another light bulb moment. It’s like, Oh, how do you run without shoes? It’s like not the way he’d run with shoes. Why would you do that? Um, yeah, for sure. And that is part of the process I went through as well. And it’s a hard process going from heel to forefoot. And I struggled because my stride didn’t shorten.

[00:33:29] When I first did this. I just, I don’t know what it was about. This might have been right around when born to run came out and, uh, like the toe shoes and everything were around like the Vibrams and there was just some sort of sentiment that running on your heel was bad and that your forfeit was better.

[00:33:46] So I didn’t change anything and just cha and just changed where I landed. So I went from heel just to forefoot.

[00:33:53] Josh Ried: [00:33:53] You started one of your calves

[00:33:54] Rich Ryan: [00:33:54] blowing up my calves like, and it would never get better. And the mistake I was making is that I would land on my forefoot and I wouldn’t let my heel come to the ground at all.

[00:34:04] Like I would, it was essentially just on my toes. So like how you would sprint, like that’s how it was running all the time. It looked great. I looked fast. I looked at like, you know, my stride was still long. It was like bouncy. I was like, ha ha ha ha. Um, and I was running fast, but it was not,

[00:34:17] Josh Ried: [00:34:17] I was not crying.

[00:34:19] Holding your calves.

[00:34:20] Rich Ryan: [00:34:20] There was, it was never not sore. It was ridiculous and rerun. It would just get worse and worse and worse. So, and I would still have trouble with my hips as well because my stride was still long and the landing where I was aiming for wasn’t in the middle of my foot. It was kind of on the outside.

[00:34:36] So I would land on like the outside edge. Of the, of like my pinky toe essentially. So it’s still have a lot of motion and a lot of like swinging. So then on the outside edge of that foot, and then as it would come over, it would swing across my body and I would get hip flexor and piriformis stuff from that at the same time, just because of that side to side motion that was taking place.

[00:34:56] Josh Ried: [00:34:56] So, right. What rectified that? Was it, uh. Quickening your, your cadence, or did you end up shifting more to like a mid-foot or what do you do now that makes everything all right.

[00:35:06] Rich Ryan: [00:35:06] So a big, a big cue that I had with that is allowing my heel to like kiss the ground. So every time, so my entire foot does touch the ground now.

[00:35:14] Um, and I don’t know if that naturally would shorten the stride. Um, and I think I did start to consider my cadence a little bit more, which made it easier for that heel to come down. But yeah, if you’re. Once that heels are touching the ground, it alleviated that pain almost immediately. And my calves weren’t as blown up nearly as bad, so that, that was more what happened there is allowing that heel to come down and touch.

[00:35:37] Josh Ried: [00:35:37] Nice. Uh, and theoretically speaking, uh, I think that that is ultimately the most energy efficient way to run because you still get the, you still get the, uh, the. The value of that strength or that shortening cycle, the stretch shortening cycle and that loading in the calf, but then you get just like a little relief real quick to get it moving in the other direction with that light little kiss of the heel.

[00:36:01] And I think that’s why some people will train in a lower drop shoe and then actually racing a bigger drop, bigger heel, like a lot of the Nike shoes.

[00:36:10] Rich Ryan: [00:36:10] Not that

[00:36:11] Josh Ried: [00:36:11] I would go for, but like I think the ones that these guys are doing, those low two marathons in. I think those were like 10 12 millimeter drops.

[00:36:19] Rich Ryan: [00:36:19] They’re huge and they’re stacked

[00:36:20] Josh Ried: [00:36:20] really high. I mean, number one, they’re going so fast. They’re forward-leaning is extraordinary. But yeah, they have that stack so they can get that little kiss to keep shooting them forward. Is that the idea?

[00:36:31] Rich Ryan: [00:36:31] Totally. Yeah. That and I, she did some research on those shoes, like the 4% shoes, and it did actually, it’s somehow lengthen their stride while wearing them.

[00:36:40] Change their mechanics on how, on what the shoes are wearing, but it was for performance, and that foam is so good that it takes all the energy and returns it. Um, so yeah, that’s a way to like allowing your, like you mentioned the. With the calf, with the heel coming all the way down. That is a good way to get that energy return without the shoes.

[00:36:58] But yeah, the shoes just exacerbated. It’s a lot. It allows you to get everything and more,

[00:37:02] Josh Ried: [00:37:02] bro. You get a pair of those shoes and you get those reverse. Like in the spring, things are going sub 50 in the 10 mile, better

[00:37:08] Rich Ryan: [00:37:08] believe it. Super energy efficient. Um, but yeah, and that, that is. A really important piece.

[00:37:16] And these all kind of work together in tandem, right? Like there’s not one if you want going, there’s not one piece of the running form that is going to change everything. And once you start to change one, like if you’re working on the pole, it’s like, okay, you’re here with the pole. And then the next piece is probably going to have to be where you’re landing and kind of having it be in that midfoot area just so you can shorten that stride.

[00:37:38] Um. And do you have any tips when it comes to engaging in your core? Do you do anything in particular or is that just something that’s naturally happened? Because you hear that a lot, and I think that that’s sort of overblown when it comes to runners like core strength, core strength, core strength. But again, I believe it boils out to positions.

[00:37:56] So if even if you don’t have the, even if you have the strongest core in the world, if you’re. I have that lower back arch and your overstride, it doesn’t matter. You’re still gonna have a hard time keeping that together. But so do you have anything that you que to yourself as far as core engagement?

[00:38:10] Josh Ried: [00:38:10] Totally. What I, uh, towed, I mean, not, not so much anymore, but what I did because ultimately the beautiful thing about so many things that we do is as you put your time, and as you get close to those 10,000 hours, you’re working towards that, that place of unconscious competence, effortless mastery. You. You start to build these habits and you no longer really have to think about them, they become so natural and so flowy.

[00:38:31] And one of those things that I think that I’ve come pretty close to obtaining is that with my, with my core, because of all the weight lifting that I’ve done over the years, my history, I have built such a habit of bracing. And it’s, it’s not so much, you don’t think about like flexing to make a six pack.

[00:38:48] It’s not that it’s actually, it’s a little bit deeper. It’s the deeper core muscles, and it’s actually even more into like my pelvic floor. Hmm. Which is where I feel I get most of my stability while simultaneously allowing myself to breathe.

[00:39:01] Rich Ryan: [00:39:01] Hmm. And have you done exercises? Have you done pelvic floor exercises in particular?

[00:39:05] Josh Ried: [00:39:05] Totally. Dude. Key goals.

[00:39:07] Rich Ryan: [00:39:07] Dude goes, yeah, that’s what it is. What it is. Um, that’s interesting cause yeah, I feel the kind of the same way as that, just over the course of time of just doing like lifting heavy and just running for so long and just working on core and other areas besides just doing planks, swinging the kettlebell, things like that, that I don’t really think about my core.

[00:39:29] When I run it all, like basically never, and I just assume I’m just looking at proper positions and I’m not swinging back and forth and I don’t really have to consider it. And just kind of taking care of,

[00:39:40] Josh Ried: [00:39:40] yeah, here’s what I’m really interesting talking about cork. So I just mentioned the like the stretch shortening cycle.

[00:39:46] And so the three muscles that that takes place in the most during running is the calves. The quads

[00:39:53] Rich Ryan: [00:39:53] and the obliques.

[00:39:55] Josh Ried: [00:39:55] So, and the reason it happens to the obliques is coming to think of it like a spring, like an old garage spring or something. It’s a coil right. And you can pull it apart. It’s like a slinky, right?

[00:40:04] But if you twist it, it’ll sling that swing swing back to the way it was and vice versa, no matter which way you do that. So when you, when you run and say your, your right leg is behind you, right? And your right arm is in front of you. It’s that counter. Your arms are countering, and we’ve mentioned this before, how your core.

[00:40:21] Is ultimately attaching your upper extremity to the lower extremity, and that’s where the balance is coming from. So your obliques are twisting and then they snap back and twist the other way, and it’s that twisting and it’s snapping back back and forth through your running that’s occurring while your arms and your legs are exchanging positions.

[00:40:37] And it needs to not be forgotten that the arm swing is absolutely essential in the transfer of that energy back into your legs. Everything’s working in unison, so that’s where the core. Really becomes interesting because it’s not just stabilizing. We’ve talked about like pelvic stability, I think when running like downhill, you know, so you’re not getting trashed.

[00:40:57] You’re a, you’re not getting as much shock load, like in your spine. Uh, and uh, uh, yeah. But also when you’re running on flat. Your obliques become responsible for that fluid, snappy twisting motion as your arms and legs transition and switch places.

[00:41:13] Rich Ryan: [00:41:13] So what would you do for to train the obliques and that?

[00:41:16] Josh Ried: [00:41:16] I bet, I personally think that the two best ways that I can think of right now, I’m going to go with, I’m going to go with three because I think they all have some really good to offer and they’re a little bit different. One would be side planks. Uh, it’s an isometric. You can really focus on putting yourself in a really strong plank position, trying to keep everything straight head all the way down to heels, uh, and spend some time there, really focused on that flex and that’s like a good warmup.

[00:41:38] And then what I would follow it up with something a little more dynamic. And I like to do windshield washers or when, when your wipers, we lay on your back, put your arms out into T and then either with bent knees to start. This is also a little bit good from mobility. Great for the spine. Let the knees flop over to one side of the floor.

[00:41:53] Up and over to the other side. And then if that’s really easy, if you can get 20 reps of that, I say get the legs out as straight as possible. Now you’re going to get the hip flexors even more engaged, not just the rectus for Morris, but the sow ass. And then big leg swings one side over to the other. And then I’ll even top that off with, with standing.

[00:42:13] Russian twists are cool and all. But I think, I think something a little more functional would be to stand. Cause when you’re running you are operating. It would be to stand, get a nice solid base with the leg. Slight bend in the knees, get, get your pelvic, uh, your pelvis talked. So again, you’re, you’re in a nice standing strong position and then holding a weight in front of you.

[00:42:31] I’ll just grab like a 20 pound kettle bell and I’ll twist side to side vigorously for 30 seconds. And that’s going to angulate a high load, high torque. Scenario, relying on the obliques.

[00:42:44] Rich Ryan: [00:42:44] I like that. Cause then you’re using some like anti-rotation drills, like a plank or say like a Pallof press where it’s like abandoned and push out and try to not move with some rotation because it is the muscle.

[00:42:56] Like you said, it’s like a slinky and it does rotate. So it’s important to be strong in those positions. So I’m working both of them. There is not one specific way to do that. So I liked that. Having both of the rotation and anti-rotation is a, is a good idea for those obliques.

[00:43:10] Josh Ried: [00:43:10] Yeah. Get a license metric, we’ll concentric will ecentric get some snappiness in there is great.

[00:43:14] It is great.

[00:43:16] Rich Ryan: [00:43:16] Um, so yeah, when it comes, it comes to running form. There are a lot of things to work on and it, to me, it’s more of a practice in mindfulness than anything. It does take a while. It is a skill you have to obtain, which a lot of times people don’t consider running to be a skill. But it is, you know, it’s like anything else.

[00:43:35] If you do want to improve on this, it takes time. I found it takes about six or eight weeks to really fully be able to adapt to this style of running. And, uh, I’m actually going to, we have an ebook on how to kind of go through this process and like a six or eight week. Um, training plan with some drills and everything that you can do that, which talks about the landing and the, and the pole, and, uh, some of the core of sizes that you can help you engage in.

[00:43:58] So you can check that in the notes in the podcast notes. So you should grab one of those. Check it. Josh, anything you want to add about running form?

[00:44:09] Josh Ried: [00:44:09] I know there’s so many things we can throw at people, but less is more. Go check out that ebook and a yes to do the study in. Get out, videotape yourself, watch yourself, check yourself out in the practice.

[00:44:24] Rich Ryan: [00:44:24] In practice, man, it’s not just going to happen. It’s not just going to know, listen to this podcast, be like, okay, I’m going to put that makes sense now and you’re going to do it. It’s not going to work that way. So

[00:44:32] Josh Ried: [00:44:32] I’m here. Genius,

[00:44:33] Rich Ryan: [00:44:33] which you must. You are a super genius, which

[00:44:36] Josh Ried: [00:44:36] I hope you are. I just read, I just finished the book Ender’s game, which I partially read back in middle school, but like, not really.

[00:44:43] And I always talk about someone, they sparked it and I’m like, Oh my God, these kids are like six to 11 year old geniuses of the world. So my, uh. Yeah, yeah, totally. Oh yeah. It’s science fiction. Yeah.

[00:44:54] Rich Ryan: [00:44:54] Yeah. Who, who wrote that?

[00:44:57] Josh Ried: [00:44:57] Uh, Holy Nike’s. I’m forgetting his name. Olson Olson card. Something. Olson card.

[00:45:04] Rich Ryan: [00:45:04] Someone just mentioned that to me too, and I didn’t know who it was. Like something like a prolific writer. That person has written like a dozen trilogies. It seems like a ton of series of stuff. He’s like a ridiculous scifi writer.

[00:45:20] Josh Ried: [00:45:20] I told him to read the next one. Yeah.

[00:45:22] Rich Ryan: [00:45:22] You should, I should. I want to get into reading a little bit more.

[00:45:25] Scifi. Do you have a favorite scifi book?

[00:45:28] Josh Ried: [00:45:28] Do it. I don’t, and it’s funny you say that because like, that’s what I’ve, that’s what I’ve been thinking. I’ve been reading so much. Uh, I like, I used to be huge on philosophy and like I’d only read philosophy and then I started reading lots of science and I just, uh, I just needed to get a little more creativity going a little more.

[00:45:42] Uh, yeah. I mean the, the fiction is great cause it just does something different for the mind as far as eliciting the. The brain creating more imagery and the story.

[00:45:54] Rich Ryan: [00:45:54] Dude, it’s, they’re just ideas. I used to shit on them because I was like, why would I do, why would I listen to a story? Like, I’ll just watch TV.

[00:46:01] Like that’s the same thing as reading a novel or listening to a novel, but like the ideas that are presented, especially in Saifai, they’re ridiculous. Like, and they’re, they’re like somewhat plausible. You can like kind of wrap your head around it and like kind of take yourself somewhere else. Be like, Oh my God, what if like, we don’t know.

[00:46:17] Maybe. Maybe so I dig it kind of. I never was a big scifi person in any respect. Um, but I like it much more

[00:46:28] Josh Ried: [00:46:28] now. Dude. It’s pretty cool. Have you ever watched the alien movies like Sigourney Weaver

[00:46:32] Rich Ryan: [00:46:32] stuff? I need to revisit them. I’ve seen alien. I’m not seeing aliens and I didn’t, I haven’t followed through.

[00:46:38] Cause then there’s been two or three more sales

[00:46:40] Josh Ried: [00:46:40] versus predator.

[00:46:41] Rich Ryan: [00:46:41] I think I saw alien vs predator

[00:46:44] Josh Ried: [00:46:44] high school, my friends and we went and ham in the movie theater.

[00:46:47] Rich Ryan: [00:46:47] Oh my God. It probably went crazy. But uh, but yeah. Oh, but my favorite band is a, like, they’re kind of like, they’re considered post-hoc now. I forget what ProgRock pro pro because what they are so essentially email, but they’re, they, their subject matter is all scifi.

[00:47:06] They’re like basically wrote a Saifai, a graphic novel, and now just sing songs about them. It’s called cohesion Cambria. They’re the best.

[00:47:15] Josh Ried: [00:47:15] Wait, Kuwait and Camry did that.

[00:47:16] Rich Ryan: [00:47:16] That’s what, that’s the whole shtick that every song is a story behind, uh, like in this science fiction world that they’ve created.

[00:47:23] Josh Ried: [00:47:23] Oh my gosh.

[00:47:24] Shows how little I actually know their lyrics. I just like kind of listened to them back in school. Like that was, they were the band, they had the video out for the suffering. Was there a stall and I would come home after school and wait on MTV, but MTV actually their music videos and I would wait for that video to play.

[00:47:38] Rich Ryan: [00:47:38] Whoa. They’d play it,

[00:47:40] Josh Ried: [00:47:40] dude. I mean, gosh, that was a while ago, man.

[00:47:43] Rich Ryan: [00:47:43] I’m kidding. Imagine that again. They got much play, play time, but yeah, that’s song rules, but yet it has, it’s all. Tied in science fiction somehow. But, um, segue again, we’re going to talk about some real science. We were looking at this scientific study that we’ve talked about, the ketogenic diet considerable amounts on here and kind of how it can help with your endurance game.

[00:48:03] But there’s one study we came across recently. It was published in, um, just April. Last month, April, 2020 fresh off of it is the effects of the ketogenic diet on body composition and strength in trained women. So I found this to be really interesting because a lot of these studies that we do get fed, they’re either really old or they are just for men.

[00:48:24] And there has been some different thoughts about, you know, fasting in general for women, how it might not be at that. Advantageous for them. And I wasn’t really sure how the ketogenic diet would work, especially depending on like how they were going to break down the macro in what they were going to eat.

[00:48:43] So this study was kind of cool to see how it changed their body composition in strength training in particular. Over the course of eight weeks. So basically the study, it took 21 women, so not, not a huge city, not that long, right? It’s only about eight weeks. And and put them all on the exact same training protocol, and they just observed some of the data that, that came from it.

[00:49:01] So just recap. We kind of read this together. So what were some of the takeaways that you got from this?

[00:49:08] Josh Ried: [00:49:08] Well, it’s that, so I kind of already have a little bit of experience with the KIDO. So I enjoyed that they, that they did the study and that they, they made it present. They were very. Thorough as far as being accurate, the numbers and, uh, keeping on top of the people as far as what they’re eating.

[00:49:25] But the one thing that they didn’t really, uh, California ended up being a factor was the, the, the change in. Caloric intake, and you mentioned this before, how we’ve talked about like when it comes to weight loss, does Quito, is it just because you eat more fat and less carbs that you lose fat, or is it ultimately the kind of natural decrease in caloric intake that leads to that.

[00:49:48] That improvement in body composition. And I’m curious about that in many ways, and we can talk about like hormones and fat and stuff at another time. But the fact is that in this study, the women who ended up having the greatest improvement in body composition, well seem to have an averageable 400 calorie decrease.

[00:50:12] Rich Ryan: [00:50:12] And yeah, they were splitting the two groups, so it was, one was a ketogenic diet and one was a non ketogenic diet and the ketogenic diet was, then they did try to keep the calories. Even across the board. That is always my thing. With these, it’s like, okay, they’d never really control for calories or like, Hey, you just don’t eat carbs and see how it plays out.

[00:50:29] Another one is eat carbs and see how it plays out. And the carbohydrate group always ends up eating more calories. So no matter what it calorie consistent, uh, ketogenic findings are, are really hard to come by when it comes to the scientific journals. And in this case. I think try they, but they gave him a little bit of wiggle room.

[00:50:46] The formula that they gave them was a 40 to 40 to 45 calories per kilogram of fat-free body mass. So I kind of broke this down. So that would mean if it was 140 pound woman who is 18% body fat, which is pretty lean, they would have about 26 pounds of body fat on them. So then they took the 113 remaining.

[00:51:08] Pounds that they had, which would be fat free mass, so they wouldn’t, didn’t consider that the fat and interdict the clerk equation because, um, fat doesn’t like, we want to make sure the more expensive stuff is that the muscle, and that’s really what you should be kind of going off of it. There’s some different formulas to figure out your macros and this is one of them going off of the fat free mass.

[00:51:27] So there were about at, uh, 50 kilograms of fat free mass with this example. So that would be, so then they would take 40 or 45 times that 51. And if you take 40, that is, um, 2040 calories. So that would kind of how they want, where they wanted them to be. And then from there, the ketogenic group was 30 to 40 grams of carbohydrates, and then they actually did 1.7 grams of protein and the rest was made up of fat.

[00:51:54] However, that broke out and their their calories. So in the findings, it found that in that span of 40 to 45, um, times 40 to 45 calories per. Kilogram of fat free mass. The ketogenic group, we leaned much toward the 40 and the carbohydrate group was closer to the 45 and why do you think that always happens?

[00:52:19] In your experience? What is it about these diets that just make people want to eat less?

[00:52:24] Josh Ried: [00:52:24] Yeah, so I think what ultimately ends up coming down to is leptin and ghrelin, your appetite hormones. The fact is that insulin does a correlation between insulin levels in the bloodstream. And your leptin and ghrelin and the fat, and once responsible for out for appetite, increase in ones responsible for being satiated.

[00:52:40] And so when you have one insulin in the blood stream and it gets taken out, and you tend to go into a, a hypoglycemic state, that that signals hunger. Hm. And then you end up eating more. So in the absence of carbohydrates, there’s just more stability in insulin and leptin and ghrelin. And thus your, you are more satiated.

[00:53:00] You don’t end up wanting to reach for more food because you haven’t had such a dramatic decrease suddenly in the, uh, glycogen in the blood sugar or glucose in the bloodstream. Which is really interesting. And another thing that ends up happening is that when you, and another, another reason that the ketogenic I think ends up working for, uh, uh, for body composition is because when you, when insulin is floating around in the bloodstream.

[00:53:29] That’s funny. I said we can talk about hormones later. We are, so you have like a lipid lipoprotein lipase and hormone sensitive lipase. And when, so lipoprotein lipase is, you end up like women typically have them more present and like their, their buttocks and their breasts. Cause that is like, it’s a, it’s a reserve cause they’re the whole point.

[00:53:49] And the reason women typically have a larger. Uh, or a little more fat on them is because they need to like care for a child. At some point. The biological setup is for, uh, just went back

[00:54:00] Rich Ryan: [00:54:00] and did not know. He did not know that.

[00:54:02] Josh Ried: [00:54:02] But that’s like one of the reasons why women said, we have bigger butts, but we don’t mind.

[00:54:08] But when you, when you don’t have insurance floating around in the bloodstream. There tends to be more hormone sensitive lipase floating around, and that helps with the metabolism of fat

[00:54:19] Rich Ryan: [00:54:19] for energy, right, because you don’t have grit. And that’s, that is so interesting because a lot of times you think that hunger comes down to the amount.

[00:54:28] How much you’re eating and if you’re eating more, you would be less hungry. That just seems like there’s only so much space from an intuitive sense, but really there is this hormonal response that is happening that is ultimately driving your behavior, right? So like if you have. Less signal to eat, even though you’re kind of eating less, somehow you’re like eating less volume, like you’re just not going to be driven to eat as much food.

[00:54:51] And that is a really good point and that seems to be consistent over and over and over. And if you’ve ever tried a low carb or a high fat diet like. You can speak to it as well, like, Oh yeah, I wasn’t hungry. I could eat, not eat for hours and be fine. Whereas if you’re consistently eating carbohydrates are going to get a little bit more hungry, you’re going to feel those cravings, you’re probably going to eat a little bit more.

[00:55:11] Um, so ultimately the results of this study was that the ketogenic diet did have an improvement in fat free mass and overall, um, body mass, uh, reduction in, in, uh, in fat. The other things that they were, they put them on the exact same training plan. Um, kind of just like a four week typical, uh, progression with strength phase, hypertrophy, phase, uh, recovery and, and, uh, some muscular endurance.

[00:55:38] Um, the gains were not. Really distinguishable, distinguishable between either group. I think there was a little bit of improvement on the carbohydrate, but not nothing that you can really point you to that showed it was that much better here. But the body composition

[00:55:54] Josh Ried: [00:55:54] thing is, ah, sorry to interject, but yeah, so.

[00:55:58] The body composition was improved. Right. More so in the, actually, they even said in the carbohydrate group, like body composition I think was hardly improved, but there were pretty good improvements in the, in the keto group and also with the, with the strength gains. But when the most they did, they did bench press, they did squat, and they did

[00:56:13] Rich Ryan: [00:56:13] jump

[00:56:16] Josh Ried: [00:56:16] power plate.

[00:56:18] Rich Ryan: [00:56:18] Right.

[00:56:18] Josh Ried: [00:56:18] So from a rubric. If I recall, correct me if I’m wrong, I think you have the study right in front of there is they had both groups had improvements in the squat and the vertical jump, although the carbohydrate group was slightly better in both the squat and the vertical jump, right? But then when it came to bench press.

[00:56:37] The carbohydrate group had a great improvement and the keto group hardly had an improvement. I thought that was very interesting that it was specifically on the bench press. Am I wrong?

[00:56:48] Rich Ryan: [00:56:48] Um, I’m not pulling it up right now. I’m trying to find it, but that isn’t, what do you think would that would, what was your initial response to that way?

[00:56:56] Like why would that be the case?

[00:56:59] Josh Ried: [00:56:59] You know what, I, the only thing I can really think of is the body. For the most part is pretty smart, and when it comes to a time of a caloric deficit, it’s going to prioritize the most. Primary functions and a baby. It feels that pushing things away isn’t nearly as important as being able to get up and run.

[00:57:21] That’s the, that’s the only sense I can put to it. Really

[00:57:24] Rich Ryan: [00:57:24] just reaching, we’re reaching here, but, um, yeah, no, I mean that, that, that makes sense. And there, there seems to be like, there was, um, a lot more improvement in squat. Actually. They both improved, but the, the. There was improvement on the bench press and squat a little bit more in the non ketogenic group than the ketogenic group.

[00:57:46] Um. But yeah, the ketogenic barely improve in the, in the bench. Yeah.

[00:57:51] Josh Ried: [00:57:51] What’s interesting is in the, uh, yeah, in the, so this is folks listening, this is why it’s important to make sure you’re getting enough calories, not go crazy, but make sure you’re getting enough. Cause one of the things that I had seen was that in, in the times where you were in a caloric deficit, some of the bigger muscle groups were, were gone into to get their pool of energy and like the vastus lateralis of the quad, you know, one of the quad muscles, there was a decrease in that mass.

[00:58:13] And. You know, I would imagine also the strength that goes along with it. But yeah, if you’re not eating enough and you’re going out and you’re doing work, it’s like, yo, your body’s got to pull energy from somewhere and it’s only so good at, at reaching into the fat. And you know, it’s interesting. That’s why sometimes you see people that are like skinny fat, they’re skinny, but they have like, they’re not defined or toned.

[00:58:33] Uh, it’s like. Typically they just have a diet that isn’t conducive to fat utilization. And they’re probably also, their hormones are out of whack where they’re a little stressed out and their body ends up metabolizing its muscle primarily because the body wants to metabolize like glycogen first. Cause that’s the easiest.

[00:58:47] And then if you’re not that adapted, typically protein’s going to be the next easiest thing for them to, uh, break down. And then they’ll go

[00:58:53] Rich Ryan: [00:58:53] into fat. And that’s what this study in particular, I would definitely push back based on the amount of, uh, amount of protein that they were eating in this, where a typical ketogenic diet would be pretty low.

[00:59:05] And they were testing for, uh, to, to make sure that ketones were present. They were testing once a day and in the morning, so after a fasted state and, um, then they did kind of load them up with protein. So it’s 1.7 grams. Per kilogram of the, um, this didn’t even say of the fat free mass. I think it was just the kilograms of body weight.

[00:59:30] Josh Ried: [00:59:30] So that’s, that’s, so why does that come out to be

[00:59:34] Rich Ryan: [00:59:34] so with our example before, um, person was 140, um, now this is not going to be that entertaining. I know if it’s going to be close to a hundred grams, and I’m thinking of someone’s 140 40 pounds,

[00:59:48] Josh Ried: [00:59:48] I’m not very much for someone that’s doing intense training.

[00:59:52] Rich Ryan: [00:59:52] So it was still 108 grams. Yeah, so like for endurance training, that would be low for someone who weighs 140 pounds, but for strength training, that seems to be pretty much on par with, with kind of what is standard as far as a recommendation. And that could be,

[01:00:08] Josh Ried: [01:00:08] I would just go out on a limb and say that for the ketogenic group that’s a little low.

[01:00:11] Rich Ryan: [01:00:11] Low for the protein intake.

[01:00:13] Josh Ried: [01:00:13] Low for the, yeah, for the ketogenic group. Because when you go ketogenic, there is more pulling from your protein. So typically people would get away with a little bit more protein in their diet because it’s either going to be utilized via gluconeogenesis. Uh,

[01:00:27] Rich Ryan: [01:00:27] but right. Isn’t that, wouldn’t that move them out of.

[01:00:31] Ketosis.

[01:00:32] Josh Ried: [01:00:32] I’ve done hard to say. Hard to say cause they have, cause some people would, some people wouldn’t. Some people are more sensitive to us and being more prone to, there’d have to be a constant like monitoring for them to be able to infer that.

[01:00:44] Rich Ryan: [01:00:44] Right. And that’s where they, that’s what they didn’t do on this.

[01:00:46] So for them to say this is a ketogenic diet, like maybe, and that might be at this point, it’s almost like nitpicking. It’s like people are taking with the ketogenic diet. What it is supposed to be and what it actually is in practice, and it’s not the same. It should be almost called something different for what they’re doing.

[01:01:02] If it’s gonna be this much protein and they’re not testing ketones and not it, and they’re not necessarily driven to find out how ketones are improving any body composition, it’s just what this diet breakdown, it’s essentially like low carb to me, I would say. Would you disagree or what do you think.

[01:01:20] Josh Ried: [01:01:20] I feel like they could have done a little bit of a better job measuring certain things.

[01:01:25] It looked like they did a pretty gosh darn good job. But yeah, I think that there was some things that weren’t taken into account and if they could have been a little bit better with making sure that everyone was taking in equal calories and that may have created some pretty drastically different results.

[01:01:40] Rich Ryan: [01:01:40] And not even the calories per se. I’m not even that worried about that. Like that’s just something that is just, that just consistently happens. Um. And like, w we see good results with this anyway. Like they did it. They try to account for calories. A lot of times they won’t at all, and you’ll see a much more drastic change.

[01:01:55] But I just think that, I think the protein is, is too high to be considered a ketogenic diet on this.

[01:02:01] Josh Ried: [01:02:01] Interesting. I for the ketogenic, so I’m. If they, if they were coming in at around 140 150 pounds and they’re weightlifting and they’re going through a weightlifting protocol and they’re already experienced and they’re in a caloric deficit, I have to take the clerk deficit into account for sure.

[01:02:19] The more of a caloric deficit you’re in, the more it becomes important to take in adequate protein and get it. Making sure you’re getting adequate amino acids, which a, which I’d also would love to talk about

[01:02:30] Rich Ryan: [01:02:30] right now.

[01:02:31] Josh Ried: [01:02:31] Yeah. Matt, do you have anything else that you want to touch on with the, with this particular study, what do you think are the takeaways for this study?

[01:02:37] Rich Ryan: [01:02:37] I think it’s cool. I like, I like where it’s coming from. I like what they did with it. I think it’s an appropriate way to go about the ketogenic diet when it comes to strength training. I think it is great that is identifying just women because like I said, it’s not always the case. With that said, pretty small sample size.

[01:02:57] Pretty short study and it show, it’s showing results that I would kind of guess that I would kind of think, and I was up. I was actually happy to see that the, the strength training, uh, gains weren’t that different. That, uh, you would think that the carbohydrate group would be a little bit better. But what’s the takeaway for an improved body composition?

[01:03:23] And you know, that’s really up to the individual and like what their goals are.

[01:03:28] Josh Ried: [01:03:28] If they’re competing like power to weight ratio, it makes it easier. So you don’t have to like be so, uh, drastic and your weight cutting. Getting closer to competition.

[01:03:36] Rich Ryan: [01:03:36] Yeah, exactly. And if this is just for body composition and you just want to look better than, and a strength numbers don’t really matter.

[01:03:41] Then that’s great. And there was not really a reduction in, um, muscle mass too much, which is also really important with those protein numbers high. Um, cool. So what, uh, so for the amino acid piece, let’s just touch on that really quick. Um, we, we, we read an a different study about some branch chain amino acids that you can take over the counter when it comes to performance.

[01:04:02] But, uh, maybe we’ll touch on that at another time. But w w when it comes to the amino acid piece. And the ketogenic diet, like how we were talking about, they’re like, I kind of think this is a little, I kind of thought that was a part of this that was cheating. Like if they didn’t measure the ketones throughout the day, they measured it just in the morning.

[01:04:19] Like, yes, of course. That is the time that you would produce ketones. And of course, these are people who are living lives and the, those strips are expensive, I believe. Um, and to like test consistently, it might’ve been just outside of the scope of this study, but, um. That to me is what I is how like the, the muscle kind of stayed on.

[01:04:39] Um, but there also could have been. That might’ve been out of ketosis at this point. So how does, how does, how do the branch chain amino acids kind of plants this, that you, you were mentioning, are they just amino acids?

[01:04:48] Josh Ried: [01:04:48] Well, what I was thinking is it’s just a matter of muscle protein synthesis because carbohydrates do play a role in helping with like muscles grow and in their function.

[01:04:57] So in the absence of carbohydrates, there does become a greater demand for like protein to kind of fill in. It’s kind of like a, you can think of them as soldiers that are able to do like double duty. So the protein will fulfill, well, the standard protein requirements, muscle protein synthesis, but they can also, again, like I said, be broken down, uh, via gluconeogenesis for the use where like carbohydrates mind that come into play.

[01:05:19] And does that mean that they’re going to be kicked out of ketosis? I would say not necessarily. And if there is kind of, like I had said before, if there’s not. You have to take it, you have to take the caloric deficit into account because now there is a, a lack of energy to produce certain, uh, functions, which might include, uh, muscle growth.

[01:05:39] So, uh, like with that, with that particular study, if they w if the ketogenic group. Oh, I was in a caloric deficit. I, I would suggest, based on my knowledge to increase protein, also to increase fat, but I would increase protein, maybe just like 10%, just to, just to fulfill, uh, perhaps that, that downregulation in muscle protein synthesis.

[01:06:03] Rich Ryan: [01:06:03] Hmm. And that makes sense, right? Like that would be what you would do and yeah, to me, I guess I was just was curious if that would be considered still ketogenic and you think it could,

[01:06:13] Josh Ried: [01:06:13] I definitely think that it could. Um, from what I’ve gathered through things that I’ve read, some people do respond a little bit.

[01:06:19] Differently. Some people are more likely to also, it depends on like the amino acid brand and you don’t know if there’s fillers in there. Some people have had amino acids spike their insulin, which is a pretty telltale sign that the body is kind of recognizing it as sugar, like converting it in sugar. So that’s,

[01:06:34] Rich Ryan: [01:06:34] does this taste so good?

[01:06:35] Oh, I

[01:06:36] Josh Ried: [01:06:36] know, right. But yeah, if you just take like some essential amino acids to kind of top things off you are, you’re probably going to be in a better position to preserve the muscle that you have. And tell the body, Hey, we have the resources. You can continue to grow and do other other functions, which in this particular study might’ve led to a slightly greater gains.

[01:06:57] And in all of the exercise that they performed, hard to say, Allah, almost into to the company and tell them to redo it,

[01:07:04] Rich Ryan: [01:07:04] tell them to do this study. This is like a legit studies like Brad Schoenfeld was on, I was on, and he’s like the hypertrophy guy. Um, he’s like on all of them, so. Yeah. We’ll link to this in the show notes as well.

[01:07:16] If you want to dive into this and kind of nerd out on it, definitely something you should do.