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Trail Running Series: Muscular Endurance for Trail Runners
17k Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Steve and Alyssa welcome coach Will Weidman to the podcast to discuss the benefits of muscular endurance training for trail runners. The three break down what muscular endurance training looks like for trail runners, how it can be integrated into training and its importance particularly in downhill training. Will describes his positive experiences with using muscular endurance training for UTMB and Tor Des Geants and the improvement in results he found. The three discuss using gym based vs outdoor based muscular endurance and how Alyssa and Will use it specifically for themselves and their athletes. They wrap up with a conversation about the upper body endurance needed for 200 miles and the importance of training with weight to endure a 200 mile event. Muscular endurance training is key to big mountain trail running and you do not want to miss this lively discussion.
Please write to us @ [email protected] or visit our website at uphillathlete.com for more information.
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Transcript
Introduction and Mission
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the uphill athlete podcast. Our mission is to elevate and inspire all mountain athletes through education and celebration. My name is Steve House, and I will be your host today, along with Alyssa Clark.
Guest Introduction: Will Weidman
00:00:13
Speaker
We're super psyched today to bring you a very knowledgeable guest and one of our coaches, Will Weidman. Welcome, Will.
00:00:30
Speaker
Hey, great to be here talking with you about my favorite topic. Will's an accomplished ultra runner, coach, and a data scientist. He has over a hundred finishes of trail, ultra, and road races. He's taken on and finished with high rankings in the Hellbender 100, the UTMB, the Tour de Jean, to name just a few.
00:00:51
Speaker
Will has coached athletes to over 500 finishes at races all over the world with an incredible success rate of only two DNFs. And both of those, if I'm not mistaken, were due to broken bones, right? Well, so I don't know if anything counts against you. Unfortunately, yes. Yeah. Falls that, uh, created some injuries, but that's right. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on, Will. My pleasure. Great to be here.
00:01:18
Speaker
I would say those don't really count. When broken bones, when there's bones sticking out or blood involved, I mean, some blood's okay. I think that's a pretty solid finish rate. But we are super excited to have you on the podcast. I personally love talking to you, and I think this is going to be a blast.
Will's Ultra Running Journey
00:01:40
Speaker
First off, I'd love to start with how you got into the sport of ultra running.
00:01:46
Speaker
and what your background is in that. It is wild how many people got into this sport from one of two books born to run or ultra marathon man. And I was the ultra marathon man generation. So that inspired me to run my first ultra, which was JFK in 2007. JFK has about 16 miles on the Appalachian Trail and then a marathon on a flat canal path and then some road.
00:02:16
Speaker
Uh, and I realized in training for the race and running the race that I didn't love the flat and the road part as much, but I really loved that trail part and being on the AT and really just went from there and signed up for the Vermont hundred and then running mountains and trails since then. That's awesome. And how did you get from racing to then coaching? What led you onto that path?
00:02:42
Speaker
So I had a lot of years between that. You know, after I ran my first couple of ultras, the first couple went really well, I think partially beginner's luck. And then I had several years where I honestly struggled a lot. I had I think 400 mile DNS in a row and just struggled with training structure and nutrition and
00:03:02
Speaker
just trying to figure out things the hard way and eventually got to the other side of that after almost giving up the sport, actually. But then after a while, I realized, you know, I'd piece this together and wanted to help people avoid the mistakes that I made and was inspired to get into coaching and hopefully help others and help them have an easier path with it. Nice. Was that 2019? Is that the year that was really a struggle or?
00:03:31
Speaker
So I started, I started coaching in, uh, yeah, 2019, 2020, the years that were struggles were more 2009 to 2012 or 13. Gotcha. Um, yeah. And then had a number of years after that where got back on the rails and got back on track. Nice.
Understanding Muscular Endurance
00:03:52
Speaker
I know discusses often at a philosophy, but I just want to quickly talk about and actually define the term muscular endurance.
00:04:02
Speaker
I'll take a first crack at it. And generally speaking, muscular endurance is the capacity to do a lot of repeated exercise that requires a high degree of strength. Sometimes it's called strength endurance. And muscular endurance training is sometimes called local muscular endurance training. Sometimes it's called strength endurance. I have a bunch of other names that you might hear kicking around.
00:04:32
Speaker
The way I like to describe muscular endurance isn't so much through sets or reps, but in terms of perceived exertion and what it feels like to do. And the overall feeling when you're doing muscular endurance training is that your legs, in the case of what we're talking about, are kind of
00:05:02
Speaker
are working really hard, but you're able to keep going and your lungs are not the limiting factor. So, you know, if I put that into visuals, it's like I'm carrying a really heavy pack for a really steep hill and as I
00:05:16
Speaker
push with each leg one at a time. It's like, I can just get it out and get that step and get the next one and get the next one and kind of keep going at a pretty slow, pretty steady pace. And that's what it feels like. I think a lot of Denali climbers will know this because it's exactly what pulling a sled up Denali feels like. It's hard. It's kind of slow.
00:05:43
Speaker
Um, but it's an incredible training tool and it's been one of the, I would say pillars of the apostate sort of approach to training. So it's a, it's something that I use for years in my training for alpinism. And, you know, it kind of comes out of, you know, classical strength training. Um, and we have ways to do it in the gym, ways to do it outside and so on. What is your, uh, how would you define that Will?
00:06:15
Speaker
I would define it as the strength you can sustain over the event that you're doing. And I think we often forget how much any kind of running really is a strength and power type of sport. We think a lot about the aerobic aspect and the aerobic systems, the lactate and the U2 max systems, which are very important as well. But when you actually think about
00:06:39
Speaker
you're landing on one leg with multiple times your body weight and absorbing that impact and you're doing that tens of thousands of times. And then you take that and you move it to a trail or a mountain where now you're going thousands of meters, tens of thousands of feet up mountains and down mountains and you're absorbing those forces and fighting gravity while you're doing all that.
00:07:02
Speaker
And it really is, you know, incredibly important when to think about that muscular endurance and the strength and power you need to be able to sustain you through those. Yeah. And I think that also really.
00:07:16
Speaker
Something that I want to highlight that what you said is it's very related to speed too. Like speed is related to power and you can't run fast if you're not powerful. So while muscular endurance training is often thought of as sort of the slow grinding sort of movement, that doesn't mean that that
00:07:37
Speaker
you are going to be running more slowly because of it actually quite the opposite. I think it's actually a great way to combine with other things like tempo and other types workouts to build the neurological connections needed to do the faster paces. You can actually gain a lot of speed through this kind of work. Yeah, I think that those are
00:08:01
Speaker
Exceptional points, I actually wrote down what you said, Will, about the strength you can sustain over the event that you are doing. I think that's a great way of defining it. I also, I tend to think about it with my athletes too, if they come back and say the limiting factor was my legs or the limiting factor was my
00:08:23
Speaker
my breath or like my heart rate that to me it's like oh limiting factor legs muscular endurance that's what we need to do limiting factor aerobic capacity we need to keep working on your zone one zone two um so that to me is i love when my athletes come back and give me just that really easy way to define it because it's so it then becomes so clear of like oh cool that's what we need to work on so i'm always glad when i get that feedback because it it's uh
00:08:51
Speaker
lends itself to the direction we need to go.
00:08:55
Speaker
that pretty much anyone climbing the four or five thousand foot climbs in Tour de Jean probably feels that to a certain extent. But Will, you can use muscular endurance to help combat that. And we brought you on because, and I think I heard this really early on when Steve was talking about you, that muscular endurance has played a huge part in your training.
00:09:24
Speaker
and also your success in the longer mountainous events. So I'd love to hear what your background is and how you have personally used it in your training.
Training Revamp and Results
00:09:37
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't always use it in my training like I do now. So I found myself after about a dozen years in the sport in early 2019 with a growing pile of injuries and felt like I was just breaking down over time.
00:09:52
Speaker
So I had lower back issues, Achilles, right hip. I had a small tear in my hamstring that wasn't healing. And I realized this wasn't gonna work. I had to figure out what was going on. I had to figure out how to make this sustainable if I wanted to keep doing what I love so much. And so that was early 2019. I was staring down, being signed up. I got into UTMB that year and it was hard to even run because of what was going on with my body. So that's where I started.
00:10:20
Speaker
you know, I was able to find a really great PT to help start that path and read a book that you might've heard of called training for the uphill athlete. And I had to start really from the basics. I mean, I had to really just start from body weight work, core work, band work, just to deal with some of the deficiencies that had built up from doing the sport for a long time and the imbalances and you know, one side being stronger than the other. So I had to really work on that. And then I started to incorporate more,
00:10:50
Speaker
Weighted strength type exercises and you know building that up over time and then you know moving that towards things like Deadlifts and squats and single leg work and just continuing to build over time and over the years And I was amazed just you know the impact it had just from feeling stronger feeling more resilience these injuries just fading away and Haven't really had much of an injury to speak of in the four and a half years since then And also just found I was getting
00:11:20
Speaker
better performances and getting faster as well. So in addition to the injury prevention and feeling better, I was actually, you know, even as I was getting older, able to get faster through doing that. Cause like you said, Steve, it's not just about being able to finish or the injury prevention. It is a way to actually improve performance too. Cause you were able to bring more power to what you're doing. So that was, yeah, that was a path that I,
00:11:46
Speaker
went on and I've, you know, just continued to have that be a core focus ever since then. Excellent. And I actually want to touch on a specific usage of muscular endurance for you with a race that everyone must think that we are sponsoring or just are personally obsessed with. I know that you use muscular endurance for Tour de Jean. I'd love to hear
00:12:12
Speaker
maybe what that buildup looked like for you and then how you felt it worked during the race. So I've been looking at Tour de Geant for the 12 years that that race was in existence, you know, since I first saw pictures of it in 2010, just such an amazing, amazing course, like an amazing challenge, but I had, you know, healthy respect for just how hard it was going to be. For those who aren't as familiar, it is
00:12:42
Speaker
And Alyssa, I think, you know, the stats on it are hard to pin down, right? But I think it's on the order of 220 miles and about 85,000 feet of climbing. And going into the year of training for my number one focus was I knew I just had to get myself as strong as possible and focus first and foremost on muscular endurance, which you might think a race that long and you need to really focus more on, you know, the running side or distance or mileage or vertical.
00:13:09
Speaker
But I knew the reality of it was going to be so far beyond anything I'd done. And the idea of four plus days in that terrain, what was really going to matter most at the end of it was going to be the strength side of things and muscular endurance just to prevent breakdown as much as possible. So I'd had that foundation. I've been doing it since, you know, early 2019. Um, and really made that more of a core focus, you know, multiple muscular endurance workouts a week, trying to really progress what I was doing in those workouts.
00:13:38
Speaker
a lot that's going to be single leg, um, but a lot of, you know, deadlift squat type movements as well. One way I thought about that was in terms of relative to body weight, you know, again, coming back to like, it's how much power you can put out relative to weight is try to progress over time in terms of like a power to weight aspect. And that was the, that was the core. I mean, I certainly did plenty of running and plenty of other training and plenty of worked over that, but throughout that was what I focused most on.
00:14:09
Speaker
You mentioned the strength, some of these strength exercises. Did you use and progress like us particular, like all outdoors or did you rely more on the gym-based muscular endurance approach or have you, what's your favorite flavor? I usually use gym-based, which at the start was maybe not my favorite thing to do, but I've come around to actually enjoy it a lot more and
00:14:39
Speaker
um, you know, find, find it to be fun with, you know, the right structure around it. But I generally like doing the gym based version. I think for, for outdoor, one challenge I find, um, and thinking from a coaching standpoint too, is there's a tendency often with a big distance race to just go out and want to do as long of a run as possible at a slow effort. And then what'll happen is over time,
00:15:05
Speaker
you're gonna get slow, you're gonna get less efficient, the running economy gets impacted. So what I generally like to do is actually keep that outdoor work and try to focus on moving well and improving some of those other lactate and VO2 max type systems and bring more intensity into those, which is just harder to do with a weighted structure to it. So we do a lot of hill tempos, hill intervals, hill strides, and focus on that for the outdoor portion, and then do a lot of the strength work
00:15:35
Speaker
several times a week in the gym. And I would say, you know, even before tour, that had a pretty big impact. Like when I first did UTMB in 2017, I remember I trained a lot. I had really high volume and high vert going into that race, but the last three downhills, my quads were just totally blown. I, you know, I was leaning on my trekking poles, you know, hobbling down at who knows how slow for those last three descents, my legs were just gone.
00:16:06
Speaker
And then 2019, you know, coming off of those injuries and incorporating the muscular endurance training, I actually did less running volume that year, but I didn't have that same quads being shot. My legs weren't gone. I was running to the end. I was about three hours faster that year with less running volume throughout the year. And I think that, you know, is almost a hundred percent the combination of the muscular endurance work and then putting more intensity in the trail running
00:16:36
Speaker
Larger run
Strength Training Insights from Alyssa
00:16:37
Speaker
efforts. Yeah. Yeah. That that's very true, right? Like you have to, you, you can't let that part of the technique go, right? I mean, people forget how much running is a technique sport. I mean, that's not the, the, the viewpoint that people start out with, but when you've been doing it for a while or been coaching it for a while, you
00:17:05
Speaker
realize just how incredibly important form and technique is and doing all those things like the tempos and the repeats and that stuff. So that's interesting. I also have to say with, I do think for most people it is easier to wrap their heads around doing the muscular endurance in the gym because it's just much easier to control the variables.
00:17:32
Speaker
That's assuming that people have the background or have access to someone that they can do the workouts with that can teach them the correct form. And I think in climbing, which is more my, which is obviously much more my background, but as well in running, you know, we, neither of these sports have, uh, uh,
00:17:55
Speaker
real strong history with, you know, hanging out in the gym and lifting weights. So that's for a lot of us in all of these mountain sports, that's a deficiency. And I think, uh, how did you go about, you know, that was out of background you had, did you lean on this physical therapist you mentioned, or how did you go about kind of solving that aspect of the problem as you worked, worked your way into this?
00:18:21
Speaker
I would say having the physical therapist helped a lot just in terms of bringing some structure to it, some direction to it. Having somebody actually look at form and technique in person. I would recommend that everybody do that even just once have somebody who is an expert check out how you're doing and what the form is like is that makes such a big difference and so important to make sure you're doing it well. So that ended up helping a lot. And then, you know, that
00:18:48
Speaker
got the path started where I started to feel more comfortable with it and was able to build up from there. But I think it's a good place to try to get some help to get that started if you don't have as much of that extensive background. And once you have that and can feel more comfortable and have some guidance on it, I think it's a lot easier to get that going. How about you? Did you learn this in lacrosse or?
00:19:14
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I was just actually having this conversation with one of my friends is that I grew up with a strength background. I lifted in high school, I lifted in college, especially I went to a ski academy and we lifted I mean, we're
00:19:31
Speaker
little Nordic skiers, but we lifted and then I did crew for a year and lacrosse kind of throughout and I actually think that the athletes that I see often excelling, I think I mentioned this in the last podcast too, are athletes that come from
00:19:49
Speaker
having spent time in the gym, having developed a pretty strong basis, especially in mountain running, having sturdy legs makes a difference in having a strong core. And having spent a lot of time building up those ligaments to be able to keep everything going in a good direction, especially in trail running, there's so much
00:20:14
Speaker
ligament strain and stress that I think if you come from a strength background, that can be huge. So as much as like I look back and go, Oh, yeah, I would probably have liked to spend time on trail. I'm actually really thankful that I played field sports and was introduced to the gym at quite an early age. And I think that
00:20:43
Speaker
the more we can help athletes change their mindset about gym work. I also think a lot of athletes, especially when we're doing the long zone one, zone two work,
00:20:58
Speaker
can get really defeated by the slowness of the efforts. And so it's like, hey, you can go to the gym and rage a little bit. Here's your chance to let it out and really go after it. So I think looking at it as an opportunity to cross the aerobic threshold barrier, I think is a great way to approach it.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah. And listen, what's also wild is you'll have people who won't bat an eye at going out for a six to eight hour run on a Saturday. Yes. Well, you know, 20 minutes of strength work is just, Oh, I don't have the time. Right. Um, but you can get a lot of strength work done and not a lot of time. I mean, you go 15, 20 minutes of hard strength work effort twice a week. You can make a ton of progress doing that. And you know, you're not even giving up much running, even if that comes exclusively at the cost of running time. I mean, that's a good trade-off in my mind. And it's not that hard to do.
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I think part of it goes to intimidation and what we're used to. We're going into a gym, we're starting something quote unquote new is intimidating. And especially as an adult, I think probably like the three of us
00:22:13
Speaker
have gotten pretty good at embracing that you have to be a beginner, uh, and learn things. I think, um, to do what we do, you have to adopt that spirit. But I think that that can be really scary for other people. And so I think going into a gym and you've always been a runner, it's like, well, what if I'm bad at it? What if someone laughs at me or I don't know what I'm doing, especially if you do have a strong expertise in a certain area that can, that can be a real deterrent. Yeah.
00:22:42
Speaker
I think that we're battling human nature here a little bit, which means ourselves, which is where the real good stuff happens. But I'll make an analogy out of the sport, but whenever I go ski touring, I notice the people who are really good on the downhill, they always have the heaviest setup.
00:23:05
Speaker
right? And all the people that are really good on the uphill, they always have the lightest setup. And what they all need to do is switch gear. Because the people who are really good on the uphill, they can't ski for crap going down, right? So they actually need like stiff boots and fat skis for the way down. They're the ones that need it. But
00:23:24
Speaker
They're like showing up at the trailhead on a powder day with like their, you know, 60 centimeter with underfoot race skis with, you know, it's completely backwards. And we all are like that. Like we, you know, if you're, if you're a runner and you got into it because you love to run, yeah, you don't bat an eye about, you know, the, the Sunday long run, right. But, you know,
00:23:47
Speaker
If you're not used to going to the gym, then that's hard. And I think that people who are used, and we've all seen this as coaches, people who are used to going into the gym, they actually love going to the gym. They love lifting weights. And it's sometimes really hard to get them to go out and do aerobic work. Just tap into any gym culture and they'll talk about, they're always downplaying and making fun of, quote unquote, cardio.
00:24:27
Speaker
together best practices to get better at something like running 200 miles or running a race with 85,000 vertical feet. I mean, that's just insane, right? Then, you know, you're actually right. Yeah. Surprise, surprise. You have to be really strong to be able to do that. You know, it's a lot of, a lot of workload. Yeah.
00:24:30
Speaker
that stuff.
Addressing Personal Weaknesses in Training
00:24:48
Speaker
And you touched on this, Steve, but there's an aspect of working on what is your, what is your weakness, right? What are the things that you're not as good at? Um,
00:24:57
Speaker
You know, people can't see me on the podcast, but I am, I am pretty thin, right? So I have 50,000 plus miles of trail running on my legs. I got the running part. Like I need, I need help. And my weakness is the strength part. So that's what I have to make sure I don't forget and make sure I focus on. And I love running on the trails, but if that time in the gym will one, make me be able to do this sport for a lot longer and two, get me to the finish line and three, maybe even get me there faster. Like that's a great trade-off.
00:25:27
Speaker
Definitely. I also want to touch on this idea that when you're running, you're kind of just purely running because as we're getting into races like a UTMB, like a Tour de Jean, a Moab, we see, which is an incredible thing and I think
00:25:49
Speaker
is a good direction, especially as we get more and more people with less overall mountain experience, there's required gear. And so when you are out on these courses, you're not just carrying your water and some stacks. It's a whole lot more involved than that. And so I was reflecting on when I did Moab 240, and I would guess that my pack
00:26:13
Speaker
was anywhere from 10 to 15 pounds, because you've got 25 miles upwards between aid stations, you have unpredictable weather. And so, Will, what are your thoughts on muscular endurance being beneficial for these trail runners who aren't carrying quote unquote weight? Whereas maybe, maybe that's not the case.
00:26:41
Speaker
It's true. More and more races are requiring more and more gear. And I think there's a lot of good reason for that. And we can certainly debate it, but for safety, then the reality is you have to carry more things with you. And that is a big difference, right? Like you said, if you're talking about dozens or a hundred plus miles and you're taking that weight and you have to carry that up all these mountains, that does take a lot more strength. So I do think from.
00:27:09
Speaker
standpoint of thinking about the strength you need to do that. And also practicing that in some of your runs too. You know, you may not want to do it all the time, but take that, set a required gear and take that up your local hill and practice with that and make sure that works and know how that feels going into it. And, you know, there's also interesting things like, you know, when I thought back on Tor,
00:27:32
Speaker
there was probably 70 plus hours where I was using trekking poles and I was hauling on those things for all I was worth to try to save my legs as much as I possibly could. And then you think about the core and upper body strength, you need to be putting force into trekking poles for that long. And, you know, as I was certainly doing the muscular endurance work, but I also, and looking back,
00:27:55
Speaker
I don't have a climbing background, but my older son started climbing a couple of years ago and I just found myself in the climbing gym and I was there. So I was going to climb and doing more of it. And I think that was actually hugely helpful just to have that upper body strength as well, to be able to, you know, use poles and help take some of the pressure off the legs for that kind of terrain. So yeah, you got to think about the race you're doing, the weight, the gear, are you using poles or not? Cause that all comes in and if you,
00:28:24
Speaker
If you're not planning for that ahead of time, it's going to be really hard the day of. Yeah. I know we didn't intend to talk about this, but one of the things that I think is beneficial for runners that I've coached that.
00:28:40
Speaker
that they use skiing as their opposite sport for those that live in that environment. Again, you can ski tour. It's just enough similar and it's just enough different that I think there's really a lot of advantages to, you know,
00:28:59
Speaker
I mean, we see Killian and Emily and all, you know, there's a lot of people out there that are doing that to great effect. And I don't think that that's an accident, you know, that they're not like, I don't know, road cycling in the winter, they're, they're ski touring. Um, they're not cross country skiing. They're not like doing, there's a lot of things you can do in the winter and not just running year round either. Because I think that it's, it's good to give your body a little bit of a break, um, by switching things up, you know, and it's also, um,
00:29:29
Speaker
Yo, can certainly
00:29:32
Speaker
I used to do a lot of these upper body ME workouts, like double pulling on cross country skis, similar kind of thing, right? You just find that piece of track that just had a slight uphill that was long enough. And you can do a pretty good ME workout, just double pulling on a slow pair of cross country skis. And there's a lot of things that you can do in the off season.
00:30:01
Speaker
as strength training, but I'm outdoors. I'm on the snow. I'm in the mountains. It doesn't feel like work then. There are a lot of ways to do it. I want to go back to the different types and I want to not pass over the outdoor version of muscular endurance because it doesn't work for everybody, especially urban dwellers.
00:30:24
Speaker
Urban dwellers are going to have a hard time doing that unless they like the staircase at their local Sears Tower or something. But doing those is at least going outside and being on a trail or being on a steep road or something when you're doing those workouts. Either of you spent much time with outdoor muscular endurance.
00:30:51
Speaker
And see that you, it might be helpful to just find that too for the audience. And so that would be having weight that you're carrying and then carrying weight up, up at, you know, the steep incline, right? I think the easiest way for a runner to understand it is to, it's like a, a weighted zone three interval workout. Like if you, you know, zone three, zone four intervals of long duration, like, you know, five to
00:31:22
Speaker
45 minutes, depending, and pretty heavy weight. Heavy enough that you can't just like bound up, can't walk fast uphill, like you're having to push hard through your legs. And you're probably wanting to wear boots to protect your feet and ankles, probably using ski poles because you want that upper body effect. You want to be, as you said, will sort of pulling on those for all your worth.
00:31:48
Speaker
And that's part of the workout. Cause that's what you are doing on these, on these big races. I mean, you know, I don't think anybody finishes tour without ski poles, right? Like it just doesn't, I just can't do it probably. Yeah. I think pretty much everyone is using trekking poles. So, you know, I haven't, I haven't done.
00:32:10
Speaker
I've witnessed muscular endurance because my husband follows the Eiger plan and I've seen him go up with 50 pounds on his back and it looks incredibly painful. But I've done, I guess where I kind of do it is that I do ski tour in the winter and so I'll often have a pretty heavy pack. I ski tour in Lake Tahoe so I always have powder skis on my feet.
00:32:37
Speaker
And so it is for me, that's a pretty big strength workout. And I think that actually prepares me really well for the mountains, as you were saying, Steve. So not explicitly the muscular endurance work, but
00:32:56
Speaker
through the change of seasons, that off-season work, that is quite muscularly challenging for me. And so it's not the exact definition, and I would encourage people to do muscular endurance workouts. I do think when I go back to tour, I will incorporate those. And so, yeah, so that's kind of my short and long answer of yes and no.
00:33:25
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think it's a great tool. And one of the reasons that I think that, like what you're saying, going skiing with heavies, bat skis, or whatever, that works, because one of the things we have to remember is muscular endurance is one of our most trainable qualities as human animals. So there's a lot of ways to do it. The ways we lay out in the philosophy books and in the training plans and so on.
00:33:53
Speaker
they're structured and they're progressive and, you know, we're trying to, you know, we're trying to make it just a little bit. We're trying to, you know, utilize the, the, the, the training effect to continuously improve throughout a season, right? Or to get ready to peak for a race. So that can be, um, that can be maybe daunting, but I would just encourage people to
00:34:23
Speaker
you know, give it like eight weeks and tell me, you know, tell me if it doesn't make a massive difference. There's just so many stories I know of, of people who have tried this for the first time and are just kind of blown away. And sometimes it happens, you know, I was telling you about this just the other day, yesterday, at least in a separate conversation, there was a guy, Neil Bidelman, and Neil's acquaintance of mine, and he's a friend of a guy that I coached.
00:34:53
Speaker
And I was over in Aspen and went for a ski tour with them. And Neil had just come back from Denali and had
00:34:59
Speaker
climbed it only for the first time in, I don't know, a couple of decades. He's about your size, Will. He's got a runner build. He's shorter than you are actually by a good number. He's shorter than I am, but he's very small bone. I don't know how many times he's done hard rock. He's done hard rock like 20 times or something because he's one of the OG hard rock guys.
00:35:25
Speaker
He was saying, man, I just can't believe ever since I've been on Denali. I feel so strong and I'm so fast that my runs are going so well. And he said, I think it's the altitude. And then I started asking him about it. And they were only on the mountain 11 days. And I was like, I don't think it's the altitude because the altitude would be gone by now. I think it's dragging the sled for 11 days or nine days.
00:35:53
Speaker
because you basically did nine days of muscular endurance workout and now it's two months since you've been back from Denali and you're still feeling the effects, that's not altitude, that's strength, that's ME. And so there's so many ways to do this kind of work that can get
00:36:11
Speaker
you, you know, really significant results, intentional or not. And I think that, you know, you only kind of have to be creative enough to figure out, understand the basic principles and creative enough to kind of figure out a fun way to do it that works for you. Yeah. And as you talk through, Steve, you know, there's a way that I think for me and for athletes, I coach, there's an aspect of getting some of the muscular endurance workout as part of long runs that I'm realizing as we talk here.
00:36:42
Speaker
So for me, the bread and butter when I can is to try to get to the Shenandoah National Park. That's where I do a lot of my training. And when I'm training for a race like a UTMB or a tour, what I found really effective is after a short warmup, during the long run, do a high Z3 effort on a big climb at the beginning of the long run. So it might be 15 minute warmup, 2,000 foot, 600 meter steep climb at the start of that long run at a
00:37:12
Speaker
You know, pretty high intensity effort. And the reality is I actually have quite a bit of weight for that because I'm going out for a long time in the mountains. I have a ton of water on me. I have gear, so it's probably at least 15 pounds there.
00:37:23
Speaker
And then I think what that's doing is it's probably getting some of that muscular endurance benefit from pushing hard up that climb, that sustained long climb. I also really like how that structure of putting that really hard effort at the start of a long run makes a four hour long run actually feel like a seven or eight hour long run. So you can get a lot of benefit with less pounding on the body. So I think that's maybe a yes and no, like you said, Alyssa, it's somewhat in that muscular endurance realm of getting some of that.
00:37:53
Speaker
But it makes sense, and you're just building a lot of that power and strength in doing it. Yeah, so many thoughts. But I guess the first one is that I think that often, as I'll say mountain ultra runners, because I think that's how it fits, is when we go out in the long run, we don't have an aid station. So we're carrying all of our aid at a much higher weight than we usually would in a race.
00:38:20
Speaker
And so right there, you have quite a bit more weight than you're used to. So I think that's exactly it will with that component. The other thing I would say, Steve, thinking about your example with the hard rocker is that
00:38:39
Speaker
It's such low hanging fruit for all of us trail runners. I think that we struggle and push for such marginal gains. And here's this thing where it's like, oh, that could be such a huge
00:38:56
Speaker
benefit and such a huge boost where we're trying to get you know a second or two off of this interval or you know just like these marginal gains here's something that why not give it a shot because it could really impact how you can do and it's
00:39:17
Speaker
It's something that I think runners are still kind of trying to grasp. But truly the difference is, and I talk about this a lot, there is such a difference between walking a 15-minute mile and a 20-minute mile, especially at the end of the race. I mean, Will, you pointed it out.
00:39:33
Speaker
right off the bat with your UTMB finished that the first year, you were barely able to make it down the hills, leaning on hiking poles, and then, you know, just being able to run down hills, which is not a cardiovascular thing at all, it is a muscle thing, allowed you to increase time by three hours, or decrease time by three hours. Like, that's huge. Yeah, sorry, that was my tangent. And with less running volume that year,
00:40:03
Speaker
So you can go crazy and try to just pour on volume or you can be smart about where you put in your strength work and it's just a huge benefit from it. But I agree it's a lot of low hanging fruit and it falls in the where places you can train smarter or not harder. And I think that's, for people who aren't doing it today, there's just such big gains to be made there. I want to call out one important thing that you
00:40:29
Speaker
mention that I want to just emphasize because it's worth emphasizing is that you're doing this ME style piece of the long run at the beginning. Because it's really important for people to understand that you can't do that at the end. And the reason is that for strength training to be effective, you need to be rested enough to be able to activate the largest
00:40:51
Speaker
you know motor units in the muscles and that's hard right like it's that's why you have to grimace and groan so much when you're trying to lift something heavy it's hard it takes a lot of
00:41:05
Speaker
intention, a lot of focus, a lot of like, to activate those big motor units. And you just can't do that when you're already tired. So, you know, this is a pretty key piece to what you said, Will, and I think that
00:41:23
Speaker
This is one of the things that I see people making this mistake all the time on training runs. It's like, oh, I sprinted the last 15 minutes. I'm like, that actually didn't help you. Maybe if it's done the warm up and then sprinted a little bit, that might have helped you, but you don't want to do that the other way around.
00:41:44
Speaker
It's just understanding these little bits. This is kind of what uphill athletes all about, right? Like these little bits of knowledge can really make a huge difference in, you know, how you can perform if you just understand these basic kind of ideas. Yeah, absolutely. And I guess going to that, we talk about
Muscular Endurance in Mountain Races
00:42:07
Speaker
muscular endurance benefiting uphill, but how does it benefit long downhills? Because especially when you're getting into the Alps, when you're getting into these longer mountain races, you can be descending for hours at a time.
00:42:23
Speaker
And that takes a huge toll. And so we've talked about how downhills are often overlooked. But Will or Steve, I mean, how do you see muscular endurance helping with these long downhills? And Will, is that something you saw and tore that you were able to do better because of it?
00:42:45
Speaker
I think it's huge for downhills. I mean, the muscular endurance work will make you faster on the uphills as well. But one thing I tell people who have a really big challenge, right? It's a race that's outside their comfort zone. They think a lot about the uphills because they sound scary, right? Climbing 5,000 feet, which is, but you know, there's a reality of
00:43:06
Speaker
If you're getting tired and you're going uphill, you'll be okay, right? You'll go a little slower, but you're gonna keep moving. And there's also an interesting reality with these races where when you're at the top of the mountain, you can't really drop from the race. Like you're up there, right? You kind of have to come down. The challenge is when you come down these painful long downhills and then you hit the valley and then you see your crew and then you see your car and then you have all the food there and there's a pizza shop open. That's where the temptation is gonna hit.
00:43:35
Speaker
So I do think the muscular endurance part to be able to withstand the downhills, because the reality of these events is you can't really do anything approaching the event in training. And that's just the nature of the beast with these. So you have to find other ways to be able to get that eccentric contraction loading to be able to prepare the muscles for what's going to happen.
00:43:57
Speaker
whatever it is, mile 90 going down that 20% grade or mile 170 going down that 20% grade. So I think it makes a big difference in just withstanding it and also being able to run it, run it faster too. Like if your legs actually work, like my legs did not work the first time at UTMB when they actually do work, you can go so much faster on those downhills. But that's really probably the most important thing in my mind to prepare for. And I always try to orient people on work backwards from how you survive the downhill.
00:44:27
Speaker
You'll get there with the uphill, but you have to really put more attention on the downs. I would also say that with the outdoor version, when you're carrying the heavy pack, a lot of times people use rocks that they pick up at the bottom of the hill or water or something like that and then dump them.
00:44:50
Speaker
to have less weight going down. And, you know, for people with good, you know, a good strength basis and are injury free, I encourage them not to jump all the way. Maybe some of it, you know, it's a case by case, but to really try to carry some of that weight down, not just go like full, you know, body weight only going down. And then I would also say that's the other advantage to doing this in the gym.
00:45:13
Speaker
because you get that eccentric contraction. You have to step off the box. You have to do the Bulgarian split squat up and down. Whatever the exercise is, you're lifting the weight up and you're putting it down. I think that that is super important in training all that full capacity of the muscle, full range.
00:45:43
Speaker
Yeah, and I also I was actually just speaking this morning with an athlete about downhills is that I think
00:45:52
Speaker
we're, I mean, we're programmed the uphill is the hard part and the downhill is the reward of the recovery. And actually, if we can shift our mindset, especially if you are very good at going uphill, to thinking about the downhill is something that requires focus and attention, that we can really actually change the perceptions of downhills and think of them as equally if not more important to be mentally prepared,
00:46:17
Speaker
mentally strategizing rather than just huh I made it up the hill now I can just you know recover or I can just kind of take the gas pedal off or not think about it because especially um I mean running aside but in mountain sports I'm sure Steve you can attest to this that when you get to the top of the mountain the the hardest part is still ahead of you of getting back down and so the more that we can frame the way we think about downhill as not so much just this
00:46:47
Speaker
turn the brain off, kind of get down it any way, but rather a tool and a place where you can be the best version of yourself that you can strengthen yourself on. I think that will really benefit quite a lot of people. Yeah, I was thinking back to, you know, I worked my way to UT and be in tour by doing some other races in the Alps, just because it was such a different experience and different terrain.
00:47:13
Speaker
And one of the first ones I did was the Trail Verbier course in Switzerland.
00:47:18
Speaker
which they've changed a little bit, but I remember doing that, I think it was 2015. And the first big descent, you descended 4,000 plus feet in two miles, basically. I remember getting down that descent and I was 16 miles into the race and my legs were just gone, just cooked from that descent. And that's when I realized like, okay, that's what I need to actually really train for and focus on and prepare for.
00:47:45
Speaker
You know, Tor, you have that as well. I remember one descent in the night where you'd go down 2,000 feet of scree in one mile. You know, just how do you get ready for that physically and mentally and be able to prepare for it? So I do think, I mean, obviously the gym work is huge with that because it's a way to get that eccentric contraction that's just hard to do otherwise.
00:48:07
Speaker
And there's some risk to the downhill steep, you know, technical trail training. So you do need to manage that risk, but including that some intentional efforts towards the end, like as you're approaching your race and actually pushing the downs more and doing some of the repeats on some of the steeper parts and.
00:48:25
Speaker
both from building up the muscles to withstand that, but also the technique aspect of it, too, and being able to get your turnover faster and your body more forward and looking ahead like that's that's huge. And it's definitely something that's important to practice and make as much or more than the uphill. So you two have each completed these massive 200 plus mile races. You know, you've touched on it a couple of times.
00:48:53
Speaker
outside of the ups and the downs, what is it about running that far, if anything, that requires a greater strength base and why? So I think the first thing is something I've touched on is that truly from an upper body and a core standpoint, you're just carrying a lot more weight in your pack and that takes a huge toll. I just remember
00:49:19
Speaker
finishing Moab and my upper body was so tired. And it goes to using poles, and I didn't use poles that much in Moab, but for certain sections. And so really having a strong upper body and core is just so crucial. Also, having a strong core truly helps going uphills. I think about this a lot when I'm getting tired, I pull from my core.
00:49:43
Speaker
rather than kind of dragging along. And that to me makes a huge difference. And I think you're just dealing with just so much more fatigue, whether it's mental fatigue, physical fatigue, that the stronger you are, the longer you're able to combat that fatigue level. And also just, you know, you're dealing with muscle wasting, you're dealing with huge calorie deficiency. And so the stronger you can go into it,
00:50:13
Speaker
and kind of combat that. I think it's probably quite similar to an expedition where you know, you're going to come out of it lighter and muscle wasted, but the stronger you are going into it, the better off you will end up. Yeah, I would agree with all that. When I was a tour, you know, they divide it into 750 K sections, basically. And between each of those, there's a life base where usually you'll stop longer and there's more
00:50:42
Speaker
more things around. I remember being in the last life base and it was nighttime and looking around and realizing just the amount of muscular damage that happened over the course of this race. And everybody's just covered in like KT tape. And they have, they're just, you know, everybody's just held together by duct tape at that point, basically. Cause you're just fighting this muscle breakdown and you can't train for that from a running standpoint. I mean, you're going so much longer with so much more up and down hurt than you can train for.
00:51:12
Speaker
So that's really, I think, the most important aspect to try to prepare for. And for my race, I took a pretty nasty fall at mile 125 or so down this just ugly descent, this rocky, gully, steep descent that was also really wet, even though it hadn't been raining. So I don't know why, but I fell on this thing and had to really twist myself to keep from going down and
00:51:41
Speaker
going over this, this wedge basically. And I think I strained my calf at that point in some way. And so that was my 125 and it didn't really bother me that much for the next 50 or so miles. And then it became a much bigger issue that, you know, was challenging towards the end. But I think the extent of the muscular endurance focus I did before, I mean, that's what really got me through. I had enough other strength, enough other muscle groups to pull on that I could
00:52:10
Speaker
you know, keep forward progress basically and get through it. I think if I didn't have that, I don't think I would have made it. I think, you know, it took all the strength that I had to overcome that. And amazing that it didn't really become that significant for so long too. I think that, you know, it was also the benefit of some of the strength work. And looking around, like I said, most everybody seemed to have something similar, you know, a race that long and that hard. You're just going to do a lot of muscular damage and need all the strength you can get to get through it.
00:52:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's so true. I mean, on a different sport in a different time. In 2010, when I had my bad accident, I felt 80 feet.
00:52:56
Speaker
and slammed into the wall, not a ledge or would have been a different result, but I slammed back into the wall and I was badly, badly injured, but I survived and I'm convinced it is because I was so strong. I was in the end of a big training block just in the specific period, getting ready to go to K2 and
00:53:20
Speaker
I was in by far the best shape of my life. And I'm sure that that's what saved me is just how strong I was. And, you know, we used to joke, kind of joke about it, you know, trying to make ourselves hard to kill. That was sort of the joke we would use about what, that's what we were training for. We were trying to make ourselves hard to kill. And, you know, then it shifted as we learned more. That was back in the beginning when we didn't know what we were doing.
00:53:49
Speaker
You know, but I still think these muscular endurance workouts, whether they're done in a gym or carrying a heavy pack or however you do them, they definitely have that feeling where you come out of them.
00:54:01
Speaker
you feel like you get stronger. I do want to highlight this because I do think it's a real risk that they are a little addictive because you do feel so much stronger. It's easy to overdo it. And when I'm coaching athletes, I really err on the side of recovery with them because people will want to do them every three days or something. I'm like, no, no, no.
00:54:30
Speaker
You might feel better, but you're not actually recovered yet. We need to give you plenty of time to fully be into the training effects of the recovery and before we do this big of a load again, especially with the big ones that are accumulating an hour at these zone three heart rates with high loads.
00:54:55
Speaker
they're really debilitating. I mean, you know, you'll be exhausted. I remember doing these and like literally just going home and eating and going to sleep, but you know, I was just full time athlete so I could, I had that luxury, but if you don't, then it's also, you got to consider all the other things you're going to have to do that day and how that is going to affect your recovery. And you know, people need to be very respectful with these workouts and you know,
00:55:25
Speaker
watch themselves and not overdo it because it's also a way to get overtrained and get injured and and I think it can be addictive especially when you're doing them for the first season or so and you're just like like wow this look I feel this pop in my leg that feels so good I want more of that it's like crack you just want more
00:55:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's a I guess a way to translate it to running is I think when people discover speed work, they tend to go, I'll just dump a bunch of speed work and look at how much faster I'm going in that initial curve flattens out very quickly and also leads to injury. Yeah, but now that's great. See if I think there could be no better. Advocation for doing strength work than what you just said.
00:56:19
Speaker
Well, I mean, we'll story like, you know, what you said, well, like, you know, that's, this, this goes back to the value of strength, because one of the things that we didn't talk about that I also think is worth mentioning, and this is more of a general strength thing is, you know,
00:56:39
Speaker
as your muscles fatigue and your muscles are generally what are holding, besides the ligaments, the muscles are holding the joints together, especially badly designed joints like our knees. And so when you lose that strength reserve and you do go down or you do slide or you slip out or whatever, and you get into some funky position,
00:57:06
Speaker
you know, that's where you can get hurt if you don't have enough kind of strength reserve to kind of keep the joints in alignment. And I think that that's a key to longevity in these sports is to stay strong. Yeah. When that happened that tour and I was in the depth of, you know, just being sleep deprived and struggling with that calf during the race, still I was starting to beat myself up of
00:57:34
Speaker
Oh, I should have done more strength because maybe then right this wouldn't have happened. Once I got removed from the race and, you know, was able to think rationally again, after some sleep and many, many calories, I realized like, no, it was a strength that made it so you could go 95 miles on a compromised body. Like that's, that's because of the strength. It's not a deficiency of it. So, um, you ran a hundred mile around a pulled calf. Like, I mean,
00:58:02
Speaker
essentially, right? That's incredible. And what the body can do when- And probably one of the hardest 100 milers you could run. I mean, that's the insane thing about Tor is you take any section, you're like, that would be one of the hardest 50Ks or 100 milers in the US if you just did that one part.
00:58:23
Speaker
to be clear, I don't recommend it. And I would much rather it did not happen. And when I go back, hopefully someday, I will go a lot slower on that descent. So I don't fall again. But yeah. And the funny part is, Will brought this up before we started recording. And I knew exactly what descent he was talking about and agree it is hellish, to say the least. But there is a giant pot of polenta at the bottom. So that is, I mean, it's literally a cauldron of polenta. So that's a
00:58:53
Speaker
That's a pretty big bonus. That's pretty good. I joke with my crew that that section got zero stars. It's the zero star rating on that descent. Yeah, I would, I would agree. Um, I think we should instigate negative stars, honestly, for all of these things like climbing routes, all this stuff. There's certain, certain, certain things. It's just like, that's like negative, negative five. So you know, it could just be like percent.
00:59:19
Speaker
plus one to plus five or minus one to minus five, because things can be so bad that you should get a minus five.
00:59:26
Speaker
So I've started, I don't know when I started thinking about this, but I call it type three fun, where it's like, you know, type one fun, blah, blah, blah, type two fun. I think the type three fun as did not enjoy doing, did not enjoy afterwards, was not a good story, deeply regret, or not deeply regret, but like, do not look back on it fondly. And so I think. Negative stars. Yeah, negative stars, type three fun.
00:59:53
Speaker
So, yes, it, uh, yeah, I think that it's like would not recommend. It's like the negative reviews of the national parks where they're like, there was a bear on the side of the trail. What was it doing there? It's like,
01:00:07
Speaker
There are bears in Yosemite, shocking. Awesome. Well, this has been a great episode and hopefully if you were not convinced that muscular endurance with caution is a great tool for trail running, then I'm not sure what else we can do. So anything you two would like to touch on before we wrap up?
01:00:37
Speaker
Now a great conversation, Will and Alyssa. Thanks for putting it all together. Yeah, it was fun. Awesome. Thank you both. Thank you. Well, thank you for listening to the uphill athlete podcast. If you can rate, review, subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Uh, that's really helpful to us and Steve. It's not just one, but a community together. We are uphill athlete.