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Ben Parker | Runna
283 Plays5 months ago
In our latest podcast episode Michelle chats with Ben Parker who is a Running Coach and one of the Co-Founders of our partners Runna.
Listen to hear Michelle and Ben chat about:
The Runna app.
Strength and conditioning.
Mobility.
Summer training tips.
How to prevent injury and improve performance.
Follow Ben on Instagram
Follow Runna on instagram.
You can claim an extended free trial with Runna using code UKRUNCHAT1 here.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Ben Parker and Runner App
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to this episode of the UK Run Chat podcast. Today we're joined again by Ben Parker from Runner, which is an app to help you get the support that you need as a runner with tailored running plans to achieve your goals. Now, Ben's been on the podcast before talking all about what Runner does, but Ben, for the benefit of those people who haven't listened to our previous episode with you, could you just kind of introduce yourself and recap what Runner does for runners?
00:00:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me again. And yeah, so I'm a running coach and I had the privilege of getting to help, I guess, 40 runners at one time with their running journey. And it was an amazing privilege to do that. And at the same time, it's a relatively time consuming and expensive service.
00:00:40
Speaker
as so many runners will understand. So with Runner, we set out to build a much more affordable and accessible service to help runners all over the world with their running training.
How Runner App Works
00:00:51
Speaker
And so, therefore, Runner is this fully automated yet personalized running coaching app.
00:00:56
Speaker
We'll learn everything about you from your schedule, how far you can run, how fast you can run, what you're training for, and all of these different things that we need to know. And then we'll automatically run that through our algorithms to determine what is optimal for you to go on to achieve your goals, breaking down all your workouts by doing their distances and their paces, sending that straight into your calendar for you, sending it straight to your smartwatch if you've got one for you, and really just helping you through
00:01:24
Speaker
every step of the journey to get from where you are today to to your goal and then as of course because it's all done automatically it means that we can do a fraction of the price so doing I used to be in the position where I was charging kind of 20 pound a week or doing near on a hundred pound a month
00:01:39
Speaker
We're now doing able to coach, I mean, well over a few hundred thousand runners and deliver that all at a package that costs only a hundred pounds for the year. And also people can subscribe monthly, 15.99 a month and have that training that they're doing in their pocket. And additionally, it's very much worth noting if you get inspired by this conversation, you can use the UK run chat code and that will give you a two week free trial to check out how runner works as well. Oh, that's fantastic. So yeah, do feel free to go and give that a go and see what you think.
00:02:09
Speaker
So how did you get into coaching yourself,
Ben Parker's Journey into Running Coaching
00:02:11
Speaker
Ben? How did kind of it all start? Yeah, I guess like I very much found my love of fitness probably around 15, 16 and really got into the gym and really focused on building my muscles to be big and strong as I could and very quickly realised this was my passion and absolutely loved it. And just the endorphins of exercise and progress initially focused on getting bigger and stronger.
00:02:35
Speaker
then off at uni I very much kind of worked out that I wanted a career in coaching and wasn't going to use my kind of academic geography degree that I was studying for at the time and immediately after graduating qualified as a personal trainer and then quite quickly got a job staying in Southampton which is where I've done my degree.
00:02:54
Speaker
working in a kind of private PT studio under an ex-professional runner. And initially, that was the way to kind of start kind of crafting my running coaching knowledge, starting spending time with some of his running clients. And at the same time, I was relatively capable as a runner as well. So I was able to do these one on one sessions and pay some of their clients around
00:03:14
Speaker
And that was really the first kind of tickle for running coaching as such. I did that for nine months or so, and then I actually went out to run the fitness department at a five-star hotel in Greece, which was amazing, because we'd have about 600 guests, but 100 of them, let's say, would get involved in the fitness classes, the cycle sessions, and the runs. And I would lead up doing a morning run timetable. Some runs were 30, some runs were 45 minutes, and we'd do a weekly interval session. And it was just such a fantastic way to
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, learn but also work with so many different people that then transpired that doing runners would come out to the hotel over the two years I was working there and Relatively they would head off home and then be messaging me asking them what they should keep on doing So it kind of accidentally became this online Service that I started to deliver to the the keen beans who stayed at the hotel and after my two years in Greece I then returned back to London and then kind of did things a lot more than
00:04:09
Speaker
officially and became a running coach, sent it out of Richmond Park and got my Richmond Park license.
Evolution and Growth of Runner App
00:04:14
Speaker
And yeah, I was doing a lot of in-person one-on-one coaching and online coaching, qualified as an Ironman coach, an England athletics running coach, lots of other qualifications as well. And yeah, that was a very happy time doing that for a few years. And like I said, at the start, coaching kind of up to 40 people.
00:04:31
Speaker
And one of the very interesting people that I had the privilege of getting to work with and getting to help was Joshua Patterson, who went on to go and do the challenge of running a marathon in every city in the UK in consecutive days. He did 76 marathons in 76 days and a few other challenges building up to that challenge.
00:04:50
Speaker
And so that very much put the spotlight on me and my coaching to some extent. And therefore, I was only having to turn people away, which was really frustrating, which really demonstrated that there was this huge demand and huge opportunity to deliver coaching in a much, much better way.
00:05:08
Speaker
And so it's now genuinely such a privilege to know that we're able to deliver something infinitely better than I was able to do before. And it's 12 times cheaper, which is just such a nice feeling. And it was always frustrating having so many of my friends and family really getting into their running and doing, Ben, can I have a plan? And I don't have time to write one. And I also felt too embarrassed to charge them for it.
00:05:31
Speaker
And now they're all able to get their training through the app. And my elder brother, who's relatively followed a runner plan nonstop for the last three years, he's slightly funny in a way that he'll even text me and apologize if he runs 100 meters too far or not far enough. But he now wins parkrun every single week. And it's just amazing to kind of see the effect that it's able to have. And I guess that's kind of relatively why runners being able to grow in the way that it has as a business as well.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's fantastic. So you started runner basically to help more people. So you, you are three years old now. Is that right? Yeah. So we launched, um, initially the business was called the run buddy. Uh, and we launched that in March of 2021. So just over three years ago, and we spent the first year, basically a website where people could come onto the website, tell us about their.
00:06:20
Speaker
their schedule, how fast they are and what they're training for and buy a personalized PDF. And then we emailed it to them 15 minutes later and off they went and printed out their PDF and followed it for a year.
00:06:30
Speaker
It went well, and we managed to help about 1,000 people in that first year and raise a bit of investment, which we were able to put into the development of the app. And then since then, it's been a bit of a roller coaster. We've been under the name Runner and on the App Store for two years and a month now. And yeah, we've got kind of a few hundred thousand people training with us in 180 different countries. And the bit that baffles me is that we've got more than half of our customers not in the UK.
00:06:57
Speaker
which genuinely is absolutely crazy because the number of people I know outside of the UK is very small. I guess that's the power of being in the modern day with social media and how interconnected everyone is digitally. It's just a really amazing
00:07:14
Speaker
position that we get to be in and we're just super privileged here that we get to help so many people wherever they are in the world and doing that's people getting started training for their first 5k and at the same time people at the other end of the spectrum doing the marathon the subs or a crazy ultra marathon or their 10th marathon and
00:07:29
Speaker
And relatively, when we think about how we make runner fantastic, the same things that someone at one end of the spectrum needs are very, very similar to someone at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of obviously they need the perfect plan. But that needs to adjust around how many times a week they're running, how fast they are, and how far they can run.
00:07:48
Speaker
But then at the same time, to make it motivating and easy to follow and interesting is very similar. So we want to keep you accountable. No matter how fast and strong you are, it's still hard to get out the door sometimes. And if you're right at the start of that journey wanting to do your first park run, it's still hard to get out the door sometimes. So we need to be thinking about it from a motivating perspective. We also want to make it really easy to know when to speed up and when to slow down and how to track your intervals.
00:08:13
Speaker
some people at one end of the spectrum are going to have a really smart smart watch and some people are doing just downloading this app on their phone. So we need to be building it to be really easy to fall in in those ways for both ends of the spectrum.
Personalization and AI in Runner App
00:08:25
Speaker
And then as we look ahead, there's lots of exciting things that we're building into Runner.
00:08:29
Speaker
depending on when this podcast launches. We've got a really exciting one that's about to launch and it's what we call our runner AI. So we're looking back at the past four to six weeks of your workouts and then using that data to continue to inform if your plan needs adjusting and doing that automatically for you.
00:08:47
Speaker
And doing that is going to be super valuable for someone at the start of their journey. Is their plan not progressing fast enough because they're adapting so quickly? Or is it at the other end of the spectrum when someone's actually really struggling to hit these paces, let's adjust their plan for you? Just like doing a really good coach would be texting you back and adjusting your workouts as a result, we can do that.
00:09:07
Speaker
And during the one step beyond that we're really excited to look ahead to, we'll be doing down the line. Runner will be able to adapt around your sleep, around your stress, around your holidays, around your injuries, and even around your menstrual cycle as a woman. So there's so much that we can do. And that just makes us so excited and relatively why. We're kind of all guns blazing. We're hiring relatively quickly. And as a result, we want to build these brilliant features to continue to make Runner
00:09:34
Speaker
a better service for all of our current customers and hopefully all of the future customers that we get to go on to help as well.
00:09:40
Speaker
Yeah, sounds like it's really popular. What's the kind of, what would you say is the most popular distance or goal that people have on the app at the moment? Yeah, it's a really good question. And I guess like, I think a lot of people who don't know much about runner would probably assume that we're this really elitist service that helps people do their marathon training. And it's really not the case that we probably see like 10 or 15% of our customers being marathon runners.
00:10:06
Speaker
Our most popular plan would be people training for half marathons I guess you've got the doing the die-hard people are looking to get a bit quicker at the half marathon It's also an aspirational distance for someone at the start of their running journey to go on to achieve But relatively we see a really nice mix of customers
00:10:21
Speaker
training for our kind of couch to 5k journeys, which are completely free. Then we've got our five tens, half marathons, which are all relatively evenly popular marathon plans. And then the ultra marathon plans are a lot less popular. But what we also see, which is, again, such a satisfying thing that we just love to see when we kind of look at the data on the whole, is that so many people will start out at one end of the spectrum.
00:10:45
Speaker
And then they'll find their love of running, which is just such a huge privilege
Changing Perceptions of Running
00:10:50
Speaker
for us. And then they go on to train for a 10K train for half marathon, do their first marathon and think, right now I can do an ultra marathon. And I think.
00:10:58
Speaker
between anyone who's done an ultramarathon has trained really hard and really well for a number of years. But they're not born differently. They just had the resources. They've worked really hard at it. And relatively, we're putting all of those resources in a really easy way to go and grab them. And that's what makes it relatively so exciting. And I guess it's also not rocket science, really. I think so many people
00:11:25
Speaker
will have ran. It's such a common theme, which is that people run because it's a healthy way to lose weight around the block half an hour, two or three times a week. And they'll do it after work in the dark. And it's not that fun. You run as hard as you can. You don't get that much fitter because you're not doing the right things. You don't love it. But it's something that you kind of feel like you should keep doing to be healthy.
00:11:45
Speaker
And instead, that type of person that hears about runner, whether it's doing a friend raving about it or doing one of the race partners or hearing about it on this podcast, and they think, let's go give it a go. And even with a week or a two week free trial, just by getting the right resources, essentially, and being told, don't always run as hard as you can around the block for 30 minutes. Why don't you do an easy 20 minute run?
00:12:06
Speaker
And then, OK, now let's go and do some intervals. And these are the intervals that are right for you. And they're hard, but they're just about achievable. So then when you feel like you're making progress, you've had a bit of variety, a bit of interestingness in the workout, you do that for a week or two and you can already start to see your body improving. And not only your body, but your mind and the satisfaction that comes from doing those pieces. And I think
00:12:30
Speaker
that all sticks together. And that's what creates the growth of runner that we've seen. And yeah, relatively in a short period of time since launching the app, we've now been able to go on to help a lot of people. Yeah. So it's a variety of training that's helping people realize that they can enjoy running. Is that right? Yeah, I think so. And even last weekend, so we're one of the recommended or with the recommended training provider of the great run events. And so I was at the great run in Manchester and it was just so amazing to have
00:12:57
Speaker
people come along to us and chat to us at the stand and say hi, and they recognize me from being Coach Ben inside the app. And just tell us that, yes, they've got a PB, yes, they've lost some weight, but that they're loving running. And I think everything that we try and do in the way that we build the app is to build it in a way that helps someone love running in the way that I'm sure you do and I do. And I think
00:13:21
Speaker
relatively it's a huge privilege to be able to enjoy exercise doing so many people force themselves out the door once a week because it's what doing the government recommends or whatever and and if we're able to translate this thing that is really hard for so many people into a way that is fun get them excited looking forward to the next workout like we're going to make people live a happier life and a healthier life and they'll probably live a longer life as well and i think like
00:13:50
Speaker
That's not the thing that people realize they're signing up for when they're doing purchasing a Beers Runner subscription. But that's why, that's why relatively as a team where we work really hard and doing, we do a lot of long days, late nights and doing, it's a lot of stress running a fast growing company, but it's doing in, in infinitely worthwhile given the real human effect that we get to
Innovative Coaching Strategies at Runner
00:14:13
Speaker
have.
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, so tell us about your coaching team, then you've got nine coaches at the moment. Yeah, there's a lot of us. So relatively, there's, I guess, kind of like a number of different kind of Olympic athletes. And we've got another another amazing American coach yet yet to be announced, but relatively happy to share because we'll probably posted a posted on social media and plug her into the app within the next few days. But yeah, so obviously, I'm kind of like the head coach. And we set up the business with myself and
00:14:41
Speaker
technical co-founder and that was that was it for the first year when we were that PDF services as the RunBuddy. We had Steph Davis come and join us first up so she joined us still under the RunBuddy days when we were we were on the PDF. So we had Steph on the podcast yeah that was an interesting experience. Steph's doing a phenomenally inspiring and such a perfect addition to the team with us at Runner because not only is she an incredible athlete and incredibly
00:15:07
Speaker
inspiring woman, but she's also an incredibly impressive business woman as well. Like she was working between three days a week in finance while racing at the Olympics. She works during all of her working time now is with Runner and she doesn't work in finance anymore, but like taking that brain means that she can understand coaching at a level that's relatively that much more complex than we need to understand as a conventional coach because we're
00:15:31
Speaker
been changing one thing in the algorithms and in the engine and how does that translate to doing runners across the spectrum. We've got Beth Potter, she's a relatively hot favourite to win the Olympic triathlon in Paris, she's been with us for nearly two years as well. Obviously London's very popular Anya Culling works very much with us and we've just launched our
00:15:52
Speaker
podcast with myself and her as a waiter. She's been chatting to some of the really inspiring and amazing people training with Runner and different ambassadors and different people in the running community. And then we've excitingly just announced our lead coach in Australia, so Genevieve Gregson, who's an incredible 227 marathon runner again.
00:16:12
Speaker
training towards the Paris Olympics, so she's kind of helping support us and excitingly we've also got Colleen Quigley who's joining us and yet to be announced, hopefully she will be by the time this goes out but otherwise this is a spoiler but yeah Colleen Quigley is joining us and she'll be one of our lead coaches in the US and there's a few other doing people working behind the scenes and everything else there but yeah it's a really exciting kind of makeup as a team and adding lots of exciting people and I guess like
00:16:41
Speaker
The coaching sits in two halves. It's obviously bringing great coaching logic in from doing real world amazing athletes and coaches, but then also coupling that with doing great machine learning and doing engineers who can help digest that logic and build it into these automated algorithms that essentially the more and more AI we're using now to really be at the forefront of setting the right coaching. And I think we really have this really exciting opportunity when you start to think about that.
00:17:11
Speaker
which is almost that we have a huge number of customers training with us and we have the data as to how well they're performing with their sessions. Are they running too fast or too slow? And so much of running coaching is theories that haven't been proven by science.
00:17:28
Speaker
in terms of doing should someone who's six foot two versus someone who's five foot eight be doing 1k reps four weeks out from a marathon or should they be doing one mile reps and like there's no black and white answer to that question doing some coaches will have a favorite session and some coaches doing some athletes will
00:17:46
Speaker
But we can start to really quantify on a mass scale, looking at the data, with someone doing this workout versus that workout, which one is more likely to lead to improved performance? Which one's more likely to lead to injury? How does that change based on height and weight and age and gender and all of these different things? And relatively, we think we have the opportunity to be the ones writing the
00:18:09
Speaker
the running coaching books in five years time to be able to answer the grey area which sits between a lot of these kind of coaching philosophies and to be able to to be able to clearly and scientifically be able to to to take running coaching to the next level and I think relatively almost like distilling everything that we're trying to do back down is doing the amazing experience that someone like Beth gets to have training for the Olympics where she's got doing a huge number of resources different coaches
00:18:36
Speaker
Do you mean data scientists analyzing all these different bits about her? That helps her to perform at that level, but it's not accessible. She's one of few people in the world in a Western world country and a well-funded Olympic team. But we want to give that experience to everyone. And relatively, it's not impossible. There's a long way to go. And I'm not saying that everyone who trains a runner today gets the same experience that Beth gets. But that's exactly what we're trying to do and trying to build and build it in a way that is
00:19:05
Speaker
amazing, inspiring, fun and also as accessible as possible. Yeah, that is so exciting actually all that data at your fingertips just waiting to kind of
00:19:16
Speaker
be shared, really. That's really exciting research that you're doing in real time, isn't it? No, exactly. And I think you can look at the real time effect that doing Strava as an amazing business gets to have. They get to shape London as to where they put their bike lanes because they know where people are commuting. And I think it's so easy in the modern day to get worried about tech and social media and chatting to grandparents. They'll get so worried, oh, it was better in my day. But at the same time,
00:19:43
Speaker
We're already able to help people in a way, doing 95% of the people that train with us at Runner have never worked with a coach before. And that's doing, we're helping more people to enjoy running and to become better runners. And that's going to be fantastic for the industry. People are going to be buying more shoes, signing up to more races, buying more tech and smartwatches and doing
00:20:04
Speaker
And if someone loves running, they're probably going to be pestering all their friends, telling them why they need to get into running too. So it's a really good place to be. And at the same time, yeah, with that data and the more people that we're able to support, the more we're able to continue improving and supporting people better in the long term. Yeah. Okay. So let's get onto a bit of coaching now and aim in towards autumn races, because we're kind of at the start of summer.
Adapting Running Plans for Summer
00:20:31
Speaker
We've obviously got people who will be
00:20:33
Speaker
focused on maybe an autumn half marathon or a marathon. How does kind of running change over the summer? Do we need to be adapting anything? What do we need to be thinking about as we're gearing up towards an autumn race?
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah, so I guess kind of like it very much depends on kind of a few things, one of which is going to be, I guess, our our motivations and then also where we're based in the world. So for some people, summer could be a really hot place, like maybe in, let's say Dubai, where it's actually too hot to get outside and to be doing your really long runs.
00:21:05
Speaker
And at the same time, summer could be somewhere like in the UK, where it's a much more enjoyable place to go running, if you're someone like me who wants to go outside running in the daylight and doesn't mind a little bit of sunshine from time to time. But so first of all, I would really understand what it is that you love and also understanding what the change in the seasons means for you.
00:21:24
Speaker
because if it means you're not going to be able to get out and do your long runs, maybe you should be planning your races and planning your goals, not necessarily just races, around that. Additionally, it might be the case that for you, do you mean you're someone not at that end of the spectrum that's thinking about races all the time and everything, and instead you're thinking about balancing running with being a happy, healthy person. And it might be for you, some as an opportunity to spend more time with your friends. So then maybe you should be thinking about a goal of
00:21:48
Speaker
do you mean maintaining your fitness over the summer and do you mean balancing a nice social life so i think the key is really understanding what's coming up for you have you got a busy period at work is summer an opportunity to train more is it an opportunity to do and get inside and run on the treadmill in the air con so understanding all of those things is going to be really key
00:22:05
Speaker
first of all, but then relatively if we're doing the kind of person like you mentioned who's maybe signing up for a half marathon or a goal and we're doing it at the end of summer, I would say like we kind of want to look to do the kind of standard things which is going to help us to get stronger and get fitter. So thinking about starting to build up our mileage gradually. So typically looking to kind of increase our mileage by like 10% a week is a healthy rule and not increasing any faster than that.
00:22:33
Speaker
still making sure that we're taking an easy week, every kind of maybe three to five weeks. Relatively we don't want to just keep adding mileage, keep adding intensity every week, otherwise you're going to first of all reach infinite miles, it's going to be completely unsustainable, but also we need to take a break.
00:22:49
Speaker
And then also making sure that we're getting a nice balance of kind of the fun sessions, like I mentioned. So we want to be making sure we're doing some doing lots of our running kind of easy, making sure we're looking to build up our endurance and doing some of these longer sessions, but also getting a mix of some some faster work. So that's some tempo, some interval workouts and some hills, depending on on what we're training for.
00:23:09
Speaker
And all of that is going to be super, super valuable.
The Importance of Strength and Mobility Training
00:23:12
Speaker
And then, obviously, relatively, as a runner, people can get injured. So we want to be really thinking about what we can do to reduce the likelihood of getting injured. And I think for someone who loves running,
00:23:25
Speaker
Therefore it's really worth investing in avoiding getting injured so you can love your running as much as possible because if we're injured and we're gonna spend two months out because we don't do any of the extra stuff. Relatively you're gonna be sad for those two months you don't get to the thing you love so it's really worth thinking about that doing doing doing those extra things and the key things to be thinking about that.
00:23:44
Speaker
whether it's a summer or whatever time of year, would be prioritizing your sleep, looking to get as regular eight hours of sleep as possible every night, looking to do some mobility work, making sure that you've got really good kind of range of motion in the gym, and then also through any kind of recovery movements you're doing, whether that's Pilates, yoga, or some stretch work, and then predominantly looking to do some strength and conditioning work, and that's going to be a really valuable way
00:24:08
Speaker
to prepare the body for whatever goal that you've got coming up at the end of summer or at any point in the year and making sure that the body's strong to be able to absorb the impact of essentially jumping up and down on one foot after the other for 20 minutes, a half an hour or three, four hours long. And it's not an easy task and therefore we've really got to make sure that we're doing those extra things to be able to enjoy running year round or as much as possible.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so you mentioned mobility there, you mentioned stretching, you mentioned strength and conditioning. For those out there who have perhaps never tried any of those, could you just kind of break those down and just explain what the difference is and why they're important? Yeah, so I guess kind of when we think about stretching, there's kind of a number of different ways that we can stretch.
00:24:52
Speaker
relatively stretching would be doing an example would be bending over and reaching towards the ground and if you do this you're going to stretch kind of two main muscle groups you're going to stretch down the backs of your legs so the backs of your thighs your hamstrings and you'll also stretch
00:25:05
Speaker
through your lower back. And relatively, as humans, doing a lot of us sitting down and we're sitting down right now, we're going to get tight in certain areas. And it's really important that we kind of undo, to some extent, the tightness that that comes so that we can then achieve really good positions and postures with our body. Naturally, when we're standing up and running, we're in a very different position to that of sitting.
00:25:30
Speaker
So we want to be standing up nice and tall, driving our hips forwards, pulling our shoulders back a little bit, chest nice and proud. And to achieve that, we've got to have relatively a good range of motion through our hips. And so with that in mind, if we spend a lot of our time seated, which is going to create tight hips, we need to then look to open out our hips.
00:25:48
Speaker
and so we can do this in a number of ways. We could do some static stretches so we might want to kind of kneel with one leg out behind us holding a kind of a lunge position and then by pushing your hips forwards you can stretch into your hip flexors and you can hold that position and you can slowly work a little bit further forward into that and then do the same on the other side and that would relatively be a good way to
00:26:09
Speaker
build your range of motion to then be able to hold a really nice strong position when you're running. Pilates and yoga are both ways of, I guess, exercising as a way to work on our mobility, which is going to be really valuable. They're slightly different in the way that Pilates will involve a little bit more strength and a little bit more core strength. Again, really valuable to help support us as runners. There's no one is better than the other. If you're looking to do a bit more mobility, you could try them both out and work out which one you enjoy more.
00:26:37
Speaker
because I think the key is with these things and like the majority of us are not professional athletes and the most important thing is that we love what we're doing because the key for us to be a great runner in five years time or ten years time is that we run for the next five or ten years and you're not going to run for five or ten years if you hate it and all you do is run around the block for 20 minutes three times in a row. So doing do some polarities do some yoga do some stretching if you enjoy it and if you don't do a little bit of it just to stay in good nick.
00:27:05
Speaker
Additionally, when we think about the mobility side of things, we can actually achieve a lot of that range of motion via strength training as well. So naturally, if we wanted to stretch our hips, we could do a lunge. So by doing a lunge where you take one leg out in front of the other in a nice big long step, essentially, and go up and down, as you go down, you're stretching your hips. But as you go back up, you're strengthening through your quads and through your glutes and doing engaging through your core and your back.
00:27:32
Speaker
So it's a really good way to strengthen the muscles that we need to be strong for when we're running, but at the same time also achieve that good mobility, that good posture that's going to be really valuable for us. So if we are intentional about the strength and conditioning that we do, we are then able to get a lot of the benefits that we would get from the stretching or Pilates or mobility. And that's where the word mobility is valuable, which is that we can achieve a lot of that mobility
00:27:59
Speaker
through doing functional strength movements. If all we did was squat up and down, we would get very strong in our quads, but we're not actually strengthening through other areas, and we're not also mobilizing through the hips. But if we do our squats and we do some lunges, we're then going to be getting the strength through the quads and the glutes, but we will mobilize through the hips as well.
00:28:20
Speaker
And then if you were to add in another movement, like a deadlift or a straight leg deadlift, we can then strengthen our hamstrings and stretch or mobilize our hamstrings at the same time. And as you can see, you can start to make sure that within your routine of strength or routine of strength and pilates and yoga, we should be looking to make sure that we're getting doing lots of strength gains across all of the major muscles that we want to be working as a runner.
00:28:45
Speaker
but additionally making sure we're mobilizing through those key areas such as our hips, our hamstrings, those are the two most important when we think about setting up for a really good strong posture. Additionally, it's worth noting that not only within Runner will we help everyone by setting them the perfect run session to do, but you can also add Pilates and yoga and you can add your personalized S&C routine to your Runner plan
00:29:09
Speaker
and whether that's you wanting to do strength and conditioning at home with body weight or some kettlebells at home or you've got access to the full suite at the gym, you can tell us and we'll build you your plan for you as well. But whatever you're doing with your running, it's super important that we do look to do some strength and conditioning and make sure that we work on our mobility and that's going to be super, super valuable to mean that we avoid getting injured and we get to do the thing that we love that much more.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's fantastic. And I think strength and conditioning will also improve running performance as well, if that's what athletes want. Absolutely. Absolutely. Like doing so many of us are focused on getting a PV, getting faster. And yeah, not only is strength and conditioning going to be a really powerful way to run more, which is obviously going to feed back into us getting stronger because we're
00:29:55
Speaker
to be able to do all of our training, but we're going to be stronger. We're going to have more power to push off the ground. We're going to be more efficient at absorbing that impact from one step and rebounding off into the next. So yeah, it's going to mean that you can run longer, you can run faster, and you can also reduce the likelihood of getting injured, which will mean that you can then do more running as well.
00:30:13
Speaker
And the more running that we do relatively is also going to feed back into that progress as well. So it's a very much a strong positive feedback cycle. And again, relatively strengthening the strength and conditioning and mobility doesn't need to be boring. It doesn't need to be the same thing over and over again. And again, that's where working with a coach or finding a
00:30:31
Speaker
solution that can help support is going to be a way for you to hopefully enjoy doing these complementary things that much more. And hopefully you can go from maybe being a runner who runs three or four times a week to being a runner who runs three or four times a week and does some complementary strength, does some mobility, and actually then you don't need to spend two months of every year injured, which is doing such a common path for so many runners.
00:30:54
Speaker
Yeah, and that's what, you know, we want to be consistent as runners at the end of the day, don't we? We want to, it's the consistency that helps us get better. So if you're spending
00:31:03
Speaker
few weeks out injured then that's not going to help at all is it? You're kind of back to square one when you get back. Yeah exactly and particularly for anyone doing in the kind of slightly older demographics like obviously as we get beyond the ages of 40 or 45 like relatively our muscle mass and our bodies will slowly start to kind of degenerate over over time until during where doing
00:31:26
Speaker
Yeah, and it follows a particular trajectory. And relatively, with that in mind, a really, really valuable way to be able to enjoy healthy, strong running for as long as possible is to really prioritize that strength and conditioning. We're going to be more prone to injury, and we're going to struggle in terms of building up that power as we age. So by doing good strength and conditioning work is going to be a really, really valuable way to reduce and to offset that kind of like change in the body.
00:31:56
Speaker
Yeah, so how much guidance does the runner app give the individual on how much strength training and mobility to do? Or is that more up to the individual? How does that work? Yeah, so relatively we'll encourage doing all of our runners to just like I'm saying now to do some do some of their mobility work. We will allow anyone to add during regular yoga sessions or regular polarity sessions onto their plan. They don't need to. You can stick with just being a runner, but relatively giving all the resources to
00:32:24
Speaker
and encouraging and educating people as to why that they're going to be valuable. So then they can have that from a mobility side of things. And then additionally, you can add, run a strength conditioning into your plan. And so the way that this would work is you can tell us, first of all, how long you want your strength sessions to be. You can tell us your level of experience in terms of your experience doing different movements. Are you a diehard warrior in the gym who knows how to throw the weights around above your head? Or are you looking to learn and build up your experience?
00:32:51
Speaker
Are you wanting to train in your local park without any equipment or are you training in your living room? Are you at the gym? Whatever it's going to be, you tell us that and we'll conjure up the perfect plan for you, work you through it in terms of clear demonstrations and how to do each movement, doing how many reps you should be doing, how many sets you should be doing and really guiding you through that process. And additionally, if you're the kind of person who maybe wants to do some strength at home and
00:33:13
Speaker
sometimes into the gym when the kids are out of the way or whatever it's going to be, you can tell us and adjust your program at a moment's notice and we'll kind of perfectly sort that out for you. And then the other one as well is that like we've all heard doing warming up for our workouts is going to be a really important piece as well. And for every run session you do, we'll guide you through a very quick kind of dynamic warm up if you'd like to add it onto your plan and then also a static stretch to finish as well. So really kind of making sure that we're getting you ready for sessions and then helping you recover or start that recovery process at the end of a session
Flexibility and Goal Setting in Runner App
00:33:42
Speaker
as well.
00:33:42
Speaker
So really making sure that we're trying to cover all those bases. And at the end of the day, we understand that not all runners are going to do what's optimal. So relatively, we want to build what's optimal from the running side, from the mobility side, from the strength side, and then relatively let the runner decide whether they want to be running five times a week and doing no strength, or whether they want to be doing two runs a week and three strength sessions, and doing however many mobilities they want to add in as well. So yeah, that's hopefully a nice
00:34:09
Speaker
I guess, kind of summary of how it works inside the app. But again, you can you can try it out with two weeks of free with the UK run check code. Yeah, perfect. And so just yeah, just one last question for me, really, is how, how involved does runner get in kind of suggesting a goal for, for say, a half marathon or a marathon race or a 10K?
00:34:30
Speaker
because that can be quite hard to establish what you're capable of, can't it? How does that work within the app? Yeah, no, absolutely. So, relatively, we have kind of like, I probably like two different groups of people. Some people will download the app knowing that they've signed up for the great Manchester run, and they want to build a plan for it. And with that in mind, we want to make that super easy for them that way. And then we also get people who come in because they want to become a healthier runner, or they want to become stronger, but they don't have a goal in mind.
00:34:54
Speaker
So with that in mind, we really want to be serving both people in the right way. And then relatively, we have people getting into running at the other end of the spectrum as well with a couch to 5K journeys, people doing what we call our get fit plans, or we also have our running maintenance plans. So relatively making sure that we're understanding as much as we can about the runner at the start, and then building them up on that trajectory. And at the same time, we also know how
00:35:20
Speaker
valuable it can be to runners to have a goal. And like doing one of the things that I would always do as a coach would be to encourage one of my clients or encourage a client to pick a race, sign up for it and tell all their friends about it. Because by telling their friends or telling their husband or whatever it's gonna be, you can't back out and you're that much more likely to actually go and do your sessions.
00:35:37
Speaker
Um, so we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll do the same. We'll help kind of, um, support runners in different ways. We work with lots of different race companies and can help, um, kind of promote some, some amazing races that we, we're really privileged to get to, to work with as well. Um, and then another one would be kind of parkrun, like it's so, such a valuable resource doing parkrun as, as, as, as an institution. And, um, something that I've been so lucky to, to, to, to mean, to have as part of my love of running over the last kind of five or 10 years. And I think I'm.
00:36:04
Speaker
I'm not up there in the thousands, but I think I'm on 70 park runs. And that's, again, a really valuable thing that we can start to encourage. And if someone's got a long run or doing a tempo session on a Saturday, we can go and suggest, why don't you go and do this at park run? Because relatively getting someone at the start of their running journey
00:36:21
Speaker
involved into that wider kind of running community can be such a great way for them to meet running friends or for them to get the excitement of what it's like to go and push themselves surrounded by other people. And that might foster the love that then they go on to sign up for a 10K race and then onto marathons and everything else. So, yeah, relatively, we want to be feeding these things in the right way and doing understanding that there's 101 different motivations and not everyone wants to be to be racing. And some people just want to run on their own and they want the accountability of having a plan.
00:36:50
Speaker
So yeah, try and get the balance right and there's more that we'll be able to continue doing as we build some really exciting features into the app over the time ahead as well. Yeah, fantastic.
Runner's Community Engagement and Global Expansion
00:36:59
Speaker
So you just had a big meet-up in Manchester, hadn't you? At Hackney Half as well in May. Yeah, so we've had it.
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think fundamentally like communities, the reason why runners been able to grow because relatively runners are like we said, like a pretty noisy group of people. If you run a marathon and you're probably queuing for your coffee, you're probably going to tell everyone in the queue around you, oh, by the way, I've done a marathon, that kind of type of person, I guess. And with that in mind, like, yeah, relatively, it's amazing to bring our community members together. And it's an amazing opportunity for us as a business to chat to some of our customers where
00:37:39
Speaker
relatively, we don't get to see them in the day-to-day as a coach would do in maybe a conventional capacity. And again, like I said, we work with some of these amazing races and that's ways that runners are able to hear about us as well. But yeah, for Hackney, we had doing a few thousand people had trained with us for it. And so yeah, we had our stand at the start line. So loads of runners coming over to say hi, to ask some last minute questions. They were able to see and buy some of our runner merch.
00:38:06
Speaker
and then go and do the run and come back and tell us how they got on. I got to race as well and I got to run around with Anya which was super nice and we both did a 119 half marathon time which was nice and it was pretty funny running around the streets of London with a very much a celebrity of everyone running past would shout,
00:38:25
Speaker
And then I'd kind of hear the whisper as I went past being like, oh, I think that's that bloke in my app, which is quite funny. But yeah, so we did that in Hackney. And then the week after that, or last weekend, we had the great Manchester Run, so another one of the race partners that we work with. So people signing up for the Great Run events will get recommended to train with Runner as well. And so yeah, we had to stand there. So we were able to chat to some of our runners and give them some last minute top tips and give them a nice big hug and hear their story at the finish line.
00:38:54
Speaker
Additionally, we did a ShakeOut run the day before, and we had a few hundred people come along to that, which was a super nice way to, again, settle some nerves before the run and chat to some more of our customers. So, yeah, I think.
00:39:07
Speaker
relatively during we're an online service and so many of our runners are going to listen to us on podcasts and chat to us through the app but not meet us face to face but relatively where we can. It's a really nice thing for us to do and engage with our kind of like most kind of loyal and diehard fans and fundamentally as we grow and like I said we've got more customers not in the UK than in the UK we're looking to do more and more meetups in the rest of the world and we've already done our first in Australia and in America and
00:39:33
Speaker
relatively will continue to do to do more and more supporting runners globally while also continuing to do more amazing exciting things in the UK as well. Oh fantastic well yeah thank you so much for coming on and chatting to us what have you got coming up over the next well for the rest of the year I guess is there plenty more I guess and anything you can share with us
00:39:53
Speaker
Well, I've already shared two bits, which is our amazing Colleen quickly coming to join us as the face of the runner coaching team over in the US. We've also got our runner AI feature that's about to launch in people's apps probably within the next two to four weeks from when we're recording this today. That will be looking back at people's previous workouts, adjusting paces and keeping them on track that way. We've got loads that we're working on and probably without
00:40:21
Speaker
Boring everyone and going through the roadmap. Yeah, relatively everything we think about every day as a business is how we can make the running coaching experience as best as possible and as easy and as accessible and fun as possible. So with that in mind, make sure you keep updating your app and you'll get to see all the new features and follow us on social media and we can be telling you what we're getting up to as well. Yeah, and do go and try out the extended free trial of two weeks using the code UKWENchat.
00:40:50
Speaker
So thank you so much, Ben, for your time today. I hope that all of you out there have enjoyed listening to this episode. And let us know if you're already a runner user as well. Until next time, goodbye.