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Training, Stress, and Success for Female Athletes with Uphill Athlete Coach Alison Naney
1.5k Plays5 years ago
Uphill Athlete Coach Alison Naney has been running ultras since 2003 and coaching a broad range of athletes since 2006 through training groups, clinics, camps, and women’s retreats. Along the way she’s had two daughters, and shifted her mindset around training to fit around her family and work while still accomplishing big personal goals with her own running. Her experience as a massage therapist also guides her coaching practice to help athletes have a sustainable, long-term approach to training.
In this session Alison will discusses:
Balancing training with other life stressors for long term success and health.
Training through the menstrual cycle.
How life stress affects training.
Training for yourself rather than to fit in.
Injury prevention the key to success.
Weight loss and training.
The importance of patience. The 80/20 iceberg concept.
Fat adaptation through fasted training: is it appropriate for many women?
Postpartum recovery and return to training.
Training through pregnancy.
This was originally recorded with a (great!) live audience via Zoom on May 28, 2020.
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Transcript
Introduction to Allison Naney
00:00:00
Speaker
So I'd like to start off by introducing Allison Naney. Allison has been a coach for uphill athlete for the last several years. And Allison comes to us from a trail mount running background. She's one of our one of the two or three main running coaches that we use. And we
00:00:25
Speaker
We do, uh, she has a lot of experience in that. She's been doing, uh, ultra since 2003. So a real long time. She's done a bunch of the races, you know, classics from like local Pacific Northwest classics, like the Chuck and nut 50 K to the rut out in Montana, broken arrow sky race, just too many to list as well as just sort of personal, uh, long runs like.
00:00:49
Speaker
Wonderland Trail and these other great trail running, mountain running objectives. So Alison brings a great perspective to the whole coaching staff here at uphill athlete and a lot of really good experience. And with that, I'm going to let Scott take it away. And Scott, why don't you get us started? Thanks again, everyone, for joining.
00:01:15
Speaker
All right, well, thanks, Steve, and welcome, Allison.
Accessing Recorded Zoom Hangouts
00:01:18
Speaker
Before we dive into our topics for today, I want to remind folks that all of these Zoom hangouts that we've been broadcasting live are also being recorded, and they are on our website. They will be on our YouTube channel, and so you can go to the video page on our YouTube channel, or you can just search
00:01:43
Speaker
YouTube for uphill athlete and you'll find these things so you don't necessarily have to be there for these live.
00:01:52
Speaker
Well, it's great pleasure to have Alison today. We've been really wanting to get her on. We've just had some conflicts in terms of timing for everybody. But finally, we're getting here. I think it's a really valuable perspective that Alison brings to our coaching group with not only her perspective as a woman, but also as a high level athlete. And I think in particular,
00:02:17
Speaker
her coaching experience because she coaches a lot of people for us, both men and women, and has done so for quite a few years. And so she's had a lot of experience in dealing with common issues that come up. And we've made a bit of a list today so that I can hopefully keep us kind of on track as we go through that. But so anyway, thanks, Alison, for making time to do this. And let's get started.
Challenges Women Face in Sports
00:02:49
Speaker
Okay, so maybe first of all, Allison, something that you and I have talked a lot about in the past is the, and I think we see this, we hear it from our, the female members of our uphill athlete community, and I'm sure you've heard it from friends and clients that you coached, that sort of thing, about the
00:03:12
Speaker
kind of the barrier and the intimidation factor that's involved with women getting involved in these sorts of sports that are kind of male dominated in many cases. And can you address that a little bit as a starting point for us?
00:03:29
Speaker
Sure. Yeah, I think it's really, it can be intimidating for people and especially in these sports where you maybe need to have a lot of time to train or you think you have to and you're unsure how you're going to balance that with family or work, other obligations that we all have.
00:03:48
Speaker
But really, I always, people who come and say, oh, I wouldn't be able to do a long race or whatever. I'm not good enough to do that. And I always tell them that everybody, if you showed up to an ultra marathon race, you would be absolutely floored with the range of people who are there.
00:04:08
Speaker
There are people wearing knee braces on both knees. There are people who are of all ages. There's just a wide, wide range with ultras in particular, but I think it takes a shift in mindset of thinking that it's not about being at the top, but what's really, really cool about ultras also is that you get to be in the same race as
00:04:34
Speaker
the very highest level athletes in the world. So I really encourage people to take a go at it and I found so much joy in it that I think other people can too and it can also build your confidence if you haven't spent time growing up in sports or anything like that.
00:04:55
Speaker
It really is just such a valuable, a valuable addition to your life and it can decrease stress overall and really everybody I've met through this sport from a side, maybe a couple jerks during races.
00:05:15
Speaker
are just really wonderful people. So I'm a self-admitted pusher for getting into these kind of things.
00:05:28
Speaker
And in a sport like running, a more traditional sport like running races, where there are men and divisions are separated, the men are competing against the men typically, although there certainly are women that are serious ass kickers in the men's fields, but typically you're comparing yourself to other women.
00:05:48
Speaker
And what about that intimidation factor? And on Iowa, honestly, we've seen it in the past where in the mountaineering world where women can be sort of discouraged from even trying or intimidated by the fact that if they're going to climb Benali, there will be
00:06:06
Speaker
a 115 pound woman is gonna probably have to carry the same amount of gear as a 180 pound guy. And that can present a major hurdle. And I think that one of the things I wanna state just as one of the founders of uphill athlete, the reason Steve and I started this whole process originally was to try to bring high level coaching or training advice to this entire mountain community.
00:06:33
Speaker
And I think what the offshoot of our books has been the uphill athlete website and our coaching business. And the same way we want to encourage participation and open the door that might otherwise be closed to people. And I think, Alison, you've had great experience without working with women is getting them over that potential hurdle of even getting involved.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah. And I think with, with both ultras and, um, you know, I've, I've done up to a hundred miles and that can seem super intimidating by people like, Oh my gosh, I could never do that. And no one can ever start it. It doesn't matter who you are. So all it takes is just making that, you know, it's very incremental. And I think that's one really benefit beneficial thing of having coaching and, you know,
00:07:23
Speaker
having the website and having all these training tools is it kind of demystifies it. It can be relatively simple and sure you can get very detailed also, but ultimately we're just putting one foot in front of the other and we're working year after year to build the tools that you need to do that work. And certainly with mountaineering and there is the strength component, but that's a relatively simple thing
00:07:53
Speaker
to do. I mean, it's hard work, but we know how to do that. We know how to build endurance. And again, just starting down that path and starting, I've worked with someone where she had no time during the day, didn't have a very supportive partner, and worked, I think, 10-hour days as a secretary in a business where it seemed like
00:08:17
Speaker
She was certainly the secretary. It was not an administrative. It was pretty cut and dry with gender roles. And she was able to do way more than she thought she could. And all it took was just starting from where she was at and then building from there. And along the way, I could see her confidence change. And that's just really cool. And a lot of times, people like her, I think even she did say this when I first started working with her.
00:08:47
Speaker
oh you might not want to work with me and you know very self-deprecating and it's those people that are sometimes the most rewarding to work with because you see that it's changed their life so much and have and that confidence and intimidation factor I think is one of the biggest the biggest parts of that it's really fun to see as a coach.
00:09:08
Speaker
It is, that is very rewarding. And I think we can make some gender generalizations here that I think we've seen this a lot that typically the men that come to us and want to sign up, grossly overestimate their current fitness levels or what their potential will be. Whereas the women come in with, like you said, sort of self-deprecating and more concerned that they're not good enough. And of course, in both cases, they're wrong.
00:09:39
Speaker
typically and we can usually help them. It's a lot easier to help the ones who don't have such a high opinion of themselves to start with.
00:09:48
Speaker
Well, Alison, we build this about talking about stress, stress from life and stress from training.
Managing Life and Training Stress
00:09:54
Speaker
So let's dive into that topic for a second. We talk a lot in our books and other writings on the website about the impact of the autonomic nervous system and how both the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system need to be in balance and to create a healthy athlete so the athlete can absorb the training.
00:10:17
Speaker
What kind of advice do you have that I think you think relates best for women in particular regarding balancing stress? And what would be different about them than men? Yeah, I mean, these do apply certainly to men as well. But I think like it or not, a lot of some other tasks tend to fall more on women. And I think we might have a few more
00:10:47
Speaker
stressors, although I will say as a caveat, um, partly because he's listening, my husband does the cooking. I don't really have to deal with that. He certainly is a, um, equal partner in terms of childcare, but I know that that is not necessarily the case for most women. Um, and so if you're working full time and you have to do the childcare and you're fixing dinner and doing laundry and all of that, that's a huge amount of stress overall.
00:11:14
Speaker
And then you're also trying to sleep at some point, which we all know is very good for for any sort of training. So I like to think about just this overall stress load. And so if we think about how we're gonna
00:11:30
Speaker
how we're going to manage that, we have certain dials. So we know that exercise is also a stressor, but it also can take away stress from the other parts of our life. So if that's one dial, and then we have work life, we have family life, we have friends, we have
00:11:50
Speaker
you know, whatever else is going on in our lives. So if certain stresses are really high, then other stresses that we can control need to be dialed down. And one of the things I think is so liberating about knowing the kind of the background with aerobic training and just how to do things the right way is that then you can modulate that very easily. If you get used to doing work under your aerobic threshold,
00:12:20
Speaker
that is a very sustainable way to train. So maybe you can't do the really hard hill workout that you want to do, but you can go out for a light jog and that will take the stress away from some of the other parts of your life rather than add to it and then throw you over the edge. I think the more
00:12:43
Speaker
the more you can think about your training as the stress management. And I think maybe that's partly why I like a hundred mile races is it's more about mitigating the circumstances than necessarily like just running hard the whole time is it's really just about taking care of yourself. And I think that can be broadened out to just our whole lives. It's just trying to have a sustainable, low stress way of living where we still can do a lot of things in the mountains and
00:13:13
Speaker
then when you have a day that you don't have very much stress, then you're ready to go for it and you're not run down. There was a question that was sent to me that was about, you know, during COVID, if you're in the healthcare industry and you're working a ton of hours of not sleeping and how to regulate that, or if you have a newborn and you're not sleeping at night, or you just have a lot of work going on, other things, I really think that thinking about it in that framework is helpful
00:13:42
Speaker
and getting the right marker so that you know how you can keep those dials in relation to each other. Great. Yeah, I think that's true for men and women both, this stress balance in life. But I think that one of the things that I think you and I have talked about in the past about women often being the primary caregivers in a family setting,
00:14:10
Speaker
tends to put I think a bit more stress on them because you know when you go out for a run you have to make sure you know the kids are going to be cared for and luckily you have a very understanding spouse who you know you guys have balanced that out really well and there's certainly some challenges to that and and I you know I guess it's a little bit like you know
00:14:32
Speaker
choosing your parents well for your genetics, you want to choose your life partner well in the same way so you can be supportive of one another and your goals. Totally. Yeah, and I think there, you know, when you talk about if you have all these things going on, and then at a certain point, then to think, oh, I'm going to go out and run for an hour, like, I just want to go to sleep before I've even started.
00:14:56
Speaker
Um, or you go out and you just want to pound it out. Well, then you come home and then you can't sleep because you're kind of jazzed up or you haven't eaten. You've missed a meal because you haven't, you decided to go run instead. And that can just start taking you down this road where you're a lot more on the edge of either injury or, um, just.
00:15:20
Speaker
overrun than just not being able to do the things that you want to do, being tired all the time. Maybe you go out with friends to go on runs and you find that you can't keep up as much or you're just super worn out all the time. And that's just no fun. So then you have to think that, oh, I'm going to do some race. Oh, that just feels impossible. But I'm kind of changing, changing the mindset of like, I remember I worked with you, I don't know. It was probably 12 years ago now.
00:15:50
Speaker
And I just remember you saying, how, see how easy you can run up Spokane Gulch, which is a local mountain. And I just, it kind of blew my mind apart. It's like, what are you talking about? I know, I don't run easy up a mountain. And now I just feel like that is such a great, I think about that so much. I'm just like, oh, I'm just gonna see how easy I can make it. And certainly there are days that I,
00:16:16
Speaker
like going harder, it's really fun to go hard, but if you're not balancing it with enough of the easy, low stress work, you're just setting yourself up for something bad to happen. Sure, yeah.
00:16:32
Speaker
So given what we've been talking about so far and certainly given your experience both as an athlete and mentor to local women runners and professional coach, what are some of the big, I hesitate to call them mistakes, but let's say, you know, challenges that you have
00:16:51
Speaker
come across that are most common for women that that you've helped them deal with. What's kind of what are some of the let's say maybe the top three or four things that you see most frequently? One is kind of what we started talking about is the confidence piece or intimidation of feeling like they're not going to be able to accomplish whatever it is or I'll see you know when we start talking about what goals they want to do and they they maybe have put a goal that isn't
00:17:19
Speaker
isn't too, I mean, definitely a reasonable goal, which is always great. I like it when people have reasonable goals, but then I hear them as we talk more and then they'll say, well, it would really be cool, but I don't know if I would ever be able to do this, would be to run a 50K. And I was like, okay, well, that's where the spark is.
00:17:37
Speaker
Like, let's go for that because it was clear that you were giving a goal that you didn't think that was too safe. And so not going after some of those bigger objectives because they think that that's not going to be a realistic goal.
00:17:53
Speaker
And so sometimes along the way it's just about you know I see what they're doing for training and just what their attitude is and I think well you can definitely do a 50k now so let's let's go after that let's not
00:18:10
Speaker
don't cut yourself short thinking that you won't be able to do a little bit, tackle a little bit bigger goal. And sometimes that can be confidence, sometimes you just don't, the fear of failure. And really all of this doesn't matter. I mean, it matters because we like running, but it should all be adding to your life. And what better thing to go for something that you're not sure you can do when the stakes are very low.
00:18:40
Speaker
But really, you can only gain from it. So I'd say that's one thing. The other thing, and I guess this is the same topic, but on another kind of twisted, the opposite side is just having too high of expectations. Social media is great to see what the best in the world are doing. But not everyone can be like Emily Thorisberg.
00:19:09
Speaker
and or Courtney to Walter or you know there are these amazing athletes who we all look up to and it's really easy to kind of get sucked into comparing with them and then just thinking oh gosh I can't I'm nothing I can't do anything like that or I just had a baby and
00:19:30
Speaker
I can barely run one mile. I like, I'm just not doing well. And that has nothing to do with it. You know, we're all so, so different. And so trying not to compare definitely with the professionals who have spent their whole lives working up to doing the things that they're doing, but also not comparing to friends or to your former self before kids or before
00:19:57
Speaker
whatever it is, maybe if you're an older athlete to what you used to be able to do when you were at your prime. So just really finding where you're at there and then making the steps from that versus starting where you want to be and then just having all these hiccups and setbacks. It can be really discouraging and then you're likely to just give up.
00:20:27
Speaker
But it can be really hard and I totally get it. I mean, I have the people that I look to and I'm just like, oh my gosh, that's so great. But you can't, we just can't compare. And we also don't always see, well, we never see the whole picture. I remember there was someone who I looked up to that had done these races after having her child and was winning everything. And I just thought, oh my gosh, that's so cool. And then,
00:20:52
Speaker
Later, I found out that she almost had a prolapse, that she went back way too soon. So you just don't know, and ultimately our bodies win. We can't just fight against them. We can't fool Mother Nature, can we? Yeah, exactly. So I get it. It's a really, really hard thing to keep in mind, but just to keep trying. I mean, I guess it sounds a little woo woo, but trying to just not be attached
00:21:21
Speaker
to anything like just where are you at each day especially when we you know during COVID or you know if you don't have no child care or whatever the different stressors are every day you're going to wake up and have a very different experience so
00:21:43
Speaker
not be attached to any one thing. If a workout is great, good, but that doesn't really mean anything. Just like if it's bad, it doesn't really mean anything. Like just kind of taking, just doing the work is the main thing.
00:22:01
Speaker
What about training intensities? I mean, do you see any differences for when you approach your training with, and you could tell a little story about your own experience when you first started working with me, but do you, and I'm sure it's been informed over the past number of 10, 12 years since you've been coaching a lot,
00:22:22
Speaker
about trying to help people balance intensity. You know, is there a difference, would you think, between men and women and their response to intensity and how they should balance, you know, that, you know, Matt Fitzgerald calls it 80-20. We call it polarized training, which, you know, and I think we need to give, we need to give recognition to Steven Styler because he's sort of the one that came up with that concept of making that term polarized training popular.
00:22:47
Speaker
But anyway, how do you find many women coming into the sport with a sense of they need to just run fast all the time? Yes. Although they won't say that it's fast. They'll say, oh, I'm really slow. I only run eight minute miles on my easy days or whatever it is. But it took a while for me to convince friends to run with me.
00:23:17
Speaker
I'm not Emily Forsberg for sure. But people would say, oh, well, I can't run with you. I won't be able to keep up or whatever.
00:23:29
Speaker
guarantee them that their normal run, they're going faster than me, and that is still often the case. So I think it's really, and this is certainly something that I deal with with men as well, and nobody likes to have to run slower when you want to eventually be able to run fast all the time. But I think it's really hard to
00:24:00
Speaker
It's hard to go at an easy effort. And I think a lot of women don't recognize that an easy effort doesn't mean that you're, you're going to be bound to running slow forever or that you don't sometimes run fast or just modulating, I think can be challenging. I've noticed with a lot of women, they just are used to, you know, especially if they're time crunched and like you have the one hour.
00:24:27
Speaker
before you have to get back to your kids or whatever. And so every time you go out, you're going as hard as you can for that hour. And then maybe you have one day you have two hours and so you go as hard as you can for the two hours. And then it's certainly fun, but it isn't as long term progressive as really building that easy
00:24:50
Speaker
the easy stuff and then peppering in some more polarized, you know, then peppering in some really fast stuff. But I think I've worked with many people where the issue is usually getting them to go under what they normally have versus pushing them to go harder.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's certainly been my experience in working with the community. And I mean, it's what part of, again, what prompted us to write the book and start the business and the website is just to inform people that going hard all the time is like the surest route to self-destruction. Or at the very best, it's going to cause a plateau in performance. But if you go off the other end of that cliff, it can be pretty devastating.
00:25:44
Speaker
And I think there's something about, too, where women might not feel that they are like, OK, well, that's fine and good for people who are actually running fast all the time. They're like, oh, well, yeah, maybe they need to slow down. But I'm already going really slow. So I don't need to slow down, even though I can barely talk when I'm going. Like, it really is kind of.
00:26:12
Speaker
getting that expectation in line again with it really doesn't matter what it is that you're feeling like if it's too hard it's too hard and whether that's an 11 minute mile or that's a seven minute mile if if that's if that's where you're training all the time and it's too hard for your system and your body and you're getting injured all the time or you have lost your period or you're getting stress fractures or whatever it is
00:26:42
Speaker
Um, then that's your body is saying we gotta, we gotta do something here. That's too much of a load. Something. Yeah, exactly. Something's out of whack. Yeah, exactly. So while you touched on that, why don't we talk about training through the monthly cycles, um, and, and how you manage that and how you recommend other women
Optimizing Training with the Menstrual Cycle
00:27:04
Speaker
deal with it. What kind of things have you seen?
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah, so the first thing that I would encourage everyone if you don't already is to just start paying attention to when your cycle is Training Peaks, which is the platform that we use for coaching and for a lot of the athletes use has a metric
00:27:27
Speaker
button so what I've started to do is just on the first day of my period I just make a little metric and say start of my period so the day one of your period is the first day of your cycle so in terms of hormones that's how everything is kind of laid out so there there are
00:27:45
Speaker
three, but you can also divide one of those into two, so three or four ways of looking at how the cycle is broken down. And typically, the very beginning, why I shouldn't say typically, the beginning of the cycle is when you have the least amount of hormones and it starts building and
00:28:07
Speaker
I know I'll get them confused when I'm on this, so I'm not even going to try. But progesterone and testosterone and estrogen are the three major hormones. One goes down, one goes up as you're approaching ovulation and then they come back around and there's a slight rise again before you start your period. So a lot of people think that, you know, when you're on your period, they feel terrible and while
00:28:36
Speaker
many, many women do that physiologically corresponds with when we actually are more like men and that we're able to put on strength a little bit more. We have tend to have a little more energy if if you don't get worn down by
00:29:00
Speaker
you know, the period itself, but some people do, you know, I think finding what your body is and when you feel the best and the worst is really beneficial because then you can tailor your training around that. So, and what I found is just kind of making notes in training peaks of how I feel. And then after several months of having data, then you can start to see some trends of like, Oh,
00:29:29
Speaker
a week before my period, I feel terrible and I'm really tired or I'm uncoordinated. I've talked to friends about that where, you know, you're just tripping a lot or your brain is in a fog. And so that is those hormones shifting. So if you take a rest day, just if you're feeling terrible or you start doing a strength workout and you feel a lot of whack, then just don't do strength that day.
00:29:56
Speaker
tailor your training to be doing those things when it works a little bit better with your cycle or do your hard workouts when you know that you're going to have lower hormones. It's not to say that you still can't get some good workouts in during the other times, but I think it kind of going back to the the confidence piece, sometimes if somebody has a bad workout
00:30:21
Speaker
And I'm like, I don't know what's going on. And then three days later, they're like, oh, I started my period. Well, that's probably why you didn't feel very good again. So just taking note of that, I think is really, really great. And then finding what works for you. My friend Steph.
00:30:39
Speaker
I'm working on an article, which hopefully will be out in a couple of weeks, but she helped me a lot with, she's been tracking her cycle for 20 years. And so she has a great amount of detail of exactly when she feels great and she's a climber, so she plans out when she's gonna do her big expeditions or her big climbs where she's gonna need to be really mentally focused. And I think that's just awesome. Instead of thinking about it as this
00:31:09
Speaker
thing that we just want to pretend we don't have, if we can actually just kind of come to terms with the fact that we have it every month, then and go with it, it can be can be pretty powerful. And that goes also into nutrition. You know, we need a little bit more
00:31:27
Speaker
calories during certain times of the cycle. So being able to just kind of keep those things in mind for just to feel better.
00:31:40
Speaker
And if you know that you get really irritated on a certain day, maybe that's a good day that you should go out and run as hard as you can up a mountain. And then you'll feel better afterwards. So there's a really good book called Roar by Stacy Sims. And she is an exercise physiologist. And when she was in school, she was just kind of appalled that there weren't any
00:32:09
Speaker
expert or studies done on women because for all the physiological studies they would take women out since the menstrual cycle was kind of
00:32:20
Speaker
you know, it threw a wrench into the nice data sets. So she has set out to try to change that, and she's really been instrumental in all of that. So I'd really recommend reading that book. But also just learning your body, because everyone's different. And even in her book, you know, we talked about all the different cycles, but you might find that your worst day is day two, or it could be
00:32:49
Speaker
day 27 or whatever and just knowing knowing what those cycles are can be really really powerful and making sure that you have them too it can be another way to you know I know we're going to talk a little bit more about nutrition later but it's a really really good sign to be
00:33:12
Speaker
thinking about. If you stop getting your period, that's a major concern. And so knowing when it's going to happen and making sure that you're just keeping aware that that is something that you should be having.
00:33:32
Speaker
My friend Chrissy used to want to have a shirt that said, I still get my period. She's been running ultras forever. I think that would be great because I think there's also a thought that somehow you're not an endurance athlete. If you still, if you still get your period that, you know, if you're lean enough or whatever, that it just is part of, part of the deal. There's almost like a,
00:33:58
Speaker
like a pride in not getting your period anymore. And that's your body saying that it's not healthy. So being really aware of that, I think is really important. Great points, Allison. Thanks. And while we're on this general topic, what advice do you have for women either going through or after menopause? How does that affect your training? Yeah. So I don't have, um,
00:34:23
Speaker
explicit experience with that yet. From people I've coached, the main thing that we've kind of figured out is that strength training becomes more important, and then nutritionally, having a little bit fewer carbs. And I don't
00:34:47
Speaker
that's like as far as I know that stuff like I don't want to pretend to know more than I do.
00:34:57
Speaker
And I know that there's, you know, like with everything, there's so much variation individually. But energy wise, and just keeping some strengths in has been really helpful for people. And they just have found, and these are purely anecdotal, but the clients have found that when they
00:35:18
Speaker
you know, have more carbohydrate, they tend to just feel kind of off and gain weight a little bit more. So, but I'm interested in learning more about it. And that's also something where when this first came up with an athlete, I thought, oh, I'm going to dive into this. And I looked online and I looked on pep bed and I was trying to find stuff and
00:35:42
Speaker
couldn't really find much. So if anybody has any resources of that, I'd love to know also. This is all kind of a burgeoning field with research. So there's huge holes that we don't know
00:35:59
Speaker
We don't know a lot yet. So in some ways, in the positive light, we can think of that as being really exciting that we're on the cusp of that. Yeah. Having new stuff to learn is always fun and exciting. Yeah. For the people having problems, I'm sorry. I don't have any good answers. Yeah. Well, in 15 years, you'll probably have a lot better answer for how that works.
00:36:26
Speaker
So let's talk a little bit about pregnancy. We've had a few questions come in about pregnancy and training through pregnancy, you know, metabolism slowing down during president.
Training During Pregnancy
00:36:37
Speaker
I mean, as the metabolism slows down during pregnancy and postnatal, if breastfeeding, does that affect your ability to burn fat in the aerobic zones or what's your thoughts on that? Um, so in terms of training through pregnancy, there is now, um,
00:36:55
Speaker
Nothing that shows that you need to stop doing what you've been doing. There used to be some silly thing, like you weren't supposed to get your heart rate over 120 or something like that, which we can, when you're pregnant, you can do like walking across the room.
00:37:15
Speaker
that is really good news and what I found personally and also with friends is what you know and athletes what you do before really will you know it's good for the baby you can
00:37:31
Speaker
You can help the baby's heart rate variability if you want to get into the weeds with that stuff. Continuing to train and really, I mean, it a little bit goes back to what we talked about before with it's all about how you feel in the day and, you know, kind of coming to terms with where you are.
00:37:52
Speaker
while it there still is a recommendation not to do a lot of like vo2 max type work but so high intensity high intensity yeah um but i can say assuredly from both my pregnancies i had no desire to do
00:38:12
Speaker
that type of work and that just any kind of running was felt hard enough. So really going with how you feel and making sure that you're supporting your body with your back and you know you do have relaxing going through your blood and that
00:38:34
Speaker
that makes the ligaments a little bit looser so that eventually you can have the baby through your hips. And so that's just something to be a little bit cautious of, just to make sure that you're not extending yourself a little bit too much.
00:38:51
Speaker
You know, you could be more likely to roll an ankle or something like that. And just, you know, the low back, obviously you're getting a lot more pressure there. So I found there was a maternity belt that I used during my first pregnancy.
00:39:09
Speaker
I think it, it felt great. I skied all through that pregnancy. And then with my second, the way I was holding, you know, the way that she was just for whatever reason, I just didn't feel like the belt even really helped. So, um, I think really just thinking about supporting, supporting you and what you need, um, and then,
00:39:34
Speaker
that will in turn help support the baby. But I think don't worry about whether you have to go easier. I mean, obviously there's the caveat, like check with your doctor, but for the most part, in general, if you've been active before, it's better for you to stay active and do what you have been doing than to shut everything down. Your baby is safe, your baby gets everything that it needs, and it probably decreases your stress,
00:40:03
Speaker
helps you feel better. It can even help, you know, tone your muscles for prepping for childbirth. Doing squats and some very gentle strength work can feel really great. And the movement also
00:40:22
Speaker
can be helpful if you have sore hips or you have you know a lot of times people find they from sitting a lot they get hip hip pain or low back pain and walking or if running feels okay doing some light movement there or just some lunges or you know gentle things like that can feel really good. I ran through the enchantments with my second daughter and
00:40:47
Speaker
Now it's really fun to think that we did that little adventure. That's a big day. How many miles and how much vertical is that? I don't know, 5,000, I think something like that. Yeah, but it's a good six, eight hours, really, isn't it, of running? Yeah, yeah. But I definitely didn't do that during my first. The pregnancies were really different, so I think
00:41:13
Speaker
Again, going back to comparing either to yourself or anybody else. Um, with my first pregnancy, I didn't really feel great to run at all. Um, and then, you know, in between got back to things. And, um, so it really, I think paying attention and again, knowing, knowing what your normal easy is, I think that can also be a dangerous part if people have the tendency to always be going too hard.
00:41:42
Speaker
then when you're pregnant and also going hard, you know, it's not dangerous to your baby at all, but it just might not feel very good. So anytime you're feeling any kind of stress, just take it down a notch.
00:41:57
Speaker
Great. Well, that's super thanks. And here's a question that's come up that I think you could probably help this person with. What advice would you give to a woman who felt that just having a menstrual cycle was an inherent weakness? Well, I
00:42:21
Speaker
I mean, I guess I want to know a little bit more if that's a weakness just because men don't have to have them. I guess in that case, it is. But I also think, I don't know, I always really like to try to spin things and find the silver lining and somehow
00:42:44
Speaker
make whatever it is that I have the best way to be. Cause otherwise, you know, then I think that can, I actually have an athlete who was a competitive runner in all growing up. And that was actually something that she felt was that it was just, she didn't want to have it because it was a weakness. You know, guys didn't have to have it. And so I don't want to have it either. Um, which.
00:43:11
Speaker
is one way to look at it, but if you end up stopping it, then that's just a major, you know, our bodies are supposed to have this cycle. And you could, you know, you could take the pill and continue through so you don't have your cycle and that, you know, we don't know what the long-term effects of just having the pill, whether you're stopping your period with it or not.
00:43:40
Speaker
work kind of in a long-term experiment with that. So I would really urge you to
00:43:48
Speaker
try to think about all the good things like I think about the mental the mental part like oh well this is something that's not very fun but every month I deal with having something that's not very fun and getting through it and it's not a big deal or you know just getting out and running and not feeling the greatest but I know that in mile 80 I'm not gonna feel the greatest and so you know just having some way to spin it into being a
00:44:18
Speaker
helpful thing toward whatever goal you have. And, you know, when I mentioned that certain times we need a little bit of extra calories, like, maybe you could take that as a good thing, like, okay, well, I get an extra cookie, or whatever. During that time, I think, yeah, I just think that women are really
00:44:44
Speaker
amazing and our bodies do amazing things and it's a lot easier to go with that than try to fight against it. And if you have a long held, you know, I would just wonder where that thought is coming from and try to see if there was a way that you could spin it to be a positive versus a negative. And we go ahead.
00:45:10
Speaker
There certainly is an annoyance every month, but if you don't have it by exercising it away, you also really run the risk of long-term damage with stress fractures or illness or reds, the energy deficiency syndrome, and can just really cause a lot of issues.
00:45:37
Speaker
And we've seen in many studies that women are much more predisposed towards endurance than men. And could this be that they've had to suffer through this for hundreds of thousands of years and that's genetically made them stronger in many ways than men? Maybe they're not, they can't lift quite as heavy a weight or run quite as fast, but they're just better at dealing with this sort of
00:46:06
Speaker
persistent fatigue, persistent stress, persistent pain that this all entails. And as a consequence, they come out looking pretty good in the long run. Yeah. And we actually burn fat generally better than men do. So that can be a good thing. And I don't know if this person's had kids or not, but that's another thing that I always was amazed when people say, I can't believe that you
00:46:36
Speaker
ran that far and be like, you've had three, especially after I had a kid with a very long labor, but any kid, it's a huge thing. And I just remember thinking running a long ways is nothing compared to going through childbirth. We're pretty cool creatures.
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Well, now that you touched on fat burning, let's talk a little bit about, I mean, I know nutrition is a subject that we could spend, you know, hours on itself, and neither you nor I are nutritionists.
Nutrition and Endurance Training
00:47:16
Speaker
And we definitely put that out there. And none of our coaches, we do have a nutritionist on our staff, but none of us are. But I know there's some common sense things. But I'm sure that you deal with women
00:47:29
Speaker
That that want to lose weight through training and so let's just dabble on that We don't have to you know, get down into the weeds too far on the nutrition end of things But let's just talk somewhat about fat adaptation lose weight loss during training and that sort of thing Yeah, so I feel pretty strongly that that adaptation will happen with training itself and
00:47:57
Speaker
because I know there are extra things that you can do to kind of trigger that. But in general, what I've seen with women is that trying to somehow cut carbohydrates so that you use more fat just isn't very great. I think that we,
00:48:20
Speaker
As we were talking about this the other day, and I said, I think that every single woman I know could tell you the calorie content in basically any food. And I don't think the same is true for my male friends. So I think we're so aware of our weight, whatever we think our perfect weight is, whatever our weight in high school was or whatever.
00:48:50
Speaker
I really, really, really de-emphasize weight loss. Certainly I know that there are reasons to do it. And I'm not saying that, you know, if you do have, it is easier to run when you have a little bit less weight, but only to a point. And I like to focus a lot more on feeling good and performing well, and the weight will take care of itself.
00:49:14
Speaker
Um, one of the things I've seen a lot with clients I've worked with when they start increasing the training that they're doing, and then they actually find that they start gaining a little bit of weight. And I always am really interested when that happens because that can actually be from not eating enough versus eating too much. Excuse me. Um, so I really, a long time ago, Nikki Kimball, who was the top of ultra running.
00:49:44
Speaker
at the time said to a friend of mine who told me to eat as much as you like to last a long time in this sport eat as much as you can as often as you can and I took that to heart and I do the same.
00:50:01
Speaker
I eat as much as I can, I feel good during my workouts, and certainly over the years it's been now since 03 that I ran my first ultra. I definitely don't eat as much as I used to, but my body has gotten really used to doing that so it just doesn't burn as many calories as it used to.
00:50:22
Speaker
Um, I really, I really, really try to emphasize getting the training in, um, versus worrying about, like, especially if you, if you're in the race season, um, trying to cut calories is just a bad, a bad way to go. Um, we're asking a lot for our bodies and I think nourishing that, and even if it's not with nourishing food,
00:50:51
Speaker
If you have to grab a Snickers because there's nothing else around, grab the Snickers. It helps with recovery. It helps your mood. It helps you sleep. All of these things that are all way more important than an extra pound that you might be carrying around.
00:51:08
Speaker
And often people will find like once they do start eating more, then they drop the weight. One cool thing with training peaks is that you can link up with my fitness pal. So I will sometimes have people just start using that to track because they might think that they're eating a lot of food. But then at the end of the day, it turns out it's only been 1500 calories or something like if you're doing
00:51:32
Speaker
an hour every day plus, and sometimes you're doing a long run and you're only getting 1500 calories, you're putting yourself at a pretty big deficit. And also just at risk for injury or illness or burnout and adrenal fatigue, all those things that we've been talking about. So food is really just should be something that
00:51:59
Speaker
you don't have to think about in terms of like, oh, do I only eat this carrot or can I only eat this organic whatever, like just eat. Sure there are better choices than others, but the main, the main thing is to eat enough. And then you can, you know, then you can swap out maybe a better nutritious choice.
00:52:22
Speaker
and make sure that you're getting protein and make sure that you're getting well-rounded things, but not to just cut one thing out or get so fixated on having really healthy, healthy food when you're putting this big training load on.
00:52:38
Speaker
I'll mention just from the physiology standpoint for both men and women that when you begin an endurance training program, especially in the early weeks, you're going to be increasing your blood volume. So the plasma volume is going to go up and of course water weighs eight pounds per gallon. So it's pretty easy to see weight gain just because you've got more blood.
00:53:00
Speaker
And then they, of course, the other thing is we're doing some strength training, or even if you're not doing strength training, there's a muscle can be a muscle mass gain. And those, both of those can contribute to a significant difference when you step on that scale. But it's probably, those are pretty positive things to be having to happen rather than thinking that, Oh my God, I'm three pounds heavier than I was two weeks ago. Well, that probably is a good thing if you're training consistently.
00:53:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and I think trying to frame things and like, what are the things that I want to be able to do versus what do I want to see on a scale? So, you know, I personally have noticed that my legs are bigger than they used to be, but I've been skiing a lot more and I actually need bigger leg muscles to support my knees for skiing. And so, you know, our bodies shift to do the activities that we're doing.
00:53:54
Speaker
And if you're able to do, you know, accomplish the things that you want to be accomplishing, and a lot of times people end up, they're even getting faster, but they're saying, you know, like, oh, but I've gained a few pounds, or I want to lose a few pounds, and those, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's going to make you faster. Unfortunately, sometimes people take a drastic
00:54:17
Speaker
diet they do lose weight and become faster to start with and then that can lead you down a bad path because then you think okay well then I'll just stop eating and I can just get lighter and lighter and then my strength to ratio my strength to weight ratio will go up and it does for a little bit until you can't run at all because you have
00:54:45
Speaker
got a stress fracture. Yeah, those are the babies we see with people that are trying to diet and train. Yeah, so Allison, we're getting pretty close to our one hour. I'm going to scroll through some of these questions and see if I can find a couple of others. But I know there's a number of questions that we've not been able to address. Some of them are going to require significant more time.
00:55:13
Speaker
And I want to encourage everybody who's listening, that if you have a question that did not get handled here, we didn't get to it, or you think of it later, please write to us on, especially on the women's segment of our forum, and Alison or one of our other women's coaches will get in there and see if they can help you out with that. But let's, as we wrap this up, Alison, some closing thoughts you have about
Encouragement for Female Athletes
00:55:42
Speaker
you know, kind of encouraging words for women as they're going forward with their training. Yeah. I mean, one thing I'd say is to trust yourself. Um, that I think maybe this kind of comes back around to what we were talking about at the very beginning. Um, but you know, our bodies are meant to move. And so there's no reason that you can't do
00:56:07
Speaker
anything that you see someone else doing it. Maybe you won't do it in the exact same way but I just really think the mountains are an amazing place to be able to go for our minds and our bodies and I just think it's really cool to be able to do that and just to trust that your body can do it and
00:56:34
Speaker
the best way that I have been able to do that is to just kind of take an expectation out of that, to just enjoy being out. And even if that means that I'm walking up a hill, great. And then I can run down it. Um, so yeah, I think the, the most, the, you know, we have everything that we need to do, to do all of this. And it's easy to get kind of into the weeds with all of the details. I,
00:57:03
Speaker
I love the details as much as anyone, but ultimately it's about moving in the mountains and, you know, building a little bit of strength so you don't get injured and eating a lot so you don't get injured. And I think, yeah, I just think that I would love to see more and more women out there crushing it and it's starting to happen. But I think, and to your point of choosing your partner well, like,
00:57:32
Speaker
make your partner support you and just give them the kids. And like, I think sometimes that Sam gets annoyed all the time when people say, Oh, you've got the kids right now. And he's like, what are you talking about? Of course I have the kids right now. And I think, and our kids don't know any different. I mean, obviously they know different when I'm there versus he's there, but they don't see either of us as being the primary. And I think I,
00:58:02
Speaker
I have a pretty low threshold of what I'm willing to do in that. And that might mean that he's doing things differently than I am, but who cares? If that means that I can get out for several hours at a time, I don't care. And it's great for everyone. And for the dads, I think, you know, we've been focusing on women and women's, like,
00:58:30
Speaker
being able to do more, which I think is really important, but we don't actually talk that much about men getting to do more of the roles that women do. And it's really beneficial for everybody. So yeah, I guess I would end with that. And also with the forum, I would just love to see more questions of that. And I know there might be some hesitation just about posting about women stuff.
00:59:00
Speaker
you know, we're still kind of have this taboo around periods or the menstrual cycle or whatever, but, um, yeah, post away on there, or you can also always email me, Allison with one L at uphill athlete. So, um, yeah, I just love having these conversations.
00:59:20
Speaker
Well, thanks so much, Allison. This has been wonderful. And I think we're going to need to do this again pretty soon and cover some other topics. But thanks, everybody, for participating. Thanks a lot for hanging with us. We really appreciate the female audience that has started to build around uphill athlete. And we definitely want to make sure we're catering to the needs that they have. So thanks again, and we'll see you guys next week. Thank you.