[00:00:00] James Breese: Strength Matters Media. Video. Print. Podcasts.
[00:00:05] Josh Kennedy: Today's topic is why are running athletes train differently now, and this kind of all started, have a sip of your coffee, James. Um, this all started probably about 12 months ago, right, when your cricket season, uh, was getting back up and running. Because obviously, the way we've been training runners for, for many years now is a lot of, uh, a lot of base work, a lot of math.
[00:00:25] Josh Kennedy: Yes, we do anaerobic stuff and some sprinting as well, but most of it because of the clients we train. We do majority of our work at MAF, which is still important because even the elite, what's the statistic? They still do 80 percent of their work at aerobic, below aerobic threshold. So you've got to do easy base work, but we realized there was a missing element, uh, if you will.
[00:00:47] Josh Kennedy: So do you want to talk about how it all started?
[00:00:49] James Breese: Yeah, sure. I think it's the caveat. This, this is what the work we're doing with say 5k athletes, 10k athletes, half marathon, marathon and ultras. So it's not sprinting athletes per se. [00:01:00] However, what we're going to talk about is how we take what we work with sprinters to.
[00:01:03] James Breese: To these, um, athletes. To the endurance world more. Exactly. Exactly. So, it started off where I knew I was, the Wales over 40s team was starting up and I wanted to get back into training properly. I'd done a lot of running, trail running in the mountains here in Wales. I love it. It's something I enjoy doing.
[00:01:20] James Breese: However, I knew, for me to keep up with the young kids in Cardiff, I think that's a really good way to put it, I need to make sure I maintain my speed. So I started doing a lot more speed work and sprinting drills as part of my daily routine, almost. So a lot of stuff from, uh, Mike Boyle's ideas. Where he got a lot of it also from Tony Holler, who, shameless plug, is coming on the podcast and I'm so excited about that.
[00:01:43] James Breese: Like, so excited about that, uh, him coming on. Where I've taken a lot of his concepts from what he was doing, like his atomic workout, and I applied it to me. I noticed a marked difference in my running, right? Not just my 2k, 5k sort of times, but in my [00:02:00] sprint speed, and the ability to maintain it, and quick off the mark to get to balls, pick things up, running between the wickets when I'm playing cricket.
[00:02:06] James Breese: And I was like, wow, this is interesting. And I felt better from it. I felt more springy. I think it was the best way. I had more leap. I had more bounce. I was like Tigger, you know, from Winnie the Pooh a little bit more. So it was that idea. Then we went, right, let's see if we can play with this with our clients.
[00:02:21] James Breese: Let's introduce some of these concepts to some of the runners, because as you all know, one of the biggest problems with runners are, is that they don't particularly want to go to the gym, most of them. You know, the ones who work with us, they do, but a lot of runners... But not
[00:02:34] Josh Kennedy: often, you know, they might only have twice a week, maybe, maximum, because they want to spend the rest of the time running, right?
[00:02:39] James Breese: Exactly. They, they choose to run because the simplicity. Just need a pair of running shoes, go outside, they love it for the outdoor freshness, whatever reason they choose. So, we've got to think of ways to get them some strength training into it, without them strength training almost. And it was this idea that kind of came into it, and we were like, no, let's try this out, let's give them some running drills.
[00:02:58] James Breese: Because a lot of runners have poor [00:03:00] tight and weak hip flexors, right? They don't have any bounce. They
[00:03:04] Josh Kennedy: don't necessarily have great technique. Yeah, no bounce. I was going to say how often, sorry, before, just to interrupt for a second, how often do you see recreate, because we are talking about recreational runners here, not, we don't train athletes, um, recreational,
[00:03:16] James Breese: we do cricket, we do cricket matters, we do cricket matters, we
[00:03:19] Josh Kennedy: do cricket matters, yeah, all right, we do cricket matters, the strength matters, the pavements and they are like literally pounding the pavements, you know, you can hear them coming from.
[00:03:31] Josh Kennedy: From a mile off because they're like feet are slapping on the floor and so that's like they're missing that bounce
[00:03:36] James Breese: missing the bounce There's no technique. There's no Leg drive isn't there's nothing right? There's just like imploding along at the same Monotone type voice over and over again with a look of anguish on their face, right?
[00:03:50] James Breese: I think that's the best way to put it. Yeah, so you look again. I was I was joke to have a look at A recreational runner who's on the pavement and look at their face of sheer [00:04:00] despair and anguish. They're training at too hard an intensity that they don't seem to be enjoying yet they still do it over and over again with loads of kinesiology tape strapped all over them holding them together.
[00:04:10] James Breese: Like it's, it's crazy. But I think that's the how we've changed now to make sure that... We're getting a lot of our endurance athletes running and training like sprinters. How would sprinters warm up? What's a track session look like for this? Now this is more technique based as opposed to killing them.
[00:04:28] James Breese: It's like an easy day for them, like a recovery day almost in some respects. But we're trying to get them more bounce, more spring in their step, more pep in their step as some of the people say, and work on their running mechanics like that of a sprinter. And what we're seeing, it's having a huge benefit over to our everyday athletes, but also our athletes as well at Cricket Matters, aren't we Josh?
[00:04:49] James Breese: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:04:50] Josh Kennedy: What are some of the, um, briefly describe some of the drills we've got them doing now?
[00:04:53] James Breese: Yeah, very simple. Really simple. In fact, we're focusing on the A series, the A skips and the B [00:05:00] skips. We're doing single leg hops, single leg bounds, single, um, jumps. We are doing a lot of basic hurdle work, I think.
[00:05:09] Josh Kennedy: Fast marches, little hurdles,
[00:05:11] James Breese: yeah. Yeah, hurdle mar wickets is a big thing. Like, that's a Tony Holler 101 thing. Like, how to make an athlete run better, but make them run over wickets. That's, it's very simple here. And it's cheap as well. It's not expensive equipment. You can go down the park and do it. So we're making, we're putting all this together in the package where it lasts 30 to 40 minutes where it's just technique focused.
[00:05:32] James Breese: It's not designed to kill them. Because again, I'm just stealing loads of Tony's quotes now, but you want to sprint as often as possible, as fast as possible, as fresh as possible. We're kind of adopting that mentality, but with a bit more safety in mind for the aging athlete, I think is where we're trying to go with it.
[00:05:46] Josh Kennedy: And they enjoy it as well, right? It's just a bit of a change up. They love it. As you say, it's getting that, that was a missing element. The, forget the fact that, you know, it's run, this is running specific. Just the basic player metrics. Was something that [00:06:00] was missing, which is why, you know, we were noticing that some of our clients were a bit ploddy because, you know, the old adage is true.
[00:06:05] Josh Kennedy: If you want to, if you want to, uh, train slow, be slow, you know, and all that, if you want to train, train, if you want to be fast, you've got to train fast. You've got to do some plyometric work. And that was kind of a little missing element that our recreational runners didn't have. And it's having great carry over now.
[00:06:20] Josh Kennedy: Do you want to give some of the. Got some statistics from our clients. This is to uh, to go
[00:06:25] James Breese: out there. Well, yeah, I think the first thing was it was like, okay, it was great. It's working for me, but does it work with our clients? So the first thing we wanted to test out was does it work with Teresa Warren?
[00:06:34] James Breese: So Teresa is our like gold star legendary member within the, in the, the coaching coaching platform. And she is. Has been doing a lot of work with us now over the last three to four years. So we've done a lot of base work, we've done a lot of great stuff. She runs ultra, she runs 10k's, 5k's. You know, she's 54 years young, I think she is.
[00:06:53] James Breese: But she's getting faster and faster at the moment. So what we saw was like, she did a 5k run where she absolutely [00:07:00] smashed it. What was the time? She did 2205, I think it was. You know, 54, 54 years young. Where her previous race best was 2224 back in 2016. Right, so we're talking a PR on the same race that she hasn't been able to do since then and it's all other things.
[00:07:17] James Breese: She's done a parkrun, like a previous parkrun best was 21. 59 in 2017 on a flat hit, on a flatscape. It's huge, isn't it? Yeah.
[00:07:25] Josh Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Um, hey, she is, she used to be your client. You then, uh, viciously passed her over to me and I've been training her now for the past few months and yeah, she's just Seems to be improving getting Not, we're not talking huge, huge margins, but she is an experienced runner.
[00:07:45] Josh Kennedy: So anything shaving seconds off for her is, you know, a big achievement. She's just done a, uh, 10 K trail race, uh, in under 48 minutes, which is for a trail race, really good. She is, uh, I [00:08:00] think it's next month, isn't it? She's doing a half marathon with the aim of hitting one 45, which I have. every faith that she is going to do.
[00:08:08] Josh Kennedy: In fact, I think she, she might even beat that. Fingers crossed. Here's a special message from our sponsor. One
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[00:08:39] James Breese: Ever wonder how many new clients you're losing by not being Google's number one. Don't wonder, act now, book your free strategy call at strengthmatters. com forward slash website today. I think that trail racing 4750 is a really good benchmark here because What we know is our standard is 48 minutes and under for men as our gold standard, right?
[00:08:59] James Breese: Yeah, [00:09:00]
[00:09:00] Josh Kennedy: yeah, that's not, that's a regular 10k as well, not a trail. Yeah,
[00:09:05] James Breese: so under 48 minutes puts you in the top 10 percent of runners in the world who can run 10k under that time. That's, that's the, that's the data we get from all the running data in the world. But Teresa's running at 10k, right? She's definitely more a long endurance athlete as opposed to the shorter, faster stuff.
[00:09:21] James Breese: But by doing this, we're getting a more, more spring, more bounce, and it's just having a huge carryover effect. So for anyone out there now thinking about, well, how do I incorporate into the, into your training? Well, Therese is pretty cool with us. She trains with us almost seven days a week, Josh. I think, you know, we built her up to that and she finds time in her, she's a busy executive, right?
[00:09:42] James Breese: So she works, has to find time to doing this. So, in simple, do you want to give an idea of what her training plan is at the moment, maybe off the top of your head? Uh,
[00:09:48] Josh Kennedy: off the top of my head, I was going to say, because I haven't got True Coach open. She's doing, uh, three days back to back, um, for, so we can, you know, increase the volume.
[00:09:59] Josh Kennedy: [00:10:00] She's doing some, uh, 1, 500 metres at 120 percent pace. Uh, then she's doing a, um, on the, that's on a Friday, then on Saturday, she's doing some, pace works at specific marathon pace. Um, and then she's doing a longer, slower math, math run, basically. Plus she's doing running drills. Plus she's doing some strength training.
[00:10:26] Josh Kennedy: Um, I think she does running drills twice a week and strength training once a week. Yeah, so she's doing
[00:10:32] James Breese: a lot. It is a lot. So in terms of a week, obviously she's working towards half marathon I think we'll do another podcast actually Josh on how we train people for half marathons and what our format is But yes, you're looking at one strength training session a week We've gone down to two running drills a week, that's three, plus three back to back runs.
[00:10:50] Josh Kennedy: Three back to back sessions, and she has Sundays
[00:10:52] James Breese: off. Sundays off, there you go, and a bit of mobility as
[00:10:54] Josh Kennedy: well. Plus she always throws in the odd park run as well, without me telling her to. So
[00:10:59] James Breese: [00:11:00] there's lots of stuff going on here, but that's how we format it. So like, we've gone down to one training session, strength specific training session a week leading up to the marathon run.
[00:11:08] James Breese: But we're getting, getting away with that because we're doing these sprinting drills to gain the strength work, which is more strength based than you think. If we're doing the bouncing and the A skips and the marches. So.
[00:11:20] Josh Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And one other quick example is another client of ours called Sarah Pichella.
[00:11:25] Josh Kennedy: She been with us for about, would you say about a year now? Is it about James? Something like that. Yeah. Um. Come back from a serious knee injury. So when she first came to us, um, she couldn't do it. She's a big fan of running and swimming. Couldn't do any running cause we had to rebuild her leg strength, basically.
[00:11:43] Josh Kennedy: Um, so obviously walking we started with, then we built her up and up and up, strengthened, stabilized her knee, took her into walk jogs, which we had to then build up. 60 minutes in walk jogs and it's a layer upon layer upon layer where now she's able to do [00:12:00] basic plyometric work, hop and sticks, hop and bounces, plus these running drills as well.
[00:12:04] Josh Kennedy: And she's done a decent amount of base work. She was getting a bit frustrated with math and not getting any quicker, but now I would say in the last month or two, it's starting to have that effect. And her pace is gradually improving and she's really noticing the benefits, which is
[00:12:20] James Breese: awesome. Exactly.
[00:12:20] James Breese: That's awesome. I love it. Go on set, a big kudos and shout out to you as well. And everyone out there. I think there's so many more topics around the running thing. Cause we get a lot of runners here at Strength Matters, don't we? And we're working with and how we combine it. I think we should go more in depth on specifics.
[00:12:33] James Breese: I think a later date. What do you think, Josh? Yeah,
[00:12:34] Josh Kennedy: yeah. No, sounds good. Uh, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. And if you want to find out more about what we do and how we do it, uh, you can have an our system of training, go to strength matters. com forward slash system and get our free ebook.