The Do's and Don'ts for Runners in the Gym

Carrie: Hey everybody, welcome to the RunDot Podcast. We know strength training can be beneficial for a runner. So today we have with us a run coach who does elite strength training programs for his athletes, and he's here today to tell us the do's and don'ts for runners going to the gym. That coach is podcast favorite, Brady Hoover. Brady is an ACSM certified personal trainer and a 2:48 marathoner who's been coaching runners and triathletes for many years. Brady, thanks for coming back on the show.

Brady: I'm so excited to be here. When you guys reached out to me and said, hey, we gotta record something on strength training, I said, that's like my bread and butter, that's what I love to do.

Carrie: Yeah, we like to have you on this show, whether it's strength training or gear checks, whatever it is, we always ask you to come on, probably at least once a month.

Brady: Yeah, frequent flyer.

Carrie: Yeah, I like it. Well, if you're new to the show, I'm Carrie Tollefson, Olympian, broadcaster, and your guide to the world of RunDot. We treat the show like any good workout — we'll start with a warm-up question, settle into our main set conversation, then wind things down by having Coach Brady answer an audience question on the cooldown. Lots of good stuff, so let's get after it. Okay, Brady, we're gonna warm you up here. This is the question — we are having this gym-themed episode today, so I thought I'd ask a gym-themed running warm-up question. Brady, what's the longest or furthest you've ever run on a treadmill?

Brady: Geez. Yeah, we used to call this — well, we call it the dreadmill. I now call it the treadmill because I don't dread it. Having two young children a few years back had me embracing it. I still wanted to continue training for marathons, and the only way I could do it was to embrace the treadmill. I've gone two and a half hours, twenty miles, on the treadmill before.

Carrie: That's crazy. Did you have any tricks — like every 5K or every five miles you'd get off and change a shirt, get a drink, anything like that?

Brady: Yep. I'd have a couple of shirts next to me, so I would sweat and be changing those. Netflix — new definition of Netflix and chill. I usually fall asleep when I'm with my wife watching TV because I'm up at three or four in the morning, so I usually fall asleep a little bit before nine. So I get to catch up on all the missed episodes that we miss — I can watch them while I'm running on the treadmill and then we can chat about them.

Carrie: I love it. I mean, there are so many different tricks that people use to stay on the treadmill. I think the longest I've gone is about 14 miles — so probably roughly an hour and a half or so. But that's long enough for me. I do love a good three- to four-mile run. If you're getting to know me a little bit, you know my favorite run is like the 20-minute run — that's a great one to do on the treadmill, you hammer it out and you're good. I agree, we can't call it the dreadmill because it is a really good tool for us to have. So let's move into the main set, Brady. This is all about the do's and don'ts of strength training. First question today — what inspired you to pursue a career in strength training?

Brady: Good question. So it was not part of my roadmap originally. I was a lifelong athlete, grew up playing soccer. When I got into my college years, I started lifting weights — was more in it for looking good, putting on muscle, with no sport-specific goals other than to build some muscle, looking a little bit better. So I dove into all the books — the Arnold Schwarzenegger training bible, the bodybuilding bible, you name it. I just wanted to learn. Then in college I was going for marketing, and I took a course on nutrition my senior year — just a general elective, Nutrition 101. I loved it — it helped me with my strength training gains, it kind of made sense of how we fuel our bodies. And I thought, wow, I'm about to graduate, it's too late for me to change my career path now. So down the marketing road I went. I was getting results in the gym, so I would coach other friends with their strength training programs — just principles I had learned, without an actual CPT. Then I worked for Milwaukee Tools, I was a territory manager, and I moved from there to a couple of jobs, and I was just never fulfilled. I had success in my career, but it was never fulfilling — it was just a job, check it off the list. Then I met a personal trainer at the YMCA named Mark, in Melrose, Massachusetts. Started chatting with him, taking his classes, and I said, hey, what's it like being a personal trainer, how much do you make, can you make a career out of this? And he kind of took me under his wing — I went to his classes, he said, come shadow me for a few clients, he checked for permission, and — the rest is history. He took me under his wing, answered my questions, told me which certification to get, which was ACSM. And then I just went on from there — you get your CPT, and then I wanted to learn more. We have to do continuing education credits, and when I take a continuing education credit, I don't want a general experience — I want another certification, something that's gonna be twenty to thirty hours of curriculum, good testing on experience. So I took Barbell Rehab, I took Mike Boyle's Level One Certified Functional Strength and Conditioning Coach, I took a program design one that was sports-specific — how do you periodize all this. And I just want to keep learning — Functional Movement Systems is something I want to take, Level One and Level Two. I know a lot of it, but I don't actually have a certification in it. So that's kind of how I got turned on to it. It takes a while to build a business — you start training clients, they start getting results, their friends ask, hey what are you doing, I'm working with Brady, and he trains at — and the rest is kind of history, it builds, and they started referring friends. And then I moved to where I am now, in Newburyport — worked at a great club called Cedardale in the Haverhill, Bradford area — high volume, like a Lifetime Fitness but mom-and-pop owned. Worked full time there, built my business there. And I was there until TriDot RunDot reached out to me and said, hey, we have an opening, do you want to come work for us? And I was like, you get to coach runners and tri athletes and work for a coaching company? Yeah, let's go.

Carrie: No brainer. That's pretty cool — for you to take the leap like you did, from having to drum up your own business, which is not always an easy thing to do.

Brady: Yeah, I hate to say this — I'm forty-one now, I hate to say that on a podcast — I was twenty-something, many years ago. We were young, we were getting ready to sell our first house, we were getting ready to start a family. So if I was gonna make a change, that was the time to do it — had enough to kind of float income for two years, without a family yet. So my wife said, yeah, go for it. And the rest is history.

Carrie: I love that, and you can truly tell you have a passion for it and you love helping others. I wanna know how you write these plans, especially for runners — do you write them personally, do you prescribe them from RunDot, or do you just do it athlete to athlete? There's all kinds of different ways.

Brady: All the above. So for coaching tiers, a lot of us coaches have different tiers — do you need just run coaching? Do you need run and strength? Do you need run, strength, and gait analysis? They might just want run coaching if they hadn't strength trained before — RunDot's strength training is great, especially for somebody doing it on their own. So it depends on the athlete. For the most part, for my athletes that I'm coaching, I give them an individualized, personalized strength training plan. I'm looking at what's their goal A-race — I start there and work backwards with the periodization. What other milestone races do they have in between, and how do we sync this up, and what phases of strength should they be in and when. So I'll do a movement screening — like a simplified FMS, which I'm not certified in, but I know all the principles because I've been in the field.

Carrie: FMS, in case someone doesn't know that acronym —

Brady: Functional Movement Screening. We have a PhD here, BJ Leaper, who's certified in that, so I've talked to him about what I do, and I pretty much follow his screening protocol. And then I see how the athlete's body moves, what their strengths, weaknesses, and dysfunctions are. And then from there I could tell, okay, it looks like your hip flexors are too tight, your quads are fighting tight, your quads want to do all the work, we gotta balance you out. If I can get some running video on them too, and I see things like hip drop going on or overstriding, I can take those things into consideration when building out their strength training program as well. You might see somebody overstriding, they're leaning back, but we don't quite know the why. Maybe it's their forward lean — okay, that's easy to correct. Or maybe they're running in extension — why are they running in extension? Maybe they lack core strength. So if we can address the core strength, well, that might be the root cause. So it helps to have all of these pieces together. And then I can take into account what race they're doing and build them a plan — okay, we're gonna spend two weeks in this training phase where we're just doing the basics, then we're gonna move to strength, then we're gonna work on our stability or mobility, and as we're peaking, we're doing less weight, higher repetition, some plyometric work, and just kind of holding together. That's what I like to do — I like to get very involved. But that's a lot of coaching time too, so it really depends on the athlete and what their goals are. But with any athlete I am working with, whether they're paying for that top-tier service, I do a movement screening on them. If they're not on that top-tier service, I could do a consultation to just kind of come up with the exercises there — I do always give the corrective exercises that need to be done. I might just not take the two hours to build out the whole strength training program in that case.

Carrie: I see. Yeah, I mean it's so nice — I do want to get back into that just a little bit, because I think the thing with athletes and having coaches like you — I think of it like a puzzle, but not the hardest puzzle to make, right, it's not like that. It's like those kids' puzzles that are a little bit bigger — you know, when it comes to our training, we don't have to make it so technical, so hard to put it all together. And I think when you have a coach, that's where all those puzzle pieces kinda come together when you're building a strength plan and your overall training plan.

Brady: Yeah, and it doesn't have to be that long — something like three or four exercises, if that's all the person has time for, to do twice a week. Especially if they're not doing anything, it's very beneficial. Or in season, and I can only give twenty, thirty minutes — great, we'll do this for now, and then when your big races are over and you have more time, we're gonna add to it.

Carrie: That'd be me. Yep. It's really good that you say that — three or four exercises. I want everyone listening right now, if you are like me and not hitting the gym or not being real disciplined and doing it at home, I am with you — even Olympians kind of lose their way at times. And that was good, Brady, to just say it could just be three or four exercises, it doesn't have to be even thirty minutes, could just be ten minutes if we just start doing that. I gotta start doing that, okay.

Brady: It doesn't want to be fancy.

Carrie: Yes. And then you build that, and it becomes a habit, becomes more of a routine for us to do. So let's all agree to just do three or four exercises if we're not doing it. As a runner, we always want to do more running — like we want to get out the door and do more mileage, that's just what we like to do. But this is kind of the big question for me — what are the do's and don'ts for strength session scheduling? How do you do that, Brady?

Brady: So I look at where the athlete is. If they're following RunDot, RunDot's gonna provide strength training — in RunDot it's gonna be mostly bodyweight, or they'll suggest resistance bands, but it's all those things that a runner needs — split squats, maybe Bulgarian split squats, planks, rows, box squats — those sort of exercises, and they're great. As runners, we're always on one leg, so we don't do those compound movements very often. There's a time and a place to get under a barbell or get under some heavy kettlebells, there's a time and place to do some leg presses, but when we're in season, we're gonna benefit more from training unilaterally, on a single plane of motion, single leg, mostly static. So if I'm personalizing a strength training program, I'm taking into account — are they doing a half marathon, 10K, 5K, or the full marathon? Because that's gonna differ how our rep counts go. If we're doing high volume, we can't do heavy weights — we can't do six to eight reps to failure while we're running 40, 50 miles a week, it's just a recipe for disaster. We can still do that lift-heavy phase, but we'll lighten the weights and go through those. So I'm looking at how the athlete moves — I'll screen them for mobility, put them through a squat pattern. Can they squat? Can they get their femurs parallel? No, they can't — okay, well what's going on here, is it their ankle mobility, is it their T-spine, what is blocking them from doing it? So we'll go to some breakout exercises to find out where that flaw is coming from, and then from there I can build that into their stretching routine, their warm-up routine. Maybe they have trouble with pelvic stability when it comes to isolating one side from the other — so I have some exercises they can do on the ground to learn that movement to better stabilize their pelvis. I can ask them to do a single leg deadlift — maybe they can't own that position right now, they get pelvic tilt going on because their body just doesn't know. So I'll give them those corrective exercises. If I'm building the training plan, I'll give them the strength exercises that go along with it as well. So a lot to consider. And also if they're quad-dominant, our programming may not be fully balanced — if we're doing a quad exercise, then we might do a hamstring exercise. It might be like a two-to-one, where if I'm gonna involve the quads a fair amount, I might have to give them two exercises to engage the rear chain to keep things in balance, because they are so quad-dominant.

Carrie: I think people forget that — they always think, the old school way is what you do on the left side, you do on the right side, what you do in front you gotta back up with the back. That's a good thing to remember too, and that's also where personal coaching, personal training is really beneficial at times. Especially I think as we get older and we really have weaknesses that creep in just from daily living or the repetitiveness of going out and doing the same activity year after year.

Brady: Yeah. And in our everyday lives we don't move laterally very much — we're in one plane of movement, we run from point A to point B in one plane of movement. Unless I'm going around somebody, do I move laterally? When we go to the gym, a lot of folks want to go to the gym and work on what they can see in the mirror, which are the muscles that are taking the brunt of it when we're out there running. Our glutes maybe are a prime mover, but what's absorbing the impact is our quads and our calves. So if we then go into the gym and start training our quads and our calves, well, we're not having that equal reaction between our hamstrings and glutes to keep things in balance, and there becomes a point where if someone just keeps pushing like that, they're gonna end up with a hip issue, a knee issue, an IT band issue, because that balance has shifted. There's so much strength in the quad that it might be pulling the IT band forward ever so slightly to cause pain, because there's not enough tension coming from the hamstring and glutes to keep that in place. So there's that shift — there's all kinds — I could go on and on.

Carrie: I could see where your mind is just thinking of every little piece of the body right now, it's so cool, like you love this stuff. So let's talk a little bit about day one and day two, then — everyone talks about arm day and leg day. Do we as runners have that same kind of scheduling that we should put into our plans?

Brady: No — a good plan is gonna involve the full body, because when we're running, we do use it — we use our arms. Imagine trying to run with your arms down by your side.

Carrie: That's one of the first things I notice when I'm looking at people's forms, especially newer runners that are older in life — I'm like, you can't forget your arms, it's what propels your legs. People forget that.

Brady: Yeah, arm strength is a big part of it. Our shoulders are working, even our chest is working — there's a contraction every time we swing our arms, when we hit the ground, our shoulders are contracting, our chest is contracting. People forget about that. Our back is involved in that arm swing as well. So it's important to train all those things — we don't have to go super crazy with it, just some of the basics. So that's why I like to prescribe a day one and a day two, because I think everyone would benefit from two days of strength training, and we can make that twenty to thirty minutes, keep it super simple. And for those programming for themselves, just think about the different types of movement. We've got knee-dominant exercises — those are like our squat pattern exercises. You want to have at least one of these, the bare minimum, and that's where we start, and then if they have more time, we get more volume and we get smaller muscles involved. Most bang for your buck — you want a knee-dominant exercise, something like a lunge, a squat, a step up, a leg press — those are what we would consider knee-dominant exercises. Then you want a hip-dominant exercise — something that's going to more involve your hamstrings and glutes, and if time is tight, I want something that's going to maximize that — something like a deadlift, a bridge, a hip thrust, and the single-leg versions of those too. So there's our two-leg exercises — we want a hip-dominant and a knee-dominant exercise. Then, if we do a push exercise — a push-up, a chest press — that's going to involve our triceps, shoulders, and chest, so we're working three different muscle groups right then and there. So we want to push, we want to pull — a pull is going to work our back and our biceps. If there's extra time, an overhead lift that works the shoulders that way, or an overhead pull. And then I always want a core exercise in there. So anywhere from four to five exercises. If I have to eliminate something, maybe it's the vertical press, and we put something else in — maybe I get them on the incline at that point to involve their shoulders a little bit more, because we're getting rid of the overhead lift. I don't like to not give the overhead lift because it's something we could benefit from, but when time is tight, what are our goals, what's the stuff we need.

Carrie: Okay, so I'm gonna piggyback on the previous question — you said just three or four exercises is a really good place to start, and probably a good place for any one of us, no matter if you're lifting all the time or not. But if you could, again I'll put you on the spot, tell us the three or four exercises that you would say are your most favorite or the most prescribed. What do you think we should do at home or in the gym — the three or four best exercises?

Brady: Yeah, if the balance is there — single leg deadlift, split squat, and some sort of vertical, like a lat pulldown or a pull-up, and then a core exercise. You're gonna pretty much hit every muscle group doing that. If you do the squat and deadlift in a single — you know, split squat that's on a single leg, and single leg deadlift. Of course, I want the athlete to lift a little bit heavier, so I might want to give them a two-legged squat. So in programming, I like to split it up over two days too, especially when it comes to the legs in our sport. I'll give them, say, day one, they're gonna do a goblet squat with a kettlebell — that's moving on two legs. Then I'm also gonna give them a single-leg hip hinge — a single leg bridge, a single leg hip thrust, a single leg deadlift — something that's going to put them into hip extension. Day two, I'm going to reverse that — now I'm going to give them a two-legged bridge with some heavier weights, or two-legged hip thrust, your traditional deadlift. And then I'm going to give them a split squat, a Bulgarian split squat, a reverse lunge, a step-up, something like that. So we're still working on two legs where we can get some heavier lifts in. But when on one leg, we're also working on stability, working on good movement — especially like a split squat. If I can set somebody up on the floor, all they have to do is stand up — they're doing split squats but setting up from the ground, coming up, coming down, resting on the ground. We get them moving like that, they're essentially in a correct movement pattern. If I can get them strong there over the course of three, four weeks, then I bring them to a regular squat pattern where I let them use two legs — imagine how good they're gonna be and feel there.

Carrie: And if they're older and they have a hard time, there's always modifications — you can just hold onto something to get you, or go from a chair if you can't go all the way down. There's all kinds of ways to do it.

Brady: Yep. If I set somebody up on the floor but they can't get all the way down there, I can get a couple of pads to put under their knee to bring that floor up six inches, nine inches, twelve inches, whatever their range of motion is. If their balance is not the greatest, I can get them on a TRX doing the same thing.

Carrie: You're holding on the whole time — it's such another puzzle for you to figure out how to deal with each athlete as they come. That's amazing. So yes, now we're talking balance and strength, but the old-school thinking was that you should not be in the gym if you want to be a really good endurance athlete. Even my coach at Villanova, Marcus O'Sullivan, who was a four-time Olympian, he didn't really lift a ton — he did bodyweight, which is great, we're not saying bodyweight isn't good — but you are seeing more and more runners and elite runners getting in the gym and lifting super heavy. So I want to ask you a little bit about building mass as an endurance athlete — is that a thing we want to do? Is it something that doesn't really happen because we put on quite a bit of mileage, so it's more about strength and stability? What do you think about muscle mass as a runner?

Brady: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with putting on a little bit of muscle mass — I call it functional weight. If you're lifting and putting on weight, you're putting on functional weight. Where you're gonna notice those benefits — not top-end speed, maybe top-end ten-second sprint speed, you'll notice that — you'll notice it when you're running uphills, you'll notice it more when you're running long threshold intervals, that your form feels more built together. So you're gonna see those dividends paid in terms of stamina, your RPE is going to go down. Your top-end speed may not necessarily increase, but your 5K will improve because your form is better and your time to muscle fatigue is later, so you become more efficient. We're all built a little bit differently — some people are built with more type-one, fast-twitch muscle fibers, which have the tendency to grow, and some of us are born with more slow-twitch, which are your endurance muscle fibers, and those don't tend to grow very much. But when we start lifting weights, yeah, we might put on a little bit of muscle — nothing wrong with that. You just don't want your gym days to outcompete your running days. So if you're running four days a week, you don't want to be strength training five days a week and putting on mass, because then it's like now I'm trying to run in this new body. I want to still continue to run four days a week, I want to put on a little strength, but it's happening at the same time that your run is building and your strength is building. So any weight you add at that point is gonna be more functional than say, in the wintertime, okay, I'm gonna lift four days a week and only run two days a week — well, you're gonna put on a lot of muscle that your mechanics may not keep up with, so that when you do go back to those higher-mileage days, all of a sudden you might have broader shoulders, more muscle, and that's gonna affect our balance when we're running — how we rotate through the air, a little bit from side to side, maybe not quite forty-five degrees, but we rotate as we're running. Well, that rotation is gonna change as we get wider from lifting heavier weights. But if we're running as much or more than we're lifting, we won't even notice a difference — but we'll see it in our time savings.

Carrie: That's really a good point, especially when athletes are maybe growing in height, or they are younger and their bodies are changing — I think we forget, as young athletes, how to get in the gym and deal with those changes as well. How do you treat a younger athlete? Maybe there are parents listening to this, or younger athletes listening to this — as your body changes as you go through life, how do you figure out the strength program there?

Brady: Always assessing the way they move, what they need. With the younger ones — their bones are still developing, so I don't want to go super heavy with them, I want to keep them on more of a ten-to-twelve rep range, higher reps, lower weights. Their coordination — as teenagers, when they're going through puberty, they're growing so fast that they almost look clumsy again, like they were toddlers, right — they're in this new body and they don't have much control over it. Well, strength will control those muscles. But I don't want to put them in something that's going to jeopardize — I don't want to put them in a compound movement if they can't own it. Sometimes it's going back to the basics, doing those step-ups and safe movements, split squats, things like that to gain balance, maybe they're losing balance because they're growing so quickly. Before, now we gotta do it with a TRX to get a little bit of balance — we get better, we learn that movement pattern, we can let go of the TRX, now we can own that, okay, good there, now we can add weight to it, things look good there, they're stable. Maybe I take a kettlebell and have them put it on their opposite shoulder, and all of a sudden they're a little imbalanced and they gotta learn to control that movement. And then we can progress that to a walking lunge and add some momentum to it, and then once they're stable and can own that, we can have them do a walking lunge with a rotation, make them a little bit unbalanced. And that, over time, is gonna increase their stability, and it's gonna get them moving a little bit better too.

Carrie: So good to hear. I have a sixteen-year-old daughter who grew like eight inches, basically from seventh to eighth grade — a big jump — and I still kind of say to her, you still look like you're salsa dancing a little bit, especially as you fatigue. Her knees don't quite lock in and pull her through when she's using that long stride now that she has. So it's really good to be reminded, remember that they're young, we don't want to add a lot of weight on them in the gym, but that TRX is so good, I forget about that, and that would be perfect for Ruby, my daughter, just because she is learning how to handle this new body and new height, especially — it's like I can see above the trees now, basically, she's grown so much.

Brady: Yeah, and I think about my six-year-old daughter — when she runs she kicks her calves out, you know — everything from the knee to the hips is good, but the legs are kicking out, and I'm like, she would benefit from some step-ups.

Carrie: Sure, and she would probably love that at that age.

Brady: Or something that's gonna involve her quads. It's like, how can I take the equipment that she's using at the playground and incorporate that in, so that she doesn't know if she's training?

Carrie: Brilliant, I love that. So next question — this is kind of a more supplement-style question. When you go into the gym, you see all kinds of different people — you see that person with a big water bottle, maybe it's a protein drink, we don't know what they're doing. We also hear a lot of people talking about protein and carbs and all these different things. Let's go through a little bit of the gym rat habits. What do you think about all that? I think runners have a different mentality sometimes than the old-school, quote-unquote gym rat style, but maybe not — maybe we're all kind of going together now.

Brady: Yeah, we could benefit from some of the things we see them doing. They might be taking a pre-workout drink — is that needed? I don't think so, it's the equivalent of having coffee with some calories, right. Sometimes with those pre-workout supplements, there's caffeine in it, or a lot of caffeine, or some other form of stimulant that's gonna give you energy. Take that in the afternoon, it may be hard at first to fall asleep at night. But it can give you that extra boost. Is it necessary? No — I mean, these guys are in there for more than an hour, they're doing heavy weights, so they need a lot, and the reason they're in there for a while is they're doing heavy lifts.

Carrie: And they kind of have to pump themselves up to get in there too — it's a little bit different style than what most endurance athletes do.

Brady: Yes, not really what we need. They're doing heavy weights with, say, something like a five-rep-to-failure set — you're gonna need three minutes of recovery, four minutes of recovery, go heavier than that, you might need five minutes of recovery, so they're gonna be in there a while before they can perform that lift again. You'll see people walking around with gallon water jugs — I think part of it's a convenience thing.

Carrie: Doing curls in between.

Brady: These bodybuilders are also taking creatine — creatine gets stored in the muscle, it helps pull some of that water into the muscle, so there's something to be said for that. Also, when you weight lift and you're lifting heavier weights, the muscles really heat up, so water can help cool those down too. They're always drinking. Us as runners, we're only gonna be in there maybe, at top — in the off season I might give someone an hour gym workout — we don't need a gallon of water, 24 ounces, 20 ounces, a liter at most. You might see people walking around mixing protein powder, protein drinks mid-workout — again, those folks are gonna be there for longer than an hour, they're lifting heavy weights, think about all the muscle trauma they're doing, it's gonna be a little while before their next meal, that helps them bridge the gap. That being said, could we benefit from a protein shake? Absolutely. If you're not going to be eating within an hour after you finish strength training, yeah, a protein shake is a great supplement. I'm a firm believer you can get everything in through a good diet, good nutrition. After a gym workout, I might make a green smoothie with peanut butter and chia seeds, and maybe I'll put a little bit of protein in there if I'm not getting it through my dietary needs that day, like not having a lot of protein with breakfast, lunch, or dinner — a good way to get additional protein. That covers everything we usually see them doing nutritionally in the gym.

Carrie: And I also think that is just sort of — I don't know if it's fun, but I do think it's a mentality that weightlifters have — they are very meticulous, and it's almost like they check that off — I've gotten this many micros and this many macros and this much protein. And that's just sort of their mentality, and I think for a lot of endurance athletes, we look more at what we eat in a meal, rather than what we're filling in our bottle. And it's not that one way is better than the other, I just think that to me, on the outside looking in, strength people — weight trainer people — what do you call it, when they're doing shows and stuff, bodybuilder — that just seems like history has shown that's kind of how they check off their training day.

Brady: Yeah, they're tracking all their macros. I mean, some runners do as well — I'm not sure if your dietitians back in the day, when you were competing at a high level, were tracking all your macro and micronutrients.

Carrie: No, we didn't do that. We talked carbs, we talked protein. And actually Jillian — Jillian Tholen, who's been on RunDot — she'll talk about any kind of training, bodybuilding or endurance. But it's just interesting to hear how you have to adapt to the athlete you're working with — bodybuilder, trainer, or endurance runner, triathlete, whatever. Let's talk a little bit about when we're in the gym — free weights, machines, bands, mats, all the things. Are there some that are better than the others? What do you think?

Brady: Yeah, I try to keep people off of the traditional machines. A leg press, different story, but I'd rather have them squat than leg press — it's more functional, you're gonna get more bang for your buck. If I put you in a leg press, you're gonna get a lot of power, your back is supported, your core is supported. If I put you in a squat, you're holding that kettlebell around your collarbone height, so your core is involved, your glutes are involved, your hamstrings are involved, your quads are involved, your calves are involved. If I'm doing that same exercise in a leg press, well, it's just my quads, hamstrings, glutes that are involved. There's a time and a place for a leg press, absolutely, but I'm thinking more convenience for the runner — time is of the essence, how can we get most bang for our buck with the limited time we have in the gym. So free weights, TRX, single leg movements — we're gonna get more bang for our buck. Let's take a squat pattern — take a squat, we go down, you come up — you've got your adductors and abductors involved as well, you don't feel them so much. How can we get a little bit more out of them? If we take a split squat, which is the same movement pattern as a squat, and now we're doing it on a single leg, well, you feel your inner thighs working, you feel your adductors working, they're more involved. That's why I like to make somebody strong in single-leg movements before I put them on two-legged movements, so they can get all those benefits. And when we're running, especially when we're landing, what's stabilizing us is our calves, our quads, our abductors or adductors, our glute maximus, glute medius. The more I can train them on a single leg, the better they're gonna be in their run, the longer time to fatigue. All of a sudden they're gonna get up to mile 16 in a marathon and say, wow, I still feel my glutes firing, I'm starting to get tired but I still feel like my body is pretty well fit together — that's strength work, I love that. I stay away from more of your hammer-strength machines and those kinds of machines, with the exception of cables, because they're a fixed plane of movement. You get in there, say you're doing a chest press — I can raise the seat up and down, and then all you have to do is press it, but it's only gonna go in one plane of movement, maybe it's got a little arc to it, but it's a fixed position — we're not stabilizing, we're just pressing. We're gonna get a little bit more benefit going to a dumbbell chest press, where now we've got stabilizer muscles going with those dumbbells. If we lose the dumbbells and go to a barbell, well, we're a little bit more stable now because we've got one fixed object, we don't have to stabilize two independent things, we can press more weight, we can get more power. Again, there's a time and a place for that — I like that in the off season when we're trying to get that raw strength. But more bang for your buck, dumbbell chest press, because you're working your core there, you're stabilizing, working your chest, triceps, and shoulders as well.

Carrie: Yeah, and I even think of my dad, who has an old football injury in his shoulder, and going and doing a machine just doesn't work because it's lifted up and it's just kind of awkward. I think that's really smart, for you to remind us all that dumbbells can do maybe even more than a machine can — but yet I understand the convenience of a machine too. It's just like, if you don't wanna think, or if you don't know how to build a plan really —

Brady: Arm shoulder presses — I love people doing those. I prefer people to do those standing up, because think about everything below that as the dumbbells are up in the air — my core's involved, there's just more involved. And the other thing to think about is, in this day and age, we sit to work, we sit to drive to the gym, we sit to eat our meals, we sit all the time. When you want to go to the gym and sit on a machine, I'm like, there's gonna be more benefit — we're sitting all the time, we need to —

Carrie: And then you have your phone, and then you just start to scroll, and you forget, nope, I'm supposed to keep my heart rate up, let's go to the next machine. So yes, yes. How about what do you think of classes when you're at a gym? I know you go to Zumba twice a week — but actually it's so fun, I was just at Special Olympics and there's a bunch of pro athletes, and I mean I could see those guys — there was a bunch of football players, I mean they love dancing. There's definitely a time and place for all of those classes, absolutely, especially if it brings the fun into some sort of fitness, then get after it, go do it.

Brady: Yeah, all the trends right now — you got your Zumba classes, which are great for cardio. We get plenty of cardio through our running, so I would rather advise my athletes not to do Zumba as their main thing. The other thing I like about Zumba is there's a lot of lateral movement, side by side — we don't get that in our lives, we need more of that in our lives. I like to program that into their strength training, to have them do lateral lunges or something we call star lunges, or clock lunges, where we're lunging to the one o'clock, the two o'clock, the three o'clock. Those are great. So yeah, Zumba, cardio-focused, great for cardio, not for strength, great for lateral movement. Tabata is really popular — I do like Tabata class. Tabata protocol is 20 seconds on, 10 seconds rest, and you do sets of that. I can't speak for all trainers or coaches, but most are going to do a full body workout — we might be doing chest presses on the floor for 20 seconds, then we stand up with dumbbells, then we stand up and do 20 seconds of rows, we get 10 seconds to get back down on the floor, do our chest presses. We go through that, we have a one-minute transition or rest, now we're working on legs where they're doing deadlifts and squats, and then moving on to core, and maybe a cardio session. Tabata's a great way to get strength if you need some motivation. Body pump is very popular — I like body pump. You're using a bar that looks like a barbell, and you put weights on it, and it's very lightweight, high repetitions, but you're getting a full body workout — they have you doing bent over rows, squats, they literally have people doing cleans, and that just scares me sometimes because the movement pattern's not there — but that's in the programming, it's a lightweight, sometimes I just have to look away, I'm like, slow it down — and I know everybody's doing twenty, but you could get ten good ones in the same time everyone else is doing and get a better —

Carrie: Yeah, and we all get competitive, we wanna do more than everyone else.

Brady: What are some other workout trends out there? Circuit training — circuit training's great, that's when, if someone's really time-crunched, we have the cardiovascular system to do it. So we might do something like 10 goblet squats, immediately followed by another exercise, different muscle groups. So if I'm gonna write out a circuit, maybe I have them doing goblet squats and then having them do something more static, like a bent-over row, where they can get their heart rate down a little bit because the goblet squat's gonna elevate their heart rate. After that, maybe I have them do a single leg deadlift, then a push-up, then rest. So they go through four exercises and then rest — saves time in the gym. Again, you need the cardiovascular system to do that, you don't want the heart rate to get too high, so I'm very particular in how I program those — this is going to get the heart rate high, this is gonna keep the heart rate where it's at, this might allow them to get that heart rate down a little bit. Those kinds of things — those are the trends you kind of see in the gym. Any other popular ones?

Carrie: If you're thinking of cardio, your spin class — which I love — boxing classes, I think those are super fun, especially when you are injured and trying to become a different athlete for a little while, if there's something you can't do that's related to running, like an elliptical or whatever. I love those high-energy classes.

Brady: Yeah, good for cardio, good for building leg strength too, and it translates really well — it's pretty much the same muscle groups as running. So if you're picturing — you can cycle and take spin classes, and you can get the tension up there, get the wattage up there, feel the muscle burn — that's gonna help you when you run overall too.

Carrie:

The quad burn in those classes, so good. Let's talk about — since I brought up the elliptical — we've talked about the treadmill already, but like spin bikes, ellipticals, arc trainers, all of those machines — what's your do's and don'ts on those?

Brady: Yeah, great alternative to running, especially when it comes to zone two days — time off of impact. Say Tuesday's your hard run and Monday's your easy run — you go to the gym and use the elliptical or arc trainer, your goal is to get your heart rate in zone two, go to that low end of zone two, you're not getting the impact. Think about how much better you're gonna feel the following day when you show up to that hard run workout — you're gonna get a little bit more out of it. So nothing wrong with doing that. If I have an athlete that wants to be active six days a week, at least two of those days should be some form of cross-training — cycling, elliptical, arc trainer, stair climber, something different, walking on an incline even.

Carrie: Yeah, do you have any don'ts you think of when it comes to being on a machine in the gym for runners? I think of right away — the elliptical for me was I could stay pretty much in the same fitness as I did as a runner, I would go really hard. But for instance, I had plantar fasciitis for sixteen months in one foot and eighteen in the other, and looking back now I'm like, was that elliptical trainer good for me? Because I basically think I kept myself injured — even though my foot didn't hurt quite as bad after the elliptical as it did when I was running, it still hurt. So those are my don'ts — if something still bothers you while you're doing a non-impact machine, you have to think about that.

Brady: Yeah, find something else that will serve the purpose — we'll coach on what other alternatives we could do if that was an issue. Does it bother you while you're cycling? It might, because your hamstrings are involved. Okay, well does it bother you on a recumbent bike? Gonna be hard to get the heart rate up there on a recumbent bike, but what can we do? There's so many alternatives — there's even those, I forget what they're called, the ski ladder machines where you're pulling with your arms.

Carrie: The UBE, the arm bike — that's one. I used that like crazy when my foot was so bad and I couldn't even get on the elliptical anymore, and I'm telling you people, get on that thing, you will sweat like nobody's business and you will get a good workout.

Brady: Yeah, those are great — if what bothers you is the pedals, you can do it with the arms and still get into that sweet spot to get those adaptations.

Carrie: But again, with that, you have to kind of learn it — you go forward, you can go backwards, just have some fun. I always say, if you are truly a runner and you're in the gym having to work out on different machines, probably something is up, right, or we have to supplement mileage on other machines — but have fun becoming a different athlete, that's the big thing for me, when I'm hurt, I want to be better as a runner after, so I figure out how I can do that. We've gone through a lot of things, Brady. If you can just kind of summarize some of the do's and don'ts of strength training, I think that would be a fun way to wrap this up.

Brady: Sure. Some of the do's — as I mentioned earlier, when you're writing a program for yourself, think about — I want a knee-dominant exercise, a hip-dominant exercise, a push, a pull, and a core exercise. You do that and you're in a great place. On those knee and hip dominant exercises, get yourself on a single leg from time to time too — because you're always gonna do, say, a squat and a deadlift, or a squat and a bridge. If you do a two-legged squat, do a single-legged bridge. Day two, two-legged bridge, single leg squat, like a split squat. So those would be your do's — keep it simple. You'll see people doing dumbbell curls on a BOSU ball — I don't know what to think of that, you have to lighten the weight, you could stand on stable floor and lift more weight — there's other exercises I can give you to work on that stability that would be more beneficial. You might see somebody doing burpees and you're not there yet — you don't have to be doing burpees, keep it simple. I like to say — before we started writing papers, first we had to learn the ABCs, then we could write small words, when we could write small words we could write sentences, when we could write sentences we could write a paragraph, when we could write a paragraph we could write a story. Strength training is the same way — start with the basics, start simple, progress from there. Try to stay away from the machines unless it's absolutely necessary — we sit for a majority of the things we do. You might look at a machine and say, what's this machine want me to do — it's a chest press, I could do a cable fly, I could do a dumbbell chest press, I could do a push-up. This is a rowing machine, I could do a bent-over dumbbell row, I could do a supported row with a hand on the bench. There's other variations. So those would be my do's and don'ts.

Carrie: I love that — I think you have kept it simple for us, you have made that puzzle kind of easy with the bigger pieces. Where I think the big thing I want to ask next is — how do you do it all? You're training everybody, but you're still racing at a pretty high level, you're doing all the different things, now you're getting ready for a triathlon, so you have three different disciplines you're trying to fit in. How do you fit in your strength training? Because I know it's not too late, I know I gotta get going again, but we talk about this all the time — there's a lot of things that get in the way in life, especially when you're working or have kids, all the things.

Brady: Yeah, how do you keep it simple in-season when the volumes are high? I keep it to two or three sets — I guess if you're new to strength, one set of ten reps, go through it, week two, maybe do two sets. If you go in there, the gold standard is like three sets of ten reps when it comes to muscle endurance, but it doesn't mean you have to start there — work up to there. If you're coming from nothing, start with one or two sets. Three sets is going to make you sore for days, we don't need to go there, we don't want that. What my training looks like right now, in season, I'm sticking to split squat, single leg deadlift, push-up, pull-up, core exercise — I'm setting it up in a circuit style, so I can do all five of them, then rest, do all five of them, then rest, do all five of them, then rest, done — some heavier weights, the heaviest I can maintain there. In the off season, when my volume is lower, that's where I might do eight to ten exercises — I'm just doing more volume. If I'm doing a goblet squat, I might also do a split squat, and in that same workout I might have a single leg deadlift, so now I have three exercises for the legs. I might be doing a push-up and a chest press, I might be doing a pull-up and a row. So it's just more volume — that's what I'm doing when I have more time and I'm trying to increase a little bit of muscle size. Then season comes, and I can reduce it — what's the bare minimum I need to do to get a little bit of benefit, but also help prevent my body from injury.

Carrie: I love it — minimum dose. We have one more question for you, Brady, and that's the cooldown question — a question from our audience. Emily from New York says: "With the hot summer we are experiencing right now, I find myself running more in the AC at the gym. I've dabbled with the different treadmills they have — they have the traditional belt version, a more platform-style belt, and even the one that is curved where I have to generate the pace myself. Is it better to use different ones throughout the week, or should I spend most of my time on a specific type of treadmill?"

Brady: So it sounds like self-propelled, the arc treadmills. And then you see some of the Woodway treadmills that are like slats, that feel a little bit more road-like. Then you've got your Matrix or NordicTrack or Life Fitness treadmills, and they have basic ones too, and the really fancy ones that have more cushioning, feel like you're running on a cloud. What are the differences? I like the Woodways with the slats — those are super expensive, so your high-end gyms will carry them. Your Planet Fitness will have your traditional treadmills, maybe they have a self-propelled one. Nothing wrong with any of them — do what feels right for your body. If you need a little bit more cushion that day, get on one of the more expensive treadmills. If you need something more road-feel, use the Woodway or a basic treadmill. The arc treadmills are really hard to run on, and the pace showing on screen — gosh, it's humbling, it says I'm running a ten-minute mile and my heart rate's sky high. For my zone two runs, I do like those, 'cause I'm just controlling my heart rate, I don't have to worry about pace and RPE, I'm just trying to keep my heart rate around 140. If it's telling me I'm doing a 12-minute mile, well, I don't know if that's right or not, because if I was outside I'd be running a lot faster than that — but it is what it is, and they're also fun to run on and kind of push. So yeah, they all serve a benefit — do what feels right. I like to rotate through the different treadmills depending on what the demand is in that workout that day. And sometimes — I don't know about your gym, Emily, but my gym has a track, so I like to do my warm-up and cool-down on the track, where I'm running zone two pace, and then I'll do my intervals on one of the treadmills, and then go back to the track and run some laps. I've played around with doing intervals on the track, but ten times to a mile — the knees don't like that very easily, those corners are sharp.