Rate of loading – even a slow jog has faster loading than many traditional gym movements
Lower leg loading across the footstrike – often as the arch collapses
Hamstring loading as the leg swings forward
The challenges are addressed by the plyometric component of the program.
Drop load when you add plyometrics AND always add plyometrics gradually. They are strong medicine.
The suggestions split themselves into three categories
Post-Run
Daily Mobility Routine
Self-Massage
Vibration Gun
Strength Routine
Unweighted Single-leg Deadlifts
Reverse Lunges (torso over hip)
Front Squats (heels elevated, vertical torso)
Hinge Lift
Plyometric Routine
Foot-elevated calf raises
Double Leg Pogos
Mini-Blasters
Most of us will need to split the strength routine away from the plyometric routine. When I combine, I find the fatigue is a bit like 2+2=5.
Where to start depends on what you’ve been doing for the last six weeks. I’ve been slowly developing overuse injuries…
If you haven’t been strength training then you’ll need to come in very gently.
With the mini-blasters, each cycle takes a minute and I take a minute between cycles. Five rounds, when combined with the rest of my program, proved more than I could handle!
Here’s my plan:
1-2 sets of each exercise
Split Strength Away from Plyometrics
Do each program once every ~10 days
Repeat for ~60 days
With every intervention, the first “little bit” has the highest return. This is particularly important with respect to mobility work.
Finally, powerwalk the first ten minutes of every single run workout.
I had a friend ask me if I thought “cash is king” in the current environment. My answer is more than can fit in a tweet so here you go.
Key Point: when we read reports of monetary policy tightening, I think we are being misled. On a historical basis, policy remains accommodating.
The collective is lousy at remembering history.
US Federal Reserve Total Assets
The value of everything, in the world, has been inflated by the actions of Central Bankers. I think everyone accepts that point. Thing is, it is impossible to measure the scale of the inflation.
In recent memory, the best example will be to cast your mind back to when crypto was a one-way bet.
Asset inflation feeds upon itself, until it doesn’t.
The increase in the size of the Fed’s balance sheet has been a strong tailwind and dominates our collective memory.
If you’re 35 and under, then unprecedented monetary inflation is the only environment you’ve ever known.
Time for another chart.
As at 12 Sept 2022
Here’s a chart of our current reality (black line).
We’ve lived the rate increase, but assets prices have not adjusted to the new reality.
Why?
The economy is rolling along – the tailwind was powerful, and strong
It is unclear where the Fed’s massive balance sheet is going – there has been 13 years of QE – who wants to bet against another round, I don’t
There remains plenty of OPM (other people’s money) and leverage
Those are equity, bond and money market funds I track, as at last Monday.
US 30-year Mortgage Rates 2015-now
Mortgage rates appear to have jumped.
However, let’s have a look at the next chart.
2003-now
Rates are only just getting back to their 2003-2008 level, a time when people were hardly holding back on real estate.
So what do I think:
1// Assets could get cheaper – I don’t see any case for a melt up.
2// If the Fed materially shrinks their balance sheet then assets will get a lot cheaper. Cutting their balance sheet in half takes us back to 2015.
3// Sit down and ask yourself “what if” asset prices drop to 2015 levels, a 50% reduction. Odds are, you have your interest rates locked in. So the main risk will be short term cash flow due to unemployment. How might you protect yourself?
4// Having a year’s core cost of living in an “emergency” fund makes sense. Personally, I didn’t reinvest the proceeds from a Q2 asset sale. My reserve is enough to navigate a nasty recession without selling anything further.
So a “prudent cash reserve” is King.
I don’t think it makes sense to liquidate positions, and pay extra taxes, because risk assets might fall in value.
I was very fortunate Scott Molina took an interest when I moved to New Zealand. Not that he had much of a choice, I turned up at his garage (ready to ride) most mornings. Scott has studied, and applied, what works for his entire life.
One of my favorite follows (Elias Lohtonen) was writing about the differences between Beginners and Elites. The context was metabolic fitness, as determined in his lab.
This got me thinking about my journey as a new athlete.
When I started out, I disliked intense training:
It crushed me
It hurt
I wasn’t very good at it
However, I thought I “needed it.”
Turns out I was lucky I didn’t bother with it for many years.
We now have a better idea why.
I’ll take you back 25 years.
Lactate As A Fuel Source, Not Waste Product
When I learned exercise physiology in the 1990s, lactic acid was presented as the athlete’s enemy – causing pain and slowing us down.
Difficult, searing training was believed necessary to teach our bodies to buffer and tolerate this acidic compound.
We used to think lactate would form crystals in our muscles, causing post-exercise muscle soreness. Hours, and days, later we would “flush the legs” to remove these waste products. We’d get massages to “break up the lactate.”
Turns out we were wrong.
Lactate is essential, and extremely useful, once we’ve trained our bodies to use it.
Lactate is also a key regulator of intermediary metabolism, regulating substrate utilization. It decreases and inhibits the breakdown of fat for energy purposes (lipolysis), as well as the rate of glucose utilization by cells (glucolysis).
The bold part is mine.
What does this mean for you?
Athletes who start fast, and perform “intense” endurance training impair their ability to burn fat
Every human I’ve ever met (!) wanted to burn more fat.
What are the implications for your training?
Slow your endurance sessions down.
Endurance training needs to feel light (link is to an article on “aerobic threshold feel”).
Endurance adaptations favor duration.
We all share a bias towards thinking that “more intense is better.”
Intensity is not better, it is different…
…and a key difference is you are burning less fat.
You already have plenty of capacity to generate lactate. If you want to improve performance (and burn more fat) then you need to focus primarily on the low-end.
2// Next up, Dr. San Millán’s paper on Metabolic Flexibility is a fascinating read on the differences between three groups: elite athletes, recreational athletes and individuals with metabolic syndrome.
From the article linked above
3// Overcoming our shared bias towards intensity : One of the way’s to retrain your mind is to focus on submax performance. At 53, I’m very interested in my paces, and powers, at 130 bpm. This is ~35 beats below max (the “top of”cap” in the table below, approximately).
4// How do you know what’s “intense enough?”
From Last Week’s Thread on Training Zones The table is a good starting point, you can dial in more accurately using the resources in the thread
Feel The Byrn 
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