192 - Train Like You Want to Still Be Dangerous at 60

I trained for a sub-three marathon, hit it, and spent the next several weeks barely able to walk without my hips locking up. I did everything right. Trained hard, stayed consistent, crossed the finish line. My body broke down anyway.

This episode is about what I got wrong, what the research says about training volume and long-term durability, and why most runners are one bad training block away from learning this the hard way.

You'll walk away with:

• Why skipping strength training costs you years of running, not just one race
• The science behind easy days and why yours probably aren't easy enough
• A 2023 European Heart Journal study on lifelong endurance athletes that genuinely surprised me
• A simple training framework built for the runner you want to be at 50, not just at your next finish line

I want to run a marathon with my son one day. That goal changed how I train. I hope this episode does the same for you.

If it helped, share it with one runner who needs to hear it. Rate the show on Apple or Spotify. Takes 30 seconds.

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You're not lazy. You're not lost. You just know there's a gap between the life you're living and the one you're capable of — and that gap is getting harder to ignore.

Every week, I pull apart the mental patterns that keep capable people stuck — comfort disguised as patience, avoidance disguised as strategy, mediocrity dressed up as balance. I bring in philosophy, personal stories from the trails and the trenches, and conversations with people who decided to stop waiting.

This isn't a show about hacks. It's about the harder work: getting honest with yourself, building the discipline to act on that honesty, and becoming someone you'd actually respect.

Keep getting after it.

Transcript

Pride Driven Training And Pain

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Oh man. Oh man. We're talking about one of my favorite things today, guys. We're talking about training. And here's the deal. Pride is a little bitch. I struggled with pride a lot throughout my training career, you could call it. But I have struggled with pride quite a bit. And I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I was perfect in my training program and everything that I was doing. I thought I had it all figured out. And I thought, you know, more running, more suffering, less rest meant I was going to be a better athlete. Turns out that is not true. That was the formula that I had for myself. And it worked for a while, I will say. I got some pretty good results, which we'll talk about. The main one being my sub-3. I hit that goal, and a few weeks after that race, I could barely walk right. I was messed up. And I wasn't just sore, like my hip flexors. Every time I went for a run, it felt like I was being stabbed in my hips. It was horrible. And I think about it now, it's like, well, the signs were obviously there, like obvious Brett, which we'll get into today, because I want you to understand the story completely here. But I was tight all the time. I had pain all the time. And like I was saying, the first mile or two miles in every single run, I was limping because it hurt so bad. And my brain was telling me, We gotta do this. You gotta hold your standard. You gotta do this. You gotta get out there and get your miles in. Doesn't matter if you're about to die and pass out from the pain. I would walk around the grocery store, like limping around like a 70-year-old man in a 23-year-old's body. Like it was so bad. And the thing that messed me up the most, I thought, around the time was that I thought I was doing everything I was supposed to. I trained hard, I stayed consistent, and I hit the goal. And so why did my body feel worse afterwards? Looking back now, I understand that I built a system that could perform one time and not one that could last. It was not feasible for me to keep it going. And that's where I went wrong. Looking back, I wasn't taking time to recover or to stretch or to do weight training. All things that I believe you have to have in order to be a great runner. And you don't have to go out and like become a bodybuilder to understand the benefits of weight training. It can be very small things, like just things that really you don't think mean a lot, but your body requires you to do in order to be healthy and in order to be strong and to be able to perform at its max capacity. Welcome back to the Get and After podcast, my friends. I'm your host, Brett, and as always, if you're new here, one, thank you for showing up. I always enjoy talking to you guys. And two, this podcast is all about getting out of our comfort zone, pushing our limits, and doing hard things. Now, today's episode I wanted to spend some time on because I got a lot wrong when I when I first started training for races and when I was trying to do the hybrid athlete thing. You know, I was I I didn't really know what I was doing a lot of the time. Um so it just made me want to sit down for a minute and just talk about what I've learned and talk about some studies I've found, which I I find pretty interesting, and just share some thoughts from Brett because like I first got into actual training, like I would say weight training in college. Um, when I was in college, I would do long runs on Saturday, but my long runs at the time were like six, seven miles, so nothing too crazy at a pretty slow pace. Um, but my main focus was bodybuilding. I was gonna be a bodybuilder. I'll put up a video myself right here, just showing you guys. Uh I I did lift a lot. Um, but you know, it was just a time where I fell in love with the fact that discipline and consistency and hard work provide real valuable results. It was my first experience with that. And I trained all throughout college. Uh, when I moved down to Arizona to work on our agency, my brother and I, we were still training partners and we'd train all the time together. And there's just something fun about being with someone, suffering with them a little bit, but then seeing results come. Uh, that meant a lot. Like it was it was pretty awesome. And so understanding that as my background, I got into running around 2023. That's when I first did my team Tim race and fell in love with the sport. Like, I I love weight training, I love what it does, but running has taught me to endure. And weight training doesn't necessarily do that because you know you're pumping out 10 to 12 reps of um three sets or four sets, and you know that there's an end in sight. It it takes effort, but it's not as severe as like you're out on a run for two hours and you got to keep going. At least for me, that's been my experience. And running was something that just opened up doors for me to one, look very introspectively and see the things that were bothering me during the time. You know, I've mentioned a lot how I love weight training for the sense that it gives you uh insight into who you are, how you're performing, and things that you never really think about. But when you have time to just run for two and a half to three hours, you're thinking a lot about different different stuff that's going through your mind. So pretty interesting there. And we'll start there, but from my experience at the beginning, I've looked at other people with their training programs, and I I think that most runners they train like they're cramming for an exam. How fast can I go? How far can I go? How how much can I push? And how much can I handle this week? That mindset it does get results. Don't get me wrong there, but from my experience, it also creates blind spots, is what I'll call them. Mine at the time was strength training. I told myself that I didn't have time, or I told myself that it didn't matter because my main focus was running, and my only focus was really race day. That's what I was working towards. Every time I'd be out on a run, I would visualize the race and just put myself in that situation and just tell myself things like, okay, well, if this comes up during a race, what am I gonna do? How will I respond? I don't want to be, you know, shocked on race day when something comes up. And after my first marathon in 2023, it's really when this problem really started because I went all in on running, which again, it did provide results, but it also showed me areas that I needed to improve upon. And my hips they didn't fix themselves by running less, they they fixed themselves from starting to lift. So sit with that for a second, because I think that it paints a very important picture. Like the more I would rest, I would feel better, but the pain didn't go away until I started lifting again. If running was the cure, then running less would have been enough. And then it wasn't. That wasn't the cure. The thing that I ignored, and the thing that I used to love, but told myself didn't matter, and told myself I didn't have enough time, that turned out to be the thing I was missing the whole time. And people, I think hear hybrid training, and they think of some elite athlete doing some CrossFit uh competition at 5 a.m. and running a 50 miler on Saturday. That's not what it is. It's not what I've come to believe it is. Even if you study some of the hybrid athletes out there, like Luke Hopkins, Nick Bear, you know, the big ones, they're not doing that either. They they will have moments where they train for a big event, but a lot of the times it's just maintenance and trying to make sure that their body is ready to go, it's primed. Hybrid training means that you stop ignoring the things that will eventually break you. That's what my definition is. Running builds the engine, and strength builds your structure. Mobility, in fact, keeps the parts moving the way that they're supposed to, and rest lets all of it actually work. That's the time where your body's repairing itself, building the muscle that you're working towards, and letting you get back into the game, staying strong the whole time. You miss one of those long enough, and something will show up. I've seen guys who can run 18 miles no problem, like studs, but they tremble under a squat rack. You know, they don't have the form, their their legs are not ready to handle that kind of weight. And I don't think that's just being well trained. I think that's being good at one thing. And there's a difference there. And the guys, the people who don't learn it early, tend to learn it on a training table. Like, that's when it shows up. And I've actually learned this through ultra marathon running. Also, I didn't have a diet coke to crack, so my wife got me a swig drink. What's better than that? I don't know. Not much. Makes the day go by. So much better. This is little things in life, guys. It's a little things. But when I first started trail running, I had weak legs, honestly. And I didn't know what was going on. Like I didn't know why I struggled so much going up steep climbs, why I my muscles were burnt out very fast. And it wasn't until, like, like I said, I started getting into weight training again. I started lifting more, doing squats, doing lunges, um, doing all the things that suck a lot of the times, but are very crucial for your success in any endurance event. But it wasn't until I started doing that that I started seeing the progress and the results on the trail. It's really interesting, just knowing that there's two things that you could possibly face. And one is you just go out there, you just train in the trails, and for some people it works. But for me, I've recognized that there's other other inputs I need to have in order to be successful and have the output that I'm looking for on the trail, in a race or in the gym, whatever it is. And the data backs this up, and some of it seems counterintuitive enough that it it's genuinely had me sit for a moment and think, well, why is this? The first one I'll tell you about. Dr. Stefan Saylor at the University of Ager in Norway has spent decades studying how elite endurance athletes actually train, and not just how they say they train, he studies them while they train. What he found was that the best in the world spend around 80% of their training at genuinely low intensity, and the remaining 20% they go hard. Almost nothing lives in the middle. It's it's typically 80% low intensity, zone two, you've heard this before, and 20% you're going all out, you're trying to give it your all. And I used to live in the middle where I was probably, you know, 50% training as hard as I can, and 50% low intensity, and I paid for it. But that just made me tired and slow. That's really it. And the hard sessions hit harder when your easy days are actually easy. That's what I'm learning. And that's not some soft take. I that's what the research says is that you gotta give yourself time to actually train in an easy pace and an easy heart rate zone, so that when you need to go hard, your body's ready for it. It knows what it needs to do. Here's another thing that hit me kind of hard. The there's a it's called the Master at Heart Study. That's what this is called. But it was published in the European Heart Journal in 2023. It looked at lifelong endurance athletes. So hopefully, people like me, I want to do this for my entire life. Um, but that's what the study was, that was the group. And people who had been trained seriously before the age of 30. That was kind of the precipice, that was the starting point. They were fit, healthy, they had low cardiovascular risk problems. And no question that these people were in shape. None at all. And yet, they had more coronary coronary plaques than non-athletes with similarly low risk factors. More, not less. It's really interesting to me. Now, to be clear, this does not mean that endurance training is bad. The same research notes that these guys had better cardiovascular performance across the board. Fascinating. But it does mean more volume is not a free win that compounds forever. There's a point where more stops allow you to become better. And the athletes who have figured this out early are the are the ones who are still running at 55. I think recovery is a big piece here, and I a lot of people get recovery wrong, including myself. Like I'm still going through this, I'm still learning how my body needs to recover, what fuel I need to give it, what stretching regimen I need to do, foam rolling, all these things that are important for recovery. Sleep is the biggest one. But I think a lot of people get it wrong. Um number one is it's not backing off, it's not a weakness, and it's it's not taking it easy. Recovery is timing, training is the signal, and recovery is where your body actually adapts. It's so interesting that you have to push yourself hard, and you think that that work that you're doing is what's required. And I would say that that is the catalyst for the results you will receive. But if you're not giving your body time to recover and to be able to repair itself, you're doing what I did. You're digging yourself into a hole, you're getting good at one thing, and you're gonna pay for it later on, just like I did. You skip recovery, then you're not building. You're just stacking fatigue on fatigue until something gives in. And the reason elite athletes don't hammer every single session isn't because they lack some intensity. I think their track record shows that they have that intensity, but it's that they understand the cost of stress on the body. Every hard session does have a price tag. Your body needs a little bit longer to recover after that. The question is whether you're paying it or running into a debt. And I was running up a debt for years, and then my hips they sent me the bill. They said, here you go, we're not doing this anymore. You got to figure something else out. I'll give you an example of my training, and I'll be honest, it's not perfect. I am working on doing things better. Um, I don't have a coach, so I'm trying to figure it out as I go using AI things. Actually, AI is such a helpful tool in learning what training programs you want to go after. It will build it for you based on your your uh body type, how much you weigh, how how tall you are, where you're at, your your level, I guess, in the sport, or whatever it is. It'll it'll help you out. And here's what I've changed that seems to be working for me really well. I'm doing about 45 miles a week, 45 plus. And so running is still a priority for me. That hasn't changed. But I've started again reintroducing lifting three times a week. Hopefully, you don't notice that this changed, but I'm telling you, it did. Uh, we had someone come and he's working on our treadmill. Uh, I broke our treadmill, so that's my fault. But, anyways, uh, it turns out he couldn't get it fixed, so we're waiting on that. Anyways, let's get back into this thing. I was talking about lifting three times a week and how now it's a non-negotiable for me. And it's really interesting what it's done for me overall. I I feel like I'm much stronger. I feel like I am able to endure longer on my runs. Interestingly enough, I feel like my legs uh they don't hurt as much. And so there's a lot of benefits that I've already seen from incorporating like lifting three times a week, and I've been doing really well at it since the beginning of the year. I set a goal for myself to make it happen, and luckily enough, hey, I've been following through and I'm very happy about that. But there used to be times where I would go to the gym and I would just want to run because I got that's honestly what I was good at. That's what I love to do, and so I didn't think of anything, I didn't think it was a negative thing. I thought, you know, I was training myself to become a better runner, and so you know, I'd get to the gym and be like, oh man, do I really want to lift today? Ah, you know, running's my focus. Maybe I'll just do that. But I've I've had to really figure out that there's going to be tension there a lot of the times. There's going to be tension in my desire to weightlift, but there's also tension in my desire to run sometimes. You know, you're sitting there, and I know you've had moments like this where sometimes you're amped up to go to the gym. Things are feeling great, your body's feeling good, and you're excited to go into that gym and lift some weights, do some cardio. And there's other times you show up and you're like, this is the last thing I want to do today. But it's in those moments where you choose the difficult decision over comfort where you see some benefits. Like, and I I've seen it through weightlifting. There are still times where I show up and I'm like, man, I just want to run today. That's all I have in the tank. But instead, I force myself to actually do what I said I was going to do, and which is weightlift. And I feel much better. One, about myself, and two, just overall, general health. I feel much better. And it's interesting when you neglect some certain things, you you a lot of times pay for it. The other thing I've been focusing on is mobility and sleep. So things like foam rolling, stretching, eating like it matters. Another thing that I never really have done, but for recovery specifically, I had a conversation with Spencer Walker on this podcast probably six months ago now. And that's one thing that he talked about is you know, if you want to get strong, if you want to be healthy and you want to recover, you have to replenish what you've lost. A lot of the times that's protein for me and my endurance, it's carbs. Um, but also healthy fats. That is what stabilizes your hormones and allows you to actually feel strong and healthy. Oddly enough, you got to just figure out what the balance works for you because everyone's protein, carbs, and fat requirements are going to be different. So, again, this is where AI comes into play, and you can ask it questions. You can say, These are my goals. You know, I want to lose fat, I want to build muscle, I want to be able to run further. What would you recommend I eat? Like, this is my this is my weight, this is my height, this is how active I am, and it will help you, it will guide you in that step. But it's the small things, the small things compound. None of this is really complicated. Like telling someone to eat food or telling someone to stretch and recover is not something that's difficult, but in practice, it's hard. And usually there's a gap between knowing what you need to do and the consistency of it. And from what I've learned and observed from other people, the gap is a lot of the places where people live. Now, the longer game, this is what I'm playing for, okay? I want to talk about Cameron Haynes for a second. He is unbelievable. I, you know, he's he's 58 years old. 58. And it's funny because like I know a lot of people who get to the 50s, they're like, oh, my body's not, my body's unable to be strong anymore. But they're not playing the long game. Those people are checking out, you know, maybe they they worked out in their early 20s and 30s, and then they started putting on weight, and they said, Oh man, you know, that's just the dad bod. That's just what happens. And I don't believe that because there's people like Cameron Haynes out there, who's 58, he's still elk hunting, he's still running marathons, and he's still in the gym. He has a a segment of his podcast that he calls Lift Run Shoot, where he lifts with people, he goes on a run with them, and then they shoot a bow. And this past weekend, I think it was, he ran the Eugene Marathon, and his time was 239. The guy's 58 years old. My sub-3 marathon time was 256, and so he smoked me in his race, and I think his pace was around 605, and he had a heart rate of 135, 138, something around there. That's unbelievable. But I know it's possible because that's not just genetics. Genetics does play a role, but that is years of balanced training. Stacked on top of each other, over and over again, compounded for decades. That's why he's the way that he is, and I want to be that guy. I want to be able to run a marathon with my son Winston one day. He's four and a half months from being born, and I think that would just be the coolest thing. You know, I imagine he runs a marathon when he's 20, uh, 21, maybe 25. And by then I will be in my 50s. And that image lives in my head more than any other race goal does right now, because I want to accomplish that with him. And that won't happen if I burn out chasing short term goals and cost my body's ability to keep going. The goal shouldn't be your next race. That's important to work towards, but the goal should be your next decade. How do you balance all that? How do you stay in the game? Are you burning out? These are things you need to consider if you have big goals like that. If your training plan doesn't account for the version of you who's still out there at 50 or 60, it's not, in my opinion, a real training plan. Because the goal isn't just to work out for 10 years. The goal is not just to look good in your 20s or your 30s. It's to be well trained, balanced, and healthy your entire life. It's a marathon in the simplest terms. You're training for life's marathon by staying healthy, by being fit, by spending 80% of your time in low intensity training and 20% going hard. That's what it is. And I don't think that you need a perfect system. I think that you need one that you can repeat. And hopefully what I'm about to share can allow you to take some things that I talk about and repeat them in practice. And so the first thing I would say is lift twice a week as a minimum. Just two sessions. Do compound movements, your hips, your glutes, your single leg workout, your chest, deadlifts, rows, all those things that get your body active and moving and using different muscle groups, like those are so crucial. A lot of the times when I'm in the gym weightlifting, I try and focus only on compound movements. I will do things like bicep curls because I'll be honest, I want some I want some biceps. I'm trying. Look, I'm trying, guys. Nowhere near where I want to be, but hey, I'm making progress, and that's because I lift. Like pays out, it's compound. And then the second thing I would share with you is run easy on your easy days. Oh yeah, that makes sense, Brett. Well, a lot of the times people mess this up, mess it up. Because I did for years. And it's still something I struggle with because, like I said in the beginning, pride is a bitch. I want to perform well. I want people to see it and be like, that's awesome, great pace. But that's such a stupid thing to train for. If you're training for the fact that other people are looking at you and that people are maybe considering your pace, like I that's the wrong reason to train. And I've been telling myself this and I've I've gotten better. But run easy on your easy days. And if you're not sure what easy looks like, you might not be there yet. But slow down until it feels almost embarrassing. That's the zone you should be in. Or you're able to have a conversation, you're able to breathe through your nose, you're not huffing and puffing, and you're just cruising. You're just getting the miles logged, you're in a good spot, and you're building up your cardio base. That's huge. So important for endurance athletes, but also for people in general. That is a very important thing. Number three, I would say, is schedule recovery like it's a workout. Sleep, mobility, and food. These are not optional extras. They're the mechanism by which training actually works. It gives your body time to rest, it gives your body time to rebuild the muscles that you've torn down through training. And it's incredibly beneficial if you have time to recover. There's also things that you could add, like if you have leg sleeves or taking Epsom salt baths, sitting in the sauna, all those things have been proven to assist in recovery. And so you might add a couple of those. And if you feel good by doing a bath, which hate to break it to you guys, but I hate taking baths and they work. And I do it as much as I can, but it's so annoying that it works because I hate them. But you know, it's important. It's important to do things that you don't like. Mike Tyson says, do something you hate, but do it like you love it. Now, the last thing I'll share with you is think in years and not weeks. The question is not how much can I handle this month? The question should be, will I be dangerous at 60? That's it. Your body needs both strength and aerobic work. The research is clear. The athletes who have been at it the longest, they seem to have figured it out. Have figured it out what works for them. And the rest are usually at a PT office somewhere, learning it the hard way, getting injured. Don't wait for the energy uh the injury, but build the thing that prevents it. It is a process. With all things in life, like if you want to be a great learner, you have to be a lifelong learner. If you want to be a great speaker, you have to speak a lot and then refine it. Look over it. Relationships are built the same way. Long. And you can't go hard for a month and then neglect your spouse or someone else for a couple months and tell yourself, like, oh, I'll just get back at it next month. You have to be consistent. And that's the same goes for training. Because if you want to be dangerous at 60, if you want to be Cameron Haynes, 58, running a 239 marathon, it's going to require decades to get there. And that's the thing. I think a lot of people get in the gym or they they start running and they expect these results to happen so quickly. But what they think others have is genetics, or they think that they're gifted in some way. When in reality they've been doing work for years on end, not stopping. And so that should be the goal. If you want to exercise your entire life, do it now. My mom's another great example. She's oh crap, she's gonna get so mad at me at this. I think she's 52, 54. She's up there. Um, not really old, but mom, you're not old. You're a beautiful woman. All right, don't get me wrong. But she's been working out her entire life. Like ever since I was a kid, I remember her exercising. And sometimes it was Taibo, Tab Tabot, um, with Billy Blanks. Other times it was she would train for a marathon, and that's such a great example to me of someone who's been doing it for so long and is healthy, is strong, and just proud of her for that. But there's examples all around you. Try and find them, ask them what they've been doing, and I'm sure the answer will be something like, Oh, yeah, I've been training for 25 years. I've been training since I was 18 years old, and that's why I'm in good shape. Because you can get there, but just realize your timeline's gonna be different, and the consistency and the recovery, all those are the important pieces that you might be missing. And that's why I love it. That's why I love training so much, because you you let off the gas for a while, your body's gonna feel it, and then you're gonna have to work back to get into it. So it's almost like your body's like, hey, what's going on? You used to do this and now you don't. What's the problem? Because now I feel weak. So be kind to your body, don't destroy it, don't go all out because of pride, because pride's a little bitch, and you'll be good to go. You'll be a strong 60-year-old. That should be everyone's goal. And you're not, you know, broken at that age. You can keep it going. Like, I mean, you can look at Arnold Schwarzenegger as well. That guy, I think he's in his 70s now, but he's still lifting, he's still working out, he rides bikes all the time, so he seems to be pretty healthy. Obviously, I don't know his entire lifestyle, but and he might have been juiced up when he was um actually a bodybuilder. Actually, he for sure was juiced up. Here's a picture of him too. Boom. Anyways, guys, it's so important to me to train for your life, to train for decades and not weeks, not months, but stay in the long game. And by doing things, like I said, like it doesn't have to be a perfect structure, it just has to be something that you're able to repeat over time. You will get there and you will avoid a lot of pain and suffering that comes with getting old. Like the more muscle you have, the more longevity you have. So just understand what your goals are because your goals not might not be like mine. Like you might get to a point where you're like, you know what, I'm just I'm just gonna enjoy life. And if that's what you want, great, that's fine. But if you want to be healthy and strong, you gotta keep doing it for decades. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. I really appreciate it, and I hope you you may have learned something that gets you excited to go into this next week of training and figure out what you can do differently to keep yourself in the game. But really appreciate all the support. You guys are the best. The show keeps going on because of you. And if it helped you at all, please leave a nice little rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It means a lot and just appreciate it. And uh share with a friend. You know, if you guys have the same goals, if you have an accountability partner, send it to them because maybe you know they they can learn something that they didn't know before. But that's a lifelong game, guys. And keep doing it, keep getting after it, and push yourself respectfully. Um seriously, thank you guys for listening, and until next episode, everybody. Keep getting after it.