How to Tell if Training Is Making You Better or Breaking You

If you train seriously long enough, eventually you hit the point where your body stops feeling “good.” Your legs feel dead. Recovery slows down. Workouts that normally feel manageable suddenly feel heavy. And then the mental spiral starts:

Am I adapting… or breaking down?

In this episode, Coaches Justin and Katie break down the difference between normal training soreness, accumulated fatigue, and genuine warning-sign pain. They discuss how endurance athletes misinterpret body signals, when soreness is actually part of progress, and how to recognize when your body is telling you something more serious.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to tell the difference between productive soreness and injury-warning pain
• Why fatigue, stress, sleep, and life load all impact recovery
• When athletes should push through discomfort — and when they should back off
• What recovery tools actually do (and what they don’t)

Timestamps:
00:00 — Why soreness became the topic of this episode
02:10 — The fine line between soreness and pain
05:20 — Marathon training fatigue and struggling workouts
09:20 — Strength training, recovery, and accumulated fatigue
19:30 — Heat training, stress, and recovery load
23:15 — What delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) actually is
30:15 — Why soreness is part of adaptation
35:10 — When soreness becomes excessive
42:30 — Soreness vs fatigue vs injury
49:00 — Sharp pain, tendon pain, and warning signs
57:20 — Should you train through soreness?
1:04:30 — Recovery days, nutrition, hydration, and rebuilding

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Welcome everyone to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. I'm your host, Coach Justin. I'm here with Coach Katie, and this is episode 97. And today we're going to be discussing a topic about soreness. Uh, I think both of us are deep into a training plan where we've got races that are coming up, and we were just chatting offline before we started to record this, and we were both sharing our stories on what training has been like for the past few days. And I think both of us are in a very similar situation, albeit from different reasons on why we're in the situations that we're in. But I think both of us are kind of have hit this area of our training plan where soreness is really, really high, fatigue is really, really high. Uh, regardless of what the reason is, we're both feeling the same way. And when we were talking about what potential topics we wanted to talk about for this episode, I just said, I'll I selfishly just said, hey, I want to talk about soreness because I've been feeling really, really sore. My legs are feeling dead. Uh, it's really hard to get them going. And so I selfishly wanted to discuss this because I really wanted to have this conversation just to kind of bounce some, get some ideas from from Coach Katie on maybe something that I can do, just talk through some of what I'm experiencing. And it it seems that she's experiencing similar symptoms.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah, we guess we can talk about what we're experiencing and then I don't know, go a little bit selfishly about our own experience, and then we'll dive into some other can things really.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

We want to talk about why why soreness materializes in the first place. Uh is it good? Is it bad? What's it what's it a real indication of? What's a signal of what's it telling us? What are we how do we interpret these signals from the body? Because not all soreness is the same. So there's a very there's a very thin line between soreness and pain. And so we want I wanted to discuss this um because I see a lot of conversations with with athletes either online or conversations that I have with people um where we do talk about, man, I'm just really, really sore. And you know, it kind of like almost feeds into a little bit of a burnout scenario where they're just like, I'm tired of feeling this way, I need to cut back. And it's like they just kind of start to step away from the sport a little bit. And I don't I want to encourage athletes that you know, soreness is part of the game. If if you're training, if now there's the distinction that I really want to make is that if you're if you're doing this for fitness and soreness is persistent, then yeah, there there might be something that you want to look at. But if you're training and you're purposefully going through a structured process to uh to bring about a certain level of performance, then you have to have the expectation of soreness is going to be persistent. Now, it's how we manage that soreness so that it doesn't materialize into pain and then progress into overuse injury. So there is a logical progression that you would go through. So we want to be able to understand why our bodies are sending these signals and when we can just when we should push push through and when we should heed the warnings that the body is sending. So it I think that this comes from just a lot of experience because a lot of new athletes don't understand what these signals are. They don't have enough experience under their belts to really kind of say, okay, I've felt this way before. This is what I did before, this is what I did last time, and it seemed to help. Um, sometimes those those experiences are relevant, but then sometimes you just you said, Well, I did the same thing that I did last time, and it it continued to persist and developed into something else. So we're we're talking about the human body, and everybody's different, it reacts different ways. Uh adaptations happen at at different at different rates, requires different stimuli. Sometimes we we over stimulate, and sometimes we're under stimulating. So it trying to understand what what stimulus we need to develop the adaptation that we're searching for. And it's it like we've talked about before, sometimes this is a little bit of a mad scientist uh experiment, you know, to where you're just like, let's just let's just see what happens, and then you you pull that lever and you're like, oh, that was too much. And then that's just that's just part of the game, you know. So it has to be expected. So when these situations start to arise, how do you make adjustments going forward with your training plan so that it doesn't completely derail what it is that you're trying to pursue um without changing the expectations and goals that you have for a particular event? I I I hate for persistent soreness to result in that kind of situation where it's just like now I've got to rethink my performance on race day. Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Um which isn't aware, I feel like I've been day. I feel this way. It's tough. Yeah, because I mean I know I'm gonna do a Grindogrammas episode coming up soon. So I don't want to overshare too much because I think I'll recap on everything that's been going on the last few weeks. But um for me, I I agree. I think it's really hard because it's this fine line of like trying to fatigue yourself, especially for a marathon. It's you're trying to put in the mileage, you're you're sort of expecting that you're not gonna feel fresh and great every day. But I've had a few workouts now, and some of them are my fault because are not my fault, but just like like Tuesday I did a really hard workout, or I didn't do it, it wasn't really hard, but I had a workout that I was supposed to do. Let's see, I did my 22-mile long run on Sunday and then tried to execute that on Tuesday. So it's understandable that it didn't go quite the way I was hoping it would go because I didn't give myself enough time to recover from that, and it just was because of my schedule. I was hoping I was feeling pretty good. So I was like, okay, maybe I'll just give it a shot and see how it goes. And then I gave myself like three days of easy running, you know, just very recovery runs, watching my heart rate, making sure it doesn't go too far up above zone two, like actually trying to pay attention and pay attention to how I was feeling and just going really easy. And so I was very optimistic about my run today. And I woke up and I felt like sore, kind of hamstring sores, kind of like generally not a hundred percent. Um but you know, sometimes you just go out and you get get you do it, and you as you warm up, you feel better. So it's never you could never take exactly how you feel in the morning and extrapolate that to like how you're gonna feel in the workout. But then I get out there and it's just a struggle this the entire time. I had to kind of make some adjustments to basically be more based off RPE and not so much off of pace, um, which is hard for me because I'm trying to have these paces that I'm supposed to do for my marathon, and it was like a struggle for me. So I'm trying trying to adjust, you know, just kind of looking at RA a little bit and RPE instead of hitting these exact paces. And so I did the work, but it wasn't at the paces, and my body hurt like soreness most of the entire time, especially really at the end of the workout. And it's hard, I think, when you have especially like a couple of d workouts, it's that question of, you know, where a couple of the workouts don't go that well, and you're sore, and you know, you're but you're fatigued. Like, is this the line? Am I kind of going a beyond it? Like now do I need to pull back and give myself like a recovery, like a purely recovery day, which I've already decided I'm gonna do on Tuesday, um, because that's the day that kind of makes sense for me. But it's like trying to figure out what the body's trying to tell me is the soreness, is the fatigue kind of going too far? And you know what uh can it make some adjustments? Um, this is my last really long we or higher mileage week before it kind of starts to come down a little bit. So I'm just trying to see if I can continue to ride the line a few more days and then maybe take it easier, uh, you know, but that's so hard, I think. And even I to this day kind of struggle with trying to interpret what's going on with my body and not take drastic measures. I'm kind of thinking to myself, at this point, am I gonna totally have to reframe my marathon goal and the soreness is bad, and you know, those those thoughts that go through every runner's mind, like I'm not I'm still susceptible to that, and that's kind of where I'm at anyways. So I know we're in different spots, but that's what I'm experiencing. So I'm curious kind of where what's your soreness you think is you know, what's going on with you, Justin?

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Well, I've I've to be honest with you, I've felt perpetually sore for like the past like 12 years. So uh I just the but that aside, it's like for the past couple weeks, I think I've just been I've been really, really sore, really tight, um, especially up in like my upper trap areas. And it's been affecting my sleep. And so, you know, I I try and take, you know, there's a couple nights where I ended up taking some some Tylenol just to try and dull the pain a little bit so I could sleep better. So I was like, if I could just get a couple good nights sleep, um, maybe it would help my recovery because I'll just toss and turn because I can't get comfortable and I can't stay in one place, one position very long, and then have to move around. And so it's breaking up my sleep. And so, you know, I already don't sleep enough. Uh I don't get enough hours of sleep. And so when the quality of the hours that I do get start to drop off significantly, my performance is definitely hindered. Um, I've I've been giving a whole lot of thought to my approach in the weight room because I'm I'm I'm carrying a lot of volume. Um, a because I I like that style of training, I I really enjoy volume training. Uh and I'm 49 years old, so a lot of a lot of what I have to think about now is like I can't rely on approaches that I've used before because I'm getting older. And so my body is reacting differently to the same kind of stimulus that I've given it before because I'm getting older. And so, you know, even if you do have a whole lot of experience as an athlete and you try and draw back on past experiences and what you did, sometimes those themselves aren't helpful because as we age, the body just reacts differently and takes longer to recover. And so if we say, Well, this is the way that I've done it before, and you keep pushing, pushing, pushing, eventually the body is just going to push back. And I'm trying not to get to the point where my body is going to push back on me, but I feel like I'm getting pretty close to that. Um, it's like today, for instance, uh, I had a pretty rough week in the weight room this week. So, like I only have three sessions in my training plan for strength training, and two of the three were really, really just subpar in my in my opinion, in terms of you know, my reps and my weight and how I was feeling afterwards and my ability to recover. And so I was chatting with uh the the guy that I that I used for my for my strength training, and I was like, man, I'm just having a hard time recovering from from these sessions. And so we were discussing a a kind of a change up to the method. Um, and yeah, I think some of it is my A-type personality where I'm kind of like pushing to failure for a lot of the movements that I'm doing, and I find it hard to kind of back off, you know, because I was like, well, if I can lift that and I lift it easily, let's let's lift some more. Uh but with the aerobic conditioning that I'm doing on top of it, I shouldn't be pushing as hard, I think, in the weight room then as what I am, and it's now starting to bleed over into the aerobic conditioning. Um because today I had a uh the conditions here where where I live is cold and it's raining, and this is uh May 23rd, so we're getting this is Memorial Day weekend when we're recording this, and my long ride is three hours. Uh, and then I jump off the bike and I do, I think it's like a 30-minute brick session. So I jump off and do a 30-minute run off the bike because I'm getting close to race day. And so I was stuck on the trainer today uh because I just did not feel like dealing with the weather conditions. And the workout that I always reserve for that kind of adjustment to the training plan is a challenging workout in itself. And so I threw that on there. I was like, you know, it's a workout that I've done many, many times. Uh I know how to execute it, and I know the way my body typically feels when it does. And it was like from the get-go, like my legs just said, not today, son. So I had a really, really I was on the struggle bus the whole time. And uh I know that when I get to this point, sometimes I have to give myself a little bit more freedom and a little bit more uh grace with the warm-up because as you start to carry more and more fatigue, it just takes the body longer to get warmed up. And so if you if you stick with the same duration of warm-up, you have to maybe start to extend that a little bit and allow more time to warm up. And so I said, Well, maybe this is just what's going on. So I said, Well, let me just go a little bit easier uh for a little bit longer during the warm-up, try and get these legs to kind of kick in and see how they feel. And they just they were just mad. So never really kicked in. They just never kicked in. Um, it's like it's all in my quads. Um and so you've got hamstrings, I've got quads.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

And I did like I didn't mention this, but I did that dead, I did a deadlift um Thursday night. Cause I was like I was with my son all day Thursday, so I wasn't able to get my run or my work strength work it. Usually I would do it earlier to allow more time to recover. Um and I don't know if that was it, but I think I've had I'm gonna have to rethink my deadlift routine because that like after that I was my um hamstrings were tight, sore, but they were there's like a tightness at every time I do deadlift, and that's kind of expected, but I'm wondering I you know, I warm up, like I'm really cautious about my form, but I just don't know. I'm trying to do these like shorter, heavier deadlifts, but I'm uh for the rest of my training plan, I'm gonna probably keep it on the lighter side and I'll keep doing some form of hamstringer deadlift. But I think I j I don't know, I don't think I overdid it at the time. But maybe because of all the fatigue, you know, that's the other thing is like even when your strength training seems like something totally different, you know, you're not running your strength training, but it's all contributing. And if you've if I already had sore legs or something going on from my run and my squats the other day, it's like I don't you know, it's all accumulating. And so even though it wasn't another run, it probably just caused the micro tears and things we'll talk about with soreness. And um just had it recovered enough. So when I came in this morning to run, that was probably my biggest complaint, other than maybe the heart rate was a little bit higher than I wanted it to be for the for the pace that I was running, but it was my hamstrings were just not they were tight. It was like they just couldn't I I would stop and I would try to like loosen them up a little bit and they would just go right back to kind of like tightening up feeling sore and and especially on the right side, and that's always the side that gives me trouble. So that just when you when you're sore or you have something going on where the muscles are tight, your biomechanics change, and I could just tell my running wasn't as smooth, you know. I wasn't running like I normally do comfortably at that paces I was trying to hit. It was it was not smooth as it should be, and so I do think potentially it's just like general soreness, and then maybe the timing of that workout wasn't fantastic, but I'm kind of in similar boat, just I'm having hamstring stuff. My quads are great. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Yeah, so I ended up just actually cutting my workout short and I skipped like the last like 25 minutes of it, which really makes me angry with myself because it it it kind of it kind of makes me feel like well you're just mentally weak today and you just couldn't you just couldn't find it to push through.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

But I feel the same way. I'm like I couldn't do what I was supposed to even though I got the amount of time I was supposed to go, my in my case, I wasn't just able to push like do the workout as it was prescribed. Like I had to adjust it, and that's really hard, but I think for any athlete, but to be like, Oh, I'm I had it prescribed this way, and I had to in the moment kind of adjust it so that I'm still doing the work, but it's not exactly the way it was prescribed. And then on Tuesday I had to cut my workout short. I I I understand that, you know, like I'm just it just happens. It's not that you're weak. Because we know you're not weak. Like we all know you, we know it like you you probably push through more than you should, you know what I mean? So for you to tell me that you're had to cut short, to me, that means you probably had something, it was just like significant enough that you make that call. Because I think you're the type of person that would most definitely try to push through if you could. So to telling me that, you know, I don't think it's weakness, I just think it's like something must have been going on that you had to cut that short. Because I don't think you would have to do that.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

It has it has to be pretty serious, it has to be pretty serious for me to cave. Um because I usually don't do that. Right. But um I I do know that I'm gonna make an adjustment to my training plan for my strength stuff, and I think we're gonna I'm gonna reduce uh my peak weight for each of the movements by like 45 to 50 percent, and I'm just gonna cut it in half. I'm getting really close to race day, and so I don't want to continue to stack on fatigue. I want to get to the starting line healthy. Last year I did the same race and I didn't get to the starting line healthy. I developed some kind of heel pain and ended up having to like cancel like the last week of running, and I don't want to do that this time.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

So I'm trying to have two weeks to you to but yeah, I would say definitely. Or no, I'm gonna I'm gonna two weeks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Yes, two weeks. So I'm gonna I'm gonna make some slight adjustments in the weight room and see if that starts to help uh alleviate some of this and start to shed some of this fatigue. I've been in the sauna uh a couple a couple days this week. Uh as I'm trying I mean, I know I'm behind I'm behind the eight ball on my heat acclimation, and so I was like, let me just get into the to sauna a little bit and try and get a little bit of a sweat going on.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

I just wondered too, I'm gonna those are all stressful. Yeah. Like that's what I've been wondering too, as I maybe this week I actually really wasn't good about it, so I don't know why the heat training really probably didn't impact me as very much at all. So that I can't really blame that. But though, you know, there is a stress to it. I've ha I've never worn my heart rate monitor. Do you ever wear your heart rate monitor in the sauna?

SPEAKER_02 20:00

I do. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Does it go up quite a bit? Or do you think it's a good thing?

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Yeah, I mean my I'm just sitting there and my heart rate is in the 90s, uh close to 100. 100 beats per minute. So I mean, if that's like considered to be like a re my resting heart rate is nowhere near. It's like in the it's in the 40s, right? Is pretty much my resting heart rate.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

I've had athletes that um I've talked to or that I've kind of seen them talking about heat training and they're probably it probably depends a little bit on how hot the sun is, but they were saying their heart rate getting up to like 140, you know, like actually like work out, you know, heart rates that or they might see in like a zone two sort of situation. So there's definitely like a stress to it. I thought about it, like maybe wearing my watch in the hot tub while I'm trying to do that, but I think I don't know if it's a waterproof one or not, but it's um something I've thought about because I'm like that would be really interesting to see what's happening with my heart rate during that because it's very uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

So Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

So it is an added stress, and you have to think about all again, we've talked about this before, but like all of us stressors, and so soreness I think can come from um it's just probably somewhat to do with like what we're doing to our body and then like the recovery from it, and if we have other stressors going on, um, then maybe like our ability to recover and and adapt to that stress or that that input of of weight training or whatever we're doing is just gonna be less. And so if we continue to try to push through, I think you just accumulate more and more soreness.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

If that makes sense. And for me this week I do think I I had to work at the hospital a couple days, and those days are not it's stressful in the way that they're but it's just out of my norm and in not like it's not something I do every day. So I always go in there like, okay, like I have to kind of like relearn or just like remember exactly what I'm supposed to do. And there'll be like three weeks I won't work there, and then all of a sudden it's like two or three. Days in a very short period of time. So that I'm like, maybe that's contributing to it, and I'm just not recovering as well. So I think we have to kind of think about those things too. Is I just wonder for you if it's just like the sleep something because you're mentioning sleep and then you're trying to do like heat training and you're trying to do all these things.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

I think it's yeah, it's a combination of I think maybe I think really high it's relatively high volume for the race that I'm training for. Right. Um, even though I've carry I've done a lot higher volume before. Um, this is still relatively high volume. I've had a pretty stressful couple weeks with with work. Uh just completed my recertification for my triathlon coach uh certification. So I'm certified again for the next couple years, but that required a lot of continuing education units that I had to spend uh watching videos and trying to stay focused uh to do that. Of course, I waited to the last minute to do it. So um, and then just the inability to get good quality sleep, and I think it's just it's brewing, and I can feel it. I can I can feel it kind of like rolling. Uh it's that momentum, it's just like I've got to stop this from gaining speed because it's going to affect how I'm going to feel come race day. And I I I want to finally enter into a race where I'm feeling healthy and prepared and nothing is like inflamed. So I I just I really would love to have that. So let's now that we've kind of talked about our own experience. What we're what we're experiencing and kind of the the backdrop to this, let's talk about DOMS. And so this is delayed onset muscle soreness. This is part of the game when it comes to any kind of of training, um, and to a certain extent fitness. If you're just kind of getting started and you're coming off of the couch and you're just now becoming active, you're going to experience this. And I want to talk about kind of the physiology on why this is happening and why it's not necessarily a bad thing. Um so let's talk about delight delayed onset muscle soreness.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

So um I think maybe just talking about when it's typically starts to occur occur for people who are listening probably have understand this a little more. But if someone's brand new, usually it's like you might strength train, like this happens to me. Sometimes I'll I'll strength train and I don't feel immediately sore. Like immediately after you do usually maybe a little weak. Like I've done it, I've gone so hard before where it's been hard for me to go down the stairs because my muscles are weak, but I'm not sore yet. But usually when that happens, I'm like, no, because you know just panic. The soreness is gonna come. And I are I know it's coming, you know. I'm realizing that when I have what I'm feeling that week after strength training, but usually it's you know, maybe 12 to 48 hours. So you're either gonna feel it usually like usually it's the next day, and sometimes it's even like two days later, which is lovely. Because you think you wake up the next day and you're like, oh, I feel okay. And then it hits you two days later, which has also happened to me. Um and that's just this so it's soreness. Um, and it can be it can be somewhat light and it can be very significant depending on how hard you went and and the stimulus that you know that happened, the the amount of damage, like micro-tears in the muscles that you accrue. And I think people kind of worry when we say that. So I think we need to explain what's happening and why it's okay, but also like when is it too much, or when do we know we need to back off and when can we work out through it? And it can also be like other stimulus that occurs just from general endurance exercise. So it's not always strength training, although strength training is typically typically happens after strength training for many people, but it can also be from like a hard interval session, like a really long run. I know I get it from some of my long run's races, obviously. Everyone who's run a marathon will know, you know, going up and down stairs the next day can be difficult. Um, hill work, speed work, anything like that can can also cause it because you're basically the accruing a little bit of damage there in the muscle, but it's not like a a bad sort of damage in most cases. It's just uh just something that naturally happens. So yeah. Any any add-ons there? Do you want to go right into and what's happening? What's the process?

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Yeah, I want to talk about the process. So this is based on my understanding and the research that I've done. This is kind of what what DOMS really is. And it's when you have a heart session, whether that whatever the reason is behind the session, but some kind of stimulus that you have thrown onto the body and there's a reaction. So you get these micro tears in the muscle. Nothing bad. Um that's it's like some mild damage. Yeah, that's what we're looking for, is some kind of damage to the muscle. So sometimes calling it micro-tears kind of like can make people feel a little bit uneasy. You're like, oh my gosh, I'm tearing muscle, but just very yeah, let's just call it, let's just call it just some damage, damage to the muscle.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah, let's just also say it's like very small. Like you wouldn't be able to see it from the naked eye. Like, not that you would want to see that because you don't want to, but if we were looking at the muscle, we wouldn't be able to see it. Just we'd have to get our microscope out. You'd literally have to look at it on in a moment of submicroscope to be able to see what the damage. So it's very, very, very small. It's just small changes that are occurring within the muscle that um I think when we think of tears, we think of something that's like torn open and it's something visible, and it's not it's not like that. So don't don't think that don't when it when we say microscopic microscopic tears or microscopic muscle damage.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

So very recoverable from the body's repairing process when that happens is that fluid gets pulled from the body to the damaged area. And with that, muscle almost kind of like swells to a certain extent. It just gets larger to accommodate for the additional fluid that's being brought in.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Which is why sometimes when you do like push-ups or pull up, you know, like a strength training session, you may look, you know, a little more like bulky right after because you might have like more water swelling occurring.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Yeah. And it's the fluid that is brought into the muscle starts to uh swell the muscle a little bit to where it starts to push on nerve endings, and that's where the soreness is coming from, and it's the pressure of the the swelling of the muscle onto these nerves. And it's the body's just natural ability to repair itself, and so it's completely fine.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Acute inflammatory response that we've talked about before, that's like that signals that adaptation. So the body's coming in and as long as you have the proper nutrients and the and you're not, you know, continuing to push yourself, the body will come in and repair those micro tears or micro damage that happens. And yeah, the body will come in and and what happens is think of it like um like this is how I've thought of it before. So maybe this is helpful. It's just a analogy. Um so if you have like a house, and then then there's like a tornado that comes through, and I might have used this before, but the tornado comes through and it doesn't like destroy the house, but there's a lot of damage or some damage. And so the people go in or we go in and we repair that house to make it stronger than before. So there's you know, whatever we're doing to the house, maybe just making it more stable, a little stronger. And then maybe the next time a tornado comes, if that tornado is the same amount of force, then the house will stay pretty well put without damage. If the tornado or some sort of storm is way worse, it'll cause damage again. And then, you know, you might want to come in and make that house a little stronger. So each time you're sort of there's a process of like rebuilding that has to happen to make the house, or in this case, our muscle, a little bit better able to handle that same amount of stimulus that we just put. So that's kind of the theory of adaptation, right? You do something, you do a workout, a hard workout, or strength training, you come in and you have these little bits of damage, the body comes in, repairs, there's that little bit of inflammation that happens, that's actually normal and okay. The body will repair the tissue and make it better, stronger. So that next time that same stimulus comes along, it's not um, it's not gonna cause the same amount of damage. So that's why with strength training, especially, or any kind of um work, we need you know that we actually kind of want that response in some level because we want to be stronger and get better, that makes sense. So it's actually not a bad thing. Um, it only becomes bad when it's oh when you've overdone it, or you continue to push your body over and over again and you're not allowing the recovery. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 31:14

So it's like Yeah, so that's one of the reasons why uh tool like recovery tools like compression systems and and things like that, like the NormaTech, uh those types of pulsing uh pulsing uh constriction, you know, that what that's effectively doing is it's it's not helping you recover. Uh what it's doing is it's actually pushing the fluid back out of those muscles. And so, you know, as it does that, it reduces soreness because the muscles aren't as quote unquote swollen as they were before, pressing up against these nerves. And so as these devices push fluid out and the body kind of processes that additional fluid and cleans out the system, you're you're you're less sore the next day. So I don't want people to think that oh, these types of systems are helping me recover. What it's effectively doing is it's just reducing soreness for the next day. It's not helping you repair anything.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Yeah, that's true in cold therapy too. Like if people use that a lot. Same concept. It's when you're using cold therapy, it's kind of restricting the blood flow to those tissues, and so it delays soreness. So it's fine, you know, if you let's say have sort of two hard workouts or something where you're doing you need to do two days where you want to be less sore for the next workout, and it can work in certain circumstances, but it's not helping you re really recover any faster, it's just helping delay soreness.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

So it's fine, you know, for that purpose. But if you're thinking either with the compression tights or the compression like normal tech boots or the cold therapy, if you're thinking that's helping you recover, I mean, it's I don't know, it's in that sense not.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

You know, maybe it is because it's Yeah, it's not repairing anything, it's just it's treating the symptoms is really neat.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Maybe that's I don't know, open you recover, but yeah, so I think that's that's a good point.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

I have I have a Normotech system, I use cold therapy and things like that. So, you know, I understand there's a reason why I'm using those and I understand it, but I don't want people to think that these systems are shortcuts to the repairing process. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Yeah, I haven't used cold therapy much. Maybe that's my problem. I did last time I was training for a marathon, and this time I just haven't just thought just a thought. Um, so maybe maybe there's something to just generally reducing the soreness, and so you can maybe perform better the next time. I don't know. But it yeah. Um, so we kind of talked about why it happens, like what's going on with soreness. I think with just like there's degrees to it, right? So I think when we're like talking about whether or not we should train and we're beast or like what soreness is and what what how we need to interpret it, and if we need to if we can still train, I think we need to just chat a little bit about like common characteristics of soreness. I mean, it's just that it's hard because pain is discomfort and pain is very sort of subjective to each individual. Anytime I've kind of learned more about pain, whether it be people experiencing pain or chronic pain, it's sort of the level someone's in pain is is very subjective to their own experience. And so it's hard to talk about discomfort and pain in any sort of way that's sort of universal to everyone. And this is exactly how I experience pain. Some people don't experience it, or I think with endurance athletes especially, because we are so used to some of this discomfort, like our relationship with pain is different than somebody who's maybe just like brand new to the sport and hasn't had this experience because it can be very jarring. I mean, I've worked with individuals. I had a lady I was working with who I was very, I've always been very uh adamant and very um strong opinions about strength training and how important it is for women and men, but especially for women as we age. And so I made it very clear like we need to, you know, train strength train more. So this woman went out and found a personal trainer at a gym. And this is this irritates me. He just gave her this workout brand new. Never, she's not really in like someone that works out often, has never really strength trained. This gentleman gave her this workout that was way too hard for this person. She it's like he, I don't know what kind of personal trainer this was, but he obviously wasn't very experienced. And she was so sore she couldn't even use the bathroom to squat down to use the potty. And she's like, I'm never doing that again. And I'm like, that sucks. You know, that made me so angry because you know, at the at this point, like I wasn't really able to, I'm not a I wasn't a personal trainer. I was kind of encouraging her to go to the gym. She took my advice, and this gentleman had no idea what he was doing, and just like she was destroyed. I mean, she couldn't even I've been there before too, but I'm I know what was happening and I was aware because I'd been there before as an athlete. Um, I've definitely done that to myself where I couldn't barely squat down to use the bathroom. So it's like, but when you don't know that experience, and that is a level of it's pretty painful, it's pretty uncomfortable, you know, to have this lady then be like, I'm never gonna do that again. That was I got so mad. I would I wanted to go personally find this person, this personal trainer, and like yell at him. I was like, because she was that was the last one and only time she would ever do that because of that experience, because she'd never had that experience before. And I felt bad. Um, you know, it wasn't exactly my fault, but maybe I should have vetted, I don't know. Sometimes you just kind of like experience those things, you know, where you want to help people and you can't help them all the time.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

But it's it's one of the things that it's one of the things that I've had to uh I've had to learn as a coach, and and I'm glad that you brought this up, is this uh the pain tolerance across people is is very subjective, very different. Sometimes I get athletes that I'm working with and they're just like, oh, I'm I'm so sore, I'm so sore. And I was like, Yep, this is to be expected. Uh, you know, and I I I expected it if you weren't sore, I'd be questioning things. So uh we're just we need to push through this because I know once we get onto the other side of soreness is where you get the adaptation that that we're looking for. If we're constantly working in a way to avoid soreness, you you won't you won't get the stimulus that you need to build the adaptation that you're searching for. But it's there's a fine line between stacking on too much soreness, like I've said before, where it then progresses beyond soreness, and now we're getting into the to the realms of injury. And I think there's you you have to be a little bit careful, but you have to be willing to to tolerate some level of soreness, and you have to expect like once you've when you start that level of soreness is going to be significantly high because you're starting from from the ground floor.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

So that because hopefully you're not pushing yourself so hard in that very first few workouts that because you don't want to you have to be careful too, because I've been there before just for whatever reason, maybe getting back to it after taking some time off room training, or um Yeah, I don't know. I just remember doing like again, it's probably dead deadlifts get me every time, but it was probably some sort of strength training workout, and then the next day or two, I mean, barely able to walk, and then I'm trying to go for a run and I'm barely like I'm like unable to move, you know, or it's that bad. Um that's probably a level of soreness that's a little bit too far. And I think people that happens, right? You know, like it happens to me. It's happen unfortunately happened to that one lady in her very first try, which I just wish she had had a little more experience before that had happened. But you know, it ha it it the when it's like impeding your ability to to such a degree to even move around the house or to be able to. I don't know, like in my case, I think I tried to go for like an easy run and I was so I was like, ooh, like, you know, it's impeding my ability to even move effectively. Like that's probably too an extreme where you're just so impacted by it that it's impeding on your biomechanics, you know. So we don't we want to try really hard to get it right so we don't end up there, but there's probably somewhere along the spectrum of soreness that's kind of in between that and you know, not being sore at all, right? Kind of in the middle there. So it it is it is something we almost I think to have a little bit of soreness is is I think okay and to be expected. Um but if you don't have soreness doesn't mean you didn't do something right, you know, either. It just depends on the what's going on. But you know, I also want people to ex also be like, if they're like, oh, I don't feel sore, I did a really tough workout and I don't feel super sore, you know. That doesn't necessarily mean you didn't do something right either. So I want to put that out there.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

Because the body I I I go back and forth on that one. Um so you know, because I know that there's there should be some kind of physiological reaction to to the stress. And so, you know, if I if I do give somebody a hard workout, and I was like, they're you know and I know that the next day I purposefully give them something easy because I was like, I I know that they're gonna be sore and I because this is gonna be a lot of stress. And they come back to me as like, oh yeah, I feel great. And it kind of makes me start to wonder, it's like, okay, well, how how did they execute this? Um is it not is it not the kind of workout that I think it is? And usually I test these workouts out on myself before I give them to somebody else. And uh so it it sometimes it makes me wonder, it's just like man, there's got to be some level of soreness.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

There's something that's I mean, I don't really like soreness.

SPEAKER_02 41:29

I wonder because sometimes I think I'm so but it could just be their their the way that they're but the way that they interpret the soreness. That's what I'm thinking. There they could have a really high pain tolerance and they're just like, oh yeah, I don't feel sore. But if I give the exact same workout, same execution to another athlete, they're just like, ouch. You know, I that I could barely move that.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

That was hard.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

I can I can barely move. Same workout, same execution. It's just the way that their body is interpreting and their tolerance to discomfort could be very different.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

And so I'm thinking that for myself. There's a lot of times I'm like, I'm not that sore, but then I like go out to a run and I'm like, well, I'm not sore, but I'm definitely not able, I wouldn't be able to do a hard workout again. You know, it's not like I'm fresh either. So it's I think it that's the hard part. I think like I mentioned before with pain, it's hard because everybody's painful, like what I would interpret as not being sore might actually be slightly sore, but I'm just so used to being sort of slightly sore that it seems like I'm not sore. If that that's like doesn't I just like that doesn't make any sense, but I just think I'm like it does interpreting that.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

I think it alludes to the distinction between soreness and fatigue. Because if if you can if you're f if you go out to that workout and you're like, I don't feel sore, but I don't feel like I could do a hard workout, then maybe what you're just experiencing is just accumulated fatigue, but it's it's different from soreness.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Right. But I don't always feel sore, even. Um, so I don't know. I think it's it's it it's hard because I don't think we can always I wouldn't personally always use the soreness, how sore are you as a metric to to make sure that the workout's actually doing its job because I don't think every time you need to feel sore after every hard workout either. Even strength training, like I don't feel sore after every strength training, even when I am doing a progressive overload. It might depend and sometimes it's funny because I'll feel sore one time and not the other, but um I mean I think it is something we want to pay attention to, but I just don't know if I would necessarily use that as like an athlete telling me that they're not super sore. I don't know if I would be like, oh no, I didn't get the workout lead. I think I would want to look at other parameters as well, um, because I don't think everyone experiences soreness the same. And I don't think every workout's gonna provide soreness for people. Um the one thing I want to talk about is just a few things with soreness too, is just that the usually there's like a Like a slight ache or stiffness that you know people experience. That that that's kind of the soreness. It's not like we'll talk about the difference between soreness and pain, like sharp pain, like concerning pain, um, in a minute. Usually it's somewhat symmetrical, so you experience it in both hamstrings, for instance. One might be slightly worse because you might have like a asymmetry in your strength in some cases where maybe like for me, I think there's something going on kind of with my right hamstring. And so the experience today was it was worse. I could feel it in both hamstrings. It was kind of worse in my right side, which is typically what happens to me. So there's some sort of asymmetry in my body mechanics or the way I my strength. And so it's not always going to be like perfectly symmetrical, but most cases you'll feel it in both, unless you're very, very weak on one side, you know, and you're just trying training the same weight, and for some reason one leg is more sore. Um, it usually improves as you warm up, you know. That's true. Most cases, if you, you know, start a little bit of a war, you might be like this happens to me, especially aging. I don't know, the fatigue and the aging and the soreness. Like I have to give myself sometimes like double the amount of warm-up that I had to give myself in my 20s.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:15

Just to get that soreness out and feel like normal, you know, like and it starts. My my warmups are slow at the start. Like it's just a like real easy jog. Like it takes me a while to like warm up out of that soreness. So that, you know, that's but it were eventually, usually I kind of feel better once I'm warmed up. If you don't, that might be more of a concern. Um, and it's more like muscular. So you feel it in your muscles. It shouldn't be soreness shouldn't be something we feel in our ligaments, our tendons, or bones. Um, you know, it's hard to sometimes differentiate. I think sometimes, like, is this muscular? Is this something else? But then if it's like a sharp pain in your bone, you know, a bony area, that might be more of a concern. And it's often worse getting out of bed, like when first thing in the morning you might feel pretty sore. I know I do again, I think it's an aging thing. And then like going to downstairs, I've mentioned that a few times. Like, yeah, I know if I've had a hard strength training session when I struggle to go down the stairs in the morning. Um, any thoughts on like how you would characterize like soreness, any other things you would add?

SPEAKER_02 46:25

The one the one thing that I would add to it is that sometimes uh you can experience uh tendon pain or inflammation in the tendon simply because the muscle itself is has remained tight over a prolonged period of time. So it's not that you know you have you know some kind of issue with the tendon. It's if we can just work to get the muscle to release, then it releases the pressure off of the tendon, and that's what will bring the inflammation down. So if you're starting to feel pain and like joints in there and things like that, then you know sometimes that can be brought on by you know just pain in the tendon where you have to find where the tightness is like further up the chain. Uh, I know that I experience that with my Achilles, and I know that when I start to feel my Achilles flaring up, it's because I haven't spent enough time trying to get my calves to release. And so, you know, I have to go in with some rolling and some percussion and try and get those muscles to loosen up a little bit to release the tension off of off of the tendon. And so, you know, sometimes that's where that can that can materialize. Um I know sometimes with uh plantar fasciitis can can be brought about by just really tight hamstrings. Um I I know it doesn't it doesn't seem intuitive. You're just like, oh, but that's the problem with the feet and the hamstrings are way further up the chain, but you know, it I've experienced that myself where you know I've gone in and it's like why why do I have these why do I have this plant why is my plantar fascia so inflamed? And they just like they're like here, bend over, do an RDL, and you bend over and you're just like I can't bend over. And they're just like well that's why. You know, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

I do this like mobility thing and they focus heavily on that posterior chain, because that's my problem, especially the hammies, so the hamstrings. So yeah, I mean, I think that's part of it too, is it may not if it's tendon, it may not be it maybe because you're sore or you you know you do have that stiffness or that tightness in the muscles. So working that out is helpful, and maybe you'll also feel less sore. I think just generally just trying to get the blood flowing, blood flow maybe in the muscles. So I think doing things that's where I think I don't know, mobility, I think just helps you kind of be able to move a little bit better, but it helps kind of loosen maybe the muscle stiffness. But I also think like sometimes that's that is where heat therapy or something that kind of helps bring blood flow into the muscle can be helpful too to kind of offset some of that. But what like what about the difference between that and pain from Yeah, that's where I wanted to go next. Um so it shouldn't be sharp, right? It shouldn't be stabbing, right? If it's feels as though something's sharp, like a um like maybe it it doesn't it doesn't happen when you're just sitting, but you get up and you move and it's just like whoa, that's sharp pain. You know, it's like radiating through the body in a way that is um alarming, or like it does feel like literally somebody's stabbing you with a knife, like that would like that would feel. I've never had that happen to me, so I can't exactly say, no, exactly what that feels like, but that sort of just like it's sharp and like alarming. That's where the difference is, I think, between just general soreness and like, whoa, that's not good. Something's way, way off. Um, it's usually like localized too. If it's like some it's like an injury, it's more like achiness and soreness is kind of like you can just feel it generally through like an entire muscle, usually, like the entire tyrity of your quads or the hamstrings in general just kind of feel achy throughout. Usually if it's like an injury, it's like very localized to one specific spot. So on the hamstring, it might be like closer to where the insertion is on one of the tendons, and you're feeling like a sharp just pain very localized to one area or just localized to the knee or the ankle somewhere. Um, and it's where it's in the muscle, but it's very, very one spot located in the rest of the muscle isn't feeling it. But like I don't know, any like it usually gets worse during exercise, not better. So when you warm up, if it's like a true injury, something's kind of seriously going on, it's not improving like soreness generally. Well, you might still feel it, but you'll be able to kind of work through it. And then once you get the blood flowing with the exercise and kind of start to um loosen up the muscles, usually it starts to get better. But with actual pain or actual injury, it's generally not getting better. In fact, it's oftentimes getting worse as you move into your workout. Um, and and some sometimes, depending on the injury, sometimes it won't be felt when you're offloading it, and sometimes it will be persistent when you're off like like a usually like a stress fracture or something with the bone. If you're offloading it, like you'll still feel the pain in the foot, for instance. If it's like a foot fracture, it won't be something that you offload it and it goes away. You might still feel something um in there, you know, like it's radiating a little bit stabby kind of feeling. Even when you take the foot off the ground or lay like lie down, you might still feel it. That would be a sign, usually, you know, that there's something more serious. So I I don't know. If you have any thoughts on what to add there.

SPEAKER_02 51:57

Uh I don't know. I I know that I start a lot of my workouts where I'm asking myself, okay, am I sore or is this pain? And a lot of times I would classify it as pain, but uh I'm still hard-headed enough to where it's just like, okay, well, well, let me see if if it's real pain, if it's real pain, it will persist deep into the workout. So usually I just say, okay, well, I'm going to adjust my warm-up. I'm going to warm up a little bit longer. Let's just see if it starts to alleviate as I get into this. And if it if it does start to ease, but it doesn't go away, then I'm just like, okay, well, if it is starting to ease, I can feel it getting better, but I just haven't gotten to that point yet where it's fully released. Then I say, okay, well, this is just soreness. It's just really, really deep soreness, and I'll still go, I'll still go for it.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Yeah, it could be like tendon, just a little bit of tendon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:52

Um because I have hypermobility, so it's it's one of those things where it's just I know it's something that I just have to deal with. And so a lot of times I'm asking I'm asking myself these questions. It's like, okay, is this getting better? Is it getting worse? Um, are my mechanics changing as you know, as I start to compensate? Am I starting to feel stress in in other areas, you know, because I'm protecting someplace else. So let's say that my right foot hurts. Am I starting to experience discomfort in my left foot as it's now trying to overcompensate for the protection of the right foot? Then I start to say, okay, now I'm over I'm protecting, I'm overcompensating for this. And not only am I still damaging the area that's hurt, I'm now stressing out areas that aren't hurt to the point where now they're starting to hurt. Um, and that just comes from experience, you know, of doing it. And you're just like, oh, I remember what that was like, that was miserable.

SPEAKER_01 53:54

Um, I think this morning, I mean, I felt like my right, probably because my whole leg is a little bit impacted on the right side, and that's always my bad leg, I call it, because it's always the one that gives me problems. But I had like some ankle stiffness, you know, and I'm like, well, I'm usually my experience is I'll start running and it and it gets better, you know, and it did. Um, but if it had hadn't and I had started to feel more discomfort and pain, I probably would have stopped, you know. But luckily I got into the run and it was just like not any I didn't even really feel the ankle after that point, but it was just kind of stiff this morning, you know. So sorry because yeah, I think that's probably the test really is like unless it's like from like it. I think sometimes there are certain things that you're like, well that's alarming. Like it's something like I mentioned, like, because oftentimes stress fractures are like very pinpoint pain in some part of the especially foot. I mean, I'm thinking of the f stress fractures of the feet. There's usually like a very sharp pain kind of in the foot, but I've also had foot pain that's probably just tendon or muscular related that I've worked through. So it's hard. I think you kind of almost have to get out and start the workout. And if the pain is getting worse or maybe not better, even I mean, if it's that bad and it's just persistent and so so much to the point where you can't think about anything else and it's starting to worry you, then maybe that's that's a time to stop. But um, it's hard because I do think there's so many ex experiences I've had where I have this little bit of something and I'm like, well, I don't know. It's like I don't know what's going on. I'll try to roll it out with my little foot roller, or I'll try to like um do some stretching to kind of alleviate it at before I start, and then I'll go out. I'm like, well, we'll see. And then usually I've been lucky enough in some cases that it just goes away. The only time that didn't happen was with my IT band syndrome and it didn't go away. There are you know injuries that actually occur, and you'll usually know that they're that they're occurring because there's you know there's like impeding your ability to continue running. But yeah, it's hard, it's just such a hard topic because I do think it takes some experience as a runner. This is why I do think it's helpful to have like a coach maybe to talk things through and a coach that has some experience in the area of like, okay, this is what I'm feeling, you know, these are the symptoms I'm having. Should I be concerned or can I still try to run? You know, though to have somebody that you can talk to, or I also think it's helpful to have like a maybe a physical therapist that you can kind of check in with, you know, when you're training to not have to check with uh every week, but even just to have someone that you've established a relationship with. So when you start to, if there's something that is concerning you pain-wise, you can my suggestion is to go into that individual sooner than later, especially if you're having some sort of not soreness, but pain that's impeding your ability to move. Um, the sooner you go in to see that person, the better. Especially when you're newer to the sport and you don't have the experience. I think it's helpful to have somebody to sort of discuss this with. Because I think the temptation would be maybe like, oh, I'm sore or I'm a little bit uncomfortable. I'm gonna take the day off completely, maybe. And that's maybe not the case that you need to totally take the day off. Yeah. Um, or rest. The other thing I wanted to mention too is with soreness, um, is that it can impact your performance, obviously. Like I think that's kind of what partially was my experience today was the soreness, maybe tightness in the muscles I was trying to run. And I just felt stiff. Like, you know, I felt like my biomechanics are a little off. It's usually like more fluid, a little easier. It wasn't going as fluidly as it usually does. And so that that may be there may be um some performance uh impacts of feeling soreness or having, obviously, if you think about it, if you have mild muscle damage and then you're trying to do another workout, you know, your body has it fully, fully recovered from the previous workouts or workout. And so you're sort of now sort of treading this fine line of like continuing to push the body and and maybe accrue more sort of damage. Some point you do have to allow your body to recover. You know, it's sort of part of training is this like accruing some mild muscle damage and then and some fatigue and then sort of coming back from that. And it's it's it is a hard balance sometimes to get that correct. But I don't I don't think you should necessarily take the day off. So I don't know, your thoughts are what you think about working, doing a workout through. Should people do like actually like do their planned workout if they're sore, or what do you think, Justin?

SPEAKER_02 58:57

Yeah, I I think it I think it kind of depends on what the workout is and the severity of the soreness. Because I have worked with athletes where it's like, you know, the slightest little thing and they're just like, oh, I've gotta I've gotta take a week off. I was just like, no, this this isn't going to help us. Because what's going to happen is that you'll take the week off and we'll get back to it, and it's going to come back. That's what happens. It's going to come back. You're going to get sore all over again. And you're going to get this this cycle of of you know trying to get started, and because you're not willing to to go with a little bit of discomfort. Discomfort is is fine, is it's to be expected. Soreness is fine. It's to be expected. It's when we start to where we cross this threshold between uh from soreness to pain is where that's what starts to starts the conversation. Um I I'm really bad person to ask. You know, sorry. Should I do this? Because I'm I'm a lot more conservative with my athletes. So if if if I had an athlete come to me and it's like, you know, this is how I'm feeling, um, I'll I'll ask you know, follow-up questions and really kind of like pick and prod at it, and it's like, okay, I'm trying to discern on you know how severe severe this is, and you know, are they just being a little over dramatic? You know, that because that happens from time to time. And then if I start to feel like, okay, is is the risk really worth the squeeze on this one? So it's just like, okay, well, let's let's adjust the workout, and we're gonna go day by day. So, you know, I'll reduce the intensity of the next day. And it's like, let's just try this. So here's tomorrow's workout, and tell me, tell me how it goes. And then sometimes they'll come in and they're just like, oh, you know, I I felt better. Then I know it's like, okay, well, that was just soreness. If they come back to me and they're just like, oh, it was it was just as bad, then I say, okay, well, uh, tell me what it means to be just as bad. Was it still, you know, like a stabbing pain? Was it persistent? Did it alleviate at all? Or did it get worse as you continue to progress throughout the workout? Then I start to say, okay, well, maybe, maybe we do need a day off. So let's just take, let's keep it at one day. We're not taking the whole week off. Let's just take it at one day and let's just see how that is. But a lot of times what I'll do is I'll give them something to do during that day. And it's not a workout, it's recovery stuff. So I say, okay, you know, hey, let's let's do uh tomorrow. I'm not going to give you a workout, but what I want you to do is I want you to do this. I want you to go in and you know do some rolling. I want you to do some some stretches if you have access to, you know, an in or like a sauna. I use the infrared sauna and I've I love it. Um let's do some purposeful recovery stuff and then try an easy workout the next day. Um, because we're I'm I'm not willing to like waste the time on just taking a day off. Let's let's use that time constructively and do something that's going to help aid the process. Right. Yeah. And so they'll they'll come back and they'll just say, Oh, you know, I'm I'm starting to feel better, then we just we keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

Um but yeah, yeah, I think it's important to kind of yeah, I think sometimes you schedule a workout like you're saying, and it's like, okay, well, let's just see what happens tomorrow. And if it's like I might give my athlete parameters, like, okay, if you're do the warm-up and then you try the first few sets and it's just not going well, I give you or you're still sore, and you know, there's still some sort of level of discomfort. I give you the permission to stop there. Just let me know, you know, we'll take the next day off, or something like that, where it's like, just want you to try it. And, you know, then I I give you permission after this, after a few sets or a few um repetitions or something of an interval to like try to stop and you know, or to stop and to to give it up for the day, and that's okay. You know, so I give them that permission, but it's also often that they might warm up and be like, oh, I feel just fine, or I'm a little bit sore, but I'm I'm performing just fine. So just soreness doesn't always indicate that you're it doesn't always indicate that the workout's gonna go poorly either. Um I think it can impede performance sometimes, especially if the soreness is a more of a sign of like general fatigue or soreness is sort of building over several workouts or something where you've kind of building this soreness and it's not you haven't quite let your body recover and adapt. But I think sometimes I've had plenty of times where I'm just a general little bit sore and my workout goes just fine. So giving it a try is probably my suggestion. And then if it's really bad and not going well at all, to give yourself permission to stop. And maybe you do need a recovery day and then you try the workout again or do a different workout on your plan.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

I use a lot. It's like I just let's just try, let's just try it. If if if we try it and you you you get through the warm-up and you get through through like maybe the first or second interval or whatever structure it is that and you feel like it's still going poorly or it's going worse, then call it. But I I don't I'm less likely to say, okay, well let's just let's just not. Yeah, just take it off. Yeah, that's how I am. Unless unless there's been several workouts where this has persisted, then I make that call and it's like, okay, now this is something that needs attention, so let's make the change. But yeah, I I don't I don't make that change very, very callously or just you know haphazardly and just like, oh, well let's just let's just take the day off. Oh, you're sore.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:31

Let's take yeah, let's just take tomorrow off. No, yeah, it's like not necessary. You're kind of wanting that. And the other thing, um, you mentioned a little bit about taking like a recovery day and doing recovery. So I just think um, just a reminder, like it is okay. There are certain things that help aid in recovery. And if you do a recovery day, I absolutely agree. Like, or a rest day to to make it a recovery day, maybe thinking of it that way. Like it's an it's not a rest day. You're not not doing anything, you're recovering. So like your your goal for this day is recovery. So it could be potentially very easy aerobic movement, but if it's a like a rest day from training, you are not moving. Um, it could be like mobility work, you know, really focusing on some mobility, whether you do a yoga class or do like I do, the like a mobility app, um, really focusing that time on sleep. Um, even if you have the maybe instead of run, go take a nap. I wish I could do that. I'm terrible at napping because I usually also think I gotta be doing something else. So it's not easy for me to nap. But if you are good at napping, maybe take a nap and then focus on your nutrition. So maybe making sure, and this should be something you're doing, these are things you should be doing anyways. Like, you know what I mean? Like in general, but nutrition, I mean, that could be a thing to think about, obviously, as a dietitian when somebody's sore, like and it's happening a lot or it's impeding their ability to get workouts, and it may not be nutrition related, but sometimes it could be or You're not getting the right nutrients. Like, so then I might look at something like, are you getting enough protein? Are you fueling adequately around the workout so that you're actually giving your body the nutrients that your body needs to adapt? Because if you're constantly like thinking about that analogy I used with the house and the tornado, like if you have that tornado come through and you're trying to fix your house to make it stronger, but you don't have the materials, then you're not you're not, you don't have any ability to make that house stronger. It's like the same with your muscle. You do the workout and you have those micro tears, but if the body doesn't have the building blocks to be able to repair, where do you think that's coming from? It's coming from the food you eat, you know, the nutrition you take in. So making sure you're eating enough and and the right things and hydrating, sometimes I suppose you could maybe exacerbate things a little bit or um with soreness. I mean, maybe just lack of hydration and being dehydrated if you don't have the fluids, you know, your body is um, you know, blood and all that has, you know, we have a lot of fluid in our body. And if we're not moving those, you know, nutrients around where they need to be adequately, I'm supposed hydration could probably make the soreness worse.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:12

Wouldn't it, wouldn't it definitely make it worse? Because the uh if if you're if you're run if your electrolytes are low, then the signals aren't aren't being effectively communicated between the brain and the muscle, right? So it the the contraction, the contractions aren't happening as fluid as they should. So it should make soreness worse if you have some level of of dehydration.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:38

Maybe also cramping, which is sort of a different issue, but um obviously you are more likely to cramp. But I'm also just thinking like when we're fully hydrated, we're able to get like the flow of all these building blocks and nutrients and then sort of the waste products of certain things that we're trying to kind of pull out that make soreness maybe worse. You're dehydrated, so the body's not properly able to kind of have the ability to kind of get those nutrients where they need to go, or the ability to take away some of those like byproducts of things that um we need to go and flush out through the kidneys. You know, if you're not hydrated, well, you're probably not going to have that process be effective. And like the kidney, you know, the kidneys can't really do their job of getting rid of like not detox, it's not they're they're kind of detoxing, but it's more just like getting wet rid of some of those product byproducts that we want to flush out of the system and like then delivering the the nutrients that we want to make sure we are to recover. So I'm sure that could be impacted by probably some level of significant dehydration. So just making sure you're hydrated um is a is I think important in general.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:48

I think one point that we I I do want to stress though is that um what are your thoughts on this? That if you do have an athlete that comes to you and like you're like, okay, I'm gonna take a rest day or whatever, I wouldn't recommend like changing their diet or changing the intake of their calories because there's no training going on, but the body is still working to repair itself. Shouldn't shouldn't they kind of still eat as if they're they have a full training load? I mean it's just one day.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:16

Yeah, I wouldn't really change so I I I wouldn't really tell someone they need to eat less. I would you know, normally when I mean potentially I'm thinking too, like, unfortunately, sometimes when someone is training a lot and maybe they're even when they're trying to get the right nutrients and they might be under fueling. And so allowing maybe one day where we're not really where maybe they're just e eating, you know, like then maybe they're able to recover some of their um underfueling a little bit on that one day. So if someone really wanted some parameters, I might really have them focus on okay, really want you to focus on your protein and I want you to focus on eating like nutrient-dense foods that maybe will have antioxidants and sort of things that might help aid in reducing inflammation or you know, might give them some parameters for that day if they really wanted to focus on something, but I would not give like calorie, like like have them lower their calories necessarily, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:18

Yeah. Cause I think that might be uh something that somebody would do. It's just like, oh well, I'm not training today, so I need to reduce calories because I don't want to I don't want to gain weight or anything like that. So I I think that that might be a misconception that even though even though you're not you're not training that day, the body is still working hard to repair the damage that it has accumulated over time, which is why you're taking the rest day. So, you know, if the body is still working on it, you still gotta feed it as if you know you were training. But yeah I can understand like if that if that one day turns into a whole week, then yeah, that that might be something that you need to discuss on how okay, how are we going to adjust our nutrition for you know a whole week off versus taking like one or two days off?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:06

Yeah, I would never tell anyone who who's just taking like a day off to sort of aid in recovery. Yeah, I I don't think you need to adjust your calories that day. Maybe naturally you're just not gonna be eating as much because you won't be eating maybe the pre and during and post fuel um that you might be getting during, you know, for the workouts. But yeah, I wouldn't I would I would caution someone to to just kind of eat as they normally would or maybe focus on something like protein, but not not reducing calories um for sure. Because yeah, one day isn't gonna make it, you're not gonna gain minimally any weight in one day, but if you overeat a little bit, in fact, that might be helpful for your body to get a little bit more than it needs in one day to kind of help even um yeah, recover maybe some of the underfueling from other days that where you maybe didn't get enough. Um yeah, and I do think that kind of like to go back to that underfueling connection, I mean I do want to reiterate that like when we don't eat enough or we're underfueling, we do it does take longer for our body to recover. So soreness may be a concern where you would just feel sore more. And when somebody's feeling sore, like right now where I'm at, it kind of gets me thinking, like, okay, have I been eating enough? You know, like it's because it's like, you know, I don't track. I mean, maybe I need to. Uh maybe I should I I do occasionally go back and log food for like a day, and and that's something someone could do to just make sure they're not excessively under-eating because you know, the relative energy deficiency in sport or red S, something that develops over a long period of time. It's not something that happens over the course of two days or a week. Um, but if that's something you feel like you're just like consistently sore and struggling, that would be something to maybe look at is underfueling. Um, yeah. I think of underfueling, just poor recovery in general, overtraining, all signals of excessive or all things that could be related to excessive soreness, sleep, too much intensity, those are all things that contribute. So I think sometimes it's like when you're experiencing, like with Justin and I where we were at, I think it's like I think where I'm at right now, especially, it's like, okay, I'm at this sort of point, um, tipping point, maybe where it's I need, you know, maybe it's too much intensity or too much just too much. The training plan is where it should be, maybe, but maybe it's too much. So do I have you know, do I now now need to like back off a little bit so that I can recover? But I don't want to back off too much because I want to I still want to have a good race. It's just such a hard thing to sometimes figure out fully and because it's just where I need to be, you know, before I back off a little bit, or am I going too hard?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:47

One of the things that one of the things that I use uh quite a bit is that distinction uh between uh with overtraining and you know, I've m I've had this conversation with others before. You know, there's there's overreaching. So there's functional overreaching and non-functional overreaching. So if you get to the point where you're like, I'm feeling really, really sore, or you have this what's called decoupling. And decoupling is when you have uh your rate of perceived exertion isn't consistent with the the heart rate or the performance that you're getting out of that session. So if you go out and let's say that you do a zone two workout and your heart rate stays fairly low, and let's say, you know, we're like 130s, 140s, but it feels harder than what it should, that's what's called decoupling. And you if you get to the point where you're overreaching, functional overreaching is perfectly fine, and it's what we we really want. That's what that's where the adaptation takes place. You're overreaching, but you're still seeing the performance gains from that effort. So, one of the things that I've been trying to assess in my own workouts lately in the way that I'm feeling, I I'm asking myself, okay, is this functional overreaching or is this non-functional overreaching? Do I feel like my performance is increasing, or do I feel like I'm actually starting to lose performance now as I push forward? If you get to the point where you're starting to feel like you're per you're seeing your performance fall off, that's that's the tipping point. That's where you say, okay, now I need to roll this back a little bit. Because if if you can still overreach and still get the performance that you're looking for, then I suggest that you just keep you keep moving forward, but monitor it closely because it doesn't take much to go from functional overreaching to non-functional overreach. Um, and so that's one of the things that I've been personally, you know, asking myself every time every single workout that I've done for like the past two weeks, because that's how long I've kind of been sore and been feeling this way. It's like, okay, is this is this just life stress? Is this job stress? Is what what else is this, you know, fueling in to how I'm feeling? I I took a week off from the weight room and then went right back into it because I was super busy one week and I just didn't have the time to dedicate it to. So I wanted to focus on what's really important, that's the aerobic stuff. And so I sacrificed the weight room. But when I went back into the weight room, I got really, really sore because I missed a whole week of strength training. And, you know, I I guess I wasn't as conservative as I should have been. And so I ask myself, okay, is the performance that I'm seeing now, does it feel harder than what it really should feel? Am I having a hard time hitting my targets? And the targets are reasonable, and they're targets that I've hit before, and that's how I felt when I hit them. Now, if you're starting to get different answers to those questions that you're asking yourself, that's where you start to really start to look look forward in the training plan. It's like, okay, now I need to make some adjustments. You know, let's let's kind of restructure some things. Let's, you know, if I have any key sessions that are coming up, maybe I want to push them further out, or actually just remove the key sessions entirely for for the rest of that that week and just maybe focus on some nice, easy stuff and just say, it's a missed opportunity. Yeah, but what's worse having a missed opportunity or still pushing forward and now you've gone beyond the threshold uh of where you could sustain it and now you're hurt. You know, I I I'd much rather I'd risk much rather miss a key session than cross that threshold because I've done it to myself many times. And you know, it's a lesson that's really hard to learn because we're I think most of us are kind of like a-type personalities, and so I know that the way that I look at it, it's like, okay, well, this was an opportunity to get better. This was an opportunity to deepen my fitness, and if I if I miss a workout, then it almost feels like it's that missed opportunity. It's this fear of missing this FOMO mentality. And I know that this is what something that I struggle with, um, but it's something that I've had to come to grips with. It's like, okay, well, yeah, it's a missed opportunity, but what good is that opportunity if it causes me to cross that threshold from soreness into injury? Now I've missed many opportunities because now I have to take a significant step back rather than just taking one step back. I I'd much rather take the one step than the many steps. Um but but asking asking yourself this these questions on, you know, am I am I overreaching, which is fine, but what it what are the outputs that I'm seeing from this overreach? Are they still increasing? Then I'm fine. Uh I'm going, I'm going to move forward. But if I'm overreaching and I'm starting to decline in my performance and things are really starting to feel harder than what they should, and my heart rate isn't consistent with with what I'm seeing in terms of of output and effort, then that's that's the key. I think that's the one moment where you say, okay, now I've got the evidence that I need to confirm that you know I need to make some adjustments.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:23

Right. Yeah, I think uh yeah, that makes sense. I think that helps. It's just hard, I think, to sometimes but I I like that you put kind of like, you know, sometimes we talk about metrics and things like that. And I think this is one of those cases where we do want to pay pay attention to how our body's feeling, and then also what's happening with our heart rate or some of those um types of m metrics that we're noticing of like this heart rate should be easy, but I just feel like this is really hard right now. Perhaps I do suspect right now I am in a bit of an overreaching situation, and so what happens next week will probably be the key to how do I progress over the next few days, and then I'm taking that rest day off Tuesday. And the rest of the week, it's not super, super hard workouts. There's little bits of things in there, but nothing really, really, really hard to like Sunday when I have my final long run 20 miler with some uh pacework stuff in there. So I think that will be very telling if I get into the end of next week and it's still a struggle. I might have to kind of rethink things a little bit, but um, yeah, I think it's it's hard, you know. I don't know where you're at. Are you gonna take some days off?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:40

Yeah, I don't I don't know. I'm still kind of torn about this. Um I I think the I think the approach because I did a couple runs this week and uh I know that there's a pace that I use that's a really low zone two effort that should feel really easy. And when I ran at that effort, um it felt almost like it was like zone three. I was like, this is requiring some some significant focus and effort. And it it caught me off guard and it it kind of started this ball rolling in my head. It's like okay, and now I'm starting to ask myself, you know, am I am I getting into this non-functional overreach phase of my training? And so I'm I think I'm leaning more towards uh making an adjustment to my approach to the strength sessions to the to the weight room first. I want to make I want to make that change first and say, okay, because is that the culprit? Am I just going too heavy and I'm being too ambitious in the weight room? And that is I'm having a hard time recovering from those sessions, and that's feeding into my inability to execute the aerobic uh workouts that I need. So I'm going to kind of go through a D-load process with that. And I'm gonna just I'm just gonna give it a week. I'm just gonna say, well, let's just let's reduce this for a week and let's see how I feel the following week after that. Then I say, okay, now I'm still kind of feeling like I'm just kind of struggling. Then I'll say, uh, maybe let's just take a day. Um, but let's keep let's keep the weight the weight training at that new adjusted method and then take another take a rest day. I I I think I'm more of of that kind of like stepwise approach to to to uh to handling this kind of situation rather than just do it because if I if I reduce my weight uh in the weight room and I make that change and I take a rest day, I don't know what it is that I really needed to do because I changed too many things. So I don't know if the rest day was really beneficial or if it was just the adjustment in the weight room is beneficial.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:37

So I have I'm probably gonna do both. I'm still taking the rest day.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:41

I'm an econom I'm an economist by by training. Yeah. So that's my education. Um I'm a I'm a firm believer in this ketter's paribus assumption that you know all things remaining equal and I change one thing, then I can say, well, that's that led to to the change that I wanted.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:57

Either, yeah. For me, either way, I need a rest day. Like it's I've been training, I think since I started feeling better. There's been three solid weeks of no, yeah, I've had a couple like recovery days, but I haven't had a rest day in a while, so I probably need one anyways. And I'm gonna strain the strength training, I'm just gonna make some small changes, especially with the d the deadlift piece. Um just to kind of like not end up being like sort of destroyed by that. Um, because it's okay if I lose a little bit of strength in my deadlifts, if that means I can run my race and then I'll regain it when I'm done, you know. So I'll do both, but but mostly because I know the deadlift was the issue this last week, and I still need a rest day anyway. So it's kind of like I'm not worried about whether which one or whatever worked as long as somehow at the end of the week I'm that 20 mile or I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm actually able to hit my paces.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:55

And feel good. Well not good, but you know, feel okay. Um, if I can do that, then otherwise I'm not sure what's gonna happen. Yeah. Then I'll have to then I start uh then I only have three weeks until the race, so we're running out of valuable time here to gain any more fitness. I think I have two weeks, and so yeah, you're haze in the barn.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:19

Yeah, spending spending this week reducing the strength training and then evaluating on on how that affects. Then that'll give me to my taper week, and then I was like, okay, well, do I need a day off or then I'd say, yeah, let's just take a day off. It's taper week. The training is what it is. Uh I've I've been super consistent and I'm not too concerned about it. I'm not going to get any more fit, and I'm not going to get any less fit um between really now and then. Um the only thing that I could do is cross that threshold and and hurt myself. So that's that's where the real risk um is is presenting right now from where I am relative to how close the race day is.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:00

So yeah, you don't want it to be two weeks out and then get hurt. Um I suppose it could happen. So we gotta like, we gotta we gotta end it. I know we're a little over and you gotta go.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:11

Yeah. So all right, guys. So I want to thank you for joining us. This has been episode 97 of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, where we've talked about uh soreness and how how it materializes in the training uh in your training process, what are the questions that you should be asking yourself uh in order to for differentiate between soreness and pain and how to walk that fine line uh in order to still build the adaptation and the stimulus that you need to progress without pushing it too far. So I want to thank you guys for joining us. Um if this episode has been helpful to you uh and you and you've learned something, or you feel like there's something, there's somebody that you know that would be helped by this by this particular episode, please. I hope that you will consider leaving a review, leaving a comment, share the episode with with anybody that you feel it would be helpful to. Uh, those are greatly appreciated. And we really, really uh appreciate those comments and reviews. We do not monetize this podcast, so we don't have ads, we don't have sponsors. So the comments and the reviews is what really helps us uh break out to where other people can find us. We're still doing as much as we can on social media in order to uh really bring exposure to the podcast, but those reviews and comments really, really help. Uh so you know if you're listening to this on audio only, so it's on Spotify or Amazon or iTunes or wherever, or if you're watching us on the YouTube channel, leave a comment in the review. Those we really, really appreciate it. We also have the private Facebook group. So it's the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast group, it's a closed group. All you have to do is answer one simple question and agree to the group rules and let you right on in. This is an area that we've been building from day one where it allows us to develop this community and really connect with those people that are enjoying the podcast, listening, and it will uh give us an avenue to push out additional content that supports the podcast, comes in and supplements the information that we're sharing here, and will also give you a voice on you know, telling us what it is that you would like for us to discuss. Uh, I know that Katie and I have a have a list of topics that we still check through, uh, but we can only be but so creative. So with those having ideas and things floated by listeners on something that you'd like to learn more about, we would love to see more of that. So if you have those types of ideas, share them in the group. We uh we will absolutely uh put them into the queue and and get those developed. We are also active coaches, so if you are looking for assistance in your training, uh you're looking to try something different, or if you're stepping up in race distance and you're not quite sure how to approach the training, or you've just become so Super busy and you're tired of researching, you know, workouts and trying to find things. You know, am I doing enough? Am I doing too little? What what other kinds of workouts should I be doing to get the stimulus that I want? Uh, I hope that you will consider us as your coaches. So you can go to uh fuel the number two run dot com for Coach Katie. She does dietetics for all sports uh as well as run training. You can go to tabularasseracing.com. I do single sport and multi-sport training uh with uh custom training plans and one-on-one uh custom coaching are our options available to you. But we are actively uh bringing on people and we would love to talk to you and see how it is that we can help you move forward and and progress in your journey. Uh can't think of anything else. Um again, this has been episode 97. So I want to thank you guys for joining us. We look forward to coming to you again next week with a new topic. And until next time, I've been uh your host, Coach Justin, along with Coach Katie with the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, and we will talk to you again next time. Thanks, guys.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:06

Bye.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:08

Yeah, so we're out. That wraps up today's episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Endurance sports have a way of teaching us patience, humility, and resilience. Lessons that carry far beyond the workout. Progress in endurance sports doesn't come from shortcuts, it comes from consistency, discipline, and doing the work when it's not glamorous. Wherever you are on your endurance journey, keep trusting the process and honoring the work you put in each day. If today's episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone to help on their endurance journey. Don't forget to join the conversation on our social sites to help build and foster a community where we all learn and support one another. We'll be back with more stories and insights from Coach Justin and Katie. Until then, visit the podcast website at the endurance athlete journey.buzzsprout.com for more episodes from the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Have questions or comments about the podcast? Feel free to send us an email at the endurance athlete journey at gmail.com. For all things coaching, visit Coach Katie at fuel the number two run dot com and Coach Justin at taboolarassa racing.com. Again, thank you for listening to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast and remember to find joy in the journey.