Episode 25: Not Everything Has to Be Hard: Training Smarter in a World Obsessed With Suffering

We’re taught that if training doesn’t feel hard, exhausting, or leave us sore, it must not be working. And that belief sneaks into everything…strength training, running, and honestly, life.

In this episode, I’m talking about why hard is a tool, not a requirement. Why always pushing can backfire. And how building strength, endurance, and consistency actually comes from doing work you can repeat…not work that wrecks you.

This is for the runners who feel like they’re constantly trying to prove they’re doing “enough.” And for the ones who are tired of turning every workout into a battle.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why strength training doesn’t need to crush you to be effective
• Where the “everything has to be hard” mindset comes from
• How always pushing can lead to burnout, inconsistency, or injury
• What “not hard” training actually looks like (and why it still works)
• How this shows up in running and real life, too

If you’ve ever walked away from a workout wondering if it “counted” because it didn’t destroy you, this one’s for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey y'all, welcome back to DirtNab Diaries. I'm your host, Brittany Olsen, Trailrunner, Women's Trailrunning Coach, Hypewoman, and Professional Overpacker of the Midrun Snacks. This show is for the everyday trailrunner, the ones training on real-life legs and real life time. You've got work, relationships, laundry, pets, a group task that never shuts up, and maybe a big goal sitting quietly in the back of your mind that you're not totally sure you're allowed to want. You're not out here chasing podium spots. You're chasing finish lines, sunrises, and maybe a little sanity. This podcast is about trail running, but it's also about navigating life. The hard seasons, the joyful ones, and the ones where everything feels like too much. So let's get into it. Alright, personal update. Again, nothing big. I mean, my vault my running volume's starting to go up. I can see it. I talked to my coach about how much it's gonna go up for Coca-Dona, and we're gonna have some 13 to 15 hour days back-to-back, all that good stuff. So I've been thinking on that, trying to figure out uh how to live my life when I'm doing that much training, um, get in strength training, do all the things, but um, I'm really excited for it, that's for sure. Uh just, I mean, part of it I know here is the weather. It's warmer than normal, which is not good, you know, climate change, um, all that stuff, not good, but it still feels great compared to the summers when I'm out there running. It is a bit happier than when it's, you know, 110 degrees um, you know, by the end of a run. So uh that does help quite a bit. But um outside of that, it's just been it's been training, it's been coaching. Um today is a holiday, so my consulting job is it's actually Johnson Johnson is closed, so like I can go in and just do some of the uh things where I'm not gonna get pings from everybody else because they've taken the holiday off. So I do enjoy days like that. And I can also take a pause, and I am recording on a Monday instead of a Sunday because man, it's just busy, and sometimes that just happens. So outside of that though, um maybe one day I'll have a whole bunch of interesting things to tell you about myself uh because something happened, but for the most part, just keeping steady. Um trying to keep my uh schedule as routine as possible because I know as volume gets up, things are gonna get a little bit more complicated, including recording this podcast. So, but it's gonna be once a week, guys. I have promised that, and I'm going to. So anyway, um, let's get into what we're gonna talk about. And I almost recorded a different episode um today. As you guys know, if you've been listening or reading anything, or if you see me on my Instagram stories, like, I mean, I've talked about it so much, but like our country's in a real shit spot. I mean, you know, ice friggin' has murdered so many people. Renee Good was like the big one that came out in the news, but there are so many more. Um, and because they weren't white, they weren't put into uh the news um at all or upfront. So like just learning all of these things, learning more and more about that. So like it's just been on my brain, all of those things. And then on top of that, like I'm I've been sitting on like how exclusive running uh it really is, and not just just road running, but trail running too. What I mean by exclusive is I've mentioned this in the past too, is just like when you go to a start line of a trail race or a road race, like it is predominantly white people, period. I mean, that is what it is. So, and like how we're still missing the mark and how there's still people gatekeeping the sport that is for everybody, and how people who are still calling this sport inclusive, um, who are part of it, who see what I see, don't see that it's not inclusive, you know. Like it's it's not just about race, it's about like what body type a person has, it's about their speed, it's all of these things, and it's just not always inclusive. I'm not saying you're not being inclusive as a person, but like this stuff has been like racking around in my brain. And so like every time I go to do an episode, my brain goes like super deep, and I'm I'm constantly trying to put content out there that is always like relevant to that. And I've realized as I was thinking about like I am making everything like too hard on me. Not that I shouldn't be doing the work, not that I shouldn't, but when it comes to certain things, I need a break so I can do other things that are more important. I can act upon them, I can do those. So this episode I was gonna be like inclusivity. We're gonna do a whole bunch of episodes on inclusivity because you can't do it on one, that's just not possible. But as like I was trying to write it out and get all my thoughts down, I felt my energy was just dropping. So we are not getting that episode, but it made me think about why we think everything has to be hard. Like, why do we always like feel like we need to push a run, push a strength training session? Like, why do we always have to like be the next best best thing or push to a certain limit? Like, why are we trying to make like every training session hard? Um, and honestly, I was like, wait, not every podcast episode has to be like this hard. Like, I don't owe anybody anything. Like, I'm working on things internally with myself. I do things externally for people too. Um, but in this moment it was like, I'm making it hard, I'm making it heavier, let's take a step back. And it's not this episode isn't gonna be important, but it's not gonna be um about inclusivity um exactly or anything like that. It's gonna be about how a lot it's gonna be about strength training, about why we feel like we have to be sore and why we feel like we have to push so hard no matter what. So, but what I have to realize too is I don't need to make everything heavy for it to have meaning. Um, so just just that's one of my things. It's not a new year's resolution. I know I talked about it a couple weeks ago, but it's just something I've been thinking about. I don't owe anyone a version of myself that's constantly pushing, constantly explaining, constantly proving something, and you guys don't have to either. Like I'm saying that for you too, but that's where I feel like I've been, and my energy has been dropping and dropping. Like my runs are feeling great, but then like throughout my day, my energy is just getting sucked. So if you're experiencing that, just remind yourself you don't always have to be pushing, you don't have to be over-explaining or explaining everything you're doing, and you don't have to prove yourself all the time. So today we're talking about mainly strength training, but running will be thrown in there because, well, I can't help myself. And really about life through that lens, through the lens of always pushing and why, how, how can we pull back what it looks like and why it's okay, and how it's actually better for us to not always be constantly in that pushing phase. So, like the one, like this is where you can see how things are hard, but it's not always required for you to make them harder. So, where this like everything has to be like hard, where does it show up? Well, I think about strength training quite a bit, and that's why I put this above running in this because I even remember, and I've been strength training y'all for like 20 years, so since I was 20 years old. Yes, I'm 40. Um, we celebrated my birthday in August. Uh but um I remember thinking like after a workout when like my legs were wrecked or like my shoulders were sore and I was like sore for two or three days, um, how it was like, oh, that was a good workout. Like I really worked those muscles. And granted, now I know more about the science about like the lifting and the recovery and all of that stuff. We're not getting it in this episode, by the way. We we would be talking for five hours. But like that's how I thought about it. So, like, and it is where I see it most. It's not that, but a lot of times when you're running afterwards, you don't want to be sore because then you can't run again. So if you if you're not if you're not strength training at all, or you've ran without strength training and you've never felt that strength training soreness, um, you might not quite know what I'm talking about here, but maybe you've done it in running, or maybe you've done it at work where you just push and push and push, and like your brain is totally wrecked at the end of the day from like working so hard all the time. Where it's it's wrecked in the middle of the day. Um, so that's where that like shows up. Um, but like I think about whenever people are even now strength training, it doesn't matter what age you are, it doesn't matter what experience level, some people have still have this thought process of if it didn't crush me, did it even count? Like if I'm not sore, am I getting weaker? You know, if I'm not exhausted, am I slacking? Right? Like those are common, common things that go through our brains. Um, and it's okay that it's going through our brains. But what we need to think about is like, why do we think we need to be in pain? Like some kind of like residual soreness to make it count. Why do we think we might be weaker because we're not sore enough or we're like have too much energy? Oh my gosh, what would that be like to have more energy? That'd be amazing. But a lot of us were taught that discipline does equal suffering. Um, and that if it feels manageable, it must not be effective. Like we live on these, like just always push, always push, like I've mentioned. The tricky part here is how sneaky that belief is. It shows up and it's dressed up as commitment. Like I remember whenever like I was lifting more than I was now, I wasn't running like I was. So like I didn't feel like I was doing anything wrong to my body at the time. But now when I look back, like people are like, oh my gosh, you're so disciplined, you're so committed, you're so and like, yeah, I was going to the gym, yeah, I was doing these things, but I was doing them because I thought I had to crush myself for it to count. I thought that if I wasn't sore, I wasn't getting stronger. So, but it shows up like as grit. People just think it's so gritty. And again, people still think I'm gritty and I and I am disciplined, which I am, but it's not to the extent where in my brain I thought I had to do all of these things, all these things, be sore all the time to think I was doing it. So, but most of the time, what this is is it's just a fear of not doing enough. Um, and that stems from many, many things. Uh, we won't dig into all that psychology because again, we will be here forever. But I mean, if you grow up an athlete and you're my age or a little older, maybe even a little younger, I don't think coaches say this as much, but it used to be like, give 110%. I really hate that phrase now. Oh my gosh, because I remember hearing it when I was a kid and I was like, that doesn't make sense. Like what? And then after a while, though, it gets like ingrained in you of like always be giving this, always be giving that. And I've mentioned this in a podcast episode before, maybe a couple, but like pro athletes aren't going 110% of practice. They're going 60 to 80%. Like when when I'm talking about easy runs, it's very similar, right? We're not always pushing a run at 100%. Like it is definitely an increments depending on what that run is. So right. So when I think about that, I do have to remind myself, pros definitely aren't even like doing that because they're it's not sustainable to constantly go. So for me as being an athlete, just being told like go, go, go, push hard, push hard, like you gotta push hard through everything, you know, get that starting position, you know, get that scholarship, all of those. So that was my experience uh for the most part. I mean, others could have had it in different areas where it was, you know, you have to get, you know, certain, certain grades, and that that shows effort and attitude and all that stuff. And good grades don't necessarily show that. I had straight A's, um, I was valedictorian, yeah. I I was a people peopler and perfectionist, guys. I've got stories. But what it is is people see like these outcomes and they think the more they push to get those outcomes, the better it is. And sometimes you're just missing out on life, you're missing out on things that you could be doing. You're spending time, you know. When you're a kid, you shouldn't miss so much time with your friends because you're studying so hard. I don't have a problem with studying. I think you should put your effort into it. We we preach that here at home. But the grade, that result, doesn't necessarily mean you didn't work hard, you didn't put the effort in either. So just, I mean, again, there are so many different things. It could be sports, it could be grades. Um, it really could be anything that you grew up with, but a lot of things times this stuff is ingrained, ingrained, ingrained. Um, but from the time we're a kid on, you know, like a lot of things are, right? So, um, so let's start this out. So we're gonna use strength training here again. It's gonna be that kind of like guiding light here. Guiding light, I think that's a soap opera. I don't know, I don't watch them, but what is strength training actually for? And we're gonna talk about like how this applies to running in life a little bit too, but you might already connect the dots when I start talking. So um, strength training isn't meant to punish you. It's not meant to punish you for eating a certain thing. It's not meant to punish you because you want to lose five more pounds, 20 more pounds, a hundred more pounds, whatever that is. It's not meant to punish your body. It is meant to support you. It is meant to make you feel confident and stronger, be able to do things on your own. All of those things that are so important. Um, it's to make you more durable on the trail or on the road, whatever kind of runner you are. Maybe you're a dancer, um, maybe you're a walker, whatever it is that you're doing, like it is meant to make you more durable durable. Uh, it's also meant to help you recover faster. Um, I have uh attributed my lifting for so long to why I recover so quickly from hard efforts. Like my recovery time is normally not that much. Um, and when I first started running these long distances on the trail, I really thought, like, I remember people talking about recovery and how important it is. And it is that important. But people first of all, people recover at different, different uh time periods. Uh, so so don't compare yourself to somebody else. But like strength training does help you recover faster. So just keep it in mind. The longer we run, it's and it's good to be able to recover faster because when you're training for something longer, you need that recovery. You need to be able to go, you know, and do the next run. Um, so that's what it's for. But again, I mentioned this already because I could, I got ahead of myself. These damn bullet points, man, always getting ahead of myself. But it is to help you feel more confident in the body that you have instead of constantly questioning it. So um, when you can do something on your own, and I'm gonna have to do an episode about solo running because I'm a very big fan of people doing things solo, because when you can do a run solo or do other things solo, it is very important. But like this goes with that confidence piece of it, like feeling confident in what your body can do, feeling strong about what your body can do. Like, that is what it's for. Are you am I saying, do I ever question myself? Yeah, sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I'm like, man, like you've been strength changing for that long, and this is this is what you got going on. Or, you know, sometimes if a hill is just, it feels like it's impossible. Um, all of those things. So it's not like there's never a question, but I'm not constantly questioning what my body can do. I am confident. Like I feel super grateful for it, but I'm also like confident in what I can do because of what I've done, but also seeing what other people have done, but also knowing that I'm doing the right things in my body now, not pushing it for punishment, not pushing it to soreness every single time I do something. I get sore sometimes, y'all will get to that. But strength should give you capacity. It shouldn't be taking away everything that you have. Like it should make you do things better. If it's simple as like being able to get up of a chair more smoothly, that is important. That gives you capacity. Yes, it might wear you out some days, it might make you a little bit tired, but that's not the point. It is to give you more capacity in whatever it is you are doing. Um so just remember that like that hard piece, it's not that you never push hard in strength training. I have a certain day a month, and I and I'm a hard pusher, by the way, but like a certain day a month where like I lift heavier than any other day. Um, it's called CNS training, central nervous system training. Um, but there is a time for things to be hard more difficult. There's a time for things to be easy, and sometimes things are in the middle. You know, think about like an RPE six to seven, kind of in the middle there. Um but that that difficult level, that hard, it's just a tool in your toolbox. Just like an easier lift day is a tool in your toolbox, and an easier run day is and a moderate run day. All of those are tools. So the hard and the difficult should still be in that toolbox, but it shouldn't be the number one thing you're grabbing, right? It's not the baseline for you. Um, but why does it always backfire? And we're gonna talk here especially for women too. Think about how your body doesn't separate training stress from life stress. So if you are always pushing yourself in life, and with life, I'm gonna include like your work um and everything with that. So we're gonna include work with the life. Um, and then like you've got the training stress on top of it. You're your your body's reacting the same way to it. Yes, I understand. When you're running harder, there's muscle fibers, there's ligaments, there's things. But I mean, the actual like part of your brain and everything that's going on with you, it's not separating, it's still stress. You've got the work stress, the emotional stress, the hormonal shifts, the poor sleep, the mental load of just being a whole ass human. Like, that is all part of it. So if you are pushing life stress, if you are pushing training all the time, especially lifting, that's burnout right there. I mean, think about how long, and we all know this. When we were kids, we could push a little bit harder. When we were in our 20s, we could push a little bit harder. I don't know how old people are that'll see this episode, but like as it gets more, and this isn't a negative, this is just being realistic, you cannot, your body can't sustain it as much. And if it is sustaining it or you feel like sustaining it, trust me, you're losing it somewhere else, or you're not gonna have that longevity, you're gonna burn out, um, you're you're more susceptible to injuries, um, especially as we get older. There's nothing wrong with getting older, but all of us know as we get older, our bodies do degrade to a point, which is why strength training is important, which is why easy and hard strength training is important. Look at that. I could conclude it right there, but I won't. Um, but when everything is hard, your body does eventually stop adapting too, right? So I said, you know, we want strength training for to have it's supposed to add capacity to our life. And the whole point of strength training is to work on things. For me, I'm a pretty muscular person. That's not a brag. I've been lifting for 20 years. I should have muscle on my body, but I do have some imbalances. Like my I'm quad dominant, which means right now we're we're really working on my booty and my hamstrings. Three of my shoulder, I have there's three muscles up there in the shoulder. Um, there's more muscle than that, but there's these three main ones. Uh, and two of mine are dominant and one is not, and it's more towards the back. So, like there are things. So when I talk about adapting, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to talk about myself and my muscles. Um, but it is like there are things that your body can still be working on when you're lifting. But when everything is hard, when you're constantly pushing, you're not gonna have all those adaptations. Things are gonna start going downhill. And instead of getting stronger, you you end up burned out, injured, um, even being inconsistent because you're pushing so hard, eventually your body's kind of like, whoa, like we gotta, we gotta, we gotta go back a little bit. Let's taper back. Um, so some people have, you know, there's two different responses to that. Some people will continue to push and push and push until injury. Some people push and push and push and they realize they're tired and then they become inconsistent and then they back off completely. Then they go back into the cycle again. Typically it's some kind of cyclical thing, whichever side you're on with that. So we do want to break that cycle if you find yourself always pushing hard, always sore. Um, again, that is with strength training, running, and life, right? We don't want that burnout, we don't want that injury, we don't want that inconsistency, we don't want you to get in that bad cycle. We want you in a cycle that works for you. And then what people start doing is they're like, oh my gosh, they blame themselves. And yes, it's our fault that we keep pushing that hard. It's our brains telling us that it's better. But we start like blaming ourselves in ways like, oh my gosh, like we don't think a lot of times we don't think, oh, we pushed too hard. We think we're soft. We didn't push hard enough. We pushed in the wrong way. We need to push harder to get out of this when really we're just overloaded. We have overloaded our system. We've probably overloaded ourselves physical, physically, mentally, um, emotionally, all of that, like, and our brain is going a little bit haywire up there. Our body is too, but our brain is as well. So we don't want to have that overload because it doesn't help. I'm not saying you don't have an overload day for you, strength trainers out there have been doing it for a long, long time. Um, we we do progressive overloads, but that is not all the time, is it? And if you're doing it all the time, don't do that. Um, but so man, I'm talking fast, I'm getting into it. My I'd have ran wonderful run this morning, and it was a little bit later than normal, so I think I'm like really, really amped up right now. So we've talked about like, you know, where everything has to be hard belief shows up, like what strength training really is for. And oh, the overarching thing is it is, it's to it should give you capacity, it should add to your life, not take away from it. Um, how it like, why it backfires, especially like I haven't got to like maybe I should address that a little bit better, like especially for women, because I did I I briefly mention hormonal shifts, but we have those different hormonal shifts, and sometimes we feel like when we're in that luteal phase, those last two days, which typically some of the hardest days um for us women, like maybe if we push harder, we can get through it and we won't feel so bad. Um, when on those days, if I have somebody telling me where they're at in their cycle and they're like, I'm feeling this kind of way, I'm like, dude, like take a rest day or let's go for a walk instead. Sometimes our bodies like just need That rest during that time. Some people are fine. Some people can totally run during that time. When I'm during that time, those last couple days of my luteal face, I do feel it. I still tend to move, but um sometimes I can just tell, like, oof, I was slower in that. That was like the same effort I always give. Or like I can just feel, I don't pay attention to heart rate data, remember, like not on my wrist, but I can feel like my heart is like beating faster at those times. So like my runs do look a little bit different. But what I'm saying is like we have to realize that like at those times, pushing harder doesn't help us. Our body is doing what it naturally does, and we need to like honor that for ourselves. Um, a lot of times once we start menstruating, things get a little bit better. Um, yes, we're bleeding for five to seven days and we still live. Can you imagine that? Um, but once we start like menstruating, like a lot of the just things start feeling better in terms of, you know, we're not quite so fatigued. Um, our body is not like lag what we call lagging behind. Um, I'm not saying everybody has this way, we are all different, but it typically does like help at that time, um, compared to the luteal phase, which is right before that starts. So it is like it's a big deal. And what it is is people like, well, let me just push harder through all of this. And women, let's push, let's push through this. And it doesn't help because it just drops you into deeper fatigue. Um, and also, uh, when women continuously push and push and push, like that's when we can have some uh really, really big hormonal shifts that are not good for us. Maybe our period stops completely. Um, there could just be different things that are going on in our body. I am not an OBGYN or a doctor of this, so this is not the episode to get into it, but just know, like, honor those hormone shifts that you have and know that just continuously to push yourself hard isn't the answer for that. So just something to keep in mind. Also, the poor sleep, the mental load. Yes, I know men can have that too, but ladies, I'm talking to you, uh, women tend to actually sleep a little bit less. Um, there is science, science, scientifical, but s science, there's research around that too. Um, but a lot of times we do take on more of the uh mental load when it comes to things at home, things at work. It just goes into our brains a little bit differently. Um, and we can go in, we can go into all the how women have been for years and years and how things have happened, but again, we all know already. Uh, but we do take more and more of that on. And if we are constantly trying to push through again, that's where it comes to that burnout or injuries or inconsistency. Um, so we're not adding, we're not getting more capacity there. So we've got to stop overloading ourselves, period. And I get it. We can't always, we have kids work, there are deadlines, there are things that have to happen. I'm not saying we don't like sometimes have to push through things. I'm saying we don't have to push through everything, right? Especially if you have a strength training session and you have been sore for two weeks, you're pushing too hard and we need to back off. That is a choice you can make. I get it, you might have a work deadline that you can't miss and you have to push that. You have a kid you have to pick up from school at a certain time, you know, those types of things. I get that, but the things that you are pushing through that you have a choice not to push on, push too hard on, you gotta be super intentional. Think about when do I need to have an easy day? Like, why am I always sore? Ask yourself these questions. So, now here's the thing though, what does not hard actually look like? You know, like, and what's the benefit, which I've already alluded to many, many times, probably more than alluded, but let's be clear here. Not hard does not mean careless, it also does not mean lazy, and it definitely does not mean ineffective at all. Okay? So we still want to be intentional. We're not gonna call ourselves lazy for that, and we are it and it can still be very effective. So, what does it mean? For me, my lifting effort, I'm around most days my lifting is around a seven, like a six to a seven. It really depends on what I'm doing. Um, and I am working with a performance coach right now, but this is how I've been lifting for years too, is I'm never at I don't even know last time I've lifted an RP of 10, right? So 10, well, if we want to do 10, it's like one rep max or like pushing it where when you're at three reps, you're already kind of dead. Like basically it does feel like the RP in a RP of like nine to ten feels like what it does when you're doing a VO2 max workout on the trails or on the road or on the tread even, but you're just pushing so hard and just like it takes everything out of you. So we're looking for that like six to seven, right? Because for us trail runners, we want to complement our running, right? We want to be stronger, we want to have more capacity, more capacity to run faster, run longer, run stronger, um, be able to process food better, all of those things, and strength training is a part of that, but we can't always be pushing that strength training to the max where we are so sore that we're not getting faster and stronger on the trails. Um, it could be shorter sessions sessions done consistently. Um so maybe right now you're spending quite a bit of time uh lifting, maybe an hour to an hour and a half, four or five days a week. Uh, because that's what whatever, maybe it's something you found online and maybe it works for you guys. So I'm not saying stop what you're doing, right? Some of these, if you feel like if you're feeling some kind of way, I'm not saying what you're doing is wrong. I just want to make sure you're pushing at the right effort level. But maybe you need to cut those sessions in half. Do one session one day, take a day off, then do another session the next day. Or like the next day after that, so every other day, right? So it's it's basically making sure that the length of the session you're doing isn't making you get up into that higher effort part where you're always in a higher effort. Um, I mentioned this. I can't believe I'm I I skipped bullets again, guys. You should see you should see what I write sometimes. I need to take a picture of this and put this out there because I get ahead of myself all the time. But strength work that supports your running instead of wrecking it. So I've already talked about it. Like it's adding capacity, it's making you run faster, stronger, longer, all of those things. That's what it's for. Also, strength training is for life. I talk about this a lot. Everybody should strength train it. I am all for it. Women, especially, um, but also like men. Like, there's osteoporosis, right? There's all kinds of things that we can like bone density, but there are things that we can either not eliminate. Gosh, the word's gone out of my head right now, but like we can make things better by lifting. Like, if you have osteoporosis, you can still start lifting and it can slow it down and it can help make you stronger. It doesn't necess doesn't necessarily like make all the bones better. Here's me being Dr. Brittany, not really. Um, but the muscles around it, the ligaments around it, the fibers around it, all of those things are meant uh to help you. And that's what you can do with lifting, right? Lifting also does help make your bones stronger, but it depends also, of course, where where you're at in life, you know, and I'm not gonna like take away, I know there are people who do not have health who can like always like lift like that. I do know people cannot afford to go to a gym all the time. So, like, but where I'm going with this is we still need to do strength rates that supports our running, not wrecking it, and also supports our life without wrecking it. So, um walking away feeling like you could do more. I'm gonna say that again. Walking away feeling like you could do more. You do not need to leave the gym or end a workout if you're working out at home every time feeling like you need to go lay down and die. That means you're doing too much. Way too much. It's not gonna compliment your running. It's probably gonna make you feel stronger for a bit, but if you are constantly in that cycle, you're depleting yourself instead of adding that capacity. So walk away feeling like you could do more. Think about it, do that. It's the same with an easy run, right? You get done, you're like, I could run some more. I feel like I could run all day. And those are amazing feelings right there. So just keep it in mind. You're not always lifting as heavy as possible, you're not always maxing out your reps, you're not always constantly just like doing like circuit training where it's like lift this, lift this, and then you're just exhausted afterwards. You should feel like you could do more because progress comes from what you can repeat, and you can't repeat what destroys you. So, you can't repeat what destroys you. That goes for running, life, work, everything. All right, it will, it will destroy you. So, of course, like this how this this how hard we push, that thought, I mean, it goes into running, right? Like, it does show up there because I I've already had this talk with easy runs, uh, but easy runs matter so much, and most runs are easy. Um, that is how it is, guys. They are easy. So, not every run is there to prove something. In my mind, if you're struggling with easy runs, you can make it so it proves something. You can prove to yourself that you can run like you're supposed to run. If you need that kind of thing in your brain to tell you that. So if it's proving that you can run slower, like, but a lot of people when they think about proving themselves, it's more about proving like I can run this far, I can lift this heavy, I can do this in life, I can do this at work. But not everything you do needs to prove something. And not every day is a test. Some days you just gotta let it be. Um, and that's where this podcast came from. This this episode in particular, um, is not everything is a test. I can't always be on. I can't always be like doing these things because I will burn out. It will take away from my running, from my lifting. If I constantly am trying to, you know, write podcast episodes, write content, write all these things, um, because it doesn't work that way. There is too much we are human and our bodies and our minds don't work that way. So you don't need to earn the title of runner or strong person by suffering more than everyone else. You really don't. Um, just so you know, showing up is what counts. So, you know, be there, do the work, but you don't always have to do hard work in that same breath. And I know I'm not gonna get all into uh the privilege of running right now because that's really an episode I want to do too, but it's it's a deeper one. Um, there's a lot of privilege that comes to be able even being able to show up, showing up on a trail, showing up on the road, showing up at a group run, showing up at the gym, showing up at work, all of these things. Um, so much, so much privilege comes from that. And I'm super grateful that I get to do a lot of these things, but like even showing up, um, not everybody has that privilege. So it counts and you don't have to push hard. You can go easier. Um again, strength training. I'm just gonna repeat this like think about your strength training, it compliments some running, RPE six to seven, one to two heavier days. If you want to look up central nervous system training, look it up. CNS, uh, you can DM me about it too, by the way. I could talk about that all day. Um, and then also knowing that yes, there are times of when we run hard, but for the most part, we run easy. In life, there are times like at work where we have to push for that deadline, but there's also times where we need to take it easy because our brain only has so much capacity to. So remember, what we're doing is adding capacity to our life, to our running, to our strength training, all of this. Yes, are we ever gonna run out of injury? Are we ever gonna get tired? I mean, shoot, I got so many athletes running, like I had three athletes run this last week and they did amazing, by the way, but they pushed themselves and they did things, and it wasn't easy the entire time. But what they do is they do what they're supposed to do for them, like what they need to do, and they see those results and they show up and it counts. So, why am I rammering on like this? Because I it's really, really it's amazing how many people think the harder they push, and if they continue to push hard, the better they're gonna be, the stronger they're gonna be, the more impressive they're gonna be. And it's just not the case. All right, you gotta back off off of yourself. Um, if you have a coach, if you have a friend, if you have a family member who is telling you to always push harder or is never celebrating those victories with you and is thinking like always of the next step, always do this, always do that. I'm not saying you get that personnel of your life, but they're not the person you need to be listening to to tell you about things. You need that person who gets when you need to push and gets when you're laying, like, lit like not I don't want to say laying back because that's not right, but gets whenever you're doing those easy efforts and gets when you need to rest. Um, sometimes people will never say anything to you about what you're doing at all, and those are people are great too, unless you need somebody to step in. But surround yourself with people, make sure you're being coached by the person who's actually listening. Make sure you're surrounding yourself with friends who aren't constantly questioning what the hell you're doing. I mean, I have some people in my life and they're not questioning what I'm doing. They're just like, they think what I'm doing is always hard 100% of the time, and I'm just have to explain to them. They're like, it's so hard, I can never do it. By the way, those are the people I want in my ecosystem. So if you know somebody like that, point them to this podcast. But oh man, like you've got to be working so hard, you've got to be doing this. And it's not that I don't take my training seriously and I'm not working hard, but I have easy efforts. I have times when I hike where I'm not running all the time. I have dimes where I have missed a lifting session because I'm just tired. Like, there are those things. So if if somebody ever tells you I couldn't do that, it's too hard, like, first of all, tell them what you're doing. Point into this episode too. But talk to them about, man, every single day isn't harder, I would burn out. Like, I do this because I have joy for it, and here's how it looks. So you can always share what it looks like, how hard it really is, how hard you're pushing on some days, how easy you're pushing on other days. All of that is good. So, but now that I'm about done, you don't get stronger by grinding yourself into the ground. You get stronger by doing the work you can actually repeat, by listening when your body asks for support instead of punishment, that adding capacity, right? And by choosing consistency over constant struggle. Guys, constant struggle isn't sexy. You might think it's sexy, especially remember those moody teenage shows that we used to watch, right? Man, we thought that constant struggle, that moodiness, whew, sexy. Not sexy, guys, especially as adults, not sexy. So choose consistency over that constant struggle, that ex sexiness, as we'll call it. Heart has its place. Effort always matters, right? Why do you think I say good effort, positive attitude? Because effort does matter, and it's good to always have the good effort, but good effort doesn't mean hard effort. It means the right effort for you. Um, but suffering is not the price of entry. You're allowed to build strength, endurance, and a life that feels good without earning it through exhaustion. Alright, if this episode hit home, share it with a friend. Maybe somebody needs fired up about this. Uh share it with someone who could just use the reminder, you know. Maybe you would just want somebody to start trail running, give them an episode. Uh, but hope you're following. If you're not, go ahead and give me a follow, subscribe, whatever it does, and wherever you listen to it at. Um, and if you've got a minute, you know, a rating or review would be super, super helpful. Um, I would be ever so grateful for that. It helps this podcast reach more and more people. Uh, it gets closer to that, right? I'm gonna be number one. Okay, I'm not going for number one, but I would love more and more people to hear this. Um, so thanks for being here. As always, now go move your body, maybe stretch your calves, drink some water. Um, and if you're running while listening to this, loosen your shoulders. Good effort? Positive attitude.