Common Running Injuries, Shin Splints & Staying Injury-Free with Physical Therapist RT Hill

What causes most running injuries—and how do you know when it's okay to keep running versus when you need to stop?

In this episode of Fuel Your Finish, Registered Dietitian and 4x Boston Marathoner Lisa Nelson sits down with physical therapist, running coach, and co-owner of The Stride Shop, RT Hill, to discuss the most common injuries runners face, why some injuries become chronic, and how to stay healthy for the long haul.

RT shares what he's seeing most often in runners right now, including shin splints, knee pain, and stress-related injuries. He explains how runners can better distinguish between normal discomfort and pain that shouldn't be ignored, when it's safe to continue running, and when it's time to seek help.

We also discuss injury prevention, strength training, recovery, training flexibility, and the mindset shifts that help runners continue doing what they love for decades.

Whether you're currently injured, training for a race, or simply want to stay healthy and running strong for years to come, this episode is packed with practical advice you can use immediately.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

✔ The most common running injuries

✔ Why shin splints seem to be increasing

✔ The difference between soft tissue injuries and bone stress injuries

✔ Warning signs that pain may be more serious than you think

✔ How to know when it's okay to keep running

✔ RT's "stoplight system" for managing pain during runs

✔ Why strength training helps prevent injuries

✔ How recovery impacts performance and long-term health

✔ Practical habits that help runners stay healthy for life

Key Moments

00:00 – Introduction

01:25 – RT's background in physical therapy and coaching runners

06:00 – How The Stride Shop got started

08:00 – The most common injuries runners experience

09:30 – Shin splints, shoes, and training load mistakes

10:00 – Soft tissue injuries vs. bone stress injuries

12:00 – Why stress fractures require a different approach

13:00 – Helping runners stay active while recovering

15:00 – The long-term goal: running for life

19:45 – Injury prevention strategies every runner should follow

21:30 – Strength training and injury resilience

22:00 – When pain becomes a red flag

23:00 – Return-to-running guidelines

24:00 – The stoplight system for running through pain

27:00 – RT's non-negotiable habits for performance

29:00 – Why recovery is where progress actually happens

32:00 – Where to find RT and The Stride Shop

Resources & Links

🌐 Transform Nutrition: https://transformnutrition.fit/

📅 Book a FREE Strategy Session: https://l.bttr.to/f57AT

📖 Free Runner Fueling Guide

📧 Questions? Reach out at lisa@transformnutrition.live

Episode Summary (Short Version)

Physical therapist and running coach RT Hill joins Lisa Nelson, Running Nutritionist and Dietitian to discuss the most common running injuries, including shin splints, knee pain, and stress fractures. Learn how to know when it's safe to keep running, when it's time to stop, and practical strategies to stay healthy, recover faster, and keep running for years to come.

Tags / Keywords

running injuries

shin splints

runner rehab

physical therapy for runners

stress fractures

running pain

injury prevention

strength training for runners

marathon training

running coach

runner recovery

running longevity

endurance athletes

half marathon training

marathon runner

running performance

Fuel Your Finish

Lisa Nelson

RT Hill

Stride Shop

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There's so many different things that are happening with shoes these days. I think people are quick to try different shoes and it all of a sudden affects a strike pattern or or a mechanical type thing that with running it's so repetitive that that uh that buildup and load just tends to irritate the uh irritate the shin. So I I think I see a lot of um you know shin type issues at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Hello, hello, this is Lisa Nelson, host of Feel Your Finish podcast. I am a registered dietitian, four-time Boston marathoner, and I help runners feel, perform, and show up as their best. And today I have a really great guest. I have RT from the Stride Shop. He's a physical therapist and run coach, and he specializes in working with runners. And so we're diving into the things that runners are constantly dealing with injuries and what's actually causing them and what you can start doing right now to fix and present and prevent them. Honestly, what most runners are getting wrong. So this is going to be super practical and a really great conversation. So let's get into it. All right, RT, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Absolutely. What's been going on in your life lately with training, racing, life in general, all the things?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

I would say I'll I'll kick it off with more so life in general. I my baby girl turned one this past week. So more than anything, I am I am wrangling a four-year-old and a now one-year-old and uh just treading water.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Absolutely. Oh, that is so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Training wise, uh running wise, we actually just finished mountain relay uh out in North Carolina, which was an absolutely amazing experience. Um similar to like a Hood to Coast kind of thing where it's a 12-person relay team, pass the baton, and you know, spend spend 30 hours in a in a van with you know five people that haven't showered, that kind of fun. Um my gosh, so much fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Oh, I love it. Tell me um more about the race. How did it go?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Uh it it went well. Um, you know, it's it's one of those things where you're you're always kind of adjusting on the fly. It was really remote, so all of that relying that we do on GPS and technology was out of the window. So considering uh we didn't get lost too many times. You know, the van took about a half-hour detour at one point, and which was all along like the Blue Ridge uh parkway is beautiful. I and so you know, pleasant mistake there. And then we had one runner that he uh he was going at night, and one of the blinking lights that tells you, hey, make a turn here, had run out of a battery life, we suppose. And he just blew fat past it and didn't hit it. And so he was on a six-mile leg, cruising, I mean absolutely moving, and went past it by about two and a half miles before he was licking his watch. He's like, I'm supposed to be in close to done.

unknown 3:16

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

And managed to pull up an offline map and realized he'd run, he'd run about two and a half miles downhill, and so he had to turn around two and a half miles uphill and then meet up. So we we we lost about I don't know, half an hour, 45 minutes there. But it was one of those things where he was running so so quick that we were just like, man, he seems kind of behind, but then when he showed up, we were like, no, you just you know, what happened? He's like, my six and a half mile run turned into eleven and a half or twelve, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

But past that, oh my god, everything was great.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Uh you know, everyone got along just despite the the mental and uh physical fatigue that was happening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Oh, that's awesome. I love those. Those are the best memories. And um the getting lost or whatever mishaps make the best stories.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Alexander, I commend it. It was great.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Love that. Cool. Okay. So let's get into a little bit of your story. So um give us the quick version. Like, how did you get into running um and then into PT and coaching? What made you want to spur uh work specifically with runners? Just tell us kind of a little bit about all that.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Yeah, sure. Uh so I got into PT because my high school baseball coach was a physical therapist, and I was one of those kids that I hit a quick gross bird, bones grew really well, the muscles didn't keep up, so I started pulling hamstrings and having injuries. That I would go to see my baseball coach slash PT. And uh it'd be, you know, in the afternoon, he'd have me doing drills in this clinic while he's drinking a cup of coffee, and I was like, Well, this job seems easy, I'll just go and do that. And so I went to LSU for undergrad, did I graduated PC school in New Orleans in 2012, and then did at that point you can kind of specialize you want to be a neuro PT or an ortho PT or sports, that kind of thing. And I went on an ortho route and did a residency in Dallas. I moved back to New Orleans. My wife is from here, we kind of set up camp here at this point, and so I worked in your traditional outpatient PT clinic for a couple of years, did some travel PT, similar to like a travel nursing that was really popular during COVID and is really still popular now. And when we finally moved back, I tag on with a baseball pitching academy on the North Shore called Tabalasi, where we were working with athletes from high school up to professional level uh to try and improve pitching mechanics and power and those kind of things. And I was there for for two and a half years, but was doing some contract work with uh Oshner's Sports Medicine Clinic, which is where I met Niraj, who is my my partner in the stride shop. And in 2019, he was looking to get into something. I kind of have this personality of let's try something new. Yeah, you can talk me into it pretty easily. And uh he had a history of coaching and running long marathons and running long races and things like that. I grew up playing soccer and baseball, that was not my realm. It was uh, you know, baseball was kind of my thing. And uh and so I was just like, you know what, man, yeah, I'll get into it. I love the mechanics part of it, I understood the philosophy and the and the know-how of it. And so we started the stride shop in 2019. And at that point, I was like, well, if if our niche is runners, that's what I'm gonna get into. Mirage already had a little bit. That's when I kind of dove dove off the cliff and went headfirst into it. And it was more so uh a matter of I didn't want to be a hypocrite for it, you know, treating these people and training these people. And so I just dove into it and and developed kind of a passion for it and a and a love for it. And when that's you know, 90% of your patient population for six years at this point, it's you know, that's the world that I that I live in, and I've kind of entrenched myself in that that community, which is wonderful because New Orleans is rich with people who gather together and support one another when it comes to to running and doing things like that. So I signed up for long races and and got into the game. That's kind of the quick person.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. I love it so much, and I will agree with you that New Orleans has so much great culture, and I love the running community and just how much fun that is. So that's great. Thanks for sharing. Um cool. So what and so kind of to get into the whole, you know, um nitty-gritty of it, um, what are the most common injuries that you see in runners right now?

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Um, I mean, it very it varies, right? I think because there's so many things that you can say involves the knee, right? So if someone will come in the most frequently says, Hey, started running, maybe it's a change in volume or a change in intensity or a change in hills, and my knee started acting up on me, right? That could be an IT band thing, it could be a patellar tending kind of things. There's just so many things that that are happening around the knee that that's probably the most frequent one that I hear.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Uh currently I'm in a a string of people coming in with shin splints, right? Is is that, hey, I think I have shin splints going on, in which case, again, training load is a big thing there. There's so many different things that are happening with shoes these days. I think people are quick to try different shoes and it all of a sudden affects a strike pattern or or a mechanical type thing that with running, it's so repetitive that that uh that buildup in load just tends to irritate the uh irritate the shin. So I I think I see a lot of um you know shin type issues at the moment. The way that I um look at it when someone comes in is the first thing I'm differentiating is do I think I'm dealing with soft tissue or do I think I'm dealing with bone? Uh because the way that you rehab them, the way you train someone with that is two entirely different types of things. And so that's that's the main thing that I look for when someone comes in is do I think you have a soft tissue injury, or do I need to make sure that you're not having a bone uh bone stress injury? Because I would say that's probably the most frequently missed and overlooked thing from the physical therapy side of things. I can't tell you how many uh bone stress reactions, uh possible stress fractures that I've missed before I started really focusing in on runners and the types of injuries that they have.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Hmm. Interesting, yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of um bone stuff is gonna sideline you for a lot longer than a soft tissue shoe injury. Am I right?

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah, it is. And it and especially depending on the location, right? Um there's some spots that aren't as as as much of a red flag, but if someone comes into me and it says, hey, I've recently gotten into running, I've been trying to run every day for the past couple months, but it's started to get to where my hips bother me. Just walking now wakes me up at night going up and downstairs. I may I may give you a set of crutches right there and say, I'm gonna call a doc. I want you to go get an MRI, because if you have a ephemeral neck stress fracture or something like that that doesn't have a good blood supply, you know, you run the risk of having to have a hip replacement in your, you know, at a your twenties or your thirties because that bone just it it doesn't get the blood supply at knees, and you have this necrosis type of thing. So it's it's just become very, very, very apparent in my eyes how serious we need to take bone stress injuries and not just be like, ah, take a take a little bit off and see how it feels. Like you have to give it the respect, you have to respect the biology and the healing time frames of the body for uh for those types of things. And with bone, sometimes, depending on the location, yeah, you just have to offload it. Whereas soft tissue, right on the other hand of it, that tissue, it's finding the balancing act of okay, how do we stress this enough to keep it within its capacity and its resiliency to not get overloaded, but to send a signal to the body of, hey, I need this zone of tissue to heal and to get more resilient, to get more robust, and that's how you build that up, that's how it gets healthy, yeah, and then sets you up for success moving down the road so that it doesn't happen again, right? And so two separate mindsets and approaches to those things.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah, yeah. Well, and it sounds like from um, you know, the since we, you know, work with a lot of the same clients, you know, I with nutrition and you with the physical therapy. It sounds like from what I've heard both from runners that I've worked with and just runners that I've ran with, that you don't make people commit to more than they need to do, but you don't miss things. Like you are very um, you help people run as much as they possibly can, but you're also very careful in making sure that they're not overdoing it to like um make sure that you protect against any injury. So it sounds like that's something that you do really amazingly well. So I know that you're very trusted in that.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

I appreciate you saying that. Um Yeah, I appreciate that. I try to, right? I I try to not take people off the run, because it's the number one thing with first question you're gonna get from a runner that comes into a a doctor's office or a DT clinic is can I keep running? Can I still run? When can I run again? Those kind of things. And uh and a lot of times the answer is not just stop, you know, it's how do we change either training load or or intensity, things like that. There's there's variability and flexibility with that, but I am trying to get the reputation of if RT Hill at the stride shop tells you to to stop running, you probably need to to not be running in this in this moment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Unfortunately that, because it is I'm the main goal of what I'm trying to to do with the PT practice, and we're geared at runners, absolutely. That's where the you know the marketing and stuff goes to. But if someone says, hey, what do you do? Like I try to tell you, I I want to help people make stories. I want Lisa Nelson to, in her 70s and 80s, still be running, you know, marathons and going on long and exciting hikes and spending time with your kids doing the things that you want to do. And I think that starts at a at a much younger age. And so my job is to help set up one, protect you from making a poor decision when there's there's so much more opportunity later down the line, but sometimes we get tunnel vision of, hey, I need to I need to get back on the road right now. Um and so that's probably what I combat a lot, people a lot with runners with, because we do tend to have that mindset of I'm just gonna go test it. Let me get out there and and test it. And I think there's probably just a better protocol that you need to be able to accomplish some things before just going and and running. So that you can be that 80-year-old Lisa that's still knocking out Boston marathons.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Right. Isn't that what we all want? Is to be able to run as long as possible.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yeah. And that's what you want to do. And and I treat runners and it's other it's other things, right? It's people who want to be able to, I'd like to be able to pick up my grandkids when I'm younger. I want to be able to to go on long hikes and things like that. And so I try to meet people where they're at on that and and go into it with the mindset of, hey, this is our goal of where you want to be. And I I think I think that just helps get buy-in from that person when they realize, hey, I have their best interest in heart for the for the long-term plan. Yeah, so the goal, it's different for different people, right? Maybe it's maybe it's picking up a kid, maybe it's I want to be able to I'll continue to be able to walk five blocks to get my groceries, I want to be able to ride a bike later in life. I want to be able to continue to go on hikes. I have uh a patient right now in his 70s, is about to go and hike the Grand Canyon, right? Like, I want to help people create stories. Like that's the kind of thing that he's going to do this thing with his son. Um, first time his son's going out there and they're kind of going and do it together, right? It's just cool things like that uh that I that I want people to be able to continue to do and tell.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Absolutely. I love that so much. Is there anything better than helping people be stronger and more able to accomplish their goals? Right?

SPEAKER_01 15:55

No, it's it's so it's so fantastic and it's so rewarding, and I would say it's honestly what probably kept me in the physical therapy profession was starting the stride shop because once we set it up in this manner where I'm able to see people one-on-one and I have time to to listen to them and talk to them and hear what their real goals are and what their lives are about, um, it started creating more of a a why and a purpose for the work that I was doing. Versus in in certain situations you can get in with the the profession. It's I've got to see 17, 20 people today, I've got to write notes on all of them, I'm gonna see them for 10, maybe 15 minutes, and I'm gonna pass them off to a tech. And it's just tough to it's tough to one develop a really close relationship with people at that point. And it's also very difficult to be kind of the best version of yourself in terms of giving quality care just because you don't get to see like what you don't get to make sure all of the reps are right or or give the time to talk about the education and the the natural progression that needs to happen. And so uh once we switched, once Niraj and I started this the stride shop, and I was finally able to sit down and and have these long drawn-out conversations with with patients and clients that were coming in. I was just like, man, I was I was missing a huge part of the picture, and it's it's like you said, very motivational now to develop these relationships and say, okay, here's your goal for sure, but this is our goal together in the whole thing. So absolutely, it's it is uh it has kept me in the profession being able to do that now.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Cool, that's awesome. I love it. Uh, currently RT and I were work are working with the same client, I with nutrition and RT with her training, and she did have an injury, and it was very interesting to kind of like hear back and forth like what she was having, what RT was having her do, and um just how she was responding. And I just loved hearing like his whole process of like how he was testing out when she was ready to run, and um RT like it just like she was just so happy with the whole process, even though it was really stressful for her to have an injury, but um yeah, it was really it was neat how we were able to collaborate too on the nutrition and the training side. Just loved seeing that, you know, secondhand how you handled that whole situation and she's you know gotten healthier and kind of still working towards her goals, so love that so much.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

She finished London yesterday.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Yay!

SPEAKER_01 18:38

She got through it.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

I know. I heard she had a great time. She got through it.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah, she uh, you know, it was it it was uh it was one of those things where she out of the clients that I work with, I feel like if anyone could pull off, you know, what she was able to there given her injury, um she was the one that I th I thought it could probably do it. Um but her and I had a just a really honest conversation about hey again you need to look at long-term goal here. And so you know your body and you know what's right and what's what's wrong out there, and if you have if you get in that situation where she needed to make a tough decision and pull out of that race, I was like, make that decision. Like, don't second guess it, don't think twice about it. Get out of there because she has too much potential to do things for a really long time. And um she said just emotionally afterwards, she was in such a good place, you know, legs were tired, legs were destroyed and the whole deal, but she wasn't worried about what you and I were were kind of treating her for. And um just making me really happy that she was able to pull that off. That was great.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Yeah, that's awesome. Awesome. Love it. Yeah, good job to her, good job to you. I love it so much. If someone wants to stay injury free and actually keep progressing, what should they be doing consistently?

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Um, I I mean, I think there are a couple easy uh kind of low-pieces of hanging fruit there. Um warm up before you're runs. Incorporate some form of strength training into your program. Right? And it's one of those deals where a lot of people come in and there's like, yeah, I would like to do some strength training stuff, but I don't want to bulk up and things like that. And that's just that's just not how that works. Like you can go and lift weights and you're not automatically gonna bulk up and lose time or anything like that. You know, it it helped make you it helps to make you more resilient for uh for run putting on more knowledge and running in caster fees and things like that. Um I would also say people need to be flexible with their schedules and with this kind of stuff, um, for the most part, right? Like I'm not working with a lot of role athletes where you know you need to hit this time and this time every single time. Um we live life, right? We have kids, we have jobs, we have schedules that fluctuate on and off, and and we get so caught up, I think, with um, you know, I I have to hit this run or I have to hit this mileage, that maybe we we do that on a day where our body needs to break and it needs a recovery and stuff like that. So I would say being willing to shift your schedule just a little bit uh to be able to fit in these things and and not feel like you're really missing out if you for whatever reason don't hit every single run that you're going for.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Cool. I love that. Um and I did, I forgot, I did have one more question about the injury stuff. Um so if someone is dealing with one of those common issues that we were talking about, like let's say fan pain, um what are like one to two things they could start doing right away, or vice versa that they should stop doing?

SPEAKER_01 21:54

So the big thing, the big thing for me with with any of that kind of stuff is like when these injury Start creeping your their way into your day-to-day life and activity, that's where it becomes more of a problem. And I think you should seek somebody out to at least take a look at it. So, you know, if it's pain that's waking you up at night, kind of thing, if it's I have trouble getting in and out of my car, stepping out of my tub, kind of a thing, or just walking, right? These are signs that okay, there may be something else that needs that's going on that needs to be addressed. And I I uh I have a more of a protocol that I have for people who come in and say, hey, when can I start running? And it's it's always like, how long till I start running? And for me, the answer to that isn't, well, how long till you get to start running? It's can you pass these certain criteria, right? Can you walk for 45 minutes without having increased pain? If you can't, then doing a bunch of single-leg hops from one leg to the other, you don't have the tolerance to do that at the moment, right? Can you hop on one leg repeatedly in multiple directions without an increased pain? Again, if you're not able to do those things, then running at that point in time is probably not the right thing for you to be doing. Right. And so that's where I say, you know, the listening to your body and kind of using that straightforward, you need to be able to accomplish these things instead of just going pushing through it, saying, Oh, it's probably gonna be okay, and then potentially um turning something that could be a week off of running or a week off a week of modified running and some exercises into I'm gonna push through this and now I'm dealing with a lingering issue for three months. Right. So I think those are the kind of things that can keep that that missed training time or missed run time down to a minimum. Yeah, totally. Hold on to those really hard principles.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Yeah, and it sounds like you're kind of saying when it starts getting in the way of something other than running, then the you know, activities of daily living, that's when you really need to kind of pay attention.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Yeah, absolutely. And and so during a run, right, is this an appropriate run that I should continue through, or do I need to to stop at this point? I we use what's called a we call it a stoplight system. Um I don't know exactly where I got the stoplight system phrase from. Uh, I'd like to give that credit to somebody at this point, but maybe Chris Johnson or something like that. Uh but it was uh it basically on that zero to ten scale that you get asked anytime you go into a doctor's office, right? What's your pain? Zero to zero to ten. Uh it's very subjective, it's different for different people. But I would say if you're in that zero to three range and you're pretty sure that what you're dealing with is a soft tissue, right? Muscle, tendon, those kind of things, zero to three is a green light. You're okay. You're not gonna do any more damage to that tissue than that right there, especially if you stop and that pain goes away immediately, right? Or that discomfort goes away immediately, right? You're within a green zone there. If you're in that, eh, this is a four or five out of ten pain, we call that a yellow light. And you need to ask yourself, okay, are my mechanics changing? Right? Am I trying to avoid putting more pressure on that right knee right now because it's getting irritated every time I put put weight on it? And so the left's having to take on more of that brunt. And then when you stop, it's lingering, and especially if it lingers into the next day. If it's still giving you trouble that next day after a run, then you probably overdid either the duration or the intensity of that run the day before. Six and above is a is a hard stop. That tissue does not have the capacity to handle that workout on that day, and that doesn't mean that tomorrow it wouldn't have that capacity. Just that that day, at that time, it doesn't have it. And there's a lot of things that fluctuate where one's pain tolerance is, right? It's you know, time of day, what's the key like outside? Um, are you stressed at work? Are you stressed at home? Are you fueled, right? Are you hydrated? All of these things, if you've not hit the mark, have you had poor sleep the past couple nights? If you've not hit the mark on those things, that pain tolerance or threshold before you start to feel something goes down and down. And so one day I may able be able to hit a certain pace for a certain distance, but I might go out two days later and just like, duh, no, I I'm nowhere close. Um, so that's where I'd say that think about those things when you're deciding, okay, should I push through this or should I go and see someone about an issue?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, that's super helpful. Thank you. Um, so we covered a ton of awesome information, and I feel like we could keep going. I could just pepper you with questions um all day that I'm sure um our listeners would love the answers to. But um, let's transition. Let's do a couple just fun questions about you. Um, talk to me a little bit about your own um kind of high performance habits. Um, I think of you as somebody, you know, you're running a business, you've got life, you've got kids, you're also training. Um, what are a few non-negotiables that keep you performing at a high level just in life in general?

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Uh in life in general, uh sleep is number one for me. And one, because it is so impacted right now with a with a young child, that uh I I the days of you know staying up late and you know watching TV shows or I love to read, and so I just don't get to do quite as much of that anymore because I know that if I'm gonna get out and consistently try and stay healthy and feel refreshed enough to get uh a workout in or a run in, like I need to I need to have the sleep. So that is a um that's a non-negotiable for me. I also to kind of what we were just talking about, I've I've been injured enough over over my life that I have a pretty good idea of uh, okay, what it what's hurting, like what's discomfort versus what does an injury feel like? And if I if I start to feel like I'm I'm approaching that injury zone at all, I'm quick to say, hey, we're gonna train, I'm gonna transition to some other form of cross-training and give some dedicated time to that to that issue, as opposed to, eh, I'm all right, we'll just we'll just go out and kind of do it. So yeah, uh, you know, past that, I'm very fortunate that I I work in right this this place here. I have a little bit of time, a break in between patients. I can get in, you know, a a workout or a or a run or do some mobility type stuff. And it's just kind of built into my day. And I'm very aware that I have the the fortune of you know circumstance to be able to do that. It's just not that way for everybody. Um I also I I try not to take this like for me, the the running and the endurance type events that I do, uh, it is fun. And I try and keep it fun. And the second that it starts to feel like another job or work for me, I I I lose interest pretty quickly. Um so for me, it's you know, I I'm you know, spending the time with my my kids is is number one. And then this shouldn't feel like, oh, this is really eating into my time with with family and stuff like that. Because it is a second thing for me.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Yeah, I love that. That's so helpful. It sounds like rest is a big theme for you, both physically and mentally, just like making sure you have that recovery you need in all aspects. So and that's so important.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

It is, and and the right, the the rest and the recovery is where you make the gains, right? I it's it's a thing that I I think about, and probably it took me a little while to make the realization, and it's like, yeah, I feel like, well, I want to be, I'd love to be training five, six, seven days a week, right? I need to feel like okay, I'm I'm working the muscle, I'm working the muscle, I'm working the muscle. But if you keep stacking on that and you don't give it the time to recover and to actually build back stronger, then you just you have this diminishing return. And so you'll see an uptick for a little while, but then you'll start to plateau, and then you start to flirt with over-training syndrome and and stuff like that. And uh you need the recovery. You should welcome that time of I need to get a good eight hours of sleep tonight, and I'm gonna give my body a chance to just chill out for a day or two. Um that's when you're gonna have the biggest return on your on the work that you put in. The entire concept of a taper that everybody does. Like, that's why you're doing it. You're delighted so that your body can make the building blocks uh that it needs to perform at a high level.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

So yeah, that's so good. And I think the th the same theme, you know, with nutrition is and it and with nutrition and exercise, people want it to be really, really hard in order to feel like we're getting a result. And in some ways it is. You know, of course you're training hard, you're putting in the work, but it's the same thing with nutrition. If you try too hard, meaning like usually what that means for people is cutting everything out or going to like a really big extreme, that's not gonna work either because our bodies don't respond well to that, and then you know, the stress response, the cortisol, you know, comes up, and you know, the weight loss stalls, and it's the same thing with you know, trying to build muscle, trying to build endurance and strength. The more we like overstress our bodies, the more we plateau. So um yeah, I love that. That's so helpful. So it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

And cool. And again, here's where you and I overlap a lot in that is like underfuel yourself, increase your cortisol level, and your pain threshold just goes from here to here really quickly. Um, yeah, absolutely. It's such an important part of it.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Injuries and all the other things, so um, well, yeah, that's injuries happen and and yeah. Cool. Well, Artie, where can people find you if they want to work with you? Or is there any and also is there anything um in particular that you want to tell listeners about?

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Oh, yeah. Uh absolutely. So the stride shop, we have a we have a clinic here in New Orleans on Calhoun Street. Um I'll specifically I'll say if you do try and get to us, put it in, put it in Google Maps. For some reason, Apple keeps sending people over to uh over to St. Claude. Um this is an issue that I keep having. But we're in New Orleans next to Ted's Frost Top. And then we have a we have a location in Baton Rouge as well. That's where Neuralize works out of. And we do rehab, we do some some run coaching, some gate analysis. So you've ever been in that situation where like I've never had anyone look at my running form, uh I do a lot of it and I really enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, and looking forward to future interviews, and as always, keep up the amazing work. Thanks so much for taking the time.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

All right, absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Lisa.