Ryan

“What shoes do you recommend?”

Sorry but my shoes probably aren’t the best choice for you

It’s definitely a frequently asked question and one I’ve seen even more frequently over the past month or so for some reason. “What shoes do you recommend?” Alternatively, someone might ask “What is the best shoe?”

Either way, the correct answer is the same: I don’t know.

Don’t get lost in science

Some time ago, I was listening to a podcast interview of a high school coach with a PhD in exercise physiology. He pointed out that his athletes could be using watches that measure heart rate, oxygen saturation, cadence, ground contact time, and a crazy number of other values. However, while some had these watches, he didn’t have them paying attention to those values while running. His runners learned how to run by feel.

I wrote down a few notes from that interview and came across them last week, which prompted this post.

How much should you emulate the elites?

His marathon is a completely different race than yours

Last week, in discussing strength training, I pointed out why I think most runners should probably not do what the elites are doing. I wanted to expand on that thought some this week because, while it’s good to look at them to get an idea of what works, it can be risky for several reasons to simply replicate what they do.

Strength training for runners in 2021

I’m going to tag the date on this because our knowledge changes and I’ll probably post an update every once in a while. Hopefully, more than once every 20 years.

I’ve been having discussions with a few runners on strength training recently and I’ve realized that my very old post about strength training, while not entirely invalid, is outdated. Of course, I wrote that somewhere around 20 years ago so what should we expect?

So it’s time for an update. Is strength training good for our running and, if so, what should we do?

The answers are yes and it depends.

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