Why are you up at 11:11 pm?

So the entire purpose of doing those lunges is to tell how fatigued someone is?

So here's my question Coach Jay - how do you fit all of these elements into a "real world" schedule? And by "real world" I mean the non-professional 40-hours-a-week working man/woman marathoner with a spouse and a kid at home and barely enough hours in the day to fit in the miles? The guy/gal who, despite the outside stressors of life (as much as he/she may love them) still has goals of running sub 2:20?

I'd love to see you put together a bare bones approach for these types of runners who find it hard to fit in the additional puzzle pieces: strength work, drills, CNS/PNS work, flexibility, MB exercises, core work, etc. I love your site and I love the amount of information here, but it can all be a bit overwhelming at times.

I posted the following on LetsRun in hopes of getting some other perspectives and so far we only have 3 comments,, but I thought I should share the text below. It's LONG...

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If you've read Wejo and Rojo thoughts and comments throughout the years then you are well aware of the fact that they think Dan Pfaff is a genius. I concur.

A video of Pfaff speaking at a clinic was shared via @ARTSportsChiro's twitter and when I couldn't sleep the other night I watched it. It's awesome and if you have 10 minutes you can watch the video here (i.e. the video above).

The one thing he talks about in there that I'm hoping to use this board for is this. If you think fascia has an important role in distance running and distance training then the question in my mind is simply, "What works?" and "Why does it work?" There are no doubt physios on this board who have insights and I'm hoping they'll share their thoughts. There are no doubt runners on this board who've run a ton and many whom, in the words of Wetmore, "have seen the white elephant." What has worked for you (i.e. what does your physio do that works)? And if the person who worked on you isn't on this board then will you forward them this link and see if they'll comment?

In that spirit, here is what I know...and it's not much, so this will be short.

I can't touch my toes standing. But if I try to touch my toes, noting the depth that I went (ie how far down my index fingers are on my shine) and then gently roll the bottom of each foot and arch on a golf ball (30-60 seconds each foot) and then try to touch my toes again I still can't do it, but I can go an inch or two lower. I learned this from a fantastic massage therapist in Boulder and it works and I assume the reason it works has to do with "long fasical lines" or "long fascial trains" or "fascial meridians" but I don't know. Maybe it's magic? Or maybe used NLP to convince me I would go deeper after using the ball and the vestiges of that one experience are still with me. I dunno know, but I'll go with something involving fascia.

Here's what else I know. I had the pleasure of hearing Phil Wharton speak at a clinic a couple of years ago. He needed a person to help him with his talk and because no one volunteered* I raised my hand, hoping he'd work on me and tell me what was wrong with me. At the time I was barley running and when I did run it was through gritted teeth; my left foot hurt all time.

He first had me walk back and forth and after some Q&A with the audience he couldn't help himself and said, "You're a flexion animal!" What's a flexion animal? Well, it means that from the side I look like the letter C from my hips to my head; I'm curved over from too many hours typing pointless drivel on message boards and that, coupled with sitting and driving, cause that C. Plus, what Phil and many of you could also guess is that if you're not that fit and you run Magnolia road for 17 miles one of the ways to try to keep going is to lean forward, even though it's dumb/bad biomechanically because you're breaking with each contact. Running with erect posture would be a better way to run, even when you're dying, but hey, that's not the reality for most people when they're dying on their long run, or at least it never dawned on me to try to run "up tall" when I was dying on Sunday or Wednesday.**

And that leads me to my current obsession with this idea. Brent was JACKED after Houston. He looked like he was 80 years old and while he did have a decent blister on one foot, that only explained part of his limp. He looked bad walking around, simple as that. Renee was beat up and fatigued, but moved decent, more annoyed with the race than jacked from it...

and Mark Stenbeck looked like a million bucks. He looked awesome 2 hours after the race; he looked awesome getting on and off the Frontier flight we all on and he ran the damn marathon (he finished 15th in 2:25 high). Why?

My best guess is, in terms of long races, as follows.

Longest race of Brent's life; first road race; longest previous races were 10k over grass.***

Renee had run the 10 mile champs this fall and ran 5:30 pace; she's run lots of shorter road races.

Stenbeck has run several marathons (2:27 in Boston?) and likely a dozen half marathons.

Getting off a Frontier flight from Houston Brent hobbled off the plane and Stenbeck looked like a million bucks. My question to you, is fascia part of the reason? Or is it microtears in skeletal muscles? Is it both? Is it neither. And if you're run a ton of marathons and don't know how collagen fibers and elastin work, I wouldn't keep that from keeping your from commenting. You share what you know and hopefully someone else will share what they know.

Okay, that's enough to get some sort of feedback. If you don't want to post but have an idea please email me, though if you post then everyone gets to read it and it makes us all better, right.


*My best guess as to why no one was willing to volunteer (a room with primary HS coaches, many of them fit and looking like runners) is that people are scared and don't do anything. But then they might be jealous an hour later when the realize if they had volunteered they'd not only have received some great information specific to their body (i.e. their a-symmetries and imbalances) but also get worked on during the rest of the talk by a great therapist (lucky me). That's my best guess, but who knows. What I do know is that if you write post saying "This board sucks" and "I'm not coming here anymore because there aren't any more good threads" then you're a lot like that person in the audience. People will probably respond to this post and I'll probably become a better coach and to me, it's the same type of fear underlying both the situations. But who knows, maybe there's no connection.

**If you want to turn this statement into, "Jay thinks Wetmore ran the crap out of him" you can obviously do that (and I can't think of a better place, can you?) I ran decent in college because that guy created a culture that was simple. Show up, be serious and run hard and try to have fun while you're seriously running hard. It was gift. Did I have better mechanics at 18 than 23? Probably? Is it his fault? No more than Sev's since I started to run like crap in college when I ran 5-7 mile morning runs with Chris, who's engine was big and I was like a 4 year old leaned over a soccer ball trying to keep up on these runs that I did unbenonced to my college coach. Had I faked it on Sunday and Wednesday like Tommy then yes, I probably would have run faster, but that's not the point. The point is being lucky enough to be a culture where someone cares enough to show up every Sunday morning and wait for the last guy to finish. I was the last guy more than once (2:15 or 2:17 being the crappiest finish time for 20, in case you're curious...and not on Mags - out on the aqueduct, where it's flat as Kansas****) and my college track coach waited, likely said, "Tough day. Maybe back off a bit tomorrow" and then left. That's a gift that's much more important than teaching an athlete about the perils of an running with hips anteriorly tilted.

***Did Brent's coach do a shitty job of preparing his legs? Yes. If Gotcher was doing 200's in 28 to get ready for just under 5:00 then why the hell didn't we do that to get ready for 4:40ish? Because I was hesitant. Consistency was the goal and we got 16 weeks of mostly uninterrupted training (couple of colds; knock on wood, not structural problems) yet we could have pushed the track spec. a bit (and since we both grew up with 300's in September and 3,2,1 in the Winter it's not like i should have been scarred of it). And the thing that still pisses me off is that I knew 4 weeks out his "engine" would likely not be the limiting factor, yet I didn't have the courage to a) beat him up a bit with longer, harder runs (12k-15k hard) or b) simply bump of the volume of track specificity just like Greg and Gotcher. That said, would it have mattered? Maybe, but probably not. Vega ran great from the gun; Smyth is GOOD and Smyth was the protagonist for half that race; Smyth should be a board favorite for being 23 and running 62 and looking ever bit a smooth as an Ethiopian, but for some reason he's not. The guys who knocked out 120 miles a week on treadmills had a palpable energy, a mentality in that race that you could see from the truck. They were ready, they knew it and they rocked. They're tough and on that day they simply kicked everyone else's ass. I still like where Brent's engine is and the rookie mistakes I made a coach of a road runner won't be replicated (though I'll not doubt replace them with some other dumb mistakes). We didn't use the term "surge" before Houston; guess we should have thought about those, huh? :-) Final thought: if you're a woman reading this my guess is you can grab cash on the roads at the US only champs for another couple of years and go there with less than your best. If you're fit and have the mentality that Vega, Moen, Gabrielson, Smyth brought to Houston you can place well with a conservative race plan. But for men it's going to be hard to do that; good depth and guys taking the approach of "I'm going for it" (see Moen interview on Flotrack) and maybe I'm wrong and by the time the 15k is over in a few weeks we'll all say, "Look - the women's race was just as deep and difficult as the men's." Also, why doesn't any make a bigger deal that many good US Women have run Houston and Burla ran 50 seconds under the record? Again, you know better than I, but that seemed to get lost.

****Many of you know this, but if not, "Flat as a pancake" is not as scientifically accurate as "Flat as Kansas." Some scientists took the topography of a pancake and asked, "If we could stretched it out to the size of Kansas, which if flatter?" Turns out it's Kansas. Gotta love government research grants ;-)

Hi Jay,
Can you explain to me with which excercises you test the PNS or is it the lunge matrix you do?Riachard Hansen takes the PNS the automatic system etc.. together if i'm reading it well. Is it right to put these together. I know these systems work all together but can you specify between the PNS and a sympathic reaction, simply by an excercises??

So how will we use PNS?

My guess was that we'd use it to see how tired the athlete is following a hard day/session. Ideally I'd be there for all 11-14 sessions per week and I'll try to set up life so that I can be with the athletes at the start of their second session - i.e second run - so that we can see how fatigued they are. And we probably wouldn't change that session, but we might change the next day. For instance, if we go hard Tuesday morning then I'm saying that for the second run Tuesday we'd do a "screen" to see how fatigued. Ideally I'm there for that and depending on how they sleep we may or may not go hard-ish again Wednesday.

But back to PNS, Richey basically confirmed my best guess, yet I want to point out something before I share with you what he emailed me.

I didn't think we'd want to fatigue PNS prior to a hard day, but I do think the question is valid and remember, "the latest scientific research" changes every decade. When I was in grad school the Brooks text on Exercise Physiology said the aerobic contribution to 1,500m was roughly 50%, with the other 50% being the anaerobic system; the current view is that it's roughly 75% aerobic and 25% anaerobic. What's my point? The coaching that helped men run low 3:30's and women run under 4:00 for the 1,500m probably hasn't change as dramatically as the science explaining it. And that's why I threw that out to Richey. Even though I would have been shocked to find that fatiguing the PNS would, for instance, force the athlete to recruit more intermediate fibers (something I'm always trying to do, especially on high level aerobic work since I read a Peter Snell interview where he talks about how important those fibers are) then Richey and the the athletes and I would have had something to consider.

So, the PNS works, in the macro sense, the way I thought it worked. Below are Richey's recommendations.

"I've given this a lot of thought and I think the best time to challenge the PNS would be before an easy day or following a hard day. The reason being is the PNS/somatic nervous system/ autonomic nervous system/ parasympathetic/ sympathetic are good indicators of fatigue and fitness so by challenging them after a hard day you can tell whether you got the intended effort out of the athlete on that day. If performed before an easy workout, then you can tell how tired the athlete is before the run to ensure that they don't work too hard on an intended recovery day, or whether you could add any ancillary work if they seem to be fully recovered (also a good indication of how fit they are or how much more work they could handle on the previous hard day by being able to recover quickly following that intended hard day). I don't think challenging the athlete by fatiguing out the PNS before a hard workout is as beneficial as it may alter the goal of overreaching and push them closer to the overtraining mode, as well as possibly altering biomechanics enough to effect their running efficiency during the actual workout. Also, if the PNS response is a good indicator of fatigue, then challenging it following an easy day may be a moot point, as the easy day is scheduled expecting them to be fatigued. So if the goal of challenging the PNS on an easy day is to see how tired they really are, then before the run may be the better bet to get the best assessment on how their body handled the sympathetic stress of the previous hard day." - Richey

I think you can fatigue the PNS before a hard workout. I think by using a previous workout before as guidance, you can get away with creating a different stimulus but not overtraining. The key would be to figure out how hard the previous workout was. Such things to consider, workouts you did surrounding the previous one, what the purpose of the workout is to be, things like that.