Ep #188: How to Avoid Overtraining

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who has never felt athletic, but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running and life coach and I teach women how to start running, feel confident, and change their lives, and now I want to help you.

Jill: Hey Rebels. So I have a super special treat for you today. I have both of my amazing Run Your Best Life and Not Your Average Runner coaches here today. Coach Jen and Coach Elle Dee. And we’re going to talk all things overtraining. So hi guys, welcome to the podcast.

Jen: Hi. So glad to be here.

Elle Dee: Hello, how are you?

Jill: I’m fabulous. I’m wearing my new leopard robe, which is pretty awesome. I’m kind of in love with it.

Jen: Let me clarify that it’s not a robe made out of a leopard.

Jill: No, it is not. It is a cotton robe with pictures of leopards pouncing through the trees. That is what it is.

Elle Dee: And it’s fabulous. Unfortunately your audience can’t tell but it’s fabulous.

Jill: I’ll have to post a picture on Instagram. So how are you guys doing tonight? What’s up?

Jen: Doing great. It’s been warm here.

Jill: Yeah, right? It’s getting warm out. It was about 60 degrees here in New Jersey today and that was – it was just insanely beautiful. Very grateful.

Jen: Yeah. I had the windows open; the cats were going crazy. It was great.

Jill: Now, so Jen, do you still have a lot of snow on the ground in Chicago?

Jen: It’s almost all melted. So just like the giant piles from the snow ploughing. The piles that are in the shade. There’s just a little bit left but it’s almost all gone.

Jill: And so Elle Dee’s like, she’s down in Alabama where there’s no snow down there, is there?

Elle Dee: There is none. And when there is, everyone runs out of their homes and throws their hands up to the air because we’re all just so amazed.

Jill: They’re like, what is this?

Elle Dee: Exactly.

Jill: So for you, because I was looking out my window, looking at the trees going, okay, when are the green buds going to come out? Like, are things coming into bloom in Alabama, Elle Dee, or does Alabama not go out of bloom? Is that how it works?

Elle Dee: There are some trees that turn, but we have a lot of pine down here and a lot of needle type trees, and so we’ve got a lot of greenery even during the winter.

Jill: Nice.

Elle Dee: I mean, we do have some trees obviously, oaks and things that the leaves fall off, but it snaps back quickly.

Jill: Yeah, I bet.

Jen: I remember when we were in New Orleans in February and there were flowers everywhere and I was just like, oh my gosh, flowers in February? I couldn’t believe it. It was just such a delight.

Jill: Yes. It was confusing too. We’re just like, what is happening?

Jen: Totally.

Jill: Okay. Well, so let’s – I love that we’re all over the country and we’re able to come together tonight to talk about this but let’s talk a little bit about overtraining in general. And I think for me, I’m pretty sensitive to it, although every once in a while – actually, just last month I started doing this Peloton challenge and I was strength training two, three times a week, and then trying to walk and run and I did that for about four to six weeks and I just realized, oh my god, my body was tired and hurting.

I just found that my joints were achy, I wasn’t sleeping very well, and I’m like, I got to scale this way back and take some time to let myself recover because I was not. I was doing like, two workouts a day several days a week and it really caught up to me. And I could feel like, injuries kind of starting to – the ghost of injuries were starting to appear.

So for me, I’m super sensitive to that and I’m like, okay, wait, and I was kind of bummed because the challenge was super fun. The Peloton challenge that I was doing was super fun but I was also like, hey, you know what, there’s another one in two months and you can just do the next one. So I’m curious to know if you guys have ever experienced overtraining and what signs do you look for in yourself and what do you do about it?

Jen: I don’t tend to overtrain when it comes to training for an event necessarily. But I tend to overtrain in life. I’ll have too much going on at once and I kind of stop paying attention and being mindful and that’s when I end up injuring myself because I trip and fall and break my foot, or do something crazy like that. And it’s always when there’s so much happening and I’m trying to do too much at once and I’m not paying attention.

And so I actually yesterday, I had kind of a busy day and I was doing a Zoom cooking demo and I’m normally over-prepared all the time, especially for a Zoom cooking demo. And I didn’t feel that way and I forgot – I was making hash brown waffles and I forgot to bring my waffle iron and I was doing it in a different kitchen.

And I didn’t have a waffle iron, so I had to go get one and I had to run to Target and go buy a waffle iron and I started rushing and panicking and an I was an hour away from my demo and I was driving and I wasn’t paying attention and I was doing all this stuff and I literally was like, stop because you’re either going to get into an accident or something’s going to happen or you’re going to trip and fall or whatever it is.

So I made myself stop and sit and take three deep breaths and I just reset my mind. I was like, you’re going to be fine, you’ve done this eight million times, you have more than an hour. I had to talk myself into kind of recovering from this. And so when I always talk to the people that we coach, our clients, I always say overtraining is not noble.

This is not like, I’m going to overtrain. You’re not an overachiever by overtraining. What you’re doing is you’re under-recovering. So I always say overtraining is under-recovery. And when you start doing that, that’s when you either get injured or something happens. And so this was not so much overtraining and getting injured that way, but I’ve had moments where it’s been too much and then all of a sudden, I fall and break my foot. And then it’s like the universe level setting you. So it’s really important for me to stop and reset and recover my brain, my body, whatever it is so that I avoid those kinds of incidences.

Jill: Yeah. I mean, that’s a great point. Overtraining is just doing more than your body is capable of and I think you can do the same in your life. Pushing yourself to do more than your schedule or your energy levels or your brain is capable of handling. And what happens is you either take rest or you get rest thrust upon you in the form of a car accident or a broken foot, right?

Jen: Yeah. I mean, it’s literally happened to me three times where the universe has put me in my place literally. And usually that’s in bed with my foot up in a sling.

Jill: Does not sound like fun.

Jen: Not fun.

Elle Dee: No, it does not.

Jill: What about you Elle Dee?

Elle Dee: Absolutely. When I first started training, I was working with a program and actually a group of running coaches. So it was a running center. And the running center I now realize was focused on speed. So one of the things they would do is they would have a leaderboard of speed of where people were in terms of the mileage that they hit and the speed that they got to.

And I think that coach that they paired me with was a person who probably had never worked with an older runner or even a heavier runner. And I think the mileage and speed that was expected, I certainly didn’t see anything wrong with it. But I just kept getting injured, kept getting injured. It was curiously some of the other people that sort of looked like me that was also part of this running center also kept getting injured, kept getting injured.

So finally I went to the running coach and I said, “Hey, I keep getting injured, I keep having these things happen,” and I said, “What do you do about injury?” And she said, “I don’t know because I’ve never been injured.” And I realized this person was a competitive runner and this person was young enough that they’d really – I think she was sincere about that.

She had just never been injured so she had never sort of dealt with that. Since I’ve left that running center and joined Run Your Best Life, I now see that she’s gone – I now see she’s gone and gotten some training on nutrition and some other things. So I think probably I think at some point she must have realized, oh, this is a thing that happens to people.

But just because you run and run well and are competitive, and she was extremely good. When I say she was competitive, I mean she won races. She was that level of person. But I think that it was difficult for her to communicate to us, hey, when you start feeling that sharp up and down pain in your shin, when you start feeling like a knot in the back of your calf, when you start feeling the tingle in your hamstrings, you need to stop and look and pay attention to that and keep your eye on it and make sure that there’s not something else going on.

Because it was great for training and for setting you on a schedule. I just think when you set a really aggressive schedule and you don’t know to pay attention to the things that are going on, that could happen. And I actually was thinking a lot about overtraining because I think people have been cooped up for a whole year now and I think people are just – maybe they’re finally getting a little relief or a little freedom.

Some of the restrictions are being lifted, maybe even they’re getting the vaccine. And I think some of these people are going to be unleashed like your puppy in the little thing. They’re going to run out and so this is a timely topic I think.

Jill: Yeah. I think you’re right. But there’s something that you said about creating an aggressive schedule to begin with and then on top of that, paying attention to your body. Because overtraining can come from a multiple places. It can come from setting too aggressive of a training schedule or a training plan and not building rest, the appropriate amount of rest into that and the appropriate amount of recovery.

Or it can come from like, hey, maybe you did have the appropriate amount of rest and recovery but you’re still – maybe you’ve got shit going on elsewhere in your life. And I was thinking about when you’ve got – you’re a single mom and you’ve got a demanding job and you’re running all over the place and doing all the things, and trying to train for a marathon or something like that, the amount of training that you’re doing, that you set up in your plan has to account for the rest of your life as well.

So what might be an appropriate amount of training for somebody who doesn’t have a lot of other responsibilities is going to be different than somebody who’s got a lot of mental energy that needs to be directed elsewhere and so forth. I think there’s just so many factors that first and foremost, we need to be listening to our bodies and knowing what the general signs of overtraining are. And then also what are the signs for you.

Because I think what my body says is overtraining might be different than what Jen says or what Elle Dee says. And then also making sure that you’re taking time for rest on purpose, even if – and I think this is important, even if you’re like, no, I feel fine, I can do an extra workout this week. Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should.

So for you guys, what are some of the signs and symptoms that you experience when you know oh, I’m coming up on an injury, I’m doing more than I should be doing. What are some of the things that happen to you?

Jen: For me, I had to learn the difference of the kind of pain to push through and the kind of pain to not push through.

Elle Dee: Oh, so right.

Jen: Because sometimes pain is mental too and you can push through it. But then there’s the pain to not push through. And acute pain, things that are causing you to limp, that sort of thing. We’re not going to win anything by pushing through that kind of pain. That’s not the kind of pain to push through.

And so that’s where sort of that – where I talk about that sort of mindfulness and self-awareness comes from too. Because I’ve had pain where I literally – it was a thought that was creating my pain and it disappeared when I changed my thought, which I know sounds crazy, but I was manifesting ghost pain. That’s different than having a pain where you’re like, wait a minute, something is not right.

Jill: Yeah. And I think we know. If you’re sitting there going, do I feel pain there? Is there some pain there? I can’t tell. That’s different than what the hell is that?

Jen: Ouch.

Jill: Right. And sometimes we have little aches and pains, they’re real but it’s a function of getting your body warmed up. And by the time you’re half a mile in, it’s smooth sailing. And then there’s the aches and pains that don’t go away after you warm up or they get worse during your warmup the next time and it takes longer for them to go away.

But yeah, I think that it’s not a badge of honor to push through pain. It’s a badge of honor to respect your body and say hey, it’s more important to me to finish this race safely or to finish my training plan safely than it is to do every single run that I’ve been assigned and end up injured.

Elle Dee: You know, I’m so grateful for all of the knowledge and the experience that I receive just in general, but also in Run Your Best Life. And one of the reasons why I decided to sit for a running certification is because I wanted to get to the bottom of why I was getting injured so much and really it was what pushed me to RRCA. And to really try to be a detective about what’s going on here.

Because I’ve made all the running mistakes you could make. I was wearing the wrong shoes, I ran on the wrong days, I pushed – I ignored pain or I pushed through pain saying I’ll stop being a weeny. And I was one of those people that never – I never quit a race. Just never. For some reason, I just don’t do it.

And those things, going through all those things and learning so much, I feel that at least I can still stay in the game because I do have friends who started out with me, started running with me when I moved here and they’ve all stopped. And it’s largely because of injuries. I feel sad about that. And I really wanted to get involved with other folks to try to encourage people and try to pass along some tips about not getting to the point where you just say I can’t run at all.

Jill: Right. It’s not worth it. Keeping up your run streak – that just reminded me of another training example that I have for myself is keeping up your run streak so you could say I did my 30 days and now I’m on crutches. It’s not worth it. And it’s so mental but so this happened to me I guess it was 2018. It was January 2018 and I decided I was going to do this 30-day run streak.

And it was like, I’m just going to run a mile, a minimum of a mile a day. And then some days it was more than that. And at the beginning of the run streak, I could feel plantar fasciitis coming on and I had had it in the past. I knew what it felt like. But I was like, no, I got to finish this run streak that I signed up for.

And I literally – so I finished the run streak. By the middle of February I was on crutches and I was really in pain and unable to run or even walk for exercise for like, weeks and weeks. And it was not worth it. It was one of those run bet things and I was like, I want to get my $20 back because I’m pretty sure I spent more than that in co-pays to see the doctor about my plantar fasciitis. So yeah, and I think that we all make that mistake. And that’s why I tell people please don’t do a run streak. It’s a terrible idea.

Elle Dee: But I feel like many of us, at least we have a little bit of experience with running. You can start to tell the areas of the body where it’s coming. Some people are prone to plantar fasciitis, other people are prone to hip bursitis, other people have shin splints that won’t go away that usually connected to something going on with the IT band. I’m an IT band person/hip bursitis and of course it’s all coming from the glutes for me. So I’ll know okay, I don’t play with hip bursitis because the moment that I think – it’s like, oh.

Jill: Right. And I think what – we hear this a lot from our clients. They’re like, oh, it’s okay because I stretched it out afterwards and it didn’t hurt anymore. I’m like, no, I get that you dealt with the discomfort, but we need to roll it back and fix the root cause. And very often the root cause is doing too much or doing more than your body is able to do.

Jen: Or doing too much of one thing. So people – a lot of our clients, we hear they resist strength training and they resist good stretching. And so it’s like, you might be overdoing it on the running and by strength training, you would potentially avoid that injury. And so if your core is stronger, you’re not going to get back injuries because you’re not leaning forward when you’re running.

And so people are like, but I just want to run. So they run five days a week instead of three days a week and doing strength training and cross training on the other days. And they end up getting injuries for that reason too.

Jill: Yeah, that’s a great point.

Jen: So it’s like overtraining of one activity as opposed to doing the other things that are going to support your running, that are equally as important as the running training, which includes rest. That’s one of the things in that list.

Jill: Right. Rest is a training day. Rest is a training day. It is the part of the training where your body absorbs all of the effort that was put in in the days prior. It’s the time when your muscles are re-knitting themselves to be stronger. It’s when all of the – literally that’s when you get stronger is on the days when you’re not running and you’re not strength training and so forth.

So when you refuse to rest, when you refuse to build that into your schedule, you’re literally saying oh, that whole investment of time and effort that I put into on all those training days isn’t that important to me because I’m not willing to protect it by resting.

Jen: I love that mindset shift that you just said that rest is the most important part of the training.

Jill: I mean, it is. Rest days are training days too. You’re just doing something different. You’re just not running or you’re not strength training. We actually have – so we had some questions that people wrote in and they’re kind of hitting on these topics. So Anne says, “What are the early warning signs of overtraining so we can catch it before it catches us?”

And I think we’ve kind of talked about that. But in general, for me, it’s that my muscles always hurt. That every day I wake up and something feels achy. I’m like, you know what, maybe I’m pushing it too hard in my strength training, maybe I’m pushing it too hard in my running, maybe I’m doing too many days.

So for me it’s like, if I constantly have DOMS, delayed onsite muscle soreness, if I constantly have that, probably training too much. Joint pain, when I start just feeling – not like twingy, although twinges in the joints is another sign. But for me it’s like, when my joints start to feel creaky. Or when my lower back starts to feel creaky. Then I’m like, okay, maybe I need to rest a little bit.

Not sleeping well. If I’m not sleeping well and I’m exercising a lot, I know that I’m not able to – that I’m not resting enough so that I can absorb the training and it’s impacting my sleep. So those are the three. And sometimes if I’m cranky. If I’m having a crappy day and I go out for a run and I come back and I’m still cranky, I’m like, maybe I’m overtraining and maybe I just need a nap. So for you guys, what are the specific signs that you notice?

Jen: For me a lot of it’s mental too. When I’m feeling mentally scattered and I feel like I can’t – it’s too much, I can’t keep it all together, I start making mistakes, I start tripping, I start having moments of clumsiness. Because I’m not a clumsy person, so if I start having moments of clumsiness, I know that I’m mentally overtrained and potentially physically overtrained too because my body is just like, not holding up.

So clumsiness is a big one because I’m not a clumsy person. If I start dropping stuff, if I start dropping stuff all the time, if my arms are too sore or something like that, that’s a big warning trigger for me. Because that also means it’s mental. I’m mentally overtrained too.

Jill: Yeah, that makes sense. What about you Elle Dee? What are your signs of overtraining?

Elle Dee: You know, I think one of the big ones is one you mentioned. If I get up and I’m still hurting after being asleep at night, and when I’m not just kind of sore but really hurting. Hold on, I may be pushing it too far. And like I said, luckily for me, or unluckily, you could say one or the other, but it tends to be in my dominant leg where everything shows up.

And so things will start hurting over there in certain areas and I can tell immediately, oh, it’s time to address this. It’s time to put a little bit more effort into doing the exercises, the monster walks, the side steps, the side lunges, the curtsy lunges, it’s time to focus on that rather than focus on mileage.

But typically when I will really see this is when I’m trying to push speed. Speed is what will sometimes really aggravate stuff. Sometimes even more than mileage, although mileage too soon is the equivalent of too much speed too.

Jill: Yeah, right? You can for sure too much too soon. If you’re a beginner, you can still overtrain.

Elle Dee: Oh, of course, sure.

Jill: Even if you’re just starting out. Because a lot of times beginners think, oh, I have to run every day so I’m going to try and run every day. And then a month in they’re like, I don’t understand, my knees hurt. And I’m like, you’re overtraining and they’re like, I’ve only been doing this for a month. I’m like, so? You can still overtrain.

Elle Dee: I think of it like baked goods. If you don’t let bread prove then it’s going to be flat. It’s going to be bad. There are ingredients to the things that you might bake and if you don’t let them prove or take care of them, it’s going to go bad.

Jill: There are specific steps that you need to take to get the result that you want. And sometimes that step – in the case of bread, that steps is letting it rest. Even bread needs to rest.

Jen: And even it has to rest usually two times. So the whole process of it has to rest twice.

Jill: So here’s something interesting. I was looking at one of our Run Your Best Life members is – hi Amy. I was talking to her last night about her training for an Olympic triathlon that she’s doing. And so we were kind of trying to figure out a training plan for her. An Olympic triathlon is not a beginner level triathlon. It’s a 0.93 mile swim, 24.8 mile bike, and then a 10K. And that’s not an entry level triathlon.

But all of the different training plans that we were looking at, the one thing that they had in common was they had two days of complete rest. And they had five hard days, but I thought, wow, that’s fascinating – not fascinating. It made perfect sense to me. But I was glad to see it in a training plan that was like, hey, this is a hard thing that you’re doing and by the way, two rest days. Two full rest days.

So that kind of brings me to the next question I would like for us to answer. Caitlin says, “What can we do in our off days or rest days? I find I need to always at least stretch or I’m restless all day.” So what do you guys do on your rest days?

Jen: I rest.

Jill: What does that look like for you? Are you all day long laying on the couch with people coming and feeding you grapes or?

Jen: I wish.

Jill: Because you’ve got a toddler. You’ve got a five-year-old, so you’re not sleeping all day. So what does a rest day look like for you? How do you want to explain that to us I guess?

Jen: Yeah. It’s definitely not laying on the couch all day, although I’m an Olympic champion couch potato when I want to be. It’s fewer and farther between these days. But I mean, I remember when I was training for the marathon, I would run 18 miles and I would come home and he was a toddler at the time and I was like, I can’t not chase my toddler around.

So I remember just being absolutely exhausted and so it’s just – for me, a rest day is just not doing any real physical labor or doing any kind of run or strength training. I’ll probably end up walking anyway because we walk a lot. Maybe easy bike ride, we’ll go for a leisurely bike ride. And if I was to do anything, it would be really, really gentle yoga. And it would be short. It wouldn’t be an hour of yoga. It would be 10 or 15 minutes of just super gentle yoga.

I found that very mentally restful for me too because it was partial – the breathing and the quiet and especially the yoga that I would do because I would do so much of restorative yoga when I was training for the marathon because it just really helped with hips and tightness. I get really, really tight hamstrings.

And so I did tons of legs up the wall, and it was almost meditative for me. So something like that, if I had to do something it would be that. But I usually had to do that because I was so tight. So I would do that often. But I don’t ever really fully rest because I just can’t because of my life. But if I have the opportunity to, I love a good long couch session. It’s one of my favorite things.

Jill: Well, here’s what I find interesting is that on a rest day for me, if I do spend the day laying around on the couch, I feel awful. So I do – physically I feel better if I go for a walk, but it’s not a power walk. It’s just a leisurely stroll. And I just feel so much better if I get up.

And on rest days, that’s when I’ll do little projects around the house like re-organizing the closet, or something like that where I’m not physically challenging myself too much, but I am moving around on my feet. But what about you Elle Dee? What does your rest day look like?

Elle Dee: Very much like you guys described. Either take a walk or a very short leisurely bike ride, just fun, just a fun ride. Or gentle walk. My walking pace is actually quite slow, so I don’t have to rush along, and I like that. So that’s good for me. If I’m sore, then I know I got to get the foam roller out for that or the massage wand that we all have. I have Jen’s Purewave. That guy, not only do I have it out for a rest day. I have that out every day.

Jen: That thing is a miracle, that Purewave. And I love that thing.

Jill: So good.

Elle Dee: For those of you who do not know what the Purewave is, it is a – I would say a very effective and cost-effective cousin to the Theragun that you may see out there. But it’s a massager. Ours is wireless so we don’t have any wires, but I use it every day. I wake up with that guy.

Jill: Nice. You’re like, hello.

Jen: Hello my friend.

Elle Dee: I need to name it. It’s such a good friend.

Jill: I like to use it on the bottom of my feet.

Jen: Me too. That’s my favorite.

Jill: Bottom of my feet and then in between my shoulder blades although I probably should use it more like on my quads and my glutes. But yeah, and I think the other thing I love to do on rest days is an Epsom salt bath as well. It feels very decadent but also important. So I’m always – and you guys, this is what I’ve been doing lately is I’ve been taking Epsom salt baths with either a CDB bath bomb or CBD Epsom salts. And they are ridiculously good.

And actually, the company that – my menopause brain is kicking in and I can’t remember. What the heck is the name of the company? Rest Day. Literally, the company’s name is Rest Day. And they make CBD bath bombs and CBD bath salts. And then also ointment. And I’ve used the ointment as well. It’s amazing.

And so we’re actually going to be getting a coupon code for everybody on this podcast. I don’t have it this week, I’ll have it for next week. But their stuff is amazing. So I like to do that kind of stuff on my rest day as well. Just because I’m like, if I’m not going to be working out for 45 minutes, I can sit in the bath for 45 minutes and enjoy that.

Okay, so here’s another question and we’re going to divert a little bit and talk more about the mental side of resting and not overtraining. But Laura says, “How do you tell your mind to stop running, take a rest day, not for fear of overtraining but for fear you will lose the habit you are working so hard to build? Afraid if you don’t put your running shoes on today, you might not tomorrow.”

And I think this is one of the reasons that people overtrain is because they’re afraid if I take a day off, I’m going to lose my habit. And so they end up overtraining because they don’t trust themselves to take a rest day and then get back at it. So what do you guys have to say about that? Elle Dee, what are your thoughts?

Elle Dee: I hear this a lot. What I often hear is I’m going to lose my fitness if I don’t stay at peak fitness. And I want to tell you folks, listen, people that run for a living, people who are professional runners take an off day. All of us have to take an off day, all of us have to do the cross training, all of us have to do the steps that it will take you to get you to the goal that you want to do.

If you let your mind bully you into oh, I’ve got to run every day or everything will fall apart, I think you’re saying I don’t trust myself to do this and the normal steps, and tomorrow say I’m going to meet my schedule, meet my promise to myself to do what I wanted to do. In other words, you’re kind of keeping yourself in a state of constant anxiety about running.

And this is something that it’s going to be – I think when you keep yourself at that high a level of anxiety, you’re always there at that high tension rate, running is going to stop being fun. It’s going to stop being something you’re going to want to do, and it’s going to start being something that you feel like I have to do or it’s all going to fall apart.

And of course it’s not going to fall apart. I’ve had the luck of talking to some 100-mile runners this year and I just learned so much from them. Of course the person who’s training for 100 within Run Your Best Life, we’re learning a lot from Sierra as well. And I’m sure that even the people who are training for these huge distances, they all are absolutely saying to themselves, yes, I do need to hit certain targets but if I see something, feel something, or something is going on that says to me I shouldn’t do this today, they make that choice and not do it. The overtraining is not going anywhere good is the bottom line. You got to get control of your anxiety about that.

Jill: Yeah, I think that’s it. It’s the mental side of it. I think a lot of us overtrain because of our brains thinking that we can’t be trusted.

Elle Dee: So true.

Jen: Yeah, the point you made about the rest day being part of the training, if you’re trying to build a habit of training, then the thought to work on is the rest day is part of my training. So I’m not breaking this habit. I’m actually honoring my habit by following my training plan. And so it’s a way to look at it.

And these thoughts are automatic. So your brain is telling you oh, you’re going to lose fitness or you’re going to break your habit. And just because your brain is saying it doesn’t make it true. So that’s where the work comes in of no actually, the rest day is part of my training plan. And that’s a great mantra around something like this.

So if your brain is restless and it’s poking at you and saying no, you’re doing something wrong because you’re not working out today, prove it to your brain, like look at your training plan and be like, nope, see, I’m honoring my training plan, I’m building the habit of training, my training plan says to rest today so I’m going to do what my training plan says.

Jill: Yeah. And I think that’s a great way for perfectionists to look at it. Because I think a lot of perfectionists are like, no, I have to do something every day. And it’s like, what if you took your perfectionist and said no, I have to follow my training plan and do whatever it says and then build a smart training plan.

The other thing I think happens is – and this is especially with newer runners is they’ll start – they’ll get into a groove of they’re running three times a week or four times a week or whatever works for them. And then they talk to somebody else who’s doing things differently and they’re like, oh wait, I should be doing it that way.

Or somebody says, “Wow, you’re only running four days a week? That’s not nearly enough,” and they’re like, oh. We get into this other people are doing it differently, and maybe I should be doing it that way, maybe I’m doing it wrong. Especially as women, we’re constantly questioning ourselves, and so I think it’s really important to literally and figuratively run your own race when it comes to your training.

You don’t have anybody else’s body. You have your body. So what works for them is not necessarily going to work for you. And don’t be afraid to just say to somebody if they’re like, “You should be running more,” just be like, thanks, I’ll consider it but what I’m doing right now is working for me. Or I know Heather, during the retreat this past weekend, I said, “Thanks for your opinion.” Heather’s like, “No, your opinion is noted. That’s it.”

We don’t thank people for their opinion. That made me laugh. But I do think that some overtraining can come from either other people’s opinions or wanting to please your coach or your trainer. And thinking, “No, I have to do this workout because it’s on my training plan, even though my body feels bad because I don’t want to let my coach down.”

I see this, this happens to me sometimes with my personal trainer that I will do a movement because I’m thinking, “I don’t want to let her down.” And I have to watch my brain real closely because sometimes I’m like, listen Jill, you’re pretty in tune with your body. There’s a difference between pushing yourself and people pleasing and I think people pleasing has no place in your training.

Jen: For sure. And the whole retreat we just did was about confidence and how to build your confidence, and that goes back to that not questioning what works for you in your training plan. Just because somebody else says you’re slow or you’re not running enough or you’re doing something wrong doesn’t mean that they’re right. That’s their opinion.

Jill: Yeah. We had a whole bunch of questions, we’re not going to get to all of them, but there is one more that I want to address. And this one’s from Heidi and it kind of ties into what we just said. “As a new runner,” she’s running two days a week, “I’m getting adequate rest days. But as I move forward, I’m aiming to dynamic stretch and then run and then static stretch four or more days a week. If I strength train on the alternate days, I won’t be getting rest.”

This is a fair point. “So as I approach that goal of four or more days per week, will it be better for me to strength train on the days I run so that rest days can purely be rest?” Great question, we’ll address that in a minute. “Googling reveals that experienced runners run six days per week.” This is not true.

There are some experienced runners that run six days a week, you’re talking – we got three experienced runners on this call that do not run six days per week. So experience doesn’t mean a number of days. Experience just means I’ve been a runner for a long time and I’ve done a bunch of things that’s given me experience.

So I would say professional runners, Olympic runners or super competitive professional runners where that’s their livelihood and their competing in races to win and that’s how they support themselves, yeah, they’re probably running six days per week. But most people are not. And I know a lot of experienced runners that aren’t.

So I think that that’s – if you’ve been Googling how often should I run per week and Google is telling you six days a week, please don’t do that. Please don’t do that until you have been able to run for four days a week for months at a time without getting injured. And then maybe five days a week. But why do you want to run for six days a week and kind of ignore the rest?

So everyone’s body is different. Your body might be able to handle that, but my gut says it’s probably too much. So especially if you’re at two days a week right now, let’s focus on getting you to three to four days a week and then your strength training, yeah, you can do your strength training on your rest days if you want. So if you’re running four days a week and you’re strength training two days a week, that still gives you a rest day.

You can do strength training on your run days, after you’ve completed your run, that’s totally fine. And then your rest days are purely rest. I would play around with it. There’s no perfect way to do it but I would ease into it. Don’t tell yourself that because Google said experienced runners run six days per week that that’s what you should be doing.

You can be an experienced runner and run two days a week or three days a week. Experienced runners just means you’ve got a lot of experience. It doesn’t mean a number of days that you run per week.

Elle Dee: I have all the opinions about this.

Jill: Please share them.

Elle Dee: I think sometimes when we look on Google and we see other people’s training plans or we see other advice, we forget that a lot of times these experienced runners are running in training blocks. So they might have a training block where one week they’re running six days a week. That next week they may take three days off.

Jill: Yeah, that’s a great point.

Elle Dee: They may do six days a week for a three- or four-week training block and then they will take two solid weeks off. So we’ve got to – so if you Google, you may just get half the story. And so you want to make sure to get the entire story. There may be people out there who are running six days a week. There’s nothing wrong with it.

But I would say for your general average everyday person, you want to watch – what Jill’s telling you about looking at getting in enough of the other activities to make sure that your running train is strong enough to handle the pounding. Because it’s not just do my legs feel good, are my legs strong enough. You got to remember that you’re putting some serious – two to three times your body weight every time you hit the pavement. And it vibrates back through your body.

That’s what you have to be strong for. It’s not just can I get my legs to move. It’s can you withstand the pounding and for those consecutive days, for ordinary people, it’s going to lead to injury.

Jill: Yeah, agreed. Agreed. What about you Jen? Anything to add to that?

Jen: I have lots of things to add but I know we don’t have all night. But I have two main points. One main point is that Google is not a reliable source for most things. You can find a lot on Google, there’s also a lot of bullshit on Google. So Google is not canon so we’re not going to look at Google and it’s going to say you should run six days a week and that’s what we’re going to do. So don’t ever use that…

Jill: Hire a coach. That’s what you should do.

Jen: Exactly right. The other thing that I have is about other people’s opinions about how much you should or shouldn’t be training and I find this to be true in most things when it comes to running. Other runners will not encourage you to overtrain. It’s the people who aren’t runners who will be like, “You only run three days a week?”

Because a person who runs knows how important rest is, how important the other stuff is too. So most “experienced” runners would really never encourage somebody to overtrain I believe. And my experience with non-runners who have lots of opinions about running, they’re usually and almost always wrong.

Jill: These are the same people that’ll say, “Running is going to destroy your knees.”

Jen: Or they have opinions about your speed and I remember I was – this was a long time ago when I was a single girl in the city. And I was sort of seeing this guy, and I had run a 5K. And then we all went out that night and I was like, “I ran a 5K today,” and he was like, he’s like, “How fast did you do it?” And I was like, “Oh,” and I told him, he was like, “Oh, that’s actually really slow.”

And I remember my reaction was like, so hurt at first, and I was like, “How fast did you run it?” And he was like, “Oh, well I didn’t, I don’t run.” I was like, “Exactly.” Keep moving. So the people who have the really shitty opinions or overly aggressive opinions are usually people who are not runners because people who are runners get it.

Jill: I’m pretty nice.

Jen: Yeah. And I had an a-ha moment in our retreat last weekend, over the weekend about other people’s opinions. And you said this Jill and I swear to god it was like a gong in my head where it’s like, accepting other people’s opinions of you and what you should be doing is like walking past a poop bag on the sidewalk, a dog poop bag on the sidewalk and picking it up and putting it in your pocket.

And I was like, oh my god, that’s so true. And I had dog poo so that resonated so much with me. It’s like, that’s so true. So don’t pick up somebody else’s poop bag.

Jill: I love it.

Elle Dee: That’s awesome.

Jill: So good. Alright, I think we covered a lot today. I appreciate both of you sharing your thoughts and your opinions and so for anybody who is wondering how they can – by the way, how they can work with three of us, you can join our next Rebel Runner Roadmap program, which opens on April 11th, I think. And we’ll be talking about it on the podcast here, but yeah, three pretty awesome coaches in my opinion. We’re all RRCA certified, and we’re smart as hell and funny.

Jen: And we all have, like you said before, vast experiences. And so it’s not like Elle Dee’s example she gave of the running coach who had never been injured and had no empathy or understanding of what it was like to work with somebody who was injury prone or was maybe pushing themselves too quick and too much. Between the three of us, we’ve been there and done it all.

Jill: Every possible injury, yes. We have.

Jen: And done every possible kind of training and every possible kind of race. I mean, between the three of us, we have biked and run and swam and all the things, strength trained and done all the things. So between the three of us, we got you covered.

Jill: We do. And we’re cute too.

Jen: Yes. And without any judgment or shame. The shame is the S word. We don’t train that way; we don’t coach that way. It is all from a place of love.

Jill: We don’t do shame in our group for sure.

Jen: No.

Elle Dee: So true.

Jill: Alright my friends, my lovely, fabulous coach friends, thank you for joining me. I think we’re going to have to make this a regular occurrence because I really like having the three of us on the podcast together. So stay tuned because we’ll be back probably in a few weeks to do this all over again on another topic.

And if you have ideas, you lovely listener, have ideas on things that you want to have us do this round robin discussion on, support@notyouraveragerunner.com. Just put podcast idea in the title and Sharon, who is our fabulous assistant will pass it on and maybe your topic will become a podcast episode. So that’s it for today. Thanks guys.

Elle Dee: Thank you.

Jen: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

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Oh, and one last thing. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out the Rebel Runner Roadmap. It’s a 30-day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to rebelrunnerroadmap.com to join. I’d love to be a part of your journey.