By Jeff Korhan
The podcast currently has 26 episodes available.
If you are familiar with Blue Zones, you may already know backward walking has been an accepted practice in Asia for hundreds of years. It’s part of the culture throughout the region, but not so much outside of it.
You may feel uncomfortable at first, but you’ll get over that quickly as you realize its many accessible benefits. In this episode we focus on three key benefits.
#1. Enhanced Balance and Coordination
You immediately notice something when you begin walking backward. You feel strange at first, but soon your body becomes more aware of how it moves and its relationship with the space around it.
Our coordination, body balance and space awareness enable us to safely move and adapt in the moment. This proprioceptive awareness is a skill all elite runners share, and backward walking will help you enhance yours.
#2. More Efficient Warmup and Recovery
Every runner knows the most common running injuries are plantar fasciitis, Runner’s Knee, and Achilles tendonitis. Backward walking greatly reduces the risk of these injuries, and helps you recover if you already have them.
Practicing backward walking for 100 yards or so just before running is enough to realize these benefits. As you do this, be aware of extending your knees over the toes, as it’s from this movement that most of the gains are derived.
3. Increased Power and Mobility
One of the cardinal rules of strength training is that you work opposing muscles to keep everything in balance. Just as a bench press counterbalances with rowing that works the opposing back muscles, backward walking counterbalances with forward walking and running.
You can imagine that after a lifetime of walking and running forward, you have weaknesses in your glutes and hamstrings. If you really want to bulletproof your legs from potential injuries, there’s nothing that mirrors forward walking like backward walking.
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Pain and injuries are part of life for active people. The true goal is maximizing mobility. This is what prevents injuries and makes pain an infrequent visitor. There are two components to mobility: Flexibility and the strength to control it through a full range of motion.
If you are over 40 years old, many experts will tell you it’s impossible to regain 100% mobility. However, I’ve experienced it myself in my 60s and promise you can too. Years of physical therapy helped, but old injuries kept resurfacing until I developed the protocol I’m about to share.
#1. Assess The Situation
#2. Gradually Restore Mobility
#3. Strengthen Supporting Tissues
When you experience pain, tightness or any kind of reduced mobility, the first thing you want to do is introduce gentle movements. Move the body to increase blood flow to the affected areas. This also activates synovial fluids to lubricate joints. These systems bring nutrients to the injured area and remove waste products.
Every injury involves some degree of swelling. It will subside when its job is complete, and you can help it by moving the muscles, tendons, ligaments and associated tissues that support joints. Your issue may not directly involve a joint, an ankle, knee or hip, but it’s nearly 100% likely that it’s connected to one or more of them.
A joint that regularly experiences a full range of motion is a healthy joint. When our joints don’t move properly, the body compensates by recruiting muscles and ligaments in a way for which it wasn’t designed. We call this a workaround.
As you continue down the road to recovery, you want to challenge the joints to build the supporting tissues. You can accomplish this by practicing only one exercise. It’s the squat – but I’m going to give you three versions for variety.
Why the squat, you may wonder? It’s the one movement that challenges your feet, ankles, knees, hips, core, lower and upper back, and everything in between. Everyone should practice the deep resting squat daily to promote longevity for running and general living.
Here are the most essential squats, from basic to more advanced.
#1. Split Squats (image below)
#2. Deep Resting Squats
#3. Cossack Squats
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Tapering is gradually reducing training volume while maintaining intensity in the final weeks before a race. This allows the body to recover from fatigue and stress while retaining fitness and sharpness for race day. Most experts agree on a taper period of 3 weeks for a marathon, and proportionately less for shorter races.
This is a how-to episode that addresses three tapering secrets in the order one would typically focus on them. However, my recommendation is to keep all three in mind throughout your taper.
#1. Maintain Intensity and Reduce Volume
You want to reduce your mileage by 20-25% during the taper. For many runners, this would be something like 40-50 miles at three weeks out, then 30-40 the following week, and 20-30 for race week. Then, and this is important, make those reduced miles quality miles by maintaining intensity.
The overall taper effort should be enjoyable. Make this a playful period, a celebration of your hard work, and a preview of how you will perform on race day. The intensity keeps your mind and muscle fibers fresh. The reduced mileage allows muscles, joints, and connective tissues to fully recover.
Examples of reducing volume but maintaining intensity are trimming your marathon pace tempo run from 6 to 4 miles, or possibly a pair of 2-mile tempo segments with a 1-mile jog between them. The goal is to lock in the feeling of running at the tempo pace without taxing the body more than necessary.
#2. Replenish and Refresh Your Body and Mind
The body and mind work together as one. You cannot be sharp on race day if you are mentally fatigued. Since a marathon is more mental than physical, be intentional about relaxing your mind during the taper.
Get to bed earlier and take naps. Practice some yoga and meditation. Race anticipation can create anxiety, but that anxiety can be managed by giving your mind and body what they need, hydration, nutrition, rest and sleep. Focus on those functions and protect your mental state by doing what gives you confidence.
Finally, be sure to practice easy body movements to lubricate tissues and encourage blood flow that circulates nutrients and flushes out metabolic wastes. For more on this, check out this podcast’s Episode #11.
#3. Visualize and Rehearse Race Strategy and Readiness
This is the ultimate secret to your racing success. The months of training are nothing more than potential gains. You must take the additional steps of translating them into real gains with planning.
This is what professional runners do. They practice daily visualization to put their minds at ease, imagining different scenarios and how they may play out. The science is clear about this – our minds don’t distinguish between visualization and direct experience. So, if more experience is valuable, you can get it with visualization.
How do you want to feel on race day, strong, fresh, and confident? One way to practice this is to view your taper workouts as sections of your race. For example, slow miles reflect the beginning of the race, tempo miles the middle, and faster intervals the closing stretch.
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Nutrition is a sensitive topic, and I respect that. We all have our beliefs, habits, and food preferences. My purpose is not to change your diet, but to help you make the best choices for your desired lifestyle as it relates to running and longevity.
So, let’s discuss a couple of foods with unique properties. One is a food that most of us wouldn’t even consider a food. The other is a category of vegetables with unique longevity properties.
Let’s start with the category because you know these vegetables, but the seldom discussed category is what sets them apart.
#1. Cruciferous Vegetables
Cruciferous vegetables are a category that includes broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, and kale. They are all composed of glucosinolates, sulfur-containing compounds unique to this family of plants.
When consumed, glucosinolates are broken down into cancer-fighting properties. So, if you plan to age long and well, these foods should interest you.
#2. Flaxseed
Flaxseed is not what most people would consider a food, but that should change once you understand its nutritional profile. You should purchase flaxseed crushed, in a meal form, to readily access its benefits.
a. Rich Source of Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Flaxseed is one of the richest plant sources of Omega-3s. These are the essential fatty acids that the body cannot produce on its own, so they must be obtained from the diet.
Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown to reduce inflammation and muscle and joint pain, while speeding up recovery time. That alone should be enough for runners to consider adding it to their daily diet.
b. Plant-Based Source of Good Fats
Flaxseed replenishes the good fats that are vitally important for endurance. These good fats also contribute to our HDL cholesterol – that’s the good cholesterol that maintains healthy blood pressure, and lowers triglyceride levels.
c. Source of Cancer-Fighting Lignans
Flaxseed is one of the best sources of lignans, which are cancer-fighting plant compounds with antioxidant properties.
Lignans have proved beneficial for reducing, and more importantly, reversing both breast and prostate cancer.
Flaxseed is high in all but one of the nine essential amino acids our bodies need for protein synthesis.
The effects of nutrition are cumulative, and higher value foods matter. For example, research proves that eating healthy foods such as broccoli side by side with less than healthy foods will negate some of thier negative effects.
If you would like to study flaxseed and cruciferous vegetables further, you’ll find more resources than you can imagine at nutritionfacts.org.
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All your training works together to produce desired results. Runners respect this and do their homework on training plans, nutrition, and the nuances of running shoes, to name a few.
Yet, when was the last time somebody asked you about your sleeping habits? Maybe it's because that’s considered too personal. However, it’s something we should inquire about because it’s vitally important for maximizing the value of all the other inputs.
#1. Establish Your Baseline
Only you know how many hours of sleep you really need. This may not be possible on weekends before early morning long runs, but a late morning or afternoon nap should come close to making up the difference.
#2. Respect Your Limitations
Getting in bed by a specific time sets the routine and conditions your sleep system. Later than that compromises the quality of your sleep, thereby resulting in some fatigue the next day.
Find what works for you and refine your practice as necessary.
#3. Back Away from Media
The goal is to tune into your body and mind before bedtime. Light stretching or yoga are ways to encourage this. For non-practitioners, the primary purpose of yoga and meditation is bringing your attention inward.
For more details on body awareness, check out this podcast’s Episode 11.
#4. Consider Natural Supplements
Magnesium Threonate and L-Theanine are two supplements commonly recommended for improving sleep.
Magnesium Threonate has the unique quality of crossing the blood-brain barrier, which provides additional benefits – one of them is improving sleep quality. L-Theanine is an amino acid commonly found in tea leaves, particularly green tea.
Please do your research and/or consult with a physician familiar with your medical history before taking these or any other supplements.
5. Avoid Time Awareness
Time awareness creates anxiety. Just changing your environment may be enough to reset, but doing some stretching or yoga will help to reconnect the mind with the body.
My view is that struggling to sleep means the mind and body are disconnected. Your mind is somewhere else, it’s distracted. So recenter it.
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It’s important to set realistic running goals and follow a race strategy to achieve them.
Strategy is often confused with planning. Strategy is determining in advance what must be true to achieve your goals. In addition to training, you may need to make lifestyle changes, such as getting more sleep and being intentional with nutrition.
Planning is simply scheduling the implementation of your strategy. As you train, you should track and evaluate your progress. To get started with your plan, have an open mind and be honest with yourself.
#1. Mentally Prepare Before The Race
Every runner has doubts when a race approaches. Remind yourself that doubts and fears indicate this is important to you. After all, you’ve trained for months and want to translate that into your best performance.
#2. Practice Your Race And Backup Plans
Develop and mentally rehearse a plan a, b, c, and so on for every race. This offers multiple, ready-to-go paths to a favorable result. Failing this preparation forces a decision with a mind that is busy managing running mechanics and tactics.
#3 Use A Race Day Checklist And Timeline
One of the keys to easing your mind on race day is having a routine you’ll follow from the moment you wake up. This should include how you’ll fuel and hydrate, specific types of stretching, applying sunscreen and anti-chafing lubrication, and so on.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe by going to runninglongevitylab.com and clicking on the Follow tab. If you have another minute, please consider leaving a review on Apple to help new listeners find the show. Just click the Rate Podcast tab.
I have enjoyed the benefits of these tools for years, but have no affiliation with the companies that provide them. See below for links to the respective providers.
The two handiest tools for traveling are the Naboso ball and the mini-roller. Those and a stretch band for muscle flossing take care of just about anything.
#1. Naboso Neuro Ball - This is a massage ball that resembles a standard lacrosse ball, except that it is slightly softer and more pliable, and that it is surrounded with flexible nubs that are useful for soft tissue massage.
#2. Yoga block - Most yoga blocks are made of foam. The one I use is solid and heavier with a pliable cork outer surface, making it much more durable and useful for support. I use them daily for supported split squats and similar exercises, such as Cossack squats.
#3. Half-round foam roller - The half-round foam roller is exactly what the name suggests, an odd duck. It looks like a normal foam roller that has been cut in half lengthwise. So, obviously it doesn’t roll, and that’s its advantage.
#4. Mini roller – If I had to choose one tool to travel with, it would be either this tool or the Naboso ball. I purchased this compact, mini-roller years ago for massaging the plantar tissues on the bottom of my feet. It has nubs like the Naboso ball that break up tissue restrictions and encourage blood flow.
#5. Pso-rite – The original Pso-rite product is a rigid plastic device that you lay on in the prone position. Two vertical fins shaped like an open hand with fingers pointing upward apply pressure deep inside the groin area to reach the psoas, just as a massage therapist would do with his or her hands.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe by going to runninglongevitylab.com and clicking on the Follow tab. If you have another minute, please consider leaving a review on Apple to help new listeners find the show. Just click the Rate Podcast tab.
Legendary marathoner Eliud Kipchoge has this to say about a frequently asked question: Do you always feel motivated to run? “I struggle with motivation sometimes, but I always try to have a positive thought, that I will enjoy the run.”
That’s great advice because we all face the same challenge. We get tired of the running routine. The challenge isn’t so much about boredom, but that our minds are drifting.
Keep Your Head In The Game
If it’s hot or humid, we recall perfectly cool days and compare them with this one. Resisting those outside thoughts is often referred to as keeping your head in the game.
It's easy to fall into the habit of running junk miles. When you run mostly junk miles, your running lacks purpose. We rationalize that we are getting the job done, even if we are not enjoying the process.
The problem is that having fun is one of the best ways to maximize your running potential.
Unless you answer to a coach, then you are the boss of your running. To stay motivated, commit to a structured training plan with tempo runs, intervals, and easy, regular, and long runs.
Use Deliberate Play
Adam Grant explores deliberate play in his book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. Deliberate play injects fun into skill-building activities. This transforms working out into a source of joy, and that maximizes productive outcomes.
NBA superstar Steph Curry uses deliberate play. He’ll invent games like scoring 21 points in a minute to help him practice his footwork speed and agility. Every time he works that drill, he improvises to find different ways to score the points, and that makes every day different, fresh and productive.
That’s the difference between play and practice.
Listen to the episode to learn how structured training builds physical and mental strength. You'll also discover ways to add variety to easy runs with deliberate play.
Running Drills
Here's a short video on A-skips and other running drills.
Here are skipping drills with emphasis on technique.
Mick Jagger skipping during concerts. It's subtle, so you have to look for it. At 81 years, he's a great example of running longevity.
Personal Best Running, by Mark Coogan
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe by going to runninglongevitylab.com and clicking on the Follow tab. If you have another minute, please consider leaving a review on Apple to help new listeners find the show. Just click the Rate Podcast tab.
Thanks so much for joining me today.
Be safe out there and enjoy your next run!
Today we will address what to do after running to fix your pain points and put the brakes on what’s causing your injuries.
If you missed parts 1 and 2, please check them out for context and continuity. They include practices that will help you reduce pain before and during your run.
Post Workout Nutrition
The first thing you should do after every workout is hydrate and refuel.
Refueling within 2 hours after a run with high-quality carbohydrates and proteins is crucial for optimal recovery. This practice helps replenish glycogen stores, supports muscle repair, and enhances overall recovery.
Post Workout Rehabilitation
This may be the most important practice for avoiding injuries. We’ve touched on it in previous episodes, but let’s break it down so that you understand not just what to do, but why.
When you have injuries that lead to chronic muscle or joint problems, it’s because the tissues have not fully returned to their original state. What used to be perfectly aligned muscle fibers are now a tangled mess. This is further complicated by the surrounding fascia tissues, which are in a similar state.
The tissues have healed, but not as they once were. They need to be “remodeled” to return them to as close to their original state as possible. This is a time-consuming process of stretching to the point of plasticity, slightly beyond the tissue breaking point.
Maintaining A Running Journal
The final post-running recommendation is keeping a running journal. The act of recording your workouts is a time-honored practice. It’s a ritual that will ensure your running longevity.
I recommend using an app such as Evernote or Notion that you can access anywhere. You’ll discover what matters to you over time and your entries will evolve to accommodate your needs.
The essentials I record are mileage, overall pace, and weather conditions. Over the years I’ve added average heart-rate to get a sense of my fitness. More recently I’ve added the percentage of time in Zone 2, another fitness indicator you can learn more about in Episode 8.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe by going to runninglongevitylab.com and clicking on the Follow tab. If you have another minute, please consider leaving a review on Apple to help new listeners find the show. Just click the Rate Podcast tab for that. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Be safe out there and enjoy your next run!
Everyone wants to run, but many resist the work it takes to run safely. As we age, we must be intentional about movement to keep our bodies in a state of readiness for activity.
Warming Up
Let’s start with warming up. In the previous episode, we discussed a pre-bedtime routine that moves the body before sleeping. This makes the next day’s pre-running routine go that much smoother and faster.
The routine is the same for warming up, but with greater intensity.
Here are the exercises I usually perform. Try them out to find what works best for you.
Another version of the cossack squat
Naboso Neuro ball for massaging and loosening foot plantar tissues.
Hindu Squat for elevating heart rate and activating muscles for running.
Suported ATG split squat (with yoga block)
Running Drills
Here's a short video on A-skips and other running drills.
Here are skipping drills with emphasis on technique.
Mick Jagger skipping during concerts. It's subtle, so you have to look for it.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe by going to runninglongevitylab.com and clicking on the Follow tab. If you have another minute, please consider leaving a review on Apple to help new listeners find the show. Just click the Rate Podcast tab for that. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Be safe out there and enjoy your next run!
The podcast currently has 26 episodes available.