Muscles are the most accessible way we have to see what our workouts do to our bodies. However, despite how many compliments you get from your Instagram pictures taken following your workouts, what matters is not what your muscles look like, but what they can do. In the early days, it was the strength […]
Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s only fitting to talk about my favorite body part on Valentine’s Day—the heart. From the time we’re teenagers scribbling cartoon hearts on our notebooks, we use the heart as a symbol of love. But it is also the most extraordinary muscle of our body. It is always working, from before we […]
On my 10-mile run today, I thought about distractions. Life is full of distractions that divert our attention away from what we’re doing and what we want to accomplish. Most situations that come up during the day are distractions. Even as I sit writing this paragraph in a coffee shop after my run, there […]
I have a friend who thinks I have some philosophical aversion to strength training. Although I do choose to run as my daily workout, I keep promising her that I will one day incorporate some upper body strength training. The funny thing is that I really have no aversion, philosophical or otherwise, to strength training. […]
1. Stretching is not going to prevent you from getting injured. Have you ever run with a dog or watched a horse race? If you have, you probably noticed something interesting—none of these animals stretch before or after they run. Stretching before a workout seems to be something that only humans do. Whether stretching […]
In the fitness industry, I hear the term “mix it up” a lot. Personal trainers, group exercise instructors, and coaches consistently tell their clients and athletes to constantly change the training stimulus to ensure adaptation—to “mix up your workouts.” In marketing their services, I see personal trainers say that when you train with them, “every […]
On a downhill portion about 9 miles into my 12-mile run on Sunday, a runner with gray facial scruff and a ponytail who looked liked he had been around the block more than a few times in his life, came up on my shoulder and passed me from behind. At first, I just let him […]
As I discussed in a recent blog post, and is worth reiterating here, runners literally have large hearts–specifically, the size of the left ventricle, a condition called left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). If you’ve ever had an EKG, you can see whether you have LVH: See the two biggest points on the EKG–one pointing up […]
February is National Heart Month. Heart disease is the number one cause of death among men and women. Everyone knows someone who has had heart disease. My father died of a heart attack when he was 51 years old. My twin brother and I were only eight years old. This is one of my favorite […]
I’ve been talking to a talented runner where I live in San Diego for over a year about working with me as her coach. She waffles back and forth about going through with it. Part of all her waffling is financial; she can’t afford it. But even when I have offered to coach her pro […]