You Have to Earn Your Run | The Art and Science of Running

The conversation focuses on the importance of biomechanics, habits, and body intelligence in preventing injuries and improving running performance. Speakers emphasized the significance of addressing asymmetries early on, using manual therapy, massage, and whole-body analysis to maintain posture, flexibility, and overall running performance. They also discuss the benefits of incorporating mobility and pliability practices into one’s fitness routine, using tools like foam rollers, lacrosse balls, and canes for self-massage, and prioritizing symmetry and range of motion. The speakers highlighted the need for athletes to prioritize mobility and pliability to prevent injuries and optimize performance.

Derek 0:00
Big question right off the bat, doing like a couch to 5k, what are what is your recommendation for them to get started and do it an injury for your way?

Joe McConkey 0:10
Well, I would never recommend to do what you’re doing.

Natalie 0:15
Oh, really!

Joe McConkey 0:16
I think it’s just really risky.

Natalie 0:18
Joe McConkey, a respected exercise physiologist and running coach, known for his focus on injury prevention and performance improvement for endurance runners.

Joe McConkey 0:28
You want to get faster, you have to be injury free.

Derek 0:30
Is music is like, is that incorporated into these techniques?

Joe McConkey 0:34
I don’t really recommend it again. I’m sorry, guys. Running sucks.

Natalie 0:39
Joe is the author of Pliability for Runners, and holds his master’s degree in Exercise Science and has achieved high level coaching certifications, contributing significantly to the success of runners at both national and international levels.

Derek 0:52
Dude, this is absolutely insane. And like the first thing that popped into my mind is, doesn’t that just destroy your knees?

Natalie 0:59
Today we are joined by Joe McConkey, a respected exercise physiologist and running coach known for his focus on injury prevention and performance improvement for endurance runners. Joe is the author of pliability for runners, and holds his master’s degree in Exercise Science and has achieved high level coaching certifications, contributing significantly to the success of runners at both national and international levels. Joe, welcome to our show. Thanks for being here.

Joe McConkey 1:25
Thank you. Great to be here.

Natalie 1:27
We’re excited to have you. I can only imagine how much detail goes into this. I, you know, personally, have been into fitness and exercise for a very long time. My preference is lifting. I’ve never really been a fan of running. When people are like, oh, yeah, I just run. I’m like, Nope, can’t, don’t, don’t love, but I know so many people who who love running instead of and I know there’s, there’s so many nuances, just like there would be with weightlifting and how to do it effectively and in a way that’s safe and that prevents energy and efficiency in the movement of your body. So knowing that you have all of this knowledge and expertise is really exciting. I know that it’s going to be impactful for our listeners who have been running for 20 plus years, and for people who are maybe just getting started and want to know how to do it well and prevent injury. So we’re gonna get into the details here in a minute. But I always like to ask a little bit about your background and help us understand who you are and and how you got here in the field that you are in.

Joe McConkey 2:34
Sure! Yeah. I mean, I guess, I guess, when I’m one of those lifelong runners. I think my first race, I was probably six or seven years old.

Derek 2:43
Wow.

Natalie 2:43
Oh no kidding.

Joe McConkey 2:44
It wasn’t torture. I volunteered to do it. And then, yeah, I ran, you know, through high school and college. And in college is where I was already studying and interested into the exercise science of it. And I started coaching, you know, friends and family on the side, and then continued on to my masters. And, you know, really started to travel the country and learn from other coaches, and start to travel the world and see and learn from kind of elite runners, kind of world class runners. And so I’ve had my foot kind of from the very beginning with amateurs and with elites and, you know, as a coach, I guess you get into it, you know, wanting to help people improve. They all want to kind of improve and get better and get faster. And the first, you know, lesson that I had, I think all coaches have, is, if you want to get faster, you have to be injury free. And so that became, and it’s become, a big passion of mine is, is teaching runners how to make that happen. So, you know, I coming out of school, I was, you know, I coached the college level. I coached at club level. I would teach running clinics here at Harvard, MIT, and I would do all this kind of educational stuff, working with a wide variety of people. And with that, though, I kind of started to realize, and given my passion of kind of the injury prevention stuff, realized how important it is on the individual level to work with someone one on one, because so much is lost you know, in working with a team. You can see something going on with an individual, but you don’t have the time to work on these kind of details with each person. So I the last, I would say, 10 years, I’ve been exclusively kind of individual, one on one stuff with runners. And, you know, they work, and a lot of them are with other teams. But I, I’m kind of honing in on those kind of details of the biomechanics, and what kind of habits do you have, and what do we need to work on, to to work on the injury prevention stuff. And then once you navigate that, then we get into the details of performance, whether that’s biomechanical or training theory in the programming. So…

Natalie 5:06
Awesome.

Joe McConkey 5:06
So that’s kind of where I’ve been.

Derek 5:08
Well, that’s awesome. So big question right off the bat, because I’m in the same camp as Natalie, I’m very much a lifter, and my cardio consists of basically just going on walks, because that’s what I enjoy. But like, let me, let me ask you this, for people that are in more of like just the lifting camp, what is your appeal to, to picking up running and incorporating it into a routine? Or if someone is, you know, thinking about essentially going doing like a couch to 5k what are, what is your recommendation for them to get started and do it in an injury free way?

Joe McConkey 5:51
Well, I mean, I think there’s a couple things there. In terms of, you know, the motivating pull to running, as opposed to another activity. I think most runners would agree that there is this overall health benefit. And it’s cardiovascular, it’s energy, it’s easier to move, it’s easier to do things when you’re fit from running as just a general function, functional human being that’s kind of hard to duplicate with with other things. When you had that kind of like, you say, you go on a walk, well, if you’re running, you can go hike up a mountain. Yeah, it’s, it’s going to be easy, right? So everything else becomes more manageable through the act of running. And I think you know, given it’s a repetitive motion thing where you know you’re doing 1000s of steps a mile, if you’re not used to running and like you’re coming from something like lifting, you really have to respect that. Where if, if there’s something off, and there’s no reason you would know there’s anything off until you start running more, but if there’s something off, and you now multiply this little something in your stride times 1000 or 2000 that little something can become an injury. So going into and doing a couch to 5k program is great. Certainly always err on the side of caution in terms of how quickly-you’re, everyone’s different. Some people have the legs and the strength because they do the lifting, and so they go out and they can dip into, get into a good stride pretty quickly and they’re cardiovascular challenged. Some people vice versa. So I think always thinking, Am I going to be able to react from today, well? so that I can do it again tomorrow, right? And it’s always kind of, the goal is not today, the goal is tomorrow, right? And that’s maybe counter to a lot of other exercise things, where I just want to be able to do this right now, right? It’s really, can you do this and be healthy tomorrow? And if you have that mentality, then you can start to add on the days. And with running, it’s the days and the weeks and the months of consistency that allow you to achieve your goals and finish the 5k.

Natalie 7:59
That makes sense to me. And I think, I think for me, just thinking fitness in general, even though I prefer to lift when I’m in a good routine, I try to incorporate, like, one interval run a week. You know, just because I’m aware that it feels different and it feels hard, and I know if I’m really challenging and stretching my body, then like having cross training and doing other types of movement is good for me, right? And I can feel soreness in different muscles than when I’m just lifting, right? Because it’s, it’s hitting different things. So I can appreciate, I can appreciate that.

Joe McConkey 7:59
Well…

Natalie 7:59
Go ahead.

Joe McConkey 7:59
Well, I would never recommend to do what you’re doing.

Natalie 8:01
Oh really! Okay.

Joe McConkey 8:01
I think it’s just really risky to not be running and to just jump in, jump in and do hard, high intensity interval running when you haven’t really done anything else during the week that is close to that activity. And there’s just certain adaptations that happen through regular, slower running, that allows faster running to be not only more injury resistant, but also more efficient that you don’t otherwise get unless you’re running. So it’s just a it’s just a bigger you know, it’s like-what’s going to add to the risk of injury? And that’s just-that kind of doubles the risk of injury when you just go and enjoy something intense. And again, you have the muscles tricked because you have the strength and the exercises that make it feel good, or you’re putting yourself at a risk from that repetitive motion of certain maybe flexibility or symmetry, that’s not there, and you don’t really care about that, but you would only care if you did repetitive motion stuff frequently. That can come out through something that you’re doing in an injury, instead of a minor sensation. It can become an injury because you didn’t ease into it. So it’s a, it’s a slippery slope to do that.

Natalie 9:48
Oh man. You’re telling me I’ve got to run multiple times a week.

Derek 9:52
laughing

Natalie 9:52
Ow. It’s so, it’s, I get it, and I think I don’t know if, I don’t know if you can relate to this, but one of my struggles with running, but it’s also probably gonna be good for me mentally is, like, I wouldn’t say that I have ADD, but I would say that I have just enough of it that, like, doing the same thing for a long period of time, don’t love it.

Derek 10:12
Yeah.

Natalie 10:12
It’s just, you know, so, like…

Derek 10:14
I mean, I would definitely relate to that. Like, if I, if I do, go for a run, it needs to be a loop. Like, yeah, if I’m on a treadmill, I’m gonna lose my mind.

Natalie 10:21
Oh, no. Can’t do that.

Derek 10:22
Like, I’ve got to find some loop in nature. And you know, if it doesn’t matter how small the loop is or, like, how tight it is, as long as I’m able to not see what I saw previously, I’m fine.

Natalie 10:33
Mm hmm. Yeah. I totally feel that. But you know…

Joe McConkey 10:38
Runners, I mean, runners are the same way. Most runners don’t like running on a treadmill because they get bored.

Derek 10:43
Yeah.

Joe McConkey 10:43
And there’s certainly, it’s not just the repetitive motion of it. It’s just running in general, is, is tough. I, one of my runners who who did really well, gave me a shirt that says, you know, you’ve probably seen it, says, Running Sucks. So I wear, I mean, and I believe that there’s some truth to that, and you have to kind of accept that, and then once you’ve accepted it, we can come up with tools to kind of minimize that thought, but it’s always there. So, you know, I think there are a lot of good distraction techniques to help with that. There’s even some elite Olympic marathoners who go out there in the marathon at the Olympics and say, Okay, we’re in that moment that sucks. What do I do to distract myself from myself in this sort of situation? Doing things like counting, trying to count your exhales, you know, to 100 and that’s hard to do when you’re suffering or when you’re bored, right? And so it’s fine. You count to 13 and 15, and you lose count, you restart. It doesn’t matter. You’re just trying this sort of meditation attempt to help, kind of distract you from the particular boredom or fatigue that you’re feeling.

Derek 11:52
You know, I know back in 2020 when all the gyms shut down and things were, you know, kind of a lot harder to kind of stay in that mindset. I know I did a lot more running then, and I there was a specific playlist, or there’s just a couple of, like, very specific songs that I knew I could run a mile in about that time. And like the cadence of the song and like the motionality of it, like, really drove me to, like, push myself. So I don’t know. Maybe is music, is like, is that incorporated into these techniques? Can Olympic runners listen to music? Or is that, like, off the table?

Joe McConkey 12:30
I don’t really recommend it again. I’m sorry, guys.

Derek 12:32
No! This is great. I mean, here’s the thing…

Natalie 12:34
Be honest with us.

Derek 12:35
This is why we brought you on. You’re the expert.

Natalie 12:36
Hard dose of truth.

Derek 12:37
We’re trying to figure out the best ways to do this.

Joe McConkey 12:40
Yeah, I mean, I think I don’t have any, you know-certainly elite runners will have music for their easy, slow recovery runs, right? But nothing up tempo for this reason, because you kind of have to be more in tune with what’s going on and make sure you’re running at the right exertion and the right pace for the workout at hand and the environment and all those things have to come together so you’re so you’re making smart decisions for what’s called for during the workout, as opposed to being at the whim of the beat or the music that happens to come on, you know? So I think it’s okay for the slower stuff and easy stuff, and again, like when you’re running multiple times a week, you’ll have days-most of your days are going to be that you’re only running intense, you know, a couple times a week. So, so, but yeah, for high intensity, definitely not for that reason, so that you’re kind of doing, doing the right thing for you for that day.

Derek 13:32
Gotcha. So, one big question I have, and you’ve, you’ve touched on this multiple times, so I kind of want to get into the specifics of it, you know, like you said, there’s 1000s of repetitions, which normally you don’t think, in terms of fitness, you don’t think of 1000 repetitions. You think of sets of, like, three with, you know, eight to 10 reps, like, but like, in this case, 1000s and 1000s. What are the main problem points for most people? Like, what are the things that you’ve seen in your experience that like, Look, if you’re just getting into running, or you’ve been in running for a long time, but are looking potentially want to do like, a gait analysis, or doing things along those lines, like, what are the typical things that people need to be aware of and how they can correct them?

Joe McConkey 14:14
Yeah. I mean, generally speaking, the most common aspect of stride that it’s kind of maybe prone to injury, is there’s been some sort of postural distortion that’s occurred for could be many reasons. It could be from birth. It could be from, you know, sports that are maybe one hand dominant. It could be from driving a stick shift for too long, or carrying a baby on one side for nine months, or running on a cambered road, or running on a track the same direction, you know, phone on one hand only, all these things kind of can contort and move your posture and your and your hips and your shoulders and and all that. And all this you wouldn’t really know or really care about until you do the 1000s of reps, because now from those postural distortions, maybe one hip is a little bit lower, and therefore one leg actually rotates more than the other leg or pulls in and immediately drifts in. So now you’re stressing the joints on that leg differently than the other, and so it’s those symmetries within the stride, which come from the postural distortion, that are the most common, by far, cause of a running repetitive motion injury. So that’s kind of the first thing to be aware of, is it’s, it’s a whole body thing.

Derek 15:36
Yeah.

Joe McConkey 15:36
You know the cause is so-and the fix is what you know, it becomes, I think, people’s passion only when they’re runners, and they realize how important it is to be injury free, because it does take time. You have to spend 15-20, minutes a day for many weeks and sometimes months, trying to reverse some of these postural distortions and soft tissue asymmetries that have occurred from those postural distortions. So it takes an investment to make sure and to work on regaining symmetry of the health of the muscle, regaining symmetry of the flexibility. And there are certainly cases where, like scoliosis or a structural leg length difference are there and those are irreversible.

Derek 16:15
Yeah, they’re pretty much permanantly damaged.

Joe McConkey 16:16
But even in those cases, a lot of times the soft tissue reaction has gone overboard. So, you know, the fix is doing the hard work, which is the home care, and you have the foam roller, and you have your particular flexibility routine, and you have, you know, I always encourage runners to do a lot of single side, single leg strength exercises, so you’re always monitoring right versus left, and all the different angles and parts of the hip, knee and ankle.

Derek 16:43
You know, you talk about unilateral and, like, I hear anything unilateral, and the first thing that comes into my mind is just like, lots of time. This is going to require lots of time, which, I mean, I guess, if you’re, if you’re really serious and want to achieve high levels of performance in anything, you’re going to be pouring that time in and that point like you’re saying, it really matters about the details. But so, I…

Yeah. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s, I don’t want people to have that idea that does take, it’s not about lots of time one day. It’s about 10 to 15 minutes every day, right? And if you do 10 to 15 minutes every day for a month, then you have built, and you will feel that difference in terms of these asymmetries and feeling more able bodied, but it’s more like it’s a lot of time total, but it’s a little time every day doing the right things.

Natalie 17:08
I’m curious, because I think this is what you’re saying, but correct me, if I’m if I’m hearing this wrong. It sounds like there could be things going on in your body, whether it’s your posture or something structurally in the tissues, whatever that are present. And if you’re doing like more lifting, like we are, versus something else, it’s more likely that they’re going to present and become a problem or an injury with running than something else, just because of the repetition, how many reps of the movement there is in the period of time. So it’s almost more exacerbated. Am I hearing that right?

Joe McConkey 18:06
Yeah, it’s the it’s the repetitive motion, which is, you know, two or three times your body weight per step, so per one of those reps. But, but yeah, because you’re, like, if you were, if you had imbalances in your shoulders, you’re not really going to find out much of that unless you were running on your arms, right? You’re not, but you’re doing these short set things or explosive sport things, right? And they’re normally not going to have these 1000s of reps type of thing. But because we’re not, we’re running on our legs, it’s going to be more pronounced. And it doesn’t mean we can. No one’s going to be well, some are, and certainly different folks around the world, like Jamaicans, are known to be genetically the most symmetrical, but most people do have some asymmetries, and even elite runners will have asymmetries. It’s we have asymmetries, but what are you doing to minimize the impact of that on your mechanics and the injury component to it. So it’s managing, trying to reverse as much as you can, and then managing what you’re left with.

Derek 19:08
So to dive, like, I’m very interested in this. And so like, Natalie’s here to essentially prevent me from nerding out too much, but, like, I am incredibly interested in this of like, so we’ve…

Speaker 1 19:20
That’s enough nerding. No just kidding. [laughing] You can keep going.

Derek 19:24
Oh okay. Okay.

Joe McConkey 19:25
She can stop me too because I know I can get too…

Natalie 19:27
No. Nerd out, little friend.

Derek 19:29
We’ve addressed the overall problem of asymmetry. We’ve talked about some of the modalities of how to specifically fix those. Are there, are there any common asymmetries that are more common than others? Like, is it normally like in the hips? Is there something that’s like, one leg is longer than the other, and is that the kind of the primary thing, or is there, is there something more common than that? And then also, like, what are I kind of want to dive into the specifics, because you touched on, like, stretching, foam rolling, these kind of things. So like, if we can address, like, what are the common asymmetries? And then what are the best ways to, kind of, like, go through each one of these modalities and maybe even specific exercises of like this is how you how you fix this? Yeah,

Joe McConkey 20:08
I think the most common biomechanical aspect you’ll see that causes injuries is sort of a permutation, what’s called lower cross syndrome, where you have femur internally rotate, you have the knee medially drift, and you have the tibia externally rotate, so you’re kind of pronated on one leg more so than on the other leg. And that’s coming typically from a hip drop, where one hip is a little bit lower, and that’s coming from sort of soft typically, unless there’s a structural thing, it’s coming from some sort of soft tissue imbalance that’s typically between the shoulders and the hips, right? So it’s, it’s a higher up cause, and so people will have those kind of asymmetries and go through the injury cycles and treat with all the bells and whistles where their source of pain is, but they never went higher to see why is that hip dropped? Is there something that we can do about that? So, yes, certainly always going to a good physical therapist that catch these things and they can work on you, but there are a lot of things people can do…

Derek 21:06
And there are alot of ones that specialize in that.

Joe McConkey 21:08
What’s that?

Derek 21:08
There’s physical therapists that specialize in, like, running, gait analysis, that kind of a thing.

Joe McConkey 21:13
Yeah, they have the experience, and they a lot of times, are runners themselves. They don’t have to be, but they understand the concept of, hey, it’s the whole chain thing that has to be taken care of. Some are just going to treat, you know, the the injury, and some will look at the whole body, but as a kind of-and that’s kind of where also my passion goes. It’s like running is every day we’re doing all the time we had to if we want to be as our competitive runners. So in order to stay injury free, you have to have the tools to kind of catch things early and fix them yourself, because you can’t afford the time or the money to go get massage or go to the physical therapy all the time. So for me, given that this cause is so often between the shoulders and the hips, the kind of first step that I recommend people is to go grab that high density foam roll and go compare right versus left, starting, you know at the, in the back, lower back, right along the spine, maybe mid back, sometimes in the in up in the traps that can throw shoulders off and have your upper body twist and rotate one way more than the other. So you go through the foam roll, compare right to left, zero to 10. Tens a lot of you know tension that you can handle zero is nothing. And score lower back, glutes, hip flexors, hamstrings, right? That’s kind of good, the big belly muscles of what supports the posture in the hip. And if anything’s off there, there’s kind of, in my mind, no reason to go in further detail until that’s taken care of, and there’s no reason to that you wouldn’t be able to fix that, right? We’re just talking about hypertension, which comes about through kind of inflammation, sort of that’s been stuck there in the muscles. So clearing that inflammation out through good quality, kind of targeted self massage and foam rolling can help relax the muscles and say, Okay, I’m now down to this even level. And what can happen is, if you have found the source of this hip obliquity, and you’ve done the work, and now my lower back is equal it’s zero, I can roll around. There’s no issues. The hips can start to level right then and there. A lot of times you have to go a little bit more in, or you have to get more engaged to really set the symmetry. And that’s where you start doing, you know, more of those single side exercises and strength exercises, right? Okay, we set the pliability the muscles are relaxed. Now let’s set that with the symmetry of coordination and symmetry of strength. So those are kind of things you hit the foam roll first. A lot of times, even if you’re not fixing the asymmetry, by fixing this pliability imbalance and this hypertension imbalance, you’re preventing a whole lot of injuries from occurring. Right this kind of the hypertension that you would feel on a foam roll is the precursor to an injury, particularly when it’s asymmetrical. So by knocking that out, even though there might be more layers to really get at the root cause, at least, you have made a step forward in terms of the injury prevention components. So that would be like the first thing is make sure your symmetrical right versus left throughout the body, particularly, you know, around the hips and the back.

Derek 24:16
That’s super interesting.

Natalie 24:17
That makes sense to me. I’m thinking about myself, and I’ll have this issue, um, sometimes just from lifting, especially if I’ve, like, had a period of time where I haven’t been regularly in my workouts, which is right now. Um, so I’m, like, getting back into it. And after last week, you know, first three workout, like, I did two lifting sessions, and then I went through an interval run. And I have a recurring issue of my IT band on my left side, from hip down to my knee, just getting super angry. And the longer it goes, it’s like it travels into my knee and down the front of my shin, and it’s just, it’s just a big pain. It’s kind of left over from a thing that happened when I was pregnant with my son, but she’s turning nine in July. So it’s a long time ago, something pinched kind of in my pelvic region when I was pregnant with him, and kind of made me walk a little funny to, like, kind of baby it. And then after he was born, I’d kind of, I think my gait had just got kind of off from that, plus I was carrying extra weight, right? And so it just continued to worsen and worsen. And I finally was like, Okay, I need to do something, because this isn’t getting better. And I got back into working out regularly, and I tried to focus on building my glutes back up, because I had a sense that that was kind of where it was starting. And I went and got chiropractic adjustments twice a week, and consistently foam rolled and did yoga stretches. And it went away, but and it’ll still come back sometimes, depending on what kind of movement I’m doing or if I’m out of shape. And so I’m curious, just hearing that, I mean, you can’t look at my gate and how I run, that’s probably for the best right now. But is that something that you see kind of often, that’s really, that’s an example of what you’re describing to us in the asymmetry?

Joe McConkey 26:01
Yeah. And, you know, you threw all the bells and whistles at it, which is fine, and, and you got to a healthy state. And once you remove those bells and whistles, then it comes back eventually, right? And so, you know, my question is always, what’s the most essential out of those bells and whistles? What’s making the real difference?

Natalie 26:20
Yeah.

Joe McConkey 26:21
And I think that’s where, and, you know, certainly, you know, I’ll see that from time to time. But that’s where, you know, the daily habit is, is most critical. And now we’re talking, you know, you did the work to get to your your healthy state, and, you know, let’s say a runner, does this work, like I was talking about on the foam roll and they get down to symmetry and a zero to two, everything’s good. And they had to spend a month or two to do it right? 15 minutes a day to do it, but now it’s there. Now that you’ve spent that kind of work to do it, and now it takes, it will take you maybe two minutes max, to roll through the body every day to make sure it’s holding, right? And if you have that two minute routine, the second something’s a little off, you’re going to catch it, right? And you’re going to work on it, get it back to symmetry within a day, right? Because you’re doing it as a daily thing. You didn’t have that kind of daily habit. So some tension came back, and it accumulated until you felt it, and by the time you felt it, it probably already worked itself all the way down the leg. So as a runner, being such a repetitive motion thing, being a daily activity, this kind of sort of daily habit is an, you know, not even advanced, just experienced runners know how important is to have these kind of daily habits so that they can catch it before it’s an injury, because your activities didn’t allow for that. There wasn’t something that you were doing that gave you full insight into the health of the body.

Natalie 27:42
Yeah.

Joe McConkey 27:42
Right? If you were jogging for 10 minutes easy every day, you would get that feedback that, hey, something’s a little off here. Let’s go hit the foam roll. Let’s go do this, or whatever you learn through what you were doing with the physical therapy, right? So you would have sort of learn quick fixes of minor things so that they don’t become a major thing later on.

Derek 28:01
So to get to some specific protocols around this. So you’re saying, you know, advanced lifters, experienced lifters, they should basically do this on a daily basis. Because if there are daily runners, you know, it’s like you want to essentially do, like, a quick check of your systems, make sure everything’s good, make sure that you’re not, like, exacerbating something to be off. Let’s say that someone that’s a beginner is just running once a week. Would you suggest that they should do this kind of routine, this like system check whenever they run? Or should they be doing it more frequently than that?

Joe McConkey 28:35
Well, I think a great step is to not run until you’re symmetrical on the foam roll. So first and foremost, just, I think whatever it takes, you know, whether it’s a week or a month, I think it will just set you up. You’ve kind of set this healthy, soft, symmetrical foundation of which now if little things come up, then you’ll be able to catch them. So by just going through that process and sort of saving the run until you deserve it, then when you go ahead and do the run, it will become sort of logical that, hey, I want to make sure I’m not wasting all that. And it can happen where you spend all that time to deserve the run, and you go out and do your 10 minute run, or whatever it may be, and something might creep up a little bit, right? Because there might be a biomechanical imbalance in there that’s not correctable. That’s fine. But if you want to keep this now as a more regular activity, we have to go back and reestablish that foundation that you spent that time before. So yeah, I think for you to get the most out of it and to be able to do it long term until you’re 80. This is the kind of skills that you start to embrace and sort of, it’s just a way of life.

Derek 29:48
Yeah.

Joe McConkey 29:49
You know? There’s no kind of you have to do it three days a week, or it’s, you’re doing it whenever you need to do it, to fix it. And, you know, I’ll have folks who will come and have, you know, these issues and they haven’t heard of this or spent the time, and I’m having them work in particular, soft tissue imbalances, five, six times a day, right? There’s two minutes every two hours they’re working on trying to reverse some hypertension that came about from something years in the past. You know, I’ve had folks have injuries from, you know, explosive sports stuff, and that’s impacted their stride, and it was 30 years ago, but their stride is still off. But if they do this work, and I’ve seen them do the work, they come in a month or two later and all of a sudden the freedom of motion is back that they haven’t had for decades, right?

Derek 30:32
That’s incredible.

Joe McConkey 30:33
So there’s situations like that that can come up where you know your your issues are fixable and reversible if you have this kind of habit in place.

Derek 30:43
Yeah.

Natalie 30:44
What I’m hearing is, it sounds to me like most of what you’ve mentioned is the foam roller. I’m like, and what I just want a little clarity on is, is the foam roller where you’re primarily identifying and working/treating on that imbalance, or the foam roller is just that, how you identify. And then there’s other exercises that might come into play?

Joe McConkey 31:06
Yeah. Well, and the foam roll is really just to get started, because we’re talking about, you know, it’s just like an easy tool. I haven’t used a foam roll in years, because eventually you graduate from a big surface into smaller surfaces, right? Because it’s hard to break that foundation that you spent on. So now we’re talking smaller muscles around the joints, those type of things that a foam roller can’t access. I always recommend people using their hands that they have strong hands. You’re going to feel a lot more. You’re going to learn a lot more about what’s going on. But there are other tools out there, whether it’s lacrosse ball or canes and whatnot, that you can access part of your body.

Natalie 31:40
Oof

Joe McConkey 31:41
I know. [chuckles]

Natalie 31:41
I know, I’m just like feeling things.

Joe McConkey 31:42
There’s more tiered pressure.

Natalie 31:43
I’ve used them so I know how that feels. [laughing]

Derek 31:46
Exactly how it feels. Yeah.

Natalie 31:46
You’re just like leaning against the wall with one of those little balls and just digging into your shoulders and you just want to cry. It hurts so good.

Joe McConkey 31:51
Exactly, right? But, you know, and I think so it’s just like a good introductory to the idea. I think, you know, if for sort of next level, or people who are more used to their body and exercise and kind of are into it, I like the route of using movement to direct where your tensions are. And then you use your foam roller, you use your cane or you use your ball. So, for instance, if you do a stretch, and I pull right knee to chest, right to stretch my right glute, and then I do my left knee to chest, and I feel one of them’s tighter than the other. You can go ahead and try to stretch more on that tighter side, but you’ll find it’s much quicker to take the tool and do good quality sort of self massage to bring in the rest of circulation that you need to create that freedom of motion than it would be the stretching, right? It’s just a more time efficient way. It’s kind of like the analogy I use is, if you have these kind of hypertensive soft tissue that’s maybe full of inflammation and is not giving very well, it’s like a pile of dry tangled fish nets, right? And if I take these really dry nets and I try to pull them apart, they can kind of rip each other and have something else come up. But if I throw a bucket of water on those fishnets, now they can expand out and glide more easily. So we’re trying to throw the bucket of water in the circulation through the foam roll, the massage the cane work right? And that in itself, creates the flexibility that you want in the symmetry. So you do the stretch. Takes five seconds to do a stretch. Then you do your pliability work, which takes a minute, maybe 90 seconds, and then you restretch right away to see what you did actually made a difference. And that cycle, again, only takes two or three minutes, but it’s I just found it’s just much more time efficient in terms of building a sustainable symmetry of freedom of motion and range of motion.

Natalie 31:56
Hey, I hope you’re enjoying today’s podcast. I just wanted to take a quick break, because if you’re listening, you probably know what we do here at Invigor Medical Podcast, but maybe not what we do at invigormedical.com so let me introduce us. At Invigor, we provide prescription strength treatments and peptides for weight loss, sexual health and lifestyle optimization. Every treatment plan is carefully prescribed by licensed doctors and sourced from legitimate pharmacies. You don’t ever need to buy questionable research chemicals again. And bonus, as a podcast listener, you get a 10% discount on your first treatment plan with code PODCAST10 at invigormedical.com. Now let’s get back to today’s episode.

And so what I’m hearing through this is, I’m thinking about body intelligence. And you know, we had a whole we’ve had whole episodes about the mind body connection. We were just talking on an episode last week about being in tune with your body and checking in with your body and how that affects your mental and emotional health. And so I’m hearing, I’m just, like, thinking about being so keyed in that, like, you’re like, stretching, you notice. I mean, how often do we just stretch and just notice that it’s tight, you know, you just notice that it’s tight. And that’s really it. It’s like, Oh, that hurts. I’m gonna do that stretch a little longer, you know, not really thinking, even though it’s making so much sense to hear this, like, Oh, I’m experiencing more resistance here. Let’s check in in this area. And so I think that’s fascinating. And I have a little thought. I’m curious, have you ever utilized or do you know of a Schottky mat,

Joe McConkey 35:11
Schottky mat, no.

Natalie 35:12
It’s like a little mat, I don’t know. It’s probably three and a half feet long and a couple feet wide, and it’s like acupuncture, essentially, there’s, you know, tons of these little circular things that have puncture on them, and you can get them to varying levels. And it’s supposed to be just you lay on it, just on your back. I got one a while ago, and kind of used it here and there in the morning for meditation, but I started a new nighttime routine, and I’m, it was recommended, especially at night to help relax. And I was like, that’s crazy, because it’s kind of painful, but it’s actually amazing for the relaxation. But last week, when I was struggling with my IT band like literally, had started limping. I can’t remember when it was that bad, and I couldn’t find my foam roller. I’m like, God, I must have let somebody borrow it. But because I don’t know how it disappeared, that thing’s like, four feet long. It’s a big one, so I don’t know where it would have gone, but I was just feeling kind of desperate, because I knew that that’s, you know, rolling that out is always the thing that takes care of it over a period of days. And so after I laid on my back, I was like, You know what? I’m just gonna try this. And so I laid on my side with the mat all the way up at the top of my head down to my knee for about 10 minutes. And then I stretched afterwards and it, I could not believe how much more motion and less pain I had, but that’s I was thinking about it, because what you just said, that’s about the blood flow, and that’s the whole purpose of those Schottky mats, is all those pressure points, like, if you feel the blood rushing to the area where you’re laying on the Schottky mat, and it feels like, feels like fire, and then it feels like heat, and then eventually you start to feel like things release and relax. And so I was just curious if you’d heard of that, or known it, or used it in your therapies.

Joe McConkey 36:46
No. And I mean, and that sounds great, and I think it’s just another tool in the arsenal, and it’s and that addresses that area, other areas, you know, maybe wouldn’t be as helpful. And I think, you know, for me, it’s and I don’t have, I don’t subscribe to any one thing. I’m not against any products that are out there. It’s more about the, do you have the daily habit of checking to see if you need to use something, right? And I think that’s kind of the more critical thing. Great, you have like one thing and you have a tool. But do you have, like, this sequence of, you know, eight movements and stretches that really expose or would expose imbalances? And are you doing that on a regular basis? And if so, great, then do you know what to do to fix whatever might come up, right? That’s kind of my focus.

Natalie 37:29
Yeah, I think even it’s, I mean, I can include myself in this, and I don’t know if you probably could too with people that are, you know, have worked out, or regularly work out, whatever it is, whether it’s running, lifting, HIT, cycling, whatever it may be, how infrequently we have a mobility practice within whatever our fitness is.

Derek 37:49
Yeah, I was just about to bring that up.

Natalie 37:50
Right? And you kind of see it more and more, and I feel like we’ve talked about it more, and I’ve been thinking about it more with the different kinds of guests we’ve had on the podcast. You know, even just one of the things we talk about is aging, well, right? And living with longevity and health, not just being really old, right? Because you, if you’re going to live a long time, you want to be able to live well.

Derek 38:09
Have a good health span, yeah.

Natalie 38:10
Right. And talking about how much balance and mobility is such a huge part of that, and like, you know, obviously now we’re also learning, like, how important it is to keep from being injured, and so as you’re talking about these things, I’m like, Well, geez, it just sounds to me like have a mobility routine every day, like whether you’re running or doing whatever you’re running through these checks and balances of movement, stretches, addressing an issue. I mean, am I off base here? But that’s kind of what I’m thinking about as you’re talking here.

Joe McConkey 38:38
Yeah. I mean, yes, there’s nothing wrong with having the mobility thing in there. I think for me, if I were to say what’s the one most important thing for longevity and healthy body as long as you can, it would be more the pliability than the mobility, because if you’re pliable, you’re going to be mobile enough. But the pliability really, you know when you press in and compress the muscle, whether it’s on the foam roll or what have you, that’s really giving you insight into what’s going on there within the fluid dynamics of your soft tissue system. It’s really telling you, hey, the way you have some inflammation here that that if we don’t take care of can accumulate and become major issues later on. It really starts to restrict things like mobility or muscle function, and of course, the gait, whether it’s running or even walking. So it, for me, it’s more, are we keeping the muscles I’m starting to sound like Tom Brady, because he got all into this during his career, right? But are you keeping the muscles loose and supple? And it doesn’t mean it has to be weak, right? You can have and should always shoot for both. It’s very strong when you use it and you engage the muscle, it can do what you want, whether it’s throw the football 50 yards or just go on a walk, but then is it loose and relaxed when, when you press into it, right? And so you want to have both at the same time.

Natalie 39:53
Right. I want to ask you to just expand on that just a little bit more, because I think it’s important, and maybe you could kind of unpack the difference between mobility and pliability, and I feel like that plays into,

Derek 40:04
I was just want to tell a quick story, but, yeah, sorry.

Natalie 40:07
Yeah, plays into your book Pliability for Runners, right? That’s the title that we talked about, you know, because when you’re talking about mobility and pliability, I think I know what you’re talking about and what the difference is. So I’m guessing we have people listening that’s like, Okay, well wait, what are we actually talking about here, and what does that mean?

Joe McConkey 40:22
Yeah, and I think just simply, you know, again, mobility is great. Mobility, the ability to move and to be as flexible as you need to for your activities, and for that to be free and easy as again, your activities require, whether you know if it’s going to be different activities, if you’re walking or your a gymnast type of thing, but you have the freedom of motion, the mobility to move around, and there’s no kind of pain. Pliability is simply, can you compress a muscle and not have pain, right? And so if you’re pliable, it’s hard not to have mobility, right?

Natalie 40:55
Okay.

Joe McConkey 40:56
If you’re being restricted by soft tissue so you don’t have mobility, it’s probably coming from hypertension in a muscle or connective tissue and by working on the pliability there, you’re going to gain that mobility, right? So if we had to have a habit in place, and we picked one, it would be focus on the pliability because you know that’s going to take care of your mobility. I’m suggesting use the mobility as a test, and then to test your pliability, say, Oh, I’m tight here. Then do your pliability work to regain the mobility. Does that make sense?

Natalie 41:26
Yeah.

Derek 41:26
That makes a lot of sense.

Natalie 41:27
No, that makes so much sense. And I’m glad that you broke it down like that. And I’m just thinking about how, for like, basically my whole life, I’ve talked about, oh, yeah, I just carry a lot of tension in my shoulders. And now you’re talking about that, I’m like, oh, probably should do something about that. Like, I just, it’s just, oh, I just carry a lot of tension in my shoulders.

Derek 41:44
You know. No big deal.

Natalie 41:45
Or no, I’m just an INFP. That’s the way I relate to the world. You know, that’s just my mother’s drigs. You know, instead of just like, well, maybe we should work on some pliability, Honey.

Joe McConkey 41:53
Right! And not only that, it’s, it becomes, as you get older, you probably become, most people become more aware of their body, and maybe their posture starts to drop. And so maybe they get motivated to fix themselves when they get in their 40s and 50s, it’s just now a harder battle, right? Because you didn’t spend the time on the soft tissue during the process. So now it’s sort of stiffened, and connective tissues can calcify to a point where it’s really tough to kind of reverse that. And so doctors say, Oh, don’t work on posture as a 50 or 60 year old because it’s so much work. It doesn’t mean you can’t or you shouldn’t, but it does take more work if you neglect it throughout your life.

Natalie 42:26
Yeah.

Joe McConkey 42:27
So now it would take you maybe a month or two or three months to work on the tensions you’re talking about, which is a lot of time, but that can also set the framework for the next 20 years. If you do that work and then do relatively little work to maintain it once you achieve it. I think the gains, you know, can last a long time and make it much easier for you to have that mobility and posture and, you know, injury free body that you’ll want to have when you’re older.

Derek 42:53
You know the-So, what I wanted to talk about just really briefly is like, so I’ve had a lot of different jobs in healthcare. One of them was, I was a caregiver at a caregiving facility. And it’s like all the places I’ve been, I’ve learned lessons just by view, like seeing the people that I was caring for. And like, when you’re in a caregiving facility, it’s like everyone, like the kyphosis, right? The shoulders caved in the hunched over feed, you know, looking down at the ground. You know, can’t tell you how many people that, like their hands, would be like, curled up into balls like this, and they’d barely be able to open their fingers, open up and close. And when you’re talking about pliability, it’s like, it’s the ability, like, I mean, you’re absolutely right. It’s like, it’s kind of like a square is a rectangle. Who has that logic is like a square is a rectangle, but rectangles not a square. It’s, you know, you can be mobile but not be pliable, but it’s very hard to be pliable and not be mobile. And so, like to me, it emphasizes the importance of this so much. It’s like, if you want to be a an old man or woman that wants to be able to move and, you know, go about your life like, these are really important things, not just for running this is important for across the board. So I think these are just incredibly valuable tools.

Joe McConkey 44:21
And it’s, you know, I mean, I only do, I’ve only worked with runners my whole life, really. But it’s, it’s across sport too, right?

Derek 44:30
Yeah.

Joe McConkey 44:31
And there are certainly repetitive motion injuries in other sports, swimming, tennis. You know, these things come up that a lot of these injuries come up that can also be prevented if those habits are in place, right? And you’re keeping on track of your symmetry and your pliability.

Derek 44:48
One of the biggest things that I wanted to bring up and maybe you have a hot take on this, but I you know, you hear this phrase, sitting is this new smoking, right? That it’s like you’re in this very rigid, and you know, here we are sitting and thinking about our Mary Richards episode where we were all self conscious about how we sit. Do you do anything for your athletes or for anyone that comes to see you specifically to offset the detriments that come from, like just sitting?

Joe McConkey 45:17
Well, the one thing I say is most of the time, right? If they don’t have a standing, movable desk, most of the time, if you put a knee pad on the ground and you kneel, the keyboard can stay the same height. You don’t have to move everything. So you switch every 15 minutes and you’re kneeling, and you look the same on the camera, whatever you’re doing, you now don’t have a tight lower back.

Natalie 45:41
I know! I’m trying it right now. It’s pretty similar! [laughing]

Joe McConkey 45:45
See? And that knee pad gives you two inches, then it’s perfect.

Natalie 45:47
Let’s just give a little mic adjustment.

Joe McConkey 45:48
I mean, I can’t really tell.

Derek 45:49
Hello.

Natalie 45:49
Here we are, folks. We should just like, we should start a podcast episode next time and be like, are we sitting or kneeling?

Derek 45:58
You’ll never know.

Natalie 45:59
And make people guess. You’ll never know.

Joe McConkey 46:00
That sounds like a drinking game.

Natalie 46:02
It does.

Derek 46:05
Back in our chairs.

Joe McConkey 46:05
So, but yeah, I mean, those, those kind of things. And some people, like, I’ll work with triathletes, and they’re or they’re coming from a biking background, and they have the same situation, tight lower back, tight hip flexers because of their position that they’re in during all the biking. Or if you have to sit all the time, that’s fine, but if you want to run and get your best out of running, you have to counteract that with something. And so that’s where the 15 minute habit of hitting the foam roll or whatever tool you had to work on the lower back and the hip flexors and the quads to make sure that they’re zero to two despite what you’re doing through the day, then at least you can survive it, right? And it will have less impact.

Natalie 46:40
Yeah. Okay. So unless you have something you want to say, I kind of have a couple questions.

Derek 46:44
I mean, I’ve got tons of stuff, as long as I’m able to ask one last thing towards the end of the episode.

I will give you the opportunity to ask one last thing.

Okay. Alright, alright. Thank you.

Natalie 46:52
Only one.

Derek 46:52
Okay.

Natalie 46:53
We talked about this.

Derek 46:56

[laughing]

Natalie 46:56
Okay, so I’m thinking, you know, most people listening maybe don’t have access or the opportunity, or aren’t feeling quite motivated enough to seek help from a professional, an expert like yourself. I’m thinking about myself when I’m running, and honestly, anytime I’m doing any kind of movement, whether you know it’s lifting, hip movement, I’m you know, I try to take the things that I’ve learned about my physiology, the way my body works, my muscles work, activation, posture, etc, to make sure that I’m doing a movement in the best way possible. And as I’m running, I think about that too. I think about like, well, how are my shoulders, like, How’s, you know, my chest carriage and my, you know, my abs, and even the tilt of my pelvis, and where are my knees, you know? So I’m wondering, for someone that’s kind of wanting to just be keyed in and paying attention as they’re running, what are sort of the mental checks that you would say, As you’re running, think about this. Notice this. Notice how this is moving, and assess.

Joe McConkey 47:57
There’s, um, there’s a great school of thought, I guess I would call it, you know, it’s in other sports called Alexander Technique.

Natalie 48:06
Oh yes! I play piano, so I know.

Joe McConkey 48:09
Right, right. It comes from music, right? And so there’s some, there’s some good sort of tools that come from that that can be really helpful with running. This notion of, you know where to establish your full posture, where you take, I have folks take a deep chest breath right, fully inflate their lungs, and they feel their ribs expand right, and they feel their shoulders broaden. And you also feel in the Alexander Technique, if you remember, says head forward and up. There’s this little kind of head now that that happens right where you’re might be like this, but you take the full chest breath and now you have the back your neck open up, type of thing, and you feel your head kind of lifts up, and your ribs lift out of your hips. So you have those things that can happen when you take the full chest breath. Okay, here’s my upright posture. I’m not stiff military. I can move around. I’m functional. But this is my best full chest inhale. I’m up. I’m relaxed. I can breathe normal now. And by just doing that and learning that skill, first, you practice walking. Can you hold it while you’re walking? Can you hold it while you’re walking upstairs and downstairs or do you start to collapse in different ways? Then can you transition from a walk to a run and still kind of hold all that together, right? And I, you know, a good kind of, once you kind of get that skill chest inhale, I feel my ribs lift and my hips, see my head kind of forward and up, and I’m upright, but not stiff, you take, you can use that kind of deep chest breath every mile, every mile marker you go through, or every five minutes you take your deep inhale. And if you feel like you did a postural shift for the inhale. We know we don’t have the habit in place yet, right?

Natalie 48:11
Gotcha.

Joe McConkey 48:11
So you try your best to hold on to it longer. Maybe you drift after a few minutes, right? The next mile mark comes up. You take that inhale. Okay, here’s my posture. So it takes, you know, we need some sort of trigger to set good, optimal functional posture, and then we need to simply put that into practice, and like we said, with the 1000s of steps, if you do that, and you line things up well and and you’re not hunched over at the hips, and you’re not tilting your head back, type of thing, and your chest isn’t falling over your knees. If all that’s happening, then the act of running starts to become its own strength exercise, where now you’re strengthening the small little muscles that are around your spine that becomes a strength exercise for your postural muscles. So now, eventually, after a month or so of running like this, you have this posture that doesn’t take work. It doesn’t take conscious effort. And of course, that will translate to walking and general posture as well. So so yeah, you’re totally on the right page there in terms of, you know, where your chest is and shoulders and head and all that coming together. You know the Alexander Technique, where you kind of learn that and can snap your finger and get right into that optimal posture. That’s great. Now we need a way to hold you accountable while you’re running. So every five minutes, I’m going to do a self check and see if I’m able to hold that throughout the role.

Natalie 50:57
How much of a role does good core strength play in in your posture and in your running technique?

Joe McConkey 51:08
I mean, it depends. If you are, if you’re not running with good posture, and you don’t have it as or don’t have any other activities, it can be pretty important. If you’re in you know, some runners, more advanced runners, will have all different types of workouts they’re doing. They’re sprinting, they’re doing hills, they’re running eight miles, very hard. They’re running 20 miles on the long run, right? And so when you go through all those different types of workouts, the core starts to strengthen itself, right? And if you’re used to sprinting up a hill and running, you know, short strides at top speed type of thing, you’re kind of getting strong from that core. If you’re not having those kind of things in your program, then absolutely you gotta counter it with sort of regular strength working. And certainly elite runners will have maybe a four or five minute routine that they do almost every day just because they feel that they need to keep it engaged. I don’t know if you need to have to go quite that route. But general core, it’s not like we need the crunching motion. We don’t need that. We need the stability 360 in all angles, right? So you’re doing core work in all angles. You know, we’re talking about plank, reverse, plank, side plank, all those kind of things are in place. And again, a lot of those can be single leg, too, where you’re doing plank with one leg and then the other. Reverse plank on one leg and the other. All those are single legs, so that you’re doing both at the same time.

Natalie 52:26
Yeah, I love me some plank. I mean, there’s times where, like, all I do is…

Derek 52:30
Are you crazy?

Natalie 52:31
Yes! I mean, I love hate it, but I love it because I can feel my entire body working, you know?

Derek 52:40
100 percent.

Natalie 52:40
And I feel so focused in on all of these different areas and making sure my posture is where it should be. And then, you know, there’s just so much you can do, like you said, with your legs, drawing knees in, you know, elbows, like, bringing, you know, hip like, there’s just a lot. So I’m a big fan.

Joe McConkey 52:54
It is, yeah, and I would just say with running, you know, it’s symmetry right to left, but also front to back. So you’re talking about, you know, one particular sort of angle and position. There’s variations, of course, but you would want to flip that around and make sure that’s equal equally strong.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. All right, what’s that question? Your burning question.

Derek 53:13
Am I permitted to ask my question now?

Natalie 53:14
You may.

Derek 53:15
So I’m actually going to ask this question fully ready to have my heart broken.

Natalie 53:19
Oh God.

Derek 53:19
Because, you know, you’ve already…

Do you want to hold my hand? Are you going to be okay?

Maybe, maybe.

Natalie 53:23
I’ve got you.

Derek 53:22
Oh my gosh, okay. So I am a huge fan, personally, of you know, this has become more popular over the last couple of years, rucking. So putting on a backpack heavyweight and just essentially going for a walk. Right? What’s your take on that? Good or bad, pros or cons? I mean, obviously, like, kind of, like, I’ve already kind of answered my question to a certain degree. It’s like, you want to do this preliminary check before you, before you pop 45 pounds on your back, and you know, your, if your hips are all wonky, then having that extra 45 pounds of weight is probably going to make it even worse. But like, overall, what? What is your general opinion?

Joe McConkey 54:04
Well, I mean, I always go first to, if you were an elite runner, how would that fit into the program, right? How’s that going to help like an elite runner or someone trying to reach their potential at whatever level, you know? How, where does that fit in? And I think it’s, you know, it’s a strength exercise, and so you have to be careful to do that, because some people can’t handle their own body weight, much less more weight. So you know, for those people, and that habits all the time, there’s some weight that needs to be lost before we can get more advanced. And you do that, of course, in a healthy way. But if it’s something that that the person is prepared for, and they’ve done, you know, maybe some, some other exercises to gain that strength, then I think it can be helpful as a strength exercise. But it’s, it’s like, you know. Uh, ultra runners, or people who do a lot of hiking, where they’re out there a long time and they’re doing a slow activity. They’re running fairly slow relative to other runners, where you can do something and you’re strong, you’re getting stronger for it, but you’re losing ground reaction to the ground, right? You’re not able to have a spring and a quick reaction to your step. It’s harder for you, it’ll be harder for you to kind of develop that lower leg spring that’s supposed to happen through, you know, fast running. So it’s good, but in balance is what I would say.

Derek 55:32
Gotcha.

Joe McConkey 55:33
Let’s use it for its purposes, to get stronger, but we have to have other activities to work on other components of your running fitness.

Derek 55:39
So that got me thinking, my brother in law is in the military, and, like, I told him that I ruck. And he’s like, Oh, that’s cute. And he sends me these screenshots of him doing weighted runs where, like, he’s got 45 pounds. Like I do rucks-I’m up to, like 70 pounds on my back right now, and I’ve gotten up to that point, and you know, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty nice. But like, he’s doing weighted runs with 45 pounds on his body, doing like, five mile runs. And I’m like, Dude, this is absolutely insane. And like, the first thing that popped into my mind is, doesn’t that just destroy your knees? You know that you’re, like, you’re putting it because, like, you’ve already got these 1000s of repetitions, and now you put that, and you multiply the weight of this extra 45 pounds, just like slamming them, like, what if somebody’s in that situation, how do they best mitigate the amount of impact that they’re putting on their knees? And what are your general recommendations?

Joe McConkey 56:34
Yeah, yeah. And yeah. I mean, to your point, like, I’ve worked with the military here and military individuals too. I mean, this is a functional thing. They need to be able to do this, obviously, for obvious reasons. So that’s a different ballgame. It’s, that’s where we switch from, you know, what’s good for elite runners? But I think, you know, and that’s a general stigma with running, is it’s bad for your knees. It’s, and which is, you know, I really feel false. It’s good for your knees, and that’s and the studies show that you get thicker bones and stronger skeletal system if you do it right. And so that’s where you know someone who has to do that for their work or for the military. That’s where all those things become more important. Can we reduce some body weight healthily? Are we keeping good posture, and are we watching our symmetries, right? All those things become even more critical. And then, of course, like good training with anything, it’s a gradual process. And I don’t know how he did it, he might be able to jump some loops there, but you would start with five pounds and 10 pounds and gradually work up to that over time.

Derek 57:37
Mm, hmm.

Awesome.

Natalie 57:38
Okay, I’ve got one for you, because we’re, we’re really, we’re a little bit over time here, but Fact or Fiction, your shoes matter a lot when you’re running.

Joe McConkey 57:49
Uh, performance, fact. Injury prevention is unfortunately in between. You know, because, because most injuries are, like we talked about, unilateral one side only. So if you’re having an injury on one side, how can you blame the shoes? Right from what happened to the other foot, right? The other leg, however, different shoes will bring out those asymmetries at different rates, right? So you can hide some asymmetries by having a different shoe. So I wouldn’t hang your hat on the shoe right away. There’s probably something else going on and that could be, you know, there’s certainly cases where people can have bilateral injuries and bilateral shin pain or foot pain, and that’s where the shoe can help with that, for sure. But again, 80% of injuries are going to be unilateral. So it’s normally something else. Performance is a different thing, and that’s come about the last eight years with the carbon fiber shoes. And that’s a real deal, and it’s probably here to stay forever. All the world records have been broken because of the carbon fiber shoes and that’s transferring into track records into track as well, even though it’s not as impactful. So performance, it’s a real deal, and it’s unfortunate, but it’s here. So I think anyone who is really trying to get their best performance in a race has to kind of go to the carbon fiber shoe.

Natalie 59:09
Yeah. Okay, that made me think of one other little question. Shin splints. If you’re getting shin splints from your running, is that something that’s fixable by your gait and the corrections that we’ve talked about in this episode, or is that just people?

Joe McConkey 59:23
Yeah, a lot of times people who are getting shin splints are leaning forward too much because they have a tight lower back or tight hip flexor from sitting. That’s very common. And then certainly the hypertension, normally it’s from the calves. The calves are super tight. You go in and you push with your thumb, and you can feel that hypertension. So a lot of times by working on the posture, and then working on the pliability in the cast, and then maybe sometimes in the shins, you’re going to be in a different place. But that can be difficult for folks, because that could-the shins are an area that are more distal. There’s less muscle mass, less blood flow, so it takes a little bit more work. So that could be a month of work just to kind of get the area ready. And then you really have to ease into the runs themselves. Some people are running where they are subconsciously flexing their toes too much while they run, and they’re flexing at the foot just to kind of clear the ground, particularly if they have a low stride, they feel they have to do that. So there’s some retraining in there that can also be helpful.

Okay, cool. Those are the couple things I was thinking about, but you have alot more too.

And all of you have successfully nerded out the entire time. [laughing]

Natalie 1:00:29
Yes, for sure.

Derek 1:00:30
You know, I absolutely love this and like it’s obvious that you are just a wealth of knowledge, and so I greatly appreciate you joining us on our show. For people that want to learn more about you and your work, where the can they find resources and where can they find your book?

Joe McConkey 1:00:48
Yeah, you know, Pliability for Runners is on, you know, Amazon. I work at the Boston Running Center where we do gait analysis. But there’s other gait analysis around the country and I think, you know, finding local physios that are kind of used to the whole body, or even massage therapists and sometimes even chiropractors. We have good chiropractors here that do manual therapy and do whole body analysis, right? They’re not just crack the back type of folks. So, so kind of getting and finding people in your area that has kind of the whole body focus, I think, is a good tool to have in your pocket. And if not then, then having these kind of habits, getting Pliability for Runners, getting these kind of books that talk about range of motion and freedom of motion and how to attain that in a holistic, healthy way. I think, think that’s the route to go.

Derek 1:01:41
That’s awesome. Do you have any YouTube recommendations or YouTube channels? Because, you know, a lot of this is, like, very visual, like, like, hey, you know, put pressure here. Do this. Are there any YouTube channels that you personally use, utilize, or that you would recommend?

Joe McConkey 1:01:55
Not really. I mean, we kind of, we like to create, you know, our own instructional videos. They’re not like full on instruction, but we kind of compliment what we talk about within the videos. But, yeah, if I don’t kind of have a I kind of just, you use YouTube as here’s a very specific position or very specific thing. I don’t kind of know of anyone that’s kind of getting into the full deal within the video itself. Maybe it’s something we should consider.

Natalie 1:02:18
Yeah!

Derek 1:02:19
I was gonna say maybe that’s a really good opportunity for you guys.

Natalie 1:02:22
Yeah, I’d follow you on YouTube.

Joe McConkey 1:02:23
Or it could be I just didn’t do enough research.

Natalie 1:02:27
Well, I’d say it’s an opportunity.

Derek 1:02:28
100 percent.

Natalie 1:02:29
Yeah, absolutely. It’s been such a joy having you on. I feel, I was like just looking at the iPad. I’m like, Man, I didn’t get a chance ask that, or that, or that, but there was so much that we covered, so maybe we can have you back another time to talk some more. I’d love to hear more stories about, like, you know your history, and the coaching you’ve done and the consulting you’ve done, because that’s really cool. And here’s some actual anecdotes of the work that you’ve done in your in your illustrious career. But I’ll just say for now, thank you for taking the time to chat with us. This was very you know, I started the episode like, Hey, I don’t really want to run, and noq I’m like, I think I’ll start running more.

Joe McConkey 1:03:03
Now you’re like, oh, I don’t know if I want to work on my body all the time.

Natalie 1:03:06
No, just as we’re sitting here, I feel like I’ve become more in tune and aware of my body. That doesn’t feel good.

Joe McConkey 1:03:12
Now we’re hyper aware, and now it’s just too much, too much information.

Natalie 1:03:16
Too much information. No, just the right. We both like a lot of information. So thank you for sharing all of the knowledge and information. That you have with us.

Joe McConkey 1:03:24
Yeah, absolutely. It’s great being here and talking to you guys. Look forward to doing again. All right, sounds good? Welcome. Alrighty.

Derek 1:03:30
Thanks for tuning in to the Invigor Medical Podcast.

Natalie 1:03:33
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Derek 1:03:37
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Natalie 1:03:42
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