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Guest: Eoin Everard

Release Date: 3/13/2023

Welcome to Trulyfit the online fitness marketplace connecting pros and clients through unique fitness business software.

Steve Washuta: Is running a high impact exercise? is repetitive, low impact worse than short term high impact? Do we need all these gadgets to track our gait times and cadence? What does sports science say about how a novice processes movement versus an expert? We talk about all this and much more in the upcoming episode.

Welcome to Trulyfit. Welcome to the Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I am your host, Steve Washuta, co founder of Trulyfit and author of Fitness Business 101.

On today’s episode, I speak with Eoin Everhard. But before I get to that quick housekeeping, we are on YouTube Trulyfitapp. You can watch us both the Monday episodes, and the Thursday episodes, the interview episodes and the solo episodes are now both on YouTube go like and subscribe. Oh, whenever RT is a Irish physical therapist.

He really specializes in running and helping runners and he uses Pilates to do that. He has a lot of accolades in the running world. He’s a sub four minute mile or a sub 14 minute 5k of sub 30 minute 10k all extremely impressive numbers.

The beginning part of our conversation surrounds running, is it a high impact exercise? Is it good for you? What do you do with people who are struggled to running? What are some tips and techniques for runners to the gadgets matter? Or should you just free run and listen to your body?

And then we get into more of almost like a sports psychology type conversation, really how you push past what’s important to think about in exercise and fitness and different sort of coach speak that I thought was fantastic. It was a great conversation. Owen actually has a really cool device coming out that he’s been working on. It’s been his labor of love.

He calls it for years. So he’ll come back on and talk about that in the near future. I’m sure when that is launched. With no further ado, here is Owen Everard. And myself. I want to thank you so much for joining the Trulyfit podcast wanting to give my listeners and audience a little background on who exactly you are and what you do in the health and fitness industry day to day.

Eoin Everard:  Great, Steve, thanks so much for having me on. Really appreciate it. Yeah, so my name is own Everard. I’m a chartered physiotherapist or physical therapist over in the States. I’m a lecturer here in Ireland as well. I lecture on biomechanics and kind of sports medicine.

Eoin Everard: And then I’m a Pilates instructor as well. We have an online Pilates course called every pilates.com specializes in sports Pilates, so and then main kind of hobby, I suppose at this stage would be running I have like a sub four minute mile or so 14 minutes. So 1350 845 k and then 2950 for 10k.

Steve Washuta: Well, that’s quite amazing. We have a lot to talk about. We’re going to be talking mostly about running but I want to go back to some things you first said. I also have a Pilates background. I’m not sure exactly. Yeah, so I am a I was former I have never kept my certification up because I don’t really work in facilities anymore. But I was a level two peak pilates reformer certified.

So I’ve worked on reformers basically from the age of let’s say 26 until 34. I’m now 37. So for the last three years, I haven’t I just sort of changed my career and lifestyle a little bit. But Pilates was very important to me, as I was learning the fitness industry because number one, it really helped me with cueing.

It does a better job than let’s say your average just weightlifting certifications with understanding where the body is and how to move joints and full range of motion and really how to engage muscles and diaphragmatic breathing and those sorts of things. Does it also help with running? Do you feel like understanding Pilates and the basics of Pilates helps you as a runner are training to run?

Eoin Everard: Yeah, definitely, I think I think the importance of Pilates is what you said there in terms of gives that baseline that you know that good movement patterns and being aware of your body and like good technique essentially that can then be used in the gym.

Eoin Everard: For more like work capacity or anatomical adaptation, you know, doing reps 10 to 15 where it helps with runners is running is very passive injuries like sore plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis, it’s a lot of load through the body, and the muscles don’t necessarily activate on their own with running. So it’s where it really helps is it can help activate the muscles and that can help with two things.

Eoin Everard: One, it reduces the injury risk because now the muscles are awake essentially are activated to help take some of the pressure off the ligaments, the joints in the tendons. And then secondly, it helps by a thing called running economy if you’re smoother because they are core is more like cause your course a stronger like are more stable rather than moving left to right direction.

Eoin Everard: You’re all your energy is going into one direction so it’s kind of like having the tires in your car pumped up to the to the optimal level. Everything is working efficiently so it can help with that efficiency and help with that injury risk.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, and I think we’re gonna get into this later, but it’s hard for me not to just get into it now to what I use Pilates for with with some of my runners, I had a gentleman who was in his early 40s, who was a Sprint’s triathlete. So for those who don’t know what that is, it’s a shorter version of a, you know, triathlon, but you’re still running and biking and swimming.

And he was unbelievable. He was in his early 40s. And he made like the the US national team for that age range. But he couldn’t hold a plank for a minute, because all he did was run, and all he did was swim, and all I did was biking, he wasn’t doing the things in the weight room to sort of like round out his body. In addition to that, you put someone on the reformer, and you have them use some of the smaller muscles in their legs that the runners aren’t typically using, right? If you put their feet up in the straps and have them make circles and do things, it was very challenging.

And I think because runners are moving forward and backwards, right, same same plane of motion, and then you get them getting their hips moving around and more of a circular fashion, it gives them I guess, you would call it a more full body workout that they don’t typically get when they’re just running.

Eoin Everard: Yeah, so true, Steve, you’ve hit the nail on the head. And even that control, like when you’re running, you can run with any technique. So there’s never that level of precision. And that’s why I like Pilates. Say, if you have if you have the technique, strength training is unbelievable.

Eoin Everard: But as you said, even from a coach’s perspective, learning those cues, and then from just generally like, athletic development perspective, like developing strength appropriately, learning how to control the body is massive. So that’s why I start generally with like sports, pilates, because strength training would do the same.

Eoin Everard: Same and sometimes maybe even better idea for runners of you know, really activating the muscles, but I find that a lot of people, they can go in with the kind of seeing poor habits like you know, maybe they, they arched her back a lot, and they kind of go into this anterior pelvic tilt, which isn’t really using the core, it’s using the back muscles to stabilize.

Eoin Everard: So it’s better to take it back a step as you said, and, and highlight where they’re lacking control and where they’re lacking, say or even range of motion or doing like circles with the hip or, or being able to move through the hips while keeping this the spine stable. So I like that I like I like to Pilates for lack of control, as you said, to highlight deficiencies.

Eoin Everard: And sometimes people are in the gym, under, people just assume they’re doing things correctly, but they could be doing them completely incorrectly and causing more problems. So I do think it’s really important to start with that baseline and then build up from there.

Steve Washuta:  Do you consider running high impact, I don’t even know if it necessarily matters. But a lot of exercises are sort of put into three different categories. No impacts, low impact and high impact. Maybe we consider plyometrics a high impact exercise, maybe a low impact exercise would be something like a forward lunge where your foot is still hitting the ground,

you’re still pressing backwards, and then maybe zero impact would be swimming or something right? I don’t know if that necessarily matters. And maybe sprinting is different than jogging. But do you consider running a high impact exercise? And is that a problem?

Eoin Everard: No, it’s not, it’s not a problem. But there is like repetitive impacts and like local money, with distance running and for talking about five K’s 10 ks above, it’s like any, any sport where one of the most frequent injuries is like stress fractures, it’s going to be more to the high impact.

Eoin Everard: And it’s just that repetitive, you know, sometimes like high impact, it can be quite good, like the Russians used to do a lot of jobs with their younger athletes, because that like high impact can actually nearly stimulate the, the, like stimulate the bone growth isn’t really like people, you know, sometimes if you have, if you have someone you just don’t get on with at all. And they’re very like in your face, you kind of recognize to do something like that.

Eoin Everard: And the body can the same can adapt to that stress, because it’s so obvious, wherever you have someone who just is like a little bit of a grind, you know, you don’t realize that they’re just draining your energy. And it’s the same sometimes at running, the impacts are smaller, but because there’s so many of them, it can lead to lead can lead to issues.

Eoin Everard: So I wouldn’t say kind of repetitive medium impact. And that can be an issue because it’s not, it’s not enough to really stimulate the bone growth, but it’s enough to kind of wear it down. And that’s where we get these stress stress fractures or, as he said that the tendons get overloaded that ligaments or the joints get overloaded.

Steve Washuta: Yes, that’s a great point to say it’s repetitive impact, and maybe that is actually more damaging than high impact, right doing five jump squats, as opposed to running 13 miles, right so like maybe you’re jogging slowly at a 10 minute mile pace, running 13 miles but you have constant competitive impact. It’s really you know, the analogy that I make I I’m someone who’s a martial artist.

In the UFC, they have really small gloves. So they’re four ounce gloves. So when you hit when they when you get hit in the face, you have a really high likelihood of getting knocked out right? Much, much more knockouts in the UFC than in boxing. Now the people think that’s terrible, they go, Oh my God, this guy got knocked out, what they don’t understand is a knockout is your brain’s way of telling you Well, it’s time to shut down, this isn’t good.

In a boxing glove with 14 ounce gloves, you might get hit 400 times in a boxing match and never go out. And that constant shaking of the brain is way worse for you than getting knocked out long term. We know that now. So I like how you said the repetitive hit of your heel hitting the ground.

And these strikes could potentially be more damaging than just, let’s, let’s say a few jump squats. So we don’t need to just say high impact or low impact. It’s what is this doing long term? And is it repetitive?

Eoin Everard: That’s such a great analogy. That is the perfect analogy and that that like is it better to get hit by that smaller glove. Because if you do five jumps, provided you have a base, it can be enough to stimulate because as long as you don’t injure yourself doing the jump, and you will probably be a bit stiff and sore afterwards. That can stimulate better, better changes.

Eoin Everard: You know, one thing I always recommend people to do with skipping like jumping rope. Because one what’s great about a jumping rope is that it’s a self limiting exercise. If you can’t do it correctly, you just keep hitting the rope. So one allows you to gradually increase. But to it’s like those kinds of impacts are a bit more deliberate, they’re higher than your normal jog, you have to have more of a lift off the ground.

Eoin Everard: And it can really stiffen the arch and kind of cause the adaptations that we want to see. So as you said, it’s, it’s that that’s a great analogy. I think of the boxing versus the UFC. Sometimes we’re worried about these one time events, which we do have to be careful with, but it’s the longer just tipping out, it can be the bigger issue.

Steve Washuta: biomechanically, can everybody wrong 100 Different people come to Oh, and they say, Hey, I want you to be by running coach, I want you to train me a little bit in Pilates, and I want to start to learn how to run properly. My goal is to run a 5k. And they’re all different body types.

And let’s say there are ages 15 to 55. Is there is there some people who you’re just gonna say, Hey, listen, I just don’t think running is for you, whether it’s a weight issue or a biomechanical issue structurally, or do you think that there’s some way that you can get them to function as a runner.

Eoin Everard: And most people, I would say, okay, but as you said, maybe if you’re a very like overweight, I haven’t run ever or maybe have like, say, chronic calf issues or anytime you go running. So I it’s hard to give a definitive there if someone can who had was overweight hadn’t run and a number of years because of calf issues was was like obese.

Eoin Everard: Now, I think it’d be better to maybe go low impact, like swimming, cycling, and then introducing little bits of running and gradually progressed, that even for people who aren’t used to it, like some people always want to do marathons. But they don’t have that base level of conditioning. Now, look, I wouldn’t recommend that.

Eoin Everard: But if they do, if I have people who just want to get around it for some reason, a lot of times, if they do like their like to workout runs in a week, their long run, which will be a long run will be a long cycle. He knows so we’re changing, you’re kind of taking things out. So you might only be running two, three times a week, because your body just won’t be able to sustain that kind of longer running. So we’ll go into cycling for that person.

Eoin Everard: But in general, can anyone improve? Yeah, generally, like we’re built for running or walking anyway. But again, you need to be you know, if you haven’t run in a while maybe one of those couch to five K’s are a great start, including cross training in the program. So you’re losing weight, you’re allowing like, adequate recovery time. And then gradually over time, see, can you build up the running that you’re doing?

Eoin Everard: The other thing is, will we all run the same? No. Is that an issue? I don’t think so. Too often. Too often. We’re always I don’t know what it is about humans. We’re all looking for the quick fix, you know, like or if I you know, I want to get better at my 5k today, a good thing I have a friend is now he won’t mind me saying because I was slagging him big time. He’s a high school friend and we just met for a coffee.

Eoin Everard: He’s a doctor and we get on great and we were just chatting. He’s like, asked me about running. He’s got two two kids and he’s busy. So he’s only got he’s only going running once every two weeks. Now, there was a lot he was doing wrong. The first was he when he was going out. He’s trying to just run as hard as he could for 5k. That’s just and you see that a lot with with amateurs. They just they’re going way too hard on that run.

Eoin Everard: So what I asked him to do was, you know, Maybe go easier, like jog for a little bit and then do certain sessions or workouts and then come home. It’s easier, long, easier overall. And it’s more enjoyable rather than go out as hard as he can or pick it up and dying.

Eoin Everard: And every day, it’s a workout. Second, though, he was asking me about like breathing techniques, he’d been listening to the Joe Rogan, about if I breathed this way with a double breath, or running technique, should I be on my toes? I’m like, Dude, you’re running once every two weeks. There’s no technique, just don’t breathe.

Eoin Everard: And there’s this like, you need to get more regularly for running. So too often people are like, What can I do for my running stride? To improve my running? And where the actual answer is, you need to train better, you need to then give yourself the building blocks so you don’t get injured, and your body will figure out the actual running technique. Stride element.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, it’s really funny. I’d actually I was laughing also because it reminds me of myself and a lot of other people with golf. It’s like, when’s the last time you played like, three months ago, but I’ve been watching YouTube videos on how to fix my swing, it’s like, well, if you went out and played and hit some balls, you would probably have a better chance of fixing your swing, rather than just watching a video for that secret tip. To

Eoin Everard: Yeah, you can spend two years looking for this like, like, there’s, as you said, if you look at the top golfers, it’s, it’s just repetitive actions to the and they don’t all swing the same yesterday. Like, there’s basics and things you can do. But like, golf is actually way more technical and running. Do you know what I mean? So there is things you can get in there.

Eoin Everard: But again, even like Bob Uttara He’s like one of the main like psychologists last swing coaches say for Podrick Harrington. My boss would have worked like he was his strength conditioning coach for Pora Carrington. But like, his advice always was like, just look down the course. Don’t worry about your tech, like he was like, just you’ve been practicing, if you’re swinging a lot does look down and hit the ball.

Eoin Everard: And don’t overthink the actual, because your subconscious is actually working things out way more than your conscious. And if you do it consciously, you actually can get yourself more into trouble.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, and most sports because the ball is moving. People don’t have that problem, right. So let’s say in a sport, like, you know, football or soccer, or European football, American soccer, when someone is kicking you the ball and through, let’s say a through pass, and you’re ready to score that goal, you’re not breaking the motion down, you’re not saying I need to plant my left foot here, I need to swing my right foot here, I need to make sure I make contact with as part of my foot.

You’re just doing it right because the ball is moving in your acting and like sort of subconsciously, in American football, when you’re being chased down by a defender and you’re a quarterback you’re rolling out and you’re not thinking about how you’re holding the ball and how you’re releasing it. You’re just throwing it. But in golf because the ball is not moving. You’re overanalyzing what is going on. And that’s what in running.

So that sort of leads to my next question. And of course, you can talk about the golf too, but it leads to my next question or running. For me. I’ve never thought about my stride. I’m not a big runner. Some days, I’ll go out and run one mile as fast as I can.

Some days I’ll just jog three miles. I’ve never thought about my stride. But I hear people talk about oh, to be a better runner. You have to change your stride and perfect your stride and slow your stride down and use all these different tempos and gadgets. What are your thoughts on that? Is that important?

Eoin Everard: No, no, no, you’re doing it right. There’s no day. Like, first thing on the golf that I find interesting is like, you know, when like penalty shootout in, like European football, or even like golf or any like close skill, what they found was beginners focus on each step. Like what, where to put their foot. Like, that’s how you learn. And as you become an expert, you just you then focus externally on what you’re meant to do.

Eoin Everard: And you can just process but in high stress environments, like say, the last kick of an American football game, or like a big golf shot when you have it on or off. Yeah, what can happen in the brain is you revert. So you actually then start thinking, Okay, I just need to do this correctly. And by doing that, by going through the steps, you actually go back to like a beginner skill level because you’re you’re processing in like a beginner router in the school.

Eoin Everard: And like I always just like in free play, I just hit it. Or if you just normally you would just like hit it to where you want it to go. And the same with running. It’s like, there’s loads of different running strides. I think this became a big thing A while ago, it’s kind of died down now. But people worry about like on their toes or head study that you need just building blocks. You don’t you should never be ever thinking about how you’re running.

Eoin Everard: All you should be thinking about is like looking down into where you’re going. I always like a couple of things I would do is I try to imagine if someone was watching me, like externally is like do I look smooth, easy, relaxed at that are they always say to myself smooth, easy, relaxed. Some external cues you can do is like imagine you were running on a cloud, you know, so you will be just naturally light.

Eoin Everard: But the less the less like mechanically you’re going into it like you’ve been running or you’ve been walking or running since you’re about like two years old, you know? Walking since one, so you know your body’s figuring this out for us. The reason why people can run poorly sometimes is we don’t have the mobility, we don’t have like the basic activation.

Eoin Everard: So our knees are buckling in, or so we just need to work on the strength muscles. And then the last thing is like motor control. So you can do like drills can be great, like high knee drills, strides after a run, just so you get used to like what it’s like to run quicker, and then that will naturally transfer into your running.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You know, and I have heard, I don’t know if it was a physical therapist or a runners coach. But basically, I was working with someone she was in, let’s say, her mid 40s. And she was trying to run her first 10k. She was bigger, not big by any means.

But just she was six foot, which is pretty tall for a female, six foot, probably in the range of maybe 160 570 pounds. And they kept telling her that her stride was way too big, and that she was going to have knee issues because of this long term. So she used this gadget that basically shortened her stride.

And it basically I guess it was like a sound and every time your foot hit, maybe it’s sort of synchrony with the sound like a, what do they call like a metronome almost right when you’re playing a guitar. And I’m not sure if it was successful ever for her in the long run. She didn’t have any issues. But she was just trying to avoid issues she was doing this as like a preemptively to make sure during this running stand that she didn’t get it.

But to me, it sounded like a bunch of things that just were added in that didn’t need to be added in. And, you know, it’s just it’s good to have your take on it. Someone who is a lifelong runner, and helps people run to say, you know, sometimes these gadgets are a little bit too much. We just need to listen to our bodies. Yeah,

Eoin Everard: 100% like, you know, like, there is a thing of a cadence is best if it’s like 180. But there’s things you could do, like maybe she could do a couple of like, you know, Hill sprints, or if she wanted to do that as like a little drill. But does when she’s running like, again, this, this lady is ready just to get ready for fitness. He’s like, she’s training maybe four times, what five times a week max, it’s like, it’s just, it’s just excessive, do you know it and it’s not really needed.

Eoin Everard: So it’s kind of gone a little bit more like less than it used to be. But yeah, for a while there was a massive trend on how to run. And I just think it really, it so underestimates the power of the subconscious, and the power of evolution to naturally do what we’re meant to do.

Eoin Everard: You know, I don’t think you have to consciously think about it, I think your body generally, if it’s not running in a certain way it there’s for a reason, like, I’ll give you an example. When I was when I was a junior, we would have gone to the European competitions. And it just so happened that the two guys who would be running against me and my age, because Ireland small. One of them was the European champion.

Eoin Everard: And the second guy was silver, which was just like, you know, unbelievable for us, you know, beaten or like Spanish, but like the guy who was second, he never even won provincial titles, he never won any real event because the other guy would beat him all the way up to the European level. So the guy who won with this was really just naturally light on his feet.

Eoin Everard: Like he just was really like a toe striker, he had a beautiful stride. The other guy more was like on his heel. So what he tried to do was change his stride to match what the other guy looked like. So he just forced himself to like, run on his toes all the time. And he did it for like a year or two.

Eoin Everard: And then I by 21, he had to have like double Achilles tendon surgery and never really ran again. Because there’s a reason your body’s if it was a, if there is an ideal way for you to run your your, your your like your body wants to be the most efficient, it doesn’t want to stress itself.

Eoin Everard: So it will work out what’s best for you. You know, if you have all the building blocks, if you’re actually tired from work, or you don’t have you have those muscles have got weak or inactivated like, inactive. Yes, they need to be switched on. Yes, you can do drills. But after that, leave it because you’re going to get yourself most times into more trouble doing that. I think then it didn’t fix any issues.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, I echo those thoughts. And I you know, just to go back to what we said before, there’s a lot of people who train like the pros, who don’t need to, right. So it’s like, it’s the golfer who’s trying to work on the flop shot, but he’s a 20 handicap. It’s the runner who’s trying to you know, get that I forget what you just call it the cadence. exactly perfect.

But you know, they run a 10 minute mile. It’s like, well, you know, you’re not there yet. You don’t need those things. You need to spend the time running and just getting better. And don’t worry about all these things, these little 1% things to get you better that the Olympians are worried about. You just need to get out there.

Eoin Everard: That’s 100 you couldn’t put it better like that. Like that’s what I’m saying. Even my friend he’s one in every two weeks. What do I do? It’s like, you can’t there’s nothing you’re going to do running once every two weeks. That’s going to work regularly, your your thing is trying, the best thing you could do is run once every week, that’s double, double it up and then try double that up again, you know, so it’s so true.

Eoin Everard: It’s like, all the time people are doing this. And maybe they’re not doing two workouts in a week. They’re not structured training correctly. And there’s like a million things they should be getting to before this.

Steve Washuta: So we talked about how Pilates can be very helpful for runners. We both agree with that we both worked in a Pilates background to help runners. What are some maybe strength training exercises that you see runners do that you don’t think are helpful or that you think that maybe they believe are helpful, and they’re doing them but they could replace it with something else?

Now? I know this is a loaded long question. I will say this, and I’m sure you agree with this. All exercise is good exercise. So I’m not we don’t need to say that this thing is bad. But what could they replace it with? That could be better?

Eoin Everard: That is such a good question. Like RST? Sorry. That is such a good question. Because I literally had an answer loaded that I get asked like, what’s the best exercise? But yeah, what’s the what’s the one that avoids? Every exercise is good.

Eoin Everard: As you said, I feel though, if I just get rid of one, it would probably be the deadlift, just because the technique is terrible. For a lot of people. It’s like what we were talking about with the golfer, or the thing we hear, like, you know, oh, this is good, which it’s a great exercise when done correctly. But a lot of people are doing that incorrectly and kind of hurting themselves.

Eoin Everard: So you want to just be careful with it. I think I think that one, I would probably replace it with like a single leg deadlift. So you’re standing on one leg, bring your leg back. And as soon as the back leg stops lifting, you stop lowering your body, it’s just it’s, it’s hitting the same thing.

Eoin Everard: It’s like one leg, one leg versus two. And it’s easier to control, pushing your hips back people that hinge action people are can really struggle with. It’s something I really try teaching the pilates and getting under your feet.

Eoin Everard: But it’s something that people can struggle with. I’m working on this product called the back of wearables to give people that awareness because, like in the gym, that’s a one exercise, I see that deadlift where people are just round and Arthur Barker and moving out their back a lot.

Eoin Everard: The second thing I would say is make the exercise easier. So say for a plank, you should be able to kind of like, arch your back, round your back. So like moving the pelvis, and then to find the middle.

Eoin Everard: And if you can’t do that, drop back down and like he’ll drop to your knees, can you move your pelvis and then find the middle and then hold it there. Another one I think is people maybe like going doing like playing for a longer time or in a poor position and not realize not having that control? You know. So I think it’s more important to make the exercise easier, and feel like I’m confident doing this than it is doing something harder, but like not doing it correctly.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, that’s great information. And I think you know, as we get older, one of the goals, it doesn’t seem to ever be the goal should be to be a better form, weightlifter and exerciser not necessarily lift more weight. So the goal for most people, let’s say would just take the deadlift is that, oh, last year, I was at 345. This year, I want to deadlift 385, you never heard someone say, last year I was deadlifting. In this particular way, I want to make sure that I really have good pelvic control.

And then I’m engaging the proper muscles, and then I’m pushing out on my feet. And then I’m not rounding my back. And then I’m not anterior tilt, and then I feel my core and I’m and I’m bracing properly. They don’t try to get better. They just try to add more weight. And eventually that leads to injury, right? If your only goal is to go to more weight, there’s going to be a weight in which there’s a diminishing returns, you’re not going to be able to hit it and you’re going to get hurt most likely.

So I think it is important. And I know you work with some older people as well. That you know, especially as we get older the goal should be to be a better more efficient exerciser or runner not necessarily add weight.

Eoin Everard: Yeah, 100%. And even when you’re younger, because you will know if you have any injuries like that this like I feel like I’m a good physio. But the sad thing is is like once you have and once you have an injury, you’re kind of managing that like so I have like my right hips been sore, my left leg have gone over badly and my left ankle, my left knee can get sore.

Eoin Everard: Now I’m not I have no pain at the moment. But I know if like they’re always now a little bit weaker than the other areas. So if you do stuff like if you hurt, you’re back younger. Yes, you can fix it, but you’ll always have to just manage that. So it’s the thing of, as you said, alpha male, he won the NFL and the NBA. As a strength conditioning coach.

Eoin Everard: He has that hierarchy where it’s like, get good movement first, then work on like work capacity or anatomical adaptation, get your body adapted, which would be like if you’re doing like, say hinging actions for a deadlift, you’re doing like 15 reps, three sets short recovery with that Good form, you know, if you’re doing like inverse roll underneath a bar, pulling your chest up keeping the core engaged, but you’re doing a lot more reps.

Eoin Everard: And with that, then you’re going to do less weight. But what that’s doing is it’s it’s adapting the tendons that it’s getting the core stronger, it’s allowing like the architecture of your body to be built to allow you then to build strength, which then is the next level. But you don’t want to go for that max strength without that underpinning,

Eoin Everard: like work capacity, the ability to tolerate the load, or without the movement base underneath that, because and that, sadly, sometimes people go, Okay, well, I started this ways, and then I move on under, like forgetting the other two levels that need to precede that to make sure that you’re developing effectively.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, it’s a great point with the movement based. And I’ll just add to that, there’s another component, which is the, the mental component, right, so we have the neurons efferent efferent, neurons that are firing and your proprioception.

So it’s not just even like the musculoskeletal system, it’s the ability for your brain to sort of process in space, where your body is, let’s just take a simple technique like a dumbbell chest press, well, if you watch me do a dumbbell chest press, you’ll notice that I’ve been doing them, basically my entire life for half of my life, somebody else, you might not see that right, they’re gonna be shaking a little bit, their arms aren’t at the right angle, I can close my eyes and do it with perfect form.

Because I’m not looking at what I’m doing. I feel my body and space, my brain, and my muscles are coordinating with one another to know where I’m pushing. And I think like you just said, unless you’re doing hundreds and hundreds of repetitions of these things with little bit of load, prior to putting on load, you’re not going to be in a let’s call it a an advantageous position to avoid injury, and you’re more likely to get hurt.

Eoin Everard: Yeah, exactly. Like there’s three things that cause someone to move poorly or have poor technique. The first is like mobility, like the joint doesn’t move well, or a flexibility issue. The second reason is like, as we talked before, like they physically can like switch on the core correctly, or engage the glutes or get the shoulders, the shoulder blades in the right position, like they just those muscles aren’t working.

Eoin Everard: And then the third is what we call motor control. And that’s the technique that you’re talking about, Steve, that’s the idea of like, just knowing having that awareness of your body and space to allow you to do that. And once you have the movement, then you need time just to like get your tendons and your joints used to those movements. And then you can start building strength. It’s like look, we’re all we’re always we’re looking for little shortcuts.

Eoin Everard: And the see I found like I run my best when I’m feeling like generally strong and feeling flexible. And I’m aerobically fit, I seem to run way better than when I just tend to run, be aerobically fit but still feeling stiff and sore or not not as strong as I want to be when I’m overall feeling like genuinely, like well rounded, I run my best. That’s when I’ve seen to run the best. I feel I can do anything.

Steve Washuta: This is a question specifically about you. So you don’t have to give this advice as if it’s for someone else. I just want to know what goes through your mind personally. Let’s go ahead and say you’re not training for something, and you’re just going out on a run. And you’re 90 seconds in and you’re like, I’m just not feeling it today. I’m a little sluggish.

My legs feel heavy. And your goal was to let’s say run, I don’t know, seven miles. So you’re like, I don’t think this is going to happen today. Do you just not do it? Do you still tell yourself? Screw it? Oh, and you’re, you’re a lifelong runner. You’re gonna get to the seven miles what is how do you sort of adapt and change in those situations?

Eoin Everard: Do you know like, like you’re saying, Steve, I can see by you that you work out? Do you know it’s like things become such a habit that it wouldn’t that scenario just wouldn’t happen? Do you know what I mean? If I was sick, it would probably No, it wouldn’t like even if what would happen there is maybe I would it would never be like 90 seconds and I’ve had it maybe two or three times in my life and

Eoin Everard: I’ve had like the flu I had COVID That was the second time that happened where I was 20 minutes in and you know when you’re dying like I was like I’ve never like I was never felt bad. So I just went home then and didn’t run for probably two weeks I was just in bits. But in terms of like just feeling stiff or sore. No I never like I just I would just stay running like I would just do the time that was meant to now you might I might cheese at the end of some runs if I was busy like so say if I was going to do 70 minutes.

Eoin Everard: Now that it’s more just for general fitness. I might stop at like 65 If I got to the car or 60 But do we never have it’s just it’s so ingrained like once you get you get used to it I it This would never happen. It just it wouldn’t even be. I think I heard a guy he talked about this one time, and I haven’t articulated this.

Eoin Everard: So I don’t know how to come out where, like, if you give yourself sometimes like a slight option. So he was talking about like, Gatorade versus like, like, like, car fluids, like so like the one that you put in for your, your, your wipers, the wipers? Yeah.

Eoin Everard: Like, you know, 100% you cannot drink wiper fluid, like you’ll, you’ll get poisoned yourself. So there’s never even like, you know, if it’s like, if the answer is 100%. You don’t even ever question Is this the thing I can do so easily?

Eoin Everard: With a greater rate, you’re like, Oh, well, maybe on special occasions, or this or that? It’s like that, if the answer is zero, it’ll never come up. So no, that’s never happened. It’s never, it’s never doubted, like, I’m not feeling this ruin all. That’s never happened, because I just, you just after a while, it just doesn’t happen.

Eoin Everard: I think the key thing to do is start writing it in writing down your training, when you’re going to do it. I think that thing that most people struggle with is, I see what the plan is we give a free trial to people. I’m not joking, Steve like to get 130 People even to try the free trial. Like to try the exercise the class, they’ve signed up, they want to do it, but it’s like, they haven’t set a time to do it. So a week just flies by. And that can be with all training.

Eoin Everard: So I think if you’re new to training, just you need a time like I have all my training always written down, so I know what I’m doing. And then it’s just easier like it’s always planned. So you’re kind of out the door. And then once I get out the door, I think most people are like that. I think most people will just grind it out. I think what where they won’t do it is get out the door to be like I’m feeling stiff and sore, or I’m really wrecked today. I won’t go out. I’ll go tomorrow. I think once you’re out.

Eoin Everard: For me personally, it’s never been an issue. I know you just kind of grind through a run. I wouldn’t run higher, Jonathan, but I would always do it. That was gonna be a short answer. No,

Steve Washuta: no, no. And that reminds me of I had a conversation with Dr. PROLOGO, who is a obesity medicine specialist on my podcast, and he wrote a book called The catching point. And when he talks about is, you know, for someone who is let’s say obese, they haven’t got to that aha moment, or that catching point.

And that’s what you just described, you’ve done it so many times. This, you getting out getting out of bed, putting on your running shoes, and going out the door, whether it is raining out, it’s a little bit colder than you anticipated, whether maybe your ankles were a little bit stiffer from the day before or whatever it is. You’ve you’ve done it so many times, that it’s really not that difficult for you. Right?

So like you, you completing an eight mile run, you don’t like it’s not like you come home and brag to people, right? There’s just nothing for you at this point, right? You You’ve done it so many times that you’re past that catching point, that aha moment. But we forget people like you and me how difficult it is for people who are starting up, right.

So that person who hasn’t done that yet, they’re gonna have to put the time in and force themselves to do it. And I think really, what were some fitness professionals miss out on and having honest conversations with their clients is you got to put some hard work in, but it gets easier. This gets easier.

All of this gets easier. At some point, you’re going to do not only is this easy, you’re going to enjoy it, you’re going to need it, it’s cathartic. You’re going to love doing it, you’re going to look forward to doing this, you’re not going to force yourself to write down the time on your calendar, you’re going to be running,

it’s the first thing you’re going to write down and you’re going to push everything else to the side and you’re going to you’re going to fall in love with it, you just have to get past that catching point. And I think it’s you know, it’s imperative that we people like us explain that to our clients who are nervous about taking that first step out the door.

Eoin Everard: That’s so funny. I literally was helping this guy on a couch to 5k thing. He just wanted me to introduce it. Just remember running background. And I literally said the same thing to those people. I use the analogy of like a rocket, if you think a rocket it has to use so much energy to break the atmosphere. And then when it’s out of the atmosphere, it’s easier, because so often we can all emphasize the benefits of exercise.

Eoin Everard: And what can happen is someone’s two three weeks in and like I’m not I’m not feeling I’m feeling or they said I’d have more energy, I’m feeling really tired, because it’s a new energy expense. They said I’d feel like you know, better myself, I’m really stiff and sore and my muscles are sore. So yeah, I would totally. And that’s what I said to him was like,

Eoin Everard: Guys, you’re gonna feel like crap for the first three weeks of this. But as it goes over time, and it’s nearly imperceptible, you’re like, Oh, I’m actually feeling a lot better or, you know, I’m sleeping better because I’m exercising and stuff. So yeah, I can totally agree with you. That’s so funny.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, it’s a cultural problem, at least, you know, in America and I’m sure it expands out to where you are to where you have these like influencers like Instagram influencers and people who are like, very braggadocious about what they do, like oh, I wake up at 5am. And then I have a protein shake, and I go to the gym and then I do that, and I drive my kids to hear that do this, do this. It’s like, yes.

So why but like, it’s not really that difficult because I’ve been doing it forever. It’s something I like to do I choose to do it. I don’t have to do it like this, this helps me I’m a better person. I feel more lucid, clear of mind.

I feel more fit, I can eat what I want. If I’m working out like these are, these are all benefits. And people describe them as if they’re like, I don’t know. like the dig, like digging holes all day long for no money.

It’s like, no, what you’re doing is at this point. Is just like, when Owen goes out and run, it’s just another day. And I think we have to, you know, continue. Like you said, I love that rocket ship.

That’s like the imagery of the rocket, right? it taking so much energy and all the fire coming out of it to get up. And then once it breaks the atmosphere, it’s literally just floating in gravity. That’s how we are we’re just floating in gravity once you put the hard work in.

Eoin Everard: Yeah, big time. And I think sometimes with the influencers as well. And that is all we can kind of get. Because people always ask me, like, what’s the best time to stretch? Or what’s the best time to run? Or what’s the best time to exercise?

Eoin Everard: And I can give answers, but a lot of times my answer is, whenever you can do it, you know, like I think. Sometimes we’re looking at people on Instagram, or, you know, and they’re like, as you said, getting up a half five, and they’re like, oh, man, I cannot have five.

Eoin Everard: Okay, well that like just whenever you can do it. Do nothing as well just remember, sometimes you can look at even the times are people and think, Oh, well, what’s the point? I’ll never look like that. And it’s like, yeah, but you can be kind of skewed by that.

Eoin Everard: Because remember, there’s 2 billion people on Instagram. So like, like 50 years ago, you would be comparing yourself to other people in your town. I’m thinking yeah, like I’m in good shape compared to that person, or Yeah, I’m okay here. And I’m going to stay exercise.

Eoin Everard: And now you’re comparing yourself to the top, like 5%, probably of people in out of 2 billion. I couldn’t even work out the numbers on that, like have, like, whatever 100 million, you have to be better than to be to have that type of body.

Eoin Everard: So, you know, I think two things, I think, just do it whenever you can. And then just remember that if they have these routines or whatever. That you’re looking at, maybe to Top X routine and have 2 billion people like that’s probably not normal for most people.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, and what the times. Sometimes what that does is create a another what we call in the business world a barrier to entry. Because if I tell you, Oh, the best time is 5am. You’re like, well can’t do it at 5am. Because I have XY and Z. Well, now you don’t have to run. Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly. You’re creating another barrier to entry.

The best thing to say when when when a client asked me that I say why? Like, why, like, why do you want to know this? And then they have to think about this. They’re like, Well, I’m deciding between. You know, if I should wake up early, or if I should do it when I get home from work. And I say we’ll try both, you know, try try a week at 5am. And then try a week at 6pm See what works better for you. But don’t like don’t try to wiggle your way out of this.

There’s you’ll find a time like that doesn’t really necessarily matter. It’s like in and like you said it that’s such a hard question to answer because we’re all so different. Right? My wife cannot work out in the morning. So she makes it a point to work out at night.

I can’t work out at night. So I make it a point to work out in the morning. And it’s no workout is more effective or less effective. It’s just what what suits us best given our predispositions for, you know how we go about our day?

So yeah, it’s been, well, this was a fantastic conversation. Why don’t you give my audience and listeners some insights into where they can find you? Oh, and where the maybe they want to reach out to you personally. They have some questions about what you do and the running world in the Pilates world and Exercise Science and things of that nature.

Or, you know. Maybe a third personal trainer, or maybe there’s someone who wants to work with you in a program. So anywhere in which people can find you.

Eoin Everard: Yeah, thanks a million Steve. I really enjoyed this. This is really, really enjoyable. Yeah, every plot is.com For slash book, so e v, e, or A or D Pil. At e s.com. For slash book. I have a free book there. It is called How to get to the line in the best shape possible.

Eoin Everard: So just gives like a lot of articles. I’ve done working on this other project called the backer where belts.com. It’s a wearable technology that gives you instant feedback on your back position.

Eoin Everard: It’s not 100% ready yet, but I just want to start maybe telling people about that because I’ve been working on this for like three years. And I need to start hopefully see people seeing and seeing what they think so yeah, Steve, I really enjoyed this. Thanks a million.

Steve Washuta: Well, I promise you once that is fully launched. We’ll come back on we’ll we’ll talk about that product and and how exactly it works. Thank you so much for joining the Trulyfit podcast.

Eoin Everard: Thanks so much. Yeah, that’d be brilliant. I love to do that. Because yeah, I’ve like trials and tribulations on that project. It’s been interesting, but it’s time and money suck as well. So labor love

Steve Washuta: We’ll chat soon. If you’d like to watch the Monday interviews instead of just listen, please go to YouTube and subscribe Trulyfitapp. You can also follow us on Instagram. For updates also Trulyfiit app and feel free to email me at any time with questions or suggestions at social@trulyfit.app

Steve Washuta: Thanks for joining us on the Trulyfit podcast. Please subscribe, rate, and review on your listening platform. Feel free to email us as we’d love to hear from you.

Social@Trulyfit.app

Thanks again!

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