The Strength Running Podcast
By Jason Fitzgerald
The Strength Running Podcast treats you like a pro runner: we surround your with coaches, physical therapists, strength experts, elite runners, sports psychologists, and other thought leaders. We only have one goal: to help you run faster. Guests include world-class academics, clinicians, runners, coaches, and subject matter experts like David Roche, Victoria Sekely, Sally McRae, Zach Bitter, and hundreds more! We also publish coaching calls with Jason working directly with a runner chasing a big goal and course previews for major races like the New York City Marathon, the Boston Marathon, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Marine Corps Marathon. You'll learn how to prevent injuries and become resilient to niggles and common overuse injuries, the best ways to structure marathon training and how to fuel for endurance races, how to improve your speed and ability to kick at the end of races, run more consistently, and make running a more sustainable part of your life. The Strength Running Podcast is hosted by Jason Fitzgerald, a 2:39 marathoner and USATF-certified running coach. He's a monthly columnist for Trail Runner Magazine and was previously Men's Running Magazine's Influencer of the Year. His coaching advice and running guidance has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Runner's World, Health Magazine, and most other major media. If you want to become a better runner, you've found the right running podcast! Connect with Jason and Strength Running: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/2FARFP2 - Strength course: http://bit.ly/2Pjvlge - Training: http://bit.ly/2YgBLAv
43 episodes
All Episodes
Optimizing Aerobic Capacity Through Controlled Lactate Threshold Training
Hard training often limits your potential. By mastering the Golden Zone, which means running just below your lactate threshold, you build a more durable aerobic base, avoid injury, and unlock performance gains that high intensity efforts sabotage.
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Aligning Marathon Training With Physiological Readiness Over Metrics
Popular marathon shortcuts like Yasso 800s and novel taper activities create a false sense of security. Align your training with actual physiological demands to achieve race day success and long term durability.
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Prioritizing Heavy Strength Training Over High-Volume Running Mileage
Stop using the weight room for endurance training. If you replace high-rep circuits with heavy compound lifts and slightly lower your weekly mileage, you will develop the neuromuscular power and movement efficiency needed to break through your current performance plateaus.
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Shifting From Symptomatic Relief to Systemic Foot Resilience
Plantar fasciitis is rarely just a foot problem. Stop relying on orthotics and generic stretches, which often mask nerve issues or cause muscle atrophy, and start building systemic resilience through varied, load-based training.
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Systematic Heat Adaptation and Thermal Management for Athletes
To perform well in the heat, you must move away from reactive cooling and toward proactive, dosage-based adaptation. By mastering thermal discipline and simplifying your nutrition protocols, you can avoid the systemic failures that cause most athletes to collapse during high-heat races.
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Building Athletic Durability Through Consistent Mundane Habits
Athletic breakthroughs do not come from magic workouts. They come from managing mundane variables. By prioritizing sleep, nutrition, and mobility, you build a durable foundation that sustains higher training volume and prevents injury.
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Managing Operational Efficiency for Ultramarathon Performance
Elite ultramarathon performance relies on operational efficiency more than raw athleticism. By treating races as integrated systems and avoiding the high interest loan of unsustainable effort, runners can maintain their pace through the final miles.
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Aligning Training Timelines With Biological Capacity For Performance
High-intensity workouts often create performance ceilings when done too early. Build long-term speed by prioritizing aerobic capacity and strategic cross-training, and save intense sharpening sessions for the final weeks of your training cycle.
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Overcoming Training Plateaus Through Multi-Season Architectural Planning
Break your running plateau by moving away from short term race cycles. Real performance gains require a multi season approach that builds physiological adaptations over time, helping you evolve as an athlete instead of repeating the same training.
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Prioritizing Long-Term Systemic Integrity Over Immediate Performance Metrics
High-intensity training often creates a performance ceiling that leads to injury and burnout. Build lasting athletic mastery by prioritizing your systemic foundation and patience over the immediate gratification of short-term metrics.
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Prioritizing Physiological Feedback Over Rigid Heart Rate Training
Strictly following heart rate zones often ignores how your body is actually feeling. You can improve your training by moving away from passive data tracking toward intuitive, systems-level self-coaching. Prioritize how much metabolic stress you feel in the moment rather than relying on arbitrary settings on your watch.
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Building Elite Running Capacity Through Decadal Volume Accumulation
True athletic capacity comes from a decade of patient, steady volume accumulation rather than aggressive, short-term training plans. Master the physiological timescale of adaptation to build elite performance that lasts beyond a single race season.
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Improving Running Economy Through Low-Intensity Reactive Strength Training
High-intensity plyometrics often lead to injury instead of building power. Focus on simple, low-impact movements like skipping to improve your running economy, reduce energy leaks, and achieve faster race times through a more efficient, robust stride.
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Fix Running Form by Starting with Arms and Torso
Fixing your footstrike first sets you up for injury--real change starts with the arms and torso. Small shifts up top rewire your entire running pattern, unlocking efficiency, resilience, and performance others never reach.
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Physiological Resilience--Not Raw Power--Drives Endurance Performance
Endurance success hinges on physiological resilience--the ability to sustain performance metrics as fatigue sets in--not just raw power. Train for durability to gain a competitive edge.
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Beyond Proteinmaxxing: Individualized Fueling and Hydration for Runners
Discover how optimizing macronutrient balance and personalized hydration unlocks peak athletic performance, challenging common fueling myths for sustained gains and injury prevention.
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Smarter Marathon Training: Sustainable Performance Beyond Metrics
Build a robust aerobic foundation and strategically apply training stimuli, rather than chasing trendy workouts. Sustainable performance comes from patient, principled training and understanding your body's effort.
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Managing Mental Friction as a Performance Systems Framework
To reach elite performance, you must treat mental toughness as a mechanical training system instead of an abstract concept. By simulating psychological friction and accepting negative thoughts, athletes close the expectation gap and save their energy for competition.
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Pain Perception Reframed: Runners Manage Hurt Through Mindset and Movement
Pain is a complex brain output, not just tissue damage. Runners can actively manage discomfort and accelerate healing by understanding its multifaceted nature.
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IT Band Syndrome: Strengthening Hip Stabilizers Prevents Pain
IT Band Syndrome pain stems from hip weakness, not tightness. Strengthen glutes and adjust running form to build lasting resilience and prevent injury.
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Long-Term Running Economy Builds Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Unlock peak running performance not with quick fixes, but by investing long-term in foundational efficiency. Discover how consistent, varied training builds a durable advantage beyond immediate physiological limits.
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Strength Training as Elite Marathoner's Unconventional Superpower
Unlock elite running performance by integrating high-volume strength training. Discover how this unconventional approach builds resilience, prevents injury, and creates a significant competitive advantage.
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Systems Thinking for Runner Injury Recovery and Resilience
Injury recovery requires a systemic approach, not just physical healing. Understand your body's layered demands and interconnected readiness to return stronger and avoid re-injury.
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Proactive Biomechanics Prevent Running Injuries Beyond "Too Much, Too Soon"
Injury prevention goes beyond avoiding "too much, too soon." Discover how subtle biomechanical shifts from past injuries create hidden vulnerabilities and how elite athletes proactively manage them for lasting resilience.
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Grief of Identity Loss When Running Ceases
Losing running means losing identity, community, and structure. Discover how to navigate this profound grief and find fulfilling "B-minus" replacements for a grounded life.
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Embrace Discomfort: Ken Rideout's Blueprint for Resilience
Embrace the "other side of hard" to unlock peak performance and fulfillment. Discover how transforming discomfort into a growth engine builds resilience and transforms challenges into achievements.
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Intensity Magnitude--Not Volume--Drives Running Injury Risk
Running injuries stem from sustained forces and their magnitude, not just impact. Prioritize intensity control over volume for injury prevention and enhanced resilience.
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Adapting Running Identity for Decades of Sustained Participation
Sustain your running passion for decades by adapting to age, not chasing past performance. Prioritize enjoyment and listen to your body to avoid burnout and injury.
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Embrace Discomfort, Prioritize Depth, and Harness Anxiety for Excellence
Embrace difficulty and discomfort to unlock genuine excellence and fulfillment, as motivation follows action and challenges forge character.
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Embracing Discomfort Strategically Forges Sustainable Advantage
Sustainable progress and competitive advantage are forged by strategically embracing difficulty, not avoiding it. Unlock lasting success by leveraging discomfort and delayed gratification.
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Project Unreasonable: Building Aerobic Engine Through Systemic Adaptation
Achieve seemingly impossible goals by prioritizing foundational aerobic development and systemic physiological adaptation over pushing harder. Build a robust engine for long-term success.
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Female Physiology Unlocks Durable Athletic Strength Across Life Stages
Unlock peak athletic performance by training for pregnancy, postpartum, and perimenopause. Discover how these phases build unique, durable strengths and prevent common pitfalls.
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Metabolic Ceiling Limits Endurance Training Volume, Not Race Performance
Your body has a hard limit on sustained energy output, around 2.5 times your resting rate. This metabolic ceiling, not just performance metrics, dictates your true training capacity and durability.
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Development-Focused Running: Building Athleticism, Capacity, and Long-Term Engagement
Build a robust athletic base with diverse movement and consistent easy running; then, strategically add speed work to unlock peak performance and prevent injury.
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Elite Ultrarunning: Timing Peak Performance and Refining Fueling
Elite ultrarunners can achieve breakthrough performances by precisely timing peak fitness and mastering high-carbohydrate fueling, avoiding fatigue-induced DNF's.
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Five Key Training Interventions for Dramatic Running Improvement
Unlock dramatic running improvements with hill sprints for speed, monthly mileage for capacity, heat training for adaptation, cross-training for endurance, and heavy lifting for strength.
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Training Is Deliberate Change--Not Mere Exercise
Training is purposeful change, not just exercise. Master adaptation and skill with consistent, enjoyable effort to achieve lasting results and avoid common pitfalls.
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Challenging Running Dogma: Adaptive Training Over Rigid Protocols
Unlock peak running performance by embracing consistent training and personalized intensity, not rigid zones or form fixes. Optimize electrolytes within hours of racing, not days before.
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Optimizing Running Training Through Intensity, Pacing, and Recovery
Prioritize easy running to build aerobic base and prevent injury, using perceived effort and heart rate for accurate pacing, not just calculators.
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Holistic Training Integrates Nervous System, Nutrition, and Community
Unlock peak performance by calming your nervous system and journaling your intuition. Discover why underfueling is common and how advanced athletes gain marginal advantages.
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19th Century Fitness Industry: Military Needs, Sedentary Lives, and Early Marketing
The 19th-century fitness industry emerged from military needs and industrialization, creating a landscape of early pioneers, recurring training debates, and the initial democratization of physical culture.
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Strength Running Q&A: Training, Fueling, and Pacing Strategies
Boost running performance and reduce injury risk by optimizing training volume, intensity, and fueling. Learn how to tailor strength training and race strategies for sustained progress.
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Holistic Approach to Running Injury Prevention and Recovery
Learn from injuries by investigating training errors, lifestyle imbalances, and physiological mismatches. Identify your unique weak links and build resilience to prevent recurrence.
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