Guest Coach Jason Fitzgerald - Strength Running Podcast strengthrunning.com/strength/ for strength content

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Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (00:02) All right, welcome back listeners. This is Dr. Mandy Wayne Fan, now Dr. Mandy Real, for those who have heard my name before. thank you for joining the Movement Movement. Today we have a very special guest. This is Jason Fitzgerald, coach, strength training extraordinaire in the running field. So Jason, for those who don't know you, give us a little bit about yourself.

Jason Fitzgerald (00:22) Well, thanks, Mandy. yeah, Jason Fitzgerald. I've been running for good lord, twenty seven years now, which which kind of ages me a little bit. I think I'm pushing twenty-eight years in in as a runner myself. I've been coaching since two thousand and ten and I also host the Strength Running podcast. yeah, I really just try to help runners achieve their potential and get their performances where they want them to be.

Jason Fitzgerald (00:50) which is often not where they are, but hopefully through conversations like this we can help get runners over that hump and get them to where they want to be.

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (01:00) Totally. Yeah. For for those of you out there who found our podcast through kind of trying to run through an injury, fix an injury, this information today will be a really good bridge from, okay, I'm kind of sorting through the injury now what? How do I stay out of that? Of course, but what can strength training build for me apart from just, you know, fixing my foot pain, for example. so before we get started here,

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (01:28) We're gonna have a pretty general focus. So there's gonna be a lot of information in here. So I would recommend not skipping around too much because we may be referencing things that we talked about earlier in the podcast. So stick around through it all. We'll have a great little takeaways at the end of the show. but we're gonna go over a ton of fun stuff today.

Jason Fitzgerald (01:49) Well, Mandy, I I also want to say not only am I excited, I'm a little bit jealous that you probably have a bigger Monstera behind you than I do.

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (01:59) It's it's taken some punishment over the years, but it's it's doing okay. It's about the size of covering up my maps, so I'm not gonna know what to do at that point.

Jason Fitzgerald (02:10) Yeah, my mine is pushing seven or eight years old and it's also taking a little bit of abuse. It's not in the the best position right now, but you know, that that that's what you're gonna have to deal with when you're dealing with a jungle vine in your office.

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (02:23) Right,

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (02:24) right, yeah. It's my only couple plants in here that haven't died yet with my little window. So well

Jason Fitzgerald (02:30) Yeah.

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (02:30) cool. So so Jason, you're in the strength training world. you are deep, deep in the strength training world for runners. as you mentioned earlier too, if you have not checked out the strength running program podcast, go ahead and check that out after the episode. It's fantastic. but Jason, how did you come to realizing that strength is important?

Jason Fitzgerald (02:53) Well, I came to it through a lot of trial and error. it was because I was hurt all the time. You know, it really stemmed from

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (02:59) Mm-hmm.

Jason Fitzgerald (03:00) my personal journey as a runner. You know, before I was a coach, you know, I I ran cross-country, indoor and outdoor track throughout high school and again at the collegiate level. And I I was a very injury prone runner, you know, with Achilles tendinopathy and plantar fasciitis and you know, all kinds of different strains and SI joint problems and

Jason Fitzgerald (03:22) IT band syndrome. I mean, you name it, I've probably had the injury. And it wasn't until my first marathon, I ran the New York City marathon. And I realized afterward when I had started to, you know, try to return to running again after about a week off. And I I felt terrible. And pretty soon I developed a case of ITBS that laid me out for about six months. And I had to go to four physical therapists. And I was just seeing all these different people and and

Jason Fitzgerald (03:53) Trying to leave no stone unturned on how to get past this injury. But then more importantly, not only just get healthy, but what do I do with my training after I get healthy so that I don't have to waste another six months sitting on my couch watching reruns of house because I

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (04:09) Yeah.

Jason Fitzgerald (04:10) I'm just bored. I really just like to run and I want to get back out there and keep training. So it was a little bit of a process, you know, like I think at the very beginning of of that whole journey for me,

Jason Fitzgerald (04:22) I started, you know, incorporating certain body weight, strength exercises, much more mobility work, doing some, you know, band work, medicine ball work, things like that, very running specific, so that I could, you know, get strong in a way that runners care about and that would actually help me stay healthy. and now that's evolved a little bit. You know, I still do a lot of that kind of work and I still prescribe it for my athletes as well that I coach and that I work with, but I'm also fully.

Jason Fitzgerald (04:52) in recognition of how valuable weightlifting is in a gym. And yes, it's great for kind of building more durability, more resilience to injury, but in regards to your running economy and your performance and your body composition and all the other lovely things that we love about weightlifting, you know, there's a lot to love about it. And, you know, if you're any kind of performance oriented runner,

Jason Fitzgerald (05:17) Which doesn't mean that you're a professional or anything. It just means that, you know, you have some goals. You want to run a certain distance. You want to break a certain time in, you know, a given distance. We have to start thinking much more strategically about your training. And I think strength training is so important. I don't even really call it cross-training. You know, it's just

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (05:35) Mm-hmm.

Jason Fitzgerald (05:36) part of the training process that

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (05:38) Yes.

Jason Fitzgerald (05:38) runners need to really achieve their best. So it it was a it was a very big journey for me, you know, at the beginning. I didn't even

Jason Fitzgerald (05:46) lift at all. I didn't do any strength work. I didn't think it was necessary. You know, I I really was just 18 years old and could get away with a lot of, you know, poor exactly.

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (05:53) Right. You made a rubber.

Jason Fitzgerald (05:56) You know, I could just go to sleep at night and then any problem I was dealing with would be gone by morning. You know, to be 18 again.

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (06:00) Right, right. Right.

Jason Fitzgerald (06:03) So I think my youth masked a lot of the training errors I was making at the time. And now that I'm 42 years old, I really have to be thinking a lot more strategically about

Jason Fitzgerald (06:15) How I'm structuring my training. And, you know, coming from that college cross-country and track background, it has been very eye-opening coaching adult recreational runners over the last 16 years because, you know, they don't have the same kind of movement fluency that a lot of college athletes have. And so we've got to build a lot of that into the training program so that number one, they just feel much better on a day-to-day

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (06:42) Mm-hmm.

Jason Fitzgerald (06:42) basis, but also.

Jason Fitzgerald (06:44) They're building that resilience into the program. They're they're getting the results that they're looking for. They're getting injured less. They're staying healthy for longer. So, you know, I I'm I'm now someone who is such a big proponent of strength training. Now, look, that doesn't mean I love it. I'd rather be out there running a couple more miles. I mean, you know,

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (07:00) Right. Right, right.

Jason Fitzgerald (07:02) I'll raise my hand. I'm a pure runner through and through.

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (07:04) Totally. Same.

Jason Fitzgerald (07:06) I don't like being in the weight room, but I understand that it allows me to do what I love to do. And so now I make it a priority.

Dr. Mandy Riehl (Wainfan) DC (07:14) Yeah, it's like going and, you know, buying shoes. It's not I don't have a passion for shopping, but I need shoes, so I will go get shoes. But I know what you mean about the literacy. So just on the side for fun, I I coach high school cross country and having them in the weight room once a week. You know, they're like f...