The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
With regard to long-run results, I don't think the data is consistent with that and it doesn't really match my understanding of the biology either. Aging well is heavily governed by muscular fitness, VO2Max, and bone density, which all improve from running. For anecdata, I guess I see more runners aging well than aging poorly.
That said, even for someone whose primary focus is running, low-impact cardio is an amazing supplement. Most amateur runners aren't doing anywhere near enough low-intensity work to maximize the metabolic and fitness gains available from very easy aerobic efforts. Biking, rowing, swimming, even just simply walking all improve both aerobic fitness and fat-burning capacity. Parker Valby has become the fastest college women's 5Ker ever on three runs a week, using tons of cross-training to supplement the low running volume.
Ultimately, I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution. The standard advice for running faster at distance is that more volume is better as long as you don't get hurt, but that last caveat is so broad and totalizing that it makes figuring out individual optima really difficult. I certainly wouldn't worry about negative long-run consequences of volume if I wasn't getting hurt, but if I was constantly getting dinged up, I would rethink that. Likewise, if you're already doing a bunch of interval work supplemented by low-impact cardio, that's certainly a proven effective strategy and if you're not getting hurt, that's great.
The advice to go the other direction and focus on volume first is what I tell someone that doesn't have a program yet and is debating what to do. If you're not already a runner, I think starting on intervals is a bad idea because of the injury risk. If you're having success and you're happy with what you're doing, all's well.
Awesome. Thank you for the well articulated reply.
One more piece of anec-data to take or leave; It seems to me that my strength training (heavy compound lifts, think Starting Strength protocols) directly improve my runs as well. I'm sure there's a frontier to these when additional weight starts to retard progress. However, as of now, it feels like a free lunch.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link