PODCAST - 3 Best Cross Training Exercises for Ultra Runners
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[00:00:00] Today. I'm gonna go through the three best cross training exercises for Ultra Runners, and I have a bonus for you. You're gonna have to wait for that later in the show. Now I've been a serious runner since 2021. That's when I ran my first marathon. ~It was ~a self-made marathon. I ran 26.2 miles by myself without an official race. Okay. I had support. I had my amazing, significant other, and my parents ~were a, and my parents ~were supporting me as well.
Welcome to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host Johnny Ha, an ultra runner endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone a hundred K ultra. I prove them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned from breathing techniques to mindset [00:01:00] shifts to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals, despite limitations, let's get started.
I actually, yes. Set up a situation where I run between our house and my parents' house and back so I can refuel and get water and get everything I need to continue on my way. Now since I've become an ultrarunner, I almost feel like I always have some sort of pain in my body.
All right. Now, in the past couple years, since I've lost 40 pounds, ~'cause ~back in 2022, I ran my second official marathon. It was probably my fourth or fifth marathon, and I had ran a 50 K at that point, so 31 miles, but it was my second official [00:02:00] marathon, ~and it ~was in Honolulu, Hawaii. End of 2022, I weighed almost 200 pounds and I was just feeling.
Off. Okay. My knees were starting to hurt, my feet were starting to hurt. Just starting to have all these pains. Okay. What I did at the time is I'm like, you know what? If I really want to run 50 miles or beyond, and if I want to keep doing this, I wanna lose some weight
okay. When I ran the Colfax Marathon in Colorado, which is a mile above sea level versus at sea level in Hawaii, I ran it in four and a half hours. When I ran the Honolulu marathon, I ran it in five hours. ~Okay? ~And I was training a mile above sea level. Okay, is the extra weight that slowed me down. So what I did is I embraced the three pillars of healthy living that I teach in my Healthy Living Guide.
It takes less than two or three minutes probably, if you're a fast reader, might even take one or two minutes to read this whole guide and start integrating it into your life. It's my three pillars of Healthy Living Guide. I have [00:03:00] it linked in the description below this video if you're watching on YouTube, and I have it in the show notes.
If you are listening to this as a podcast or you can go to www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your copy today.~ Now once I lost my thir, ~once I lost 40 pounds, now I weigh anywhere between 155 and 160 pounds. My injuries have drastically decreased, but I still get them. Okay. I don't really get any really bad injuries, knock on wood, but I still get pains.
And what I've learned is the cross training exercises that I'm going to share with you today have helped me drastically decrease my pains in my body even more as an ultra runner along with losing that weight.
So the first cross training exercise that I recommend everyone do is integrate some sort of yoga into their weekly routine. Okay? Ideally, you wanna do [00:04:00] yoga once a week, okay? One to two times a week. If you can swing it. Okay, but when we're talking about yoga, there are a lot of different types of yoga. So what you really wanna do is integrate yoga focused on runners.
~Okay? Now, it doesn't have to technically be yoga for runners, but ~if you want yoga focused on runners, go to my YouTube channel. And I have it linked in the show notes and I have it linked in the description below this video. I have a playlist that is all about yoga. So I'm a yoga teacher, so I record yoga sessions that are built for runners and athletes with asthma.
So you can do your yoga virtually. Okay. By going to my YouTube channel, I have different lengths ~of classes ~and ~I have different ~types of classes, but the basics are you just want yoga focused on runners. Okay. This means focused on stretches. So there's really two types of [00:05:00] yoga that I have on my channel.
Okay. I have a. It's typical flow for runners. Then I have yoga, sculpt, sculpt, which is with weights. Okay? Now both of these types of classes are focused on runners. That means that for flow, we're gonna be stretching. Are legs, okay? Our hamstrings, our calves, our quads, our glutes, our hips. Okay? Our feet. Okay.
That's what you wanna make sure you're doing, and you wanna make sure you're doing a flow once a week like that, or just stretching. Yoga stretches focused on the legs once a week. Okay. If you're gonna add a second type of yoga, you could add yoga sculpt with weights focused on the legs. Okay, so this means we're doing kind of high intensity exercises and strength-based exercises mixed with yoga.
~And ~focused on ~lower body. Okay, ~[00:06:00] lower body. We're gonna do some upper body too, 'cause we wanna make sure we have some strength in our upper body, okay? And we wanna make sure that we can carry our pack, carry our things, okay? Depending on what kind of ultra race you're doing, you may even have to have a weighted pack, okay?
You may have to carry a lot of things, not just water, but camping gear, all this stuff depends, so yoga one to two times a week, if you're gonna do two. Sessions a week. Then I highly recommend you do a flow and a sculpt, and you can access either one of these on my YouTube channel in my playlist, yoga for runners and Athletes with Asthma.
Okay, number two, we already kind of talked about this. You want to integrate ~high intensity animal training. Or hit ~high intensity interval training. Okay. Or hit. Okay. Same thing with this one to two times a week. [00:07:00] I always say one to two because I'm gonna give you three different things here. If you can do each of these ~things ~once a week, that's a win.
Okay? Now for hit, that could be Yoga, sculpt. 'cause yoga Sculpt brings our heart rate up with cardio and ~high reps. High. High. Re. ~High reps, low weight. Okay. We're really trying to get our heart rate up, and then you use your breath to bring your heart rate back down. You can also do high intensity interval training, so we can do sculpt, we can just do a class with weights.
~So ~I teach yoga live at ~a place called ~Endorphin in Colorado. Okay. And we also offer a lot of HIIT classes. At Endorphin. I teach a yoga flow for runners at endorphin, but there's tons of HI classes for athletes at endorphin. Now, if you ~do ~live ~local ~in Colorado, ~then ~I highly recommend that you come to my Yoga for Runner's class, you can find all my [email protected] and I have 'em linked in the show notes. And in the YouTube description, if you're watching on YouTube, so you can do it with [00:08:00] weights, you can also do it just intervals with running.
~Okay. So you can, for me, ~I can run a sub seven minute mile for a minute, two minutes, three minutes. I can run a full mile at sub seven and then I'll rest. Okay. Then I'll go to like a 10, 11, 12 minute mile and rest. That's high intensity interval train. This is really good for increasing your speed. Okay. This is really good for increasing your VO two max. VO two max. ~Okay. ~The amount of oxygen ~that ~your body needs to run itself, okay? So by doing this, you're going to get faster. You're also gonna get stronger, okay? So that's why I highly recommend doing high intensity and returning one to two times a week.
What you could do is really do a flow and do a sculpt once a week. And there you go.
Hey, friend, I wanted to take a moment to ask you a quick question. Are you struggling to lose weight due to your asthma? [00:09:00] If so, I get it. I used to run marathons and still kept gaining weight. It wasn't until I learned about the three pillars of healthy living that everything changed,
so I put together a healthy living guide that you can access absolutely free by clicking the link in the description. This guide shares these amazing three pillars of healthy living that you can easily integrate into your life to start losing weight and live healthier today. Click the link in the description or go to.
Athlete with asthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your [00:10:00] free copy. Now let's get back to the rest of the show.
The third thing, and I'll get to my bonus, is heavy lifting. ~Okay? ~Heavy lifting. ~This ~is not just great for ultra running. This is great for your life, okay? Keeps your bone density high. This mixes things up. As ultra runners, we tend to shed a lot of weight.
~Okay. ~We ~tend to ~shed muscle. This allows us to keep our muscle, okay, so you wanna do this once a week? Twice? I guess you could try. I never get this to be twice a week. ~Okay. ~If I'm gonna do something twice a week, it's gonna be hit or yoga. So I say one to two times. But really just, if you can do this once a week and you really wanna focus on the main muscle groups glutes.
[00:11:00] Quads. You can throw some chest in there, some back. But I try and do this once per week. I do dead lifts, ~I do ~squats. ~Just wanna ~focus on lifting heavy. So this is low reps, high weight. Okay. You don't wanna go too high weight, so I don't. Ever ~try and ~max out when I'm heavy lifting, I don't want to injure myself.
I just do heavier weights than I do with my hit exercises. Okay. So just be careful when you're heavy lifting. But integrating heavy lifting is very, very key, especially with our glutes. We build up our glutes to protect everything else in our legs. Okay, and that brings me ~really ~to my bonus.
~Okay. I wanna share with you. What my massage therapist and my, I wanna share with you what my amazing massage therapist, Seth. ~I wanna share with you what my amazing massage therapist has taught me over the years and what my amazing physical therapist over at Human Power has taught me to specifically help me overcome knee pain, plantar fasciitis in my feet.
I wanna share some of these exercises with you. Okay? Now I teach these exercises in my [00:12:00] yoga classes, so if you actually wanna see how to do these and do these with me, ~I highly recommend you ~check out my yoga for runners and athletes with asthma playlist on YouTube, and I go through all these exercises there.
They're integrated into my yoga classes, okay? But basically we have a few different exercises here. Lemme make some real. Okay. I have something called the towel stretch. I'm spelling towel wrong. My bad. I have something called bridge lifts. Okay. Then we have towel scrunches. So really you just need a towel
~and then just ~foam rolling. ~Okay. ~You can get a foam roller. As well. Okay. So I try and do these things as often as I think about 'em. Bridge lifts I actually do every ~single ~day. I do 10 in the morning of [00:13:00] two types of bridge lifts. I teach all the different types in my yoga classes on my YouTube channel. Okay. The towel stretch. The towel stretch is for mobility, is to hit our hamstrings, our calves, our shins. It hits our IT band. It does all these different things. So you grab a towel, you put it under your foot, you straighten your leg you wanna micro bend though to protect your knee joint and you wanna find the line of your leg.
I cue this in my classes. Which line of your leg? There's different muscles, there's different lines in our muscles that are tight depending on how we run. You wanna find the tightness? Breathe into it for three to 10 breaths. Do at least three breaths and release. ~Okay. ~Do that on the other side. ~Okay.~
Bridge lifts. We wanna focus on our glutes. You want to engage your glutes before you even lift you. Put your feet on the ground, bend your knees, and you lift your hips up. Okay? [00:14:00] You wanna do at least 10 of these? Okay, and then hold it for 10. Engage ~in ~your glutes before you even lift. Make sure you're using your glutes, okay?
Then you can do it one legged on each side. ~You want to ~do it just with your right foot, ~okay? ~Isolating your right glute. Same thing. ~Do it ~with your left foot. Isolating your left glute. You see all this in my yoga for runners classes, okay. Engaging your glutes. Then you wanna do towel scrunches, okay? This is where you take a towel, put it underneath your foot, barefoot, and then you just.
Curl your toes to scrunch the towel towards you. That's gonna help you build up your arch. Okay? I have a link to my physical therapist, her website at Human Power in the show notes and in the description on YouTube. She teaches, this is her thing. It's amazing. I never heard about this before until I learned it from her.
Okay? Then foam roller. You wanna hit all the different regions. You want to hit your IT bands by foam rolling the side of your legs. You wanna hit your quads [00:15:00] by foam rolling these big muscles that can actually cause a lot of knee pain. If you have, if you have knots in your quads, you may actually have knee pain.
You may think you have a knee issue, but it's actually a tight quad. You can also have a tight IT band instead of a knee issue. Right? I was told in high school that I would need to get surgery on a torn patella tendon in my left knee. Okay? They're like, yeah, you gotta get surgery. You're probably never gonna play soccer again.
Never be a runner. All these things. Or you can do six months of intense physical therapy. You have a 10% chance of that working, but you could do that. I opted for the physical therapy. I foam rolled. My IT bands, ~my ~quads, all these things every single day. ~And ~I also did ~some of these other things like ~bridge lifts, strengthening my quads, and my knee healed.
Okay. And now to this day, when I feel knee pain, I know that I need to hit my foam rolling. I gotta make sure that I'm strengthening my glutes. I have to make sure that I'm stretching my legs so that I [00:16:00] alleviate the pressure on my knees, and then knee pain tends to go away. Okay, so foam rolling, it, band, quads, glutes, calves, hips, ~whatever.~
Feels good. ~You should roll and. ~Integrate this into your weekly routine. Okay? Ideally, I'd love to do all these things every day. I don't do them every day. So same thing. Try and do this one to three times a week. Okay? So once a week on ~the ~yoga. Once a week on ~the ~high intensity, once a week on ~the ~heavy lifting, and ~then ~one to three times a week on these things.
This is gonna take you like five to 10 minutes, okay? Each time you do these things, okay? You can even knock these out a lot. Shorter time. Okay? Now remember I have that healthy living guide. I talked about it at the beginning of this episode, my three pillars of healthy living
to not only help you lose some weight if you need to, but really live a healthier life with movement tracking and accountability. You can grab your free Healthy Living guide at [00:17:00] www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide, or just scroll down to the show notes or the YouTube description thanks for tuning in to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection. I. It is about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals, and if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible.
