Here's the replay of today's live call! @Jesse Garn and I talked about: -Different injuries (and prevention strategies) for runners of varying ages -Causes of running burnout: -Overtraining -Chronic pain -Decreased motivation to train Burnout is often at a high this time of year (at least in the Northeast) where it's now been colder for many months. Fortunately, spring running is right around the corner! :) Our next live is on 2/20 at 12pm EST (see 'Calendar' above) - comment topics/questions you want us to discuss here or come chat with us live!

Hey all! I will be leading a live discussion this Friday with open Q&A afterwards, if you are able to join us! We will be discussing “burnout” regarding running and strength training, and strategies to counter this. This is a classic time of year where weather and sickness can affect motivation and training consistency, so I felt this would be a perfect Winter topic. You can access the link for the call through the group calendar. Looking forward to seeing you then!

Happy Friday everyone! I wanted to dig into an idea that I wished a lot more runners were familiar with, that can be super helpful when a new pain pops up. One of the most frustrating things about a new running pain is not knowing what it means. Most runners default to worst-case thinking. We automatically think that a twinge in the shin is a stress fracture. A tight Achilles means months on the sideline. The brain fills in the blanks with whatever MRI result or horror story it remembers from the internet. Here's something that tends to shift perspective once runners actually understand it: pain is constructed in your brain, not produced in the tissue itself. Your brain takes incoming signals from the body and combines them with context: past injuries, that article you read, how much sleep you got, how stressed you've been. It assembles all of this into an experience and decides how loud to make the alarm. This doesn't mean pain is fake....it means it's modifiable. Think about getting a shot at the doctor's office. The nurse says "you'll feel a pinch on three." You tense up. Sometimes you swear you feel it before the needle even touches you. The signal was real, but your brain jumped the gun. Running pain can work the same way. You had an injury last year and then one morning you feel a flicker of that old sensation. You walk for ten seconds and then it's gone and your run feels totally normal. Your system was on high alert, expecting trouble, but nothing was actually wrong! This is why sleep and stress change how things feel. When you're well-rested and recovered, your brain reads signals more accurately. When you're exhausted and overwhelmed, the same input can feel sharper, more alarming, and make you think "something must be wrong." The takeaway is that "listen to your body" has to include monitoring your recovery status. If your alarm system is more sensitive because you're running on fumes, that doesn't automatically mean there's new damage when a pain is worse. Sometimes it just means you need to adjust today's run and focus on recovery, rather than spiraling into an internet search.

Hey all! Jesse and I had a great chat about how to better recognize if you could have early signs of a bone stress injury. We went through the SPOILD framework (severity, presentation, onset, irritability, and description) so that you can be more confident if you may (or likely don't) have a dreaded stress fracture/reaction. Excited for the next live call in 2 weeks - come with questions or send them ahead of time!

We're actively growing this group to be a free community for runners around the world to have access to evidence-based & optimistic running-related information. There's a lot of BS out there, so we hope to help you better understand what info is likely either nonsense, or needs a lot of nuance. @Jesse Garn has been working with Steady State as a virtual PT/coach the last year, and is helping lead our virtual growth. He'll be leading the first live Q&A this Friday at 12pm EST! Feel free to come with (or without) questions, or comment questions you have here to be talked through on the call. You can find access to this live call in the "Calendar" section above - make sure to add to your calendar so you remember to join!