(soft music)
- Morning Trainiacs.
I am limber like a wet noodle.
For the past four weeks,
I have been doing about a 30 minute yoga session
every single day.
I've been reviewing an entire year's worth
of yoga sessions that we've put together
for our training app that we did with Helen Faliveno,
HMF yoga on YouTube.
She produced all of the guided yoga sessions.
I went through all of the guided yoga sessions
to just be a second set of eyes
before they actually went into the app.
And there were some really interesting things that happened.
Very much not things that you would think
when you say like, ooh I'm gonna take up yoga
and see if it helps for triathlon.
So today, once I get up my PJs
we're gonna go through that.
Let's start out with why yoga?
Like why would you even consider
getting a little bit more flexible and mobile?
Well, for this, I went to NCBI
and started looking at studies.
One study called "Effects of brief yoga exercises
and motivational preparatory interventions
in distance runners"
results of a controlled trial wanted to see
if yoga would help one mile runners.
Well, what they ended up finding out
was there were three groups, one that did nothing,
one that did yoga
and then one that just had people yell at them
before the second mile time trial that they did.
And yeah, yoga did better than the runners who did nothing
but it didn't even do as well
as coaches just screaming at you.
So not a really big sales point for yoga right there
but this was just one yoga session.
One week they did the run,
next week they came back did some yoga or got yelled at
and did the run after
but it's not actually changing how flexible you are.
The next one, the impact of 10 weeks of yoga practice
on flexibility and the balance of college athletes.
And what this found was that 10 weeks of yoga training
did make the athletes in that study actually more flexible.
All of their mobility measures ended up going up.
So yeah, yoga improves flexibility of course
but does it actually improve running performance?
Well, we start getting a little bit more nitty-gritty
and seeing a flexibility improves running performance
and one study called "Chronic stretching
and running economy" addressed the thought
that you actually don't wanna be flexible
to perform well in running.
And this actually turned that thought on its head.
When it found that after 10 weeks
the stretching group exhibited a significant increase
in sit and reach,
while non stretching group experienced
no significant change.
So the stretching group got a little bit more flexible.
However, neither the stretching group
or the control group exhibited a significant change
in O2 costs for the submaximal run.
It is concluded therefore
that a chronic stretching program
does not necessarily negatively influence running economy.
So that idea of like,
you wanna be wound tight and be springy,
isn't actually the case for runners.
So then why even think about it if it's not clear
if it's gonna help?
Well, I look at what we're doing with our training app
and what I want to recommend for endurance athletes
isn't just getting you
to be the best athlete you wanna be.
I want you to be the best person that you wanna be.
I want you to use endurance sports to be a better person.
And if you just go through endurance training,
without any of the mobility training,
you're gonna get inflexible.
You're gonna lose a lot of mobility.
You're gonna get really really good at being a diesel engine
and having a healthy heart and lungs.
But everything else tends to be sacrificed.
Running tends to really make us quite stiff
and not feel very good.
And what does that result in down the road?
Well, this is the key study
that I found about nine months ago.
It really changed my thought pattern
on how I think about strength, mobility,
mixing all of that in with endurance training.
And it's called "Falls in older persons
risk factors and prevention."
And what this study found
is one of the major things that happen to us
when we get older
that takes us out of being healthy
and living a long fruitful life
is that major amount of time away from activity
caused by either illness or injury.
So if you get sick or injured, when you're 40, 50, 60
it's very unlikely that you're gonna be able to come back.
The factors in this study were found
that it was intrinsic factors, such as unstable joints,
muscle weakness, unreliable postural reflexes,
so lack of mobility and agility.
This failure is generally due to factors intrinsic
to the individual.
It's our fault that we're falling
because of a loss of sensory function,
impaired central processing and muscle weakness,
lack of stability, balance and agility.
So if all you wanna do is just be a good endurance athlete
and it might be to the detriment
of your overall long-term wellbeing, by all means,
ignore strength and mobility.
But if you wanna be a good athlete
for the rest of your life
and insure against the likelihood of major illness
or injury taking you out of the game
that you can't really come back from,
then incorporate strength and mobility,
'cause here's what happens
when you ignore strength and mobility.
All right, with the help of our lovely assistant NTK
I'll show you the areas
that tend to end up going a little bit wonky
with endurance athletes.
So start with the hips.
With us being mostly desk workers
like the vast majority of endurance athletes
are desk workers,
we sit in this position, shortens our hips.
Being triathletes we tend to scrunch over
in the aero position shortening up the hips.
And when something gets tight here, the opposing muscle
the badonkadonk,
it ends up tending to go to sleep.
That is a really big,
(both laugh)
That's a really big determinant of injuries.
If you don't have glutes that can activate
and stabilize you when you run up, right please
you are gonna have a lot of injuries.
If you speak to any physiotherapist,
inactive glutes that is a big cause of injuries.
Next, similar sort of thing.
The chest, the chest tends to get tight.
Because again, we are working at a desk.
We are in the aero position.
We are running everything is very tight.
So with this, getting tight here,
this stabilizer muscles, everything back here
will tend to be a little bit less active.
Now, as a result of that
what will happen is that T spine rotation,
your ability to move your shoulders back and forth
with your hips staying stationary,
it tends to go away.
Your hips are still moving.
Try to move your-
- Oh man, it's hard.
- So you can only move like two inches.
Now that's what happened to me
when I actually start golfing,
I tried to start twisting
and again, I got an injury
that took me out of working out for probably two weeks
working out entirely, golfing, probably three months.
And these are things that just start building up
as you get older and taking it out of the game.
I'm 38 right now.
What if I had that injury when I was 52 or 58
I might be out for a long, long time.
So the T spine rotation needs to be worked on.
You're just getting wiggly what's going on.
And then we don't really do any balancing movements.
We're are gonna try a little test here,
lift your knee up to hip height, look forward,
close your eyes.
Oh, she's actually doing pretty good.
Most endurance athletes
are gonna have a really really hard time.
- This (indistinct) - There we go.
And that is a really basic thing.
Think about your aunts, your uncles
people who have had a broken hip or a broken knee,
like strain knee, torn cartilage.
Often it happens by getting up in the middle of the night
to go to the bathroom in the dark,
hit the corner of the bed
and boom you go over
because you don't have the stability
to actually brace yourself.
And all we do is cage our feet as endurance athletes.
And we stay in this one single plane
going forward and back all the time.
In my opinion, a healthy human and a healthy you
is a healthy athlete.
You're going to be able to perform better
for a longer period of time.
Meaning that your ceiling of what your performance level is,
will just keep going up and up
because you're not getting those instances
of being taken out of the game
and your life is to be a lot better longterm.
So we ended up hiring Helen Faliveno,
who runs HMF, yoga the YouTube channel
to create a whole bunch of guided yoga workouts
are being put into our app.
So I had to go through all of them
over the course of about four weeks
doing one 30 minute session every single day for four weeks.
I missed a couple of days here and there
but I had a really big focus on mobility.
And these six things were the big things that I found.
First, it's a workout.
Even though you might as an endurance athlete, be like,
well, it's just yoga.
I can just add it in.
No, it actually does take a fair amount out of you.
So you can't just take your current plan
and then lump yoga on top.
Yoga has to be put into your plan
in the same way that you would add in strength training.
It needs to be factored in for your total training load
and your total trading time,
your total training balance and on the right days.
In addition to that, it should be designed
in such a way that it isn't competing
with the intensity of all of your different workouts.
The second thing that I found
when I started doing yoga in general,
we get lots of workouts.
We have swim, bike, run, trail workout, strength workouts,
intensity is not something
that we really need more of as endurance athletes.
So I started actually gravitating much more
towards actually feeling good from very gentle workouts.
Floor based workouts, yin style workouts,
which is really just lying in a certain pose
and holding it and just waiting
minutes upon minutes upon minutes
for the muscles to release and let go.
It's kinda like taking a nap in a stretch.
Third thing is that I felt better, a lot better.
All the little you know like nicks and niggles.
And you're like, you know
just a little bit sore at the end of the day
or just feeling a little bit beat down.
I didn't feel that a whole lot.
Really just much more comfortable throughout the day.
A four thing you might be wondering
is related to performance.
I recovered faster, a lot faster
as opposed to having all of those nicks and niggles.
I was kind of just knocking off workouts
one after the other.
Now granted, I'm not in the midst of a race season.
I'll get to how you deal with yoga during a race season.
But I just tended to absorb the workouts a lot better.
So this is similar to what happens
when you start researching massage.
If you look into
all of the different modalities of recovery,
massage is really one of the only ones
that is statistically shown to be very beneficial.
People report feeling less fatigued and less sore
when they get frequent massage.
But when you dig into the data,
the reason for that is likely
not because of the actual massage
but it seems to be because it's time
that you actually get to lower your cortisol,
your stress levels just kind of come down
and that lower stress level that lowered cortisol
that increased parasympathetic state
where you're not in flight or fight,
it allows your body to start recovering a lot better.
That's kind of the feeling that I was getting
throughout doing all of these yoga sessions
that it was very rejuvenating.
It seemed to almost like reset me.
And I would come out of a 30 minute yoga session
in the same way that I would feel coming out of a massage,
just refreshed and the mind was clear again.
And didn't feel like this.
Fifth thing is that yoga for endurance athletes,
in my opinion, is different than big box yoga.
As opposed to having these long flows
and these hour long sessions,
these sessions that are actual literal workouts
which we don't need more of,
the yoga that we designed with Helen was like I said,
very floor based.
It's very gentle, very complimentary.
It also targets all of those different muscles.
The badonkadonk, the chest
while yoga general does promote flexibility,
yoga for endurance athletes is specifically targeting
all of the areas that we know
that 80 to 90% of us are going to have to address.
So why not design those workouts, those yoga sessions
in a way that it addresses the exact things
that we know we need to address.
The final thing is that even though
I'm talking about all of the good things involved with yoga
and why you should very strongly consider yoga,
I put the priority of it way down
on the overall list of everything that you should do.
During the base-building season, the off season,
when you're not training for a specific race,
it ranks higher in the priority list,
but come race season, if you are a time crunch triathlete,
you've gotta nix something
we nix mobility pretty quickly.
In our plans, once people come back
to their baseline training, their general wellness,
general fitness training
that is gonna allow them to stay healthy,
to move in and out of races at any point in time
and have longevity as a person and an athlete,
we then bring the yoga back in
and there's a time and a place for it.
Same sort of concept that we use with strength
that during the off season base building season
more focus on strength,
during the race season less focus on strength,
same with yoga.
So those were the six main things
that I found going through all of those yoga sessions.
If you wanna check out Helen's channel,
you can see one of her videos over here that she's done
in conjunction with us.
And if you wanna get a training plan
that is designed for the average adult
everyday amateur triathlete to keep you healthy,
while also letting you hit your race goals,
go to app.mymottiv.com.
Check it out there.
You can try it free for 14 days
and all of this stuff that I'm talking about,
about yoga workouts being designed properly,
about yoga workouts coming in and out of the plan
at the right point in time,
yoga workouts being put into your plan
at the right point in the week,
it's all automatically done for you there.
You get a custom training plan designed for you
based off of your goals, based off of your schedule,
based off of what your races are that you wanna do.
And then all you have to do is show up every single day
and just do the workouts and you will hit your goal.
So with all of that said,
if you're not already subscribed, hit the subscribe button.
Later Trainiacs.
Stay bendy.
So bendy.