 Video number two publishing on the channel today This video is a basically a response to a commenter three days ago Who wanted me to go into a little more detail on the lifting that I do in the gym And when I say lifting it's a little bit in air quotes right now So what I like to do just put it out there right up front I like to keep my lifting a little bit Lighter and a little more dynamic and really focused on explosion Early on in the training block. So the the marathon is in May I will begin to introduce heavier lifting in a basically like next week and 10 days from now So after this race that I'm doing on Saturday and I do that again because I don't want to bulk up too much Look at look at Ryan Hall. You all know Ryan Hall the Olympian in the marathon Stud runner incredible runner. Well, he kind of he stopped running and he had had enough He retired and basically he's now a powerlifter and he's like this massive dude like Google him now He's like boom. He's he's ripped now But I heard an interview with him recently and he basically said like it's really Difficult for him to run now because he's so he's put on like 40 pounds of muscle. It's insane So as runners, we don't want to be big and bulky, but we do still want to be strong It's running is all about walking the line. Remember we talked about tapering yesterday like being fit and fresh Well with lifting I believe it's it's walking that line between being a strong But not too strong. I did does that make sense. So so today I'm gonna walk you through some lower leg Exit I'm gonna say exercises I'm not even gonna say lifting and I'm doing these exercises in the gym In order to get ready for the lifting I will do I will do squats in the month of March and April getting ready for the marathon I'll probably dabble in a little bit of dead lifting and I'll do some bench pressing and some overall Strengthening, but that's not what I'm gonna cover today and one more point before diving in I almost forgot I'm a big fan of single leg Isolation I think we can like I my right leg is so much stronger and more it has better Coordination than my left leg and my left foot is a little it's you know, that's where I had plantar fasciitis last year It's a little weak so I'm a really big fan of isolating both legs and Oh, this is a topic for another day But that whole like if you could like 50-50 if you could just get five to ten percent more power and Energy return out of your weak leg. You know, we all have a dominant leg for me. It's my right side Oh, imagine five to ten percent more from one leg that would it's just amazing So anyway, just wanted to mention that so a lot of these exercises that I'm gonna do our single leg Exercises so I always like to start with the treadmill just to warm up the muscles So I'll hop on the treadmill get movement moving I like to go in different directions just to fire different muscle groups Then I'll hop over to the mat and start rolling out Stretching doing ankle rotations just to make sure like ankles for runners The ankle is so important not only for strength But just to make sure we keep it healthy because of the Achilles tendon Which maybe some of you have had issues with in the past. Okay, so after the warm-up again treadmill rolling out Stretching and we'll go into more detail on foam rolling at some point But that's not for today and then the ankle rotations We start with single leg deadlifts and you're seeing it on your screen right now Unfor I use a 10 pound weight. I would like to work up to a 20 pound weight later in the Training block and ideally you are doing this with a kettle bell But my gym doesn't have kettle bells So I just use a 10 pound weight and you see me just going down there and then back up and again My form like my leg that is is stuck straight out in the back. That should be straighter So again, I'm working on getting better myself as I'm watching these videos I like to do three sets of 12, but don't do that at first. You want to ease into it I'd recommend two sets of eight the first time you ever do this Just get your muscles ready to get ready and the next exercise is a single leg lift on the ball Okay, three again three sets of 12 each leg this lift So as runners we often have very strong quads a lot of times sometimes we can neglect our hamstrings So this lift is gonna work a lot of different muscles, but it's you're gonna really feel it in your hamstrings So make sure your hamstrings are nice and warmed up before doing this Oh, it burns so bad You see you put your foot on top of the ball and then you basically stick your other legs straight up in the air And then you pull that ball toward you with you with a leg that is doing the actual Exercise and again, this is not only working your legs, but your core as well very difficult very tiring And then I call this one the rock climber three sets by 30 seconds just on the ground kind of in the Push-up position and again my back I wish my back was a little more flat But you're just you're just pumping your your legs as quick as possible on the ground making sure this is key Making sure your knee is not going out to the side that you're driving your knees Straightforward and it's all about working that form to make sure when you're running You're not losing any energy by letting your knee drift to the side It's very tempting to let that happen when you get tired and so again knee drive Straightforward on the ground. I call this the rock climber and good old box jumps three sets of ten and again Ease into it, but jump up onto a box start with a low box This one is about it looks like to be about 24 inches I would like to get up to maybe like 28 inches at some point I got to work on my vertical one reason I really do this is for climbing hills if you're doing if you're a Trail runner, I think this actually like if you can work up to it now listen It's not easy and especially as you get a little older You got to watch your knees make sure you're not beating up your knees too much But the more you do it the stronger your legs will become the stronger the muscles around your knee and the Tendons and the ligaments will become they'll become more supple and I think this I was not really doing this exercise Too much last year. Definitely not two years ago when I was Racing the Pikes Peak ascent. So anyway, I'm excited for these box jumps three sets of ten just to help with that explosive Nature of running like it's so important to have a nice Responsiveness when you need to to kick at the last, you know 300 meters of a mile race on the track you want to be explosive All right three sets of ten on that and the next one high knees on the box three sets of 20 seconds Just boom boom this one you're gonna get a burn You're definitely working on that knee drive again that's straight up and down knee drive But you know what you're working on almost even more is hand-eye coordination It's it's a little more difficult than it looks like you have to really concentrate to make sure you don't you know Hit your foot on that box when you're bringing it up and down up and down and again I think it's really important to have good hand-eye coordination as runners Even though we're not soccer players basketball players The more nimble we are and the more confident we are in firing our our our muscle groups Anyway, I just think it all can help with getting us down the track down the road over the course as quick as possible if we're Feeling confident in our footing and how we are moving Fluidly through our running gate. Okay, so those were high knees three on the box three sets by 20 seconds and the keyword is strength. We're not quite done three more. It all has to do with this. It's it's spelled BOSU. I'm gonna say Bosu. I don't exactly know how to pronounce it. Love this thing if your gym doesn't have one Make them buy one because this thing is absolutely It's a it's firing when you step up on it. You're just just standing there You're firing all these little teeny tiny muscles ligaments tendons that you don't usually fire in your running group in your running stride Because you have to balance when you're doing all of these exercises Make sure you feel confident getting on it that you don't want to fall off. You might have to hold on to a wall That's fine. And so for these last three exercises, you're gonna do the single leg lunge Two sets of 12 that's that for me. That's plenty for the single leg squats You're gonna do two sets of 12 and then for the normal squat where both feet are up on the Bosu Balance board you're gonna do three sets of 12. Okay, so again single leg squat two sets of 12 And you see it on the screen there single leg lunge two sets of 12 both legs and then lastly Three sets of 12 again for that normal squat where both legs are on the Bosu balance board and there you have it Those are the lifts lifts exercises jumps Explosions that I like to do early in the training block and the question of the day Have you ever done single leg lifting or are you interested in learning more about single leg lifting and isolating your left? Isolating your right and if you if you learn something today, let me know And again, I am not a lifting coach This is all drawn from experience at the University of Colorado I'm not even lifting in high school and then really just teaching myself some different movements Since college like all of these some of these I have created. I really literally have created some of them I've been taught by a personal trainer and Anyway, so just putting that out there I am not a full-on lifting coach But I'm happy to share as much insight as possible with all of you when it comes to what I like to do in the gym For making sure I'm ready to get ready. All right. All right. Thank you for being here This is a video number two by the way by the time this publishes. We are like we are almost at ten thousand It's so exciting. Thank you for being here and Yeah, let me know if you want more of these types of videos and listen This is my first attempt at a lifting video We can only go up from here like I need to figure out how to better film these as well See beauty work hard