Episode 103: Body Image, The Weight Room and the Importance of Rest for Runners with Coach Josh Maio
In this podcast episode, I’m joined by my running coach, Josh Maio of Gotham City Runners. I started working with Josh back in 2010, took a break while I recovered from overtraining, and recently started working with him again, as I figure out what running looks like for me these days.
While we focused on discussing three topics in this episode:
Body Image
The Role of the Weight Room
And the Importance of Rest
We also talk shop about a number of other topics from personality traits of runners, to the dynamics of the running community, the role social media plays in it, and so much more.
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“The thing about running that I love is that it is the most individualized sport out there. It’s about you. It’s never about everybody else. ”
Read the Episode Transcript...
Naomi Nakamura: If you're a long time listener, especially if you've listened to some of my very early episodes, then you will know that for several years, long distance running was a really big part of my life. It was so huge that it really encompassed almost every aspect of it, and it meant, and it still does mean, so much to me because as a kid I was never an athletic person. I was bookish, I was the kid who didn't play sports. I was the kid who was always picked last for PE. To discover that I had this ability within myself, it was really important to me and it really meant the world to me. Now, being the Type A person that I am, and we actually talk a lot about Type A people in this episode, I went all in, so much so that I pretty badly overtrained my body until I was forced to take a step back from running and really take an extended break.
The irony of it all is that, in hindsight, I can now see that had I listened to my running coach, because I had a coach during the whole time, that things might have gone very differently for me. Now, I've always had coaches. I really believe in the value of coaches, whether it be a personal trainer, a nutritionist, a running coach, a Pilates instructor. I've had all of these things in my life for the past 15 years, and so I've always valued being coached and it's probably why I love being a coach myself these days. But I've always valued having that person, those people in my life, having someone to have expertise and to provide extra support, and just someone to rely on.
Joining me in this episode is my running coach Josh Maio, who I actually took a break from working with him for a few years when I couldn't run. I recently started working with him again, sort of, as I figure out what running looks like for me now. A little background on Josh, he began running on a whim over 15 years ago and as he got more into the sport he found he was able to apply his natural coaching skills from coaching other sports into coaching runners. As you'll hear, because he does share his story of how he got started, he has coached a number of charity teams that were training for races all across the US, as well as internationally, and then he formed his own coaching team where he now coaches runners of all ages from high school students to adults of all ages and all different abilities. He does this in person as well as virtually, which is how I work with him. He's contributed to a number of national periodicals, running magazines, and other media outlets. And he also works as a Brooks ID Coach.
While we focused this episode on three main topics, those being body image, the role of the weight room for runners, and the importance of rest, we also talked shop about so many other things from personality traits of runners, to the role of social media in the running community, and the dynamics of the running community, and so much more. I've worked with Josh since 2010 and I have really come to appreciate his insights and his intuitiveness, especially working with him remotely. I know that you'll also share that in our conversation as well. With that, let's get to the show.
Hello my friend, welcome to the show.
Coach Josh Maio: Thank you, appreciate it.
Naomi Nakamura: Don't laugh. This is a professional show here.
Coach Josh Maio: I can't help but giggle, all right. It's how I operate.
Naomi Nakamura: For the listeners who don't know who you are, introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do, and-
Coach Josh Maio: Sure. My name is Josh Maio. I am the head coach and founder of Gotham City Runners in New York. I train runners in person and virtually for everything from the 400 through the 100 miler. I am currently in Denver where I coach high school track and cross country in addition to all my virtual marathoners and half marathoners, and runners of all different levels.
Naomi Nakamura: You are my running coach, although I-
Coach Josh Maio: Yes. Well, you have to run to be someone's running coach.
Naomi Nakamura: Yes. That's a story in and of itself. My own journey from never running in my life to then doing half marathons and then advancing up to longer distances, and then going through a whole bunch of things I didn't understand at the time. There's a lot of-
Coach Josh Maio: We stumble.
Naomi Nakamura: We stumble, but there's a lot of insight in hindsight.
Coach Josh Maio: Yes. The 20/20 hindsight is amazing.
Naomi Nakamura: Yes. There's a lot of things now that when I look back upon, I get what advice that was given from other people, from things you told me. I'm like, "Oh. Gosh, I should have understood. I should have listened at the time."
Coach Josh Maio: I actually had a situation with a runner recently that I haven't coached in probably a year and a half or so. I bumped into them in New York randomly and they were like, "Oh my God, I have to tell you this, everything you have ever told me, everything, I now get it." I was like, "Great." I was like, "Well, why couldn't you have gotten it when we were working together so we could have skyrocketed to greatness?" But it's always, that little bit afterwards everything makes sense.
Naomi Nakamura: That's definitely the case for me because, I mean, even now looking back to different logs and different notebooks and whatnot, I can almost recall specific situations where you were like, "I think you're doing too much," and I'm [inaudible 00:05:58], "No, this thing is doing too much."
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah, right. It's still a popular thing, not just for you, but for many people at this point in time.
Naomi Nakamura: I know. We had a pre-call, before we started recording, that we talked about, and I said in my observations, I think that people who try to do running at longer distances have very common personality traits, specifically Type A.
Coach Josh Maio: Yes, and they're also the most treacherous.
Naomi Nakamura: How so?
Coach Josh Maio: How so? Because, if you write the program for someone and you put it all together, one of the things I say about running the marathon or the half marathon these days, when you get to race day, it's not about the training, it's not even about the race plan for the day, it's about how you adjust when things go wrong. Because if you're going to run three hours or four hours for the marathon, inevitably something's going to go wrong. Nothing's perfect. It never is. Whether it's the weather, whether your shoe comes untied, whether you got to go to the bathroom, what do you do when that one little thing derails your ideal day?
Type A personalities. They don't enjoy that. They like systemic, clear. Everything A, B, C, D, one, two, three, four, right on through. When it doesn't go their way, they blame everything else. It's like, "Well, you could have changed something along the way." "Yeah. But that wasn't part of my plan." "But nothing ever goes to plan."
Naomi Nakamura: Well, and I think that was the case with me because it was, as soon as something went wrong, and something always went wrong, I was always like, "I'm done with this race. Let me just go find another one I can focus on in the [crosstalk 00:07:31]-
Coach Josh Maio: Correct. Yeah. That's with Type A people, if they start to have any sort of minor injury, even the littlest things, you're like, "Take a day off." "No, I can't do that." "Why not? All right. Well fine, I'm deleting it off your schedule." "Yeah. I'm still going to do it." "Yeah, but it's gone. You don't have to see it there now." "Yeah. Well, it's like I can't stop myself. It's a compulsion. You got to check that box." One of the things that I do with some people just [crosstalk 00:07:57]-
Naomi Nakamura: Just to mess with them?
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah, mess with them, but also to prepare them for the unexpected is, when I write, "I want you to go out and run X distance," or I make the numbers really random, "I want you to run 5.37 miles." "Why 5.37?" "Why not?" "But then I have to run five... that's not five and a half it's not an even increment." "Yeah, I know." Or those people that are like, "I ran 5.96 miles." "So stop." "No I can't, it has to be a six." "No it doesn't. You could just stop. It doesn't have to be that." "Yeah, it does." That stuff goes on and on, and if you run with a group you absolutely see it. Everyone finishes running, they look at their watch, "I'm good." Then there's always that five or six people that just jog up. "What are you doing?" "It's not 10. It's nine and change."
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. I'm nodding because, yeah I get it. I know one thing that used to just, and it still drives me nuts, is when you only get schedules by the week.
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:08:58]-
Naomi Nakamura: I'm like, "I'm a planner, I need to know in advance."
Coach Josh Maio: But that's also because life is unexpected. When I started coaching and training everybody individually, it's in New York City, and New York City is like its own animal of psychosis. It's completely crazy. You get the men and women working in finance, their schedule changes every 10 minutes and you're like, "All right." You can't plan down the road, and then you get stuck with a Type A person that's trying to squeeze things in when they're doing two flights in a day. They're flying to Cleveland and back in the same day and they're like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to squeeze my run in when I get home." "Why? You're going to be exhausted. It's going to be terrible." "Yeah. But it's there." "No, let's move things around." Or they start moving things around on their own and then they hurt themselves because they do. "Well, I couldn't do my workouts those days, so I'm going to do them all back to back for the next three days and then I'll be good." Yeah, you're going to end up hurt. It just happens.
I had all these [inaudible 00:09:48] where I was, I'd write out a month or two weeks at a time and people were like, "Oh, okay." Then every day or every two days, "Hey, I got to fix this, I got to move stuff around." After a while it's just like, "No, I'm just going to give you the week and you just tell me what you have this week and I'm going to fit it in my puzzle pieces, like a good game of Tetris. I'll just pop those suckers right into those time blocks and I'm good.
Naomi Nakamura: That touches upon a lot of things I want to talk about today, but before we do, how did you get into coaching running?
Coach Josh Maio: I started what is now... God, I'm getting old. 16 years ago now? Yeah, I started running. I was 260 something pounds, and the girl I was dating at the time started running for the first time ever, and I had run a little bit in high school. She started running, she challenged me to a race. She's like, "Oh, you can't get back in shape to run a 10K with me." I'm like, "Whatever, fine." I tried it out, I got smoked, and then I started running more and more, and I was like, "This isn't going to happen again, I'm not going to lose." Too competitive. Then I joined a charity team after that in New York before they did this 9+1, which we have the volunteer race that you have to go and volunteer at. You used to just have nine races and you're automatically in the marathon. All you got to do is sign up.
At that point in time I was doing the races locally at seven and I was like, "I'll do two more and I'll do the marathon. That's crazy. All right." I did the first one with that team and then the next year stuck with them, and the economy bottomed out. The entire staff scuttled, and the guy who was the head coach, he was like, [inaudible 00:11:23]... even before then, he had been grooming me to help out with the group because he was just like, "You're really natural at this coaching, and talking to people, and working through it, and you ask all the right questions." I was like, "Well, I coached soccer and basketball forever so it's just what I do." He started teaching me everything he knew and when everybody left, when the economy bottomed out, they were like, "You got this," and I was like, "Okay."
I coached the team. At that point. I think we had like 35 or 45 members, and I just worked through the schedule that him and I had planned out, knocked it out, finished the season. I did one more year of that and then started coaching people on my own from anywhere like Twitter. At the advent, at the very beginning of Twitter, we started using that to go and find people on racecourses.
Naomi Nakamura: When it was fun to be on Twitter.
Coach Josh Maio: It was one of those things where it was like, it literally was just, "I'm going to text this into my phone and it just sprays out to people so we know where people are on the racecourse. No pictures, nothing, just words." We started using that then, and then as it became more and more of a social thing, it would be like, "Hey, I'm going to go do this workout tonight. Is there anybody interested?" The first time I did that in New York, like 60 people showed up. It was just random people. That person brought a friend who brought a friend and we all congregate and I was like, "Holy crap." I was like, "I didn't think anybody would show up." Then it just took off from there.
I started coaching individuals, started my own group in the city, and then I did that. I coached the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation charity team for five or six years. I coached American Heart Association, I coached a couple of running stores and I keep doing it. I came out here to Denver and I hadn't coached high school or anything like that in forever. I'd worked with some high school kids over the summers in New York. Then I just dropped into a 5A school here and they were like, "You're overqualified." "I don't care." I was like, "I haven't worked with high school kids in forever. Plus, I don't know, Colorado, so I don't think I want to be a head coach." They picked me up and they were stoked, and we've progressively brought more and more kids to state every year. Still coaching virtually, still coaching you [crosstalk 00:13:33]-
Naomi Nakamura: Sort of.
Coach Josh Maio: I still have runners in New York, I have some in Boston, I have some overseas, all over the place.
Naomi Nakamura: You work with people of all different ages, of all different capabilities-
Coach Josh Maio: [crosstalk 00:13:46], and health issues, non-health issues. Everything.
Naomi Nakamura: Right. My primary audience are women, probably from the ages of late 20s to early 50s, and-
Coach Josh Maio: My demographic for as long as I've been a coach has been 60% female roster, which has always been stunning.
Naomi Nakamura: Tell me. Looking back now I can see how personally I had a lot of body image issues that maybe aren't typical when you think of body issues, but what are some of the trends that you have seen women deal with when it comes to running with body issues?
Coach Josh Maio: I mean, well, it depends on what you're looking at in terms of the athlete. You get your post-collegiate athlete who has that preconceived notion that their head coach instills in them, "You are not the right size." "What do you mean?" "I want you at 12% body fat." "What?" They'll quote off numbers, they'll look like a runner type of a thing. It gets drilled in from high school on through college, and those kids, women, once they get older, it still sits there. It doesn't go away easy.
Naomi Nakamura: No, I think mine came from reading a lot of the Fitness Magazine, Shape Magazine, and they have these calculators and you put your numbers in and you think, "Well I need to have this BMI or I need to be this." In hindsight now I'm like, "That is so not possible, realistic or even healthy."
Coach Josh Maio: But also if you look at it, you look at the magazines themselves, you look at Runner's World, Running Times doesn't exist anymore. But Sports Illustrated, Body Issue and stuff like that. They take someone and they basically give you a cue. "This is the prototypical track runner. This is a prototypical marathon. If you look at the elites, this is what they look like."
Naomi Nakamura: Or even just healthy person.
Coach Josh Maio: Right. But, I mean, even the elites, some of them you're going to be like, "Is that healthy, is it not healthy?" Because, some people are like, "It's too skinny, it's not too skinny." Some of it is very personal based on what their life experiences, and a lot of it is just what you see. If you look at the models that are on any of the clothing, it's standard sample size. You've seen companies over time try and change that demographic look and work around it, but if you've paid any attention to it, it's rubber-banded right back to the way it was. It worked for a hot minute and then it just bounced right back. Now we're back to it again. With Instagram and everything else, it's just more of it. It's not elite athletes anymore, it's just anybody. Anyone who could be seen as fit. They don't even necessarily need to be runners, they're just dressed in the clothes. I mean-
Naomi Nakamura: It's funny you say that because that's what broke me through that mindset a little bit is with the advent of social media. I'm reading this article by a publication and I look at the author and I'm like, "Well, I'm going to look up to see what this author, what their personal social profiles are." I looked them up and I'm like, "This person isn't even a runner, and they're writing this article." I'm like, "First of all, I just lost all respect for this publication and pretty much any words that come out of it." Honestly, that's what broke me of that.
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah. It's funny because if you look at the publications that are still out there, they've become like microcosms. They only talk about a handful of things. If you look at the people who they interview and stuff, it's only the same handful of people. Yeah, I mean, as far as people who comment on it, I mean like the blogosphere or whatever you want to call it these days, it's full of people who, they put out there their experiences and everything like that. The thing about running that I love is that it is the most individualized sport out there. It's about you. It's never about everybody else. I mean, maybe you in the context of being a runner with the rest of people doing a marathon or a race or something like that, or pace group or whatever, but it really only comes down to you. It's you, and the course, and your watch, or the clock, or whatever, the only things that matter. But it's blown up into this other thing.
One of the toughest conversations to have with runners these days is talking to them about, "All right, tell me about yourself. Who are you?" "Well, I do this, I'm a runner and blah, blah." "What does that mean? Do you define yourself as a runner or is it just a part of your personality?" One of the things that... you'll remember this from the very beginning, is that I've said, I don't ever want running to be the only thing we're talking about. It's not it. I know that you have more in your life than that.
If you are a professional runner, talk to me about running all day long, that's the only thing we talk about. Fine. I've worked with some semi-pros and stuff like that and yeah, all we talk about is how to fit more running in and X, Y, and Z. But people with a full time job, and family, dog, kids, whatever, you're not just a runner. You are so many other things. Defining yourself as that is really hard to have as part of the conversation because then you're like, "Well what about these things?" "No, no, no. We're just only going to talk about these." "Well, we can't talk about this and not have the rest of this as part of it."
Naomi Nakamura: It's really hard though when you're in it. All of the friends and the people you hang out with are in it and they're all just as obsessed with it as you are. I really didn't get, I don't want to say get out of it, but I really didn't until I started socializing with people who didn't do it, didn't run, and that's what made me see, "Oh, I was living in a bubble for a while."
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah. It's become a very cliquey type of a thing where it's like, runners only really want to talk to runners. Triathletes only want to really talk to triathletes. It's like, "You're still people. You're still human beings. The fact that you run... Okay fine, you run. That's a hobby. You're not getting paid to do it."
Naomi Nakamura: Although I still don't like to talk to cyclists. Just kidding. I just don't think they're nice on the road.
Coach Josh Maio: Well, we don't need to get into-
Naomi Nakamura: I know.
Coach Josh Maio: ... my issues with cyclists and all of that goes with that. But runners have become very cliquey. I mean, it's running teams running this, running that. Okay fine. It's fine that it brings people together in that way. But-
Naomi Nakamura: But it also separates people too because when I was not able to, my whole social community changed. It completely did. It was interesting because I realized that the people who I was spending my most time with, that was... I don't want to say that was our only connection together, but it was the main one.
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah, and that's the kicker is it's, there's more to it. It's like religion or politics or anything else, it's so divisive. "Oh, well I'm a two something marathoner." "Well they're are three something marathoner. Okay, can you guys talk?" "[inaudible 00:20:07]" "Never mind then." It's like, I don't ever want anyone to feel like what they do is unimportant or like they can't talk to somebody else.
Naomi Nakamura: It almost goes back to the whole Type A type of mentality or personality.
Coach Josh Maio: It goes literally down to diction and vernacular and the meaning of words. I am writing a paper which I will never finish, I'm sure, about the diction and the vernacular of the sport and how it absolutely will ostracize people, or it will scare the crap out of people. If you were to have a conversation with somebody and say, "Well what about this race?" When you mention race, people get scared, or, "What about running the mile?" People go, "Oh, it's too fast. It's gross." Even the words fast and slow, everybody uses them. I try extremely hard to not even have that as part of any conversation I have with any of my athletes because it's too divisive that it objectifies what they do in a weird way.
They can define themselves as fast or slow and it tells you a lot about where their personality, and their confidence, and how they operate as a person, which I think is fascinating. "Well, I'm really slow, so you probably don't want to run with me." "No, that's not a thing. Running with you is about running with you. The pace of it doesn't matter." It's just that mental image of what fast, or slow, or any of those things look like.
Naomi Nakamura: There's one thing that we used to do in San Francisco and we called our friends BARFs, because we're Bay Area Running Friends.
Coach Josh Maio: I would join that group.
Naomi Nakamura: We had people of all different paces. But one thing that we found that really worked well for us is that we would all meet in Golden Gate Park at a certain time. Everybody went and did their own run, whatever it might be, but we all had an agreement that we would finish at a certain time together, and then we'd all go out to eat. Because before that we never saw each other.
Coach Josh Maio: Right, yeah. It's one of those things where it's like when you organize a staff or if it's people coming out for a particular workout... It's why I've gone from being a road person to really loving the track, because everybody is in the same space. It doesn't matter how fast, how far they're running, you're still in the same oval.
Naomi Nakamura: Right? There's... One of the oldest, I think this is the oldest running club in San Francisco. It's really chill, but they have this one race. Actually I don't know if they still have it, but it's at Crissy Field in San Francisco, and it's two or three weeks before the San Francisco Marathon, and it's a six-hour event. Basically it's this one mile loop around this area, and you run as many loops as you want. They have a whiteboard and they have some person calling out your name and they just tally-
Coach Josh Maio: Mark it off.
Naomi Nakamura: Mark it off.
Coach Josh Maio: [inaudible 00:22:42].
Naomi Nakamura: You can run one time, you can run one hour, you can run six hours and everybody brings their picnic blankets, and everybody just hangs out.
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah, there's a bunch of those out there now too where there's just like, "Oh, we're going to do this and see how far people can go in a day or a couple of days."
Naomi Nakamura: The best part is, it's $5 to show up and do it or $3 if you're a member.
Coach Josh Maio: I like that.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, those are always fun.
Coach Josh Maio: But to get back to the body image thing, I mean, a lot of it has to do with what people see every day, and then... Like I said, I think some of it even beyond... If you were to take the visual away, just the numbers. The numbers dictate a lot to them. Triathlon's fascinating, because you can go out there and see triathletes who don't look like they are... I mean if you were to go by pure aesthetics, they don't look like they should be that great, and they go out there and they crush it and you're like, "Whoa."
Naomi Nakamura: I noticed that, I was in Whistler this past summer and we were at the finish line for the Whistler Ironman, which I think the whole thing is crazy, but I witnessed that at the finish line.
Coach Josh Maio: You're see and you're like, "Wow, that's amazing. Why can't I do that? Or why don't I do that?" It plants that seed. I think with runners, it's there sometimes, but not as much. People get really hung up on it and yeah, I mean, the body image stuff is, it's [crosstalk 00:23:57]-
Naomi Nakamura: It takes the joy away off it because there's a lot of joy to be had there.
Coach Josh Maio: Yes, there is. Therapeutically, and just... It is my favorite reason to travel. Go travel. Where am I going? "I don't know. Edinburgh." Great. What are you going do? "I don't know. I'm going to throw my shoes on, and then I'm going to run around the town and see what I think is cool, and then when I'm done running, I'm going to go back to that place and I'm going to check it out." I've always found that to be the most interesting way to work my way through new places, run it, see what's around, nice, not nice, whatever, and then go back to it once I'm done. It really is fun. It's a cool thing to go do.
Naomi Nakamura: Shifting a little bit, I am finding a lot of joy... again, I did, probably about 15 years ago, find a lot of joy lifting heavy things in the gym. I always found it to be a little bit of, I don't want to say a challenge, but how to do that when training for a race. How do you approach strength training for runners?
Coach Josh Maio: I used to be... Way, way back in the day, and I won't use the athlete's name, but it was one of the elite males and I asked them. I was like, "Hey, how is it that you really get faster for the marathon?" They're like, "Run more miles and run them faster." He's like, "You can't do it any other way." I was like, "Okay, that seems very straightforward." I was like, "All right. I mean, simplicity can just be the answer." But over time, it's just running more miles, bodies break down. They don't like it all the time. There are very few people in the world that can just go out there and run the miles and that's it. There always has to be something else.
In the last couple of years I've really brought the weight room into everything and not just for the sake of, "We'll just go with the cosmetic or the aesthetic portion of it. Body image stuff where, "Oh, I want to look like the runner," so this helps with that lean muscle mass. More so because it just strengthens the tendons and muscles in all the right places if you get the right combination of stuff together, and you don't get injured as much. I've barely had people with injuries, and if they have had injuries, they've been flukeish, random things that generally don't happen, or a technique flaw which can happen in the weight room. You do one little thing wrong and you tweak something in your back and it takes a few days to go away.
Naomi Nakamura: Or you're resting and it's six weeks later.
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah, or something. I mean, I've had people be like, "Whoa, I was walking outside, I slipped on this rock and now my foot hurts and it's been like this for..." I'm like, "All right, these things happen." As I said, nothing goes to plan. There's always something. But using the weight room in conjunction with your workouts to create that nice balance of lots of, the hard effort and then the easy recovery. In the scheme of the things that I do with everybody now is, leg lifting days are always in conjunction with hard workout days. Early in the week, a little bit heavier as the week goes on, a little bit lighter so that you get to your long run and your legs can just go and just do what they want to do. The combination of things really works. It works really well.
Naomi Nakamura: You keep that approach whether someone is training for a race or maybe in between races?
Coach Josh Maio: Sometimes I shift it around and maybe we're not lifting as heavy earlier in the weekend, and maybe we're just doing reps and keeping it more static in that respect where they're lifting moderate weight, moderate amount of reps, more consistently, versus heavier stuff earlier in the week and lighter stuff at the end of the week. Keeping the weight work consistently definitely has helped everyone stay healthier.
Naomi Nakamura: Do you get a lot of resistance for that? Because I know that all of my running friends do not lift.
Coach Josh Maio: It comes and goes. Yeah. You'll see a lot of PT places are really pushing hard for people to do more strength work and they do isometrics and plyometrics, and that kind of stuff.
Naomi Nakamura: But you're talking lifting weights.
Coach Josh Maio: I'm talking Olympic lifting. Deads, and squats, and all that kind of stuff, and everyone just goes, they're like, "Okay that's great." I'm like, "I'm not CrossFitting, I'm not asking you to CrossFit."
Naomi Nakamura: I hate CrossFit, but I got to tell you a funny story. I was working out with my trainer on Tuesday and he had me doing Romanian dead lifts, and my wrist is still injured so we have to go a lighter weight, but he wants me to do more reps. I'm doing the first set and I'm looking at him, I'm like, "Am I doing this right?" He's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Well I really don't feel like it's doing anything for me." He's like, "Well it's a hard workout, just keep at it." Then I finish the first set and we start the second one that I stop halfway through and I'm like, "Seriously, this is not doing anything for me." He's like, "Finish this and you got two more sets." I'm like, "Fine." I finished it, I put the weights down and the first step that I took I was like, "Oh dear God." My whole legs are cramping up and I've been sore for the past two days because of it, and he's like, "I told you."
Coach Josh Maio: I have one of my post grad high school kids. They're sophomore in college now and they're like, "Can you get me ready to do a half marathon or something in the spring." I'm like, "Yeah." They're like, "Well, I want to start just doing base work training now." Okay, I was like, "Well, we're going to go to the track and we're going to do short, fast, hard reps. Your same workout. Exactly what you've been doing, hundreds of [inaudible 00:28:56]. Yeah, that same hundred on a hundred off for laps on the track. Just focusing on mechanics and stuff like that, just like in the weight room. Maybe we're not doing as much in the weight room, but making sure that the form is correct. Then we go lift, and today she's like, "I can't move." She's like, "Everything hurts." She's like, "I can't go to the bathroom. I can't do anything. Everything hurts."
Naomi Nakamura: That was me the past two days. I'm like, "I can't do anything." I'm like, "I don't want to do anything, I just hurt."
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah, and it's one of those things where it's like, I have him in the weight room two to three times a week doing legwork and then even if they get into it, I'm like, "All right, well look. I have upper body sets you do in the in between days where you don't do any leg focus at all." Then they're like, "Really?" "Yeah." There's no reason for you to not to go and keep doing stuff. It'll strengthen your core, it strengthens other places that are going to need help when your body gets tired.
Incorporating the weight room has been a huge thing in the last few years, and it's really about finding the right combination of things specific to what that person needs. Everything is so individualized, one person. We're all built different, we all have a different history, we all have different jobs. All of those things need to be factored into what you're doing. When you go and lift, and when you go and run so that it makes sense.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree, and I am really enjoying lifting right now. It's fun. Related to that, and this is where I think I really had to learn a lot, is, how am I going to word this? What should rest look like? Because, even before I ran, I was someone who was in the gym doing two-a-days, sometimes three-a-days, for five days a week, and my weekends were like one-a-days. I was working out seven days a week. It was frightening to back off from doing that. In hindsight, given all of these other things that was happening to my body, hormonal things, all these other things, work stress, life stress. I got to the point where my body couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't even run a mile without my entire body being in pain. I'm still trying to figure out what that looks like for me, but what is the role of rest?
Coach Josh Maio: You have to go back to, even when I was talking, when we first started talking, you were like, "Oh, I want to get going." I was like, "Just remember, two weeks before you start to even feel like you're normal. Metabolically, you're just waiting for the two weeks to just feel like everything catches on."
Naomi Nakamura: I'm still waiting because have I have such-
Coach Josh Maio: It's [inaudible 00:31:23], then people are like, "Oh, I missed this and I missed that," and it backs up. But I mean, rest is hugely important. Sleep is the greatest thing ever.
Naomi Nakamura: I'm not getting that, and that's why I really don't feel-
Coach Josh Maio: Some people really suffer in training when they don't sleep. I mean, one of the beautiful things about professionals and elite runners is, they get up, they run, they eat-
Naomi Nakamura: They can go to [crosstalk 00:31:49]-
Coach Josh Maio: They do a couple of things. They take a three-hour nap, they get up, they run. They eat, run, do whatever else they want to do, and it's like, "Okay, that sounds amazing. I would love to nap in the middle of the day all the time. Sleep is the best way for your body to recover from just about anything. As far as rest days are concerned. Yeah, I mean, you can read all the stuff. There's active recovery, there's passive recovery, there's full on rest days. I'm a huge proponent for the full rest day. An unplanned day is a good thing where you just go and do something else.
Naomi Nakamura: Which is really hard for a Type A person to have to comprehend.
Coach Josh Maio: Yes. To go and do something else-
Naomi Nakamura: Or nothing.
Coach Josh Maio: Or nothing. I'm always like, "Go to a movie, see a friend you haven't seen in a while. Anything, do something else."
Naomi Nakamura: I'm like-
Coach Josh Maio: Then usually I get is like, "Okay, well I'm going to go to the pool and swim." I'm like, "No, that's not rest. Just because you're not running doesn't mean that it's rest." Also, it's just good for the soul. Go hang out with your friends, go meet them at a bar or something. Anything. Just something that is not related. If it's always the same things related, at some point you're not going to enjoy it. I mean that's one part of it. Until your body will just start to break down, it's going to hate it.
The durations between rest days, it can be any variable forever. I mean, I know people that I train now that are just starting to run and they rest every other day, fine. They just don't do it because they're sore. Their bodies are not assimilating it. They have their own medical issues that they're dealing with. Something like that, every other day. Fine. At the beginning, and then you take one away and you add that other day [inaudible 00:33:29] work and eventually it just becomes how they operate. In my beginning training plans for marathoners, it's generally two rest days a week all the way through, beginning of the week and the end of the week. That way, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday they're running and then Saturday they have a long run, and Sunday they have an easy run or a cross training day. That's it. As they become more advanced, then you take one away and their bodies get used to it.
The more competitive runners that I do have, I will put up on a 10-day cycle, which they think is weird. Some people do think is really weird, but it really works for them. They just get into that rhythm and then when they hit their rest day they're like, "Oh freaking love rest day." They just shut it down. I get pictures of them with their feet up, eating pizza, watching sports. I'm like, "This is great. All right. At least they're paying attention. But rest really should be that. It should be mellow, relaxed, and have nothing to do with the training stuff. It should be something more personal. Take an art class, cook your own dinner, lunch, do your prep week. One of my runners, they take their Sunday as their rest day and it's their prep day. They do all their grocery shopping, they get all their containers set up, and they cook for the week and they're done.
Naomi Nakamura: It's impressive.
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah, they're neurotic.
Naomi Nakamura: I don't even do that. It's impressive. But yeah, I mean, rest is not just good for the body but good for the mind too.
Coach Josh Maio: Yeah, you just got to stop at some point, because if all you're thinking about is the next run, the next... "Oh I missed this lift, I should probably squeeze it in." No, just let it go. Sometimes, just letting things go is better and Type A does not enjoy that.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, and it's better to learn it before you're forced to learn it.
Coach Josh Maio: Right. That's usually what ends up happening is someone goes along with it and then all of a sudden they're like, "Oh this hurts." And it's like, "Well, now your body is telling you, you have to stop. It's not me. You've seen the warning signs and I've told you, be careful. You don't want to go over the cusp of that, because once you do there's no turning back, then you have to stop." You have these stress reaction and stress fracture people who are like, "No, I'm going to run on. It's fine." I'm like, "It's not going to be good."
Naomi Nakamura: I actually ran a half with my cousin who did it on a stress fracture, but she was a Division 1 track athlete.
Coach Josh Maio: That doesn't mean anything.
Naomi Nakamura: It means that, that's the mentality she had.
Coach Josh Maio: Yes, and her mentality as well, "If I survive this race then I can rest for a long time afterwards no matter what happens." But I mean, you can get bad breaks from that stuff and they can be really ugly. Yeah. I mean, rest is the best man. I love it.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, clearly we work virtually, but I've always appreciated your intuitiveness in helping me with my training. How can people who want to maybe have a little bit more support or guidance or, this is my favorite word right now, make brain space to make somebody else do the thinking for them. Yeah. Free the mind clutter, make brain space. How can people follow you or get in touch with you if they want to learn more.
Coach Josh Maio: They can go into gothamcityrunners.com. I think I still have my link up there. I don't know. I haven't looked at it in a while. They're going to ask you. You're going-
Naomi Nakamura: I will have links to it in the show notes.
Coach Josh Maio: I have my page up on Instagram which is an absolute disaster. I've been injured for over two and a half years, I haven't really run much. Then in the last 14 weeks, I think, or so, I've magically found fitness again. I definitely am faster than I was when I was at the end of the last time. I could really run consistently. But that's @coachjoshmaio, and you can see that all spelled out somewhere. No one wants to spell my name. Yeah. Honestly ask questions. I love to talk shop always, constantly.
Naomi Nakamura: I will have links to all of this in the show notes.
Coach Josh Maio: I love that you said intuitive. That is probably the best descriptor for me ever.
Naomi Nakamura: I've always thought that.
Coach Josh Maio: The intuitive coach, I prefer that to much of the other stuff.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, thank you.
Coach Josh Maio: I appreciate it. Absolutely.
Naomi Nakamura: I've enjoyed chatting.
Coach Josh Maio: Love it. Let's get another topic.
Naomi Nakamura: We will.
Coach Josh Maio: We'll get a Q and A day, and we'll just have people filter in crazy questions about this [crosstalk 00:37:40]-
Naomi Nakamura: You should do that. You should go live on your Instagram and just be like, post something and just-
Coach Josh Maio: [crosstalk 00:37:45] say that sounds like effort.
Naomi Nakamura: No, you just post something to your stories or your feed and just be like, "Hey going live at this time. Ask your questions." Then when you go live, then just... I don't know how people do it but I've seen it where they are able to put the question on the screen so people can see what the question is and you answer it. Then, this is even better, you save the recording to your phone and you post it somewhere else.
Coach Josh Maio: All right, maybe I'll try that. My favorite thing right now is asking people to give me some weird workout to go try and then I'll go do it and tell them whether it was good or not, or if it was one that I would actually use or recommend to other people. I'm always curious to see what people... Because there's only so many workouts in the world. You can make some really weird ones. I have some really, really weird ones that people look at and they're like, "I don't want to do that."
Naomi Nakamura: Did I tell you what our BARF friends used to do for Christmas every year?
Coach Josh Maio: No, [inaudible 00:38:39] do that?
Naomi Nakamura: We used to meet, they don't live here anymore, but at this one couple's house and everybody would bring their tree, and they would designate a one-mile route and they would put in the board. You go out and run one mile, you come back, you'd have to eat a treat.
Coach Josh Maio: That's like the Krispy Kreme challenge.
Naomi Nakamura: We had all kinds of treats. Whoever made it to the end won. After the first year I'm like, "I'm just here for the treats."
Coach Josh Maio: There you go. Perfect.
Naomi Nakamura: All righty. Well, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Coach Josh Maio: You're welcome. Absolutely. Anytime, let me know if you've got more questions, fire them away.
Naomi Nakamura is a Functional Nutrition Health Coach. She helps passionate, ambitious high-achievers who are being dragged down by fatigue, burnout, sugar cravings, poor sleep, unexplained weight issues, and hormonal challenges optimize health, find balance, and upgrade their energy so they can do big things in this world.
Through her weekly show, The Live FAB Live Podcast, programs, coaching, and services, she teaches women how to optimize their diet, support their gut health, reduce their toxic load, and improve their productivity, bringing work + wellness together.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
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