In this show, I share 40 mind-blowing assertions to recalibrate modern fitness philosophy, inspired by content in the book Born to Walk, written by me and Mark Sisson.

Walking is universally health-boosting, delivers excellent aerobic conditioning, stabilizes energy, mood, and appetite, and carries near zero overuse injury risk. In contrast, endurance running—even at a comfortable pace—is too physically stressful for the vast majority of participants, promotes breakdown, burnout, and chronic injury, and is most likely bad for your health when done in the typical modern manner.

You’ll hear why walking is a genetic expectation for health, why most endurance exercise should be conducted at or below your fat max heart rate, and how chronic cardio promotes stress hormone overproduction, suppressed immune function, and visceral fat storage. I also explain why elevated cushioned shoes enable poor running technique, drive injuries, and why recreational endurance running has only been possible in modern times because of them.

Key points from this episode:

• Walking is universally health-boosting and delivers excellent aerobic conditioning with minimal risk
• Running is too strenuous and stressful for most participants; walking should be the baseline
• Fat max heart rate (180 minus age) is the true measure for energizing, fat-burning cardio
• Chronic cardio promotes overuse injury, stress hormone overproduction, suppressed immunity, and visceral fat
• Elevated cushioned shoes enable poor running technique and are the driver of chronic injury rates
• The most celebrated endurance events (marathon, Ironman) are antithetical to health and fueled by marketing hype
• Humans never ran for recreation until the modern running boom; ancestral movement was built on walking, strength, sprints, and play

Learn more at BornToWalkBook.com, where you can also download the free PDF resource with all 40 assertions and more tools for building lifelong health.

TIMESTAMPS:

For the vast majority of participants, running, even at a comfortable pace, is too physically stressful. [00:50]

The vast majority of your training should be at a medium or perhaps brisk walk if you’re really fit, with a minimal amount of anything faster because it elevates the heart rate too high and it’s too strenuous. [04:34]

Fat max heart rate represents the intensity at which you burn the maximum number of fat calories per minute. [06:27]

If you cannot proceed faster than 14 minutes per mile while you’re at your fat max heart rate, you should be walking, not running. [08:32]

Maintaining muscle mass strength needs to be added to your bicycling, jogging, stiar climbing. Those simply aren’t enough. [13:44]

It’s not about the calories burned, it’s about the movement. [16:50]

Running is catabolic. It breaks your body down and requires recovery while walking is anabolic, which means it sends the genetic signaling for efficient metabolic immune cognitive and endocrine function [24:54]

Running on elevated shoes enables poor running technique. [30:25]

When you’re running barefoot, impact forces are similar whether the surface is hard or soft. [35:15]

Chronic cardio can suppress immune function, promote chronic inflammation, compromise gut health and damage mitochondria. [37:50]

The monotony of repetitive impact trauma and mental and physical suffering associated with steady state cardio can easily breed an obsessive addictive mentality. [43:08]

Don’t overdo the search for that endorphin rush. [46:12]

Any homo sapiens genetic gifts for endurance are buried today under excess body fat, insufficient daily baseline activity, weak musculature and dysfunctional feet caused by a lifetime in shoes [53:50]

Recreational runnung is a new thing. It has come about only by elevated cushioned shoes. [59:56]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• BradNutrition.com
• B.rad Whey Protein Superfuel – The Best Protein on The Planet!
• Brad’s Shopping Page
• BornToWalkBook.com
• B.rad Podcast – All Episodes
• Peluva Five-Toe Minimalist Shoes
• Brad Kearns Cardio 2.0 Workout
• The Primal Blueprint
• Peluva YouTube

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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast – where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life. I’m Brad Kearns, NY Times bestselling author, world #1 ranked masters age 60-plus high jumper, and former #3 world-ranked professional triathlete. You’ll learn how to stay fit, strong and powerful as you age; transform your diet to lose body fat and increase energy; sort through hype and misinformation to make simple, sustainable lifestyle changes; and broaden your perspective beyond a fit body to experience healthy relationships, nonstop personal growth, and ultimately a happy, healthy, long life. Let’s explore beyond shortcuts, hacks, and crushing competition to laugh, have fun, appreciate the journey, and not take ourselves too seriously. It’s time to B.rad!

Brad (00:00:50):
Endurance, running anything beyond a mile or two is most likely bad for your health. For the vast majority of participants, running even at a comfortable pace is too physically stressful. How can you say that, Brad? Isn’t it better than sitting home on the couch and being inactive? Well, 40 mind-blowing assertions to recalibrate modern fitness philosophy. And these are inspired by the content in Mark Sisson and in my new book called Born to Walk. Learn more at Born to Walk book.com and you can also download this very PDF that I’m working off to give you the 40 mind-blowing assertions and numerous other helpful PDF resources on all aspects of healthy fitness. Learning how to integrate more walking into your daily life, learning about the hazards of running and elevated restrictive shoes, and how to get, improve your foot functionality, all kinds of awesome resources at the book landing page.

Brad (00:01:55):
The first 20 mind-blowing assertions relate to walking. I’m gonna cover some of those and continue on with more distribution of the info on this wonderful PDF. So let’s start with the big picture insight that walking is universally health boosting delivers an excellent aerobic conditioning effect even for fit runners. It improves fat metabolism 24/7, it stabilizes energy, mood and appetite, and has near zero overuse injury risk because the impact load is never more than one times body weight. Realize that the distinctive feature of the human gait pattern of walking is that one foot is always on the ground, whereby in running there’s a so-called flight phase where both feet are in the air and then your impact load, even on a moderately paced jog is two to three times body weight and that adds up over a five mile run. We have all this information in the book. 2.3 million pounds of impact trauma, and that’s why the chronic rate of overuse injuries when people exhibit poor form as enabled by the elevated cushion shoes and shuffle on down the road trying to get fit, and instead they get injured, tired and have difficulty reducing excess body fat. Walking is the baseline of aerobic conditioning for all manner of athletic endeavors.

Brad (00:03:19):
Now, I’m going to declare this is number two, that walking is not a fitness option. It’s not one of the things that’s going on to your to-do list, along with hoping that you can get to the morning bootcamp class and the weekend, uh, hike and the, uh, enter the mud race or whatnot. Walking is a hardwired genetic expectation for human health. It goes right up there in the same category as getting nutritious food, adequate sunlight and sleep. Number three, walking is accessible to virtually everyone while running is self-selecting for lean, fit, competitive, willing to suffer types. In general, running is far too stressful, exhausting and injurious for the vast majority of participants. Walking delivers excellent zone one cardiovascular conditioning effects without the downside risk associated with slightly too strenuous endurance runs. And I’m heartened to see the wonderful popularity of zone two cardio being dispensed by mainstream fitness experts and progressive health leaders.

Brad (00:04:34):
But at times I get frustrated because it seems like we’re discounting the tremendous benefits of zone one and we talk at length in the book how Eluid Kipchoge, the greatest marathon runner of all times, does the vast majority of his training. 82 to 84% of his weekly mileage is conducted at zone one heart rates not zone two. Zone two is around 9% zone three, four and five collectively or only around 7%. And that’s something for all of us to wake up to and realize that if you’re a devoted endurance runner now and you’re not at the very front of the pack trying to bust the three-hour marathon mark or whatever, the vast majority of your training should be at a medium or perhaps brisk walk if you’re really fit with a minimal amount of anything faster because it elevates the heart rate too high and it’s too strenuous.

Brad (00:05:26):
Number six on the list walking makes you supple, mobile and flexible, unlike chronic cardio, which makes you creaky, achy, stiff and sore. Number seven, walking is a stress reliever. It stimulates parasympathetic nervous system activity and helps speed recovery from all forms of training, injury and illness. In fact, what is the protocol to recover from anything, from so much as being laid up by a virus or an injury or a surgery? You start walking as your comeback. That’s the start of the comeback trail for everybody. Whereas running is in that category of an extremely stressful athletic endeavor. Number eight, walking helps boost blood circulation and oxygen delivery to the brain. Improves brain neuron firing, alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety and improves neuroplasticity. Now we’re gonna get to number nine.

Brad (00:06:27):
Fat max heart rate represents the intensity at which you burn the maximum number of fat calories per minute. Exceeding fat max heart rate on a routine basis, of course means that you’re burning more total calories, but you’re burning less fat and more glucose. So if you do that as your typical exercise pattern, which the vast majority majority of endurance athletes do, what happens is you’re becoming essentially a sugar burner and a sugar scarfer in the diet because your workouts are slightly too significantly too stressful. Number 10 on the list, exercising at or below your fat max heart rate ensures that your workout is energizing and health boosting a pattern of steady state cardio workouts where you exceed fat max routinely leads to breakdown burnout, illness and injury. It’s simply too stressful of a sport to engage in. And how do you get permission to run or become less frustrated to having to slow your pace so much to a walk? It all comes down to fat max heart rate.

Brad (00:07:32):
How efficient are you when you are exercising at the fat max calculation of 180 minus your age in beats per minute? Now you can go to an expensive laboratory test. This is number 11, where you can calculate your fat max through putting gas exchange monitor, breathing through a mask and exercising on a treadmill or a stationary bike. But this simple calculation is widely regarded as highly accurate. It was developed by aerobic training pioneer Dr. Phil Maffetone. So I want you to just take 180 minus your age. I’m almost 60, so it’s 180 minus 60. My fat max heart rate is one 20. And even though I’m a very fit person for my age, one 20 is a very comfortable pace. It’s barely jogging, so I barely have permission to jog when I’m up at my fat max limit. I want everyone who’s interested in endurance exercise to monitor exercise heart rate diligently.

Brad (00:08:32):
A smartwatch is okay, but it’s not as accurate as a chest drop and be disciplined to conduct the vast majority of your steady state cardio at or below or well below your fat max heart rate. Number 12, we typically transition from a walking gate to a jogging gate at around 14 minutes per mile. If you cannot proceed faster than 14 minutes per mile while you’re at your fat max heart rate, you should be walking, not running. Number 13, the human foot is vastly superior to any running shoe for impact absorption, balancing moving body weight and generating forward propulsion. Those are the three things that we’re counting on our foot to do with every stride that we take, whether walking or running. Again, it’s absorb impact, gracefully, balance, moving body weight, and generate forward propulsion. The great research from Harvard University, Dr. Daniel Lieberman, uh, reveals that the human foot is better at absorbing impact than even the greatest shoe.

Brad (00:09:38):
And that when you run, likely with poor form as 80 to 95% of all recreational runners exhibit, when you run with poor form, you are incurring seven times greater impact trauma than when you run barefoot. Number 14, lifelong use of elevated cushioned shoes has caused atrophy, dysfunction, and chronic pain. That’s why the stats are around 80% of Americans complain of chronic foot pain. So that means if you’re not in pain, you’re an outlier. Regaining lost-foot functionality is a critical modern health objective. Number 15, going barefoot or wearing minimalist shoes with flat, flexible soles and individual toe articulation can safely strengthen feet and reduce injury risk. But you should be walking in these shoes not running because you’re poorly adapted due to wearing elevated restrictive shoes for a lifetime. So at Peluva we’re promoting these shoes for use in all manner of everyday life.

Brad (00:10:41):
But if you’re doing specialized high risk sporting activities like running, go ahead and choose your favorite pair of shoes. If you insist upon running, you’ve heard the previous tips where you might wanna slow down to a walk if you’re training in an overly stressful chronic manner, but then the rest of the time go barefoot as much as you can. And when you’re out of the house and walking on hard surfaces, you can enjoy the Peluva the true authentic barefoot shoe. Any shoe that’s more minimalist and less elevated and restrictive is a step in the right direction. But to call yourself a barefoot shoe, you need those articulated five toes. The toes must operate independently and through multiple planes of motion, especially the big toe which is responsible for so much important kinetic chain activity. We’re at number 16 on the list of walking attributes. All types of physical exercise are literally cardio.

Brad (00:11:38):
They stimulate the cardiovascular system to respond to muscular demand, even a HIIT workout, even stop and start sports. Even a strength training session where you’re sitting down on the bench and scrolling through social media or text messages in between sets the moment you get out of your car and start walking to the gym to do your muscle training session or to do your HIIT session, you are engaged in cardiovascular exercise. Witness how your heart rate is at least double your resting heart rate as soon as you start walking and as you’re performing, even stop and start activities where you’re getting rest, the heart is still working to help you recover. It does not have to be steady state to deliver a cardiovascular training effect. Now, when you understand this insight, you can realize that every workout is a form of cardio and the rationale for performing steady state cardiovascular exercise as a huge important element of your fitness routine is starting to slip.

Brad (00:12:40):
If you’re training for a competitive event, that is probably the main rationale for engaging in steady state cardio. Otherwise forget it and do stuff that’s more fun and develops more broad-based fitness capabilities. I have a video on YouTube called Brad Kearns Cardio 2.0 Workout, and you can see me exchanging my typical jog for an adventure through the forest where I stop and do, jumps up and down onto the tree stump or stop at the bench and do some other exercises, do some strength, some sprinting drills interspersed with walking recovery, a little jogging, more drills, more walking, expand your possibilities about what cardio really is and broaden your fitness capabilities in the process. We’re at number 17 in the walking category. An ancestral inspired, broad-based functional fitness program entails frequent, everyday low-level movement, regular brief intense resistance exercise, occasional all-out sprints and spontaneous unstructured play.

Brad (00:13:44):
You might be familiar with the Primal Blueprint Fitness recommendations that came out many years ago, man, we’re about 15 years old from the first publication of the Primal Blueprint, but this is an ancestral inspired fitness program. This is what our human genes expect to make us healthy, fit and promote longevity. Unfortunately, when you are immersed into a steady state extreme endurance training program or extreme cardiovascular training pattern, what happens is you don’t have enough energy to go and hoist weights around and get all the tremendous benefits that you get from strength training, nor do you have energy to perform brief, explosive all-out sprints. Now, as we age into the older age groups, what happens is we more quickly lose our anaerobic and explosive power than we lose our aerobic conditioning. So if you’re out there climbing the stairs or pedaling the bicycle or working the treadmill or jogging on the roads and trails of the world, and that is your main devotion to fitness, that’s simply not enough.

Brad (00:14:52):
I urge you to allocate more training energy to the primary way to age gracefully, which is to maintain muscle mass and muscle strength throughout life. That means resistance training, and that means pushing the top end once in a while where whoever you are, even if you’re a senior citizen. Brief explosive all out sprints done safely, of course. So for many people, that’s low or no impact, but ideally, running sprints on flat ground is the quintessential human movement and the way to age gracefully and get that beautiful burst of adaptive hormones that give you all the hormonal fitness and overall health benefits. Number 18, broad based functional fitness cannot be achieved when too much energy is directed to chronic cardio. Slowing down your cardiovascular workouts, keeping them in that energizing, refreshing, fat-burning zone will help you get fitter and faster with less pain, suffering and sacrifice than you’ve been programmed to believe by mainstream fitness programming.

Brad (00:15:57):
I know the commercials are cool with the girl sweating on the bike and wiping off with a towel and high fiving the person next to her also pedaling a stationary bike like crazy. But these workouts where you really push yourself and do a series of really difficult intervals should be conducted few and far between. What you want to focus on is increasing all forms of general everyday movement, performing brief tense strength training sessions that are indeed difficult because you’re bringing your muscles to failure during an exercise set, but they don’t last for too long and they’re not conducted day after day in the form that would exhaust you. And finally, the occasional all-out sprint workout, which I’ve talked about so often on my B.rad Podcast, where the template is where you perform just four to eight sprints lasting 10 to 20 seconds. You only have to do this once a week and you’ll get tremendous fitness benefits.

Brad (00:16:50):
Sprinting delivers the return on investment, vastly superior to any other form of cardiovascular exercise. It’s number 19. It’s not about the calories burned, it’s about the movement. Extensive daily walking improves fat metabolism around the clock. It helps regulate your appetite and satiety hormones. It also helps you manage stress effectively, which sets the stage for successful long-term weight management. And we talk extensively in the book about how endurance running and and chronic exercise spurs the chronic overproduction of stress hormones. You’ve probably heard of cortisol, uh, adrenaline glucagon. These are hormones that are released in response to all forms of stress, including overly stressful workouts. And when you are pumping out an excessive cortisol, you are in a fat storage pattern, especially the extremely health destructive visceral fat that’s the fat that gathers around the abdomen around the abdominal organs, which is far more of a health concern than just adding a little extra fat unpleasantly subcutaneous fat in the storage areas on your body.

Brad (00:18:07):
So chronic exercise drives visceral fat storage via the chronic overproduction of stress hormones, which messes with your appetite. You’re gonna overeat, you’re gonna reach for sugary snacks, you’re gonna throw off your metabolism even though you’re burning calories like crazy. So when you settle down, establish an aerobic conditioning base with frequent everyday walking, you become a good fat burner around the clock. Then when you introduce high intensity exercise, you get this effect called EPOC, excess post exercise oxygen consumption. And that is what help you get to your ideal body composition putting on some lean muscle or toning up and dropping unwanted excess body fat, especially visceral fat. We’re at number 20. The correct human walking gait entails a heel first landing while a correct running gate entails a midfoot landing. So the heel first landing for walking is an ode to the actual dynamics of the human walking gate whereby one foot is always on the ground.

Brad (00:19:16):
Go take a look at your heel bone. It’s one of the most densely, the strongest bones in the body. The calcaneus cross reinforced and ready to absorb your one times body weight impact on every walking stride. Now, running is different. The running gait pattern has what’s called a flight phase where both feet are in the air, both legs are in the air at the same time. And thereby when you land, you must land gracefully and utilize the various muscles, joints, and connective tissue in the body to execute a beautiful landing that absorbs that increased impact load that is two to three times body weight, even when you’re jogging slowly and can go up to five times body weight when you’re sprinting in the Olympic 100 meter dash. So running entails a midfoot landing over a balanced center of gravity. Go visit the Peluva YouTube website and I have a great video there about running technique instruction and learning just how to land gracefully and correctly.

Brad (00:20:21):
It’s going to take some time to build this correct technique and build the resiliency to run properly instead of just shuffle along in your elevated cushion shoes and incur an inappropriate and increased impact trauma because you are landing on your heel by the use of the cushion shoes, allowing that whereby if you’re running correctly, you’re landing on the midfoot and that’s what you are forced to do when you land barefoot because you don’t have the pain of landing heel first is gonna be an immediate penalty. You won’t do it, you’ll execute correct running form. If you run barefoot. Of course, you’re not gonna go start training barefoot because you’re not adapted to, but it’s interesting to realize that the body knows how to land gracefully if it’s forced to. So the point here is learn to run correctly, execute correct technique with that midfoot landing over a balance center of gravity.

Brad (00:21:18):
Watch the video if you’re not sure what I’m talking about and we’ll get you back on the road with less impact trauma. This is the second half of the document. You can download this PDF that I’m working off of at born to Walk book.com. This is the category talking about running. So number one, it would be 21 overall in the category in the list of 40 mind-blowing assertions. Endurance running anything beyond a mile or two is most likely bad for your health. For the vast majority of participants, running even at a comfortable pace is too physically stressful. How can you say that, Brad? Isn’t it better than sitting home on the couch and being inactive? Well, yes, I would say, but we’re just urging you in the book to learn how to do it right so it does not become another stress in your already hectic high stress modern life.

Brad (00:22:14):
The reason the assertion is stated this way is that running is too strenuous. And for most people the correct cardiovascular training protocol would be to conduct the vast majority of your endurance exercise at a walking pace. And I talked a little bit about fat max heart rate in previous messages, but that is the point where you distinguish between a workout that is refreshing, energizing, and within your capabilities, emphasizing fat- burning. Fat max means the most fat calories per minute burned. And if you speed up, you’re starting to burn an increasing percentage of glucose and the workout, it’s becoming more stressful, more difficult to recover from. So you determine your pace at fat max heart rate, and that should be your training pace at or low fat max heart rate. You’ve probably heard of zone two and the wide popularity of zone two cardio. That’s really cool because the upper limit of zone two is your fat max heart rate.

Brad (00:23:12):
But I contend that most people don’t really realize the pace that they’re going is far too stressful. It’s exceeding zone two too frequently. And even when you get pretty fit and you hit the upper limit of zone two every day, as you’ve been told, it still can be quite strenuous in comparison to a blend of zone one and zone two cardio that helps you build, build, build your aerobic competency without the interference caused by overly stressful workout patterns. Here we are with number 22, running is only health boosting if you are lean and fit and can jog or run at a comfortable pace that emphasizes fat burning and minimizes glucose burning. So again, your fat max heart rate 180 minus your age in beats per minute. Let’s go see how that looks when you’re out there on the roads or trails or tracks.

Brad (00:24:04):
And if you can jog and continue to jog. Remember, you wanna stay at or below fat max heart rate for the duration of your workout, not just the first 10 minutes, which is a huge mistake that a lot of runners make where they set out to maintain a steady pace. So they set out at 11 minute mile pace and they’re gonna go five miles and it’s gonna take 55 minutes. Well, the first couple few miles might feel comfortable and the heart rate might be in the correct fat burning zone, but due to cumulative fatigue from the effort, your heart rate starts to climb when you’re working out for a sustained period of time, it’s called cardiac drift. It’s just natural, right? Even for elite athletes. So to conduct a correct workout, you pretty much have to slow down in the latter stages of all your endurance training sessions in order to keep the heart in the correct zone.

Brad (00:24:54):
Number 23 running is catabolic. It breaks your body down and requires recovery while walking is anabolic, which means it sends the genetic signaling for efficient metabolic immune cognitive and endocrine function. And that’s one of our favorite sound bites. Mark Sisson and I running is catabolic walking is anabolic. And if you want to get stickler here, what’s really happening is walking is sending the anabolic signaling so it promotes the restoration, repair, recovery, rebuilding, coming back stronger afterward, right? Anything that’s, uh, burning calories is going to be literally catabolic, but walking sends the signals for anabolism, just like a high intensity strength training session where you push your muscles to the maximum and then go home and refuel and have your protein smoothie that is going to make the anabolic signaling for your muscles to come back stronger. Running on the other hand, when you go out there and pound, I talked about this in earlier messages, you are incurring two to three times body weight impact trauma on every stride.

Brad (00:26:02):
Thereby a comfortably paced five-mile jog for the average person incurs around 2.3 million pounds of impact trauma. So running is simply catabolic and it’s highly catabolic in its overall genetic signaling effects to the extent that you suffer from the widespread disastrous effects of chronic cardio. One of ’em as a matter of fact, is the storage of visceral fat driven by the chronic overproduction of stress hormones, the prolonged overproduction of stress hormones that happens when you are immersed into a high stress endurance training pattern. Number 24 running prompts, the genetic signaling for fat storage, bone loss and muscle loss, a so-called skinny fat physique. How can this possibly happen when you’re looking on your internet calorie chart and realizing that an eight mile run at a 10 minute pace burn, 647 calories? Indeed it might. A lot of this stuff is inaccurate actually. But when you immerse yourself in a pattern of workouts that are overly stressful in the big picture I’m talking about, you are going to produce a lot of cortisol.

Brad (00:27:16):
You’ve probably heard of that as the preeminent stress hormone. And when you over produce cortisol, it leads to visceral fat storage. It leads to appetite dysregulation, dysregulation of satiety hormones. Basically what’s happening is you are exhausting and depleting yourself over and over and over with your repeated workouts and the body responds by overeating and also engaging in a variety of compensatory behaviors to help regulate your overall daily caloric expenditure. So when you get up on that alarm at 6:00 AM and go crank out your eight-mile run in the morning while the rest of the neighborhood’s asleep, what’s gonna happen the rest of the day? You’re gonna be eating more food, especially quick energy food, and you’re going to be lazier in assorted ways, both consciously and subconsciously. You’re gonna give yourself permission to be lazy. Ah, I’ll rake the leaves tomorrow ’cause I ran eight miles this morning in the dark.

Brad (00:28:16):
And you’re also going to subconsciously move a little slower throughout the day and internally burn fewer calories in order to try to cope with the overly stressful exercise behaviors that you’re deeply immersed in. Number 25, running prompts, chronic overproduction of stress hormones, sympathetic nervous system dominance, overeating, and the accumulation of the extremely health destructive visceral fat, which is even worse than accumulating excess subcutaneous fat, which in itself is not a huge health risk. It might be unpleasant, but running will not make you lean, fit, trim, and develop the physique of your dreams <laugh>, unless of course you’re training at the elite level. And of course, everyone we watch on the Olympics is pretty lean and ripped, but they’re skinny, they’re very, very slender, and they don’t carry a lot of muscle mass. So they are sacrificing an overall health benefit score for becoming extremely efficient at long distance endurance running.

Brad (00:29:21):
That’s a young person’s game, and that’s an elite person’s game. But for all of us, we are better served to pursue a broad based approach to fitness competency where we wanna build muscle mass, we want to build muscle strength, we wanna develop some explosiveness, some power, and of course, we ought to also want to, uh, develop that cardiovascular fitness. You’ve heard of the widely touted VO two max value representing your level of cardiovascular fitness. And of course, uh, aerobic exercise is going to support that. But if you are conducting endurance workouts at overly stressful heart rates at an overly stressful pace, that’s when you get into this chronic overproduction of stress hormones. When as layered on top of an already hectic high stress modern life that stimulates chronic overproduction of stress hormones, you are overloading the stress side of the balance scale and will be much better served to slow down, emphasize fat burning and do workouts that are restorative and rejuvenating.

Brad (00:30:25):
Number 26 running requires reliance on elevated cushioned shoes, which enable poor technique and drive chronic injuries. So the shoes enable poor technique. They don’t cause poor technique. An innate object sitting on your rack is not going to be the cause of poor technique. But what happens when you slip on that elevated cushion shoe is you can now proceed to shuffle down the road with a jarring breaking heel striking, overriding pattern. The research from Harvard University suggests that 80 to 95% of all recreational runners exhibit this breaking stride pattern only enabled because of that nice cushioned elevated heel. If you were to take off running down the road in bare feet, you would not be able to heel strike because the immediate pain would be so severe. Why don’t you feel this painful jarring impact on every stride? It’s because the shoes, those wonderful cushioned pillow shoes that feel so good when you try ’em on in the store and jog down the aisle, they compromise proprioception.

Brad (00:31:38):
So you can’t really discern the immediate penalty of an inefficient running impact. So you put on these shoes, you shuffle down the road. The running boom occurs for the last 50 or 60 years, and people routinely get injured at an embarrassing rate. Around 50% of runners are injured annually, and it’s all driven by the use of elevated cushioned shoes. Number 28. Research reveals that 50% of regular runners are injured every year with 25% of regular runners injured at any given time. We have details in the book, but there’s research from around the world with different rates, going from 37% European study to Wake Forest University saying over 70% of runners are injured every year. Yale University School of Medicine says that 50% are injured every single year. Why this incredibly embarrassing and shocking rate of overuse injury? It’s because elevated cushion running shoes enable poorly adapted people to run who should not be running because they are not have, they don’t have the overall fitness resiliency, mobility, flexibility, muscular strength and balance, and all the attributes needed to take off and do this actually very difficult sport to do correctly.

Brad (00:33:04):
Remember, I talked about how the correct running gait is a midfoot landing over a balanced center of gravity. This requires great muscular endurance and competency and capability. In contrast, shuffling down the sidewalk, wearing cushioned shoes enables people to open this gateway to the roads and trails and the distant finish line who shouldn’t be doing it. This is number 29. If you were asked to run barefoot on a hard surface, you would immediately exhibit excellent technique due to the enhanced proprioception and foot functionality. In contrast, shoes dampen proprioception, and they enable you to exhibit a horrible, jarring, breaking, overriding, heel striking technique. So you can even try this experiment on a nice, safe, smooth hard surface like an indoor gym or a hallway or down on a nice clean concrete sidewalk. Take off your shoes and take off jogging and run a a handful or more strides down the path.

Brad (00:34:13):
What’s gonna happen immediately within the first couple strides is you are going to exhibit a beautiful, graceful, light landing wonderful technique like you’re running gracefully like a deer, like you’ve never run before. And the whole reason is, is because the incredible proprioception delivered from your feet to your central nervous system teaches you to land softly and gracefully and balance that moving body weight with excellent capability that your foot does the majority of the work here because of all the amazing impact, uh, absorption attributes in the human foot. But they’re only made possible when you have that sensitivity and can determine how to move your body weight through space. It’s called kinesthetic awareness or proprioception. As soon as you slip on the shoe, you can lumber along and disregard that information is now muted, the information that’s supposed to come from your feet to the central nervous system and that allows you to lumber along and shuffle along with poor technique.

Brad (00:35:15):
What’s happening to that increased impact trauma? It has been, is being inappropriately dispersed throughout the lower extremities. And that’s why you see this amazing rate of chronic overuse injury where people get plantar fascitis, achilles tendonitis. They get calf injuries, they get runner’s knee. It’s called croma, going all the way up to the hamstrings, the glutes, the lower back injuries, injuries, injuries because of poor technique, because of poor proprioception. Because we’re wearing elevated cushion shoes. This one’s really gonna trip you out. It’s from research at the highly regarded Dr. Lieberman’s research laboratory at Harvard University, which found that when you’re running barefoot, impact forces are similar whether the surface is hard or soft. What ?running on a soft grassy field has a similar impact load to running on a hard sidewalk or a hard indoor gymnasium floor? How can this possibly be? It’s because when we land and absorb that impact force, we engage in these wonderful, uh, human techniques, this kinesthetic awareness, uh, that it that delivers the techniques of pre-reactivation and muscle tuning via pre-activation and muscle tuning.

Brad (00:36:40):
We absorb impact gracefully in accordance with the surface. So this is where we tense our muscles in anticipation of that hard impact, uh, running barefoot on a flat surface and by creating these levers that are just stiff enough. And then when we land, we, uh, flex the ankle and the knee just enough to align with our speed, our body weight, and the surface that we’re running on. So when we’re running on soft sand at the beach, we might not dorsiflex the ankle and then have to bend the knee as much. But when we’re running on hard surface, we’re going to kind of stiffen up these levers and allow them to absorb that impact gracefully, gracefully. It’s a fascinating insight from exercise physiology that impact forces are similar, whether the surface or is hard or soft. And then when you put on an elevated cushion shoe, you incur seven times more impact load than you would incur when running barefoot due to technique errors driven by a lack of proprioception that comes when you are wearing elevated cushion shoes.

Brad (00:37:50):
We’re at number 31. Chronic cardio can suppress immune function, promote chronic inflammation, compromise gut health and damage mitochondria. And we go into great detail in the book, Born to Walk about all the bad stuff that can happen to your body when you overdo it and it’s truly scary. Among the most extreme examples of long time hardcore endurance athletes, there is a rash of serious cardiovascular, problems, disease even sudden death driven by chronic overuse and scarring and inflammation of the heart muscle. The heart’s just another muscle, just like the bicep. If you do too many curls, it’s gonna get torn and damaged and inflamed and shredded, and you’re gonna have to recover. But when it comes to the heart and the long time, for example, uh, cycle bike racer who’s out there racing in the pack day after day after day for years and years, the heart becomes inflamed and scarred, and then you disturb the electrical signaling and you develop these very common conditions amongst long-time endurance athletes such as atrial fibrillation and related consequences that are potentially highly problematic to their long-term health.

Brad (00:39:07):
There’s research coming from finishers of a marathon showing that the incredible disturbance to the inflammatory system and the immune system makes them appear like they’re having a heart attack. If they were to present in the emergency room, cross the finish line of the marathon and go straight to the er, maybe ’cause they have a scrape on their knee, their enzymes and their blood values and their liver values would make them look like they were having an acute myocardial infarction. That’s a heart attack because the heart has been so stressed by the extreme performance of the marathon. Of course, these values and these numbers are gonna go and regulate themselves for almost everyone, right, uh, after two or three weeks. But the point is taken that running an acute, really challenging race like a marathon is extremely acutely damaging and stressful to the body.

Brad (00:39:58):
Yes, you’re gonna recover and rebuild and come back, but if you train on a chronic basis and you have this path of your athletic career where you’re doing a couple few marathons or ultras every single year, year after year after year, as the people who get in hardcore and get in deep are tending to do this is the cumulative effects of stress That one run through the trails on a beautiful Sunday morning is not gonna kill you. But a pattern of pushing yourself a little bit too hard and drifting up into those chronic cardio heart rates is going to cause trouble in the all important digestive health. All important inflammatory balance as well as your immune system function is gonna get pushed aside in favor of all the energy that you’re devoting to training and recovering. So it’s a very, very high risk sport in that sense.

Brad (00:40:53):
Playing tackle football is also high risk sport from getting tackled and tweaking your knee or getting your, uh, your bell rung too many times. But running has its own incredibly high risks when you do it in that overly stressful manner. We are at number 32 years and decades of extreme endurance training can lead to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. This is a phenomenon known as the excessive endurance exercise hypothesis. And if you can envision an upside down U-shaped curve where you start, you know, with the, the health benefits of exercise, and we have a nice graph in the Born to Walk book showing this, uh, but if you do no exercise, you’re gonna be at the bottom of the curve with minimal health benefits, right? And then as you jump from let’s say zero hours per week to a couple, few hours per week doing fun stuff that you like to do, even if it’s pickleball, whatever you’re getting off the couch, you’re doing something, you’re gonna experience tremendous health benefits and then you’re going to hit the maximum cardiovascular benefits from exercise at a surprisingly modest commitment to cardio exercise.

Brad (00:42:06):
This is from the, uh, good research, um, from Dr. James O’Keefe, uh, and also from, uh, coming out of, uh, Denmark, uh, showing the Copenhagen Heart Study where a couple, few hours a week of comfortably paced exercise will maximize your disease prevention and cardiovascular benefits. Then as you exceed that, you have the potential to take it all the way from the top of the curve down to increasing your disease risk factors when you do it to the extreme. Now, when you do it correctly, I want to make a clear distinction here. If you are exercising at a comfortable pace, more is better. And they have research from super exercisers so-called that exercise for hours and hours every week. They’re probably retired and they’re out hiking for three hours a day, maybe, you know, someone like that. They incur a tremendous health and longevity potential because they’re not doing it in an overly stressful manner.

Brad (00:43:08):
So it’s years and decades of extreme endurance training can increase cardiovascular disease risk factors. Number 33, the monotony repetitive impact trauma and mental and physical suffering associated with steady state cardio can easily breed an obsessive addictive mentality. This is known to scientists as the obligate runner, and we have a whole chapter in the book, born to Walk about the ordeal of the obligate runner. And let me tell you, it is pervasive in the endurance training community. You get a little bit of fun, you get a little bit of payback and success when you venture into this sport as I did when I was a young man, running as a high school runner. And then, uh, the more competitive I got and the more disciplined and devoted and focused I got running kind of became my identity, especially at that young age when you’re are supposed to be searching for an identity, right?

Brad (00:44:07):
But then, uh, as the obligate runner pattern reveals when you get injured or your life gets too busy where you don’t have time to put in your workout, you get cranky and irritated. Uh, when your life is getting harmed by your workout patterns not going perfectly, you’re not going to your, previous standard. That’s when you know you have drifted past the harmonious passion. One of the, researchers calls it. And we use that term in the book. Harmonious passions are great, right? What’s your harmonious passion? Well, I play ukulele in the evenings and I run in the mornings and I love everything. I love going to the gym. It’s my harmonious passion, it’s my social centerpiece. But you can easily transition from that harmonious passion category to quote from the researchers harmful obsession. And we have this ordeal of the obligate runner who’s taken it too far to the extent that they don’t feel right and they don’t feel happy unless they get their <laugh> painful, challenging, uh, minimal suffering workout in every day.

Brad (00:45:16):
So we wanna check our attitude and we want to check that highly driven, focused type A goal oriented mindset that, uh, attracts people to the sport of endurance running in the first place. And strive hard to keep that in balance, not just for our overall mental and physical health, but also to be able to reach your potential in the sport. You gotta know when to back off, and of course you gotta know when to push it too. And balancing those, I found in my elite training career as a professional triathlete when I was good at that, I was good at the finish line. And when I allowed myself to get out of balance and have my competitive intensity unregulated, that’s when I struggled and suffered with my results as well. We’re at number 34. Excessive pursuit of the lauded endorphin rush generated by strenuous workouts can lead to depression, anxiety, and hormonal burnout.

Brad (00:46:12):
Hey, those aren’t good things, but you hear the endorphin rush celebrated so often and everyone talks about it,. Oh yes, I love working out. I go to CrossFit three days a week and I love that endorphin rush afterward. Or I’m a big time runner and I go 40 or 50 miles a week, and I really do it for that wonderful endorphin rush. And that artificial, I mean that chemically induced high that you get when you finish running. And hey, we’re allowed to get rushes once in a while and dopamine, uh, surging through the neurons in the brain and making us feel elated and buzzed and high from the activity or whatever joy and pleasure we’ve, uh, we’ve sought. But it’s very dangerous to overdo it with that endorphin rush response because basically what we’re doing is we are, uh, we are abusing the fight or flight mechanisms that are part of the endorphin rush.

Brad (00:47:09):
The endorphin rush occurs through evolutionary biology as a way to keep us going when we’re starving and when our life is in danger. We don’t succumb to fatigue and exhaustion because the endorphin rush kicks in as we’ve exhausted ourself with a really strenuous workout. And the harder and longer the workout, the greater the endorphin rush. This is programmed survival instinct where the the body is flooded with pain killing chemicals that enable us to keep going, but at what cost The endorphin rush is putting us out of balance from that very, very important, uh, autonomic nervous system balance where we want to balance parasympathetic and sympathetic. So you are drifting over into a sympathetic dominant person. You are going for these chemical highs, your bloodstream is, uh, flowing with the feel good chemicals, but then of course, the body can’t do this forever. And when the chemical high wears off, that’s when you feel,kind of down dragging difficulty recovering by the way your immune system has been put on hold in favor of the endorphin rush.

Brad (00:48:19):
So if you do that, uh, quite frequently, you’re gonna have immune digestive problems. Digestive system is the first thing to be put on hold when we are in this fight or flight state and pumping these endorphin light chemicals through the bloodstream because we certainly don’t have the resources to digest food when we are, uh, hypothetically hunting for food when we’re pushing that endorphin high. Okay? So manage that endorphin rush, even though you’re allowed to get it once in a while. Number 35, to escape from the psychological dysfunction of the obligate runner. It is essential to de-emphasize results, reduce training, stress, load and release the attachment of your self-esteem to the outcome. Speaking from the heart people, ’cause when I was a young runner and so excited about my success in high school, that helped me form my identity and so excited about competing at NCAA division one for a team and getting up there and rising up in the rankings and distinguishing myself and getting recognition, boy, it’s easy to attach your self-esteem to the results.

Brad (00:49:27):
And when you do well and you feel good about yourself, hey, that’s fantastic. But if your self-esteem is dependent upon your results, not just as a competitive athlete or as a fitness enthusiast or your reputation at your local gym, as the person who always shows up early and never misses a 6:00 AM workout, all that stuff can easily drift over into an unhealthy category if your self-esteem becomes fragile and dependent upon your ranking and your results. The key here is to focus on the enjoyment on the, and the appreciation of the process of becoming fit, and to strive to do it in a healthy, balanced manner with an eye on your overall mental and physical wellbeing and your longevity prospects. And that is a big hurdle to overcome when we’re also asking you to develop this incredible motivation and discipline and willingness to suffer, especially when it comes to the endurance running scene where suffering is what it’s all about.

Brad (00:50:32):
We need to help you control those dials and not turn them up too high and definitely release the attachment of your self-esteem to the outcome of what you’re doing. Number 36. The most celebrated endurance events like Marathon and Ironman are arbitrary distances inspired by fabrication and bravado, glorified by marketing hype, and are inherently antithetical to health. We tell a wonderful story in chapter one of the book where the today’s marathon distance of 26.2 miles was inspired by the reenactment of the ancient Olympic Games in 1896. That’s the first modern Olympic games. And they decided to throw in a marathon race, uh, to honor the great, uh, Greek messenger named Pheidippides who as the legend goes, ran 26 miles from the city of Marathon to the city of Athens to the headquarters of society to announce victory in battle. And then he collapsed and died after this heroic feat.

Brad (00:51:37):
And the funny thing about it is that it never fricking happened. The whole story was made up in an 1879 poem by Robert Browning. Pheidippides was indeed a famous Greek soldier, and he performed incredible heroic running feats to help the Greek army win in their, uh, historic battles that changed the course of western civilization. And you’ll get the amazing details in the book, but the takeaway point here is that 26 miles has F all to do with your health, wellbeing and a balanced lifestyle within all the other, uh, energy draining responsibilities and aspects of modern society. If we change the marathon tomorrow to 13.1 miles instead of 26.2 miles, we’d all be better off. And it’s still a really, really freaking long way to run for an average citizen who’s not an Olympic athlete practicing in training camp. So I love watching the marathon during the Olympics because these highly trained individuals will race with incredible skill and drama for 26 miles only takes them two hours.

Brad (00:52:47):
Remember, it doesn’t take ’em four or four and a half hours. So even the greatest endurance athletes in the world are not racing for four and a half hours <laugh> they’re over with and done and having breakfast while you’re out there hitting mile 20 and your back and your legs and everything’s aching and you’re feeling horrible. So remember that these esteemed distances are built upon a house of cards, hype fabrication, and are basically antithetical to health because they’re too extreme. Number 37, the quote, endurance runner hypothesis of evolutionary biology, which states how we possess all these amazing genetic attributes that are ideal for endurance. Exercise is quite distorted and misinterpreted in today’s modern life and modern endurance training scene. The endurance runner hypothesis goes into detail how our bodies are built vastly superior to our ape cousins for endurance exercise <laugh>, the most obvious one is that we’re bipedal.

Brad (00:53:50):
We stand up and we can go and go and go for a long way. We have sweat glands so we can cool ourselves if we’re going for hours and hours. And indeed humans are capable once in a while of magnificent endurance feats. But our ancestors most certifiably did not train and get up day after day after day and practice endurance training in the name of sport or even in the name of survival. And in fact, this, uh, lauded aspect of our evolution where we became the greatest persistence hunters on the planet. Persistence hunting is a technique where you wear down your prey by driving them for hours and hours until they become exhausted. And then you, uh, take the bounty home to the hunter-gatherer camp. It’s kind of been misinterpreted to us, uh, making this dreamy, uh, vision that we’re our jogging and jogging and jogging after the antelope or after the wooly mammoth.

Brad (00:54:49):
And then finally, uh, we outlast them and take ’em down. But persistence hunting the way we rose to the top of the food chain was through our vastly superior brains, not our superior endurance. Our endurance was there to allow us to prevail in persistence hunting. But persistence hunting was basically a mix of walking, scouting, crawling, occasionally sprinting, using our brains, using fantastic teamwork to take down these beasts and allow humans to rise to the top of the food chain. It was not from amazing training of this many 30, 40, 50 miles a week. And in fact, humans never ran for recreation until recent decades, ever in the history of humanity. They ran for military duty, they ran to compete at the highest level for Olympic glory for their country. And only with the advent of the running boom did the masses actually start taking off down the roads and trails, uh, to pursue health and fitness goals.

Brad (00:55:47):
And we’re doing it by and large the wrong way, and we’ve been doing so for decades. It’s time to turn it around, learn more in Born to Walk book. Number 38, picking up on the heels of my previous message. Any homo sapiens genetic gifts for endurance are buried today under excess body fat, insufficient daily baseline activity, weak musculature and dysfunctional feet caused by a lifetime in shoes. You may be familiar with the Hadza, the primitive living people in Tanzania that are widely studied today. One of the last remaining primitive living hunter gatherer populations on earth. And those guys are pretty awesome. You can follow them on YouTube and see some of the way that they live. They walk between three and nine miles a day in the course of doing, uh, gathering for food or persistence hunting, and they could probably take off if they had to and go bust out a 12 miler or a 20 miler, especially if they were hungry and needing to get food, uh, to continue to exist.

Brad (00:56:52):
So that’s great for our primitive cousins that are honoring our genetic requirements for health by moving throughout the day. But if we think, uh, that we’re gonna be, uh, inspired to model the behaviors of, for example, not only the Hadza but the Tara Humara who were profiled in the bestselling book from 2009, Born to Run, we got some other things coming. ’cause sitting at a desk all day or sitting on the train or watching TV in your leisure time and then lacing up your shoes and thinking that you are genetically adapted to go run five, 10, or 15 miles is a huge mistake. And by and large, most people who are running should not be running because the sport is too dangerous, stressful, and injurious. We are at 39, the world’s greatest endurance athletes trained in a relatively less stressful, more sensible manner than the average recreational enthusiast, the greatest marathoner of all time.

Brad (00:57:54):
Eluid Kipchoge, who ran that 1 59 marathon, two time Olympic gold medalist. He reveals in his training log that has been widely studied by exercise physiologists and coaches. He reveals that he runs 83% of his weekly mileage at what he calls quote, easy or half capacity. This is akin to the zone one in the widely communicated, uh, five zones of exercise intensity. You’ve probably heard of zone two and the wide, uh, promotion of zone two as getting your cardio in at that relatively comfortable pace. And the top of the zone two category is akin to fat max heart rate. So it’s performing at or below Fat max heart rate. But in our widespread promotion of zone two cardio, we’ve discounted the incredible importance and benefits of putting in sufficient exercise at zone one, which for most people equates to a slow walk or a medium walk or perhaps a brisk walk if you’re really fit.

Brad (00:58:57):
So if the greatest marathon runner of all times is performing the vast majority of his training in zone one, he’s running 130 miles a week usually. So a hundred miles per week at a pace that equates to you and I and almost every other runner that’s sub elite that equates to a walk, that’s where our training focus should go. Yes, indeed. It might not be as quick of an adrenaline rush and an endorphin buzz as taking off and running and elevating the heart rate into that medium to difficult category. But that is the way the greatest athletes on the planet train. And this has been proven. This emphasis on aerobic development at comfortable pace has been proven by the greatest elite athletes in every endurance sport for the past 60 years. Dating back to the great Arthur Liddiard coaching in New Zealand and getting his runners storming the world stage and winning gold medals on that aerobic foundation, which was a new strategy back at that time.

Brad (00:59:56):
It’s time to pay attention. It’s time to slow down and build that aerobic base the right way. Number 40, we must state in the history of humanity. We have never done endurance running for recreation until the advent of elevated cushioned running shoes that enabled the masses to partake in an overly stressful, genetically offensive endeavor. And some of those comments will make more sense if you listen to my many other messages on the subject. But what I’m saying here is that recreational running is a new thing. It’s only been enabled with the shoes because if you were forced to run like in barefoot or a rudimentary shoe that were used in the sixties and the fifties and before that by the Olympic runners, you would not be fit enough. Your ankles and calves would start to seize up after only a mile or two of running.

Brad (01:00:49):
But when you wear the elevated cushion shoes, you can shuffle along for long distances without the immediate penalty of that inappropriately dispersed impact. Trauma caused by poor form, which is caused by insufficient overall musculoskeletal resiliency and fitness. So if you have weak abs and tight hamstrings and dysfunctional glutes from sitting all day and you take off running, you are going to exhibit poor form because you are coming from that sedentary baseline of modern life. But you’re still gonna be able to do it because of the shoes. But without the shoes, we would not have endurance running. That’s how Nike started the running boom back in the seventies. It is better than having everyone sitting around and watching TV and watching the Olympic runners run on TV and not doing it. So the inspiration to get up and join them has been a good thing for society. But this overall fitness boom, there are a lot of problems with it. And we’re urging you if you insist on doing endurance training to do so in the correct manner, which means monitor that training heart rate. And by and large, predictably, you’re gonna be doing the vast majority of your steady state cardiovascular exercise at a medium or brisk walk rather than a run because running is too stressful. Learn more at Born to Walk book.com.

Brad (01:02:12):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email Podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kerns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.