Recovery, Mobility, and Soreness Relief Exercises for Ultrarunners, with Jordan Battaglia

Welcome to the everyday ultra podcast, a show designed to help you level up your training, crush your races, and ultimately become a veteran endurance athlete every single day. Whether you're an endurance athlete as a hobby or someone who wants to be the best in the sport, this is the show for you. I'm your host, Joe Corseon, and thank you so much for listening. Now, let's get into it. What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the everyday ultra podcast. I'm your host, Joe Corseon, and super excited to dive into this episode with you. But with 2024 coming around the corner, I think it's important to talk about the value of time, right? Because if we're looking at the new year that we are entering into, we want to spend the time towards our biggest goals. And if you're listening to this podcast, it's likely ultra running goals. If you're an ultra runner and you're a small business owner or you're a leader within a small business, you know the value of time, right? Between spending time working on the business to count in the hours of training that you're putting in towards your goals and potentially family obligations as well, it can all be so much to juggle. And sometimes if you're working in a business, the business you're in may require you to spend a lot more time on it instead of getting in the crucial training that you need to hit your next ultra goal. But that's not ideal, of course. So what's the solution? You need to have your business operate smoothly without you having to do every single thing inside the business. That way you get more time to train and spend more time becoming a better endurance athlete. So how does this happen? You have to set up the processes, systems and documentation to create an efficient business. Now you don't have to do that. In fact, that's where my friends at Sharper Process come in. As a business owner myself, I've worked with Sharper Process and they are the real deal and not only setting up the processes in your business, but they also help you to reclaim your most valuable asset, which is time. That's the time you can invest back into your passion for running and for pushing boundaries. And Sharper does this by streamlining your business process, turning the chaos into order into your day to day processes. And their team is like a pacer in a long race. They're there to guide you to keep you on track. And they create process maps to help you visualize the operations and the goals from start to finish. They create procedures to help comprehend each task within the process of your business and they set up onboarding and training in trainable for your business to create a seamless experience where you're having new employees learn and retain all the expectations and responsibilities in your role. That way your business is systemized enough to where you can go on your long runs and the business still operates smoothly in the background. So if that sounds great to you and you're ready to get more time to yourself by making your business more efficient. Well, the cool thing is Sharper Process is offering you three free ebooks to help you get started with learning and implementing process and procedures in your business. And all you got to do to get those ebooks is go to Sharperbusiness.com/everydayultra and get those three completely free ebooks that are going to teach you how to systemize your business, how to get it started, and ultimately how to make your business run an autopilot without you having to do anything. There's no catch, there's no big 100% value with free ebooks from Sharper Process. Go to SharperForbusiness.com/everydayultra or go to the link in the show notes and get those free ebooks so you can start creating more time for yourself so you can train a lot more. All right, everybody. Thanks so much for listening. And let's get into the episode. I'm your host, Joe Corsion, and I'm super, super pumped for this episode, not just because we're going to be having an amazing conversation here today, but this dude is an amazing person. And I'll just give you a little bit of background on kind of how we are in touch and how we became friends. So Long Story Short, a mutual friend of ours, Brady, who has been his former guest of the podcast founder of the KWI-5-0. Y'all might have no Brady if you listen to his podcast before. But Brady connected us a while back and we just hit it off. We got to know each other. And Long Story Short, Jordan, who is our guest today, we barely even know each other. And we hit it off right away and I told him I was doing a race in Arizona, Havelina 100. And he was like, well, what if I came out and supported you? And I was like, what? Yeah, sure, that'd be amazing. So a little known that we only know each other for months. He gets on a plane with his mom, who is also a co-founder in the company and he's the co-founder of Play On. So, which we'll talk about on this podcast. But anyways, he flies on a plane. He comes out, not only helps to crew me out there by taking care of me at the AIDS stations, presents me with like a personalized t-shirt, makes me a play on athlete, like right on the spot at the end of loop five when I was at my shittiest out there for sure. And from then on, I was like, oh man, like we are brothers for life. So not only is he a wealth of knowledge, which by the way, he's played college football. He has an extensive history and fitness. He's huge on strength training and in the CrossFit community. And when it comes to recovery, he's a wealth of knowledge in that area. But on top of all those things, as I just mentioned before, he's a great guy. He's a good friend of mine. Like I said, he's the founder of Play On, which is an amazing recovery tool, which we'll talk about in here as well. But we're going to dive into all things strength, recovery, training joints, how to deal with soreness, everything on here and just have a good chat with my good friend, Jordan Battalia. Jordan, thanks so much for coming to the podcast, man. Wow. Get yourself a friend that intros you like that. Please. I love a happy life if you find a friend that intros you like that. If I was your best man at your upcoming wedding, I would intro you like you would not believe. But I'm sure whoever's doing it will be amazing at it. Hi. Thanks for that, man. And I'm actually going to send that clip to my best man being like, hey, pressure is on now. Yeah. Pressure's on. Yeah. Oh man, but Jordan. Yeah, I'm excited to have you on the show, man. And before we kind of dive into kind of topics, we're going to talk about today. First of all, thank you just for being an awesome friend. Secondly, like you have a lot of extensive history in athletics, right? Like I mentioned, play college football. You're big in strength training. You're also running now too, doing the 75 hard program too, which is super cool. What get you super passionate about recovery and specifically like being able to hone in our recovery? Because I think nowadays, especially in the ultra running community, it's all about work, work, work, work, work. But what get you super passionate about recovery in your fitness journey? Yeah. I think it's, I think that was the nurture part of my life. That my dad had me, and my parents had me play all different types of sports. They, he thankfully gave me a trainer early on who's one of my really good friends today. And his spiel was like all about mobility. And so I learned a lot from him. And I think just so much about my childhood was how to improve performance. My dad was like, you, you got like hold the football this way and you got to eat this food. My parents were a bit much. But it really had in a major impact on me throughout my life, both nutrition, training, who I am today. And I just got more and more interested in how do you become a better athlete? I was transitioning from a small private Jewish school where I played eight man football to college football. So I was like obsessed with becoming a better athlete. And part of that is not just the training you do, the food you eat, but a big part of it is the recovery aspects. And I became obsessed with understanding how can I go from today's hard training session to do the same thing tomorrow. And I ended up leading mobility for the football team, which was like my first intro into coaching really, leading a 90 to 100 person football team of 18 to 22 year olds in stretching and meditation and yoga is quite the learning experience. I will tell you that. And then plan started and I just kept on learning and learning and learning. Yeah, oh man, I could have seen you for trying to teach all those things. A bunch of young men out there who, I mean, I'm sure in the football team, I have only played when I was very, very young for maybe a season or two. But yeah, it is one where there's a lot of high energy. It's a lot about hitting the gym hard and putting in the work. So to have that slow down aspect, it's got to be a difficult thing to kind of teach. I'm curious for you, like what have been kind of the key tenants of recovery? You kind of like dive right into it. I know you mentioned mobility is one thing in there, meditation, nutrition, as kind of some parts, but kind of like over your journey for both you and also the people that you have coached like in terms of recovery, what are maybe some of the biggest areas that you see to really, really help to optimize people's recovery so that they can, you know, get out on the trails or the roads or wherever they're running to be a better athlete. Yeah, absolutely. I think this is something I've really focused on and I've actually created a protocol that you can have for free. It's a free PDF. It's called Recovery 21, 21 because it's a 21 day protocol that will help you understand why recovery is so important. And so the seven tenants that I believe in that I have found through my research, there's seven categories. First things first is that We need to breathe. We need to breathe when we're done working out. And I'm a big, big, huge human guy. Okay, I've listened to a lot of human, huge human podcasts. One thing that he does and that he learned from Dr. Andy Gallupin is that breathing after workout helps us bring our nervous system down. When we work out, our nervous system is heightened. We're in fight or flight mode, survival mode, which is great, which is what we want because we need adaptation when we work out. But most of our lives right now, you're listening to this podcast, maybe you're running, maybe you're at home or in the car. If you're in the car and you're just maybe walking or eating or whatever, right now you are not in that mode. If you're running, you probably are. So we need to get back to the calm down mode. And to do that, we breathe. So I usually pair breathing with category number two, which is stretching. Stretching, lengthening the hip joints, opening up the upper body. When we run, especially long miles, our bodies can get very tense. We're doing the same motion over and over and over again, especially on the long runs. So we need to open up that body. And so I stretch and breathe at the same time. So I'm just close my eyes, either no music or soft music. Breathe in very slowly, breathe out very slowly. You can do different breathing techniques. And I bring out the nervous system while I'm stretching. Three is food and four is drink and they kind of go hand in hand, food and drink. After you finish working out and within a couple hours, it's great to replenish with electrolytes, especially for runners, you lose a lot of salt. You're sweating a lot. And then you replenish with carbohydrates is very important. We replenish those glycogen stores in your body. And you want to again, add more protein to your diet. So you can do that through scoop away protein or vegan protein or P protein or whatever your protein choice is or whole foods is amazing too. But way protein does have more amino acids in it, which were kind of work with running and exercising. We're kind of breaking down muscles. You want those additional amino acids. And yeah, so that's food and drinks. And now we have four categories done. We got breathing and stretching and we got eating or food and drink. Now we're coming to move. Okay, we need to move our bodies and we're not talking about running here. We're talking about walking. Okay, because actually low impact cardio at a very low heart rate helps us with soreness. It's something that's very overlooked. Do you think that, oh, I'm super sore. I should kick up the legs on the couch and be done for the day. Instead, I want you to try just a 15 minute walk or spin on the bike very slowly, whatever you can do and break up that tissue and that soreness and get the blood flowing again. Five categories down, two more to go. Stay with us, folks. We got category number six and that is tools. Okay, this is personally my favorite category and I'm going to tell you why in a second. Tool number one is a foam roller, massage gun, lacrosse ball, whatever you can do to add some percussion essentially to the muscles. That's going to be really helpful for our sensory system, but also that blood flow. And we'll talk more about soreness, I believe, later, but foam rolling, amazing when you're done working out. It's my favorite. What's more about play on, I'm sure too, but essentially when you're done working out, you spray on play on and we have Arnica in our formulation. So you're going to get that natural anti-inflammatory work, which we know there is inflammation, excuse me, is a part of soreness. And last but not least, folks, we got sleeping, yes, the S word. It's the best honestly. Hey, hold on now. Joe, maybe maybe December two. Okay, don't forget about straw berries too. Okay, because we got to get our berries. Another great expert. Anyway, sleeping so critical. So part of the sleep protocol is a lot of people like, oh, I just take your melatonin. I don't in the recover, recover 21. I don't recommend taking melatonin. Instead, I recommend taking magnesium. It's something that doesn't get doled over time. It's a natural vitamin that we need in our body. And there's many different types of magnesium. The one most commonly associated with sleeping is biscliscinate or glycinate kind of the same thing. And there's a couple of different brands that just sell magnesium biscliscinate. There's also a couple that sell like a magnesium complex. But taking that 30 to 60 minutes before bed, putting the phone away 30 minutes before bed, just reading a book, sleeping in a dark room, just having a sleep protocol is it's critical. Thanks for staying with us there. Those are the seven categories of recovery. And we put that together nicely, well detailed document for you for free. So recover 21, take it if you want, use it, you'll recover better. Oh, that's awesome. And I'll put the link to that in the show notes for sure. And I remember reading through it when you first sent it to me. I thought I was like, this is incredible. This is awesome. And I've even started to implement the things into my training. A few things I want to definitely double click on in there. I think the first thing is the movement piece, right? Because I thought that was very interesting when you mentioned the walking and the biking and everything like that. And like I imagine, it's not running, right? Because sure we can go on recovery runs, but sometimes we have to bridge the gap between moving, but not moving too much to the point where we're just working out again, right? Because even if you go on like a recovery run, you're still putting that high impact forward, as far as if you're doing a walk or a cycle, it's a lot less. And it helps to break up, you know, any of those muscles a little bit more than just sitting on a couch and everything like that too. I'm curious to how does mobility kind of play a role into that as well? Like if it does and like what are some kind of key mobility exercises that, you know, you see for athletes that, you know, it could be beneficial, maybe specifically for runners, because I get questions about it all the time. And I think there is a lot of kind of confusion around like mobility versus flexibility. So I'm curious to kind of hear how like the mobility piece plays into the move stuff. And we'll double click on the other kind of areas too, but definitely want to hear your thoughts on the mobility piece. Yeah. It's a great question. Flexibility, I would say, is the normal touch your toes, hold for 60 seconds, do a calf stretch, hold for 60 seconds. Let's try to lengthen the muscles over time. That's a critical piece. A different type of flexibility would be doing movement to increase the range of motion. This is really what Niz over toes guy talks about is let's work on improving the range of motion in your body while also creating more flexibility. And then a kind of a third category is mobility. And there's some mobility coaches online on Instagram and stuff that you can find. And that's all about creating more room for the joints to work with essentially. So you think about hips, hips, especially for runners are going to be very tight. So hip mobility for a runner is critical in my opinion. So that can be a combination of doing a couch stretch, which is detailed in recover 21 if you don't know what that is. And we're going to open the quad and hip flexor and stretch that out. But then also you add in some hip strengthening movements while also doing flexibility, like a hanging hip raise. So you put a kettlebell on your foot, for example, or you can get a tool like the monkey foot. And you're now you're doing single leg hip raises. You're lengthening out the hip and then you're contracting and you're getting stronger hips. Last piece mobility, for example, you can be in a 90 90 position in just YouTube 90 90s. You'll be in a position where on one side your hip is now feeling like it's really tight. It's tense. It's kind of moving a little bit. That is opening up the hip more. That's doing some more traditional mobility work. So different tools that all play an important part in creating healthy hips, for example. Yeah, I love that and I love that you touch on the hips piece because even if you think like a lot of the common injuries that runners get, right? IT band syndrome, even like knee, like, you know, runners knee hamstring kind of stuff, they can usually be tied back to the hips at some point. I know in my past, like whenever I've had a running injury and I haven't thankfully had one in years, but when I've had those running injuries and I've gone to a PT, the general place that we always kind of start to work on first is the hips. Even if it is the knee, even if it is the Achilles, even if it is like such a foundational thing. So I love that you have that focus on it there too. What I thought was interesting too is like you also mentioned the mobility stretching, but you also mentioned strength kind of in there too. How does strength also play a role in the recovery piece, right? Because I think a lot of times, you know, when, you know, there's runners, it's like we want to run all the time. And when we think about recovery, we just think about, you know, the things, a lot of the other tools that we mentioned outside of the kind of the move thing, how does strength allow us to recover better and stay more durable to be able to, you know, be our best when We're on our runs. Sure. Yeah, I think Streck as you hit on their strength training can improve our chances to fight injury. I think strength training also will help us become better athletes. And if you're saying I'm not an athlete, that is a lie. Okay, you are most certainly an athlete whether or not you're playing a sport. Okay, team sports. So don't even question yourself, they're people. Okay, you are an athlete. That is what I believe. So, strength training, let's just talk about rep ranges five and less. So anywhere from one to five, that is going to be a rep range more dedicated to strength training. So this can be, you know, you started five reps with a lunge, for example, five reps on each side. You're now going to be working your muscle tissue differently than if you were to do a 15 to 20 rep range in which that's going to be building mass. So you're like, I'm a runner, I want to stay my same body weight. I don't want to put on a lot of muscle size, but I want to be stronger on the course. I want to fight injuries. So we can create stronger joints. We can create better, more dense bones, strength training equals greater bone density. And we can create better just muscles overall, stronger muscles. So let's just take a lunge, as I just said. We're going to do five reps on each leg. That was pretty easy. Okay, go up and wait a little bit comfortably, you know, challenge yourself. So there's tons of strength training programs. Five reps and less, you're not going to build muscle mass, you may gain a little bit, but it's going to be mostly focused on creating stronger, more durable joints and muscles in your body. I like that. Yeah, no, and I think that's like such a good kind of point in there. Because when we think about strength training, we just think about like pure strength or like performance output, but a lot of the times, I mean, if you think about like a good, you know, physical therapist, pretty much any physical therapist you go to, when you do get injured, they're not just doing the deep tissue work and all that stuff. They're also putting a strength protocol with you because that helps the strength in the muscles to, you know, prevent a lot of that injury or help to prevent that injury going forward as well, which is just super, super interesting for sure. So, no, I appreciate you breaking that down. Now, kind of like to talk a little bit more on like the soreness piece, I think this is like soreness is something that every ultra runner knows, we've all been sore like, you know, whether it is on like an incredibly long run or a hard race, I mean, like, I don't think I've ever left in a hundred mile race not sore. So I guess like, you know, you mentioned some things that kind of help, right, the tools and the things like that. Like, I guess like what are some mistakes or maybe misconceptions that people have about soreness? And you kind of already mentioned one where you say like complete rest is obviously not a good thing for breaking up soreness. But like in your experience, like what are maybe some, I don't know, misnomers or myths that kind of go around around soreness that, you know, you've just seen to not be true or kind of where people screw themselves up when, when trying to alleviate that soreness. Yeah, I think this is a, it's an area that we're still learning about soreness is soreness and pain. They're kind of similar. They're kind of associated. They're both something that's being studied still. Again, I'm taking this knowledge from the Hubertman Lab podcast. He had Dr. Andy Galpin on they had like a six part series about recovery training performance nutrition. It was amazing. And what they talk about there with soreness is that it's most likely an immune response to the activity that we did. So previously it was thought it's just muscle tissue being torn up and we need to rebuild it through nutrition. And that's what soreness is. That is still playing a part, especially if you're like doing work in the gym or you're doing something new. If you're a really avid runner, you're probably not breaking up muscle tissue. That often, if ever, depending on the type of running you're doing. But the muscle tissue, the tearing in the muscle tissue is not what causes soreness. Instead, it's how our body responds to activity that was done. So soreness is inflammation. It's fluid buildup. So that's why we get this neural feedback loop a couple days later, or dorms or daily onset muscle soreness. So we it's a neural feedback loop. So what does that tell us? It tells us that there are pressure sensors in our muscles and pain receptors in our muscles that are responding to the activity that we've done, the new activity that we've done. So what's really interesting here with my company with Play On is that we can now help you block those pain receptors on the in the neural pathways on your muscles and help you get over the soreness, get over the pain. We're not talking about injury here. Okay, we're not talking about fighting through injury. We're talking about your mind and your neural spots to the soreness that was created. And this can be mid-run, this can be post-run, this can be on your day off, whatever it is. Play On, for example, or other topical analgesics. If you don't like ours, that's fine. It's all good. Can help you overcome that mental blockade of what soreness is. Really fascinating stuff. Oh my gosh, so that is interesting. So obviously like I knew the science. I mean, I've used Play On. I've used it at Havilleen 100. I basically use it on every single long run and even interval workouts that I've been doing lately, training up for coconut and it's just been incredible. I mean, a lot of people listen to the podcast. No, I talk about it a lot and for good reason because it's helped me a ton. And as we were joking before the podcast, my fiance steals my plan all the time because she likes it as well. But that is interesting on the mind piece. So tell me, I guess, what's going on with that? Go deeper into how that using something like that can inherently like trick our minds to keep going with that because I think obviously it goes in, it helps cool the muscle down. And I don't know, maybe if it's just that cooling effect, but I'd love to hear a little bit more of the nitty gritty on how that pain receptor is almost blocked in some sense. Yeah. So the way menthol and camphor work and other topical analgesics like lydocane or methyl solacellate, the declofenac, which is an n-sed, which is an over the counter product now, but that's like topical ibuprofen, not the biggest fan of personally. But I think there's more natural ways. In my opinion, but if it works for you, that's great. The way it works is that they attach to our nerves and they provide a cooling sensation to our mind. That's number one. Number two is that with menthol and camphor, menthol is going to be the cooling aspect. Camphor is going to be the warming aspect. So I'm sure you've heard a lot about contrast therapy with sauna and cold plunge. And that's like a full body thing, very different in terms of like the uses. They're very expensive. I'm not saying that topical analgesic is like cold plunge and sauna. They're very different. But you can get that targeted contrast therapy is what we like to say on the muscles because there is that cooling and warming effect that takes place. So that's number two. So again, that's one with our mind. We're getting those cooling receptors. The pain receptors are being blocked by the cooling and menthol effects. And then there's also the actual topical application that will have a positive effect on your muscles or joints where you apply it. And why does that contrast therapy kind of work? Because I think we see it all all the rage now. Everyone's getting a cold plunge. Everyone's jumping in the sauna. I feel like every time I go on Instagram every single day, like someone's getting a cold plunge or sauna, by the way, that's you. I'm not knocking you. I'm just saying more so to bring that up on like it's just so freaking popular nowadays. And so I think people are just wondering like why? Like why is this like a kind of thing? And obviously, like, you know, I've looked into it. But maybe for people who are kind of curious, like, why does that contrast work? Yeah. Cold and hot therapy with sauna and ice plunger amazing tools. I highly recommend it if you can do it. I don't add them into recover 21 and who are recovery protocol because the majority people don't have access. And to be honest, even if you do, you should still be doing more. You should still be doing the seven things that I talk about in recover 21 because that's what I believe creates true recovery is doing all of those things. So in sauna, ice bath is a part of that for sure if you have access. It's amazing tools. But with topical contrast therapy, we're getting that cooling and heating effect. It's kind of like an ice pack and not taking not putting an ice pack on. So there have been studies that topical analgesic like menthol has similar effects to ice. It's going to be different, but it's still going to have a positive effect on the muscles with reducing inflammation, increasing blood flow, increasing circulation, all positive things for the body. That is super, super interesting to see that. And I also like how you mentioned, like it's not just, you know, the cold plunge or the or the heat therapy that's going to kind of be the magic bullet, right? It has to kind of be a cumulative effect of everything, which is really, really going to kind of help out with like the overall like long-term recovery because I think nowadays it's so easy for us to look at. at a specific product or method or anything like that and be like, this is going to solve all the problems. But if you're off in another area, it can really, really be an area that's just going to be hindrance to your entire thing. It's kind of just like where if you eat like a super clean diet, but every day you're also having like a McFlurry or like a big mac or something like that. It's not going to lead to that long term kind of a health and benefits that you're going to get because holistically, you're still not kind of hitting all the areas you need to be. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah, I agree completely. I think it's the same way with nutrition that you need to have, in my opinion, a balance in the diet in that you're hitting different markers of health. You're hitting certain nutrients. You're hitting certain antioxidants. You're hitting a number of protein. You're hitting the right glucose as well. So there's a lot of things in terms of just balance in life. And I think going all in on one mindset can be great for some people and it can be dangerous for others. So you need to find what's best for you in terms of your practice, what is best for your body, what makes your gut feel the best, what makes your muscles feel the best. And with play on and recover 21, we're just trying to provide tools that we know or science backed that we believe in wholeheartedly and that we think can help you take your game and your body to the next level. That's just what we believe in. You know? Yeah. And I like that you guys do it by science too, right? It's not just like this mumbo jumbo kind of thing because I think there's just so much BS on recovery and things out there just the pedals, certain things. I mean, even like you mentioned like, you know, NSA ID, like, you know, I be profan as at least from the ultra endurance standpoint has been very, very, you know, just the research is clear that the athletes should not be taken that. And like, because it actually like really reduces inflammation to a point where your body's not actually recovering. It's not actually getting that like repair that it needs. And I see people pop Advil all the time. And listen, I used to do it in the past. Like I'm not saying like I'm, you know, clean hands and everything like that. I remember my first Iron Man, or second Iron Man that I did. Like I was popping Advil at each transition, which ended up being a terrible idea. But that stuff where a lot of people think like, Oh, you know, it's aspirin. It does that thing. The research and the studies are clearly showing that that is detrimental against, you know, recovery and even performance and even how you feel as an endurance athlete, which I think is just so interesting. Yeah, I would agree. I, when I was playing football, I saw a lot of Advil popping. It's very popular. And when you're young, it probably doesn't have a major effect on your body. But as you get older, it's going to affect your liver more or kidney. I honestly forget which one. But it's going to affect your body more is the point. The more you pop Advil and the more we can be, in my opinion, I just try to live as naturally as I can. Because there are so much going against us in the world surrounded by electronics and just pollution. There's so much going against us that I like to, I like to put money into organic food. I like to put money into natural ingredients and natural products. And it costs more money for us to put 100% natural ingredients, no synthetics into our product. But we care about that. We care about having a minimal ingredient, 100% natural product because we know that you guys care about that. So that's just, we preach what we do what we preach to. Yeah, and I love that. And I think that's one thing that I've always been super mindful of of like a lot of products that I've taken in this. And like I'm not perfect because like sometimes I'll eat gels or certain foods that have some stuff in there. But if I'm going to prioritize certain products, it's always like looking at, you know, what am I putting into my body? Is it natural? Is it going to help? Because like those things do not only lead to more, you know, of an increase of effectiveness in whatever it's trying to do, like in play on its case, right? It's reducing the muscle soreness. Obviously that helps too. That it's natural as well. But like if you're putting in things that like do reduce that muscle soreness, but it's filled with all this other shit, like that is going to again, like kind of start to negate some of the areas where you're not kind of reaching that full kind of potential of where you need to be like anything that comes in. I mean, it's almost like that craze with deodorant too, like where, you know, aluminum and deodorant, like I remember like when I first learned about that, that like scared the shit out of me. So like now I'm like so hypersensitive. I'm like, if I'm putting stuff on my skin, I'm making sure the shit is clean as possible because I can't wait to put aluminum in my body for freaking years. It's a quick quick pro tip about that with aluminum aluminum, aluminum and deodorant, excuse me. If you have yellow pit stains on your t-shirts, it's because of the aluminum. Get it over in your series? I'm not no joke. I'm not joking. The aluminum in deodorant causes yellow pit stains. I've not had yellow pit stains in a few years now. So just heads up there. Interesting. And it's probably just because it's like a not a natural thing into our bodies or I don't know, like because yeah, because I've used non-aluminum deodorant for probably about like five or six years and I have an ideal of pit stains, but thinking about it now, like I used to in the past and I'm like, shit, I never put two and two together. That's wild. Yeah. The fact that aluminum causes yellow pit stains is quite creepy in a lot of ways. It's like, wow, everything's going against us. I actually was listening to another plug in cubermin so much here, but it's amazing. Yet an episode with a doctor on sugar. And I was listening to it yesterday and my mind is absolutely blown. Blown. Joe, let me ask you a question. What percent of American grocery stores are ultra-processed food? What percent? I like, I want to say, pull. I'm gonna say like 95 percent, maybe. Wow, you are cynical. Okay, that was a very, I don't know. Let me shoot high here. I don't know. It's about 73, 75 percent, three stores. That's ridiculous. And they talk about that the definition of food does not match what ultra-processed foods do in our body. So ultra-processed foods are not actually doing what food is supposed to do. So 73 percent of an American grocery store is actually, technically, not food. Interesting. And what's like the definition of food? Like, is that like, don't call me on it, but dictionary definition is like something that helps us grow and that also burns in our body. And ultra-processed food has been studied to show that it actually inhibits burning in the body. So it does the opposite of what it's supposed to do. Interesting. You know, that's actually really, really interesting because I've been gearing more towards kind of natural like, feeling sources for my ultra like food wise. I'm talking about like, and I've just noticed a difference in, I guess, just how I feel out there, which is just super interesting. So that's a, that's, that's interesting too. And I'm like, I'm sure it has to have like a similar role with the, you know, things we're putting on our topical bodies like and things like that too. Even our shampoos or pain creams or appointments or any of those kind of things as well. Like, because I mean, it goes into our pores, into our bloodstream. And like, I think that's another thing like people don't always think about it. Like, and I always think about like the term like input equals output, right? And it's like, if you're putting in not great stuff, the output might not be as well too. I agree completely. I you know, there's, you may be asking yourself, why is, why are they bringing another pain relief product to the market? Yes, there are a million and one topical analgesics on the market. There, it's a very saturated market like CBD. This CBD that go to the retail store. There's 20 different options. It's a lot. We have, we have a proprietary technology that makes it do a lot of magical special things. We can talk more about it if you want, but that's why we did it. It's not another snake oil science back. But we also did it because we needed something on the market that is only five natural ingredients. We needed something that wasn't full with like ABC-40 and red 30 and blue 20 and and you look at, look at like any pain relief appointment online. It's going to be filled with 20 to 30 ingredients. And it's like, what, what is that? What am I literally touching right now? So it's, it's, there's a lot of bad actors in the world who are just trying to make money, you know, so yeah, for sure. And you brought up to CBD like talking about that because I think that's been, I mean, that market has exploded. Obviously, with more like the legalization of cannabis, like things are becoming much more, you know, lacks. And even before, you know, we was becoming legal, and CBD was just kind of blowing up. And I've only used it a select amount of times and it just didn't personally work for me. And I know some, but like, I guess talk to me about that and like maybe your thoughts on CBD stuff. Yeah, CBD is an interesting one. You know, it's become very saturated itself. The price of CBD per kilo has gone down significantly compared to like 10 to 15 years ago, as more and more people have bought it in bulk. As it's been used more and legalization. Obviously there's some evidence that it can help with inflammation orally taken, topically, not so much so, not strong evidence supporting that there is any topical inflammatory benefits. And that's largely because the actual molecule, the molecular size of CBD cannot cross through the skin cell barrier. So it doesn't actually get into your muscles. So if people say it works for them, that's great. Like it works for you. Please keep using it. That's all I want to say about that. But most likely, it's placebo, most likely. So interesting. Yeah. Interesting. And CBD products are priced out the wazoo. You know, they're marked up a million percent because it has three letters on it. So that's all I say about that. Yeah. And that's an interesting thing when I started to do a little bit more research on to like why certain like topical kind of pain relief products work over others is like, is it actually going to the source inside your muscles inside your joints or is it just the skin level thing that like feels good, right? Because you know, there's a lot of things that do feel good, right? Like massage, like dry needling, like a lot of these different things can feel good. But you know, some of this stuff can be a little mixed in terms of the research because even though it feels good, it doesn't always correlate to an actual effectiveness and what it's trying to do. Not saying those specific techniques, but all I'm saying is like, I think there's like a placebo effect in a lot of these different things where it's like, is this thing actually working towards it, which is like personally like why? You know, I found plan to be super successful because it does go deep into it. It feels like this like it's going into the source as opposed to just like, oh, my muscles hurt, but there's kind of like this cooling layer on top of it that, you know, where I feel pain and cooling. Like it's almost just like, no, I need this to like actually get in there deep into the source itself. Yeah. So we developed a technology that it's all natural and it just creates more effective, longer lasting and safer delivery of medication. So we call it Durakool Technology because it's going to make the cooling last longer for you on your runs or in your training or when you have pain. So Durakool creates a thin, invisible film on your skin. It's going to actually help the ingredients stay in place for longer. It's going to be time release. So from, for example, minute one until two hours later, you're going to get that drug release over time and drug release in this case is menthol and chamfer. And there's actually going to be some cellular healing that takes place. So we've studied this and the Durakool actually heals cells. So now we pair that with Arnica, which is naturally anti-inflammatory. And when Arnica is brought into the muscles, it's actually going to have some effect versus biofreeze that just says Arnica on the back because they are label fillers. Biofreeze if you use it sucks. It is a numbing agent. It works. I hate it especially because every time I spray biofreeze on my body to test it out, I get it in my eyes. Every single damn time. But my point is that the market is filled with numbing agents. Menthol and chamfer work is a numbing agent. But not a lot of products if any work to help actually heal the body and help you recover. And that's what we're so dedicated to doing is actually help create real results. That's what we care about. Yeah, I like that distinction between is it just like a numbing agent versus is it actually like helping you out? And I think that's like a big thing especially for ultra athletes like where you know, you if you're in the middle of an ultra, which by the way, I use, you know, you spray it on me personally like at a Halloween 100. Like when you're in the middle of like a race and you know, you're 60 miles in and you still need to go 40 miles to the finish. Like you need to have something that's going to be able to really take care of your muscles like out there as well. And so that was like a cool little distinction that you know, I was able to kind of make and like what was a huge breakthrough for me? And you know, obviously not just using plan, but also just any kind of product and like looking into like, is this thing actually going to be helping me out? Or is this just kind of, you know, slide marketing on the side of, you know, whatever this company's trying to do? And I think, you know, it's helped me to kind of even just dive deeper into like asking those tough questions about the products that, you know, I decided to use the training and what I always encourage other people to do as well. I agreed completely. I was, I actually add another little tidbit about food here because I think it's very similar. When someone loses weight and keeps it off successfully, they don't do it generally by a calorie restriction. So there's been studies shown that people who lose weight successfully by just omitting processed foods and just eating whole food diet, no calorie counting, they'll lose weight. It's not because they're eating less calories. It's because there's less insulin that is brought into the body from the processed foods, insulin turned sugar into fat. So when you reduce the insulin in your body, you're going to lose weight. And it's not about calories. It's crazy stuff. It's mind blowing to me. It's the same thing. It's making me ask myself that point that I learned is making me ask myself important questions about my life. Like is it worth buying that loaf of bread at the market that I know can be out on the counter for two weeks without getting moldy? That's not how bread should be, right? Is it worth it? Maybe at my age, I'm only 25. Maybe it's fine. You know, but as we age, like in the more and more, you want to like keep your body healthy and away from cancer and away from diabetes. It's big questions that you ask yourself, what are you putting in your body? Why and is it worth it? Yeah, such good questions to ask, right? And I think it's, that's incredible too with like the insulin kind of thing because you know, it's not necessarily like the, sure, you can cut down on the calories a lot more. But how, you know, if you have like more insulin in your body, you're going to have a lot more hunger, like cravings and a lot more susceptibility to overeat in some scenarios. So that's, that's interesting to see like that effect and how it correlates with like whole food kind of natural ingredients on there too. Yeah. I love that we're talking a ton about like recovery and like, you know, the tools that we can use, play on eating healthy, all these kind of things as well. But the question that I have to ask you is, is something that I think a lot of people do have on their minds, right? They're like, listen, I'm super busy. I have a family. I have a running all the time. I, you know, have a job. I have like all these kind of things. I just don't have the time to fit in recovery. So I'm curious to hear like how you would help the, or what your, your suggestion would be to someone who feels like there's trapped on time. And maybe they are a strapped on time, but like how they can implement a lot of the things that we've been talking about to help them be a better runner and implement recovery into their routine, you know, without feeling like they have to, you know, add a, at a whole new commitment onto their play. Yeah. One hundred percent. It's, it's very understandable to be honest. It very, very much is like, you know, us fitness coaches and trainers like to say, there's time. There's always time you can make time. Sometimes there's not, you know, so what can you do? You can sometimes you're like, okay, today I only have 45 minutes and that is it. The rest of the day is jam packed. Okay. My recommendation is if you're going to run for 45 minutes, run for 40 and breathe and stretch for five because the most important thing is getting to the next day without injury and feeling good and those five minutes of recovery are going to be more important in a lot of ways than those five minutes of running. In my opinion, I could be wrong scientifically. I could be, but that is my honest opinion after coaching many, many, many, many people. Number two is a great tool is compression socks is compression pants. It's using play on because it's just you spray it on plan. You're going to get some topical recovery on the go. You know, it is having a water bottle with you and electrolytes at all times. It's having electrolytes. packets if you're on the go all the time. It's having proper food in the house at all time. So you buy in bulk and you are like, okay, I'm super busy, but I can just throw something together and I know it's nutritious. It is in some, and you can also do this as busy adults, in some it is about being prepared and having intention. Do I want this week to be a great week of training and not getting injured and eating well? Okay, I'm going to spend an extra hour preparing for it today. It's hard. It's hard to do, but being a human is hard. Okay, I'm only 25. It's hard. Okay, I'm sure people are the mere laughing. Like, yeah, you don't even know. I'm sure I don't. Okay, but we can, we can not make, what I'm doing 75 hard right now, it's all about not making excuses. I'm learning that I've made way too many excuses and we can just better prepare, just write down your days, make lists. We can do this people. We can do this. Yeah, I was going to bring up a 75 hard like in relation to that too, because I think it was very, and I'm glad that you naturally said that was segue that in because I think that's a good relation to what you were kind of talking about there. You realize that you were, you said you were like, realize you were making excuses. What was that realization like? Like, how, how did you realize that? Because I think, you know, for, for me, like, I know in my life at the times when, you know, I way back in the day would say, like, I don't have the time to train. I don't have like the things to do that. And then you realize like, oh, wait, these might be excuses. Like, how did those things come to light for you in this, in the 75 hard process? Yeah, I, you know, so many times in the past couple of years, I'm like, I'm going to make content and I get into making content because I think it's important for me and my business. And I go through it and then just something happens one day and I don't do it and I get off the wagon. And in the past week, I've made content every day and it's been great. And I'm getting everything done and I need to. I'm doing two workouts. I'm eating, following a diet. I'm like feeling so much better mentally because I am doing the thing I said that I'm going to do. And what I realized is it's all in hindsight, right? But what I've realized is that I just, there were so many times where I just wasn't doing what I said I was going to do. And it made me subconsciously feel like a lesser person. And, you know, I've had to learn that through therapy and through challenges and through other things. And the same thing with like I was injured in the fall. And it was an upper body injury. And I really just made excuses about it. And I then at the end of December, I'm like, okay, you know what, the fall just not, it has not been my time. I'm turning around. And what I realized last week is that it really wasn't my time. And that there's a lot more that I can do. And the excuses are just, you know, you get one life to live. So why should there be any excuses? Yeah. And I love how, you know, you kind of mentioned that, even just like doing the program, doing the structure has kind of like had those things come to light by saying like, hey, I'm going to do this every day. And it kind of replies like to bring it back to the recovery kind of thing. It's like saying like, hey, you know, today I am going to, you know, just foam roll for a little bit or hey, I am going to breathe at the end of my workouts or hey, I am going to get that extra amount of sleep or hey, I am going to, you know, bring plan on my long run so I can like spray it on my legs, right? Like whatever that thing is, it's like making the plan. And like, I love it. You mentioned like having intention around it, just like, you know, whether you have, you know, your week planned ahead or even if you have a coach, you know, planning your training, you make the time to fit in those things. It's a similar goes with recovery, lifestyle changes, everything like that as well. And so I love you kind of approach these things with intention to make it all come around and make it all, you know, something that can be sustainable, but also intentional as well because it can be easy to live life kind of on on random, especially when things are incredibly busy. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. 100% man. How how is a how of excuses in your life kind of held you back or, you know, how well, I will say like you, you're a remarkable human. Honestly, I think anyone who meets you is just astounded as to how nice and kind you are and how down to earth you are and you are easily the most genuine person I've ever met. And you went through one of the hardest things that a human could go through recently. And you, I don't know how and maybe you'll never tell us how or show us why, but you just didn't, you just didn't let you, it affect your life at least like externally. And it that alone, I'm not, I'm not lying here, that alone change my perspective on life on the way you were handling things. And I'm not, I'm really not kidding. It was what you went through and how you're responding now is should be, there should be Oscar winning movies written about. Okay. Dude, that well, first of all, that's not only the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me on the podcast. I think that's the nicest thing anyone has said to me in general, man. So I am just beyond the moon, just grateful for that and speechless to be honest, even though I'm talking, but I'm trying to find the right words. Speechless is where I'm kind of going for there. But dude, thank you so much for that, man. That that means the world to me. And yeah, that, yeah, like I said, like I'm speechless. I don't even know the right words to say, just because I'm getting emotional, just because that was the kindest thing that anyone ever said to me to answer both your questions, because I know you had two on there. And I appreciate you asking the question. The first thing is the excuse kind of part. And I think it does relate to the second thing too in there as well. But the, and for those listeners who don't know what Jordan was just mentioning is I lost my father unexpectedly out of the blue. He was relatively young, you know, 56 years old, no health issues, had a heart attack, died in an instant. And yeah, it was, and he was my best friend. So it's not even like, you know, as a father that I wasn't close to that was extremely close to my father. So in terms of the hardest experience in my life, even harder than being sober or any old to marathon, like that by far was the hardest thing I am still going through as it had really only happened a few months ago. So that's just kind of the context for everyone listening. But to your first point, I like the excuses. I think I've, you know, when growing up, I use a lot of drugs. I use a lot of alcohol. And I've had a lot of these self limiting beliefs about myself, which allowed, which led me to taking those drugs in alcohol to try and be someone that lived by those negative beliefs. And a lot of those negative beliefs for me was like I was born with ADHD. I am, you know, not someone who can operate without drugs. I'm, you know, not this confident person. I'm not someone who can, you know, go out and do these things. And because I have those beliefs in my life, I made very, very bad decisions. Like I said, using drugs, alcohol hanging out with the wrong people. And inherently, like to, you know, you're like you were kind of mentioning, like when you get to this point where you almost feel kind of empty, when you've lived out these, these, these things, you know, I got to a point where I was just like really rock bottom. And so, and I think everybody deals with those things. Everyone deals with like these negative beliefs, this negative self-talk, like all these negative things. And the excuse that I was making was that I thought those things defined my life. And I had to come to a reality to say like, hey, you know, these beliefs, these thoughts, these things that had happened in my life don't have to shape how I show up in the day to day. And that, let me to ultimately get sober. It'll let me to, you know, go from being on athletic because I have years of belief saying, like one of my beliefs was that I wasn't an athletic person. So therefore I couldn't be on athletic. And so I made the choices to say like, hey, you know, even though I wasn't born athletic, it doesn't mean I can't become athletic. So that was kind of like the big shift on there as well. It's like even though I can't operate in society without drugs now, doesn't mean I can't become a person that is that. And so my excuses were as, you know, my situations define who I am as a person. And I basically said, fuck that. And I said, no, like my actions and my beliefs that I create for myself are going to have my feet, like really going to shape my future. So for me, that's how I've kind of gotten over that. How that relates to the second thing, right? How you carry yourself going through something like that. Yeah, like I'm not going to lie. Like I still struggle. It's hard. Like I still get sad. I cry nearly every single day. It is something that is very, very hard for me to deal with and continually be. And I don't know if it will ever get easier. But I do know that I can kind of sit here and make a choice and say, I can be, can have this effect how I show up in my life to others and how I, you know, react to things. And I'm not perfect. Like I made mistakes here and there. But there has to be a choice that has to be made to say, is this going to define my life and who I am? while I can't, I'm not saying like don't, you know, grieve, don't, don't be sad about these things. You do have a choice to either sit in that depression and let it just kind of sit there. Or you have a point to say, here's a situation you accept it as painful as it might be and you don't let it define your life. And I think that's been the big thing for me. That's helped me a ton. So anyways, I don't want to take the spotlight off you because you're the guest. So, but that's that's kind of been the big thing that kind of relates to your thing is like you just don't let your circumstances define who you are and the choices you can make. And that's kind of been my ethos, you know, for my entire life. Wow. Oh, you need to write a book, dude. Oh, man. Well, thank you. I guess the podcast is a good start because that was that was unbelievable. That was. Thank you, man. Wow. Oh, dude, so are you, man. I mean, like to see what you're doing at 25 years old, younger than me, like, which is amazing to see and like start in a business and helping so many other people and doing what you're doing. And as I was mentioning to like earlier in the podcast, like where, you know, you called out and we hadn't even had a partnership at that point. Like we didn't even a partnership and you still got an up, got in, you know, I believe you fly or do you drive out there? We drove. Actually drove. Yeah. So you're from California still a flight longer than a flight, so to say of what you would have taken over there, hopped in the car, drove all the way to Arizona to help me out. So when no other brand, even ones that I partnered with has done that, obviously since then we've partnered just because I thought it was amazing. And I love the product too, of course. But I've never had someone do that off of first initial kind of meetings that we had together. So all that stuff about a genuine person and showing who you are is same goes to you. And I see you, you know, you're going out to visit people in Austin and other places as well. So I know that you bring that that genuine energy to any good people that you meet in your life, which is incredible. So just know all the same thing goes goes back to you, my friend. And I think that shows, you know, why you care, why your product has a lot of heart. And I think that's a genuine thing that comes through and not just obviously, you know, play on itself, but everything you stand for, my man. So everything goes back to you. Well, thank you, brother. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's been a blessing finding each other in our lives for real. Absolutely, man. It's been a blessing. And hey, my muscles also agree too, because they're feeling a lot better. My long runs and everything. So I'm excited to use it at Coca-Dona when my legs are just absolutely obliterated at like mile 200. So it'll be freaking great. Well, let's apply you with the play on super back. It's actually like a camel back filled with play on. You know, we'll just like garden hose spray you with just like a power washer of play on. Power washed with play on. That would be incredible. Oh my gosh. I'm putting it in my crew plan now. That is incredible, man. Well, for anyone listening to, if you want to try on plan, if you want to get the recovery protocol that Jordan put together, if you want to follow Jordan, if you want to follow a plan on Instagram, socials, whole nine yards, I'll put all the show links or links in the show notes. So please, grab the recovery protocol, try plan. By the way, I have a discount for y'all. I'll be using it on all my races this year. Highly suggest the product and yeah, Jordan is just an incredible person too. So highly suggest that as well. So please, please try out the product is incredible. Cannot put my bigger stamp of approval on it for sure. Yeah, it's just freaking awesome. But anyways, Jordan, of course, man. Appreciate you. And one last question that I have to ask you that I ask every single listener who comes on the Everda Ultra podcast and you are no different. And I know you listen to podcasts. So you better prepare for this answer. I'm kidding. But but also seriously, the question is because the show is called Everda Ultra, our ethos is helping our listeners be better endurance athletes every day. And while you have given a lot of great tips on this podcast to help with it, I'm curious for you, what can our listeners do every single day to be better endurance athletes? You can do a recovery protocol, whether it be three minutes, fifteen minutes or longer, to help your mind, body and soul recover and prepare for the next day. And that is nutrition, that is drinking water and electrolytes, that is sleeping, that is putting your mind at peace after a good, hard days of work. And caveat there is that to be a good ultra runner, you have to put in the work as your lovely host, Joe knows as he does. You know, you have to put in the work and when you put in the work, give your body some love and recover properly and your whole life will be better. Oh, I love that, man. So good because we talked a lot about the recovery and also like mentioned, you also mentioned like, you know, you have the recovery protocol and you do the work. Like those things have to live in harmony and one thing that, you know, I always tell my athletes is, you know, you not only have to put the work, but in order to make progress, both the application of the work, aka running has to be in harmony with recovery in order to see any progress in your training because if you have one or one more so than the other, then it's not going to work out. So Jordan, man, such an important podcast, such an important thing, message that you're spread them in. So I just want to say I'm grateful for you. I'm thankful for you. I'm so blessed that we met. So blessed we have this podcast. And I know you have tons of athletes playing on in their ultra runny season after listening to this one, my friend. So I appreciate you telling me, sir, brother. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. You did owe everything. You're the best. You're the best, man. You're the best. Follow, follow, Joe and leave a review of on this podcast if you haven't. Share with a friend. Best podcast. Oh, my gosh. Thank you, man. Thank you. Same to you, man. And please try and play on. Seriously, I cannot recommend it enough. So, well, one of this podcast is you can be a love fast between us. I love it. So good. [MUSIC]