145: The Pitfalls of High Volume Endurance Training

(upbeat music) Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode is titled, Working Title, The Pit Falls of High Volume Endurance Training, The Pit Falls. Now, typically, we're talking about the benefits, the performance amplification, the physical and mental, emotional results that you get from endurance training. For this episode, it's a little different. And I have some things I wanna share before we get into some of these pitfalls. Some of the pitfalls I'm gonna share, one, energy deficiency, two nutrient deficiency, three, muscle wasting and reduced strength, four, disordered eating, five, hormone disruption, and six, high risk of injury. Those are some of the things you can experience with high volume endurance training. And I wanna preface this episode to say, the intent of this episode is not to steer you away from endurance training, but to provide you information on what you may experience with endurance training, especially when it comes to high volume. Now, if you're just going out and running a few miles, a couple times a week, or you're hopping on a bike here and there, you're jogging, you are incorporating cardiovascular conditioning for the health benefit. You probably are not going to be experiencing some of these pitfalls that I'll be describing in detail. This is more applicable for an individual or an athlete who is training in terms of high volume. If you're training for a marathon, if you are training for a triathlon, an Iron Man, and an ultra marathon, if you're going from race to race to race, or you just love endurance training and you're pushing it to the physical limits, you may experience some of these pitfalls. All these things that I'm going to share today are things that I have personally experienced, some of which I'm experiencing right now. As many of you know, I am in the depths of an Iron Man triathlon prep. As of today of recordings episode, we are exactly 30 days out from Iron Man, Arizona, which is November 16th, 2025. So for the last 14 weeks, I've been training a lot. Anywhere from my prep started training roughly 16, 16 hours a week. And right now I'm training anywhere from 20 to 22 hours a week. It's a lot of time on the bike. It's a lot of time spent on my feet running. And there's a lot of time swimming, but it's just part of training for an Iron Man triathlon. Over the last seven years of my life, I have prioritized endurance training. And I've learned a tremendous amount along the way. But I want to share this. I believe, I still believe strongly that a training program that incorporates both strength and endurance is superior, superior for the short term and for the long term for performance benefits and health benefits. A training program that balances strength and endurance is far superior than one that is just strictly strength and one that is strictly endurance. Now, many, but not all of these pitfalls can be minimized by prioritizing nutrition and slowly increasing training volume. But these pitfalls that I'm going to describe, like I said, in detail, they will be exposed. They will become more obvious and evident as training volume and intensity increases. The last thing or one of the last things I want to share before you dive into some of these things, they have mentioned, I believe, the most optimal training program is one that balances strength and endurance. But with that being said, there is a time and place when you are pursuing a very specific goal that requires specification to the training. I've been saying this for years now. If I am training for an Iron Man triathlon, I know that I have to refine and maximize my performance and the swim and the bike and the run and that getting bigger and stronger in the gym. Might not benefit my swim, my bike or my run. So the training that I do has to be specific to the goal that I'm trying to accomplish. If my goal is to deadlift 700 pounds, well, I'm going to be spending more time in a gym, deadlifting, and I'm going to be spending less time swimming, biking and running. This is applicable to all things in life. Specific goals require specification when it comes to the work required to prepare for that goal or that event. So when it comes to an Iron Man triathlon or an ultra marathon or marathon and endurance focused event where you want to perform your best, you want to reach your full potential, that requires some specific training. And through that specific training, some of these pitfalls may become exposed. Again, I share this not to steer you away from endurance training but to inform you so that you can incorporate some solutions along the way to avoid some of these pitfalls. So broad strokes to have you thinking as I discuss some of these things. How do you solve some of these potential problems? One, proper nutrition, proper nutrition in terms of quality and quantity of food that you're consuming and fuel. And I talk about nutrition and fuel, what you're consuming throughout the day, day to day, and then fuel what you're consuming around these training sessions. And that is specific to macro nutrients to protein, your fats, your carbohydrates, which equate to the sum of your calories and then micro nutrients, vitamins and minerals. So proper nutrition is one way to avoid some of these pitfalls. Another way, take your easy days, truly easy so that you can go hard on your hard days. One of the ways you do this is by monitoring heart rate and perceived effort. Another way is to prioritize sleep. Also to include rest and deloids, potentially having seasons of training, being an in-season versus off-season. There's a lot of people that jump from race to race to race. I've seen some people's yearly race or competition schedule and it stresses me out because it's within 12 months, they're doing 15 races. And that puts you at risk for a lot of problems, not just energy and nutrient deficiency, but overtraining and burnout and injury along the way. So I'm a big fan of having seasons of training. Or in my case, I like to select one race or competition or physical goal or ambition that I pursue a year. At this point in my life, I put one goal on the calendar and go after that within the calendar year. And I believe that's a healthy approach. And then the last but certainly not least thing that you can incorporate to avoid some of these consequences is strength training, cross-training. The beauty of strength and cross-training is that it can prevent and alleviate a lot of these consequences from too much endurance training. So those are all the things that I wanted to share prior to jumping in to the first one. And that is energy deficiency. One of the things that I have experienced in many of these endurance preps that I've done is energy deficiency, feeling fatigued, feeling exhausted, brain fog, a lack of mental clarity, lack of vitality. I would argue that almost more so in an Iron Man prep than any other prep that I've done because the volume is so high, I experience energy deficiency more than say a marathon or even an ultra marathon prep. I think my hierarchy prep honestly was the best that I felt of all the preps I've done because it was a really strong balance of endurance, strength, and cross-training. Which that in itself could be another discussion and podcast episode. But energy deficiency, it is a pitfall for high volume endurance training. And I know so many endurance athletes who've experienced this, but I said, myself included. And I've experienced it in these large training blocks and I'm experiencing it right now in the depths of this Iron Man prep. Like I've said, it is just tired throughout the day because you're dedicating, committing a lot of your energy to training, to these big workouts. You know, yesterday is a good example. Yesterday was a three hour and 40 minute training day. It was a nine mile run. It was some core strength work after that. Then a 90 minute VO2 max bike workout, which is a big effort and then a one hour swim. And then within that one hour, I swam 3,000 yards. It's a big day of training and a lot of my energy is directed to the workouts itself, which in honesty can sometimes feel selfish. But it's for a specific goal for a specified duration of time. And endurance training doesn't just tax your muscles and your heart, which I think a lot of people think like when you go and put yourself through a workout, yes, it's, it's a big tax on your cardiovascular system. It's a big task on the muscular system. They both need time to recover and rest. But it also is a huge stressor. It heavily stresses your central nervous system. And it does this in a few ways. Now, if you've ever finished a big workout, and the next day you wake up, or maybe even the next two days you wake up and you feel just mentally and physically drained, more so than just your muscles hurt, but like whole body depletion. That is most likely the result of an overtaxed central nervous system. Long endurance training sessions can affect your brain by reducing motor drive to muscles. Because they want to protect your body from complete energy depletion. And brain chemicals like dopamine and nor epinephrine become depleted, causing and resulting in mental brain fog. One of the biggest issues that affects the central nervous system is that cortisol increases and the body's stress response becomes blunted, resulting in constant fatigue. This past weekend is a great example of this. From doing this for, like I've said, seven, eight years now, this type of training, I can pretty well and accurately predict the way my body is going to respond to the behaviors of training. This past weekend, we had an Iron Man training camp in Fredericksburg, Texas. It was a big training camp. So we arrived Sunday. As soon as we arrived, it was a 16-mile run and it was about 2 pm when we got started. And it was hot. It was probably 85, 90 degrees Fahrenheit. And for middle of October, that's still warm. That's toasty. Exposed in a beating down sun. So that 16-mile run was taxing in itself. And then right after that went into a one hour or 45-minute bike ride, climbing a lot of hills. Next morning, woke up, did a 100-mile bike in the hill country of the Fredericksburg, Texas area. It was a lot of climbing. Climbed roughly 54-5500 feet of elevation. I felt like I was climbing the entire ride, which was very taxing over the course of 100 miles. And then right after that, off the bike into a five-mile run and then next morning a 10-mile run and got in the truck and drove home. That last workout was Tuesday morning, that 10-mile run. Wednesday, I was tired, I was sore, but not overly taxing fatigued. Thursday woke up and central nervous system was just wrecked. The muscular system was wrecked as well. I mean, my legs, my body was tired and sore, but it was a deeper kind of more than tired exhaustion. I could tell that cortisol was elevated, my sleep was disrupted, which we'll talk about here in a little bit. My weight was increased, I could tell I had a lot of inflammation, and my body was holding on to fluids of sitting five to six pounds heavier than I normally was. So that big effort did a number, not just in my muscles and my heart, but my central nervous system was taxed. Cortisol was extremely elevated. That is one of the results of these high volume endurance training efforts and blocks and programs and races and competitions. You might be experiencing chronic fatigue and brain fog and exhaustion, and it is because of a taxed central nervous system and elevated cortisol. Another reason for energy deficiency is just not consuming enough food and fuel, and this is one of the reasons that critical fueling and nutrition is so important before, during and after workouts. It is a fuel, but also replenish during big effort endurance training sessions, you're tapping into your glycogen stores glycogen is the way that the body stores carbohydrates in the muscle and in the liver. So if I consume a big carbohydrate meal today, or over the course of the day, I'm consuming a lot of carbohydrates, it's going to take roughly 24 hours to consume that meal, those carbohydrates digest it, assimilate it, meaning breaking it down, and then storing it. And the way that carbohydrates are stored is as glycogen in the muscles and in the liver and your body can tap into glycogen stores to use for energy. And when you go into big workouts, especially endurance workouts, you're going to be tapping into your glycogen stores. Well, if you don't fuel your body, if you don't replenish your glycogen, you are going to experience fatigue due to energy deficiency. It is so important to stay on top of nutrition in these high volume endurance preps. One of the things that myself and Dr. Kyle Gillette talked about in a podcast a few weeks ago was reds, which is relative energy deficiency in sport. And this is when an athlete or an individual is burning more calories than they are consuming consistently for a long period of time. So what happens when you're burning more calories than you're consuming in the short term, you might lose a few pounds, you might be a little tired, your performance might not be as strong. But when you do this consistently over a long period of time, which you might not even be aware of, a lot of people who are experiencing reds, don't even know they're under consuming, they're just not eating enough because they're not aware of it. But when you do this for a long period of time, it starts affecting more than just your energy and your performance, it affects or can affect your sleep, it can affect your mental processing, it can affect your endocrine and hormone production and maintenance can affect relationships, it can affect your entire life. The reds is a big deal and a big issue with endurance athletes, and it's all because of an energy deficiency, you are deficient in energy because you aren't consuming enough nutrition or you're just taxing your body too hard and cortisol is consistently high. Some of the reasons for energy deficiency as well could be from sleep disruptions, often during large training blocks, and I have definitely experienced this when I'm really deep into a prep, my sleep often becomes pretty disrupted, where I can fall asleep very quickly, but throughout the night, I'll wake up multiple times. Because of a consistently increased level of cortisol, cortisol being a stress hormone, and when cortisol is raised and then it is elevated and it consistently stays high, that will wake you up throughout the night, it doesn't allow your body to actually rest. There's one to punch of your training at very high volumes and intensities, and you're over training, you're under recovering, you might not be consuming enough calories to keep up with the energy demands. So cortisol is off the charts, it's raised and it's elevated, and then on top of that, because cortisol is high, you can't sleep, so now you have sleep disruptions that are just digging this deeper hole of an energy deficiency, you keep digging that hole until you either rest or recover properly, or in some cases you start consuming more nutrition and calories and you dig yourself out of reds. cortisol is something that should and needs to be managed in an endurance prep and build, and something that I think a lot of people don't take into consideration is other life stressors. So if you're in a high volume training block, that in itself is a stressor on the body, and if you're in a period of time in your life where you have a lot of other stressors, that could be family related, it could be health related, it could be work related, it could be anything. All of these stressors compound on top of each other, your body has a really hard time distinguishing between one stressor and the other, it just feels the effects of stress. So if you're just stacking stress on top of stress, that compounds and your body cannot recover properly, and it digs you into a deeper energy deficiency. So I believe that energy deficiency, chronic fatigue, mental brain fog, being exhausted, tired, lack of motivation, drive, kind of all of these things that endurance athletes sometimes experience in a high training high volume block can be managed by delodes in training, rest in recovery, managing cortisol, managing stress, staying on top of nutrition and core consumption throughout the day, but also around training itself before, during and after, and then prioritizing sleep. But if you don't prioritize all of those things and you're not aware of those things, it will lead to energy deficiencies or you're just digging this hole deeper and deeper and deeper. And the deeper you dig this hole, the more you tax your central nervous system, the harder and the longer it's going to take to fill that hole back up and get yourself out of that right. Okay, the next pitfall that endurance athletes may be experiencing, especially like I've said in these high volume training blocks, that's nutrient deficiency. As endurance athletes, the type of training that we do, it's harder on the body, it excretes more vitamins in minerals because of the way that we train or energy demands sweat. We lose a lot of minerals through sweat and our bodies just require more vitamins, minerals, micronutrients, macro nutrients to keep up with the demands, especially as volume intensity increases. So we created a product, and I'm going to share this product with you right now, that when this episode goes live, which is October 27th, we are launching this new product on October 27th. It is called endurance essentials. We created endurance essentials for endurance athletes because there are some vitamins in minerals. I'm holding endurance essentials in my hand right now, the bottle. There are some vitamins and minerals that most endurance athletes are deficient in, especially in high volume training blocks. And if you are deficient in these vitamins and minerals, it can lead to some of these pitfalls that I'm about to share with you and discuss. A lot of these pitfalls that endurance athletes experience from nutrient deficiency is low energy levels, reduced performance, reduced recovery, disrupted sleep. It is compromised immune function. It is putting you in a compromised position of potentially risk of injury due to weaker bones and muscle function. As an endurance athlete, as an athlete as a whole, when you have nutrient deficiencies, you put yourself in a compromised position, not just to underperform and not reach your full potential up performance, but I'm not feeling your best. I'm not feeling optimized with vitality and energy in good sleep and recovery and muscle function, all these things. That's why we created endurance essentials. A product that fills the gaps of what most endurance athletes are deficient in. One serving is three capsules. I'll go over the formula briefly and then dive into why and what. Vitamin D, 5000 IUs, this is per serving, iron, 25 milligrams, magnesium, 300 milligrams, zinc, 15 milligrams, and vitamin K2, 125 micrograms. Vitamin D, low vitamin D status increases risk of stress fractures, shin splints, and delayed bone healing. It also supports protein synthesis, muscle contraction, and energy production at the cellular level within the mitochondria. Vitamin D also regulates immune function, which is typically compromised during hard training. I have personally found that when I go into these big training blocks, it's much easier for me to get sick or pick up something that is spreading, especially now that my daughter Charlie is going to school and she's bringing back something new every week. A immune function is not just compromised from Charlie bringing all these things back, but because I'm in a big training block, hard training block. Vitamin D also regulates helps to regulate hormones and recovery support. The thing about vitamin D is athletes who are trainees use more vitamin D that is accessible within the body for muscle repair and energy metabolism. It's really important to supplement with vitamin D. You can get it through supplements like endurance essentials, get it from nutrition, sources, food, and sunlight as well. It's why it's so great to spend time in the sunlight because you can get vitamin D and replenish vitamin D stores from being in the sun. The second thing I want to talk about is iron. Iron is super interesting. We know that women who train with a focus on endurance are at greater risk for iron deficiency than men. A lot of that is due to the menstrual cycle that women go through monthly. When you are deficient in iron, it is called anemia. Iron is lost through excessive sweat and endurance training increases the production and destruction of red blood cells. If the destruction rate is slightly greater than or outpaces the production, especially during heavy training blocks, then hemoglobin levels drop. Less hemoglobin means less oxygen delivered to the muscles, which means fatigue and poor performance. There's this very interesting and it's kind of minor, but it's still super interesting when I heard about this for the first time. I was like, "There's no way this is true, but it is true." It's called foot strike, hemolysis. I believe that's how it's pronounced. What it means is when you are running, especially running because of the foot strike, you probably don't get this from other type of low impact endurance training. Running is definitely the most taxing on the body when it comes to endurance training, just from the repeated force of your foot striking in the ground, especially on a hard services. But what this foot strike, hemolysis is, it's the repeated pound on hard services from your foot. That compresses blood in foot capillaries and it creates enough mechanical force to actually rupture some red blood cells. And when there's blood cells are ruptured, that's when hemoglobin levels drop and it affects iron levels. And that's when you experience fatigue and poor performance. Now, you can replenish iron through your diet and red meat is a great source of iron. So if you're in a big endurance training block, eat more red meat, which will help supply iron. But iron deficiency significantly contributes to low energy, low performance, low drive. It can be a huge problem with endurance athletes, like I said, especially with women. Minesium, magnesium is excreted through sweat, stress itself increases magnesium excretion. And athletes use more magnesium for muscle contractions and ATP production. So compared to the average individual, an athlete is just utilizing more magnesium that is within the body because it's requiring more energy, more ATP production. Minesium also helps manage the nervous system by controlling or helping to control cortisol production. Again, cortisol production is not necessarily bad, but when it's too high for extended periods of time, that's when it becomes bad. We want increased cortisol, not just consistently elevated cortisol. Minesium is needed for DNA repair, protein synthesis, and muscle rebuilding. And it also regulates muscle contraction and fluid balance. Minesium being an electrolyte. And without magnesium, your body actually can't efficiently produce or use energy during training. Minesium is also great for muscle relaxation and can help you sleep better. If you're having a problem just like winding down at night, if you have restless leg, magnesium supplementation can significantly help with that. Zinc is often overlooked by endurance athletes. It is a co-factor for many enzymes involved in energy production or ATP production at the cellular level. Zinc is essential for protein synthesis, tissue repair, cell growth, and it's crucial for immune cell function. It also supports hormone regulation and it's lost in sweat during these long intense endurance training sessions. Vitamin K2 is super interesting. Vitamin K2 was added to this formula because it works in a complementary way alongside vitamin D. Now, vitamin D can help supply calcium to the bones to help maintain and build stronger bones, which is great for endurance training. You need strong bones to support the impact and the stress that you're putting your body under. Vitamin K2 is so important because it controls the traffic of that calcium. It ensures that it directs it to the bones. Without vitamin K2 alongside of vitamin D supplementation, calcium doesn't always go where it's supposed to, which is where we want to, and that is the bones. That is endurance essentials. That's why we included each in every one of those few vitamins and minerals because most endurance athletes are deficient in them based off of the style of training and the lifestyle that comes alongside of it. Another pitfall. Muscle wasting and reduced strength. Now, right now in this Iron Man training block, I have definitely lost muscle, I have lost weight, and I have definitely lost strength, specifically upper body strength. And a lot of that is because I'm not prioritizing strength training right now. I'm training for this Iron Man, which like I've said, at this point in the block, it's anywhere from 20 to 22 hours a week. And based off the demands of my schedule with the business and my family and life, it's hard to find a few extra hours to do significant weight training alongside of that. And also, I have a specific goal, and that is the Iron Man triathlon. And significant amounts of weight training may or may not contribute to that effort. Now, as soon as this race is over, I will be back in the gym throwing weights and iron around on a regular basis again, and I'll put some weight back on for sure. But being lighter and still being fueled has allowed me to recover better for the style of training that I'm doing and perform better faster than when I was sitting a little bit heavier. But endurance training itself isn't inherently muscle wasting, but it can be, especially when paired with poor fueling nutrition, or recovery, or lack of strength training, and that in itself can lead to muscle and strength loss. Now, for a second, let's talk about the catabolic state and the anabolic state. A catabolic state within your body that's a process that breaks down larger molecules into smaller ones. It is energy releasing. When you are catabolic, your body is typically using energy to perform. And when you are catabolic, this is when your body might start breaking down muscle to use as energy. And if you're in a catabolic state for too long, you start breaking down more and more and more muscle, and it outperforms the ability to rebuild and repair. Being catabolic in a catabolic state, that can be muscle wasting or muscle reducing strength reducing. Being in a catabolic state often occurs during stress, fasting, or intense exercise. It can break down muscle fat or glycogen for energy, and having high levels of cortisol promotes being catabolic. Now, here's the thing. Just because you go and say, run 20 miles, let's just use 20 miles, for example. When you are running, your body is utilizing energy. It is trying to find in resource energy for that specific mode of effort that run. In that case, you are probably in a catabolic state. You're definitely not in a rebuild state. You're in a breakdown state. But as soon as that run is over, and you rest, and you recover, and you eat food, and you consume protein, and you replenish, it goes from being catabolic to anabolic. You start recovering, you start rebuilding. As long as you recover properly afterwards, you're not going to, in the long term, see any difference from being catabolic for that 20 mile run, for example. But when you're a catabolic, or in a catabolic state for too long, that's when muscle wasting and breakdown exceeds your body's ability to repair and rebuild. So that's being in a catabolic state. That's when muscle wasting and reduced strength can occur over a long period of time. When you're in an anabolic state, this is the process that builds larger molecules from smaller one, usually using energy. This supports growth, repair, and storage. And being in an anabolic state, which is when you're in a fed state, catabolic is most likely a fastened state, anabolic is a fed state. It's essential for muscle building, bone formation, and hormone synthesis. This is why nutrition, or one of the reasons nutrition is so important before, during, and after training. Now, what affects muscle and strength status while in a focused endurance training block, or build, or prep? It is your calorie consumption, making sure you're consuming enough. This can limit your body's muscle wasting potential. Protein intake, prioritizing protein. I've always been a fan of a high protein diet. Carbohydrates are the fuel source, fats, fuel source, but also very important for Bolly functions to include many, but especially hormone production. And then protein, the building blocks of your body for growth, repair, or punishment. Resistance training and cross-training, maintaining that stimulus while you're in an endurance training block, can limit the effects of muscle wasting or losing strength. Glikagen depletion, like we talked about earlier, is why it's so important to consume carbohydrates. Post workout is to replenish your muscle and liver glycogen that was used during training, and then rest recovery and sleep. If you prioritize those things, you can limit the effects that endurance training has on muscle wasting or reduced strength. Calories, not being in a deficit for too long, protein intake, resistance, or strength training, cross-training, glycogen, replenishment, rest, recovery, and sleep. So we're trying to avoid with endurance training to put it simply as the stimulus of endurance training itself is not going to burn muscle away. But it's things that we don't do in combination with. They're going to cause or result in muscle wasting and reduce strength. And this comes down to prioritizing, I said, calories, nutrition, protein, sleep, recovery. The nutrition is so important. It's so important. You can keep a lot of your size one in these big endurance training blocks, but it requires focus, it requires planning, it requires intentionality. Endurance training itself is not muscle or strength wasting. Something that I don't think enough people talk about when it comes to the pitfalls of endurance training, that not everyone experiences, but I believe many do, is disordered eating. And I believe a lot of it comes from the old mindset that if you are lighter, you will be faster. And there's some truth to that. You know, I'm lighter now than I was 14 weeks ago. And I might be a little faster. I won't say significantly faster, but I definitely feel like my body recovers a lot more efficiently at this weight. Then when I'm sitting heavier and it makes the workouts just a little bit easier from being honest. But there's a difference between being lighter and being under fueled. I am someone who has grown up over the last, wow, 21 years of disordered eating. When I was 14 years old, I had a severe eating disorder. And for most of my life after that, I've experienced disordered eating at different levels of intensity at different parts of my life. You know, sometimes disordered eating or unhealthy relationships with food are more intense than others. And it's typically when I'm in a training block, or I'm preparing for a race or competition. Because when I commit to a race or a competition, I put it on the calendar and I let the world know, I think that very serious. I'm fully committed. I feel the pressure. When I feel the pressure that I'm committed, I oftentimes like to feel the need or I feel the need to control variables that are within my control. One of those being food and nutrition. I like to dial in. For better or worse, you may view it as a discipline. You may view it as a disorder. When I'm not in a big training block, a lot of those unhealthy relationships with food, they just go away. They may not go away, but they aren't as evident or upfront. And I'm very aware of this. For someone who, for anyone, if you're listening, if you've had an eating disorder in the past, I first started experiencing mine when I was 14 years old. For anyone who doesn't know the story, mine got pretty extreme to the point where I was hospitalized because my body was essentially shutting down my organs or shutting down. And it took a few years to really remend healthy relationships with food and viewing food as fuel and something to enjoy as opposed to something negative. But that consumed me when I was a young teen and ever since then, there have been periods of my life where it has consumed parts of my life, all consuming. And for anyone who has ever experienced eating disorders or disorder eating or unhealthy relationships with food, you probably know that it doesn't ever go away. It might become dormant from time to time, but it never fully just goes away and disappears. And I share that because I asked someone who has once had an eating disorder and still occasionally struggles with disorder eating, I'm very observant. And I watch and I see the habits that some of these athletes, especially endurance athletes that I'm around, just the behaviors that they practice, the disorder eating that they try to hide, just to be lighter, to be leaner, to be faster, to look more shredded, to control a variable that is controllable on their own terms. I see this all the time with endurance athletes and I share this to say that it's important to be very aware because disorder eating unhealthy relationships with food and eating disorders when paired with endurance training, that's a recipe for disaster. That is the perfect formula for reds, relative energy deficiency in sport. That is the perfect formula for reduced energy, brain fog, hormone disruption, which we're about to talk about, disrupted sleep, elevated cortisol, nutrient deficiency, all of the things. Sometimes athletes, I saw someone online talking about this other day and I thought it was so accurate, I can't remember exactly who was talking about it, but they said that there's many endurance athletes and they were talking in context of triathletes, become more focused on the scale, how much they weigh, how much they're losing as opposed to their training performance in splits. The priority becomes how lean can they get, how light can they get, what's the scale say as opposed to how fast am I becoming, how well am I recovering, how great am I sleeping. We should be putting the focus, the priority on performance, on the splits, on the recovery, on the feeling, the wellness, the vitality as opposed to the scale. As I've trained with many different athletes over these years, I see it very frequently, disorder of eating, avoiding certain foods, underfueling, being afraid to consume and excess calories or nutrition because they think they're going to gain weight or they're going to slow down, but it actually is the opposite. Being underfueled and underrecovered is what slows you down and hurts your performance and drains your energy and drains your motivation and digs you into a deep, deep, deep dark hole. So I just want to bring awareness to that, so that people can be aware and conscious that it is not rare for endurance athletes, people who train high volume endurance to experience disorder eating. The next pitfall to discuss is hormone disruption. Again, I experienced every one of these pitfalls and you know when you're in a big training block and your hormones are disrupted and off. I first experienced this in my last Iron Man prep in 2020, 2021. Proper hormone production is, it's affected by the environment that is created during high volume training blocks. Prioritizing nutrition, sleep, rest, and stress management, we can completely disrupt our hormone production, which leads to a cascading multiple negative effects, not just on performance but recovery and vitality of life and sleep and everything. A lot of it is due to cortisol. So cortisol, like we've talked about this stress hormone, I mean, if we think about it so much of high volume endurance training is learning how to manage cortisol, cortisol production. And that's why nutrition and sleep and rest and recovery is just as important as the training itself. But chronic excessive endurance training can keep cortisol elevated even at rest, even at rest, which promotes muscle breakdown, suppressed immune function, it impairs sleep and it reduces hormone production. So in males, we're talking about testosterone, chronically high in elevated cortisol reduces testosterone production, being in a catabolic environment can suppress testosterone, ultimately an energy deficiency, being an energy deficiency for too long can suppress testosterone. A lot of people will experience this when they go on a drastic diet in a cut calories to aggressively way too fast. In the beginning, they start losing weight and they feel better and they look good. And then when they're in this extreme, clork deficit for extended periods of time, that energy deficiency will and can suppress testosterone production in men. Being sleep deprived will reduce testosterone production. Having healthy hormone levels is very dependent on sleep, especially restorative sleep, not just any sleep, getting enough sleep in terms of quantity of hours, brose quality, deep sleep and REM sleep. It is vital for healthy hormone production and nutrient deficiencies will impair hormone synthesis or hormone production. Now in females, women experience similar effects, but this is mainly affecting estrogen and progesterone. And when cortisol is too elevated for extended period of times, same things of sleep deprivation, nutrient deficiencies, elevated cortisol. Women who are over trained and have hormone imbalances might also experience menstrual cycle disruption or having irregular menstrual cycles. And then the last hormone that I want to talk about is growth hormone. I think when a lot of people hear growth hormone, they think of bodybuilders because these big jacked bodybuilders sometimes take and use growth hormone to stimulate more muscle production. But we naturally have growth hormone within our body. It is produced. It is regulated. Growth hormone rises after we exercise naturally to promote muscle or tissue repair. It is part of our body's natural recovery process. But when we are chronically overtraining or we don't have adequate protocols for recovery, this will blunt in effect growth hormone secretion. And it slows muscle repair. It affects bone strengthening and fat utilization. So when we don't prioritize, rest, recovery, nutrition, cortisol is spiked. It's elevated. It's not coming back down. It's even spiked and elevated at rest. We will start experiencing hormone disruptions, which leads to like I said, a cascading event of negative consequences that we just don't want to experience. But we may and probably will to some extent in these high volume training blocks. Some of these things that I'm talking about can't be completely avoided, but they can be managed and minimized with the right amount of planning and intentionality. And the last pitfall I want to talk about is high volume endurance training does put you at a high risk of injury. And this results from just over and repeated use. You know, think about when you're on a run, this morning, I ran 10 miles. That is the same movement for one hour and 15 minutes. 10 miles foot strikes the ground, which I run on hard surfaces, I run on roads. Over and repeated use day in, day out. You're on a bike. Your legs are spinning. The same repeated use over and over again. That type of volume and exposure to that repeated use puts you at a risk of injury. It just does. And a lot of the injuries that endurance athletes experience are from overuse or repeated use. You know, patterns, I guess the best way to describe it, overuse patterns. You put yourself at a high risk of injury from nutrient deficiency. This could be compromised, muscle, tendon, ligament, people who are suffering from reds that we've talked about, relative energy deficiency in sport. A lot of times people who have reds for long periods of time will start getting muscle strains and tears and ligament, intending strains and tears. Because their body is deficient in the right nutrients to heal and repair. You put yourself at a high risk of injury when you lack or neglect cross training. Again, this is why I think strength training is so important. Then if you don't do it or practice it a lot during the actual build or prep itself, this is the beauty of an off season. You know, when I'm not in a big prep like this Ironman training block, when I'm in my, if you will, off season, it's a pretty even split between cardiovascular conditioning. Primarily running and strength training. I'm building up those muscles that have become weak. I am building durability and strength. Cross training can reduce risk of injury significantly. Also, what I think puts most people at risk of injury maybe most frequently is when you increase training volume or intensity too quickly. You know, if you go from 20 miles of running a week and you jump into a new training program at 50 or 60 miles a week, just like that from one week to the next, the chances of you getting injured are very, very high. And in the past, I don't get injured much anymore, but when I first started training, I first started running a lot. I had every injury under the sun. I experienced all of them. And looking back now, it's because I increased training volume and intensity way too fast. It should be the slow build, allow your body to adapt and recover and get used to the stimulus and slowly increase volume, slowly increase intensity. And the last thing is ignored recovery protocols. Rest, true rest, sleep, de-loads. A de-load is an intentionally designed and structure part of a training block that has a reduced amount of training volume and intensity. I have incorporated two full de-load weeks in my prep so far and this prep and that's weeks where my volume is reduced, my intensity is reduced to allow my body to recover more efficiently. So when I go into the next training block, it is primed. So rest, sleep, de-loads. And like I've talked about before, having your seasons of training. Not going from race to race to race to race, but having a race, having a competition, setting a goal, working towards that goal, accomplishing that goal, and then truly allowing your body and your mind to rest and recover. There's a risk of injury, high risk of injury with high volume endurance training, but there are ways to mitigate that risk. It's being smart, it's having a plan, it's being intentional. So that is the episode. Those are some of the pitfalls of high volume endurance training that I wanted to share with you guys. Again, not to steer you away from some of these big endurance efforts, but to bring awareness to them so that you can make a plan, implement these protocols, stay ahead of it so you can avoid the pitfalls or minimize the pitfalls. But knowledge is power, and power allows you to make a plan. So I appreciate you guys, I love you, thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you in the next episode.