The Hobby Jogger Podcast
Welcome to The Hobby Jogger Podcast, where elite athletes and ham-and-eggers lace up their stories. We explore the common ground that running creates from the world-class runner to the hobbyist hitting the pavement, trail or treadmill. Expect a blend of inspiration, laughter and the shared joy that makes every step count. Join us on this journey, where every run is a story worth sharing.
The Hobby Jogger Podcast
E44 | How Strength Training Boosts Endurance Performance with Michael Meeker
When trail runner and Hobby Jogger podcast host Casey returned from the Canyons 50K with a surprisingly fast recovery, he knew exactly what made the difference: strength training. That's why we invited strength coach Michael Meeker, owner of Big Tree Fitness in Akron, to explain the transformative impact resistance training can have for endurance athletes.
As runners, many of us have been conditioned to believe that simply logging more miles is the path to improvement. Mike challenges this notion by explaining how a well-rounded strength program supports everything from running economy to injury prevention. "If you want to be good at anything, the whole entire body is connected together," he explains. "If you want to run with great posture on trails, you should have a strong upper body, strong back, strong shoulders." This comprehensive approach helps maintain form when fatigue sets in during long efforts.
Ready to transform your running through strength training? Start with bodyweight exercises to build a foundation, focus on technique before adding weight, and remember that consistency trumps intensity. Your recovery time will shorten, your endurance will improve, and you might just find yourself crossing finish lines with a smile rather than a grimace.
Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of the Hobby Jogger. I am joined by my co-host, Mr Rob Myers. Rob, I forgot what episode number this is, so I didn't mention it. Do you know? Is it 44? Going with 44. Going with 44. You recovered from Canyons.
Rob Myers:Yes, yes, I have recovered Nice nice Long trip.
Casey Koza:Yes, I have recovered. Nice, nice Long trip. Yeah, happy to be back. Yeah, it was a great trip. And that leads us right into this guest that we're going to have on. And the reason I'm having this particular guest on the show a friend of mine is because I feel that the strength training I did do leading up to canyons played a very big part into one how I did the performance to, how I felt in three, how quickly I recovered from it, which was record time for me. He's a strength coach, conditioning coach and much more that we're going to get into. But I just wanted to kind of explain why we're having a, I guess not necessarily running guest on a running podcast, but a strength coach, because I would like to emphasize how much time I put into that. Let's get to the guest. It is my friend, mr Michael Meeker, the proprietor of Big Tree Fitness here in Akron. Mike, how are you?
Michael Meeker:Good Casey, Very good Thanks for having me on man, Much appreciated.
Casey Koza:Yeah, dude, thanks for joining us. We certainly appreciate your time and I know you're busy down at the gym, so anytime you can make time for me, you know, so I'm obliged I always make time for you, dude. Yeah, of course I know, but you know you are busy down there. Got an evening off, I guess, kind of off, or no.
Michael Meeker:You had the last class and then yeah, last class finished up um right around 6, 30, 6, 45 and just came home and um set up in my backyard and sitting down ready to have a good conversation. It's beautiful outside, hear the birds all around me and stuff um, so I'm kind of in my element in my in place.
Casey Koza:I like to be at yep, it is one of my favorite places down there as well. You live right next to Sand Run Metro Park, beautiful area.
Michael Meeker:I just walked 30 seconds up my street and I have all of Sand Run Park and I can connect into the national park in a matter of like a 45 minute walk and it's just. Yeah, it's pretty cool down here. I moved down here on purpose 25 years ago. Nice, yeah, it was pretty cool down here. I moved down here on purpose 25 years ago.
Casey Koza:Nice, yeah, it was a good choice. Definitely the best running trails for kind of what I do is down there in Sand Run, so I'm pretty fortunate that it's a three-minute drive down the hill for me or just run down there. Yeah, or just run down the hill. So you are the owner. You're the only owner, unless your significant other owns it with you. But of Big Tree Fitness, correct?
Michael Meeker:Correct, yeah, sole provider of Big Tree.
Casey Koza:Fitness and how did you start that back when you started it?
Michael Meeker:Yeah, so I was working for a landscape company. I worked for them for 25 years, but at one point in time I just started getting really burned out on it. And but what I loved about in my company I worked for is I had a lot of autonomy, and so I got to train and coach a lot of people and my mantra was always to try to pull with from within, and I enjoyed that piece of my job the most. Everything else I could have left behind for a while. But when I actually started going into a gym because I actually started my real journey out on the trails, on trail running and everything, and eventually ended up finding myself in the gym and I ended up hooking up with an actual trainer the connection between working out in a gym and that feeling that I got from doing that and how great it felt. And then the idea of having what I love doing in Science Association and got my personal training certificate. And that same year I started my first garage gym. That was pretty much an underground thing Just a handful of people I was training. It was all free, and I ran through that all the way through 2016 when I decided it was time to do something different, and so that's when Big Tree Fitness became actual official official, and then I got my first small space right around in my neighborhood.
Michael Meeker:I didn't want to leave the Valley. I wanted to. The Valley had offered me so much that I wanted to give something back. So I always wanted to do something like that, and so I started my first gym down there in the Valley in the late, late, late fall of 2016. Just gone through many iterations of it, through dealing with COVID moving the gym to a bigger spot and then having COVID come up and get you about a year and a half later, and then removing it again and then running into a flood last year and then having to rebuild it again. It's something that's very deep inside of me that I absolutely love doing. I love the community we have and I love getting to do what I get to do every single day.
Casey Koza:It's awesome yeah, I remember your first gym, rob. What I would say it reminded me most of was like an old wrestling gym, like back in middle school it was small yeah, it was small, I think.
Michael Meeker:The total square footage, uh, and this included a little office space and a bathroom, I think the total square footage was just under 900 square foot and we had a total of maybe 600 square foot working space. Uh, which was kind of comical because at one point in time we had 24 24 rugby members laying on the ground doing green sally, and the way you guys had to position yourself on the floor was just insane. It's one of my all-time favorite videos I've ever made yeah, I, I remember that video.
Casey Koza:Yeah, uh, the song probably most famous from being gone in 60 seconds, was it green sally?
Michael Meeker:yeah, or porcelain, everybody calls it green sally, his green sally up, green sally down, and when you're on the down position, you're actually folded into that v up and everything, and so it's a three minutes and 48 seconds of torture. It's awesome.
Rob Myers:Yeah, I love the small gyms because when you walk in right away you know there's work being done there, right? You can kind of smell it in the air, you can see it on the mats. I know some of my favorite gyms over the years just super tiny, not the best equipment, but everybody's smiling, Everybody's having a good time. You're just working hard.
Michael Meeker:And then you grow from there you know it's the best. Yep, that's exactly how it happened, um, and from there just had this really cool community and having the rugby team, uh, initially join into what I was doing and stuff. That was a big, huge help for me and it kind of gave me the foundation of what I wanted to be doing in the sense of the community I wanted to have. It was extremely diverse and just opened up all sorts of different ways of thinking, different ways of looking at how you can do fitness, different ways you can look at, especially on the rugby team, of who needs what in the sense of the bigger guys versus the smaller, the faster people and stuff. So it just it was a great education piece for me as well.
Rob Myers:It's where I cut my teeth, so to speak, for a little while I mean some of the larger gyms just feel so sterile to me. You know, at the end of the day I don't want to talk smack it's nice when you're traveling and the experience is the same. I get it, but it just seems like such a sterile environment, Like there's no camaraderie.
Michael Meeker:Like you don't feel that energy when you walk in. Yeah, I go up to a couple of times a week a week at least, I go up to a sport or LA fitness here to go swim and it's that very sterile kind of environment it's got. It's a great thing to have to utilize, but it does not have that feel. It doesn't have that community feel to it. It doesn't have that. You know you're going in there and whatever's written on the board you're going to go. Oh shit, love it. Yeah, that's, that's what you're going to get when you come into big tree which is what I look for.
Casey Koza:I it's it's average Joe's gym versus globo gym is. Is it's average Joe's gym versus Globo gym is what it is. That's a good way of putting it. You're right, it's very sterile, rob, that's the word I've been trying to come up with. I've got to write that down. Sterile, and not in a good way, not that it's clean, just sterile of kind of character and things like that. You're also no stranger to endurance events, which is what we focus on here at the hobby jogger. Yeah, right, yeah, you've. You've done some crazy shit out here in the cvnp yeah, I, um, I don't know what happened for me.
Michael Meeker:Um, I I got involved in spartan races. When I started in my, my old gym, my, the original first gym, I got involved in a spartan race and, um, I had done like a couple of the um, some of the other smaller, um kind of obstacle course races before, but when I went and did spartan I was like, oh, this is something completely and totally different, this is super cool. So I got a little bit more and more involved. In each year I would get people involved with it and eventually I started working my way up and got into the Doing the Beast, which was the half marathon version of it, and it's got 28 some odd obstacles that you have to work through and you're in Mother Nature, you're in the woods, you're in whatever environment they're putting it in Ski resort sometime in a rock quarry where this next one's coming up that we're doing here not this weekend but next weekend. So I got more and more involved with those things and then when COVID hit, it shut everything down. And the weird story about that when COVID hit I was actually in New York at Greek Peak Ski Resort, way in like what would be central northern New York area doing a Spartan race. It was the only winter Spartan race I ever did and I was like, not that far away from, like, the epicenter outbreak that was in New York and I come home a week later and the whole entire everything shuts down. It was an extremely weird experience.
Michael Meeker:But when COVID happened and everybody kind of went down into the rabbit holes and stuff, so to speak, I did the polar opposite. I was like, okay, this is going to suck business wise, but what can I do to help get the keep the business going? So what I did is I created packages for everybody. So whatever was not tied down in the gym, I made these packages, some for my advanced lifters, medium, you know, middle people that you know didn't have. They had good experience, but not what they needed for lifting on their own, so to speak, and beginners as well. And so I would come in every day, do a video, send it out to each and every group of people that had, so they could keep their workouts going, and in return they kept the business afloat. And so that, just like really inspired me to just keep on doing more and more.
Michael Meeker:And so I started off doing a 5k every day for 21 days in a row, I started taking my kids on a hike with their schoolmates during Zoom meetings just like what we're doing, and before their classroom started, and we would take the kids out on a 45-minute hike in the woods and everything. And that just kept on pushing me further and further, and so the 21 days ended up turning into what was going to be just 100 days of a workout, which ended up turning into 365 days in a row of a workout, and in between there, I ended up doing the David Goggins 4x4x48 challenge and raising a bunch of money for Isabella's Closet. About two months later, I did my first ever ultra, and it was a Spartan ultra, so it was 32.6 miles and 66 obstacles. Ended up, uh, later on that year doing my first ever a hundred mile, um, towpath ride, um, just going off and doing these things. That were endurance things, but not just endurance things, but things to make you think very differently and very deeply about what you're trying to accomplish in life and how you're trying to maybe change things. And 2020 and everything was a perfect opportunity for for you to do that, if you chose to do it, and so that's how I got involved in endurance things and I just kept on doing things like that up until recently.
Michael Meeker:We did our, we did our winter challenge for 2025. And that took place on February 28th this year. We took off at six o'clock at night. It was 56, 57 degrees outside and absolutely beautiful. We didn't even have to have our headlamps on throughout the first part of the hike, which went until midnight. We just wore base layers and stuff and then, roughly around two o'clock in the morning, mother Nature decided to say okay, here I am, let's go play. And about three o'clock in the morning, by that point in time, we were in a full blown snowstorm whiteout conditions, wind all over the place, temperatures getting colder and colder and colder, and by the time we were done at four o'clock Saturday evening, we had done 44 miles and 18 moving hours and 4000 foot elevation, and the windshield factor was nine degrees above zero. But it was a blast. I had an absolute blast doing it, and it's just. I love doing these things because they allow you to prove to yourself what you're capable of doing and they just open up things for you in different ways.
Rob Myers:Casey, you said this guy was a beast, but you didn't say he was a beast.
Casey Koza:Come on, rob, I'm trying to talk him. In the last couple of times I've seen him they're doing like a 100-mile mountain race because he would kill it. I'm going to see if I can get him to come down to Grindstone with us and do the Grindstone 100. That's my goal, because a lot of that Mike is just hiking.
Michael Meeker:Yeah, I know, trust me, I'm aware.
Casey Koza:Yeah, so I would like to see it. You would crush it. But that brings us to our next point, mike, is the training that goes into all this. Because now it's kind of and Rob you'll probably agree, you've heard people talk about it they're starting to realize in running well, specifically trail running how important cross training is, how important strength training is, how important cross training is, how important strength training is, and maybe you're doing yourself a little bit of a service if you just go out and run super high volume of running without doing strength training.
Michael Meeker:You're doing yourself a huge disservice if you're just going out and doing volumes of running without doing strength training. You have to understand if you want to be good at anything, the whole entire body is connected together. Everything's connected together. If you want to run and have great posture and running and great posture and ability to move on trails, you should have a really strong upper body, a really strong upper body. You should have a strong back, strong shoulders. You should also have strong legs to be able to support the muscle. You should have strong muscles to be able to support what you are trying to do. If you are just doing one thing and doing it over and over and over again, yeah, you can run, but are you doing it to the best of your ability? And the answer to that is simply no. If you're not doing strength training at all Resistance training it makes everything, everything better. Now, that also depends upon what kind of resistance training you're looking at.
Michael Meeker:If you're a runner, are you going to go out and try to do powerlifting kind of strength training where you're going to go for maximal strength training? The answer to that is no, you wouldn't want to do that. Are you going to go and do a bunch of hypertrophy training where you're going to do lots and lots and lots of reps and everything. No, you're not going to do that either. That's because you're already doing lots and lots and lots of reps when you're doing your running. But are you going to do rep schemes where you're building the strength and the muscle? Yes, you're building some muscle onto the body, but, more importantly, you're putting strength into that muscle that you're you're building and that's going to be be able to support everything you're doing a thousand times better.
Rob Myers:And I think that mindset is fairly new. At least that change is for the longest time. Even outside of running, it was always train the sport you're doing or whatever it is. That should be the bulk of your training. I think people overlooked strength training. There's a lot of injuries because of it. It's good to see that hearts and minds are changing.
Michael Meeker:To this day we still deal with that. You deal a lot with that with the kids growing up. These days they're still specialized. I think, like you know, for me personally, if I were to look at things I would love to see kids get involved with like at least three If they're into sports. If you're a kid that's into sports and say you're really good at baseball, great, you're really good at baseball, play baseball.
Michael Meeker:But then when you're not playing baseball, go out for the swim team, swim in the off season, go out and do something else. Maybe do something fun, just like go bowling or something, but do something that makes your body move in different places, so your body has better awareness of what it's doing, instead of just doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again and you never learn anything out of it. You're stuck inside this box. Let the body expand, let the body learn different movements, let the body learn where it can be working, what it can work with and what it's capable of doing, so that when you go back into that box you're a whole hell of a lot better than when you were being just stuck in the box you're a whole hell of a lot better than when you were being just stuck in the box.
Casey Koza:Yeah, I'm convinced that bad I don't want to say bad parenting, but parents that fixate their kids on just one sport and specialize have ruined some generational talent that would have been, you know, like I said, like a generational talent at their sport, but their parents just burned them out so much, so quick from just specializing in one sport.
Michael Meeker:Yeah, I think that's the case. And I think it's even more of a case when you don't give them any kind of a break, when they don't have any kind of real off season to just relax, to recover and to just take a breath or two. When you're constantly going on from one traveling team, maybe you're off for like two or three weeks and then you're on another traveling team and maybe you're off for two or three. You're on another traveling team. That's not enough time for a younger, young kid to recuperate and to like reconnect with friends and reconnect with anything else that's going on in life besides what they're doing in the sense of baseball.
Michael Meeker:Now. When, when you get a little bit older and you're like I don't know, you're a high school kid and you're like, hey, this is the only thing I'm going to, I'm going to concentrate on this, I'm not going to go to college, but I want to be the best I can be at this sport, then yeah, go ahead and specialize at that point in time, for maybe're going to be at, but once you're done with it, then break off and start doing all sorts of different things again, but leading up to that, still have them, do all sorts of different things.
Casey Koza:Yeah, and even as adults with running, it's important, I think, to do something different. When you're not training for a race, you know a gym like yours. I've never been sure that. How to answer this, mike? How would you classify your gym Like what? What kind cause I? I never want to say it's CrossFit, because it's not CrossFit. That's like it's brand. It's not. I always say I call it functional strength. We talked about that a little bit on the phone, but that's what I look at. It is. It's making you stronger for day to day activities all around health and wellness. Is is what I consider it to be. But what do you consider your gym to be?
Michael Meeker:I consider it that that's kind of morphed over the years. But if you were to ask, like for right now, I consider my training is like longevity training you want to live a long, healthy life where you don't have to worry about somebody wiping your ass at 75 years old. Okay, that's the kind of training. That's why I look at the training. So I take a combination of traditional strength training.
Michael Meeker:When I mean traditional strength training, I'm saying your bench press, your squat and your deadlift and an overhead press and then, wrapped around that are elements of CrossFit, elements of strongman, elements of the idea of moving a fair amount of weight quickly with not a lot of rest. But you're not, you're not going. It's one of these. So say, for instance, you're on a day where you're doing a squat day. You're going to squat but then you're going to do maybe three to five reps because we're working on strength, maybe six at the most, but three to five reps. You're going to do your squat and then you're going to do a series of other pieces that help hit the whole entire body, their accessory movements, and then you're going to go back up to that squat and you're going to work through that and you're maybe run that whole entire gamut five times.
Michael Meeker:So you're taking traditional things, you're taking the element, I guess, or the idea of a little bit of CrossFit, where you're having the volume and a little bit of speed, but at the same time, you're using it in a fashion that you're not looking for maximal strength or anything. You're using it in a fashion to make yourself strong, create endurance, so that you can move through everything that you're doing through life easier, faster, fuller range of motion, things along those lines. So that's, I guess that's that's a way of describing it. I've always had a hard time putting words to that as well, but that's pretty much what it comes down to. So you're cross training over everything, or you're. You're taking your main main lifts, but you're adding so many different other pieces to those lifts that allow you to train the whole entire body at the same time. Still, while you're still hitting the main lift.
Casey Koza:Yeah, that makes sense. Having been through your workouts, that's a good way to describe it. So do you ever?
Rob Myers:get people that come in that maybe they're recovering from a very specific injury or just something. Over time is just worn down. Mike, I want to get back to some sense of normalcy, you know, do you recommend certain workouts or is it just kind of the same for everyone?
Michael Meeker:No, everybody who comes in. Is everybody's completely and totally different. You have to find out where everybody's at. Is everybody's completely and totally different. You have to find out where everybody's at. Now, can you take a program with a series of different exercises and still give it to that person to do? Yeah, you can. But what you need to do, though, before that is like can this person squat this way? No, he can't squat this way, or she cannot squat this way. Can this person really squat really well at all? No, they can't squat this way, or she cannot squat this way. Can this person really squat really well at all? No, they can't. They're going to need an assistance for assistant kind of squat. So you're going to change up the whole entire squat so that they can start to learn to get to the depth that they need to be at. So you're going to change it to a completely nothing but a body weight squat, but you're still running that whole entire program.
Michael Meeker:Is that person able to do a full on pushup on the ground? Most people who come into the gym no, they're not. They can't do them on the ground. But if we put a bar on the rack and we just change the angle but keep the body posture the same and we change the angle and take a little bit of gravity away. Can that person do the pushup then? Yeah, they can do the pushup then.
Michael Meeker:So we work our way from where they're actually at to. We get them to the point where they're doing the things that we would normally do in a workout. At that point in time, yeah, you have to, you cannot, you can't meet people, you can't expect people to come into a gym. That's where most people fail is they come into a gym and they're, like, expected to do something that they're just not capable of doing. They might be able to do it for one or two workouts, but then their body's going to feel like crap and they're going to get wrecked and they're going to quit. So why do you want to do that to them? Very true.
Casey Koza:And we see that a lot in running, rob, where you know people immediately. I want to run 100 miles. I'm going to sign up for this 100-miler. It's like you haven't even run the local 5K yet. Maybe we should start there and work our way up through the distances to build your body up. Build your mind up is probably a bigger thing.
Rob Myers:Unless you're Goggins and you can pull it off. But even then, if you read his first book, he regretted it, and he was, I'm sure, still destroyed afterwards. Which race was that? I think it was the hurt 100 one, uh in Hawaii that he ran and didn't train for it, something like that. I'll go back and reread the book, but it was. It was pretty interesting.
Casey Koza:That's such an outlier and and yeah, it is, you know, I know, mike, at your gym you do get a lot of people, I'm sure first time in a gym, oh yeah, and there's an intimidation factor Big time intimidation factor, and it's not even just intimidation factor of like they're afraid that they're going into the gym and it's an environment that they've never been in or they're uncertain of.
Michael Meeker:There's people that come into the gym that actually do. I have a guy that started with me a number of years ago. He was a biker mountain biker and a gravel rider and did not really want to touch any weights. He was afraid that if he started lifting or anything he was, his already sore body was going to be just destroyed and wasn't going to be able to, you know, bike the way he wanted to bike and he needed to stay at this certain thing. So I allowed it to happen, I kept him right there and everything. But now he's bench pressing 195, he's pulling 300, some odd pound. It took a few years to get him to that point, but now he's biking like a madman. He's four years older but he's doing better now because he's got this strength that's backing him up. Before that he didn't have.
Casey Koza:When you focus on strength training, the recovery that you get after a big event, like after he does a big ride, is night and day from before strength training, like this winter I I was had just a real simple one because I can get like a half hour a day for strength training so I can just pop in, I could do my squats, I have a kettlebell here, I could do kettlebell swings and what else. Oh, lunges, weighted lunges those are like the three big things that I did and night and day difference from before how I recovered after like a 50k to this version of the 50k. So I'm sure the guy at the gym there who's gravel riding and beating himself up now he's just two days later. He's good after a 50 mile ride or whatever, correct?
Michael Meeker:yeah, he, he has. You know, any of the guys that I have a couple guys that are like that are that are, uh, bikers and they'll attest to the fact that their recovery time is, you know, a thousand times better like I can go to the um when I go to look at what I, how my recovery time was when I did my goggins, my, my spartan ultra, versus what I did just recently with my, my 44 mile ruck hike. I trained for this thing so much better, so much. You know I use a lot more knowledge, a lot more wisdom to train for this 44 mile ruck hike than I ever could have thought of training for everything else. I was destroyed when I got done with those two events like destroyed. It took me. I probably did body weight workouts for about three months before I actually started picking up a weight again. That's how kind of screwed up I got because I didn't understand the real training that needed to be done to be able to do one of those things, even though I was strong. This time I did a whole entire different way. I did my strength training piece, but one of the big things I added in when you talk about cross training is I swim twice a week, sometimes three times a week. Swimming probably is the number one thing that I've added to my workout Probably the best thing I've ever added to my workout program. The hands down swimming translates over to absolutely everything, because what you gain in your VO2 max from swimming is off the charts it's killer. And what you can gain through endurance from swimming transfers out so far to so many different things. Um, I highly recommend swimming over everything. But the swimming was a big, huge piece because it helped my endurance. It helped my VO2 max out. I did a much better job of the hiking piece, but the whole entire training piece before that, when I was working back then in 2021, it was like still chasing numbers kind of attitude towards things.
Michael Meeker:This time was very different because I really changed in the way I look at how we train. I have a friend of mine, diesel and I we created this whole entire new workout program. It's an eight week long program runs along that line of we're going to run with five reps of fives, reps of threes, maybe reps of sixes, but we're going to do rounds of like six rounds. We're going to do five rounds of things but we're going to have maybe three or four exercises, five exercises mixed in with that, and doing a lot more emoms and things along those lines, those type every minute on the minute.
Michael Meeker:So if you do an emom, say for instance, for right now, uh, we're going, we're getting ready to do a spartan race and we're doing it a bit differently, we're going to be ruck hiking it. So a lot of us are going to be trying to do a lot of the obstacles with the backpacks on, and so we've been doing tons and tons and tons of pull-ups, tons of hangs at the gym, and so an EMOM would say six, seven, eight, nine pull-ups every minute on the minute for eight to 10 minutes. Or you could do something where you're um, one of the things we did today, I like sprinting a lot, uh, at the gym. So it was, uh, eight pushups and then a um, basically about a 20, 25 yard sprint and then jog back and then rest whatever time and repeat it for 10 rounds, stuff like that. Those are EMOMs and you can put all sorts of different exercises in the EMOM. It just depends upon what you're trying to accomplish.
Casey Koza:Gotcha Because, you remember, most of our listeners aren't gym. They're not going to know the….
Michael Meeker:Yeah, I get it.
Casey Koza:In fact, every single one of them is running specialized. So yeah, just made sure I knew what it was. Uh, to make sure I could refresh myself on that.
Michael Meeker:It's been a while one of the other things too um, for you, casey, and for anybody else who you know that you work with personally and stuff that does the running, is in started starting to do strength training. When you're thinking about doing your squats, when you're running a running and it doesn't matter if you're trail running or, you know, road running or gravel running or whatever you're putting a lot of compression on your back all the time you're. You're constantly putting compression on the back, you're putting compression through all sorts of joints. You're going to be squatting. One of the squats I recommend it's a far superior squat as far as I'm concerned for a runner is to do a zurcher squat. Zurcher, z?
Michael Meeker:u e c h e r, I believe yeah, I got the gist of it, so I can it's a cradled squat, so you're cradling it in, so the hands are in front of the chest and you're cradling it in the crook of where the bicep and forearm meet. You want to have a fatter bar or a pad on it, but it's staying close to the body, and so what you're doing in that squat is you're taking the compression off of your back that you're already putting on when you're doing your running. You're able to keep the body a little bit more upright. When you're doing this squat, you're still getting massive amount of leg drive.
Michael Meeker:You're still getting really good eccentric piece, but now what you're doing is you're loading up your front end and you're loading up your core, which are two really huge areas that are in neglect when it comes to runners. If you have a strong core and you have a strong upper body, your posture is going to be a thousand times better. Your fatigue rate is going to drop drastically because you're able to keep your body more upright, because that upper body, the middle of the body, in a sense of the thoracic area, of the back and everything wrapping around the ribs, and then the whole entire core, the abdominal area that wraps all the way around the backside. When those areas are strong. You can keep a posture much, much so. The fatigue rate goes down a lot faster as well too.
Casey Koza:So how would you weight that? For, say, I'm just doing regular back squats, we'll say 195 pounds. How would the weight vary?
Michael Meeker:Well, first off, the way I would start out anybody would be if you've never done one before, do one with an empty bar, do yourself about five, five reps, put it back on the rack, walk around for a second, grab it again, do another round of an empty bar and then do something very basic of a warmup weight. I would say maybe 40 to 50% of what you would normally do as a warmup. Just throw that on the bar so you get a feel for it. So anything, anytime you ever start out something new, start out slow, really, really slow. Learn the movement, learn how your body is going to react to it. Don't worry about any weight. You have plenty of time to worry about the weight getting on there. Technique is way more important than anything else. So let your body learn how to do the movement. Let your body feel comfortable doing the movement slowly. Start adding the weight on and you'll get a feel really quickly at that point in time of where you really need to start, in comparison to doing a normal back squat yeah, always good advice.
Casey Koza:I mean, that's that's pretty much what I was doing last year is I started out, I just tried to gradually build, took a couple weeks off. Um, what do you call them? The weeks, the down weeks? What's the term in the weightlifting deload week? Yeah, the deload week, yep, yep, you taught me that. You didn't teach me the name very well, mike, but you taught me what it is yeah, everybody likes the deload week deload are fun.
Casey Koza:I don't have to do as much, all right, so that's good, I'm going to, I'll, I'll. I'll put that onto my list for sure here. Now, one thing I know a lot of runners have especially trail runners have an issue with is their quads. When we run downhill it puts a lot of impact on a quad. A lot of force gets driven through the quad up through. So what kind of workouts do you have for us as far as, maybe, quads and hamstrings go? I know you've tortured me with a number of hamstring workouts over the years.
Michael Meeker:First off, you want to build your quads up. Start pulling a sled backwards. That will help out drastically. I did that a lot as well, too. I had a warmup that I was doing where I was doing 10 rounds of I pulled the sled backward with weight. Do 10 pushups, pull the sled backwards, do 10 pull-ups, pull the sled backwards, back and forth, back and forth, and all it was was to build the quads up, because I knew I was going to go up and down, up and down, up and down a lot of hills and everything. So pulling the sleds is a big thing.
Casey Koza:Bulgarian split squat. Great one to build up your quads, great one to build up your glutes. Can you explain that one for maybe us that haven't done one of?
Michael Meeker:those. You're going to need something like a bench, a chair of some sort that you can put your foot on. Basically, the shoelaces part of your foot is going to go on that and you're going to basically step out away from that, about with your other foot probably about a good, depending upon your size about three feet away, and you're going to kneel down basically with the leg that's on the bench or on the chair. You're going to kneel down by driving that knee down and back towards the bench and then driving back up with the leg that's pushing through the ground. So you're kind of, um, yeah, you're on a one, one legs on the ground, pushing through one legs on the bench as a balancing point, and you're basically doing a kneeling squat.
Casey Koza:That's something we need to add, Rob, I think I was missing that I think I need to try it tonight.
Rob Myers:I purposely put off my workout.
Michael Meeker:You absolutely hated those yeah.
Casey Koza:And I have good balance too, which is surprising, like I just, I don't know it, just it puts a lot of pressure, I guess, on my knee.
Michael Meeker:You're probably not out quite far enough. Your front foot's probably not quite far enough out. And then the other thing too is don't add any weight to that. Go nice and slow and get nice and low with it, but nice and slow, let it sit there for a little bit, typically when you're talking about your knee hurting and stuff along those lines.
Michael Meeker:Don't forget they have these insertion points where tendon goes in the bone, bone tendon goes into muscle, all right, and it's the hardest point for us to get any kind of blood flow going through there. It's the place where everything kind of gets trapped. It's the place where all the sorenesses, it's a place where all the abuse gets taken over in care, you know, taken on all the time. So that full range of motion that you want to get, that's purely body weight, where you can kind of get down and just really open that up. It's not about necessarily stretching the muscle as far as I'm concerned. It's more about how can I open up that insertion point area so I can get blood flow going in there, so it feels better when I'm squatting over time, when I'm doing the Bulgarian split squat, that's what it is. You've got to open those areas up.
Casey Koza:Yeah, and for me I think it was just the pressure. I probably was and still do do them wrong. That would probably not surprise you, to say the least. But you know, I have read, you know about them and I should have better form. But I'm going to, I'm going to add those back in. I've got a bench here, uh, in my office, so it's perfect. I got to start. That's one thing, and I should take my own advice. But I need to start off by not doing it with weight for a while and do a lot more body weight stuff without weights till I get the proper form down. And I think I can add a lot more, especially with something like the Bulgarian split squat, I think people forget.
Michael Meeker:One of the things that people forget about body weight work is it's extremely restorative. It is probably one of the most restorative kinds of resistance work that you can do, and the reason why I say resistance is I'm 208 pounds. So if I do a full squat, I'm trying to push 208 pounds back up off the ground. I'm still doing a resistance training. If I'm doing a push-up, I'm not pushing a full 208 pounds. A pushup. I'm not pushing a hundred to a full 208 pounds, but I'm pushing like a fulcrum. I'm pushing a lot of that weight still through my chest, through my shoulders and everything. So your body is still weight that you are moving around. And then you go and do, like I said, a Bulgarian split squat. You're moving your whole entire body, basically on one leg. So you're still doing resistance training. It doesn't necessarily have to be weight in hand to do resistance training.
Rob Myers:Yeah, I'm happy to hear that, because I think that's another common misconception, right that body weight exercises are not enough. A lot of people think they have to swing heavy weights around to get a good workout.
Michael Meeker:If somebody's fairly brand new, maybe they've been in a gym before, but they haven't been in a gym for two or three years. Their body may remember what a gym's like, but they just haven't been in a gym for two or three years. They're going to be on my body weight workout board for four to six weeks before I start letting them do any kind of barbell work or anything that's relatively heavy. They really need to build a foundation up, and the best way of building a foundation up is through body weight workout. Now, are they going to still move a sled around? Are they still going to play with a sandbag and things along those lines during that body weight workout? Yeah, because that's a functional piece of equipment. But to do bench pressing, flies, do kettlebell swings, clean snatches, things along those lines, trying to get them to do pull-ups right away no, they're not going to do any of that kind of stuff. We're going to keep it very basic so they can. They can build that confidence that they need in them to to actually, you know, do what they need to do and be, you know, get what, what they're looking to get out of it and stuff. So I always tell everybody when they come in.
Michael Meeker:If you come into any gym, it doesn't matter where you're at, it doesn't matter what gym you go to. If you come in and tell somebody, oh, I got it, I need to do this, I really really need to do this I'm going to say, okay, yeah, that's fine, yeah, We'll sign you up and everything. But I can tell you right now that the majority, the vast vast majority, like at least 90% of them they come in and say I need to do this last about two to three months. It's just the way it is, Because when you come in with a need that you need to do this, it has a negative connotation to it. Eventually, it feels negative and everything.
Michael Meeker:But if you come in and you say I want to do this, this is something I really really want to do, Somebody comes in and tells you I really really want to learn how to trail run, I really want to be part of it. That person's usually going to succeed because it's a want. What's really cool about the want piece, though, is two to three months later, it reverses and it's not a want anymore. Now it's a need, but now it's a positive need that they have, that they don't want to not be without. But now it's a positive need that they have, that they don't want to not be without. So that's you know, if you want to make somebody successful at that.
Casey Koza:Start where they're at Start with body weight, start with the basic thing that gives them success to build on, so it always stays a want, so it can turn to a need. Thanks for taking what was going to be a negative question of mine and turning into a positive there, mike, because I was going to say why do people fail at the gym? You were one step ahead of me and talked about why the people are most successful, because that's one thing I would like for people to get out of this the most, I think, is how to consistently do this, because if you can consistently do this over a long period of time, the results that you get from all the running that you do, you're going to see those results go up as well, I feel so. That's why it's important to me, like and I should have asked it in a positive manner, that's my fault, but yeah, like, why do people fail?
Casey Koza:What keeps, what stops them from doing this and I've never heard it explained it like that where they need to do something like it's, I guess it's kind of like you know, when you're a kid, your mom needs you to. You know, do this chore, that chore? You didn't exactly no, you just you know, you needed to and you know, so that's great?
Michael Meeker:Yeah it's. I've, I've always kind of felt that way that the, the, the, the, the mind has to want something in for you, for you to succeed at it. There's plenty of times in history that I in my own life that there's so many things I needed to do and I I did it. But did it come out great? Did it? Was it my best work? Was it that it did? Did it pass? Yeah, but is that what you want? No, you don't want that. And so when I, when you think about also things that get people motivated, and motivation because motivation is, is fleeting, is very, very, very fleeting. You can get motivated by just watching something and wake up the next morning and you're like, well, where would that go? And it just went away and stuff.
Michael Meeker:But what I always tell everybody, especially somebody because of the different things that I like to do, I know that if I could just train mediocre and I could go out and run a Spartan race or I could go out and hike and everything, and I'd still have a fun time, still be nice and everything and stuff. But if I train, really train to do it, the enjoyment level of what I'm going to experience is exponentially of what I'm going to experience is exponentially, exponentially higher the gratitude that I'm going to get from it, the experience that I'm receiving from it, if I'm with a group of people like I have 14 people next Sunday going out and doing a Spartan race with me from the gym that and we've all trained really, really hard for this and so that we're all going to go out and we're going to do something. That's very, very difficult and we're going to work hard at it, but at the same time, the reward and the feelings that we're going to get with each other are just you can't buy that, you can't just, you can't create that, you can't think that you have to do that, and that's the thing. That's the thing is, if you just do that, it just feels amazing.
Michael Meeker:And that's one of the things I try to drive with everybody is think about that, because if you can think about that and keep that in your forefront, keep the pain. You know the pain's going to be there when you're doing it. You know the pain's going to be there when you're working out. You know the pain is going to be there when you're working out. You know the pain is going to be there when you're running, but if you put that back here in the back of your head and you think about all the killer ass things that are happening in the front of your head, you'll succeed. It's amazing and it'll make you want to keep on doing it more and more.
Rob Myers:You'll you'll go to a finishing line and you're like, oh cool, all right, where's the next starting line? And you'll just walk to the next starting line, and that's the cool thing about it.
Casey Koza:I think, wow, that's our next Instagram reel right there. I'm pumped up, let's go. We got it, rob, we got the soundbite right there. Yeah, I agree with you, mike. I mean, sometimes I do have a little bit of lag after a longer race of wanting to sign up. You know, I've sworn off running like four or five times now forever. Yeah, yeah, you know, you got I give myself 48 hours, you know, a few days sometimes, depending on on the distance. But yeah, yeah, there is that feeling of accomplishment when you get across it and you've gotten through the pain, because I mean, rob, we've been in a lot of pain a lot of times now, right, how quickly you forgot about that pain, like how fast I mean.
Michael Meeker:There's things that I remember that I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, I remember that. But it doesn't even compare to what you really really remember when you were doing it. When you were doing it, when you were doing it, it was a whole, entire different level. But once the accomplishment is done and you look back and you're like fuck, that was badass. That pain just goes away for the most part it really does and you can sit there and swear it off. But then two months later you're going man, we got to do something really cool again. Like that. Man, that was really you know.
Rob Myers:You hit the nail on the head. When we're done with the race and we're sitting back in the house because we're typically, you know, far away from our homes, running an Airbnb and everyone's hurting I'd say within 24 hours we're talking about the next one, like what's the next race we're doing? Which state do you want to go to?
Casey Koza:If you get me at the finish line, I'm like no, this is a stupid sport. We're never participating in this again.
Rob Myers:It takes 48 hours. We have 24 hours.
Casey Koza:Yeah, six beers, then we can get into the flow of what's next after about six beers. It certainly doesn't hurt. We're getting a lot out of this, mike and I. Again, I appreciate that because it's one thing that I guess. Well, we had another guest on jason fitzgerald, who hosts of the strength running podcast, and that was good, but I just I wanted to see a little bit different and especially from your point of view of you know what makes someone successful at the gym. That was probably the best answer I could have asked for shame. You stole it from me, mike. You didn't even let me ask the question, you answered it I'm very passionate about this stuff.
Michael Meeker:It just means it means a lot. Um, I uh, from where I grew up at and everything, I just this, this, this type of stuff, means a lot to me because I really feel like it helps change people's lives and I've seen it numerous times in my gym and it's just one of the coolest things in the world to watch, knowing that you're not necessarily doing it, you just got a hand in helping it happen, because you know they're the one actually doing it, um, they're the one putting the work in and stuff. You're just kind of helping them, cheering them along and coaching them along. But when you see that change happen, it is just, you know, it's so cool to see that that that that person feel better, feel happy, feel something inside themselves that they, they've been searching for and that just that just brings them this just really cool sense of accomplishments and sense of self. It's pretty neat to see and watch happen yeah, I know, I, I saw it with.
Casey Koza:Uh, well, I'll mention her if. If it's not okay, what did it out? Yeah, julie, I saw her. I'll say there was maybe a year in between times of seeing her and just the transformation of not only her physical self but just her personality self as well was was night and day, like I've actually never seen before a transformation like that in in someone. Uh, you know myself personally, like you see him, like Instagram or whatever. You never know what's real on Instagram, but just to witness it myself was, was pretty awesome to see. That's it.
Michael Meeker:Yeah, it's a. It's awesome to have a front row seat and, um, I have um, not just Julie. Awesome to have a front row seat and, um, I have um, not just julie. There's a lot of there's. I mean, she's a, an amazing example. She's an amazing person.
Michael Meeker:Julie's one of the julie's, one of my best friends. She's one of the coolest people I've ever met in my life and, uh, love her to death, um, but we have there's a handful of people down there that have, like, made some serious, serious, serious changes in their life and it's just been absolutely stunning to to be a part of it and watch and it's just and they're very, very close people to me. They mean, they mean the world to me and and I get to see, like other people in the gym that are moving on from doing different things that they were in their sports life and now they're taking on new, different challenges and getting to help them make that transfer and that transformation and stuff and still helping them keep that fire going to do something different and not just, you know, that's, that's a. That's a cool thing to watch as well, too. So it's a lot of fun.
Casey Koza:And I've and she's not the only one, she was just the one that I thought would be most accepting to us mentioning it on the show.
Michael Meeker:Uh, but I've seen numerous people throughout the community that I know have gone to your gym and you know very similar transformation, whether it's strength, weight loss that's my favorite thing is the strength, and the strength in in stuff is that's just, if you're going to lift and come to the gym and put some effort into it, you're going to get strong.
Michael Meeker:There's no I mean there's no getting around it, you're just going to, you're going to get strong and everything, but what can it do for you? How can it transcend down to the rest of what you have going on on your daily life, on your relationships, um, on how you go to work, how you look at yourself, um, how you buy food, how you do all these different things? Um, that's the, that's the big thing, that really and I'm sure you guys have seen that when people have joined in on your groups, you've seen that transformation of like, wow, bit, they got it. It's cool and it's just it's neat to see. You know, things like that happen for people and that that awakening, I guess, is a good way you could put it. It's a really cool experience to be around and be a part of it it's such a special raw emotion because so much of life is just numb.
Rob Myers:You know, I mean there's plenty of amazing things in life but you're going to work, you know you're kind of doing your routine day after day and when you go out and you just hurt and do something hard, you just feel something totally different that you can't get from anything else.
Michael Meeker:So it's a wonderful thing when, when you watch somebody go through that for the first time, I, when I see somebody go through the gym for the first time and you can see, I can usually tell within the first two or two visits whether this is gonna work or not and there's a look on somebody's face that is just they're beat down, but they have this look. That's in the of determination, it's it's. It's not just like it's not fake determination, it's just like it's a very subtle. This is not gonna beat me. Determination, and it's not fake determination, it's just like it's a very subtle. This is not going to beat me. Determination. And it's like when I see that happen, I'm like there we go. Now you got your on switch on, let's go, let's put the gas pedal down and let's start pushing this and let's go have some fun, let's make you feel good and stuff, and so that's that's. That's the cool shit. Yeah, embrace the suck, embrace the suck. That's that's pretty much what it comes down to get comfortable with the uncomfortable lean into those different things. I think that you know I was.
Michael Meeker:I was talking on a one of my instagram things, uh, and I just heard this um on.
Michael Meeker:I do a meditation practice every morning and a wim hop breathing practice every morning as part of my morning ritual, stuff that I do.
Michael Meeker:And, um, I was walking, I had a crazy morning, just all sorts of BS going on and I was just like not in the best of mood. And so I was listening to something on Sam Harris and he was talking about being in a bad mood and talking about it with one of his friends, and his friend looked at him and said did you think that, like, all your problems were just going to go away and you just wake up and not have any more problems? Because you, you know you can wish or not wish or work your problems away or anything. And it just dawned on me and it's like, ah, it's just life, I'm just dealing with some problems and stuff. So you, just you, just you know, you just have to face those things and realize that life's going to bring you problems every day. We're doing nothing but problem solving for the most part, and if you can embrace those problem solving things on the other side of that is peace and freedom you just go after that, just keep on pushing through.
Casey Koza:Well said. Well, mike, I I thank you again for your time. You know, we brought an hour and that's we found is our audience's attention span is about one hour. So after an hour, after an hour, the stop button starts to get hit because, well, most people run for an hour a day. So we feel like that's like the prime time.
Michael Meeker:Yeah, I'm a huge Andrew Huberman fan and they're like three hour long podcasts, but I'm good for 45 minutes until I turn them off and have to go do something else and I'll go back to it. But yeah, that's about the attention span.
Casey Koza:Yeah, For him. I'll listen to an hour, an hour, an hour.
Michael Meeker:If you really, if you, if you did anything, if you know anything, if you, I guess, study about the brain or anything, the attention span of the brain where to actually take information in is only good from anywhere from 35 minutes to 45 minutes. Anything after that the remembering of what you did degrades drastically. Anything after like 15 minutes or up to an hour, that 15-minute window, that goes down. Anything after that, it really goes down. So we're really only good for about 35 to 45 minutes anyhow. So that would make sense.
Casey Koza:So, yeah, thanks again so much for doing this and I certainly appreciate it. I know we at the Akron Rugby Club always thank you. I thank you for all that you've done for the club over the years. It's my pleasure. I have so much fun. I thank you for all that you've done for the club over the years.
Michael Meeker:It's my pleasure. I have so much fun, I've learned so much from you guys and it had so many cool experiences. One of the best sporting experiences I've ever seen in my life happened on that rugby field and it's ranks in my top three and it just happened in on your rugby field. So, yeah, that's pretty cool and I so I thank you guys as well too.
Rob Myers:Yeah, I can't wait to have a future beer and hear all the Casey stories from the coach. I think that'd be pretty funny. But thanks again, Mike. Where can our listeners find you?
Michael Meeker:Yeah, if they just go to, if they go to Big Tree Fitness on Facebook or Big Tree Fitness on Instagram and then you just go to big tree fitnesscom as my website. Um, we're going to be updating my website here soon. I haven't really touched it in a couple of years but, um, yeah, they can find most of my stuff on um on my website. But if you really want to see what we're doing and kind of like what we're about, go to our Instagram account and check out our videos on our Instagram account and stuff Cause I try to keep it really very real on what we're doing in the gym and get to see, like, how we're having fun and there's no yelling. There's no, there's no egos. Everybody leaves their egos at the door. At this place, there's, there's no room for that. All right, casey. Thank you, robert, I appreciate.