The Endurance Physio
@theendurancephysio.bsky.social
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Physio | Sports Scientist | Coach | S&C | Podcast host | endurance athlete | Uni Lecturer | Athlete | Dad, specialising in ⬆️ performance & rehab for endurance athletes.🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
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theendurancephysio.bsky.social
Big night…….⚽️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿. C’mon Cymru.
theendurancephysio.bsky.social
🎬 It’s that time of the year when endurance athletes get frustrated about “boring winter sessions”.

Here’s the first video in a series of winter training misconceptions where I discuss why and how it doesn’t need to be slow, boring and easy.

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Many athletes experience pain in the back of the leg.

Often it can be intuitive to stretch out the hamstring, But what if this actually makes thing worse not better?

This video explains more 🎬

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You can also play around with this in lots of other different combinations based on fitness and goals.

Also works well adding walks on really steep ground.

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Here’s a fun winter session that aims to develop ability & confidence on all aspects of hill running.

Choose your total time / distance to be covered.

For the 1st half: run the ⬆️ easy, flats steady and ⬇️ hard.

For the 2nd half: run the ⬆️hard, flats easy and ⬇️ steady.

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🧠 What it means for you:

If wanting to ⬆️ in the water, particularly if limited options to swim more, adding core work could help with efficiency in the stroke.

Even 2 short core sessions/week can make a measurable difference — especially if swim-specific & focused on control, not crunches.

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theendurancephysio.bsky.social
They also showed better stroke efficiency (longer strokes, smoother rhythm).

Their core muscles were more active and better coordinated during swimming
When measured.

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They measured changes in:
✅ 50m swim time
✅ Stroke rate & stroke length
✅ Core muscle activation using EMG
✅ Swimming force

What they found: although both groups ⬆️, the core group ⬆️ more (not significantly so it must be noted -
Would it be greater if longer swim test and more training?🤔)

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New research (Kwok et al., 2025, J Sports Sci Med) looked at whether 8 weeks of core trg could ⬆️ swim performance.

They studied 32 young competitive swimmers over 8 weeks.

Everyone kept their normal swim trg.

Half added two extra core sessions/week, The other half didn’t.

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theendurancephysio.bsky.social
A late night of dot watching this weekend tracking athletes at Lakes in a Day Ultra and the HOKA Kodiak.

Amazing effort guys, absolutely smashed it!

Looking forward to the debriefs.

(Hopefully you’re all asleep!)
theendurancephysio.bsky.social
Athletes: Stop searching for shortcuts & quick fixes.

Coaches/therapists: stop offering shortcuts & quick fixes.

The cold truth is attempts at quick fixes often end up delaying progress.

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theendurancephysio.bsky.social
There are no quick fixes.

We can certainly help “patch you up” for race day or ease pain in the short term to keep training, but long term solutions are exactly that.

Progress in performance or rehab takes time, commitment & monotonous consistency.

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I get why athletes want a quick fix in order to keep training and racing.

What annoys me the most is the people who should know better but offer and promote it nonetheless, often profiteering from innocent athletes.

But in reality it’s this simple.

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Now “harder” doesn’t mean hard at this stage. It’s just harder than the easy run.

It’s a moderate speed at best.

But it feels good to be opening the legs up slightly.

Makes my slow plods far easier to adhere to when i do them.

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theendurancephysio.bsky.social
This is a nice session that adds 75 mins of running with some harder intervals to break it up. The first number is the easy bit, the second the harder, all numbers represent time in minutes.

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theendurancephysio.bsky.social
Like many of us I’m now in base training for next season, but that doesn’t mean it’s simply slow plod all the time.

That’s hard psychologically and can also be tough physically.

So every now and then I still mix it up.

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But it’s consistency and small steps over a prolonged period that creat success.

The frustration of an injury or layoff can blind us sometimes when we focus on a new goal.

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Here’s a throwaway line that is actually taken more seriously than I wish it was by many endurance athletes.

Of course there’s sacrifice needed and at times things are hard and very challenging in order to progress.

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15 years ago today since the coolest race date ………
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Here’s a 20 min clip from a recent webinar answering some of the most FAQ’s I get from Ultra runners about training and racing. 🎬🏃🏻🏃‍♀️

m.youtube.com/watch?v=ryes...
Frequently asked questions by Ultrarunners around training and racing.
YouTube video by The Endurance Physio
m.youtube.com
theendurancephysio.bsky.social
However this is the wrong approach with patients & athletes.

Simplicity is the true sign of knowledge.

‪You’ll sound more clever if you lose the word soup and just speak in simple terms.🤷🏻‍♂️‬

If your therapist does this, feel confident enough to ask them to explain it again in simple terms.

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‪At least a couple of times a week I speak to confused or worried athletes/patients, simply because someone didn’t simplify someone’s imaging, diagnosis or treatment plan.‬

We can be guilty in professional circles of using complicated jargon to try to prove knowledge and understanding.

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b) that it can change at any point in the season if your goals / circumstances change: too many people try to achieve what are now unrealistic goals (despite previously being realistic) when injury etc strikes.

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theendurancephysio.bsky.social
unnecessary races for the goal to be met and conforms to your travel, time, budget and family commitments.

4. Keep an open mind that this a) doesn’t need to be done by a set date for most, it can be a working document for a while, and

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