The verdict is in: jogging is out
Thirty years in, I’m out. No more jogging.
I began running to get in shape to sit on the bench during high school football games.
And I never really stopped. I’ve run 4-6 miles, at an 8:00-9:30 minute-per-mile pace, 3-6 times per week, forever.
I’ve been fortunate to stay injury-free, despite running the vast majority of those miles on concrete. But I see friends and fellow runners in my age range with increasing injuries and chronic issues that just don’t go away.
As I age (I’m 47), maintaining long-term mobility becomes a greater concern. I need my knees, hips, and leg muscles and tendons functional. And I think that means no more jogging, so there’s far less impact on my joints.
So I’ve run (pun intended) a one-month experiment with no jogging.
The jogging replacement program
I launched a spirit-interval training (SIT) program on a stationary bike:
30 second all-out effort at higher resistance
90 second recovery at low resistance
Repeat six times
I also walk 2-3 miles, 5 or 6 days a week.
That’s it.
The results
Here are before-and-after photos, taken one month apart:
So I lost 4.5 pounds, by doing less. Cool.
Less carbs, less sugar, more time
I am re-learning what it means to be hungry. As a runner and frequent eater, my body ran on sugar energy. I could crush half a box of sugared cereal without blinking. I was hungry every few hours, and experienced headaches, weakness, concentration issues, and other problems when I didn’t quickly prop up my blood glucose with more carbs and sugar.
I’m transitioning my body to run on my own fat stores. This means:
Eating more protein (one gram per pound of bodyweight)
Eating fats from whole foods
Eating less often through intermittent fasting (two meals per day)
Craving and eating far less carbs, particularly carbs from processed food
Not running also puts more time in my day. My SIT workouts take 12 minutes or less. My walks take 30-40 minutes.
Avoiding scope creep
Our cardiovascular system adopts rapidly, and the SIT workouts are getting (somewhat) easier.
My tendency is always to “do more.” This could mean doing more sprints, or longer sprints.
I am fighting this. I don’t want longer workouts. I just left 50-minute runs behind. And the research shows that neither more sprints or longer sprints are beneficial.
Feeling better with higher energy
Looking back, I can see symptoms of hypoglycemia—low blood-sugar—as far back as first grade. When my body runs on my fat stores, hunger is different. My senses and concentration are heightened, not fogged over. And when I do eat, it’s heavily protein based so I stay off the blood glucose roller coaster.
Hypoglycemia can be a pre-cursor to Type 2 diabetes. Not good.
Also, my hips feel better. We often hear about knee issues with runners, but for me it was tight hips. They often cramped and always felt like they needed a few squirts of WD-40. Eliminating running-related stress has greatly improved how my hips feel and move.
Less is more
This experiment exists because of one line I heard Alex Feinberg say:
“Runners need to be disciplined to not run.”
That single sentence changed thirty years of fitness activity for me. (Thanks Alex!)
Jogging kept me lean for decades. But as we age, long-term mobility becomes a more important goal. Aging doesn’t mean we give up on exercise, but our needs evolve and the way we create the positive stress—eustress—that forces our bodies to adapt and improve—needs to evolve as well.
We live in a consumption-driven society, and always think the answer is add more. Sometimes we need to do less.
Removing jogging from my fitness routine is one of the best, most impactful health decisions I have ever made.