Former elite marathoner and triathlete behind book touting brisk walking instead

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2 days ago

Recreational athletes who lived through the 1970s will recall that two concurrent 'booms' — the tennis boom and the running boom — dominated the decade and reverberate to this day.
An athlete and sports fan from my earliest days, I zealously pursued both pastimes (as well as several team sports) for decades.
Tennis tournaments, round robins and instructional group clinics for the former; hour-plus-long daily training sessions and countless road races of varying distances —including one marathon — for the latter.
Despite managing a case of chronic adhesive capsulitis, aka "frozen shoulder," I'm still able to play tennis regularly. (Turns out my dearly departed dad, who was also a good recreational player, was right when he told me tennis was 'a sport you can play for a lifetime.')
But by the time I reached my mid-to-late 40s, my body rebelled against the cumulative effects of the daily pounding, so I gradually transitioned away from distance running to less joint-rattling cardio exercises like brisk walking, pool workouts, and isometric and functional strength-training, among others.
On my own micro level, I've lived through the macro premise of a new book — 'Born to Walk: The Broken Promises of the Running Boom, and How to Slow Down and Get Healthy—One Step at a Time' — by former elite endurance athletes Mark Sisson, 71, with Brad Kearns, 60.
Both were former professional triathletes; Sisson was a 2:18 marathoner who appeared on the cover of Runner's World in the 1980s, came in fifth place in the 1980 U.S. Olympics Marathon Trials — just barely missing making the team. (Only the top three finishers make the team — but the U.S. wound up boycotting 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in protest of the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan.)
Nowadays, though, both Sisson and Kearns extol the myriad health benefits of walking over running.
Sisson — a New York Times best-selling author, fitness entrepreneur and podcaster, and founder of the Paleo diet nutrition program Primal Kitchen — says that the primary thesis of his book is that 'walking is the quintessential human movement pattern and that we all should do more of it, regardless of how fit we are. It is hardwired into our genes that we should walk extensively every day. In other words, we are born to walk.'
And despite his world-class success as a marathoner and triathlete, he blames 'the flawed and often highly destructive born-to-run notion on an avalanche of hype, deception, misinformation, and fabrication that have fueled half a century of what we have come to call the running boom.'
Interestingly, Sisson, who lives in Miami Beach and has been married for 35 years to his wife, Carrie, says that despite not having run a full nonstop mile in more than 30 years, 'I still consider myself a runner.'
That's because he incorporates brief sprints into his walks and hikes.
The 5-foot, 10-inch, 170-pound Sisson believes the reasons why he has 20 pounds more lean muscle with the same body fat (10%) as he did in his competitive racing days include following an 'an enjoyable, stress-balanced, longevity-promoting regimen of walking extensively every day, sprinting once in a while, lifting weights consistently, and playing in a variety of ways.'
His social media feeds are filled with pics of him paddle boarding, and he rarely strays from his Paleo diet.
Sisson notes that his goal with "Born to Walk" is to spare readers 'some of the repeated suffering and setbacks that too many endurance enthusiasts accept as part of the game.'
What's more, he and Kearns present research-based data to expose 'the worst-kept secrets' of the fitness and running industries, which include, among others:
Running is not an effective way to shed excess body fat.
Runners get injured at a higher rate than they should.
The construction of running shoes is often the driving cause of injury.
Hormonal burnout, metabolic changes, mental health struggles, and cardiovascular disease are commonplace among accomplished runners and endurance athletes.
Sisson asserts that the type-A personalities who are often drawn to extreme fitness programs can be undone by their own good intentions.
'An extreme devotion to endurance training can increase cardiovascular disease risk, compromise gut health, and suppress immune and hormonal function,' he says.
Sisson has found 'that walking can be a great catalyst for fat reduction by improving metabolic flexibility, as well as regulating appetite and satiety hormones, and by prompting an 'under-the-radar' increase in metabolic rate.'
Part 1 of "Born to Walk" takes readers through the history of the running boom and explains why so many people came to believe that if they just pounded out the miles like the elite runners did, they'd also attain those lean sinewy physiques.
But what many distance runners never realized, says Sisson, is that by physiologically stressing their bodies more than was healthy or advisable, they released too much of stress hormone cortisol into their systems.
As he explains, 'healthy cortisol production is what gets us alert and energized in the morning and able to execute all manner of physical and mental peak-performance tasks,' while 'chronic overproduction of cortisol is the problem' — one that causes the body to retain fat, become more susceptible to illness and suffer from internal inflammation.
'Antiaging fitness strategies should be focused on preserving hormone status, bone density, lean muscle mass, explosive power, balance, and mobility,' says Sisson. 'Of course, they should also support cardiovascular fitness, which most runners do fine with — unless they overstress the heart muscle and compromise overall cardiovascular health in the process.'
In Part 2 of "Born to Walk," readers are taught how to exercise at their optimum VO2 max (which is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can absorb and use during exercise) to both burn fat and build a healthy aerobic base. They're also introduced to a comprehensive functional fitness program and approach to nutrition that are designed to improve their quality of life and help extend their longevity.
Looking back, I now recognize that I, like so many of my generation, gravitated toward recreational distance running and endurance sports because they were promoted as the most effective ways to burn calories and fat, and to stay in peak shape for other sports. After all, professional boxers were venerated for their dedication to their craft when they did untold hours of early morning "road work" to get in fighting trim.
And naturally, we would-be distance runners used the training programs of the world's elite runners as the template for what we should be doing. We mistakenly thought that if they were doing 100-plus miles per week and two-a-day workouts, we should be doing them too. The thinking back then was "if some is good ― then more is better."
But learning about one's fitness goals, limitations and preferences is an ever-evolving journey ― one that I'm still on.
What worked at age 20 didn't work at age 40 and what worked at age 30 didn't work at age 50 or 60. These days, however, I'm far more willing to adapt my regimen as circumstances warrant. I also recognize that all movement counts as "exercise" ― and that if it hurts, or isn't any fun to do, there's no need to "tough it out." And with all forms of fitness training quality is far more important than quantity.
Sisson said he hopes that with "Born to Run" he and Kearns have 'helped reshape fitness culture to reject the flawed and dated 'no pain, no gain' approach of the past" while simultaneously putting folks on a path to 'an accessible sustainable program that increases movement and aerobic conditioning, avoids injury and burnout, and promotes a healthy, happy, energetic and long life — one step at a time.'
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Book debunks myths of running boom, promotes brisk walks instead