176 - Stop Waiting to Feel Ready: Audience Q&A

This episode is a Q&A with the Getting After It community.

We talk about running—how to get better, how to recover, and whether running is actually required to become a good runner. But we also go deeper than training.

We cover self-doubt, consistency when motivation disappears, discipline in hard seasons, and what it really means to “get after it” when life isn’t clean or convenient.

These are honest answers to honest questions. Nothing polished. Nothing performative. Just what I’ve learned through running, building this podcast, and trying to show up well in the long game.

If you’re training for something—physically or mentally—this episode is for you.

Keep Getting After It.

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I hope today’s episode sparked something within you to pursue your dreams and unlock your true potential. If you found value in it, consider sharing it with someone who might need that same push.

Getting After It is for those who. want to silence their self-doubt. Refuse to be owned by comfort. Understand their limits are man-made and breakable. We live in a time of constant comparison. Social media drowns us in highlight reels and overnight success stories. But what most people don’t see is the grit behind it all. The reps. The quiet mornings. The sacrifices. The failures.

You are just getting started. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open And Meet Bear
• 1:52 Why A Q&A Matters
• 2:33 Music And Audio For Tough Runs
• 4:12 Strength Work That Supports Running
• 6:33 Yes, You Have To Run
• 7:47 Recovery Foundations That Actually Work
• 12:10 Common Running Mistakes And Pacing
• 14:06 Consistency Beyond Motivation
• 16:01 Two Pieces Of Life Advice
• 19:03 Discomfort Versus Injury
• 20:33 Lessons From Starting A Podcast
• 22:05 Rethinking Discipline
• 24:02 Gratitude Over Comparison
• 25:12 Earning Confidence And Handling “Behind”
• 27:11 What Getting After It Really Means

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Well, my friends, should we get after it or what? Welcome back to the podcast, guys. Happy that you are here. Even more happy about the episode that I'm doing today. We have a dog and I have a sheet set up and she's trying to get into the podcast room. I hope she doesn't tear it down. Oh, there she is. There she is. Look, we have a guest. This is Bear. She's a pup that we found that we're housing for a little bit, trying to find her a good home. She's a nice little pup. So if anyone out there is looking for a dog, Bear's a great one. She's very sweet, very nice. And she's my friend. Right, Bear? Say hi to the camera. Say hi. Say hi to the camera. She wants to come up here. Oh, thank you. But, anyways, I'm excited for today's episode. Today we're going to be talking about it's a QA. I asked you guys on Instagram just what some questions that you guys might have are. And oh, hey, listen. One sec. One sec. Hey, stay there. No. No. We're not playing. All right. There we go. Now we got her. But I I asked some questions or I asked people on Instagram to ask me questions that I could answer on this episode. And um really appreciate all those who did ask questions because it's it's always a good thing for me to see where people are at, what things that they're struggling with, what messages that I might be able to give them to help them in those times, and ultimately just help you continue progressing. So thank you very much for answering those. And this is something that I haven't really been able to do yet because I honestly haven't had the audience to actually do a QA episode. So I'm very excited about this. And we'll start off strong. This is a question from my buddy Jace Skidmore. He's uh an amazing runner, and he says, or he asks, go-to band or genre when trying to get through a difficult run. This one's tough because I believe I am a man of many tastes. I I don't just listen to one band or one genre. I'm all over the place with my music. But if I'm being honest, it's the Suicide Boys. Not my proudest answer, but it is the truth. And there's something about just the aggressive music that gets me through some of those tough spots, uh, cuts through the noise when the run gets uncomfortable. But I would say, above all, my favorite song is Free Bird by Leonard Skinnard. That song, the buildup, where it's real slow in the beginning, and then boom, that guitar solo hits. It's one of my favorite things. That's typically the song I finish all of my races to because I don't know. I just I love Free Bird, it's such a good song. The guitar solo goes unbelievably hard, a little too hard. It shouldn't go that hard, but it does, and it has consistently been my top-running song from my first half marathon, which is crazy because that was Carl's Bad 2022, so or 2023, one of those years, but wild. It stayed with me for a while. So Freebird. But I will say most of the time I actually I don't listen to music. I am listening to podcasts or books, anything to keep my mind active. I have fallen in love with listening to things like that on my run because it it forces me to pay very close attention to it. Because if I don't and I'm focused on my run itself, then I don't get anything from the podcast, and it's difficult to keep going. And so when I have that little time to just think about the podcast, what they're saying, what it means, and for for me in my life, I don't focus as much on my run, and that part just happens naturally. So that's basically what I do when I'm tired, when my mind becomes dramatic and a little over the top, it gives me something else to chew on that quiet that voice a little bit. Number two, favorite strength exercise to become a better runner. Well, there's a lot, but if I had to decide, I would say lunges. Lunges are miserable because it takes so much effort. They demand balance, they demand coordination, they demand strength and patience. They expose your wink weak links very fast. If you're off balance, you will learn. If you are weak, then you will learn. You might have to uh pull back on the weights a little bit. But they build what running requires. That is single leg strength, stability, and control under fatigue. Uh I'll also throw in squats because I believe squats are one of the most um bang for your buck workouts. Uh, anytime that you're able to move two different joints with your body and work different muscle groups, uh, that will pay dividends on its own. And so those two things together, like very boring, very simple exercises, but I I've seen great results from utilizing both of them and making sure that I actually train my legs. That's an easy thing for runners to forget. They think that because they're running, they're training their legs. But uh, at the end of the day, that's partially true. Uh, in order to build muscle in your legs and and build better endurance, I believe strength training is required. Um, I still strength train with my workouts uh alongside running because I I know it helps. So, question number three if you want to be a good runner, do you actually have to run? That's a good question. I would say yes. Yes, you do, and that probably sounds obvious, uh, but people do try to negotiate around it. Running is a skill. You get better at it by doing it, by learning how your body responds, how your breathing settles, how your mind behaves when things get uncomfortable. It will teach you a lot of those things. And you don't need to do 50 miles a week to get these benefits, you just need to run consistently enough to learn. And when people stop running, comfort usually starts creeping into all aspects of their life, not just running. And once comfort gains that momentum, it doesn't stay contained, it will bleed into every part of your life. You have to be so careful with that. And so, my advice to you would be to be honest. What part of running is the hardest right now to you? And that answer usually tells you where there's some work to be done. But do you have to be a good do you have to run to be a good runner? I would say, yes, you need to run. You need to get that practice with any skill you develop in life, it requires practice. You want to play the piano, you need to practice. You want to start a podcast, you need to practice. Practice is what will make you great. And that's what I would say. So, yes, you need to start running. Four, what do you do to recover before a long run? And how do you recover after a long run? This has become a non-negotiable for me. This is something that I've I've learned I need to do. I need to be proactive with my recovery. If you listen to the last week's episode, I talked about how I'm training for two separate races right now, both which require immense physical demand. The first being Hyrux in Las Vegas, coming up in February, and the second, a 50-mile race, which will be my longest race to date, uh, on April 25th in Sedona. Both of those require immense effort on my part. And what I'm learning is my body is adapting to that schedule. That working out, um, lifting weights three times a week, running four times a week. Actually, I run six times a week, but I include them on my run on my lifting days. And my body has really had to learn how to adapt. It's a it's insanely hard for me. I've been the most sore in my life than I ever have been. It's funny. After I'm doing those lunges all the time, training for HIROX specifically, and I'll be walking around the house looking like an old man, and Allie always kind of jabs at me. Me walking like that. Well, it's because my body hurts. So what do I do? Because I'm in a season where I'm training, I'm in a season where I'm training very hard, high volume, and it seems to be the the same story by Saturday. I'm usually depleted, and that kind of fatigue forces you to get serious about recovery. It's why I was saying it's a non-negotiable now for me. So I've outlined four steps that I believe if you take, you will recover well. The first is eat real food. You need to eat good food, you need to replenish what you lost. You can't train under or can't train hard being underfueled, and you can't expect your body to cooperate in that moment. So get the protein in there. That's literally the building blocks to repair your muscles. So you need that, you need the protein, and eat a lot of vegetables, just take care of yourself. Second, stretch. Your muscles tighten as the volume increases. And stretchy, stretching is not fun, it hurts, but it's one of the best investments that I've made for longevity. I do it every single day, and I hate doing it every single day. But how I feel afterwards is way better than how I feel during it. And that's what makes it worth it to me. My body's a little bit more loose, I feel more comfortable, I'm not as much in pain. And stretching is a short-term fix, it's not going to fix you overnight. You have to continually do it. It's it's with all things in life, it's consistency. And even though it's difficult, you have to do it. Third, protect your sleep. Recovery does not happen during workouts, it happens when you are asleep. Your body goes to work repairing everything that's been damaged from your workouts when you're asleep. So make sure that you're getting adequate sleep. If you need to focus more on that, then sacrifice something to make it happen. Because sleep is a very important thing. I struggle with sleep. I wake up a lot during the night and tend to stay awake, but it's crucial. And it's really, really important. I wish I didn't have that, but it's my case. And lastly, I will say Epsom salt baths. Again, I hate these. Truly. But they do work. I crank the heat as as hot as I can get it, being able to sit in that tub. I sweat it out, and I read for about 20 to 30 minutes. But it is uncomfortable. I hate it. I'm in there, I'm hot, I feel gross, and the only thing that I like about that is the fact that I get to read. But it is effective. So all these difficult things, you could say all four of those are kind of hard on their own. That tends to be a pattern. If you put yourself in uncomfortable situations, the outcome will be better. With your food, with your stretching, with your sleep, with your baths if you take them. That's the pattern. Number five, what's one mistake you see runners make over and over again? They quit too early. That's what I would say. I think people underestimate how long progress actually takes. And they expect a certain pace, a certain feeling, a certain outcome. And when reality doesn't match that expectation, they decide that running isn't for them, or that they're not a runner. That's rarely true. Most people do not need to push harder, they need to slow down. Longevity matters more than intensity does. With my own runs, about 75% of them are in zone two. It's not impressive, it's not fast, but it is sustainable. Typically, within those runs, I'll be around an eight-minute pay per mile pace or an 834 per mile pace. And I know I can sustain that for a long time. But if running starts feeling like a constant fight, I would ask you to recalibrate. Take a moment to see where you can really focus on your efforts. Slow down, but stay in the game. And just because you might be slowing down for a season does not mean that you are giving up. It does not mean that you are not a runner. It just means that you're progressing at a different pace. Number six, how do you stay consistent when motivation is gone? Well, motivation is gone a lot of the times. You cannot build a life on motivation. It's intermittent at best. And what actually helps me is having a reason that matters to me and building a relationship with the process itself. You have to fall in love with the process, and you have to have a reason why. Like I don't rely on motivation to train or create. If you can find something that challenges you and holds your into interest, consistency becomes less of a battle. So that's what I would say is if you feel like you're relying on motivation quite a bit, I would ask you to please find something that you are interested in that you can still push yourself in. Because motivation is going to be one of the most finite things that you come across. Some days it'll be there, and that's great. When that happens, it's a good feeling. But most of the time, you have to force yourself to do these things. So pick something you care about. Seven. What's one piece of advice you live by? There's a lot that uh I live by. And this was a hard one for me to answer because there's a lot of pieces of advice. We can spend we could sit here for hours and just talk about the pieces of advice that have helped me in my life. But I wanted to give you something that has really changed the outlook of of how I live. And the first is about balance. One of my mentors, he taught me that you should think of life like a triangle balanced on a pencil. Each of the three sides represents something different. For me, it's faith, family, and work. Some seasons require more attention in one area, and that's normal. But if you ignore one for too long, and the whole thing will tip. The goal isn't about perfect balance, it's about awareness. The second is simpler, but harder to live out, in my opinion. And that's do the next right thing, especially when it feels small. When I don't want to run, I don't think about my entire workout. That puts me in a bad spot. Instead, I simply lace up my shoes. When I don't want to work in the par on the podcast, I don't think about all the things that I need to do to get the next episode done. I just open my notes. And that progress, it's not built in these dramatic moments. It's it's typically built in the quiet follow-through of the things that you say you're going to do. And that idea has carried me through slow growth, through doubt, and long stretches where nothing feels impressive. It takes time for you to achieve your goals. And that can be overwhelming. There's a lot that you can do. You know that there's a lot of steps that you can take. But I would ask you, what's the what's the one that you can take now that will get you closer to your goal? Even if it's small, especially when it's small. And I know it sounds it it might be weird that I'm saying that, but that is the truth. Anytime you do something difficult, even if it's a small action, that will build who you say you are. Number eight, how do you know when to push through discomfort versus when to pull back? Well, caveat here. I am still working on this. I am not perfect at learning about or knowing when to pull back versus when to push through discomfort. But I will say pulling back isn't quitting, it's about adjusting. And the last podcast episode I did was all about this about how to adapt and how to not break when you're going after these goals. Because you keep the goal the same, you just change the volume or the intensity. And I've dealt with this uh a few times with my quadricept tendinitis, which I've had to go through recently. During that time, I remember there was a specific moment where I told myself, I'm just gonna push through this, forget it. I I want to start running again, and I'm just gonna go do it. But then I remember immediately after thinking, is that the best for me? Where will I be in a year if I do continue down that road and I push myself on the risk of a severe injury? If I got injured because I was so arrogant and I said, Oh, screw it, I'm just gonna ignore the pain and just keep going. Who knows where I would be? Maybe I would be severely injured and I could be out for a year. Who knows? But the goal for me is longevity. And so what I've learned is that you need to it sounds crazy, but you need to become one with your body. You need to understand the signals that it's sending you. If you're pushing too hard, your body will tell you. If you're not pushing enough, you will also know. And so you need to find the balance between those two and try and find a sweet spot to where it's difficult, it's painful, but you can still get it done. It's sustainable. So I would say a good question to ask yourself is where will this put me in a year if I keep going like this? And if the answer involves injury, pulling back is the mature move. Discomfort is something you learn to tolerate, and injury is something you learn to respect. So be very careful with those. Number nine, what's the biggest lesson you've learned since starting the podcast? Well, I've learned a lot of lessons, many valuable ones that I'm grateful I had the opportunity to learn. But I would say the first and maybe most valuable lesson that I learned is that you don't need to be ready. I delayed starting this podcast for about a year and a half because I thought I needed to be more polished, more articulate, and more qualified. None of that comes before starting. If you stay where you are, that's where you'll stay. Simple as that. The early episodes of this podcast were not great. You can go back and listen to them. It sounded like I was trying to talk like Mickey Mouse, and I had enough filler words to make up more time with the podcast than my other content. I was timid, I was shy, and that's fine. Because I've improved, and it's because I I decided that, hey, let's just go and do the thing. Improvement requires evidence, and evidence requires reps. Fear feels enormous from a distance. Up close, it's usually pretty small. Seneca was right. The famous stoic where he says that we suffer more in our imagination than in reality. A lot of the times we build these stories up in our heads of what we need to become, what we need to do, and it can feel incredibly overwhelming that you are paralyzed with decision. It's analysis paralysis by analysis. When in reality, the the best thing that you can do is just start today. Goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Doesn't matter how big the step is, as long as you get that momentum started, you start building up that momentum, you'll be somewhere that you never thought was possible before. Number 10. What's something you believed about discipline that you no longer believe? Well, I've been wrong about a lot of things, and discipline has been one of them. But I would say that I no longer believe that discipline requires perfection. When I first learned about discipline, I treated missed days like I was a failure. And that mindset burns people out. Luckily, I did not get burnt out. I just realized I needed to fix how I thought about being disciplined. Because discipline is more like strength training. You're weak at first and you improve over time. You get stronger over time. You don't quit because one workout goes poorly. That's not how it works. Progress comes from repetition, not flawlessness. And so when you think about being disciplined, I wouldn't say that you need to be perfect. You just need to do one difficult thing for you each day. And with myself, going back to the fact that I look at my life on a triangle balanced on a pencil, each of those three areas family, faith, and work. I try and do one difficult thing in each of those areas every day. That way I'm at least building up momentum. I'm trying to tell myself that, hey, this is this is how we operate, this is what we do. So don't think that you need to be flawless in order to be disciplined. That's not true. You just need to push yourself and do one difficult thing that you don't typically do each day. Number 11. How do you deal with comparison? Especially online. Well, gratitude helps. Especially when it's specific gratitude. When I look inward instead of outward, it's hard to feel behind. Because I have my health. I have a wife who I love dearly. I have a family. I have a job that challenges me and that I enjoy the work. I have the podcast. I'm able to go run in in amazing places and spend time with myself and nature and have a car. You could really just go down the list of things that you're grateful for. And when you do that, something interesting happens, and you stop looking towards others, comparing yourself to them, and instead you find content in where you're at now and with what you have. And comparison thrives when awareness is shallow. But I would say gratitude deepens it. Number 12. How do I deal with self-doubt? I want to first start off by saying if you're dealing with self-doubt, I'm sorry you feel that way. But it's time that you get out of that headspace. Because you are capable of so much more than you think. And self-doubt is a natural human tendency. Because especially if you haven't done something and you're trying to do something new, there's a lot of self-doubt that goes into that. But what I would say is that confidence is earned through evidence. I could right here I could insert the famous Alex Hormosy quote that I always seem to have on this podcast, but I'll spare you today because I've said it many times. Instead, I'll say that you don't become confident by thinking differently. You become confident by doing what you said you'd do repeatedly. Like if you want to be a runner, then you need to run. If you want to be a writer, then you need to write. Each follow-through becomes proof. And confidence tends to stay quiet. It doesn't need to announce itself. And the more that you do those things over and over again, you'll look back and say, Oh, yeah, I am a runner. I go run every day. Or I am a writer. I've spent time writing five times this week. Whatever it is, just take steps. Action is the antidote to this. 13 goes along with this. What do you do when you feel like you're falling behind in life? The antidote here is still action, but smaller. And when I feel behind in life, typically what I will do is pause. Because most of the time it's not that I'm behind, it's that I'm overwhelmed. I have a lot that I'm trying to do. I have a lot that I'm trying to accomplish. And that can get hard sometimes. But life does not run on some universal timeline where everyone has to be at certain checkpoints at 20, 25, 30, 35. That's not how it works. It's not a video game in that sense. And you are not late, you're just in your season. Life is a very personal journey. Each of us will have different experiences. And because of that, we should not expect to feel like we're supposed to be somewhere that we're not. Now, if you are struggling at work and you actually are falling behind, then you need to ask for help. You need to have someone there with you to help you get out of that. But you are not behind. With the things that you're trying to accomplish, you're not behind. You might feel like it, it might really feel like you are, but I promise you, treat it as a personal journey and you will no longer feel that. Number 14. What does getting after it actually mean in hard seasons and not highlight real ones? This is my ethos. This is what I've been trying to build for four years now. And it's that getting after it means honest effort. Not heroic effort, not highlight real effort, just honest effort. You see your perspective, you see the episodes, you see the clips, you see the guests come on, but you don't see the frustration, the doubt, or even the physical toll it takes on me. Getting after it is the willingness to keep showing up anyway. Hard seasons don't ask for perfection, they ask for sincerity. And none of us get out of this life alive. So we shouldn't act like that. The goal isn't to look impressive, it's to become someone your younger self would respect. So to boil that down into one sentence, it's getting after it means honest effort, and to become someone your younger self would respect. That's really it. It's an important message to me. And I hope you feel that. I hope you get a sense of the fact that I'm I'm trying to give you these tools to hopefully make you a better person, to make you get closer to your goals and and take one step closer. And I hope that if you did, if you were kind enough to ask a question, then hopefully I answered it well. But I really do appreciate the support. It's so much fun that I can do things like this now, and I'll probably do one every couple months or so uh just to see how everyone's doing. But really appreciate it. If this helped you at all, please feel free to share it with a friend. This podcast only grows through you guys. Uh so I do appreciate all the help. And if you want to be a little more generous, please head over to uh Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Give the show a rating that helps with visibility, gets gets us to be able to get in front of more people, and ultimately try and help more people um accelerate their growth. So I really appreciate you guys all for listening today. Thanks for spending some time with your friend Brett. And as always, keep getting after it.