Surprising Benefits of Running with Coach Victor Vizcaino | Podcast Ep. 063

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Interview Transcription

Morris: Welcome to  CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. I’m Morris from creategrowprofit.com and today I’m speaking to running Coach Victor Vizcaino. Victor, thank you so much for being here today. Where are you calling in from?

Victor: Hi! I am calling from Spokane Washington.

Morris: Victor it’s so great having you here. I have a bit of a personal connection to you because you are a running coach who really wants to make running fun for people. When I was younger I hated running. It’s only thanks to people like you that you know, found made me find ways to make running fun that now I actually run every week several times. So tell me why did you become a coach in the first place?

Victor: Well, thank you, Morris. First of all, thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be here. What you said is very common. I hear that quite a lot of people say the same thing. I didn’t like running but I started running and started to fall in love with it and that’s my story as well. I didn’t hate it but it wasn’t my favorite thing. I would go to the gym and I like to do cardio and I would do the treadmill. But it wasn’t my favorite thing either until my sister was the one who challenged me to go train for a marathon.

And I thought, “Hey if she can do a marathon so can I”. And at first, I thought, there was she was just daring me to go run it like in the next couple of weeks. Then I learned later that “no, she said dummy, the training starts in a couple of weeks”. Thank God because it was a six-month training and that’s pretty much what got me started with running. But I didn’t think I was going to do more than that one marathon. It’s like it’s going to be a one-and-done type of thing. After I got done, I started thinking I could do better and that kind of started the ball rolling as far as like getting addicted to the sport and experiencing that Runner High.

I just wanted to do more of it and also the timing. It’s like somebody told me oh you can qualify for Boston probably in the next marathon. I thought oh I wonder if I could. It took me six years and 17 marathons later that I finally qualify for Boston but by then I was really hooked. I loved running and after once, I started thinking about retirement from my regular job, which was a UPS driver. I started to think about the idea of coaching people and running because I was already coaching people not for pay but a lot of people will come to me to ask me how do I improve my running. How do I run a marathon and a lot of questions regarding the marathon. What is your diet like and I thought well maybe that’s what I could do.

I have people who definitely come to me for a lot of advice and wanting me to give them tips and all that. It’s like oh I want to do that and you know I started watching podcasts and different either whether running or self-improvement that I started to entertain the idea that I could do that. I could coach, help people with their running, help them with weight loss because that was one of the weight loss parts was a lot of people would say that that’s the main reason why they even started running. It’s like I was overweight and one way that I thought I could do it was through running and that’s what got me started in running. So and that’s I combined those for the people who don’t have a sister who dares them to run their first marathon.

Morris: How do you usually help people you know pick up running?

Victor: I say it’s usually to go gradually. If you can sign up for a race, it doesn’t have to be a marathon but if you can sign up for something like a 10K 5K local running event, it’s definitely a huge motivator that will keep you training for that event. Once you have a reason and you really stick to it, remind yourself why you want to do this and make those little slowly but surely to get to there to your race and then you can start adding. If you wanted to do a marathon then definitely, just go for and register either six to 12 months ahead of time and that would definitely get you more motivated because there’s something that you have to prepare for. So getting out the door is going to be a little bit easier having a plan that says I have to run so many miles a week so many miles per month and so on.

It definitely helps get that seat started into the running and it’s such a huge thing a marathon is so such a huge thing that you know from the inside that you’re going to make some serious changes whether it’s on weight whether it’s just in your discipline, you definitely it does change your mindset and it’s something to get really excited about. When you think of like oh my gosh I’m going to be running 26 miles and you’ve never run more than a two or three miles that definitely changes the way you think of approaching running.

Morris: Yeah anyone agrees running America is a big deal whether you’re like you’ve never run before you’re an amateur runner like I think anyone respects the merit of the people who complete a marathon. But you said you know signing up for a marathon race 6 months out, does that mean anyone like with the right training anyone can run their first marathon after six months?

Victor: Absolutely and it’s the definition of what people are calling running because when I first heard of marathon running, I thought that when people ran a marathon they actually ran non-stop and that’s not necessarily true. There’s a lot of participants that are that walk the marathon. There’s people who walk, run and everything is very respectable because the slower you do the marathon the more time you’re going to be out there. So for example, if you’re walking at 20 minutes a mile, it’s going to take you very long hours of being out there. So everything takes the discipline. A lot of discipline in doing it so anybody can do it. It’s just matter going to be some are going to be doing it faster than others. So that’s the biggest difference but yes answer to your question, anybody with six months, it’s enough to train for a marathon.

Morris: Well that’s incredible! I did not know that. So if somebody gets like really motivated, they say I want to change something in my life, I want to get healthy, build you know discipline, mental resilience, all those things, all those benefits that come with running. So if they say, I want to run my first marathon in 6 months from now, how do you work with them? How do you coach them through those six months?

Victor: So basically of course it starts with the initial discovery call of learning what is it that you’re trying to achieve. What’s your let’s say for example with what you’re saying is that they’re fresh, they only run a couple miles here and there and they’ve never run before, so now it’s getting them probably the history of fitness. How much fitness do they already have? Are they going to be walking or running?

So the first thing would be, I would start with the first week getting to see where they are in their fitness level and start to build a six-month training plan based on those paces that they’re either walking, running and so on. And we base it on that and also in that discovery call, I usually ask a lot of questions like how much time are you willing to devote, how many miles are you willing to do a week because that’s going to depend a lot. A lot of my clients who are very busy and they’ll tell me, I’m only going to do three days a week for example, and okay then it changes everything from the ideal way of training, the ideal probably. I would like them to dedicate between four and five days a week for the training but if they only have three then we just tweak the hours and the intensity of those three days a week.

Morris: Yeah I would have expected too that you need to train like five days per week to get ready for a marathon in 6 months. So you’re saying 3 days per week, 6 months time period? Yes, you’re not going to run the fastest marathon but you’re going to complete the marathon with the right preparation.

Victor: Exactly. Exactly you said it right. It’s all going to depend on the pace and what your goal is of your expectation and also keeping it you know once we start to work together we can start to get what is realistic for you. There’s a lot of formulas in there at what what times are they running their 800 meters or if they can do a half marathon in between their marathon that also is an indicator of okay this is what is realistic for you.

Morris: And what if someone doesn’t like the pressure of having to run a race, how do you work with them?

Victor: I think that probably my favorite clients is the ones that do not have the pressure, I just want to finish. I want to have a good time and not get hurt. Those are the three criteria, okay then we have a lot of leeway here because as long as you get out the door and do your miles with a smile and you do your attitude of gratitude would I call it, just to be out there just to be exercising and I feel like they’re the ones that enjoy it the most. And they’re most likely to do it again because they took out the pressure of having a time that they want to beat and they really experience that runner high.

They get so many other benefits that are not just related to running but to their health, to their heart, to their creativity because you get your creative juices going on when you experience some of those Runners high. And just a number of things and I discussed those in those sessions and how to take advantage of them, how to get more of that runner’s high benefits, how to tap into that, and how to capitalize on it. If you can apply it to your career and yeah that’s a good way to do it is not to have that pressure.

Morris: Tell me a bit more about those runner’s high benefits. What are the runner’s high benefits?

Victor: Runner’s high benefit is just the way I describe it, it’s a euphoric feeling when you’re running out there and you start getting these ideas that you might have had before, whether it’s in your career or it’s creating something maybe for me a lot of times is in my videos content but it could be anything. I remember when I wasn’t doing videos, I just wanted to come up with a speech for my daughter who was getting married and I was really nervous and I had seen other fathers when their daughters got married get up and talk. It’s like oh my God the ressure’s on I’m supposed to do a speech and I’m so terrified of public speaking and I don’t know. I don’t even know what I would say and as I was running, I think I was an 18 mile run the whole speech came to me in everything that I could talk about but in a like really exciting way and as soon as I came home I started writing the speech and everybody loved and but especially my daughter.

It was awesome and that was my first example of how running that euphoric feeling. You could capitalize on it and then I just started experimenting on different things. If they have a problem that I’m really dwelling on, I go for a run and just you know, let the mind solve it. Let it come to you and nine out of 10 times it does.

Morris: That’s what I like so much about your approach, Victor. I feel like you talk about running in a way that you know it’s not just about this hardcore community that’s going to run a marathon and it feels like suffering right? It’s like you suffer so much in your training, you suffer during the race and it doesn’t look like fun but you focus on all the fun elements of running. How do you see people discover the fun in running?

Victor: I think in different ways. They discover the fun in running sometimes when they’re in solitude, they’re going out on their own by their own, they going for a whole bunch of miles. They either tune into music or even the choir but it’s a time that really into themselves and I call that sort of the meditative experience. You go into meditation because it’s almost inevitable when you are running by yourself not to get into that state of mind of being almost in a meditative mode. If you practice gratitude that’s one of the things that I like to do I’ll just think of all the things that I’m grateful for and I start to build that euphoric feeling. That’s one way to enjoy it.

The other thing is when you do in group runnings as well because it’s a time where you are getting to connect with others and especially if you’re doing it for a long periods of time. I’ve known so many people that created such close relationships with a bunch of people in groups. I have my running group which is happens to be also a triathlon group and I’ve had lots of friends. I have lots of friends with my sister’s friends that because through the connection with her because she’s the one that got me started and they’re usually lifelong friendships. So yes, you start to build a community. So there are different ways to enjoy and have really fun at running.

I think when you combine it with racing, it’s even better because to me, the race when you go to the race and show up, to me, it’s like the graduation party. Like that’s where you’ve done all this work, now you just enjoy the race and then you are with either sometimes with friends, sometimes with just a bunch of strangers who feel, to me like there are a bunch of friends coming together even though you’ve never met them but you’re there almost going in the same direction doing the same thing and just having a really good time. And that synchronicity of the hearts beating fast, it’s an experience that’s hard to articulate.

Morris: You mentioned something I find very intriguing and that is the attitude of gratitude. Can you share that technique that you do?

Victor: Yeah in the simplest form, it would be just having, if you can think of like three things that you’re grateful for and you start running and just start to build on them. One of the ways that I started doing it and it was through listening to Tony Robbins. It’s like, say you have to have your hour of power and I think he called it also attitude of gratitude, The Hour of Power is where you change your state of mind because of what you focus on. So my theory is, “okay I’m going to go out and just start to do my appreciation and I would build it differently. I pick three things that I’m grateful for and do those.” I remember one time just thinking of I’m going to just dedicate each smile to one of my family members and I would start to list one and think all the things that I were grateful for my brother, all the things I grateful for my sister, all the things I’m grateful for my mom and little just go through all family members and all the things that I’m grateful.

And it’s amazing how it changes your state of mind and the way you perceive people around you. So yeah there are thousands of ways. I mean you can get as granual as per like I remember one time going with my back then it was the earphones and I think they were hooked to my iPod. I remember those iPods and thinking okay I’m grateful for this artist whoever the artist was. I’m grateful for all this equipment that he has to use and the people who built the equipment and then just I would go on. I would do that same thing with my shoes for the wonderful shoes that I have running and whoever built those shoes to the factory worker in China or Vietnam who dedicated the time. It just keeps on going and it does. It gets you in an elevator and I think that’s where I would start to get that euphoric feeling just from that sense of appreciation.

Morris: Wow that is really inspiring, Victor. It’s the first time I hear you share that and it goes way beyond you know just running a certain time.

Victor: Absolutely. Absolutely yes especially when I started running in the dark. It was because I had to get to work so I would get up early in the morning, go out in my runs. It’s still dark and pretty much you have the road and your mind and how you direct your mind makes a huge difference on what you’re going to experience and especially with some of the long runs because you can easily go the other way. If you go out with problems and you don’t come up with a sense of appreciation, it could easily go the other way where you start to go down the deep end of everything sad in your life or everything in your circumstances and we all probably know how that never ends.

Morris: Well, yeah I feel like that can happen more on walks than runs where you go out with sad music or a sad song comes on you’re already having a bad day and you’re just rolling in those negative thoughts but with running, I feel like it’s very hard or even impossible to you know to not come back in a better state of mind.

Victor: Yes yeah and when you’re in a marathon of course you’re going to hit the different things. One minute you’re super high, the next minute you’re climbing the hill and you want to give up and it’s easily for a quick negative thought to come in of giving up or think of other problems you might be having and actually kind of work against you and that’s where’re having this daily practice that when you most need that extra energy, that extra boost of confidence, the extra boost of euphoric feeling is like boom and uh and you can easily reverse it.

“Hey remember we were going to focus on this. We were going to focus on that” and it gets you through that wall that people hit. They talk about in marathons. You hit the wall about mile 18 or 20 where you just want to give up. You’re hurting, your body’s hurting but your mind can overcome it.

Morris: When you coach other runners, what is your favorite part about that?

Victor: I think when they share back probably and when they listen to me. They really says like “yeah you’re going to hit that wall” or they experience and they come back to me and here’s a couple of tips do this and this and then you can “oh my gosh Victor, you were absolutely right”. I felt that I did step two three and four and I got over it and they’re just extremely grateful back to me. So it’s like oh that’s when I feel the full circle of appreciation like I put out a lot of appreciation and then I’m receiving appreciation from others and I think that’s the part of the servicing others that comes in full circle.

Morris: It’s maybe a bit of a rhetorical question or trick question but do you know anyone who started running and regretted it?

Victor: Wow that’s a really good question. I have not in my experience, the only ever time is if somebody has shared that the reason they did not or they’re not running is they had an experience where their knee started hurting and they stopped running and I feel bad for them. Because I remember me having the same problem but I kept on finding different ways of being able to do. I’m not saying that everybody can do this or that. Everybody can overcome certain injuries but in my case, for me, was my knees started to get better over time and I now think that you know everybody’s different. Everybody’s going to have a different experience but for me, the most part the people that I come across their bodies are a lot better through running than if they weren’t running.

Because the mindset back then was you would hear more often in the 80s that “oh you are running, you’re going to ruin your knees, you couldn’t ruin your cartilage and it’s like that hasn’t been the case. And every time I go to a physical therapist, they kind of tell me the same thing yeah it’s not I wouldn’t encourage you to stop, you make some mod moderations but overall they’re telling me that the benefits way outweigh the downsides of injuries or any other illness from running. I hope I answered your question. Yeah not too often that I hear somebody say I regret running. They don’t say it in those words, they just they wish they would never gotten hurt so they could keep on running.

Morris: Yeah I think that’s why I hear you’re talking a lot about preventing injuries and I think that’s exactly why because the only thing that can stop you from reaping all the benefits of running is physical pain. And so not risking those injuries must be a huge part to having a fun and long-lasting hobby in running.

Victor: Yes absolutely! I would say that that’s probably, if it’s not the top the second top reason why people come to me for coaching is they tried it and they kept getting hurt, so now they say “Victor I need a coach like you because I want to do a marathon I don’t want to get hurt and I keep having these injuries and those other injuries”. So we make that the priority okay, going to train for a marathon. Our priority is staying injury-free so that it becomes a fun experience and it doesn’t set us back a lot in our daily lives.

Because most people still have a job. They have to go to so it really sucks when you get hurt and have to miss work because you got hurt doing something that was supposed to be healthy for you. I’ve been in that boat myself, you know. I’ve been in where I got plantar fasciitis or this or that and that affecting my job but that’s how we learn. There’s a lot of new information out there and new techniques for preventing injuries. There’s a lot more focus from anywhere from the chiropractors to physical therapists even the running stores have a lot more in their arsenal for pretending injuries. So yeah.

Morris: If injury prevention is the second most common reason people come to you for coaching, what is the number one reason why people ask you for coaching?

Victor: I want to lose weight. I want to lose weight that’s probably the number one and yeah but they’re just I would think, they’re very combined. It’s either I want to lose weight and I want to train for a marathon or I tried it. I keep getting hurt and I’m actually gaining more weight with running because it does. People gain muscle and it does change your eating habits especially if you stop running. Because your metabolism is working different now. And if you’re appetite has gotten more when you were running and now you’re not running, people do experience some weight gain.

Morris: Thinking about all the people that you’ve worked with, how did that client find you and start working with you?

Victor: I’ve had a few referrals for one that’s probably the number one reason. Some of the clients have been really happy with their results would tell somebody else “hey you gotta contact Victor, he did this for me” and that’s how they came to me. The other one is, I said something about injury prevention that people really aligned with, because I’ve had so many marathons where I had certain issues with either the planter fascias or with cramping and so I made content over that. And it’s like “oh I want to talk to Victor just about”. Sometimes he just talking to me about the cramping problem or some of the injuries they’ve had. And after talking to them and saying you know what they like other tips that I’ve given them on how to train and how to prevent other injuries from happening and kind of understanding their pain really well. Because I’ve been there myself. Then they really relate to me and then they just say “hey can you help me get to my marathon”.

Morris: So you mentioned the number one reason why people come to you is weight loss. You have a free weight loss program, where can people get access to your free weight loss program?

Victor: They can go to my website www.eymcoaching.com and they can contact me through that. That’s probably the easy way. They can DM me on any of my social media. I’m on Instagram, I’m on TikTok and if they just do the DM me on one of those, I will get back to them and send them some information or set up a a call where we do a discovery call for free. I usually sometimes do a 30 minute free consultation and help them out.

Morris: Awesome! Thank you so much Victor for being here today and for sharing all your knowledge in running coaching.

Victor: Oh thank you, Morris. It’s a pleasure thank you. I really appreciate appreciate you when you have our conversations and it’s so nice to see you make the progress yourself.

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