Marty Rea

‼️SPORTS MASSAGE 🆘‼️ Spring 🌅🟰Marathon Season 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️ ✅Long run ⛰️🏃‍♂️ ✅Speedwork 🏃‍♀️🔥 ❌Recovery/Massage/Taper advice 📖 📧martyrea23@hotmail.com 📍Beside MPT 💷£25ph

Cool shoes, no doubt. I’d like to try them. For marathon performance, though, the impact of shoes is way overblown for recreational runners. It’s 6–8 hour (or more) weeks of stacking runs at <75% HRmax. Everyone wants the cool shoes, few are willing to run the slow miles.

the pride of Belfast ☘️ ⏪ CJ FULTON SEASON REWIND ⏪

Rory McIlroy is an investor in Whoop, wears one of the company's wristbands while playing, and allows the brand to share his data periodically. Here are some of his Masters highlights: • 24,000+ steps on Sunday • 91,000+ steps during the tournament Rory's heart rate spiked to 135 BPM during his tee shot on 18, dropped to 121 BPM during his approach shot, fell further to 105 BPM during his winning putt, and then jumped back up to 150 BPM during his celebration. His resting heart rate for the week was 47-49 BPM. Rory says he follows a strict routine during the PGA Tour season to ensure proper rest and recovery: • No caffeine after 2 PM • Last meal at least 2 hours before bed • Magnesium and theanine for sleep quality • Blue-light-blocking glasses in the evening • Sauana or Epsom salt bath when available • Cool room temperature for sleep He follows the same three-hour routine before every round: arrive at the course → warm up in the gym → eat breakfast → hit balls on the range → putting green. Rory says he believes his focus on longevity will help him play another 10+ years at a high level, and his physiological age on Whoop is now 1.5 years younger than his actual age. Plus, it turned out to be a pretty good investment. Rory initially invested in Whoop in 2020 when the company was valued at $1.2 billion. While we don't know exactly how much he invested, Whoop recently raised another round at a $10.1 billion valuation. That's an 8.4x multiple in five years. Not bad, not bad.

The fact Jordan is this petty is also why he's the greatest

I asked Dan Hurley the same question I asked Tom Izzo: why does the media have a problem with coaches coaching players hard? Hurley: "Society has gotten soft in a lot of ways... The real world is tough and cruel... I'm preparing my players for life."

If Strava is negatively influencing how you train, the problem isn’t Strava. It’s your insecurity. I’ve fallen into that trap before too. Now I don’t care. I train with confidence because the only thing that matters is race day. I’ll walk during runs. I’ll run as slow as I need. Listening to my body matters more than impressing an imaginary audience. Most of the pressure people feel from Strava comes from critics that don’t actually exist.

Tip for novice runners: You do not need to carry/drink water on most of your runs. As long as you're hydrated going in, you'll be fine. You don't need water on a 60min run. Save lugging around hydration stuff for long runs.

I'm not impressed by the "I did this marathon on no training" folks. To me, that sends an opposite signal: 1. You self-sabotaged so you had an out handy. You didn't risk seeing what you could do. 2. The prep is the meaningful part. You didn't have the discipline to do it.

An Diaspora Domhanda ag an line tosaigh do 10K na Féile Pádraig: craic.run 🏃🏼 @parkrunjim

Norway is once again dominating the winter Olympics. And this is their youth sports program: Participation trophies for all kids. No keeping score until 13. No national travel competitions in youth sports. No posting youth results online. Motto: “Joy of Sport for All.” They let kids be kids. And it works. But…it’s the winter Olympics,right? Recently, they have had tremendous success in summer sports. Karsten Warholm demolished the 400 meter hurdles world record. Kristian Blummenfelt broke the Ironman triathlon record and won Olympic gold. His training partner, Gustav Ivan, won the 2022 Ironman World Championship. Casper Ruud reached world number two in tennis. Viktor Hovland is a top ten golfer in the world. Erling Haaland set the record for the most goals in a season in the Premier League. Beach volleyball champs, a surge of elite runners. By any metric, Norway’s elite athletes are achieving on a global stage. Yet, if we turn to their youth sports, their programs are the opposite of the US. Norway doesn’t allow for official scorekeeping until the age of thirteen. They dissuade early national travel teams in favor of local leagues. You can’t even post the results of youth games online without being fined. And almost sacrilegious in certain American circles, Norway doesn’t allow trophies unless everyone gets one. As Tore Ovrebo, Norway’s director of elite sport, told USA Today writer Dan Wolken, “We think the biggest motivation for the kids to do sports is that they do it with their friends and they have fun while they’re doing it and we want to keep that feeling throughout their whole career.” Their youth sporting model can be summed up with their chosen slogan, “Joy of Sport for All.” But not keeping score, giving out trophies, not being “win at all costs”...that’s anti-American! How can they be competitive? Research backs their approach up. 1. The fire has to come from within If you look at ​research​ on prodigies who eventually become standout adult performers, a deep intrinsic drive is paramount. Researchers found that intrinsically motivated football players were 3.5x more likely to make it to the next level, and athletes in general 2x more likely. The problem is that early success often pulls young people away from this inner drive. Kids start playing soccer (or violin or chess—this isn’t just about sports) because it is exciting and fun. As they improve, they gain accolades and praise from their parents, coaches, and teachers. They start winning trophies or seeing their names in online commentary. Without even realizing it, their intrinsic drive gets replaced by external validation and a need to please and impress others. The quickest way to kill that internal motivation? Hype achievements and be a crazy controlling parent or coach. The best way to create and maintain intrinsic motivation is to let kids dabble, explore, and find something with which their interests and talents align. Then, let them enjoy it without an undue emphasis on success. Praise effort, character, and teamwork, not results. This is easy to talk about but hard to do. Find ways to reward and incentivize the values you want to instill. That means not taking the easy road and talking about who set a new mile best or scored the most points, but instead highlighting who hustled during the fourth quarter, rallied after it seemed like the match was over, or displayed exemplary sportsmanship. 2. Go Broad over Specialization Even if the entire point of youth sports was to create future champions (which it’s not), we’d still adopt something similar to the Norwegian model. An ​analysis​ of over 6,000 athletes explored what separates athletes who reached world class and those who came up short. Those who reached world-class had during their youth: -More multi-sport than specialized practice -Started their primary sport later -Accumulated less overall formal practice -Initially progressed slower than national class peers Those who performed well when young, but didn’t progress: -Started their primary sport earlier -Specialized, engaging in more practice in one sport -Made quicker initial progress Norway doesn’t have 300 plus million people and an NCAA system to funnel talent. They have to develop theirs. And they realize the best way to do that is keep as many people in the system as possible. Why? Because you can’t predict talent development very well! Just go look at the age group record books. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking early performance equals talent and potential. The kid running a 6-minute mile at 10 looks way better than the one running 6:45. But if the faster one is at track practice 5 days a week and the slower one rolls out of gym class in jeans and runs it off “fitness” from just playing, well I’m betting on the slower one! When we assess performance early on, we’re not measuring talent, we’re looking at training age and opportunity. And we’re crowning winners based on who started grinding first. America gets away with the insane achievement model because we can burn out 9 kids to get 1 survivor. Norway can’t afford to do that. They take the longer, more sustainable model. Rethinking Youth Sports: The whole point of youth sports should be for kids to learn, develop, have fun, and want to come back and play again next season! The best chance of developing a D1 scholarship athlete is essentially to do the exact opposite of what our current youth sports fiasco promotes. Even the poster child for early specialization, Tiger Woods, ​acknowledged​ it’s not a good thing for parents to push their kids too hard: “Don’t force your kids into sports,” he says. “I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It’s the child’s desire to play that matters, not the parent’s desire to have the child play. Keep it fun.” While youth sports in America aren’t going to adopt the Norwegian model anytime soon, we can rebalance the equation. As I outlined in my book, it’s not getting rid of competitiveness, it’s rebalancing the equation to make sure that crazy mom, dad, or coach don’t extinguish the fire that makes great competitors (and sport fun!). In research on performance orientation and grades in school, a teaching environment that supported and emphasized mastery[PA1] , where students focused on the process of learning and comprehension instead of a comparison to others, was also linked to better grades. But it wasn’t the direct relationship that an outcome orientation had. Instead, in one study on college students, a mastery approach was linked to challenge-seeking, which in turn predicted end-of-the-year grades. In another study, mastery goals predicted higher levels of interest and enjoyment. Mastery works on our approach system without activating avoidance. It frees us up to take on a challenge and pursue our interests without getting bogged down by the pressure or judgment that often comes with an obsession with outcomes. The same findings hold true when looking at sport or the workplace. In a large meta-analysis that analyzed the impact of goal setting in sports, process-orientated goals had a large effect on performance. Outcome goals had little to no effect. These two paths represent a fast versus slow road to success. Both a mastery or outcome focus can lead to better performance, but the latter is akin to taking a shortcut. Obsession over outcomes is the most direct path to improvement, but it comes with some downsides that shift us toward avoidance. The slow path takes a longer, indirect route. It helps improve our performance not by focusing on the results themselves but by supporting the foundation that ultimately leads to better performance. It stokes the fire of enjoyment and interest to sustain our curiosity and work ethic over the long haul. It pushes us toward challenge-seeking so that when we inevitably hit a roadblock, we’ll take it on instead of trying to protect our ego. Both approaches work. One is more sustainable, providing success with less angst. Society has thrown us so far out of balance that we can’t even see the slow route right in front of us. We can either instill a love of sport in our youth, or we can turn sport into a burden where kids are exhausted, stressed, and scared. We’ve seen this go both ways, and the results couldn’t be more different. One leads to happy, healthy, and better young athletes. The other leads to burnout, family tension, mental health challenges, and quitting. As parents, volunteers, coaches, and community members, let’s all do what we can to minimize the latter and champion the former. -Steve

Listen to World champion Josh Kerr: “I don’t do crazy workouts or crazy mileage. I just don’t miss days. Consistency is my biggest weapon. I’ll break any athlete down with how consistent I’m going to be training wise and just getting the work done.”

Sub-six-minute mile pace uphill on skis: #WinterOlympics SPEED. 🔥

CJ FOR THE LEAD

Sexy numbers in training never tell the true story. That comes when the day arrives. It requires a harnessing of everything you've done, everything that's within you. Not many can let it all go when the time comes. That's the difference.

Travelled to Norway to speak to Jakob Ingebrigtsen. He was fascinating on so many things, including his obsession with winning, autism, his love of cars and so much more theguardian.com/sport/2026/jan…

If you made some strong resolutions for 2026, they will probably not stay for long. Instead build a solid routine you can sustain easily and build slowly from there. You can be occasionally flexible to ensure that consistency lasts.

My year in sport was ok. I'm relatively healthy and not injured. Now I'm looking for good. It's in the game. Sometimes staying in the game is the most important factor. Oversized mileage and sexy workouts with nice numbers and graphs came after we'd made the wheel. Simple works.

🚨🔴‼️ Per Mertesacker on the reality of youth football 😳✅: "I set the expectations right from pre-academy and speak to under-eight parents. Your son has got less than 1% to be the next Bukayo Saka. This is why we have the program that we have. We got to make sure that we develop well-rounded individuals who still can find a bus station and are not waiting for the taxis when we leave them. 99% need to find a different job. Period. We cannot just prepare them to fail. No chance. I am not in for this."

I’ve been coaching for 10+ years It took me a long time to learn what I know and longer to feel confident going alone I find it WILD folks feel confident coaching after doing 1 or 2 Ironmans or marathons. Coaching is not just plans. This line of work is in a weird place!

Great opportunity for all involved in sport to help shape national mental health guidelines via a short focus group👇(players, coaches, volunteers and officials - all welcome). A £20 gift voucher is provided as a thanks