Magness at it again

From what I understand, the resentment here is his history with the sport that doesn’t match with the self-promotion of himself as a coaching guru. His distance group at Houston performed pretty mediocre under his watch. In the early days of his podcast, you were under the impression that they were killing it. There are teams consistently making it to NCAA cross and his group was finishing at the bottom of his conference. Hell, Rojo had much better results than Magness and he didn’t charge money for a coaching education program.

I personally had to unfollow Magness on twitter as he would consistently argue with random gym bros for some reason. And then his account became a Hallmark calendar of motivational quotes with less emphasis on running. I’ve met the dude and he’s really nice but spends way too much time on social media.

I get what the OP is saying. OP SHOULD be saying- stop assuming anyone would even suggest that waking up early makes you tough. I've never heard a single coach say that in my entire life. SM is creating an argument where there wasn't any need for debate to begin with. SM is the true winner here as we are all talking about his ridiculous post. Name one coach who says getting up early makes you tough.... waiting.

Does the esteemed Marcus eat on camera? Does he chew with his mouth open? That’s what it used to sound like on the pod. I gave them several chances to live up to the pod description but they never got to their topic.

Disclaimer: Although I have read much of his published work, I am not a Magness follower.

While your statement seems logical, based on my experience, it cannot be taken as fact. As a longtime athlete/ runner using paper logs with perhaps too many datapoints, I found that, with all other factors such as diet and mealtime remaining consistent, my waking heartrate was lower when going to bed at 9 p.m. and rising at 5 a.m. than if going to bed at 10 a.m. and getting up at 6 a.m. Again, this is a study of one individual who found the time does matter when one falls to sleep.

When you have a job creating running content, there's only some much new information you present after you've covered the basics. So you have to recycle old or non-existent topics to keep the podcast/youtube/blog/magazine going.

...Speaking of Magness, has anyone read his book "Do Hard Things"? I was thinking of reading it and was wondering if it's good.

The reason boxers run early am is because they also have to do skill work: pads bag, and sparring.

Getting the run in early allows for some recovery between sessions.

I run early but it’s to get it in the bank so it’s not hanging over my head for the rest of day.

It actually takes longer to warm up in the morning as you’re stiff from being in bed all night.

Agree. I (stupidly) responded to a similar post of his in February, where he told people to stop glorifying early-morning workouts and instead get more sleep. I said, Most are working out then because they have to, and if it helps them to occasionally post a photo of their watch at 5 a.m., how does that hurt anyone? He backpedaled some, said his post was intended mostly for college teams who think 6 a.m. workouts make them tougher. I said, Again, the people working out at that time aren't choosing to do so; in this case, it's the coaches (rather than jobs) setting the schedule.

And so on. He's mostly arguing against something ("grind culture" he would call it) that few people do by choice.

What if I had adequate sleep Mr. Magness? If I had eight hours of sleep before my 5 AM run?

I understand people have lots of opinions on Magness, but I don't see anything to get mad about in this post. Many people work out early because of job or family responsibilities, which is understandable. Still, I've definitely met runners who think they're mentally tougher for getting up before dawn, or others who are afraid of running in warmer weather, both of which seem a little silly to me. Personally I have a hard time getting eight hours of sleep consistently as is, so early workouts are counterproductive for me.

Like Magness said, get it in when it works for you.

So the whole argument- that he makes- is silly sauce as he ends his silly sauce argument with “do what is best for you.” Smh

bwhahahahaha well according to the "experts" if you start at 5am it's the same as starting at 3pm when it's 45 degrees hotter in phoenix.

His correct assertion, that time by it self doesn't matter, isn't refuted by anything you say. In fact you point out numerous variables other than time that impact performance.

You just proved his point.

what about the benefits of training fasted?

All 8 hours of sleep aren’t the same. Night shift workers have higher rates of cancer and other diseases. Cardiac rhythms are at least partially driven by genes and sleeping at odd hours can result in circadian disruption. Best case is less than ideal recovery and worst case poor health and disease.

People are just calling Magness out for being the biggest grifter in the running world.

He posts meaningless pseudo-intellectual drivel on social media to try sounding smart. Things like "sometimes you should just settle for 9.99 instead of 10.00 on your GPS watch"

Basically his sole purpose is to trick people into buying his crappy books - which are essentially plagiarized or paraphrasing other authors/researchers, often times without citing them (hence the plagiarism).

I'm not so sure. There are people out there devouring David Goggins books and starting their day with ice-cold showers because... well, because it sucks. The physiological rationale for cold showers is basically nil, but there's still a belief that (as a bestseller in this vein a few years ago was titled) what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. The early morning "rise and grind" ethos is part of that culture, starting before the crack of dawn because it's tougher that way. There may not be huge numbers of people who actually do that by choice, but it's definitely an aspirational idea. Magness isn't saying you *shouldn't* work out in the morning. He's just saying it's not measurably better than any other time that might happen to be convenient for you. Is that thought worth an Instagram post? Opinions may differ, but getting upset about that Instagram post like the OP is 100% ridiculous.