Top 10 Reasons Why Sprinting is Better for Fat Loss, Longevity, & More - With Cynthia Monteleone

29:21But so I ended up, I was 40 and I hadn't run for 20 years and my daughter was 11 and she said, mom, I want to run track in college like you did. And I thought, okay, well, let's go to the track and run a 400. See what happens. We did. It was painfully slow and painful period. I mean, the 400 meters as it is, is a beast of a race. We started out pretty good. And we crawled across the finish line in something like a minute and 30 seconds, nothing really, you know, amazing and in a lot of pain. And so I, we started there and we trained together. And by age, that was age 40. So age 43, I became world master's champion in the 400 meters indoors.

30:03I ran faster than I did in college. So I not only did I match my college PR, but I, I set a new PR that was faster than college in my indoor 400 meter world championship race. And she went on to run track in college. So mission accomplished. Oh my God. Yeah. And that's where, I guess my journey like kind of started and why I'm so passionate about teaching people to be fast over 40 and continue fast over 50 now, I guess. So yeah. Oh my gosh. Just to hear this decades, literally decades later to run faster than your PR is, I mean, but this is what's possible. It shouldn't have happened. I'll say that in the normal world, it shouldn't have happened, which is why I tell people, you can be a superhero.

30:48Like superhero is to me, you becoming not only your best self, but going another level and what, what is possible? What can I do? And I, I'm just really thinking people limit themselves sometimes with expectations. And I, there's one thing I could say it is, is like, don't limit yourself. You never know what you can do. Yeah. Now I want to know how you did it. I want to know how you did it because again, your daughter being the, the catalyst and going out and then you haven't run, you know, maybe again, since college and going after a 400 and, you know, somebody who's competed in a minute and a half is that's a hefty time.

31:30You know, that's, that's not, that's not particularly good. And it probably weighed on you mentally like, damn, like that was really not that good. So how did you find an inspiration to want to get a little bit better? And how did you improve so rapidly, you know, in that timeframe? Oh gosh. Okay. So, um, you know, I do think part of it is neurological. I did have that neurological timing that I remembered from racing the 400 before, but I wasn't strong enough or healthy enough to do it. We'll say I still had my baby weight from my third child because I was nursing. And by the way, if anyone, no one should be in a rush to lose that because you need it to feed your baby and you don't want toxins to come out in your breast milk and all that kind of stuff.

32:15So don't be in a rush ladies to, you know, lose that body fat. But I was, you know, past that I had gotten done breastfeeding and I was holding a little bit of extra weight. It felt like my bones were moving back together. It was painful at first, but I just kept showing up every day. It really, it wasn't anything to write home about my workouts in the beginning. I just consistently showed up. And when, how many times a week was that? It was not every day. It was three days a week. That's how much I showed up one hour, three days a week. That's all it took. And in fact, my track coach who I ended up working with, he was adamant about me taking those recovery days, which is so important for our CNS, our central nervous system to have that recovery, our body likes to work hard and then rest and then work hard and then rest.

33:03I think there's too much going on with people grinding it out too much and going every day, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And on top of that, we're just bombarded by stimulus all the time and it's wreaking havoc on our central nervous system. So, you know, even on recovery days, you have social media coming at you, news coming at you, notifications. I turn off all notifications. I I don't even want to see anything that I don't necessarily have to see right away. So I'm digressing a little bit, but I just showed up every day and I learned from Charles. I learned what supplements to take. I started studying traditional Chinese medicine on my own, all kinds of Eastern medicines.

33:45I figured out what made, after Charles passed, I figured out, okay, what's making the biggest difference? I made sure I kept on my protein, of course. I took amino acids. If you want specifics, I don't know, glutamine and glycine. Yeah, those were the main ones. And I basically just, oh, yes. And also red meat is the number one thing. I love red meat so much that at one point my Team USA teammates were calling me the meat lady. The meat lady is crazy word. I know. That is crazy word. But I had my baggie of steak cut up before my race. so people think oh like the 400 aren't you going to throw up i never threw up from a 400 and i really believe the red meat is why um so i i actually teach eating for neurotransmitters everyone's out there making all the noise about macros and carbs and protein and they're all arguing you know carnivore versus vegan and and i'm like how come no one is talking about eating for neurotransmitters.

34:50That's what I did to win my races. I ate red meat for tyrosine. I had nuts for choline. And this was one of Charles's things, the meat and nuts breakfast. That was one of his main things that he taught and berries if you're carbohydrate tolerant. But so I'd have my red meat and my nuts and I'd be firing all those neurotransmitters that set me up for success. So that would definitely be one of my secrets to how I ran that fast. Wow. So what I'm hearing also is you're obviously very inclusive of the different types of foods that you're eating. It isn't just this, because there are so many different diet frameworks.

35:28It's just doing what's right for you and knowing that you have accessibility to these different categories of foods, but you're eating real food first and foremost, but also you're fueling your body for the performance that you want. Yes, absolutely. And the neurotransmitters I want. So I don't want to eat something that's going to wind me down. I want something that's going to fire all of those neurotransmitters so that I have energy to last me. And that really helped because especially in the 400, you know, you hit a wall about halfway through. And there are many different ways to get through that.

36:01And I really found that the red meat was one of them. And it's not just me. My athlete clients, my master's athletes, my elite clients, they all have the stake right before their competitions as well. My one client, Sue McDonald, she's 61. Well, she's 63 now, or 62. Anyway, she's in her early 60s and she's crushing it. She ran a 61-second 400 last year. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah. How old is she? She's at 61. She's 62 now. 61, she ran a 61-second 400. That's unbelievable. Yeah. Oh, my God. And she was plant-based for seven years. And she, before she turned 60, asked me, please, can I work with you?

36:39I want to break all these records when I turn 60. And I said, well, I'm sorry. I don't work with plant-based athletes. it's just not going to be the outcome that you're after. I, you know, you want optimal, I'm going to give you the tools for optimal. And so she said, well, I don't care. I'll eat a steak tonight. And I said, well, actually poultry is better in the evening for winding down. And she said, okay, she sent me a picture of her chicken dinner. She hadn't eaten meat in seven years. And I thought, okay, well, she's serious. So I took her on as a client and she was a gem of a client. She followed everything to meticulous detail, had her steak before her races, all the thing.

37:14She broke 17 world records when she turned 60 in all different events. 17. And at age 61, still running a 61 second 400, which if anyone knows the 400, that's just unreal. I mean, most people in their twenties can't do that. That's crazy. So talk about inspiring. I get to inspire others, but then they get to inspire me too, because I'm totally inspired by her. And if you watch her, she moves like a 30 year old or 20 year old. She moves well. Again, that power. Yes. And just to be clear, so you're not against plants. No. In fact, I think that, well, okay, look, if you have an autoimmune disease, then maybe giving up the plants for a period of time might heal you.

37:59I'm not against that. I'm not against carnivore as a concept. I think that many people find success with it. I think long-term, it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to be carnivore long-term. I think you can add plants back in if you get the right reset, if that makes sense. But particularly I'm into ancient plant medicine. So when I say supplements, a lot of the supplements that I use are based in TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine. And recently I'm really into Maya medicine. So I don't know if you want to get into that at all, but my favorite recent supplement from Maya culture, ancient Maya culture is tocotrienols.

38:40Have you heard of that? The longer half of vitamin E? I've been on this, you know, over 20 years, just like, what is the next thing? What is the next thing? And it just keeps leading me back to the past. Exactly. If you look in the research, it'll say scientists recently discovered the longer chain of vitamin E. But if you look further into the research, you see, oh, it's from ancient Maya culture. They used it back then. So things like that, where it's really rooted in the earth and rooted in natural, you know, I'm not saying nothing lab created, but it's just rooted in nature, I would say. So I utilize all those supplements as well, different supplements for different people, for my clients and myself.

39:19And that definitely helped me, I'd say, change my epigenetics because that's what we're doing here, right? We're changing how our genes are expressing as we get older. So after deciding to take on this new, new experience with track really. So how did that progress? Because again, that was, I guess, three years to you becoming a world champion from like that first time of like, I'm hurting 92nd. So what did your, what was your PR eventually? Yeah. And 57.4. 57.4. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you. What was your PR in college? However, my client, Christina age, broke the 40 year old age record at 56.5, I believe.

40:02So I trained her to beat that record. Oh man. Yeah. So she's a little bit younger than me right now, but yeah. So, um, in college, your PR was, and my college, the indoor PR I had was 58.1, which some people would say, oh, that's not great or whatever. But I mean, it was what my genetic potential was at the time. I wasn't doing anything crazy. I was training as hard as I could. And, um, I mean, it's nothing to say it's not good. You know, my outdoor PR was 56.5, I believe. So it was close, but yes, I mean, I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't going to the Olympics either. But the funny thing is, Sean, is that women I was running against at these world championships for masters, they did run 51, 52, 53 seconds back in the day, but they hadn't taken care of their bodies as well as I was doing, if that makes sense.

40:50So the ratio was off. So here I was beating my best and they weren't even coming close to their best, right? And I was still beating them. So, yeah. That's the context because again, people don't realize like a lot of these, these are high level athletes who are coming out for these master's levels track meets. And for you to perform like you have is just, is mind blowing. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. My 200 PR was 25 high. So, you know, in my forties, I was very pleased with all of my times, but at age 43, you know, and then as I, then COVID hit. So here it was, I was 45, 46. I thought, okay, I, you know what I really want to do?

41:32I want to learn more things. Neuroplasticity, keep the brain firing. What else can I learn? And I thought, wow, well, masters women are pioneering the women's decathlon. That sounds amazing. That sounds right up my warrior alley. So let's see, what can I do? I think if I were to send a message to anyone out there listening today, it would be to question yourself, what can I do? Not what am I not able to do today, but what can I do today? And really don't set a limit to that. Like dream as big as you want to dream with that. So I thought, okay, I'm going to become a decathlete, never hurtled, never thrown discus, barely thrown the shot put, you know, basically I could sprint.

42:12Um, but I learned all of those new things. The first time I showed up at world championships, I think I placed like ninth in the pentathlon, which is the indoor version, um, only five events. And then, uh, lat this past year, uh, 2025, I, uh, won the silver medal at world championships in this new event. So it took me two years to go from like ninth or 10th or something like that to silver medal. And I joke that I'm even more proud of that silver medal than I am my gold medal in sprinting because I worked so hard for that to learn all those new things. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Well, I mean, one of the greatest blessings of having you here is truly like you're showing us what's possible.

42:56And also it's these little things like that. Like, let me learn, let me keep learning what's new, what's next? What can I do to keep progressing and challenging my body and my brain in different ways? Because that's going to keep you youthful. And also you're sharing what you've learned. Like when you teach what you've learned, you get to learn it twice or thrice or just like again and again and again, but that's contagious. And we need that because the messaging that we're getting today about our athleticism and aging and what's possible for us is very skewed. Thankfully that's changing, but you're one of these superhero voices that I'm so grateful to be able to share with more people.

43:36And, you know, with this being said, I want to take a turn back really quickly because when you mentioned fast twitch muscle fibers and you also, you know, tie that to the neural wiring, I want to dig in a little bit more with these fast twitch fibers. So we've got slow twitch fibers on the other end. And then we've got some intermediary as well. But these fast twitch fibers are really important, not for just the longevity benefits, but also the potential for like our metabolic health too, because they're tied to so many more motor units. Like, so when we're sprinting and working hard, we're creating a cascade, an amplification effect for our bodies.

44:22and you mentioned that EPOC. And so what we're doing is we're not just like, quote, burning fat during the workout, but like we're kind of blocking our body from storing more fat over the course of the day. Like we're changing the way that our body's operating by engaging in a sprint. And so I wanna ask you how, because you've worked with people in the real world on this, how do you get people to go from not sprinting or being afraid of sprinting to start to incorporate and to add some fast movement into their lives. Yes. I'm so glad that we got to this because we want the action, right? We want to be able to share what is the path to get to this point.

45:04So what I have people do is I have them actually, if they're very beginners, they start by walking up a hill. Why? Because that forces your foot into dorsiflexion, which is your toe up. It forces you to drive up the hill and it, it, that's your sprint position. That's your driving sprint position. So other than forcing you into the correct position, it gives you resistance to help build your tendons and your muscles needed to sprint and it's low impact. So that means you're really not going to get injured by going up the hill. And as you walk up the hill, and I would say maybe like walking maybe 30 seconds up a hill, that's something about that length.

45:47And then walking back down, do it maybe 10 times. And then after that, start to incorporate a little bit of jogging up the hill and then slowly get faster. The other thing is to strength train for sprinting. So there are specific movements that will strengthen your muscles for sprinting and prevent injury. Of course, my mentor, Charles was a strength coaching genius, and I learned all of the protocols from him. And then again, took it and specifically made it better with my experience from clients. But there are certain like, for instance, the split squat, that is a great exercise for strengthening the tendons in your ankles, creating that tendon stiffness we talked about, because you need to be able to spring back.

46:35And that's just one of many, for example. Would you say like the two foot on the ground split squat or a Bulgarian split squat with one foot up? Definitely knees over toes style. And if anyone's familiar with knees over toes guy, he, you know, is the first one to say he learned everything from Charles. So he basically is, has rebranded Charles as ACL protocol. So it's good information, it works. But yeah, that like a knees over toes style escalator forward, not elevator up and down. The Bulgarian, you can target the quad or the glute, depending on what you're doing. And glutes are important for sprinting.

47:11So don't neglect those. But this is more about the stability needed to control that movement and using eccentrics. So a lot of, I'll tell you, this is, you'll find this fascinating between age 40 and 43, when I won that race and ran that fast, I did zero Olympic lifts, which are very popular for track and field athletes. I wasn't ready to do those Olympic lifts. I had a great strength coach as well, who was one of Charles's students, Malcolm William. But basically when you're doing eccentric movement, so eccentric is the lowering portion, doing it with a tempo of four to six seconds, say you're controlling the movement and you're recruiting more muscle fibers, especially fast twitch.

47:53A lot of people think, oh, I need to move. If I move fast, then I'll get fast twitch. But actually the slow eccentric is what's going to build your muscle and recruit those fibers. A lot of people don't know that. So it's a recruitment sequence. Right. Move slow to be fast is what I say. So things with, so let's just say the split squat, maybe a four second down, hold for one at the bottom and a one second up. You can manipulate that according to time under tension and your goal and all that stuff. We don't have to get into all that detail, but that's just one example of a great strength exercise.

48:26My dad, 82, I had him doing Polican step-ups off of his outdoor step. He lifted weights. He did shoulder press movements, bicep curls. Is this a step-up on like an apparatus? Are you using something? You have a heel elevation. So if people don't have a slant board, then you would use maybe a stack a couple of plates or something like that. My dad did it. He had just like a block of wood that he propped up on and he held onto the railing of the stairs at first until he was strong enough, which is a great progression. And this targets the VMO, which is your vastus medallus oblique of your quad. It's right above your knee and it protects your knee from taking all the stress of sprinting.

49:12So it's like one of the number one exercises you should do. Just kind of like going down a stair. yes correct yeah yeah and uh that one's really important uh deadlifts of course romanian deadlifts with a slow eccentric and that actually is one of the number one exercises it turns out for neural firing as well is a slow romanian deadlift with button you can just do dumbbells so these begin we're talking about beginners right um so those are some great places to start and then after like for instance we'll talk about my dad because he's 82 right so he did his hills in his driveway. And then he did some down the street.

49:49He didn't even go to a track. Sometimes he went to a track for a time trial, but he just did, he would walk for maybe 45 minutes and intermittently sprint for 10, 20 meters until he became comfortable, got faster as time went on. Grass sprinting is great to keep the tension off the joints. But yeah, I have many different protocols for beginners that depending on what level they are, but anyone can learn. But what about say like me right now we talked earlier i have no acl uh pole vault i was pole vaulting and fell straight down violently and shredded my knee uh so that was about six months ago so right now i'm not sprinting at the moment but uh i am still sprinting because i'm on the assault bike so assault bike bike especially you're using your total body uh for that momentum so if you say oh, I can't run and my joints this and my knees that well, you can get on a stationary bike and you can do intervals.

50:47This is good. If you can do the assault bike with the upper body, that's better. But anyone can sprint on a stationary bike or rower or that sort of thing. So you can also start there. That's a great place for beginners to start. And not every day. I really have to stress that I see some I try not to get too upset about it. But like sometimes I see influencers out there and they have no idea what they're talking about they don't have sprinting experience they just know that sprinting is trendy right now and they say i sprint every day i sprint 100 meters times whatever every day and this is incorrect like do not sprint every day okay um three days a week is plenty i like to prescribe a tempo day a fast day and a kind of mixed race model type day um that way you're hitting different energy systems because let's think about it like weightlifting.

51:37You're not going to just max out on bench every single day, right? Like if you go to the gym, you're not like, okay, I'm maxing today. And then you go to the gym the next day and you're like, I'm maxing today too. And then you go to the next day, I'm maxing today too. Like that's not how you do it. You do reps in different rep ranges for different purposes, like hypertrophy or strength or endurance, that sort of thing, depending on your sports goal or your fitness goal. But you're not maxing it every day. So you don't want to do that with sprints either. The tempo helps with that. Tempo means you're going about 85 to 95 % for multiple reps with a little bit less rest.

52:13Then the second day would be a little bit shorter, faster, more rest. And the third day, maybe you're combining a little bit of the two and going for, you know, like a peak performance type thing. I love that you said that, you know, you're, you're taking your own advice, like what can you do? And so outside of this kind of a freak accident that happened, you were basically injury free for years of all this training, which is phenomenal. Yeah. Unbelievable, which speaks to how you're training, but you know, what can you do, which is using an assault bike. And I love that you specifically mentioned that because you're incorporating your upper body because you're incorporating your upper body when you're sprinting and people don't think about that.

52:56And when people are actually utilizing sprint training, they're going to find out they're going to be in sore in places that they didn't even know they could be sore. So can you talk about that phenomenon? Like I, you know, people experience like their abs are so sore the next day or whatever the case might be. Yeah. It's a great core workout. Talk about that. Yeah. Oh, upper body is huge in sprinting. It's not just lower body uh you're like oftentimes i'd even get like like a fatigue lactate buildup in my pecs when i would run my intervals uh training for the 400 but uh so yeah uh this would be a good time to talk about sprint form you use your upper body a lot because you want to actually have an open chest so if you can if anybody's sitting there right now listening they can kind of like put their shoulders back, pin them down, roll them back down.

53:47And so your chest sticks out. This is actually the best way to sprint. You're going to take deep breaths as you sprint. This is where the neurological timing comes into. One of my secrets to success in the 400 was that I, I controlled my breathing throughout in, in through the nose, long exhale through the mouth, the whole way around. I could control my breathing and that helped my central nervous system stay relaxed. and it helped me become more efficient. He who is most efficient is the best sprinter, the fastest. In fact, if you look at professionals, you'll see their cheeks jiggling. They're completely relaxed when they're sprinting.

54:25So we have the open chest, our shoulders are rolled down and our fingertips come up right outside our eyeballs all the way to our, like we're putting something in our back pocket maybe. This is the range of motion that's proper for sprinting. If you can imagine that, we're not crossing our body. that's kind of putting on the brakes because you're wasting energy that way. So this is a good beginning sprint technique. But yeah, so when you do that, clearly your lats are engaged. That's a big one. So pull-ups or sorry, chin-ups, pull-ups, anything that engages the lats, pinches the scapular are going to, it's going to be fantastic for sprinting because absolutely, you know, it was mostly sore as my biceps would be sore too.

55:10So any kind of bicep work really great for sprinting. But yeah, if you can just picture that and just relaxing. So sometimes you see beginner sprinters and they're really tight and they kind of like are in almost a fetal position. They're just fighting their body. And in that case, sprinting is hard, but it doesn't have to be. You get better if you're totally relaxed. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Because again, we would just superficially think this is just the legs, but it truly is a total body, total brain movement. And, you know, so you are coaching and helping Olympic athletes succeed, master's level athletes succeed, everyday folks.

55:51And what if people want to learn more from you and learn how to do this stuff from you? What are some resources that you have for people to get access to? Yeah, sure. Well, I got, I'm not tired of, but I got so many people asking me, how do you do this? I just wrote a book about it. It's called Fast Over 40. My Instagram account is Fast Over 40. My website, whereas the home base for any of my brands that I do is fastover40.com. So I have a new brand called Earthen, which is inspired by the volcano that I live by. It's like skincare. And I have a new app coming out, Earthen Core Fire, because you're lighting the fire within.

56:27Like, I just really want to reach as many people to become their superhero warrior self. This is my passion. And yes, the gold medals that my clients win and that I've won are great rewards. But when someone comes to me and they say, Cynthia, I've never felt better. I can't believe that I was feeling the way I was before. And now I feel like I can do anything. I just feel so good. That is the number one gold medal in life. I just am humbly grateful to have this gift and be able to share it with others. And thank you for giving me this opportunity to hopefully make, you know, teach somebody something today.

57:04Yeah. I'm grateful for you. You know, thank you so much for making this incredible trip, of course, this journey, but for sharing your voice and your experience and also of course, doing the work, figuring things out. And I know it. I know that there are people who are listening right now who've been inspired and their life is going to be changed as a result of what you shared today. So thank you so much. And again, we'll put access to Cynthia, aka CM, to her social media, to her book, Fast Over 40, and all those other resources. And final question, what is the model that you're here to create for everyone else with how you live your life personally?

57:44Oh my gosh. Yeah. So I really live it. We talked a little bit about this earlier, but I really believe in community and giving back to my community. That's a whole other story. But I think if I were to just relay one message about the model of how to live your life, it would be, what can I do today? And how can I help others? Charles used to give us this thing to recite every day for our clients. And it was, who have I helped today? What have I learned today? because if you didn't learn anything, what are you doing? You know, and how, you know, what am I grateful for? So just maybe if you find yourself in the rat race of life, think about, and I do this all the time, and this is why every day is a great day, right?

58:31But even if it's a challenging day, because I'm not saying my life is easy or anybody's life is easy. It's not, we all have challenges. And it's what can I do today? And what am I grateful for? So put yourself back in the mindset of gratitude. I know this is kind of like a basic thing, but it really works. Just think of five things, five things that you're thankful for. And you can get into that mindset where you can access your champion mentality and be your superhero warrior yourself. Let's go. Amazing. Thank you again for coming to hang out with us today. Thank you. Aloha. The one and only Cynthia Monteleon.

59:06Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. What a transformative way to think. what if we can be faster in our 40s than we were in our 30s? Faster in our 40s than we were in our 20s? What if we can be faster in our 50s than we were in our 40s? And on and on and on to think more progressively, but we need to train for it. We need to qualify ourselves to do it. And the thing is, the map to get there isn't that complex. This isn't like a Legends of Zelda situation. This isn't like back in the day we had to pull out the whole map situation to get somewhere, you know, across the country.

59:48Now we got the GPS right in our hands. All right. We got access to this kind of information right in our hands. And so what are we filling our minds with? What are we feeding our minds? What are we feeding our bodies? And we have an opportunity today to transform the way that we are aging as a culture. but it starts with the microculture in your own home. So applying what you learn from incredible conversations and incredible experts like this is first and foremost and sharing this with the people closest to you. We can create a movement. We can make health and wellness go viral. I believe it.

1:00:29We got some incredible masterclasses and world-class guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. Thank you.