Hara Hachi Bu. I was first introduced to this Japanese phrase somewhere around 17 years ago. I know this because I printed out the phrase and tacked it to the wall of my first office cubicle workspace. Hara Hachi Bu roughly means 80% full. For a long and healthy life, this maxim encourages you to eat till you are 80% full, then stop. Pretty sound advice, right? Overeating strains the digestive system, and is hard on our internal organs.
Back then, several years before I started running, I was just trying to maintain my weight. I was right around 27 years old, and with 8 hours a day at a desk in my new office job, I knew I would quickly gain weight if I ate indiscriminately. Long story short, I did gain weight rapidly, hence why I started running!
Don’t Overstuff Your Training (aka “Overtraining”)
Back to Hara Hachi Bu and why it applies to my running in the present day. Today, I was running through the streets of Tokyo with iFit Coach Tommy Rivs, on my NordicTrack treadmill, and Hara Hachi Bu kept echoing in my mind. Boulder was in single digit temperatures (Fahrenheit) this morning, hence my desire to break a sweat and run indoors. What I was thinking about though was not necessarily overheating or overeating, but overtraining. Overstuffing your training can oftentimes be more detrimental to your goals than under-training, as we’ve heard many times before.
Why You Should “Leave Room for More”
The thought that kept coming back to me was “leave room for more”. Whether during a workout, or during an ‘easy’ run. Leave room for more. So when race day comes, or that super hard workout that you’ve been planning for weeks – you have more to give! For me today, it was a reminder that I still had work I wanted to do. Both day job wise, and training. I had an hour to get some quality work in on the treadmill in the AM, get some computer work done, and then squeeze in 30 minutes in the afternoon for some vert.
I have to constantly remind myself to be patient, within the day, and within the training cycle: Hara Hachi Bu. When I was training for Western States a few years ago, I made sure not to overstuff my workload. Instead of chasing those ‘mandatory’ 100 mile weeks, I made peace with topping out at 80. Instead of maintaining 80-90 mile weeks for several months, I consistently hit quality workouts and a schedule of around 50-60 miles per week. Long runs were replaced with a few training races. Recovery weeks followed those races. Hara Hachi Bu. I achieved my sub-24 hours, and was hungry for more.
Putting Hara Hachi Bu Into Practice
So, as I prepare for a full racing season (with the Chuckanut 50K only 3 weeks out) I will focus on not overstuffing myself… with Tillamook ice cream, or with training volume. I will focus on filling my training schedule with quality ingredients, eating and training just enough so there’s always room for more.
Kyle Fulmer is a coach with Team RunRun and our social media manager extraordinaire. He is an experienced trail and ultra coach and athlete based in Boulder, Colorado.