One of the biggest gains you can get in training isn't actually carbs, lactate, or bicarb — it's a pair of good headphones. Here's my favorite product to recommend to the athletes I coach.
I talk a lot about high-performance methods to gain 1% here, 2% there. But the biggest gains don’t come from bicarb or even carbs (gasp!), they come from consistently enjoying the process of showing up and stacking bricks.
For brick-stacking, the one product I couldn’t run without is the Shokz OpenRun Air 2 headphone system. One must imagine Sisyphus happy? That’s old school. In 2026, one must imagine Sisyphus absolutely jamming out to pop-punk.
The Bone-Conduction Difference
These bone-conduction headphones are ridiculous tech. You hear the music or podcast loud and clear, but you still are aware of cars and wildlife. I literally can listen to Blink-182 and hear the rattlesnake telling me to run on the other side of the trail at the same time. That’s potentially life-saving, plus it allows me to hear rattlesnakes.
For me, training is a refuge of joy in an unpredictable life. Some days (especially workouts), I’ll listen to playlists (like the Ultimate SWAP Playlist if you want 20 hours of questionable music). Most days, I listen to podcasts. I check in with different podcast host friends who have no idea I exist. If I had time and I wasn’t living in a rapidly decaying meat sack, I could train 30 hours per week with these headphones for company.
Why Good Headphones Matter
To be real: I recommend a good pair of headphones as a purchase for all endurance athletes. Adaptation is tied directly to the chemical context for the training stimulus. So it’s not just about consistency. The more fun the process can be, the more an athlete may respond to the work they’re doing.
Some athletes don’t need headphones for that. They just enjoy their own thoughts. And I respect that, even though that’s not me. I enjoy the thoughts of Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge more than my own. And every run I get to listen to The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast is my favorite run ever.
Also, I don’t enjoy being hit by cars or bitten by rattlesnakes, though the potential insurance payout from getting hit by a car makes that slightly more preferable. Not every pro runner I know listens to music when they run. But the ones that do listen with Shokz.
