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Blog
Okay, so I know when you read that title you either rolled your eyes or you felt intrigued to find out why I believe YOU should be running. The truth is, it was a little bit of a trap, and as your friendly neighborhood coach, I would never recommend running to you. That is, unless, you wanted to run. I believe in our culture we have all decided that running is a great way to “get exercising” again. It’s free, easy to do, and can be done anywhere or anytime. While yes, those things are true, running is not the best place to start for most of us. Running is actually a very high impact exercise that creates a force that is 3-4 times your bodyweight. For anyone who doesn't have the muscular structure to endure the repeated force that running induces, they may end up with an injury even after a “simple easy run”. I would recommend increasing daily steps to about 2,000 steps a day, or a mile, as well as strength training. Strength training is an amazing way to ease into movement again and meet yourself where you are at. There's so many flexible ways to load your body as well as being able to adjust range of motion. Let's not forget to mention YOU SHOULD ENJOY YOUR TRAINING! Moving your body is a gift and you should always enjoy however you choose to move it.
It is time for you to get ready to just.... wear the shorts! We all have the pair of shorts or crop top that we bought and said to ourselves “when I lose a little more” “I will feel more comfortable to wear them when...” We have them in our drawers haunting us every time we don’t wear them. Maybe we wear them around the house to try to get acquainted in them and decide next time.
Did your work out count if you are not sore?! What a great question! I just had a conversation with a client the other day about this! In short, YES! Being sore does not mean your work out is being more effective or you got a better work out than days you have not been sore. Soreness typically correlates to newness. So, you may find you are sore after doing a new program or new exercises. Sometimes doingan increased load can make you sore as well. Other times doing things improperly can lead you to be sore in the wrong places. Exercises is something we want to dose out. What I mean is, if you hada headache, you wouldn’t take 12 Advil’s. You would take 1-2. Same with training. We want to incrementally build upon your last session. This is most often done by the load, aka the weight we are lifting. (For the most part you want to increase the load on most exercises every session, note this load increase will typically be about 5%. Different exercises will allow for bigger jumps than others, but that is a whole other conversation.) Another way you can build upon your last session is increasing the volume of work. This means you do one more set or increase the number of reps per set. So long story short, you should not, nor do you need to be sore after every work out to be increasing your gains. You should however be steadily making increases on the amount of load you are lifting or the volume of work you are doing.
Ever find it challenging to be motivated enough to get your workout in? Do you drag yourself to train and just feel too tired? Who hasn’t right? We’ve all been there. It could be a build up of sleeping poorly at night, extra stress at work or with the kids, it could even be the fact that the entire world is plunged into a pandemic….WHO KNOWS? Any little stressor that comes my way these days seems to be magnified and feels a lot bigger and badder than it would have seven months ago. With all of this in mind, adding on the stress of being too tired to take care of our bodies feels like a tipping point. I was speaking with a client the other day on a Zoom call and she was feeling all of this, on top of suffering from an autoimmune disease that leaves her feeling fatigued from the moment she wakes up. We have a mantra for all of this. NO. ZERO. DAYS! So, what does “no zero days” mean? Put simply, we have a plan. We have a plan on top of a plan to make sure no matter how fatigued or worn down she feels, we will not leave our day without some sort of victorious check mark. We make sure that we can still take care of ourselves even if the world hands us more than we can chew. We will never close our eyes at the end of the day with a big fat zero, we will make sure we get IT done, however small, whatever it may be. Suppose to do a metabolic session today…*sigh* too exhausted from homeschooling your kids? Maybe you feel up to a strength session then? Nope, too tired from helping your parents maneuver their list of errands for the day. Okay, lets do some mobility and soft tissue work. This is active and will make my body feel good. Perhaps after that I will be up for a short walk. Oh wait, too run down and exhausted to even wrap your head around that? Okay, lets try some mediation and alone time. Recoup yourself maybe even with a bath or some reading to reset yourself. A plan, on top of a plan, on top of a plan… The idea here is to set ourselves up for success by preparing contingency plans to avoid a ZERO day. It feels terrible to say “oh, I was suppose to train today but I am just too tired so I will skip it.” You should have a fool proof list of activities you can do that still allow you to take care of yourself, mentally and physically. When you have a plan, and a back up plan, and plan if that fails, it still allows you to succeed by the end of the day. You still get to fill up your tank. Sure, you’ve made adjustments but, you did not fall off the wagon, you got some points today and you did not stop at zero. No. Zero. Days.
