Self Care Part 2

How do you balance working out at an intense enough pace for maximum effectiveness with knowing when to stop so you don't over-do and possibly injure yourself?

Someone asked me this question a couple of weeks ago. Specifically they wanted to know how to maximize their exercise routine while preventing injuries. I had a hard time wrapping my brain around this idea. If you don't presently have an injury, why are you setting up a mental construct seeking to prevent something from happening? If it doesn't exist, you don't need a structure in your life to prevent it. The whole idea seems backwards. What you want is a mental construct which maintains health and well-being.

As much as we may deny it or live in fear of it, change happens all the time, every day and every way in your life. Your body is no different. So the exercising you did yesterday changed your body. I think rather than asking how do you prevent injuries, the better question is what is your body saying right now? Does it want sleep? Does it want stretching? Does it want more food, different food, no food? I had a client say to me that last week was a red meat week. She had a craving for meat, which she normally doesn't eat. Because she is attuned to her body, she noticed the message and had a couple of servings of meat and felt better.

Like balance (see previous posting), health and well-being is a dynamic, fluid state. If you seek to be one thing, one way, one feeling, one mood, you're in for a rough ride. If you seek to exercise a certain way, at a certain intensity, so many days a week for the rest of your life, you're in trouble and headed for an injury, mental fatigue and physical exhaustion. You change on a second by second basis, you just don't notice it. If you doubt me, ask the people around you! Could be an interesting experiment.

Yes, we all know people who do the same exercises in the same way for 30 years (runners come to mind), however I would suggest that they are not necessarily fit and healthy. I was married to a 5 day a week runner who had the same exercise routine for the entire length of our marriage. He had significant back issues, no flexibility, high blood pressure and was easily 60 lbs overweight. Maybe his running forestalled more serious health issues like a major stroke or heart attack. Hard to know. What I do know is that he would have benefitted greatly from switching up his exercise routine on a regular basis.

In addition to spicing up your exercise routine, you have to listen to your body. This is crucial since you will get the information you need on how to tweak things. Your body talks to you all the time. It will tell you if and when you need to change up your routine. It will even tell you how if you listen closely enough. And don't tell me that YOUR body doesn't talk. Of course it's talking, you're not listening!

I've been preaching for awhile that changing your exercise routine is a positive thing. If you aren't proactive, your body will let you know in a fairly obvious way whether or not the routine is still working for you. However, by then, you may already be sliding down the slippery slope of little nagging injuries or poor meal choices or not enough sleep.

The fact that this person asked me a question about injury prevention already indicates to me that something is amiss. It's the way the question is phrased. Certainly I don't want any of my clients to get injured. When I'm training them, I'm focused on giving them safe, effective exercises which help them achieve their personal goals as well as improves their overall health and well-being. This is a different mind-set than preventing injuries.

We all live in this amazing creation called a physical body. We are the caretaker, the shepherd,
the captain of the ship. Our bodies generally require so little attention from us. It breathes without our help, it digests and moves and feels the warm August heat on our skin. If we had to consciously think of every single action which keeps our bodies functioning, it would be impossible. Yet, when our bodies ask for something (rest, food, massage, movement) are we listening? Are you listening to your body?

In health,

Laura