We’ve been working on this post for a while, but Life got in the way. (Alternate story: Dallas is better at starting projects than finishing them.)  Nonetheless, we’d like to talk about recovery. No, not economic recovery—though that would be lovely—but physiological recovery from the stressors placed upon us by our modern physical world.

Rest vs. Recovery

These two words, “rest” and “recovery,” have distinctly different meanings when applied to health, fitness or athletic contexts. Recovery can encompass many different behaviors and strategies, but it is fundamentally different than just resting.

Rest is simply the absence of effort or movement—the absence of exertion. Think taking a day off from exercise or sport, napping, chilling on the couch, rotting your brain with Jersey Shore or Lost reruns, and going to bed nice and early so you get adequate sleep. All of that is fine and good, but resting is only one small part of true recovery.

Recovery is the restorative process by which you regain a state of “normalcy”; healthy and in balance. (If your “normal” is not “healthy,” perhaps you should spend some time considering that.) Recovery is far more than just taking a day off from training. Genuine recovery includes adequate rest, but also must include the engaged, deliberate execution of a cogent plan to offset the (physical and psychological) cost of your training.

In his 2010 All Banged Up post, Dallas wrote:

“I see more sub-acute and chronic injuries resulting from inadequate recovery from exercise (especially with high-intensity programs), than resulting from an acute or traumatic incident. The primary fault lies with inadequate or improper recovery from exercise, not the type or intensity of exercise. (To put it another way, it’s not that you’re hurting yourself doing pull-ups – more often than not, it’s because you’re not properly recovering from those pull-ups.) I believe that a high-intensity exercise program is both effective and sustainable life-long only when combined with good nutrition and recovery practices.”

Merely taking a day or two off from exercise when you’re feeling overtrained (or All Banged Up) is, to put it bluntly, the slacker’s version of “recovery.” One of the many things that has been underscored during our training with Rob MacDonald of Gym Jones is that recovery requires just as much (or more!) discipline as training itself. Which means if you’re training hard, a case could be made that you should spend more time focused on recovery than you do on training itself.

Don’t have that much time in your busy, stressful life? It might mean a little less training and a little more time spent on recovery.

Still don’t think that’s really necessary? Maybe you just don’t realize how stressful your life really is.

Stress is Stress

Let’s review the biological concept of hormesis as it relates to recovery. Hormesis is an adaptive process that occurs as the result of a specific “dose” of a stimulus. In simple terms, you could summarize it as “the dose makes the poison” meets “what doesn’t kill you might make you stronger.” Hormesis describes the dose-specific response to a stimulus; whether something’s net effect is beneficial, harmful, or neutral depends on the “dose.”

Another way to put it is, “some is good, but more is not better.” Hormesis is at the core of our favorite refrain, “context matters,” and is reflected in our Whole9 Health Equation as the balance of Stress vs. Recovery. Why all the focus on stress?

During his recent Paleo(fx) presentation, Dr. Daniel Kalish said, “Psychological stress and physical stress are virtually indistinguishable in the body.” We wanted to give him a standing ovation for that. What does that mean, in terms of hormesis and our Health Equation? If you’ve got a ton of psychological stress, that costs you something. It costs you recovery capacity. It cuts into your reserves. In fact, being chronically psychologically stressed is probably more damaging than overtraining or under-sleeping, though those are obviously poor behaviors, too.

Think about your own life. Ask yourself if your “dose” of a stressor is appropriate for your context. There are lots of examples of stressors: intermittent fasting, high-intensity exercise, under-eating, cold showers or acute exposure to cold, caffeine intake, eating extremely hot peppers… the list is long.

A “stressor” isn’t necessarily a bad thing – but the application of that stressor in that dose in a context already saturated with a high stress load may be detrimental to your health.* If you’re a parent with an infant (and thus some degree of sleep deprivation/disturbance), a busy job, and some financial stress, do you think the net effect of getting out of bed at 5:00 AM five days a week to do high-intensity exercise is positive? Likely not. (If we just described your life, please… just stay in bed.)

*This is one of the reasons why we rarely recommend intermittent fasting to our consulting clients. Unsurprisingly, most of them are on the “too much” side of the stress scale, rating their daily stress at an average of 8 out of 10. These folks don’t have any “reserve” left to offset an additional stressor, which means adding IF on to their current health equation would do them more harm than good. IF may be a perfectly appropriate tool for other folks with different contexts, but it’s not for everyone.

Minimum Effective Dose

Exercise is an excellent example of hormesis in action. An appropriate “dose” of physical stress provokes a positive adaptation in your body (you get fitter), but dosing progressively larger and larger amounts of exercise can be seriously detrimental to your health.  Make no mistake – excessive training (or, perhaps stated more accurately, under-recovering) can and commonly does have serious health consequences. And what look like “reasonable” training for one person might be way more stress than a different person has the capacity to adapt to.

Clif Harski, among other Smart People we know, talks about the “minimum effective dose,” that sweet spot on the hormesis graph. This is where healthy adaptation is occurring, but you’re on the safer side of the stress curve, not revving at the redline day in and day out. In the case of exercise, doing none is pretty unhealthy, but doing too much is unhealthy too.

The real key is to find that sweet spot, where you’ll have optimal adaptation to the stressor without reaching the point of diminishing returns–or worse, when the exercise “takes” more from your health than it gives back. Like with other stressors, exercise is dose-dependent, and the appropriate dose for you depends almost entirely on you, your context, and your goals.

Are you Under-Recovered? Here are a few things to look for:

1. You used to be excited about going to the gym – not so much anymore.
2. Your performance (or lack thereof) is seriously stressing you out , and a poor workout ruins your day.
3. You’ve got chronic muscle soreness after every workout, and/or that lingering “shoulder thing” that just won’t seem to heal.
4. Your sleep pattern has become irregular.
5. Even though you’re in bed for enough hours, you never feel well-rested in the morning.
6. You need a Monster drink or three espressos to get fired up for your training sessions.
7. You crave carbohydrates (sugar!) more than you used to.
8. You’re getting sick a lot, or just can’t seem to kick that cold you picked up.
9. You’re training hard and “eating right” but that little belly just isn’t going away.
10. You’re actually gaining fat, instead of losing it.

Any of this resonate with you?

So how does all this connect back to actual recovery? In order to progress forward with health, there must be a relative balance between Stress (such as exercise) and Recovery. Otherwise, you’re writing checks your body can’t cash, eventually ending up beat down and “overdrawn.”

In case you’ve not experienced this eye-opening phenomenon firsthand, take our professional word for it: it takes a lot longer to recover from an overdrawn state than it took to get you there in the first place. Like paying off debt, it’s a prolonged and generally miserable process. We’re not trying to scare you – we’re simply sharing what we know in the hopes that it will save you some heartache. Take it or leave it.

Recovery 101

You don’t get fitter when you are training. Whether you CrossFit, or Zumba, or swing kettlebells, or run marathons… you get fitter when you are recovering from that training.

Being committed to recovery means that sometimes you don’t train hard, even if you really want to, and even if everyone else is doing it.

A commitment to recovery may mean that you take ice baths sometimes.

It means that when all you want is pizza and a beer, you choose a nutritious meal instead.

It means that you put away the computer/TV/smartphone/video game and go the heck to sleep.

It means that you spend some intimate time with your foam roller, lacrosse ball, stick, ice pack, or other self-care tool/torture device.

It means that you watch and learn from Kelly Starrett getting his supple leopard on.

It may mean that you seek out a reputable practitioner of your preferred therapeutic approach: massage, Rolfing, acupuncture, chiropractic care, naturopathic or functional medicine.

It might mean that you use your noggin’ and take a pass on a race or competition that really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of Your Life and Health.

It might even mean that you revisit your trip down Whole30 Lane.

“Aerobic” is not a dirty word.

If you’re passing on lower intensity, longer duration activity and exclusively working at a high-intensity, we think that’s a short-sighted perspective. For our clients, we recommend regularly spending at least a half-hour doing easy activity as part of your recovery practices. Riding the Airdyne, walking, swimming, or biking for 30-90 (long, slow, boring) minutes expedites recovery from hard training, improves metabolic efficiency (especially in folks on a low-ish carb, high-ish fat diet), and improves cardiovascular health.

Don’t confuse durations over a half hour with “chronic cardio” – the long duration, moderate-to-high intensity stuff that really nails you. To be clear, no one was ever harmed by a two hour hike or an easy spin on the bike with their kids. Keeping the intensity low is the key to recovery activities, and including some long, easy stuff in your routine improves health and recovery from hard training—which ultimately will improve performance in your higher-intensity sport or exercise program.

Regardless of how you choose to step your recovery up (perhaps, in part, by stepping your training down), it’s time. Summer’s activities are just around the corner, and if you play a sport, participate in outdoor pursuits, or simply like comparing your physical capacity to others (or yourself!), now is the time to invest in yourself. Now. Not tomorrow, or next week, or after a few more workouts. Now.

You owe it to your Future You not just to rest, but to recover.

Note: This is the third installation in a 3-part series. If you haven’t read the first two parts, read them here and here before continuing.

We brought together 12 fitness experts from a broad range of backgrounds–with bodies of experience ranging from weightlifting to track and field to mixed martial arts, and over two centuries of collective coaching experience–to ask them all the same question:

If you could only perform five exercise movements for the rest of your life, which five would you do? (Assuming your goals are general health, fitness and longevity, and not a specialized sport)*.

*If your goal is to be a high-level competitive exerciser, your goal is not health, fitness and longevity – it’s sport-specific performance. That’s okay, but don’t be confused. Keith Norris does a nice piece on health vs performance, if you’re interested.

We’ve spent some time analyzing the responses, and we’re going to share some of our observations and thoughts on this collection of opinions. Note that we’re using the word “opinions,” not “truth,” or “fact,” or any other hubris-soaked descriptor. There is no “right” way to answer our question. Each person has their own experience to draw from, and that experience will impact their selections. That being said, we think there is much to be learned from collective experience, and Smart People take notes when veteran coaches share insights like this.

Let’s take a peek at some of the things we noticed about this list of exercises.

Five Movements, Summarized

• All of the exercises selected are multi-joint (compound) exercises. As in 100%. No single-joint exercise belongs on a list like this. If you’re doing lots of curls or lateral raises or leg extensions or tricep press-downs, your training currency would be better spent elsewhere.

• The vast majority of the exercises are ground-based, either with feet flat on the ground, or with some sort of transition between body-on-the-ground and standing positions (i.e. Turkish getup). There are no contrived, machine-based movements. The real world happens with objects in unrestricted planes of motion, and so should your training. The only “resistance” you need is your body and something heavy to pick up or carry.

• There is a significant emphasis on movements that are “big, strong” movements. Whether explosive (fast) or “grind” (slow) movements, there’s a lot of weight moving – even if that weight is “just” your bodyweight. Ever done multiple sets of unweighted squats or strict pullups to failure? A training effect is still present, despite the fact that there is no external load applied. For long-term health, building and maintaining strength must be a central feature of your program. Clif Harski lays out an excellent sample week of programming using these movements here.

• Locomotion was a common response. We are bipedal creatures, and training the reciprocal patterns of walking, running, lunging, stepping, and crawling, strongly echoes the three-dimensional ways that we move in the “real world”. Stabilizing our trunk while shifting and supporting weight is not only beneficial, it’s fundamentally human. We learn it as infants, but far too many of us lose that ability in adulthood. Get it back. Side note: Our experience with the Airdyne, which uses an arm-and-leg reciprocal pattern, suggests that trunk stability has a major impact on power output. Trunk strength matters, especially if you’ve got a pair (or two) of appendages flailing about at high velocity.

• Squatting is not the end-all-be-all. Sure, we have to squat to be able to stand from a chair, but little else occurs where our feet are symmetrical and neatly spaced outside of hip width. Gardening, all field and court sports, moving furniture, and wrestling all share the staggered stance position where stabilizing the body’s mass on top of a narrow or unilateral base of support is critical. Every coach we polled who chose squatting at one of their five movements also chose a movement with a unilateral stance component (lunging, step-ups, Turkish getup, etc.). If you’re squatting all the time but under-utilizing single-leg or staggered-stance movements, you’re making a mistake. (Clif comments on this in his post about our 5 Movements series.)

• We found it fascinating that an Olympic weightlifting coach (Greg Everett) did not include a single explosive movement in his list. If that doesn’t illustrate the priority of building full-body strength with basic movements, we don’t know what does.

• Almost everyone included putting weight overhead: press, clean & jerk, overhead squat, etc. If you aren’t putting heavy things overhead on a regular basis, your program should change. If you don’t know how to press with proper technique, find a good coach and learn. (We don’t want any cranial fractures.) Mark Rippetoe’s classic volume, Starting Strength, is a good option if you don’t have access to a local coach. You don’t have to go to a fancy gym to do this; at home, you can use water jugs, bricks, kettlebells, or inexpensive dumbbells.

• Almost everyone included a pulling movement (a pull-up or row variation), and no one mentioned kipping. We’d be shocked if any of these coaches recommended kipping pullups as their primary pulling movement. (We’ll republish Melissa’s post on prioritizing dead-hang, strict pull-ups soon.) Build true strength through appropriate scaling, not by manipulating physics to “clear the bar.” If you can do weighted pull-ups, doing them fast if the real-world demands it would be no problem. And don’t give us that foolishness about kipping over a fence or up into a tree.

• Note that one of our experts selected both swimming and walking. That would be Eva T, a legendary athlete and coach – as well as a recent inductee into the US Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame. We believe the training and therapeutic value of both of those movements is under-rated. They might not sound very bad-ass, but Eva knows a thing or two about creating and maintaining excellent health and longevity. Perpetually chasing performance is not the same as creating excellent health. Don’t be afraid to slow down, especially if you’re All Banged Up.

• One of Greg Everett’s comments struck us as poignant: “With a foundation built on excellent execution of these movements, an individual would be capable of performing nearly any other movement imaginable with little instruction or practice.” Did you get that? Learn these movements, and train them often–and you will be able to readily transfer the physical capacity you have built to most other applications.

Those are some of the things that we gleaned from these experts’ responses. What struck you about the experts’ choices? What, if anything, will you change about your own training program based on their perspectives? Comments, questions and observations are always welcome.

On Monday, we kicked off Part 1 of our 3-part series on the top five foundational movements for health, featuring Dan John, Eric Cressey, Rob MacDonald, Michael Rutherford, James Fitzgerald, and our own Dallas Hartwig. Today, we feature six more strength and conditioning coaches and athletes, and ask them the same question:

If you could only perform five exercise movements for the rest of your life, which five would you do? (Assuming your goals are general health, fitness and longevity, and not a specialized sport).

Krista Scott-Dixon

Krista Scott-Dixon, PhD, has run the website Stumptuous.com since 1997. She is the Lean Eating Program Director for PrecisionNutrition.com, and also serves as the Research Director of the Healthy Food Bank foundation; and as the editor-in-chief of Spezzatino magazine.

Deadlift: Whether it’s moving a dead body or 10-pin bowling like a toddler, the squat-to-pick-stuff-up movement is crucial.

Pull-Up: Because you just never know when you might find yourself hanging off a cliff or window ledge. If you’re living life right, this should be a strong possibility, so be prepared.

Climbing/scrambling/crawling-type movements: These involve the whole body, make you feel like a kid, open up the hips, help improve shoulder girdle strength and stability, and get you in touch with your ancestors. Metaphorically speaking, if you can face both mountains and crawling around the floor, you’re easily able to handle reality.

Carries and drags: One shoulder or two, cradling or hauling, the Inman Mile or waiter’s carry, business in the front or party in the back — however you play it, moving stuff around keeps you strong and balanced while transitioning often-awkward objects through 3-dimensional space.

Rotation/resisted rotation: This can be throwing a projectile, throwing a punch, or throwing a judo opponent. Our bodies were designed to spiral and circle around a central axis, and to move symmetrically in the service of exerting our will on something else — whether that’s an object or a person (or even, sometimes, resisting our OWN rotation).

Keith Norris

Keith Norris has been a “physical culturalist” for more than 30 years, and is the Austin-based regional manager for Efficient Exercise. You can find him blogging at AncestralMomentum.com.

Clean and Press: Pick something (relatively) heavy up off of the ground, and put it over your head.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Use a barbell, dumbbell, your four year old, the axle off of Bubba Joe’s tractor, whatever; but just do it.  Turn this into a squat clean and press for even more bang for the buck.

Deadlifts: Yeah, you knew this one was coming. And you might ask, “but I’m already doing cleans, right?”  Right.  And to live a healthy, full-of-movement life, you’ll need a bulletproof posterior chain.  A posterior what?  That’s all the stuff you can’t see in the mirror.  And a caveat: if I had to choose only one exercise, this would be it.  Yeah, it’s that important.

Dips: Any and all variations here. Bodyweight or loaded (another use for that four year old).  Forget the bench press — between dips and overhead presses, you’ve got it covered. And you’ll get some great core work done as well.

Chins: Again, any and all varieties, weighted or not. Few people do them because, like dips, they’re incredibly difficult for the novice. Persevere, my friend — they’re well worth it.

Sprints: As in, run fast, for a short distance. Recover, and do it again.  It’s the most natural of human movement patterns. And don’t think you have to hit Usain Bolt top-end speeds to derive benefit.  Mix up the distance and have some fun. Feel the wind in your hair as your body glides over the ground.

Additionally, if I had to choose a single method by which to perform my exercise bouts, it’d be, hands down, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). Smartly programmed HIIT with resistance exercise coupled with a Paleo diet is the closest thing to a fountain of youth that we’ll find in our lifetime.

Jen Sinkler

Jen Sinkler is the editorial director of fitness for Experience Life magazine. She is a certified instructor through USA Weightlifting (senior level), Russian Kettlebell Challenge (RKC), Kettlebell Athletics, TACFIT, CrossFit (L-1) and L.I.F.T. Ultimate Sandbag. She also played rugby for the U.S. national team for a number of years.

Sprinting: Martin Rooney names sprinting as the single most body-transforming, health-enhancing type of exercise a person can do, and I believe it. The five reasons listed in the Experience Life article “The Need for Speed” best sum up why.

Pull-Ups: This upper-body exercise also involves a whole lotta core, and is arguably the very best exercise for gauging strength-to-body-weight ratio. If you’re not ready for unassisted pull-ups just yet, check out Krista Scott-Dixon’s progression in “Clear the Bar.”

Deadlift: What a fundamentally useful exercise to be able to pick up something heavy off the floor! Important to include single-leg variations — unilateral and asymmetrical training tend to be either a) overlooked by or b) terrifying to people, but yield vast benefits in terms of how the body learns to cooperate and coordinate. Because we so often train bilaterally, the practice can even be rehabilitative. One of my favorite variations is the Jefferson deadlift.

Clean and Jerk: Maybe I’m cheating by including a combo, but I’m not sorry: I wanted a deep, heavy squat and some sort of overhead press variation, and this does the trick, with tons of fast-twitch muscle fiber development included. I think squat cleaning is skill very nearly everyone should learn — it pays off not only in terms of power, but in mobility and strength through full range of motion.

Overhead Squat: This is the ultimate exercise for developing mobility in joints that probably need more of it, from your ankles to your hips to your thoracic spine. Yet more tick marks for its pros column: it also improves your balance and your core strength, and it’s a squat (and is thus inherently good). Learn to overhead squat well and your whole body will work better.

Clifton Harski

Clif Harski is a movement, strength and conditioning coach with a BS in Kinesiology from San Diego State University. He is a MovNat Master Instructor, and is RKC, CK-FMS and ACE PT-certified.

Turkish Getup: The TGU encompasses so many important aspects of human movement: single leg stance, rolling, standing up, stepping down, and additionally has the amazing benefit of being an overhead carry (which is fantastic for the stabilizers of the shoulder and body).

Pull-up: Between excessive sitting and lack of day to day requirements for lifting, the general population has become incredibly weak in the posteriors of their bodies, as such training the posterior aspects is mandatory.

Front Squat: When we lift things in life, it’s generally in front of us, and not on our back.  This squat derivative additionally challenges our core to a greater extent than back squats.

Crawling: Developmental, shoulder girdle building, contra-lateral movement patterning, good for brain intercommunication, self limiting and non threatening: crawling derivatives are incredibly undervalued.

Power Clean & Jerk: Develop power. Power = good.  ’Nuff Said!

Eva Twardokens (“Eva T.”)

Eva Twardokens is a two-time U.S. Olympian and six-time National Champion in alpine skiing. A 12-year veteran of the U.S. Ski Team, she was recently inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. Her passion is surfing, her profession is athletics, and she loves both coaching and performing.

Squat: From air squat to weighted squat, this movement can be therapeutic to the knees and helps maintain ambulance as we age. Weighted is a good hormone stimulator. Gaining strength in the squat has contributed to more improvement in outside activities and sports than any other exercise.

Swim: Swimming is easy on the joints, potentially therapeutic and facilitates recovery. It is also a great way for folks with injuries to keep active.

Sprinting: A few short efforts goes a long way! Intensity is required.

Walk: Passive, safe, not done in the gym, social. Choose from many intensities, weighted vest walking is a nice twist to maintain bone density.

Push-Up/Plank: Easy to scale for all levels, plank is safe and effective for spine stabilization. Push-ups, when done correctly, strengthen and stabilize the whole upper body.

Greg Everett

Greg Everett is a USA Weightlifting Senior Coach, NSCA Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist, RKC Kettlebell Instructor, Level III CrossFit Trainer, and CSUH Certified Personal Trainer. Everett is a co-founder of the athletic performance journal The Performance Menu, and author of Olympic Weightlifting: A Complete Guide for Athletes & Coaches. Greg serves as the director of training at Catalyst Athletics.

Squat: I’m going to cheat a bit and make the squat include all variations of the movement such as the back squat and front squat. Maybe the overhead squat if I can get away with it.

Press: To be done standing with complete range of motion, in particular meaning a fully open shoulder and complete scapular retraction overhead.

Pull-Up: Strict and through the complete range of motion. This means a fully opened shoulder at the bottom and an arched upper back and complete scapular retraction at the top.

Bent Row: Horizontal pulling for the upper body is very important, and I’m fine with twice as many pulling exercises as pushing exercises for the upper body. This movement includes barbell and dumbbell variations and all manner of elbow orientations and torso angles. Full range of motion with forceful scapular retraction at the top.

Lunge: If I had six, I might include the deadlift, but with only one spot left, I’m going to go with the lunge. This is the staple of unilateral leg training and very effective for hip stabilization.

Conveniently enough, all of these exercises can be used effectively and safely as both strength exercises and conditioning exercises. With a foundation built on excellent execution of these movements, an individual would be capable of performing nearly any other movement imaginable with little instruction or practice.

Stay tuned for our analysis on Part 1 and Part 2 of the Whole9 Five Movement Series on Friday.

Header image credit: Joe Petrusky

If you could only perform five exercise movements for the rest of your life, which five would you do? This was the question we recently posed to twelve of the most widely respected fitness experts and strength and conditioning coaches – assuming their clients’ goals were general health, fitness and longevity (and not a specialized sport). The answers we got back were intelligent, well reasoned, and sometimes surprising. (And yes, some responses pushed the limits of just choosing five movements – but we let those slide.)

Join us this week as we outline our three part series on the top five foundational movements for health in Part 1 (Monday) and Part 2 (Wednesday). and then analyze the results in Part 3 (Friday).

Dan John

Dan John has been teaching and coaching for well over thirty years. He is the former Strength Coach and Head Track and Field Coach at Juan Diego Catholic High School in Draper, Utah. Dan publishes a newsletter called Get Up, and contributes to dragondoor.com and t-nation.com, and magazines like Men’s Health and Outside.

Farmer Walks: It’s the one stop answer to any and all fitness questions. I would put “Hill Sprints” in here, too, but some people can’t sprint any more. I once did 165 in each hand with a really thin handle and went for several laps at a Highland Games. I thought I was going to die and I never asked the idiotic question “what muscle does that work?” (For other variations of loaded carries, see this Dan John article on T-Nation.)

Goblet Squats: Yep, I invented them and, yes, you should do them. A corrective that can build strength, mobility and flexibility or a strength move that can correct. (For the full description, read this article.)

Swings (Or a deadlift variation): You need to hinge. You need to hinge either for high reps or high load.

One Arm TRX Rows with the Feet Together: it’s your one stop shop for planking, upper body asymmetry questions and abdominal wall work. Enjoy.

One Arm Press: if I could do ONLY one lift, it would be this. I wrote a long piece on this not long ago. Read it.

Eric Cressey

Eric Cressey is president and co-founder of Cressey Performance, just outside of Boston, MA. Cressey is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and received his Master’s Degree in Kinesiology from the University of Connecticut. He has authored over 200 published articles.

A Lunge Variation: We spend a good chunk of our lives in single-leg stance, so it’s important to train stability this way.

A Deadlift Variation: People get hurt picking things up all the time, and these exercises are a great way to get started on prevention by teaching proper lifting technique and building sufficient strength.

A 1-arm Row Variation: Most folks spend too much time hunched over a computer, and incorporating rowing variations can help to improve posture.  Using a 1-arm variation helps to build a bit more thoracic mobility in the process, too.

High Knee Walk to Spiderman with Hip Lift and Overhead Reach: This one is somewhat of a “catch-all” mobility drill. (You can see an example here.)

An Anti-Rotation Chop Variation: These are great ways to build rotary core stability and help maintain hip mobility. (Example here.)

Rob MacDonald (“Maximus”)

Rob MacDonald is the General Manager and Training Director of Gym Jones, and a former professional MMA figher with the UFC. He is a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Shah Franco (Sylvio Behring lineage), and the current Ring of Fire light heavyweight World Champion.

Overhead Squat: You can have strong legs, but if the “core” is weak you cannot apply that strength in a sport or real world application. Nothing sorts out your “core” more than putting a weight overhead.

Turkish Get-Up: A whole body movement that teaches balance, coordination, and body awareness. It also gives the shoulder a lot of time under tension in which it has to stabilize the weight in various positions. This adds an important injury proofing dimension to the exercise. They can be done heavy to develop strength and also be done light on a recovery day.

Deadlift: If you want to get strong pick up a heavy weight. They can also be done light for form and can serve to strengthen the “core” and the posterior chain. One of my favorite exercises for developing raw strength and for correcting postural issues.

Front Squat: A great exercise for developing leg strength that places far greater emphasis on “core” stability than the back squat and also carries with it a far less risk of injury. There is a lot of truth in the statement “everybody needs to squat more”.

Airdyne: A low impact cardiovascular tool which utilizes quadrupedal movement therefore sending the oxygen demand created by the body through the roof. One of the best all around conditioning tools I’ve come across. It’s not just a bike for senior citizens. People around here call it “Satan’s tricycle”. 

Michael Rutherford (“Coach Rut”)

Michael Rutherford has over a quarter century of fitness coaching experience. His experiences include working with competitors from the ranks of international, Olympic, collegiate, high school, middle school and elementary school aged athletes. Coach Rut has also worked in hospital wellness environments and rehabilitation clinics.

Push: Visualize standing upright.  Now any angle from hands supine at the sides to arms extended overhead.  Just PUSH.

Pull: Same as a push.  Any angle from hands supine at the sides to arms extended overhead. PULL! From a lifelong perspective a 90 degree horizontal pull is very healthy.

Ground-to-Overhead:  Pulling a load from the ground and then placing it over the head is the essence of a functional movement pattern.

Three-Point Lunge: Stability, mobility and strength in a unilateral movement pattern. (Refer to this video example.)

Weighted Swing: So simple, primal, and versatile.  Trains and reinforces hip function.  Can also serve as a metabolic conditioning move.  

James Fitzgerald (“OPT”)

James is the founder of OPT and a full time husband, father and fitness athlete. His 16+ years of experience and service as a strength coach/technician, tireless practice on refining energy system work, nutritional and lifestyle balancing techniques and training of other coaches has made OPT a sought after method of bringing fitness to a Higher Order.

Loaded Step-Up: Single leg manages imbalances and still gets glute and VMO work, postural and balance takes a role in it.

Turkish Get-Up:  Involves sit up, co-ordination, single arm, single leg, scapular work in open and closed chain, loads changes conditioning and purpose.

Running: We’ve been doing it for a long time, why change it? Involves rotation, postural work over longer times, and posterior chain work over short times.

Broad jumps: This explosive movement is engrained in us. Features full body extension and athleticism.

Push-Up/Plank/FLR: Features scapular stability, upper body endurance and midline support. (FLR - picture courtesy of Gym Jones.)

Dallas Hartwig

Dallas Hartwig has been a strength and conditioning coach and licensed physical therapist for more than ten years. He is one half of Whole9, and most recently authored the book It Starts With Food, to be released in June 2012. He is an RKC certified kettlebell instructor and holds numerous fitness and nutrition certifications.

Turkish Get-Up: If there’s one truly “full body” exercise, it’s the TGU. Stabilizing weight overhead while shifting one’s body position beneath the weight develops key stabilizing muscles and addresses often underdeveloped unilateral strength. Getting up from the ground is a fundamentally human pattern, and is totally scalable for lifelong strength and functional mobility. Light TGUs are also excellent for recovery.

Man-Maker: Man-makers include components of an upper body push and pull, multi-planar trunk stability, and the ability to scale from heavy to very light, depending on the desired training effect. Man-makers have it all – full-body strength, a beefed-up core, cardiovascular conditioning, and a tough-sounding name. Unfortunately, the Gym Jones man-maker page gives us a 404 error, but here’s a Mountain Athlete video demonstrating the basic idea.

Power Clean + Push-Press: Picking up something heavy fast drives profound physical adaptation. Power clean and push-press develops explosive hip and leg power, tremendous trunk strength, and builds the ability to put heavy objects overhead. This movement will pay huge dividends in many areas of life and sport.

Airdyne: While it may look like your Grandma’s exercise bike, the Airdyne has the ability to humble elite athletes – but is still totally appropriate for your Gram. High-intensity intervals, all-out efforts, or long conditioning recovery sessions – “Satan’s Tricycle” does them all well.

Weighted Carry: There are many variations on this theme: farmer’s walks, sandbag carries, waiter’s walks, rucksack hikes, or an Inman mile. Few movements are more universally useful than carrying something while walking, and simply carrying something heavy for distance can be startlingly challenging. Go light or heavy, long or short, uphill or over uneven surfaces… just pick something up and go.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series on Wednesday, featuring Krista Scott-Dixon, Greg Everett, Eva Twardokens, Keith Norris, Jen Sinkler, and Clif Harski.

Header image credit: Joe Petrusky

In February 2011, Dallas wrote an article for Performance Menu, the “journal of nutrition and athletic excellence” published each month by Greg Everett of Catalyst Athletics.  The article focused on the impact of sleep (or lack thereof) on your health and athletic performance.

Today, thanks to the generosity of Catalyst Athletics, today we are offering Dallas’ article for free – available to those without a subscription to PMenu. (Although if you don’t yet have a subscription, we can’t help but wonder why. Your health, performance and taste buds would all benefit from PMenu’s high caliber monthly offerings, and who doesn’t like the instant gratification of an on-line publication? The best part? You can subscribe for the whole year for only $30. Seriously – go do it.  We’ll wait.)

Here’s a preview from Dallas’ article.

Sleep: An Undervalued Ergogenic Aid

We all know we need sleep, and most of us would admit that we probably need more. Unfortunately, that knowledge often isn’t enough to compel us to take action to improve our sleep habits (or lack thereof). In many Western societies, the hard-charging, go-getting executive takes pride in sleeping less than his or her competitors, purportedly “getting more done” in any given day. (From a raw productivity perspective, that may be true, though research suggests that being chronically sleep deprived significantly impedes psychomotor function, memory retrieval, and… work productivity. So spending more hours getting stuff done – at the expense of sleep – makes you get less done in any given hour. Ah, the irony.)

In the realm of athletics, sleep seems to be the red-headed stepchild: clumsily acknowledged, generally overlooked, yet permanently part of the family. To the detriment of our health and performance, we often don’t give sleep proper priority. I think it’s high time that we help sleep come in from the cold.

Download the full PDF

You can download the full Performance Menu PDF here.

And as you couldn’t comment or post questions on the original article in PMenu, we’ll host them here – so feel free to post your thoughts below.

Enjoy – and tuck yourself in a little early tonight, okay?

A special guest post by Ben Abruzzo, owner of CrossFit Albuquerque and a Whole9 Nutrition Partner

“We do not rise to the level of our expectations.  We fall to the level of our training.”  CrossFit Albuquerque

The Question comes in many forms.  It is always different, yet universally the same.  The question is also often not very important, because the person asking the question need not pose the question at all.

The question could be:

“Why am I not getting stronger?”

“Why am I not losing weight?”

“How come I can’t do 20 kipping pullups?”

“Why are my row times not getting faster?”

“What can I do to back squat 500lbs?”

“How can I snatch my body weight?”

You get the idea.

While these are not bad questions in and of themselves, they pose a problem when taken out of the context of our lives – and when the commitment level of the person asking the question is, in fact, questionable.

Context Matters

Let’s take context first.  Our goals must be taken in context within the framework of our lives, and must be set in a reality that is attainable for us.  If we work out three days a week, eat crappy food and make our living doing something other than lifting weights, then a 500lb back squat does not really fit within the context of our lives.  If, on the other hand, we are a professional athlete, where being strong and powerful are our full-time jobs, then the goal and the question start to make more sense.  (In another example, if your life allows you to only run twice a week, is it really feasible to be the fastest runner in your next race?)

The point here is that we all have goals and quests and things that we want, but it is only a real goal (and not merely a dream) if it fits within the context of your life.  And if that basic fact doesn’t make you happy, then change an aspect of your life to make it fit.

Commitment

The more important issue is the issue of commitment.  What I am talking about here is the issue of commitment to plan.  To the everyday.  To the things that are easily controllable.  Because if you can’t commit to that, then super duper programming and nifty movements in the gym will not answer your question. 

What this takes is a bit of self introspection.  Are you really giving it your all in every training session?  When the workout calls for full effort, are you well and truly spent?  When we lift heavy, is it really heavy or are you just running through the motions?  Are you fueling your body with clean, whole foods?  Do you even know what foods you should be eating?  Have you asked?  If you have asked, did you give it an honest effort for an entire month?  Do you get enough sleep every night?  Do you recover as hard as you train? Do you try to mitigate stress or just add to your own stress?  This is what is really important.

If taking a chalk bath in the middle of a workout is your secret way of resting and diminishing the pain, then you might want to address that instead of looking for reasons why you are a special butterfly and the workouts “aren’t working for you.” If you follow up your workout with a bowl of ice cream or a Starbucks muffin, then you might want to examine your diet as a reason for lack of fat loss.  If you haven’t invested the time to gain enough strength to do one strict pull-up, then chasing dozens of kipping pull-ups misses the point entirely.

THE Question

Obviously, I sound like a jerk here – and I’m fine with that.  I’m fine with it, because I care about you and your goals and I want you to succeed.  That being said, I only care as much as you care.   If you can’t fix the stuff that takes some commitment but little else, then I can’t go much further.

So, read this, then ask yourself THE question:  “Am I doing enough with what I have?”  If the answer is no, then get after it before you begin asking for more.  If the answer is yes, then my door is open, and you can ask away.

Ben Abruzzo is a coach and co-owner of CrossFit Albuquerque, in Albuquerque, NM. Ben has spent most of his life in the mountains of New Mexico running, skiing and climbing. His focus and passion is the development of sport-specific performance.

For more information about CrossFit Albuquerque’s fitness, performance and nutrition offerings, email info@crossfitalbuquerque.com.

CON·TEXT
noun /ˈkänˌtekst/
The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.

My Context Is Not Your Context

Definition aside, in simple terms, “context” means the general story of your life, past and present – everything that makes up your big-picture health and fitness.  A good place to start evaluating your own context is our 9 Factors – but most folks are already savvy to the fact that things like sleep, training and stress all play a major role in their individual health status.

What is often overlooked is that there are additional variables like age, health history, and genetics that also contribute to your individual context.  But unlike diet, sleep and training, many of those “invisible” factors are completely outside of your control.  And while it may be all too easy to ignore those factors or pretend they don’t impact your health, you’ll do so to your own detriment.

Age

You’re only as old as you feel, right?  In a way, that’s absolutely true.  But when it comes to things like recovery from exercise, metabolism and sleep, age plays an important role.  You may be in the best shape of your life, but some studies say that the older you get, the more likely you are to experience problems related to recovering from exercise.  While that conclusion is highly individual (and not necessarily an inevitability of aging), experts agree that at the very least, you should change the intensity, volume and frequency of training as you age.

In addition, you may be back to your high school weight, but your body isn’t as good at working through some metabolic processes as it used to be.  And you may have blackout curtains and turn in at 9 AM, but the older we get, the less likely we are to sleep as well as we used to.  Whether we like it or not, our age (and the aging process) is a factor to our big-picture health and fitness.

Health History

We’ve heard hundreds of transformation stories from Whole30 participants, some of whom admitted to having poor health habits in earlier years.  Now, as they string together a year or two of health eating, exercise, sleep and stress management, they picture those years behind them.  Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy.

A history that includes metabolic derangement and weight gain (especially the yo-yo variety), presents major challenges to your return to a healthy weight and metabolism.  In fact, your health history dictates to a large degree how hard you’ll have to work to achieve your new health and fitness goals – and you may find some of those goals (particularly regarding weight loss) are simply unattainable, given what your body has been through in the past.  While it’s unfortunate that you’d have to pay for past sins today, when you’re working so hard to do everything right, your health history is an unavoidable part of your current context.

Genetics

While many folks place too much emphasis on genetics (“I’m bound to be diabetic – it’s in my genes”), you’d be mistaken not to take that into account at all.  While epigenetics (the pattern of gene expression as influenced by environmental factors like diet, stress and prenatal nutrition) has far more impact on how you look, feel and live, you can’t discount that your genes, race and ethnicity play a role in your health status.  If diabetes, addiction, breast cancer or other conditions “run in the family”, consider your margin of error that much skinnier.  It would be smart to pay attention to your genetic predispositions, and factor them in as part of your context.

It’s Not a Life Sentence

Of course, just because we age, have a history of yo-yo dieting or come from a family of diabetics doesn’t mean we are permanently bound by these factors.  (Heck, just look at Art Devany – he’s healthier and more vibrant than most people half his age.) How you approach your current diet, exercise regimen, sleep schedule and stress management have an enormous impact.  The take-away is this:  by factoring in your individual context – both those factors you control and those you don’t – you’ll be better equipped to make an effective plan to help you achieve your goals.

As we move forward into focusing more on the big picture of health, fitness and quality of life, you’ll continue to hear the refrain “context matters.”  We’re not trying to brainwash you, we promise – but we hope this discussion (and the broader health-centered discussions to come) will prompt you to thoughtfully evaluate your own context, and better help you set reasonable expectations for yourself, and continue to move you forward in your pursuit of optimal health.

Since founding the Whole9 in 2009, we’ve used “our 9” to address the multi-faceted nature of a healthy lifestyle with our consulting clients.  But after developing a great working relationship with Robb Wolf and attending several extraordinary nutrition seminars (including Robb’s), we decided to concentrate our public health focus on nutrition.  Since then, we’ve written extensively about nutrition’s role in a healthy lifestyle over the past several years, and conducted more than 70 Foundations of Nutrition workshops, spreading our version of the Good Food Word.

We “zoomed in” on nutrition to meet a need in the community for practical application strategies of various dietary concepts – and we were not alone.  Over the last few years as the Paleo/ancestral health movement has grown, we’ve seen hundreds of new Paleo blogs, recipe sites and communities created for the exclusive purpose of focusing on nutrition.  But now, we see a new need within our community – and it’s time for us to take a step back and remind our readers that health is a multifaceted concept.  Nutrition is, of course, a  foundational piece of any good health and fitness program – but it most certainly is not the only piece.

Frank Forencich made an astute observation about this same phenomenon in The State of the Meme, saying, “The problem with this (nutrition-focused) variation (of Paleo) is that it’s a fragment of a much larger story. And because it’s a fragment, it tends to get pigeon-holed with every other diet meme out there. This brings Paleo down to the level of pop health, where it loses its meaning and its power.”  He goes on to add that “Paleo” is so much more than either ancestral nutrition or ancestral movement patterns – and we dig his perspective.

Context Matters

So now, for us, it’s time to zoom back out. Of course, we’re not abandoning nutrition as the foundational factor of a healthy life. But our readers need to hear more about The Big Picture. We interact with thousands of people a month via email, workshops, Facebook, and Twitter, and what we’ve realized is that many folks have drilled so far down into nutrition that they can no longer see the big picture at all. 

People ask us about the lectins in tree nuts, the fructose content of half a pear, or whether it’s okay to eat the deer they shot if the deer may have been feeding on GMO corn. (True story.)  And in many of these instances, what we want to say is,  “It really doesn’t matter, since you’re only sleeping 5 hours a night and I can smell the cortisol on you from across the street.” So we encourage you to pull back a bit, do a little introspection, and try to see beyond any one factor (specifically, nutrition) to view the reality of your big-picture health and fitness situation.  After all, self-analysis is nearly as critical to genuine progress as dissent (but that’s a topic for another day).

Analyze This

We’re calling this graphical representation of an individual’s overall health “The Whole9 Health Equation” (at least until we have a stroke of genius and come up with something clever-er). Yes, it is simplified – Dallas doesn’t like complex math equations. Yes, there are important factors (such as age and quality social interaction) that are not factored in here. No, we cannot quantify this for you personally, as (again), context matters. Nonetheless, let’s tackle this thing.

We think of each individual’s health status like a “bank account”, to and from which you make deposits and withdrawals.  Like a bank account, your Health Balance is a product of Credits minus Debits. If you make more frequent (or larger) deposits than withdrawals, you accumulate “Health Wealth”.  And, hopefully not to take this analogy too far, that Wealth pays dividends down the road.  Conversely, if you overextend your resources (withdrawing more than you’re depositing), you’ll find yourself in the red – “Health Debt”.  Think about overdrafting your bank account – you can continue spending for a while, but at some point, you simply can’t spend any more, because there’s nothing left in the bank. (Needless to say, that scenario stinks.)   Are you with us so far?  Good.  Now here’s where we start talking about specific factors.

Recovery = Nutrition + Sleep + Specific Recovery Practices

Your diet, sleep and general recovery habits are all a part of “General Recovery” (health deposits or credits).

Nutrition is the biggest potential credit. That’s why we call it “foundational”. Eating adequate calories from nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory foods on a daily basis will deposit huge credits into your health balance.  But your Nutrition factor can also be a negative integer, a debit. In other words, eating unhealthy foodstuffs can actually cost you – big. (Think obesity and chronic disease.)

Sleep matters. We make ours a priority – above exercise, reading, socialization, or even housekeeping. Dallas has written about this in Performance Menu, and we continue to emphasize this issue in our workshops and with consulting clients.  Nine hours of sleep per night equals big deposits.  Chronically under-slept?  Equally large withdrawals.  Sometimes, prioritizing sleep requires some radical revisions to one’s life. Pay now, or pay later.

Specific Recovery Practices include ice baths, contrast showers, specific mobility work (including foam rolling, lacrosse ball work or self-myofascial release), stretching, yoga, massage and other manual therapies, meditation, recovery (i.e. easy) training sessions, acupuncture, sex, napping, etc.  Your commitment to Specific Recovery Practices, to a large degree, dictates how quickly and thoroughly you recover from training, and ultimately can determine whether your training is productive or simply destructive.

In summary, sub-par Nutrition, Sleep, and Specific Recovery Practices have the potential to massively impact your Health.  (Duh.)  How rapidly this occurs partly depends on how fast you’re “spending” those resources with Physical Stress (PhysStress) and Psychological Stress (PsychStress).

Total Stress = Physical Stress + Psychological Stress

Physical Stress (PhysStress), for most of us, is structured exercise or participation in an actual sport. For some, working a manual labor or highly physical job (construction, firefighting, etc.) would also qualify as physical stress.  But for folks whose primary physical effort is deliberate exercise, there are several factors that determine the amount of PhyStress: intensity, frequency, and volume.  

Intensity refers to how hard the activity feels to you, and how hard your heart is working.  Frequency is how often you are experiencing this physical stress – twice a day, three times a week, etc.  Volume means the amount of work you complete in each training session – whether you lift a particular weight ten times during your session, or one hundred times.

Each of these factors work together to determine physical stress – notice they are all multiplied in the equation. That means in increase in one has the potential to dramatically affect the total of your PhysStress.  You can do short-ish high intensity stuff sometimes, or long and hard stuff occasionally, or long, low intensity activity daily – but not daily high intensity training, or large volumes of moderate intensity training, or (god forbid) both.  Unless you’re a professional athlete, of course, in which case you value performance over health. Most of us don’t fall into this category.

Psychological Stress (PsychStress) can come from a variety of sources, and can be pretty insidious. It could be job-related stress, family/marital stress, anxiety and phobias, unresolved childhood trauma, low self-esteem, guilt, etc. This stuff runs deep. But if you carry things (i.e. “baggage”), it costs – daily, monthly, and annually. The kicker here is that a complete lack of PsychStress doesn’t make a very big deposit into your Health Balance – but its mere existence can make gigantic withdrawals.  Do your best to deal with this stuff head-on, even if it sucks. Some things are actually out of your control, and that has to be okay, too.

In summary, how much of your Health Balance you can afford to “spend” (i.e. the total of your PhysStress and PsychStress) depends mostly on the size and frequency of your deposits (i.e., how much effort you’re putting into Recovery – nutrition, sleep, and specific recovery practices). 

Note:  Before you even ask, no, we cannot quantify this for you.  We can’t say an ice bath is worth 10 health dollars, and a two-a-day training session costs you 20.  You know why?  Because context matters.  Your specific lifestyle and health status play a crucial role in how much you deposit or withdraw from your Health Balance with any given factor.  For example, an evening of dietary off-roading may cost a lean, insulin-sensitive person 10 health dollars, but it may cost an overweight, autoimmune-suffering person 100.  This equation requires you to self-analyze, and determine which factors have the biggest effects on your own individual Health Balance.

Some Health Balance Examples

Some factors detract enormously from your balance. For example, the short-term sleep deprivation that normally accompanies a new baby takes a pretty serious toll on a person.  In this example, you are not able to make large deposits to your balance, even if you’ve backed off of hard training, and are still eating well.  It’s like taking a big pay cut for a few months – your spending habits have to change.  However, what you’ve done up until this point makes a big difference.  If you have a large Health Balance “savings”, you can make it through this situation relatively unscathed.  However, if you’ve been living paycheck to paycheck, barely covering your withdrawals, an unexpected life situation like a new baby will absolutely break you.  Still with us?

A nutritional strategy like intermittent fasting (our favorite example) might be just the right amount of “stress” to drive a positive adaptation in one person’s body, causing the overall effect to be positive. But in someone else, that additional stress only further taxes an already-overstressed system, and may actually detract from their Health Balance. Of course, every person’s scenario is unique, which is why no one can state definitively that IF (as an example) is universally good or bad.

Figuring out your individual context can be tricky, especially when you are both the least qualified person to accurately assess your “stuff”, given how close you are to the subject matter – but also the only person who has all the information about your own context.  But with our big-picture approach, some practice (and perhaps some guidance from a professional), you’ll be able to better evaluate your own overall health balance, and create a solid plan to keep you in the black.

Is Your Health Balance Off Balance?

All too often, we see people struggling to figure this stuff out – really struggling, working hard. They’re committed to making changes, to progressing, to improving… but they’re either overvaluing/undervaluing some factors, or completely overlooking one or more pieces of the puzzle. Admittedly, it’s not easy, but we’re hoping that this post will prompt some more honest introspection. Here are some examples of genuine-but-misguided efforts to improve health:

• Looking for a nutritional solution to a lifestyle problem, such as attempting to offset the effects of chronic stress by cutting out fruit or nuts, or trying a new PWO whey protein.

• Being frustrated with your “plateau” (performance, weight loss, whatever) and doing more of what got you this far.  “If high-intensity training helped me lose 20 pounds, then more of it will probably help me lose those last 10.”   All of those factors (Intensity, Frequency and Volume) multiply to create a potentially astronomical PhysStress product before you even realize it.

• Being so wound up about sticking to the Whole30 guidelines that you actually create more stress for yourself. Folks, the Whole30 is a self-awareness tool, not a hazing.

• Over-exercising to manage your stress.  Sometimes you need to suck it up, buttercup, because being an “exercise addict” is not a flag you should proudly fly – and will put you into Health Debt faster than you can say, “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

• Being over-stressed and under-sleeping, but still cutting calories to try to lose that stubborn belly fat. (One word: cortisol.) Don’t underestimate the power of sleeping more and stressing less on body composition.

• Grappling with “that shoulder thing” and looking to your physical therapist/chiropractor/acupuncturist to magically fix it instead of taking a week (or two!) off from the gym to focus on nutrition, sleep and bumping up your Recovery.

Any of these sound familiar?  Don’t beat yourself up if you’ve been working hard in all the wrong areas – the thing that counts is that you’re willing to work hard.  Looking at the big picture is difficult, and takes practice – and sometimes, a template (like our equation) to help you figure it all out for yourself.

Taking Care of YOUR Health Balance

We hope our Health Equation has cued some critical and honest self-analysis, and helped you think about factors outside of nutrition as they apply to your health and fitness. Given that each person’s context is different, we’re not able to make blanket statements about how much or how little is appropriate for you, but we bet that if you stop and think about it, you will probably be able to intuit a reasonable direction to head.

In the coming months, we’ll be talking a lot more about context, non-nutrition factors, and (hopefully) a sane way to combine these things into a life that is deeply enriching. If you leave with just one concept, please remember: context matters.  Drop feedback, questions or thoughts about your own Health Balance to comments.

In yoga, there are two kinds of positions.  The first requires strength to hold the pose.  The second requires you to soften and yield.

I suck at softening.

I approach my yoga the same way I approach my deadlifting – with the same Type A, stubborn, controlling personality that suits me oh-so-perfectly to someplace like Gym Jones.  And for some poses, that works beautifully. Standing splits against the wall?  I don’t look like that girl, but I can tough out the hold with the best of them.  Full side plank?  Nothing but good, old-fashioned midline stability.  Handstands?  Please – I’ve done so many, it’s practically cheating.  But move me into something where I have to soften – the shoulders, the spine, the face (yes, I’m often told to soften my face) and it all falls apart.

I have no one to blame but myself.

After six years of doing nothing but measure, count, chart progress and mark improvements, I don’t know how to soften.  I don’t know how to relax, I cannot “yield” (whatever that means), and I most certainly cannot refrain from trying to kick your ass at yoga.  My instructor told me last week to close my eyes when I practice.  This was after she caught me looking around, seeing the old guy next to me had his leg higher than mine, grunt (yes, I believe I actually grunted) and forcibly yank my toes up juuuust a smidge higher than his.  And then I fell over.  (But still, I believe I won that round.)

Measuring, counting, charting and improving are all good things when it comes to fitness.  I firmly believe you need the structure of a planned program, the discipline of a log book, and the stats to prove you’ve pushed yourself and exceeded your own expectations.  Without those things, fitness progress comes slowly and is often unrecognizable.  But for the love of Shiva, I need a break once in a while, if only for my own mental sanity.

I’ve been a perfectionist my whole life.  In school, a minus sign next to the “A” on my report card grade was cause for much hand-wringing and dismay.  (That was second grade.) In my past career, I stayed longer and worked harder than anyone else – and was promoted faster than anyone else in the history of the company.  In the last six years of CrossFit, kettlebells and Gym Jones, my logs were meticulous (I love a good Excel spreadsheet) – cross-referenced and notated within an inch of their life.  And the gold stars I gave myself for a new PR were a huge part of what kept me motivated.

I have none of this in yoga.

There are no grades, no promotions, no logs or tracking of progress – and gold stars are explicitly forbidden.  It’s just me and my mat and a constant struggle to soften.  Nobody cares if my leg is straight, nobody cares if I bent just a smidge lower today than yesterday, and nobody cares how my shoulder muscles look in Warrior 2.   Just me.  I’m the only one who cares.  And because of this, I am constantly challenged in my practice, too often manhandling myself into a position, stepping outside of the moment to worry about my progress, and refusing to yield.

I do yoga for fun.  Mostly, I go to calm my constantly tense body and ever-racing brain.  I go because my cortisol levels told me I should, and because I’m a calmer, happier, saner version of myself after 90 minutes of moving in flow.  It’s more therapy than exercise, although I’m surprised at what good exercise it is.

And despite some intrinsic urge to make my time there more “practical”, I’m not trying to improve my deadlift or squat through yoga (although that wouldn’t surprise me at all).  My practice is supposed to be a break from myself – from counting, measuring, charting and most of all, judging. So this morning, I will do my best to soften, yield, relax and let the pose dictate where my body ends up.  To be safe, though, I’ll probably close my eyes.

Namaste.

There Is No Free Lunch

Trouble is, things don’t work like that.  If there were a valid shortcut to optimal, well-rounded, big-picture health and fitness – don’t you think we would have heard about it by now?  We sure haven’t stumbled across it.  (And we live this diet and fitness stuff.)  The truth is, there is no such thing as a free lunch.  There is efficiency.  There is intelligence in programming.  There is concentration of focus, absolute dedication, fierce determination… but everything that’s worth doing requires – demands – that you work your tail off to get there.

The Secret

You want to maximize health and achieve optimal fitness?  We’ll tell you exactly how to do it. 

Eat foods that makes you healthier, every meal, every day. Eat foods that makes you less healthy infrequently, if at all. Eat just enough to support activity levels and goals.

Exercise. Work hard. Harder than you are now. But more importantly, work smart. Too much volume, intensity and frequency is just as bad as too little.

Recover. Devote as much effort to recovery practices as you do to training. This is not optional. Most fall miserably short in this category.

Sleep 8-9 hours a night, in a cool, dark room. Make time for this. You can get away with less, but only if it’s summertime.

Manage your stress. Deal with it in a healthy fashion. Stress will undermine all of the above.

Do this, day in and day out, for years and years and years, as consistently as you can.

We Don’t Do Shortcuts

If you do these things, as often as you can, as consistently as you can, for as long as you can, you will be healthy.  You will be fit.  And your body composition will reflect that.  Trouble is, that’s not anywhere near as much fun as the promise of a shortcut.  And it’s nowhere near instant gratification. 

But anything worth doing is worth doing right.  And when it comes to your health, “right” is the only way you should consider.  So we won’t offer you fads, false promises, or miracles.  We’ll just tell you what you need to do to earn your 400,000 hour body, not just today, not temporarily, but forever. 

We’ll be expanding on these concepts – how to “put it all together “- in future posts.  Because while this stuff is all pretty simple, it certainly isn’t easy.  Stay tuned.