Category Archives: Movement

Train like an Athlete: Part 5 Recovery

Hello!  Sumer is in full swing here with swimming and baseball.   I thought I would have more time to write once school was out but boy was I mistaken:)  I am back today to talk to  you about rest and recovery.  In my opinion this is probably the second most important piece of the puzzle.  Just behind mindset and our thoughts.

Recovery.  This is the down time your body needs to repair and heal itself.  This is the process where we become stronger.  If we are allowing and aiding our body in the recovery time we will be stronger, refreshed and focused for the next session.

Today I will be covering three major things we can focus on to expedite our recovery and bring us back to the gym and life stronger than ever!

The first is SLEEP.  Sleep is where the “magic” happens.  This is the time our body is healing and repairing our tissue/ cells.  I have found when we get a good 6-8 hours of restful sleep.  Our bodies perform much better an it helps with fat loss also!

The second would be our nutrition and supplements.  What we are fueling our bodies with makes all the difference.  A properly fueled body performs and recovers much more efficiently than a body that is being deprive.  This is where monitoring the cravings, hunger, energy, sleep and stress is helpful! YOU ARE AN ATHLETE! Quit the “dieter” mindset. It does not serve us!

The third is recovery activities.  Some of my favorite recovery activities are leisure walks, hot baths, massages, naps, playing with the kids, reading  a book, quiet time to just breath and anything else you enjoy doing.  There are a lot of options.  Pick things you enjoy, make you feel relaxed and good!

So to wrap it up get into the mindset that the recovery is just as important (if not more important IMO) than the actual training you are doing!  If I have 4 training sessions per week I am conscious to include at least 4 recovery session per week also.  Try it and give me some feed back!

Have a blessed day!

Train like an athlete: 5 tips to get you started Part 2

Ok friend how is your journaling going?  Are you working on becoming aware of the stories you tell yourself every day?  Are you shifting your mindset out of a diet/ fat loss one and into an athlete’s?  Be patient and enjoy the journey as this will not happen over night.  Let me know what questions/ challenges you are running into!  Today we are going to move onto the second tip.  More movement please! And your exercise/ tools of choice to build some muscle.

What do I mean by more movement?  Well, most people I work with live and work pretty sedentary lives.  They sit at a desk  all day and come home and sit in front of the television in the evening.  We are going to try adding more movement into your daily routine.  And your 30 minute work out DOES NOT COUNT.

Movement is walking leisurely, playing with your kiddos, having a dance party in the kitchen while making supper, parking at the end of the parking lot and walking to the store (craziness here in the midwest right now as it is super cold), or taking a couple laps up and down the stairs.  Just move more please! Our bodies are built to move!

My intention is to make it easy.  Easy is doable and gets done.  Let’s start with 10- 20 minutes of added movement a day. You taylor it to your day/ week.  Ideally it would be every day but again taylor it to YOU.  What is easy and doable for you! Good enough is your friend here.  Ditch the all or nothing mentality.  SOMETHING IS BETTER THAN NOTHING!!!

I struggled with this a lot!  I  l grew up  with a perfectionist parent:) “I don’t know” and “good enough” were not to be uttered in our house.

Now let’s talk about the exercise part of being an athlete.  I think the number one most important thing about your exercise is that you LOVE to do it! When you look forward to your  training sessions and they leave you feeling strong, inspired and empowered it is going to be way easier to be consistent.  Again athletes are consistent! You will be much more successful if you train 2 x week for 12 weeks than 5 x week for 2 week and burn out because you are tired, sore and  your body is telling you “NO MORE!” You are in this for the long haul so again focus of easy/ doable and being consistent.

Next I would focus on compound movements.  Big movements that use lots of joints and body parts are going to give you the biggest bang for your time.  Movements like push ups, pull-ups, squats and dead lifts are preferred over bicep curls or tricep extensions.

Lastly I would make sure you are progressing and overloading the movement with every  session.  Invest in a Dollar General notebook to track your sessions. What weight you used, how many reps and sets you did and how long it took.  That will ensure you do not to the same workout over and over with the same weight, same reps or same sets, same amount of time.   Your body will adapt and come to a stand still doing the same thing over and over Do a little bit more work with each session to ensure overload and progress.

Let me know if you have any questions!  I can be reached at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/KettlebellSynergies or email [email protected]

P.S. For extra tips on mindset, movement and nutrition please sign up for my newsletter.

Have a great day and go out and do something for someone who can not repay you!

Rock on!

Coach T

Thank God it’s Monday!

I feel so incredibly blessed that I am alive,  that I am healthy enough to train today and have an abundance of food to choose from to eat.  That may sound silly to some of you but not to long ago I was very ungrateful for all I have, angry at myself and filled with shame about what I chose to eat,  how I performed in the gym, the kind of coach I was, the business person I was, the parent I was being to my three son’s,  the way my body looked and many more!  It was eating me form the inside out and affecting my health, my finances and my relationships.

What has changed you ask?  Lots!  My mindset, my movement and my nutrition.  But NOT over night. Your external world is a mirror reflection of your internal environment.  I have been working on resting my internal environment for the last 14 months.  I am still a work in progress but I am super excited to share with you what has helped me work on that internal environment.  I want to share everything that  has helped me enjoy my training again, move better, get stronger and leaner and the strategies I use that helped me with my relationship with food. Today though I want to share a bit about mindset.  I think it all stems from mindset.

What creates our internal environment? Quiet a few things.  Our family, how we were raised, where we were raised, what we read, watch  and listen to from childhood to current day.   But first a more important question is WHAT IS OUR INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT?  WHAT IS OUR INTERNAL SELF TALK?  WHAT DOES THE VOICE IN OUR HEAD TELL US CONSTANTLY THROUGH OUT THE DAY?  First, we need to be aware of what that is and a great way to start awareness is with journaling.  It isn’t a gratitude journal but a dictate journal.  We are going to writing down all the  internal dialog.  All of our self chatter that goes on in our head.  Then we are going to go back and read and become aware of what those stories are.

Try it and let me know if you have questions!

 

The next post will be about what creates or internal environment.  Stay tuned and become aware!