#fitnessottawa

The Body Whisperer Tune in, Train Smart, Stay Injury-Free Nothing can cause a setback like an injury, and when you’re training hard, depending on your sport, they’re almost inevitable. Yet, there are plenty of things you can do and watch out for to minimize injuries and keep you exercising. Listening to your body can’t be overstated and should be your first consideration when planning your next workout or adjusting it. The feedback you feel when you wake up in the morning, during your day and while exercising is critical to identifying problem areas before they become issues. I’m as guilty as the next person of pushing too hard, too often, and sometimes ignoring my body’s messages that I need to rest or adjust training for that day, week, or more. The second major consideration is your sport. I’ve lifted weights for thirty years (which is weird since my body is thirty years old), and rarely been injured during lifting. The worst of my injuries has been in rock climbing. Why is this important? The difficulty of a sport on your joints has to be considered when looking at your overall program. A sport like rock climbing needs a lot of accessory work, but when it comes to older athletes, more rest between sessions, especially when our body is letting us know something isn’t right. So take all activity into consideration when it comes to training, and if needed, add sessions slowly (especially once you’re over forty years old). Three major steps you can take to avoid injury include a proper warm up so your joints are ready for the load, adjusting your workout, and recovery. Warm-up: You can easily warm up joints for ten to fifteen minutes without negatively impacting your workout. I like to include joint prep in my warm-up, especially as I’ve gotten older. Gone are the days when I was twenty years old and could jump into an exercise for a couple of warm-up sets, then go hard for the rest of the workout. Joint prep includes knowing the workout plan for the day and preparing those joints by moving them through their full range of motion and considering tension bands for further prep (e.g. for shoulders, complete shoulder clocks to warm up the shoulder, then do light banded rotator cuff movements to prepare the rotator cuff). Workout Adjustment: A workout adjustment can happen because you feel discomfort when you wake up, during your day, or while warming up for your workout. You have to listen to your body and over time learn the difference between a few normal aches and your body telling you something isn’t okay. You also have to give your body the opportunity to warm up and decide if it’s worth doing a few sets of exercises to see if you improve with load or if the pain persists. In the case of persistent pain, you’ll want to adjust your workout for that day by changing the muscle groups you’re training, or by doing a mobility/stretch session. Recovery: Muscles grow while they recover; the workout provides the stress, and resting is when the real magic happens. There is no one size fits all. Some people need more rest and some can get away with less. Much like some people can sleep five hours a day and feel fine while most people need eight. Age also plays a big role in recovery—take more time as you get older. A couple of things to keep in mind: very sore muscles shouldn’t be trained multiple days in a row; allow at least twenty-four hours of rest between workouts (some exceptions apply, like running in the morning and doing some upper body in the afternoon); if your numbers are dropping (weight or rep capability), consider if you need more rest. Injuries are impossible to prevent completely, but many can be avoided. Remember to listen to your body and warm up properly, adjust your workout if you need to, and get the rest your body needs to make the gains you want.

Why You Should Disassociate Nutrition & Fitness Two Tools, Two Purposes, Even If They Work Well Together Nutrition and Fitness are two tools that you should and arguably must (for a long, healthy, happy life), use on a regular basis, forever. They are two different tools that, when applied, work well together but serve separate purposes. Fitness is not the best way to lose weight and the goal with fitness shouldn’t be weight loss. Nutrition is not the best way to maintain functional movement and strength for life. Adults (especially seniors) are thin and immobile too and need strength training. People often link nutrition and fitness in an all-or-nothing mindset or they think if they have one of these figured out, the other doesn’t really matter. This often results in less than ideal results, frustration, and unfortunately a nothing mindset, which is where most people end up. There are too many senior people who look like the man on the right. Don’t skip working out your whole life and end up with no capacity for movement because you have no strength. And don’t skip eating well so you feel good and maintain a healthy weight for your joints. Common misconceptions about nutrition and fitness:• If I exercise enough, I can eat whatever I want• Having a cheat meal means I need to do extra exercise• If I can’t do both perfectly, it’s not worth doing either If you put proper gasoline into your vehicle, nothing is going to save it when the joints aren’t greased and there’s no lubricant left to keep the wheels rolling. You end up with an immovable object. Likewise, if you don’t put good gasoline in your engine, you might be able to move a little, but punching the gas produces clunky, labored results. Nutrition Nutrition is the cornerstone of weight loss and body composition. When it comes to nutrition, there are many factors that can make one nutrition program work very well for one person and get nearly zero results for another. Factors affecting individual nutrition results:• Sex• Genetics• Bioenergetics• Exercise habits• Mood• Stress levels Of course, exercise, mood, and stress also play major roles. The goal is to slowly introduce the right nutrition program that will work for you. Diet fads and extreme changes to eating habits don’t work. Working out more might help a little, but it’s not the best tool for getting and maintaining a healthy weight. Let’s do some math. Consider that exercising on average for a 30 year-old woman, burns 200 – 400 calories per hour depending on many factors (intensity, bodyweight, exercise selection, etc). Assume you burn on the higher end at 400 calories per hour and exercise 4x per week. That’s a total of 1600 calories burned in a week. If you go to a restaurant, you can safely assume anywhere from 1000 calories to 2000+ calories in a meal (obviously also varies widely). A pound of fat is 3500 calories. If you change nothing in your diet and go from zero exercise to four times per week for an hour, it will still take you over two weeks to lose one pound and if you eat at a restaurant as a reward once a week, you’ll be lucky to break even. One pound every two weeks might be a great result for you, and if you can eat to maintain, that’s great. Now, if you eat healthy, unprocessed foods as much as possible and stick to a calorie deficit of 200 – 400 calories per day, you’re losing 1400 to 2800 calories per week. You’ll also feel better, have fewer highs and lows, and give your body the fuel it needs to perform when you do exercise. Key takeaways from the calorie math:• Exercise alone is not efficient for weight loss• A moderate daily calorie deficit is more effective than intense workouts• One restaurant meal can easily negate a week’s worth of exercise• Consistent, healthy eating habits have a bigger impact on weight than occasional workouts Strength Training Most strength training takes care of cardio conditioning at a very basic level. You probably won’t run much faster by lifting weights, but your heart and lungs are working hard enough to get the benefits for most long-term health goals. What you’re really getting from fitness is movement and muscle for life. You won’t keep all the muscle you had when you were thirty, but if you keep exercising and moving, you’ll maintain enough to keep exercising and moving. A body in motion stays in motion. Let’s hope no external factors alter that for you. Looking at the math, you can see that exercise has a small impact on calories burned. It’s very easy to undo the calories you get from exercise. What you can’t undo is the benefit to your joints, range of motion and muscle mass. Convinced on the isolated impact of nutrition and exercise yet? The important thing to remember, and the point I’m trying to make, is that you really need both and you can have a bad eating day and crush a workout, or skip a workout and still have a great nutrition day. You don’t have to give up on both. You don’t have to think that one automatically impacts the other. Benefits of treating nutrition and fitness separately:• More sustainable long-term results• Reduced frustration and ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking• Better overall health outcomes• Improved ability to maintain healthy habits even when life gets busy The best thing you can do for yourself is to get on a nutrition plan that maximizes muscle growth (or maintenance), keeps you at a healthy weight (your joints will thank you), and an exercise plan that will keep your joints moving well, muscle on your body, and give you the freedom you want when you retire. Need some help? I’m happy to chat. Just reply to this email and let’s get the conversation rolling.