balance

I admit it, I am a creature of habit. I know that in my own programming I don’t change my exercises enough. There are a lot of people that suffer from perpetual program hopping where they won’t stick with one program or set of exercises for more than a week, I am not one of those people(I’m still a work in progress).

At the other extreme when training clients I include new and different exercises, maybe even sometimes too often. It’s taken a while, but I’ve realized the error of my ways in programming for both myself and my clients. There are times like this in life when you get a little perspective, but that new perspective is worthless if you don’t apply it, and so I have.

Last summer I decided to purchase a program from another trusted fitness professional, and I can tell you it was probably one of the best things I’ve done for my workouts in a while! There were a couple of incredible benefits that I received as a result of doing so. The first was improving some glaring weaknesses I had in core strength.

I’ve had low back issues for quite sometime and occasionally my back would flip me the bird, and I’d be down and out for a few days. However, once I started this new program my back within a few weeks started to feel much better, fast forward almost a year now, and I have literally zero low back issues. The program had me doing exercises I probably never would have programmed for myself, but since they were written in I felt obligated to perform them and feel much better as a result.

One of the other immediate benefits, was not having to worry about writing my own programs for a while. You see when life gets a bit nuts, and you don’t know which way is up, it’s easy to get caught in the trap of doing the same things for too long and expecting different results, often referred to as the definition of insanity. This approach however, will not only produce subpar results it could even open you up to a higher risk of injury from the repetitive movements.

Lastly, and the one that surprised me the most was how much the new exercises illuminated my imbalances. You see we all have imbalances to some degree, whether it’s being stronger on our right side due to being right hand dominant, or our left quad being more muscular since we blew out our right knee in high school football. Imbalances are found in just about everyone, but if we don’t do something to offset those they can start to snowball and lead to injury just like repetitive movements.

So the take home is be sure you are finding balance when adjusting your programming. You don’t want to be doing the same exercise program for 10 years, but you also don’t want to be a program hopper trying every new workout under the sun. I hate giving general recommendations as I feel they usually just confuse people, or worse yet they feel that it’s gospel and they should do nothing else. That being said I’ll break my own rule and say generally sticking with a program between 8-12 weeks with appropriately built-in progressions/regressions is a pretty good start, at which time you might want to start think about changing things.

If you like this be social and share!

You’ve heard it before “That cake looks good! I’ll just run an extra 2 miles tonight to make up for it.” The next thing you know your face is nothing but a mess of icing and crumbs. That really is not an uncommon sentiment to have, especially when you are in an environment with a ton of food, work potlucks, buffet restaurants, or the like.

However, that is a faulty thought pattern, because it’s based on the pretense that exercise is the main focus to aid us in fat loss. And quite simply it’s not.

You might say I’m being a bit nitpicky, but there really is value in changing our mindset with respect to that line of thinking. I’ve written about the importance of changing our nutrition to aid fat loss here
. But, increasing your exercise by adding 2 miles to your evening run or tacking on a 30 minute cardio session, shouldn’t be the targeted strategy to support your fat loss goals.

Taking an honest look at the energy expended for a 2 mile run, for a person of average height and weight, it only amounts to about 200 calories burned*. Seriously 200! That just sucks when you look at an average slice of cake clocking in around 370 calories**, that is if your portion size is appropriate, and let’s be honest usually it’s not.

That information just turned your 2 mile run into 4 miles:(. So what to do now? Attempt to avoid cake altogether, stop going to functions that have tons of food? Lock yourself in your bedroom, and decide no to come out until the zombie apocalypse comes and there is no more cake! These aren’t viable options, and I’m not convinced the zombie apocalypse is coming anytime soon either.

It really comes down to three things. 1) Finding balance. 2) Allowing ourselves indulgences from time to time in the appropriate portion or calorie amount that supports our goals. And 3) To enjoy said indulgences without feeling guilty.

Finding balance simply means that we should eat a variety of foods that support our goals and provide us the nutrition to sustain health. We can do that by making sure we have plenty of fruits and veggies, healthy cuts of protein, and healthy fats (in the appropriate amounts), each and every day.

Balance also means not making up ridiculous rules around food, or avoiding certain food groups altogether (that is unless medically you need to). Those rules only serve to get us one step closer to disordered eating, and that does not sustain or promote health, and it is not balanced.

Eat the damn cake. That’s what I’d tell you with respect to the second point listed above. No, not every day, and especially not for breakfast (ok maybe for breakfast sometimes), but when you crave cake have some, knowing you either need to adjust for it later in the day or not worry about it at all, just get back on point the next time you eat.

Lastly, learn how to forgive yourself. There will be times when you take down half the cake and wash it down with a bowl of ice cream. When that happens we need to be patient with ourselves and realize we are human, and at times the cake tastes just that good. Beating yourself up over it for days after and subjecting yourself to insane workouts to make up for it, fall outside the bounds of being balanced.

So I challenge you to the next time you are faced with a food decision instead of thinking you’ll just punish yourself on the treadmill for it, sit down and enjoy.

Now where did that cake go I’m hungry!?

*A rough estimate.

**This 370 calories is based on 1/16^th of a piece of red velvet cake from Costco. Man that cake is delicious!!