Respecting recovery: The mind body pathway to boost your fitness results

5 minutes can make or break the results for your workout. You can do everything “right”: dial in your macros, hit your heart rate zones, get your hydration and vitamin D and still struggle to find the results you’re looking for. In fact you may be doing more harm than good if your movement plan excludes time for your body to integrate and recover. Our work IN today is about how we can magnify mind body unity pathways for ourselves and our students in order to boost fitness results without adding extra high intensity, impact and calorie deprivation. 

As a part of my mission to bring a legacy of resilience through movement, each month you can join me for a hike on the bike trail followed by a free trauma informed vinyasa class back at the studio on Main Street. Go to savagegracecoaching.com to see the calendar and join my newsletter, Yoga Life on Main Street, to stay up to date on all the latest studio news, events and gossip. And now… on to this week’s episode.

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business and so much more.

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get all the details.

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Transcript

Episode 212

Respect recovery:The mind body pathway to boost your fitness results.

5 minutes can make or break the results for your workout. You can do everything “right”: dial in your macros, hit your heart rate zones, get your hydration and vitamin D and still struggle to find the results you’re looking for. In fact you may be doing more harm than good if your movement plan excludes time for your body to integrate and recover. Our work IN today is about how we can magnify mind body unity pathways for ourselves and our students in order to boost fitness results without adding extra high intensity, impact and calorie deprivation. 

We are more than the calorie and heart rate equations they teach us about in our certifications. More and more science is coming to light that proves the important connection between our mind, our beliefs, our physiology. Numerous studies have shown how the simple act of educating people about how healthy their activity is can have significant and measurable positive impacts on their health. I’ll link to some of those studies in the show notes. For example the housekeeping study and the milkshake study. What these studies and others show us is that what we believe matters. Now put a pin in that.

When we exercise, the body releases stress hormones. Basically exercise is a form of self induced fight or flight. There are many many good adaptations that can come out of it. Strong bones, strong muscles, mobility, cardiovascular health not to mention simply feeling good in your own skin. But for many years there’s been a belief that more is better, that if it doesn’t hurt it isn’t worth doing, the no pain no gain mentality is pervasive in our modern fitness culture even today. We wonder why some seemingly perfectly healthy people, after years of running, step off the treadmill and suddenly drop dead. Or the woman with the perfect body, vegan diet  and regular exercise routine gets cancer. Could it be that perfectly healthy looking may not be perfectly healthy? 

There is a lot going on in the human body that none of us should claim to completely understand and much of that is going on at the metabolic level. If we understand that our exercise is mimicking a fight or flight response in the nervous system how can we get the positive exercise adaptations without the potential metabolic and hormonal overwhelm? 

The answer is in the integration and understanding of how the body recovers. 

In nature the cheetah doesn’t run full out all day every day. Neither does the gazelle. Most of the time they are moving about in a calm, social state or lazing around in a tree. 

Humans on the other hand have developed a modern lifestyle that can be the equivalent to chasing down dinner or trying not to be dinner every single day. Then in order to get healthy we trigger the same response again when we exercise and wonder why no matter what we do, how we eat, etc. nothing changes?

Cortisol, melatonin and insulin are big players here. Because excessive levels of cortisol and chronic stress disrupt healthy metabolism no matter what the source.  But the complicated endocrinology doesn’t really matter.  You don’t have to know anything about it or understand it in order to give the body what it needs so you can get what you want out of your workout.

And what is that? The body needs recovery. We forget that physical results we look for from exercise don’t happen during exercise. They happen in the other 23 hours of the day. If we can’t get ourselves out of that fight or flight state it delays and impedes recovery and then in turn the adaptations we see as results.

But the answer is simple. Kick start recovery.

Dr Andy Galpin explains this really well in an interview he did will Andrew Huberman. You can find this at the time mark 52:53. 

I’m going to describe these things and see if any of them remind you of anything. 

Lying down

Slow paced music (sound)

Eyes closed (Sight)

Down regulate breathing (box breathing, coherent breathing) 3-10 minutes lying down seated (shower?) to decrease resting heart rate. (Breath)

This is the final relaxation that we practice at the end of every yoga class but almost never do at the end of any other kind of exercise format. The closest we may get is some stretch time maybe. 

What is going on here? Well, in yoga we believe that opposites create balance. We can apply this to off the mat kinds of workouts. We get that peak intensity of work (fight or flight at the level of the nervous system) and then we meet that with the exact opposite to assist the body in returning to a calm social state. Our recovery state. We are shifting into parasympathetic faster so all that work you just did isn’t lost in the noise of your stressful life.

The longer it takes to recover the longer it takes for us to see those beautiful results to show up if they ever do. 

What do you believe about your exercise? Do you believe that the only way to see results is to suffer?  What is your intention when you pick up those dumbbells, or lace up the running shoes? For many of us one of the reasons we exercise is to manage our stress levels. How well can we do that without the recovery the body is looking for? Do you give your body, heart and mind the respect it deserves through proper fuel, rest and recovery? Is it really so hard to take 5 minutes at the end of that workout to breathe? 

When I plan a workout this recovery piece is called integration. It is a  moment sometimes within the structure of the workout and always at the end when we make time for the body to catch up with the mind or vice versa. Usually this looks like a pause for a moment after a particular challenging pose or interval. Something that is equal and opposite in intensity where it fits in the format. Everything we do causes some kind of reaction in the body mind pathway. Like a ripple on the surface of a pond or an echo. When we pause and notice what change that action has caused in the body we’re building a more mindful awareness within the body. It soothes the nervous system. This is where we are actually building protective resilience. In the space between the work and the rest. 

You don’t have to go to a yoga class to get the benefits of that final relaxation. You can tack it on to the end of any workout and start to feel and then see the benefits of it right away.  

Thanks for listening!

If you’re a fit pro or fitness enthusiast doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. Head over to

savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin you’ll find all the show notes for this and other episodes plus lots of free resources.including link to book a 30 min fitness success strategy call with me.  And of course I’d be ever so grateful if you would take a moment to like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re listening. 

Until next time, stop working out and start working in