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What if your workout wasn’t your workout?

Remember, your workout was causing you debilitating pain.  It stopped your favorite activities.  It wasn’t a matter of IF but WHEN it would force you to stop doing what you loved.

So you took it upon yourself to stop it before it got too bad, evaluate the landscape and come up with a new plan for success forward.

In a very general sense, as we cannot attend to every joint in the human body specifically, it looks like this:

1. Narrow down precisely what hurts when and doing what.
2. This might be easy or it might be incredibly elusive (hint: that’s what expert trainers are for!)
3. Once you have it narrowed down, you start from absolute square 1
4. Since we have been talking about knees, we’ll focus on knees
5. Chances are it doesn’t hurt just sitting around.  That would be…well…extra bad.  It hurts when you move it, use it or you have consequences the following day.  Your goal is to find a range of motion that DOES NOT HURT AT ALL and use that
6. We have the foundation of your new workout.

Imagine this – you run 5 miles.  It hurts at mile 2.  Endorphins take over, you push through.  You head home, ice it, throw back a couple of your favorite NSAIDS and go on your way.  The next day you have the predictable aches and pains.

Well, it didn’t hurt on Step 1 out the door, did it?

So you can certainly walk.  That’s good.

But walking won’t be the load that allows you to find the specific intersection of growth-inducing-load without crossing into the zings of pain.

But there are tricks that you can employ.

Did you know that walking backwards is actually an ally in knee pain recovery?

Walking backwards as part of your warmup can produce the necessary blood flow and appropriate resistance to ensure your patellar tendon (one of the likely manifestations of knee pain) doesn’t show up.  You run your whole 5 miles pain free!  Happy day!

But it might not be that easy, there are other things.

Did you know that the anterior tibialis is one of your greatest allies in preventing future knee pain?

Strengthening the front muscle of your shin is the key way to increase your ability to decelerate the force that occurs when you heel strikes the ground, which cascades into a knee forward position and a huge portion of your weight is now hanging out directly on that same tendon.

Stronger anterior tib, less force that the knee must absorb.

This chain goes on and on.  For every pain, there is cause.  For every cause it can be traced to either weakness or lack of flexibility or, most often, both.

For every instance of weakness, there is a strength cure.

For every instance of inflexibility, there is a mobility standard to work towards.

Your new workout is making up for lost time.  It is treating every rep of a tib raise with the same intensity as your squats.  It is taking the time in your warmup just like you take time for the run itself.  It is putting in the reps on your elephant walks with the same ego-centric focus (you use Strava….right?) as you put in on your mileage this week.

The payoff if when you correct for your weakest links to improve the net efficacy of the whole system.

We use all the right analogies and metaphors in our work-life to describe exactly what is happening in the body

“The weak link in the chain”

“Synergy within the system”

“Supply chain disruptions”

And all of that industry jargon we likely throw around without a second thought.

Your hamstrings are the weak link.

Your hips and your knees have no synergy.

Your anterior tib is given no attention and it cannot supply the units of force needed to allow your knee to stay healthy

The final part we will talk about how to maintain this mindset for life.

I want you to train hard, do fun things, play that tennis match, go on that long hike!  I want you to do it all!  No pain.  No restrictions.  Just you pressing on and living your best life.

The next steps will take that away – for a short time – to return stronger than ever.

The first step is to stop.  Stopping running.  Stop saying yes to the ice-cold invite for a pickup game.  Stop working out through pain.  Stop bandaging the knee, popping the pills and gutting through it.  Just stop, cold turkey.

What to do instead?

Stretch.

Stretch with purpose.   There is a downside to stretching.  You can work length too much, so using some sort of guide is useful.

ROMWOD is a great tool.

YouTube has endless free content.

A yoga instructor can help.

If you’re local, we are well equipped to help with mobility (as we typically like to frame it).

The first thing you’ll notice is:

“Damn, how did I get so tight!”

Well, tension on tension on tension, wrapped up in braces, working around and through pain will tend to stiffen you up.  You have to unwind this tension.  You can’t ONLY inhale.  Sometimes you have to let some air out from time to time.

“But I’ll get fat!  I can’t just stop moving!”

Sure you can.  And, by the way, getting fat has almost nothing to do with your exercise per se.  it has everything to do with another cycle (a more in depth conversation for another time) that goes something like this:

• Hard work feels good
• Fuleing hard work feels better!
• I won’t eat pizza if I’m working hard (don’t want sugar in the gas tank!)
• BUT, if I DO eat pizza, I can just “burn it off” with an extra mile
• If I’m not working out…what’s the point of eating well?

This is where you workout is no longer your workout.  Your nutrition, stretching and WALKING are your workout.

Fun fact – running is a terrible weight loss protocol.  Actually, it’s basically the worst.

Walking is a GREAT weight loss protocol.  So if you’ve been wondering why you run run run and don’t drop the pounds…

Anyway!

Now you are stretching, walking and eating right.  Sounds like we are returning to baseline!

You are exactly right.

The purpose of this is to eat well for the sake of eating well.

The purpose is to restore some natural motion that gets lost in the process of building tension (i.e. endurance and strength) and focus on habits that are good for their own sake rather than “trying to outwork a bad diet.”  If you think your diet is good, then you should be able to stop working out and it still holds.  If you need to run like a maniac to keep the weight off, your diet is poor.  It’s pretty simple.

Now let me be clear, I don’t expect you to do this.  I expect you resist it.  Maybe even laugh at it.

That’s fine!  On my side I have the data, the experience with the bodies and the decade of experimentation on said bodies to get said data.

On the other side is wishful thinking that pain will go away.

We’ll be here waiting for you to consider a better way.  You just have to do that in your own time.

Next we’ll be talking about how to build yourself back up so that you can return to the activities that you love, pursue them pain free and live your best life!

I hear you.  Trust me, I hear you.

“I’ve been hurting for 10 years!  I can’t even exercise if I MUST do it TOTALLY PAIN FREE!  This is an impossible standard.  I want my money back.”

I hear you.  Trust me.

This goes back to the very beginning – what if your workout wasn’t your workout?

We’ve established some elements of this cycle that I think are foundational elements of anyone pursuing an activity.

• You’re going to hurt at some point
• You’re going to want to ignore it and push through it
• You’re going to either make the decision to stop or it’s going to get made for you

The above objection to the standard of “pain free” isn’t doing you any favors.  You are arguing against your own best interest.  There IS a better way.  Imagine this:

• You take the time to find the root of the pain
• You investigate how to resolve the pain
• You stick to a plan to mitigate and resolve the pain
• You train in a way that maximally mitigates future pain

That is when your workout is no longer your workout.

For those of us that look forward to the run, the gym, the race, the training – we salivate at the idea of getting out there and getting the blood pumping.  THE WORKOUT is therapy.   It’s what sets our center for the day.  It’s what can often make or break the way the rest of life’s obstacles are handled.

And so we naturally leap to the reward and skip all the tedious details that allow us to relish in that reward.  Here is the conversation I nearly every day:

“I played a couple games of basketball this weekend, body is pretty wrecked!”

“I did a tough peloton workout this weekend, my knees are really sore”

“I went on a 10 mile hike this weekend, my back is really tight.”

“I hopped into my kids soccer practice, my plantar fasciitis is acting up”

Naturally, I ask:

“Did you warmup?  Stretch?  Do some dynamic prep? Cool down? Stop when it started to hurt?”

No. No. No. No. [laughs] No.

Occasionally, they throw out a casual “yea, I think it was the burpees I did on Thursday that did it…”

You mean, the 4 hours of basketball after not playing for 2 years and forgoing a warmup, cooldown and playing through pain couldn’t have had anything to do with it?

I get it.  Trust me, I get it.

Who has time for a warmup anyway!

I’d rather wear out than rust out!

What are you saying that I have to throw in the towel right when things are heating up because my knee twinged a little bit?!? Cmon Coach!!

No, I am saying there is a better way.

In the next post, we’ll talk about Step 1 – identifying the root of the pain.

I’d like to take a moment to introduce you to Bob and Sue

Sue and Bob are hypothetical members of ours that are the collective embodiment of all of the success (and failures) of folks training under our care.

If you are an Edge4Life member, you might find some of these stories familiar – they are your stories!

I’d like to start by introducing Sue.

Recently Sue and I had a conversation about her training and how she thought she was behind the rest of her classmates (who are all about 10 to 20 years younger than her) and she was getting down on her balance during a movement and things like that.

Well, topics continue to unfold and I asked Sue about her recent get-together with some old friends.

She was saying how it was really fun, but she was a little disappointed that her friends didn’t want to do as much hiking as she did and got tired from the days activities a bit quicker while she had energy to spare.  She shared that she was the only one who could lift the whole cooler and taken it down the beach by herself!

And I said…Sue, do you realize…you are the fit friend!

What…?

Sue, you just told me all about how you were running circles around your friends and performing feats of strength that no one else could muster.

Sue, you are the fit friend for sure!

Despite being hard on herself for a bit of loss of balance and maybe not preforming to the same degree as her class mates, she was crushing it against her peer group!

Lo-and-behold, the next week she was in, the task from before didn’t seem quite as hard.  That boost to know that her hard work was paying off really put some wind in her sails.

I am incredibly proud of Sue and her realization that she is capable of more than she thinks!

Whoa, pretty aggressive title…

Hear me out, this is important.

I speak from experience, first of all, being just about 37 at time of writing and within arm’s length of 40.  This is an identification from personal experience that I feel develops into a larger trend.

It’s pretty simple, those of us in the 30ish+ bracket are too young to be old and too old to be young.

It’s at least partially true that young people are indestructible – to the extent they can eat like crap, exercise little, have bad form throughout, get banged up playing pickup basketball, drink the night away and experience minimal pain and regret the next day.

Those of us that have tried to do this after 30 probably regret doing what may have been normal 10 years ago.  News flash – we got old.

But there is a problem.  We’re not really that old at all.  In fact, about half of the people we surround ourselves with probably still view those of us in our mid 30s as easy breezy, young and carefree.  They WISH they were as young as we are!  And it’s true – there aren’t many physical peaks awaiting on your 50^th birthday.  35 is a blessing that we should embrace.

But on a physiological level, things have already started to slow down.  Metabolism, muscle tone, energy – they just peak out and are never the same again.

It is no coincidence that 99 out 100 professional athletes have had their best-ever season by the time they are 31.  Almost no one peaks at 35, must less 41.  Peak human performance has limits.  It’s the rare pocket quarter back, specialty relief pitcher or perimeter shooter that sustain performance into their late 30s and even 40s.  The bone crunching effects of competitive sports takes a correspondingly brutal toll on the linemen, outfielders and 7 foot tall centers.

Let me introduce you to someone you know.  You know them quite well.

It’s 25-year-old you.

And 25-year-old you is killing 40-year-old-you.

We still look in the mirror and don’t think much has changed.  We still more or less view ourselves as the vibrant 25 year olds that can drink all night, get 4 hours of sleep, play a couple games of soft ball hung over, take a nap and then be fine for Saturday night.

“Yea, but isn’t age just a number?  And I have my best days ahead?  And I’m getting in shape to prevent aging?”

Isn’t there some truth to that?

100%

But let me reframe it:

Poor health and habits prematurely ages you.  Exercise reverses those effects.  It won’t make you “be younger” so much as it will make you feel less old.

Imagine Michael Phelps – one of the greatest swimmers and athletes of all time.  He reached peak, world class physical swimming perfection somewhere in his 20s.  He cannot get that back.  He is slowing down the march of time by continuing to swim and exercise, eat well and maintain his health.

Imagine parallel universe Michael Phelps – 50 pounds overweight on his 30th birthday.  An on-again-off-again smoking habit.  Routine day drinker.  Turns his life around and gets fit at 40.  Despite being “in the best shape of his life”, he is still 40 and miles away from his parallel self at the Olympics.  Makes sense?  Doesn’t have to, just trying to paint a picture.  Anyway!

The analogies to the gym are the tedious basics that we really don’t want to do, but pay for if we don’t.  Taking rest days when our fave fave is on the board or our friends are all doing a great workout.  Stretching before class.  Cooling down after class.  Dialing in the diet.  Ignoring the loads lifted next to you and instead throwing on that extra 10# you aren’t quite ready for.  Modifying for that spicy elbow you’ve had for a couple weeks now.  The (stupid) 25-year-old in us just shrugs and says, “eh, I’ll just sleep it off. LFG!!!”

Got some bad news – you’re not 25 anymore.

With any luck, we survive this transitional maturity and make it to 55 without completely destroying our bodies.  Every 55+ year old I know is content to go at their own pace, live to fight another day and do what is right for THEM.  They are thinking about what the next 30 years looks like.  The 35-year-old is relishing in the glory of the LAST 10 years, thinking they are still in their prime.

This isn’t a gloomy assessment that suggests you throw up your arms and stop trying to be better – it’s realistic recognition that there is a LOT more life to live and you have to pump the brakes if you want to avoid trading in your knees and hips for the shiny ones your grandma has been raving about.

The fitness revolution has gotten people off the couch, given them a new lease on life and encouraged them to do things that they thought were impossible.  The beauty of this movement cannot be overstated.

But you can’t ignore consequences.  Train hard.  Be bold.  Climb mountains.  Lift heavy things.  But do so with recognition of your humanness, you can do the above for 40+ years happily and sustainably till the day you croak paddling a boat up stream to catch a wild salmon with your bare teeth. That’s the dream right?

But that also means you have to stretch every once in awhile.  Watch what you eat and, for goodness sake, take a rest day!

I had a conversation with a client of mine the other day that went something like

“Hey, coach Eric, I just wanted to share something with you.  I had some friends who have been sitting on the sidelines during all of this progress and they said, “man, I wish I could do what you did!  I wish I could get in shape like you!”

and she said:

“uh…you can.  You can literally join my gym tomorrow and do exactly what I did.  They have a plan, they’ll take you through the same thing.  You can have what I have.”

And, oddly enough, it was met with back peddling and the classic “not enough time” and all that stuff.

Ok, hold up.

So you mean to tell me, you witnessed her success first hand (i.e. its not a scam), you know her personally (i.e. she’s not a millionaire super athlete), you want what she has and…then just, that’s the end of the conversation?

It dawned on me.  Not everyone is ready for change.

We can all look at some “heroic figure” and utter the words “I want that too!” but when left with the task ahead (i.e. the work), it gets a little different.

So I thought it might be helpful to explain how this works and exactly who can expect to get success with us.

Person A

• Currently puts time and effort into nutrition and exercise
• OR, is highly motivated to start that process
• WANTS the outcomes it promises
• Isn’t getting the results they want currently
• This might be due to poor information or poor role models or any number of things like simply being stuck in a routine and plateau
• BUT, the effort, attitude and desire is there

Person B

• Does not put in the time and effort as stated above
• WANTS the outcomes
• Isn’t expending any energy to further their goals
• Still looking for “the way that won’t hurt too bad to require too much effort”
• This might be for any number of reasons, but the point is
• The CHANGE they need to overcome is not one of “what to do and when to do it” or what gym to sign up for or what program to purchase, it is a matter of changing the mental framework to embrace the change and chase it relentlessly.

If you are Person A, you need to get in touch with us asap.  You have fire.  You have fuel.  You have the energy.  You have the drive.  I want to hone that to a laser focus so you can melt steel beams.  You maybe be surprised to find that you can achieve more than you ever thought possible.

We have developed a series of systems that takes effort and multiplies it.  We have developed frameworks that countless before you have proceeded through and come out the other side a changed person.  If you are Person A and you are spending the time but not getting what you want, we can guarantee that you’ll get success with us.

If you are Person B, that is aok.  Everyone is on their own fitness journey and learning the process in their own way, but the things we will ask you to do you may not be ready for.  If you haven’t embraced the idea of reevaluating the landscape in which you operate and are fully willing to ditch the bad to adopt the best practices – and work hard to achieve them – then this might not be a good place for you.

Let me be clear, we work with teens and people in their 70s.  We work with athletes and beginners to fitness.  We work with accountants and soccer moms.  We work with all types of people – the unifying characteristic is that above: Fire.

If you have fire, let us help you focus it, distill it, and together we’ll reshape your fitness future.

Coach Eric

I had a moment.

Not that you care about the woes of being a small business owner, but there is an important lesson here.

I texted my wife and said, “I need to do less.”

Here is my brain’s operating software:

Step 1 — Every single passing thought that ever crosses my mind needs to be recorded as a to-do item

Step 2 — Stress out that you cannot complete said items

Step 3 — Pick the most useless one, spend a ton of time on it, get no ROI and then refer back to list and stress out

Maybe you do this too? (Honestly, I think it’s just straight up human to be this way…anyway)

How does this translate to fitness? Ever done the following:

Step 1 — Get frustrated that things aren’t going well (back hurts, overweight, no energy, etc. etc.)

Step 2 — Sign up for that fitness class thing you saw on Facebook

Step 2a — Decide THIS IS THE TIME ITS GOING TO WORK

Step 2b — Clean up your diet 100% (i.e. eat only salad)

Step 2c — Do a juice cleanse this week

Step 2d — Deny yourself all pleasure in pursuit of said goal

Step 2e — Sign up for a Tough Mudder

Step 2f — Buy some new clothes for the gym (cuz, why not?)

Step 2g — Drink a lot of hot water with lemon

Step 3 — Ditch the diet when the weekend comes, fall off the cleanse (it honestly made you feel like crap anyway), go overboard on that leftover cake from the recent party, cancel the race, add whiskey to the lemon water as you watch Netflix in your new clothes.

I don’t mean to be crass and defeatist, I want to almost paint an absurd picture of this human being getting hyped up and then deflated almost immediately…because it is the amalgamation of what I see every day. In an honest effort to make a change, ALL THE WRONG THINGS are selected at once. The reason? Well, this is the stuff that is shoved down our throats 24/7. None of the aforementioned is useful. Yet, tons of advertising dollars are thrown at you to convince you of exactly that.

So what’s the move?

If I could select TWO things for you that would produce a disproportionately high ROI it would be the following:

Step 1 — Go to the gym for 45 minutes, 2x a week. Do strength training. Curls, squats, situps, lunges, pullups, bench press…whatever. Challenge yourself and for gods sake skip the elliptical.

Step 2 — Monitor your calories, eat precisely your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure)

That’s it!

Here’s the rub — the picture just painted was basically the same as:

– Dont fall for get rich quick schemes, they dont work.  Instead;

– Invest in the market, its that easy!

The punchline — if this dialogue has got you more upside-down than clearly headed in the right direction, it is time to get a consult with a professional.

Fitness is challenging. Don’t make it even harder by trying to go at it alone.

~ Coach Eric

It is fairly common for people to come in the doors, schedule a consult, talk all about fitness, get started with the gym and then, 6 months later, unload a shit ton of baggage that has nothing at all to do with fitness.  In fact, this baggage was likely presumed to be SOLVED by fitness.

“I am overweight, therefore I need fitness”

“I have back pain, therefore I need to get stronger”

And these things are definitely at least partially true, but there is an interesting cycle of events that occur.

WHY would someone get “unfit” to begin with?  I’ll leave you free to speculate – there are endless reasons.  They are all pretty much correct.

So someone’s life is upsidedown and they conclude, “I gotta hit the gym!”

Which isn’t a bad idea at all.  But, 6 months later, no fitness has been gained and we all wonder what’s going on that exercise has produced no results.  So we ask some basics questions:

• Are you sleeping?
• How are you eating?
• Are you stressed?
• Do you binge drink?
• Do you smoke?
• How do you manage your time? Do you ACTUALY get to the gym, or just purchase a membership?
• Is your head in the game during class or are you chatting, checking your phone and using distractions to avoid work?

And what is uncovered is that pretty much everything is jacked up and nothing is working correctly. They cannot manage their time. They don’t sleep.  They are stressed to the max.  They don’t eat/stress eat/over eat/binge eat/something something bad eating.

Fitness won’t course correct for this.

BUT, it WILL uncover this.  Now we can start solving problems.

Can’t sleep?  Why not?  Don’t eat during the day but binge at night…why?

The solutions to these problems vary as much as the problems themselves, but it’s a huge part of what we do. And as we solve for the above, the fitness that ought to come…does.  This is because fitness is actually a much higher order activity than people give it credit.  Fitness should really ONLY be applied once things are going well enough to SUPPORT fitness.  But the catch 22 is that sometimes you don’t know what it is to unfuck until you realize fitness isn’t working.

Tricky stuff

So here are your fitness order of operations and some ideas on how to achieve them

1 – Sleep – There is no way around it, you need sleep.  All organisms need sleep.  Evading this fact will lead to your misery.  Try this: pick a day (probably a weekend) and go to sleep when you are tired and don’t wake up to an alarm.  Try that a couple times.  How long did you sleep?  That’s probably how much you need.  Are you getting that much?

How to get better sleep? The question for the ages!  I am no sleep expert, but there are some definite things that impede sleep such as too much caffeine, too much electronic stimulation before bed and lack of a “goodnight routine” that helps prime your body for sleep.

2 – Nutrition – Yep, you also need to eat.  We find it is equally likely that people aren’t eating ENOUGH as often as they are eating too much.  Get your 2000 cals a day.  Eat protein. Avoid simple empty carbs.  Avoid too much fat.  Don’t drink calories.  That is a really basic way to get your intake on track so that it can support exercise, recovery and daily energy.

Don’t create stress around diet, make small changes that are sustainable.  Examples include cutting soda intake in half (not going cold turkey), routinely eating breakfast and ensuring that you eat protein with every meal which is satiating and necessary for muscle growth.

3 – Stress – Do you take on too much?  Do you feel like the world is on your shoulders?  Do you create work just to feel useful and productive?  Do you take on OTHER PEOPLE’S burdens?  Do you say yes all the time?  Do you feel bad saying no?

Got some bad news – if you’re reading this, life will go on with or without you being a martyr for everyone else’s time.   We simply aren’t that important.

Scratch things off your to-do list if they’ve been there more than a month.  Say no.  Value your time.  Force people to solve their own problems.  Take on less.  Focus on nailing the important things in front of you.  If it’s not on fire, it can wait.

Life is short.  You won’t feel any better on your death bed having scratched off 10,000 menial tasks that are simply killing you anyway.

And there you have it! Why do we feel so qualified to address these topics?  Are we some sort of experts?  Nope. But we uncover these problems and become allies in solving them for our members.  And, in the process, learn quite a bit about what makes people tick, how gym time is best used, what problems it won’t solve and what you need to do to get the most out of your gym experience.

It’s not just fitness, it’s straight up  mental health we’re doing over here.