Hey y'all and welcome to the everyday athlete podcast recorded live from Omaha, Nebraska and I'm your host, Katie danger U S army veteran and founder of Red H Nutrition providing everyday athletes just like you, clean, effective nutritional solutions, custom formulated to help you reach your absolute potential every single day.
Hey athletes, welcome to episode number nine when fitness works against you and what to do about it. This is Katie Danger and I am here at the nutrition store and I want to ask how you guys are all doing out there today? Lately my train has been going really, really well and I have been adding in some cycling workouts to my weekly routines. In fact, Omaha just got a psycho bar franchise and I've been adding it to my workouts. In fact, I've been attending spin class now three times a week and I've been hitting up the CrossFit gym three times a week. I have a one rest day, so I'm getting six days of training in and I have one full rest day and so far my body has been holding up fantastic. I could not be happier. And I'm actually really, really excited. I'm not attending spin class to get better at spin. I am using this as a way to improve my muscular endurance and power output.
01:07 And so far I have seen the rewards and benefits in my cycling, excuse me, on the air, dine in CrossFit. And definitely in my deadlift and my rowing form and technique, I have been able to reduce my 500 meter average time by 10 to 15 seconds on average. And this is really without any additional weight trains. So this is, this has been a great adaptation in the past four weeks. So let's go ahead and get into what episode number nine is about. Let me start off with a story first. So I don't know what it is, but I can't not be competitive no matter what I do. I go all out and I always go at 100% especially when it comes to fitness. So I told you I've been going to spin class and it's your own ride. You get your own bike, you get it set up how you want to.
01:49 It's guided by an instructor and you also get to see your cycling stats on the screen, so it's similar to like any sort of screen where whether it's a rower and Airdyne, if you're familiar with you see the RPMs, the revolutions per minute, how many times that wheel is going around per minute. You get your heart rate, your power and your distance and I love these stats. I love knowing exactly how I'm performing during my ride based on these metrics. And the same goes for CrossFit. How much did I lift, how fast did I go, what were my splits? So if the work that happens to have rounds or intervals, this is another great way like how long did it take me to do that route, how long it take me to do that interval, and all of these numbers helped me gauge if I'm improving my fitness or not.
02:27 This feedback that I get, it's both from the metrics and then from how my body and how it moves. It all gives me this catharsis. It makes me feel good when I work out. I feel empowered and powerful and like my body is a well oiled machine and that's on a good day. But what happens when you have a bad day? Like what happens when your fitness actually turns against you? And here's what I mean. So if you've been fitnessing for any longer than like a day or a week, you've probably had a bad day at the gym and I put bad day in quotes because we all know like getting to the gym is an opportunity. We should be grateful for it. But if we don't feel our best, we have a bad day and you know what I'm talking about. You feel sluggish, you feel slow and maybe you don't even want to be there.
03:07 This is where I think fitness can be a catch 22 and it brings me the topic of episode number nine, how fitness affects our endorphins and our mental health. The catch 22 part is where we let our short term outcomes and results dictate how we feel. And I'm talking about the good days and the bad days. So I mentioned I've been having some good days, but I've had some bad days. This is the catch 22 I just mentioned. When my training is good, I feel good. My train is bad, I feel bad. I don't get the results I want. I don't finish first. I don't perform like I want to. I get upset, I get down on myself and I've actually let my fitness make me depressed and sometimes that mood carries on with me throughout the entire day. So if I go in for a morning workout and I have a bad morning workout, like my whole entire day is bad, and that's not what fitness is about.
03:53 I'm not sure if this has ever happened to you before, but if someone who struggled with my mental illness for a long time, I still have ups and downs. I've been using fitness in a journey and multiple times I've reinvented myself to conquer this weakness that I have. The weakness is to use fitness against myself objectively. When you just look at fitness on paper, the definition of it, fitness is a way to move the body to retain healthy patterns. That evolution has directed us to being optimal for survival. It is a way to improve the mechanics and operation of our body to be resilient, to prevent injury and or death. Fitness makes us strong and stronger. People are harder to kill. Biologically. Survival is tops on the list of any human need. In my opinion, fitness allows us not only to survive but thrive if we let it. So I looked at the definition of fitness and it's pretty vague. One is very, very simple. It's a state of being fit and healthy and what that can mean. So many different things to so many different people. I don't think that anyone would argue that fitness is supposed to be enjoyable. It's supposed to be sustainable and it's supposed to improve our world
04:56 of life. Fitness certainly shouldn't break us and hurt us in any physical, mental, emotional way. Ever heard the same? Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. A major component to your competitive success will be your nutrition prep. And I create a competition nutrition guide to help you utilize pre intra and post-competition nutrition protocols. Boost your confidence heading into a competition, recover quicker post comps. You get right back to training and increase your power output and max capacity so you can own that podium. I created this guy just for the everyday athlete and you can get your free copy at competitionnutritionguide.com.
05:34 I'll say again, competitionnutritionguide.com. but what happens when fitness starts to hurt us mentally? What happens when fitness goes against us in our best interests?
05:47 Now in this particular case, I am not talking about physical injury. I'm not talking about where you get hurt and then you have to stop doing what you love instead. This is the mindset and wrapping your head around to the journey, the process, and how each workout should be a celebration of your capacity to move your body and then in a way how it compares to others or where you were at previously. So listen athletes, your body is going to change as you get older. As you experience new things, as your priorities change, your body's going to change with it. You might get injured, you're going to have days that just aren't as great as others. But what fun would it be if you got the results you wanted overnight, like then what would you do? You wake up one morning, your an Olympic level bodybuilder or you wake up one morning and you have a 350 pound dead lift.
06:33 You know there's three times your body weight. Like that just really wouldn't be that fun because then where do we go from there? Those outcome based goals are very, very shortsighted. So did you know, I want to give you, just throw a stat out there, you might think it's random, but did you know that the average lifespan in the United States right now is 79 years old? This is with males and females combined. Average lifespan is 79 years old. So instead of getting bent out of shape over one bad workout, think about how many workouts you actually get to enjoy. I mean if you started this very recently and your in your thirties your forties fifties sixties like you've got so much time left, there is no reason to get caught up and get depressed about one bad workout. Well, in talking with you on this podcast right now, this is very, very personal for me because this episode reads like a dear diary.
07:20 Fitness's caused me a lot of stress in my life so much that I got burned out as a competitor. I took a 12 month break and you want to think about fitness. There was a six month period just very recently. I mean it was probably like eight months ago that eight months ago for a period of six months of that eight months I didn't do anything. I was upset with fitness. I was upset with the lifestyle because it took so much for me and I felt like it didn't give anything back. And to be honest, like I say that out loud now I sit on this podcast and it's very silly and it's very selfish, but ultimately, you know this, I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve here with my podcast audience, with the athletes out there and this fitness, this goal, this journey was taking its toll on me, but ultimately because I'm here, I keep coming back to fitness, I move because it makes my body feel good.
08:04 At the end of the day, fitness makes me feel good. So if I want to be that competitive person and I know that's who I'm always going to be, I compare myself with others who are also trying to be their best in the same fitness ventures I am. Like when it comes to cycling, did I get first in class when I go to my CrossFit gym, am I on top of that, on that leaderboard for the day? Do I have the best time on the whiteboard? Now I fallen into those ruts so many times and I've gotten burned out so many times. Like I knew that I had to do something different if I want this fitness journey to truly be enjoyable, I'm not sure why it took so many times. I took a break in a hiatus and then came back. I don't know why it took so many times for me to be angry and then figure it out.
08:43 But I really think that I have unlocked that key in my own mental space and this is why I'm finally enjoying the process. So if you've ever had this kind of negative self talk before, maybe you're still wondering how you get over it. What did I do? How do I enjoy my workouts though? How do I enjoy what my body's capable of and how do I enjoy this journey that I'm on? Because science tells us in the United States the average age is 79 I'm only 34 I've got a lot of workouts ahead of me. So here are my three quick actionable tips to get your mind right and enjoying this journey. Again, number one, gratitude. Whenever those voices get in my head and I tell myself I sucked or I didn't try hard enough, I just shake my head and I actually tell myself out loud, I did the best I could today and I feel great that I had the opportunity to do so.
09:32 And you know, like at first this sounds kind of silly, it sounds kind of hokey. In fact, there was a Saturday night live skit a long, long time ago where a guy looks in a mirror and he says, I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And doggone it, people like me and it's a self-affirmation. You know, it seems silly. It was a skid. It was meant to make us laugh. But really this is the kind of stuff that we have to do. We have got to be grateful for the things and the abilities that we have and the way that we can move our bodies, even if it's not our best on a certain day. Be grateful, be grateful, look at yourself objectively and be grateful for your abilities. Number two, absolutely. Absolutely. Stop comparing yourself to others. And if you do, make sure you've got some good self talk going on so you can work through those thoughts.
10:13 When it comes to comparing yourself to others before I go to the gym, every time before I go to the gym, whether it's cycle, whether I'm going to go out for a run, whether I'm going to CrossFit gym, I tell myself to be thankful. If the opportunity is there that I can do these, that I have both my arms and my legs and then I can exert myself and test my fitness. Number three, eliminate the word failure from your vocabulary. There is no such thing as failure. Everything we do is an experience in which we are meant to learn from. I'm going to say that last one one more time. Eliminate the word failure from your vocabulary. Eliminate the word failure from your vocabulary. I've learned, I've learned through the years that instead of refusing to finish second, so I know that I'm not going to win everything.
10:55 I get this and what I have done now is I refuse to let myself talk down to myself. In fact, one of my goals, one of the things that I am living with intent now is making sure that I have positive self talk and that I tame the demons that are in my head because I do. I have demons that exist inside my head and they have pulled me to dark places before, but with intent, I refuse to let those demons when anymore. I am not going to let myself go into a self deprecating mode ever again. Now, episode number nine right here is dedicated to all those athletes out there who demand the best of the cells and get discouraged when they don't experience the best of themselves and if you've ever felt like that before or you currently do with the fitness routine that you're in, I totally understand.
11:39 I've been there, I've been there many, many times, but when you express gratitude, when you have positive self talk and you refuse to talk down to yourself, you're going to eventually reignite that fire. You're going to reignite that spark and you're going to see every workout as the opportunity it was meant to be. I want to thank you so much for tuning into episode number nine and giving you a little bit of sneak peek into what we're going to talk about next week. In episode number 10 I'm diving into gut health and what you need to know about the gut brain connection so you can continue to optimize your life and how you can use supplements to also assist in that healthy gut brain connection. So to summarize, episode number nine for you right now, number one, be grateful for your abilities. Number two, stop comparing yourself to others.
12:23 And number three, eliminate the word failure. Thank you guys so much for episode number nine. As always, I know y'all are juggling life and elements priorities. So if you're ready to optimize your fitness and nutrition and get every last drop out of your day and your efforts in the gym, head on over to [inaudible] dot com use code podcast 20 and save 20% on your order. This is my gift to you athletes. Don't hesitate. Head over to red eight shop.com right now. Remember to use coupon podcast 20 at checkout and save yourself some dope. As always, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for tuning in, athletes. This is episode number nine Katie D over and out.
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