Hello athletes, welcome and thank you for tuning into the Coach Katie Danger Podcast recorded live from Omaha, Nebraska. I'm your host, Coach Katie Danger, U S army veteran, fitness coach and founder of Red H Nutrition. Here's a fact for you, 99% of us are not elite athletes. We're individuals from all backgrounds, juggling life priorities, including jobs, our families, their needs, and trying to find time to take care of ourselves every single week. When you tune in, I'll be discussing clear, concise and actionable strategies you can use to get the most from your fitness, nutrition, and mindset. So you can optimize your life without compromising your time. So athletes settle in and get comfortable. I'm here to educate, inspire, empower, and entertain you to help you enjoy the unique fitness journey that you are on.
(00:54): Hey athletes, welcome to episode number 66, and I hope you're having a fantastic day and even better week, I'm recording this week and we're entering the Memorial day weekend. So before we get into this episode, I just want to take a moment and reflect on those service men and women who have sacrificed their lives. So we could have a better today and tomorrow. I know many of you listening, know someone or know someone who knows someone who lost their lives while you in uniform and serving our country. And if you weren't aware, I am a us army veteran. I served in the army from 2007 to 2013. Personally, I have had a few battle buddies that have been gone way too soon. And when I think of them, it is still really hard for me to believe that they're gone. I sit and think about moments and when we were talking and chatting and you just have no idea that that they're going to be gone.
(01:40): So I want to take a few moments even before we get in this podcast. And, you know, even as we move past Memorial day, don't ever forget these people. They may be gone, but they're our friends and they're never forgotten. Well, what's on the podcast agenda today. The topic is something I think you'll find very, very interesting, and it is the uncomfortable truth about injury. Now, this podcast branches off of the personal challenge that I held for myself for the past 30 days, I didn't invite anybody to do this. I just got this wild idea. I was bored with my routine in late April. And I realized like one of the biggest things missing from my routine was cardio. I just don't do a lot of cardio to be honest, cardio. Isn't something that I really ever gravitate towards. I've had goals that have required cardiovascular training, but most of the time, if it comes to it, this or that cardio or weight training, I'm always going to choose weights.
(02:29): I just liked the way lifting feels more than I liked the way cardio feels. Well, I've got a great home gym set up and I can do almost anything I can back squat. I can bench. I even have some cable pulleys set up so I can do my favorite pulley exercises, like tricep press downs and lat pull downs. But that dang cardio, like I just don't like to do it. So at the end of April, I was thinking, okay, moral day, Murphy's coming up. And I always liked to do the workout Murph. If you're not aware of it, I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about it on this podcast, but Google it, what the Murph workout Murph CrossFit workout is if you're unaware, but this is coming up, it'll be happening here in a few days as I record this, but I always struggle with the running part and the weight vest part.
(03:08): It's just, it's just so uncomfortable, right. Which I know that's what hero workouts are supposed to be. But when I was putting together a good challenge for myself, I'm like, well, wouldn't it be great if I prepped myself for Memorial day Murph so that running wasn't so terrible, terrible feeling. So the challenge I came up with was 30 minutes of cardio for the next 30 days. I started challenge on April 26 and I finished on may 26. So just a few days ago, I got done with it. I did 30 full days of 30 minutes of cardio. Now I knew this was going to be a good challenge for me because it checked off. Some of the boxes that I think are really, really important when it comes to challenges. Number one is totally doable. Like there is no reason that I could not do 30 minutes of cardio a day for 30 days.
(03:48): I'm not injured and I can easily find 30 minutes in my day to get cardio in. I also have a treadmill at home. So once again, no excuses, the weather is crap. So really there is no reason why I couldn't do it. Number two, it was hard enough where it was suck a little. And I don't think a challenge should be too easy, but also shouldn't be so hard that you have to like completely rearrange your life around it, because then it becomes very difficult. And oftentimes that's when we fall off the wagon and we don't stay compliant or, and then number three, it would be easiest up or down depending on how my train is stimulus was coming along. So like I could run faster if I happen to not feel so good. One day I could just walk the foundation of the country challenge was 30 minutes of cardio.
(04:31): And then how he decided to interpret that from day to day is essentially how I'm feeling. How is my training stimulus it's coming along. So for example, I hate wearing in a weight vest. It's just not comfortable for me. I've hated wearing training vests. I've hated wearing rucks heavy ruck since I've been in the army. It's just not something that I enjoy, but I really wanted to train for Murph. And I, I want to do enjoy the running aspect of everything else. The body weight movements with the vest, they're easy for me, but it said, dang, wait this. So for my cardio efforts for 90% of my cardio days, 25 out of the 30 days that I did it, I wore a weight vest and I have a 20 pounds. So it was making it harder for myself, but it still wasn't out of reach.
(05:06): Right? So it goes back to that goal setting principle that I mentioned before, not easy to do, but also not completely out of the realm of possibility. So, I mean, it's just a little bit harder on myself, improve the train stimulus. I started out very, very easy. I just started walking. I have a treadmill at home, like I said, so I slept in my weight vest and I walked for 30 minutes and after a few days it started to feel pretty easy. So I started doing running intervals at first, the right intervals were easy too. It was one minute on every five minutes. Then after that got to be easy. I ran only during the commercials that run. So I like to bring up my iPad and I watch ESPN and stuff while I run. And I was like, okay, just during the commercials. And I will tell you, like, there are lots of commercials and they are very, very long.
(05:46): So anyway, I started running just during the commercials. So I amped it up a little bit. It'd be like three to five minutes, every air interval until like 30 minutes. And then my goal on the very last day, like I knew when I started, like, I want to run with the weight vest on for the full 30 minutes. So I got to today 27 and I was doing intervals of three on two. Yeah. Which put me at 18 minutes. And then the date before the 30th day. So day 29, I did 25 minutes of running. And then the final day I did 30. So you can see how I like progressively trained and overloaded myself, but just enough to elicit a good training stimulus. I didn't get injured at all. It was actually really, really enjoyable. And the whole point of me telling you all these fine details of my progression is that I successfully completed this in whole challenge.
(06:33): And I was really smart about my training too. There were days where I found myself a little bit more sore than others. So instead of running, I just kept the foundation of the challenge. And I walk, I just did 30 minutes of cardio. You know, I'm like, I don't need to run today. I need to push myself for the sake of just pushing myself to be hard. I was still within the foundation, the challenge, which was 30 minutes of cardio and that's all, anything above and beyond was always icing on the cake. I was only competing with myself and the only person I had to be accountable to was myself. I had a good time and I had such a good time that I decided for June, I'm going to execute on another challenge. It also fits into all the blocks that I mentioned earlier.
(07:07): It's totally doable. It's scalable. There's lots of ways to make it harder. And what I'm going to do is for the next 30 days, starting on June 1st, I'm gonna do 100 lunches a day. It's totally doable. It's not going to be easy. There's so many other ways you can scale it. Like I mentioned, and depending on how my body feels from day to day, I can also, you know, take it back a step or I can ramp it up. I got really excited about the challenge and I shared it with some of the athletes in the VIP community and it just, it blew up. Like I could not believe the response that I got. I just checked the post today that I put, and there's over 600 comments on that post. And as of within 24 hours of posting that challenge, there are over 300 athletes who have signed up with the June challenge as well.
(07:45): So there are lots of people who want to do 100 lunches a day for the next 30 days. And I love it. I love it. In fact, some of you listening, might've already seen it, but here's where it gets tricky. So I love coaching. I love leading others, but what I, I found is I'm going to have to get very good at leading others on listening to their own body. The only requirement of the challenge coming up is that you do 100 lunches a day. That's it? It doesn't do you break it up, but I got a lot of questions already. And then I realized like, man, I've got to be very clear on this. So I'm also hoping that this podcast blend that some of the challengers listened to it, but this helps you understand how you can train progressively overload and feel okay about taking a step back.
(08:28): So you don't get injured. Some of the questions I've got on this challenge specifically are do all the lunges have to be done at once. Do we have to use weight? Can we use weight? Do we have to do them equally on, on both legs? So do we have to be 50 on one, like 50 on the other? What if I have bad knees? And this is where the challenge of being a coach comes in. I wish that I could snap my fingers and give everyone a magic formula for knowing thyself, right? Like, you know exactly, what's good for you. You don't need a coach to tell you, but then I wouldn't have a job. Like I wouldn't even be having this podcast. If everybody knew all of these little things that I've learned over the years. But ultimately my goal as a coach is to help an athlete learn about the awareness of their body and be patient and be able to guide themselves to whatever their goal may be.
(09:11): Whatever promised land it is that you want to get to. That is my job as a coach is to guide you on your journey, not force my beliefs and the way that I trained down your throat. I feel a lot of athletes, whether it's this upcoming challenge, the 100 lunches a day in 30 days, or just general training plans, you get so gung ho and you go too hard, too fast. They want to keep up. They want to follow the crowd. They want to be a part of the majority. But I am here to tell you that that is the fastest ticket to messing yourself up and succumbing to injury. If there is one gift that I have acquired over the past 18 years of fitness experience, it is being able to be disciplined enough to listen to my body. I listen to my body every single day and I respect what it says.
(09:53): I do not push it harder than it feels, but it didn't come easily. Like there were lots of times where I just said, screw it. I did it anyways. And I ended up injured and losing way more training days like one rest day versus weeks or months off due to injury. I'd rather take one rest day, right? Like who wouldn't. So I'm not trained for any event right now. I'm not required to be at any certain level of fitness for a job or a competition. But I do know that the fastest way to fall off track is to get hurt. And often athletes don't just get hurt in like one specific instance. I mean, sure you see some of the crazy Instagram videos where people drop weights on their heads, their bodies, their feet, whatever, but usually it's just from progressively beating yourself up, going to the edge.
(10:34): And eventually, eventually you're going to fall off. We push ourselves so hard at the boundaries and we just simply can't recover anymore. It's the repeat abuse and the belief in, I will rest when I'm dead, that throws most athletes off. I know why we do that to ourselves though. I've been there even during my 30 days of cardio challenge on occasion, I had to talk myself off of that ego ledge that I was on. I was a little beat up and I added time and tempo when I was wearing a weight vest. And I felt it the next day. But instead of doing what younger Katie would have done less disciplined Katie, and just saying, I'm just going to go hard and go hard because doggone it, like, that's what I got to do. Right. I got to prove it to somebody, even though nobody really cared. I just kept true to the challenge. I asked myself what was the challenge I had originally set for myself. And the challenge was to do 30 minutes of cardio for the next 30 days. And I knew that if I wanted to keep at it all 30 days, I
(11:26): Could not get injured. Like I could not have a bum knee. I couldn't have a bad back. I had to be smart with how I train. Hey, I know. And you know that, I talk a lot about using supplements on your fitness journey and reaching your full potential. How I believe they're integral pieces of the puzzle to reaching your best self and best fitness results. But do you know how supplements fit into your plan? Do you know what to take for your goals and how much of a supplement you should take if you ever had any of those questions and you want to know how supplements can work for you and your goals, go to your fitness supplements.com and take the free free, free three point personalized supplement assessment. And we just a few questions. You'll have a complete personalized supplement recommendation in less than 60 seconds. You'll know more about how supplements fit into your fitness goals. What's safe and what's effective and perfect for you. So type in your fitness supplements.com in your internet browser, take the free assessment and get on the fast track to your best fitness results.
(12:31): And guess what you guys, I survived. My ego came out of it just fine. I came out of my challenge without a single injury. I've no knee pain, no chronic fatigue, 30 minutes of cardio for 30 days at age 35 and the one small little win that did come out of it besides not getting injured. As I found, I lost 1% of body fat over this, which I mean, it's 1%, but it's still something to boast about, right? It's a feel good goal. It's a vanity metric. Probably like, why am I telling you off of this? It is not to brag on myself. I don't need to brag on myself to you guys, but I want to express what happens when you listen to your body. It talks to you. Everybody's body talks to you. My buddy talks to me, your body talks to you.
(13:12): It's just, are you listening to it? Now, some people are going to call this gut instincts, whatever you want to call it, just listening to your body and you'll hear it once you hear it, you're going to want to listen. There's a lot of hard nut coaches out there. They're going to tell you to put your head down, embrace the suck. Now there is a time and a place for that. There really is. After all, most of you listening, most of you listening to are probably not trained for the Navy seals. That would be a time and a place for embracing this up. Basic training is a place to embrace the suck, but in your daily training, your daily longevity training, just to be the best version of yourself, that is not the time and the place to embrace the suck. Just for the sake of proving to a hard nut coach that you can hammer away endlessly without any repercussions to your body.
(13:55): If you're training to live longer, if you're training to be healthier and prosper well into your old age, you've got to listen to your body. You're training now is to mitigate the effects of aging, not to hasten it. We don't want to get older, faster. We don't want to be laid up broken bones later on our lives. We want to be healthy, happy, stand on all of our legs, go to the bathroom by ourselves, feeding ourselves, being able to drive well into our golden years. And one skill of a well seasoned and wise athlete is to listen to your body. Anybody can do this at any point in your fitness endeavor, you can do this. You can stop and say, I'm going to listen to my body this time. I know most of you want to move mountains, but you can't move mountains when you're broken and beaten down.
(14:37): I believe that you can all do better for yourself. If you start to listen to that little voice in your head that tells you, you know, maybe today we can dial it back a little bit. So next week we can go a little bit harder. How do you listen to your body though? Well, I knew you were going to ask that. So I, up with my best suggestions I came up with, this is what I do when I get to that crossroads where I'm like, I want to train hard. And my ego is just a little bit fragile, but at the same time, I know better because I've been there before. So here's what I do. I ask myself if I'm going into a workout and I'm not very jazzed up about it, I asked myself, why, why am I not excited about this workout?
(15:11): I know yesterday I was excited. I know the day before I was excited, why am I feeling today? That I'm just not really feeling it? Am I tired to have a crappy day at work? Am I recovering from an illness to have my period? Was there a max out of 10 or a PR attempt? And one of my workouts in the past few days, all of these things affect how our body feels. The food we put in our body that affects her body feels did she like crap yesterday? You know why you gotta ask yourself why that's where awareness starts is asking yourself why and getting real with yourself after you've given yourself an honest reason as to why you're not excited about your current workout, ask yourself what the real reason behind your workout is. Like, do you want to be healthy for life?
(15:50): Is it to be able to play with your kids more than likely you're not training go to the Tokyo Olympics. So be honest, like, what is the purpose of your workout? You're probably not training for the Navy seals. You're probably not at basic training and have a drill Sergeant yelling at your face. You're probably just training because you want to live longer and you want to age well and gracefully, right. Then ask yourself this. If I rested today, what is the worst thing that's going to happen to me? If you actually dialed it back a little bit, or heaven forbid took the whole day off. What's the worst thing that happens. Honestly, the worst thing that probably happens is your ego gets a little bit fragile. Okay? That's really the worst thing that happens. And the worst thing that happens is probably looking over at your training partner, Joe Schmoe, and he's lifting heavier weights than you.
(16:35): If that is the worst thing that happens to you for taking a rest day, as you get out lifted by your training mate, that's okay. You can live through that. If you take a rest day, you might be able to come back harder the next day and I'll lift him six set of seven days the week. Right? And then finally ask yourself if I took a rest day, if you did take this rest day, or if you dialed it back a little bit, would it help me feel better for the upcoming workouts and more than likely it probably would. Okay. So in order, ask yourself why you're not jazzed about your workout, your self, why you're really working out today. What's the real reason what are you really training for? And then if you did take that rest day, or if you did dial it back a little bit, what's the worst thing that happened.
(17:15): And if you took that rest day and dialed it back, how's it going to make you feel free upcoming workouts, ask yourself those questions. That's how we build awareness. That's how you build that discipline. And being able to listen to your body. You got to ask it questions, especially if you're new to this game, I'm sure it's talking to you. I'm sure it's told you many, many times that you shouldn't pick up that barbel as heavy. That is, and you knew better. So now I'll start to ask yourself these questions, gain some awareness and have a little chit chat back and forth with yourself to kind of gain clarity on what you're actually working out for. And worst case scenario. You took a rest day, where are you at in your training? Where do you want to go with it? Longterm? And what is the context of the training plan that you're currently working in athletes?
(17:55): I have had my fair share of coaches who would probably guess at the fact that I'm telling you to maybe take a rest day. If you need it, they would tell I've been told over and over again, suck it up, keep grinding, put your nose down. Don't be a little. Suck it up, whatever, whatever over the phrases, I've heard it before. And I can tell you right now that none of that advice has ever paid off. It never got me anywhere better in my training routine. Every coach who has ever told me to just suck it up or embrace this up and who never listened to my story, training concerns, it never helped me. That advice has never ever served me. If it has served you, I would love to know how it serves you. So let me know if it has, I am very open to other people's opinions and ideas.
(18:38): This is just my experience with the past 18 years. I do believe in rest days. I don't know why some coaches don't. I just think it's silly recovery happens when we sleep get better. We build ourselves back up. When we eat, when we sleep, when we recover, if you keep breaking something down, over and over again, it never is able to recover and repair the pieces. We can think of so many metaphors, so many analogies for why this applies. You know, you think of erosion and soil. I mean, that's a really easy one. Maybe sounds kind of cheesy and an off topic here for this podcast. But if you continue to wear things away, they never get better. You cannot build on a broken foundation with a bunch of holes in it. You just can't listen to your body. Take that rest day. And you'll be glad that you did.
(19:20): And if you must absolutely go to the gym because your brain is wired that way, and you have to do something, go for a walk stretch. There's so many, any other ways to honor your body outside of beating the out of it, day in and day out just for the sake of being a hard, okay? You just don't have to do it. A disciplined athlete understands that progressive overload training and the principles that align with that type of program design include rest. So progressive overload training, which is generally what any good training plan is. Right? We want it. We started a certain point and we train up to a certain point to get to a certain threshold. And then we analyze and assess. And then we continue on a training plan. That's progressive overload training, but in there, in there, there are sets of rests.
(20:02): There are places in which recovery is very important because our body needs to be at a hundred percent or in theory at a hundred percent before we go onto the next part of our training plan, if you will, I want to be working out well into your golden years. You got to stop flooring it all the time. Take your foot off the gas just a little bit. I assure you, you will be fine. You will be fine. Remember there is no magic pill and fitness in life takes time and it takes work. But if you continually push yourself to the edge, you will fall off. You do not have to go there though. It is a choice. That doesn't mean that you might not get injured in some way, shape or form like injuries happen. Freak stuff happens, right? But the more that you listen to your body, the less likely it is that you will get injured due to the of your training program in design, the less likely you get injured and you look in the mirror and go, God, I totally could have prevented that you do not have to prove to anyone that you're committed.
(20:55): You just have to believe in yourself. You have to listen to your body and you got to trust the dang process athletes. If you haven't already please join my VIP community. I'm going to make sure that the link is in the show notes. So you can get in on the fun if you're not in already. And as always, it is a pleasure to spend every week with you and share some of my best practices that have helped me achieve my best fitness and my mindset to date. My results have come from years and years of practice, years of mindset training, I've had errors. I've had failures. I've had lots of success as well. Everything between I am here to help your journey be more successful. And I'm here to provide you with some of the most crucial advice that has helped me through the years. Let me know if you have any questions, you can always send me an email at any time. Katie@Coachkatiedanger.Com. That is a rep athletes for episode number 66. Remember
(21:42): Trust the process, enjoy the journey, train hard, but train smart and don't ever, ever, ever quit. This is coach Katie D.
(21:54): This is ThePodcastFactory.com
