Your Physical Health: The Stress and Exercise Cocktail
Not all stress is bad stress. In fact, if you're not stressing your system enough in the gym, you're spinning your damn wheels.
Good Morning!
It’s Friday. Was that subheading a little too mean for you?
I hope you’ve had a great week up to this point. I’ll say this every week until I have Bari Weiss’ subscribership, but I highly encourage you to gift a subscription to The Mental Wealth Blog to a friend. Anyone who needs guidance on their mental well-being or physical fitness can benefit from at least one of these articles, and they’re archived, dating back to January 2022.
In previous newsletters, I’ve made the case that super-intense exercise performed too often can often have a reverse stress-relief effect and that the overstressing of the body can backfire on you. I sincerely urge you to re-read my article from a few weeks ago in case you ever consider an aggressive training program. That goes especially for those who already operate in high-stress work environments.
Today, however, I will address the other side of the argument and pose solutions for accomplishing a more balanced exercise diet for those who may not be working hard enough.
Enter The Stress and Exercise Cocktail.
No, it’s not a drink. It’s a metaphor for the mixing of Stress and Exercise into a system that pushes you to just enough exhaustion for change to happen. It can be challenging to know where that exhaustion and adaptation point is. So let’s examine why stress and exercise are, in some ways, synonymous.
A simple fact of fitness is that adaptations and changes happen because of stress. This means we need a good dose of stress here and there (not the “pulling your hair out” kind, though). This stress is called eustress. If a stressor persists long enough, we eventually accommodate it, and it no longer becomes stressful.
Simple, right?
Not necessarily. Since we already know what too much stress looks like from an exercise lens (this stress is called distress — harmful to the system), we need to discuss where adaptations stop so that you don’t plateau with exercise.
The words “progress” and “adaptations” will be used flexibly and interchangeably throughout this piece and are synonymous with my point.
Starting from Square One, we need to have an outcome we’re looking for when we exercise, and I hate to say it, but “just feeling good” might not be enough. The number on the scale is a common one. Running a faster mile is another. Progress pictures in the mirror are a fan favorite, too. Without these tangible and noticeable measurements, you’ll have a tough time knowing if what you’re doing is working.
Now, if you have a goal, that’s great; you’re already ahead of many, many people. If you’ve been reading since my very first newsletter, you’ll remember I talked a lot about how New Year’s Resolutioners fall off and fall off quickly. This is usually because they just say, “I’m going to exercise more,” and not, “I’m going to exercise more because _____.” The motive for doing something strenuous will keep you going, and seeing results toward that motive will continue that process.
Shaken or Stirred: Assembling your Cocktail
Now we get into the weeds a bit. For every “I’m going to sweat a gallon in class today” HIIT junky, there likely exists a person who may just be congratulating themselves for repeating the same workout 3-5 times a week. Consistency should always be celebrated,
Even if goals are set, the unfortunate nature of training is that the stimulus needs to change for a goal to be constantly reached. Walking 2 miles on the treadmill daily is great, but at some point, months down the road, your body will accommodate that. It will cease to be (eu)stressful enough for any meaningful change.
For clarification, I think there’s a fair amount of information that explains how to progress your training. Sifting through google searches of how to get leaner can be headache-inducing, but generally, you want to add weight progressively, repetitions, and sets to each exercise.
While this sounds easy, what I’m getting at here is a two-fold problem.
There is a significant amount of 2-mile-a-day treadmillers that are not getting anywhere because they’re not being honest about challenging themselves.
Some pretty well-educated beginners may be short-changing themselves into fewer reps, pounds, and overall training time in the name of “playing it safe” when they are shying away from a more fruitful training style. They might be progressing things appropriately but a bit too cautiously for change to happen.
I understand how this might look like me being condescending.
“So Fran, you’re saying too many people work too hard, and too many don’t work hard enough? Does anybody do it right?”
I think that plenty of people have struck the perfect balance, and it takes a ton of time to find what your level of “hard” is. I think an honest assessment of your training’s difficulty is necessary at LEAST once a month. And it may even help to pick up a pair of weights that are legitimately too heavy for you every so often to see where your limits are.
(Note: It’s essential to be careful about how much fitness information you consume from social media. This page above can be helpful, but it can also be overly absolute in its assumptions about pain and how to lift. Do your research!)
The Orange Peel Garnish for Your Stress and Exercise
I don’t think, however, that it’s necessarily the smartest thing to seek out someone who’s found their balance and copy their exact routine because what works for them may not necessarily work for you. If you like your margaritas with two limes and no salt, would you enjoy switching to spicy, salt-rimmed ones from here on out?
Luckily for all of you readers, though, I have established some parameters that have historically worked across the board for myself and the hundreds of clients I’ve coached.
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