Yesterday, in my enthusiasm to help my team win a relay race while teaching a team training class, I launched myself across the finish line at the end of my bear crawl to secure the victory. The minute I did so, I felt a searing pain shoot down my right arm from a shoulder that's been injured since March. 

But my team won. 

Boom.

I’m not sure exactly what kind of damage I did, but I know two things; you can’t deprogram your competitive nature and it’s really frustrating to deal with the consequences.

A few weeks back, one of our clients who is a former Division I athlete said it best:

“I’m like a lab that just keeps eating socks, no matter how many times I need surgery to get the socks out.”

I see a lot of folks like the two of us battle similar frustrations month in and month out: you get into a workout routine and then someone invites you to play in a teacher/student basketball team and you break your finger. 

So for the next few months you work out around the broken finger only to end up with a bum shoulder. After a few months working around that you end up with pain in your toe. 

The cycle goes on and on.

What's important in the above scenario is that you keep on working out. 

The other kind of frustration I see most from day to day is the folks who are showing up, putting in the work, and not seeing the kind of changes they had hoped to see.

"If I’m going to work this hard and not see any results, then why bother?" 

It’s a fair and valid point. 

And sometimes the last thing you want to hear is, well, you just have to keep on keeping on.

Stay at it!

Stay consistent! It’ll come!

These things are true, but they’re not always what you want to hear. Sometimes what you want to hear is validation of your frustration.

Yes, that sucks. It really does. 

Don’t discount the feeling. Spend some time with how you feel. And, as hard as it is for so many of us, let yourself feel all of the emotions that come with it. Give yourself some time and space to feel it. Grab that medball and do a stress-busting circuit of slams (if you need that workout, let one of us know :-) ).

Talk through it with someone. 

As coaches, that’s what we’re here for. Yes to help you work on technique and form, but most importantly to help you through the hard times. Not seeing results and breaking yourself every time you just have to play an alumni field hockey game is frustrating. We've been there. 

Focus on the process. 

I know, it’s hard. But that quote on our wall when you walk through the door is there for a reason.

1% better. 

Focus on showing up and putting in the work. Focus on family pets and things that bring you joy. Focus on what’s good and if you need help being reminded of what’s good don’t be afraid to ask. 

Frustration is challenging. But we're here to help you negotiate that challenge as best as we can. 

Even if some of you, like myself, just keep on eating those socks :)

Sometimes as fitness professionals, we train a new client on a Monday and then Wednesday watch them shuffle back through the door for another session.

“How are you feeling?” We ask this with a little glint in our eye.

“I ripped the toilet paper dispenser out of the wall trying to get off the toilet yesterday,” they say. "Other than that, amazing."

The sarcasm is thick, and we chuckle a little.

“I’m billing you for the repairs.”

I have no statistical proof, but dressing like Jane Fonda may also help reduce soreness. 

We chuckle less. 

That soreness that you experience is known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). This type of soreness is different from acute soreness, which is pain that develops during the actual activity. Delayed soreness doesn't hit you for the first few hours. It's the next few days that has you cursing a blue streak every time you go down stairs or get up from your chair. 

If you want to add a little science to the sauce, soreness develops as a result of microscopic damage to the muscle fibers involved in the exercise. DOMS is a side effect of the repair process that develops in response to microscopic muscle damage. 

This soreness isn't limited to folks who are new to working out. I've taken the last 10 days off of lifting and decided to celebrate my Thanksgiving Day with a two-hour workout that included clusters of squats. 

All you need to know is that clusters of squats after a few weeks out of the gym was a bad idea. Because walking. 

You are bound to have some soreness when you start a new workout program, but there are a few things you can do to help reduce the soreness after. 

1. Ease into the routine

If you’ve been relatively static for a long time and then someone drags you to an hour-long advanced spin class, you can be sure that you’ll have to roll out of bed the next morning. In my case, I could have gone with four sets of five squats instead of four sets of 20 squats.

That was stupid. I knew better.

And now today I'm going to go cut down a Christmas tree and scream my lungs out trying to get up from the ground. As Sheila tells me often, this fitness thing is going to kill me.  

If you've got a program that calls for four sets of nine different exercises, start with two sets on day one. By the end of the week you'll be ready to add that third set. Allowing your muscles time to adapt to the new stresses can reduce the severity of the soreness you experience in the days following. And the best news is that once you get through that first bout of soreness from those squats, you'll not experience that level of discomfort from DOMS again, until you take another long break from lifting.

Don't take those long breaks if you can help it.  

2. Move

I played volleyball in high school, and we would start the season in August by practicing from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The next morning involved rolling out of bed and army crawling my way to the bathroom. It always seemed impossible to think I was going to manage another day of practice. But miraculously, as we groaned our way through the warm up laps, we felt better. 

The last thing you want to do when you are sore is actually move. But some gentle stretching and light walking will actually help you feel better. When muscles are in recovery mode they tend to tighten up which is only going to make you feel more sore.

3. Light foam rolling or massage and ibuprofen

My legs were so upset with me yesterday that even foam rolling was out of the question. But what I did do was use the tiger stick very lightly on my quads and hamstrings. Again, it's about keeping the blood flowing to the muscles to keep them from getting too tight.

And if all else fails, a low dose of ibuprofen can help take the edge off. Trust me, I'll be using my tiger stick and then taking some ibuprofen before Sheila drags me all over a rainy Christmas tree farm to cut down our tree.

AND....

Have you signed up for my newsletter? No? Well now you get a free guide to surviving the holidays when you sign up below. 

Happy Saturday!

My first full week of being 40 has been filled with the norovirus. I'll wait while you google that if you're unfamiliar.

You're welcome. Hopefully I only share that special kind of hell verbally and not physically.

Also, when I renewed my driver's license, I was informed that I had to take an eye exam because I'm "over 40."

This isn't on the list, but smoothies are a great way to get some quality nutrition. In the picture above, I've got almond milk, a scoop of vanilla protein powder, greek yogurt, berries, and a greens supplement. 

Let the games begin.

I joke, but a friend put it best the other day: enjoy the privilege of aging. 

Anyway, a full four days of ginger ale has me thinking full steam about nutrition and the kinds of food I plan to eat when I starting putting solid food back in my system. So with that in mind, here are five random thoughts on nutrition:

1. Track your food for a week

It sounds so basic, but the best way to figure out how to make changes to your diet is to spend some time tracking everything you eat.

And I mean everything.

Apps like MyFitnessPal have made this process much easier, as you can scan a barcode, type in the serving amount, and voila! You have your total calorie amount.

The catch is to track everything and to be totally honest for one week. This includes salad dressings, drinks, snacks, apples, chocolate chips, supplements; track it all.

2. Measure your food

This goes along with the first thought, but measuring your food for a few days can be very helpful. Let me tell you how I felt when I measured out an actual serving of Trader Joe's Trail Mix versus what I felt was a serving.

Very. Sad. In. My. Heart.

Measuring is especially important with any oils or dressings your using. I've seen folks who practice clean eating and don't  see the results they expect. Often it comes down to something as simple as recognizing you were using three tablespoons of olive oil on your salad instead of one tablespoon.

Three tablespoons equate to 360 calories and 42 grams of fat. 

But it's easy to over-use if you don't measure. 

3. Find like-minded people who support your nutrition changes  

When you begin to turn down the sweets around the office or french fries when out with friends, others often react to what your personal changes mean about them. If you're cutting down on carbs and I'm not, I might suddenly feel guilty that I'm not joining you. So my reaction, sometimes without even thinking about it, is to pressure you. 

"It's just one night."

"You're going to the gym every day."

"It's just dessert." 

The bottom line is finding a supportive group of people who respect your wishes. Sure it's ok to indulge now and then when you're making these changes. But if you're constantly swimming upstream because no one around is supporting your decisions, it will be a lot harder to stay the course.  

4. Make small changes 

Overhauling your entire nutrition plan is a lot to ask. And yet almost all of us do it, and many of us are caught in a cycle of doing it over and over again. First of all, we're overwhelmed with the amount of options out there, and it's hard to decide which one is right. 

Whichever route you decide to take, practice changing one habit per week. (Tracking your food intake can help you make these decisions). 

Start with the empty calories in drinks. Sodas, iced teas, even some types of flavored waters can have 45-90 calories. 

Are you eating two breakfasts? Do you eat when you get up and then eat again a few hours later? Try eliminating one of those meals and see how you feel. Sometimes we eat out of habit, and not out of hunger. 

5.Practice the 80/20 rule.

Some of the simplest nutritional advice I've ever seen is from Tony Gentilcore. "Don't eat like an a**hole." It's concrete, to the point advice, that might lack some details but sums up the basic idea behind clean eating.

Most of us know what we need to do, it's just a question of doing it. Eating clean is simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy.

It's also nearly impossible to eat perfectly all of the time. Thanksgiving is next week; there will be pie, and turkey and gravy and pie. The 80/20 rule means that you're eating clean at least 80% of the time, and understanding that 20% of the time you're going to be at family gatherings or on vacations where you can't stick to all of the same habits. Allow for those times. 

And enjoy your Saturday.