Listen to Your Body

Listen to YOUR Body

So I turned 50 a couple weeks ago.  Yes, that is old…1/2 century!  I don’t feel 50.  What is 50 meant to feel like?  I don’t really know but if you look around at people, you’ll probably think that 50 is meant to be the beginning of the end and it sure doesn’t have to be.  For the most part, I don’t feel any different than I did last year at this time or even 10 years ago.  I don’t think I look any different and I certainly don’t act any different.    I’m starting to look at my workouts in the same way.  I want to be strong, healthy and mobile.  I work out hard but there are days I feel tired, when I feel tired I take an active recovery day.  I will walk or do some stretching. I listen to my body. 

This is particularly true if you have an injury.  So often we think we need to keep working out when we hurt.  Let’s take a friend of mine as an example.  She hurt her back, she had overdone it doing a dragonboat race and then proceeded to try to do a heavy deadlift.  At that point, she hurt herself badly. She kept trying to work through it only to never get better.  She would start to heal and then try to do a little bit again only to aggravate the injury.  This turned into a year long saga of getting better for a time, then pushing too hard and at times even getting worse. So why didn’t she listen to her body and take it easy? Now, you might be thinking she is old and stubborn. Nope, she is young and stubborn. She felt that if she were going to do the WOD, she had to do it as prescribed and let the pressure she felt dictate the workout she did instead of listening to her body.  Which meant she did many moves that she knew aggravated the injury because she didn’t want to be viewed as a failure. Listening to your body isn’t failing though. 

We are not all Games Athletes.  We are just normal people trying to be fit and healthy and we are all different, with different motivations.  Just because the WOD says to use a specific weight or movement, doesn’t mean your body says to use a specific weight or to do a specific movement. If you can’t do that movement or weight, then let us help you make the workout work for you.  Talk to your coach and scale or use a movement that you can do without pain or adding to an existing injury.  No matter your age, that hour that you spend in the gym is your time, make it work for you.

-Coach Connie