A Friendly Nudge - Progress
...because we all could use a little encouragement!
Comfort doesn’t drive change. If I’m sitting on the couch watching sports on TV and the temperature in the room is perfect, I’m not going to get up and adjust the thermostat or put on a sweater. But if a cold front’s blown in and it’s feeling pretty miserable inside, I’ll get up and put on a sweater or turn up the heat.
Our bodies are like that. We don’t get stronger unless we give our bodies a compelling and persistent reason to do so. In fact, unfortunately, the opposite happens. If we’re not actively working to build strength, resilience, and mobility our bodies interpret that as a sign that those things aren’t important to us. It can be a painful lesson of “use it or lose it.” I’ve always understood that intellectually, but for the longest time most of my exercise sessions were little better than just going through the motions.
At the gym, some of the machines that I use aren’t the easiest to see how much weight I’m selecting. The markings on most of the weight stacks are worn or faint, the lighting isn’t perfect and the vision in my reattached retina is dodgy enough to test just how badly do I want to know exactly how much weight I’m lifting. For years I never worried about it. I figured I’m at the gym, that should count for something. I’d do my 8-12 reps for a set or two, repeat that process on a handful of machines and call it a day. Both my body and I were comfortable enough with that approach that neither one of us felt compelled to change.
The downside of doing a newsletter like this is that it’s hard to ignore the research or the stories that I hear from people about how devastatingly expensive comfort can be. Your strength and mobility don’t usually tap you on the shoulder and announce that they’re leaving. In fact, you’d swear that they were there just a second ago, but sadly they began abandoning you while you were busy being comfortable.
Resistance training gives us a chance to send an unequivocal signal to our body that things like strength, balance, mobility, and resilience are genuinely important to us and that we’re willing to push ourselves out of our comfort zone to have more of them. And the good news is that it doesn’t have to be some super-human, veins popping out of your neck, excruciating effort. But it needs to be vigorous and intense enough that your body doesn’t mistake it for background noise.
I like to think in terms of reps in reserve. There are times that I’ll do an exercise set until I can’t do another rep. That’s zero reps in reserve, but that’s limited to situations where I can bail out or fail safely. I’m not interested in getting pinned under a barbell and wouldn’t recommend it. For most people shooting for 2 reps in reserve is enough stimulus for a set. You’re working hard, but you know that if push comes to a hard shove, you could manage 2 more reps.
This next piece is something I didn’t appreciate enough until recently, even though the evidence supporting it is overwhelming. Your workouts have to get more challenging over time. Progressive overload is at the heart of virtually every benefit that we get from exercise. As our bodies get stronger we ask them to do more. We might increase the weight we’re lifting or the thickness of the resistance band. We might do 10 pushups instead of 9. Maybe we increase the tempo of an exercise or slow it down to make it more challenging, but the goal with all of these adjustments is to safely push our bodies to continue to adapt and get stronger and more resilient.
I’ve also gained a great appreciation for the value of warm up sets. I’ll do several sets of a lower number of reps and lighter weight or resistance to prepare my muscles and joints for a more intense effort. It takes a little longer but it reduces the chances of tweaks and injuries.
Not every workout is going to be amazing or even remotely as productive or satisfying as the one before. Sometimes just showing up and going through the motions is all you’ve got and that’s OK. And some days my workout is mowing the lawn or going for a walk. Improving our health and getting stronger isn’t about perfection or beating ourselves up because we don’t measure up to some arbitrary goal or standard. Progress is gradual and it takes patience, with a healthy level of stubbornness and a sizable dose of humility.
But it also requires keeping score. I’m just using my note taking app on my phone and I have a list of the exercises that I do at the gym and I log the weight I used for each set and the number of reps. It’s important to start where you are, but it’s also important to push yourself enough so that 6 wall pushups progresses to 8 wall push ups and over time you graduate to 4 counter pushups and continue building from there. Keeping in mind that we’re working up to the point where we still have just a couple of reps in reserve. If you’ve been doing 12-14 seated rows with a lighter resistance band, it may be time to graduate to a heavier resistance band and depending on how much thicker that band is, your new set might be 6 reps and you’ll gradually increase the number of reps in your set as you progress.
This approach works whether you’re doing the exercises as snacks or doing them as a circuit, but if you’re doing snacks you still want to build some warm up work into your snack approach. The goal is to build our strength and capacity over time. Exercising with a deliberate intention of building strength and expanding your capacity brings some extra intensity and focus to your workouts and gives you a chance to amaze yourself over time.
Now let’s make something tasty to help fuel that intensity.
Cilantro Chicken Salad
I buy a rotisserie chicken at least every few weeks and more often if things are really hectic. It’s a convenient way to get the protein covered for a few meals and I try to make a point of deboning it as soon as I get it home.
The mayo that I had was looking a little sketchy so I did this one with all full fat plain yogurt but swapping out a ¼ cup of yogurt for mayo would make the dish even a little richer. It also bumps up the calories since ¼ cup of plain full fat yogurt is 38 calories but ¼ of mayo is 400 calories. For context, that difference of roughly 360 calories is about the same number of calories as 6 oz of chicken.
Ingredients:
1 rotisserie chicken, deboned
¾ cup full fat plain yogurt
¼ cup mayo (or use all yogurt for a leaner version
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
1 handful mint, chopped
4 green onions, trimmed and chopped
1 lime juiced
1 jalapeno, chopped with the stems and seeds removed
Salt and pepper to taste
Debone the chicken and combine the ingredients. Season with salt and pepper.
Enjoy!
Now let’s put that protein to work and build some muscle.
It’s important that if you’re going to increase the intensity of your exercise that you check with your doctor if you have any doubts about your readiness to exercise, especially if you haven’t been exercising in a while or it’s been a while since your last checkup. Remember to skip any exercises that you’re unsure of or that feel a little too advanced. These may feel more approachable as you get stronger.
It’s also important to do some warm up sets prior to pushing yourself to a higher intensity. We’re looking for a challenge but we need to avoid injury.