Stones in your bag’
🪨 Every time Gail goes running, she picks up a small stone and puts it into her rucksack.
🎒 This is something her coach told her too. Her coach also told her to put a small stone in every time she has a late night, when she does other fitness classes and when she under eats, amongst a few other things. He also tells her that she can remove a stone each time she gets a good sleep, and remove a stone after each rest day amongst a few other things.
🪨Gail loves to pursue goals, so she runs, and fits in a few fitness classes each week, she’s also not the best at bedtimes she loves to unwind with Netflix & tictok into the early hours.
🎒Recently she’s training for a half marathon and she’s been looking to lose a few pounds so she’s been under eating & training a lot.
🪨Her coach tells her to test her 5k. It’s so slow. Looking at why, she realises her bag is so heavy because it’s full of small stones.
She reports back to her coach, “My 5k was slower, this bag is weighing me down.”
🎒The coach tells her ‘Fatigue Masks Fitness.’
He continues to say, “The stones represent your fatigue. If you accumulate too much fatigue, you can’t express your true fitness.”
🪨He continues with this example, “The day after a marathon, you may have trouble walking let alone running, That doesn’t mean you’re not fit that just means you’re fatigued from the effort of the previous day or you could say your bag is full of stones. That's obvious to spot…”
🎒He continues with… “ what’s not so obvious is training isn’t the only thing that adds fatigue, poor sleep, not enough calories, alcohol, poor meal quality, dehydration, and some environmental factors like heat, illness, and Life stress, all add stones into your bag.
🗿 Some things that women particularly don’t recognise as stressors, being a working mum, balancing being constantly busy, having to solve problems and fix bad situations, full-time job with housework, caring for kids.
🎒Gail responds with
“I want it all to be perfect so I used to be running around late in evening making lunches, cleaning, doing washing, getting things put away etc - forget Netflicks and TicTok, I don’t have time for those!.”
🪨 It’s that combo of work pressure, home pressure and aspirational pressure to be fitter/healthier. That makes it to be such a heavy burden.
🪨Often type A personalities have so much drive that they don’t take rest which can lead to total exhaustion or burnout. They need to make time to offload their stones.
🎒Even if you are not a type A person but are dieting for fat loss and exercising a lot, then you are adding twice the amount of stones, one for the training and another for low energy intake. Then it’s crucial you balance your stones.
🪨 The coach continues “with what you can do is remove a stone each time you get a good sleep, remove another after adequate food intake, you can remove one after breath work, and you can remove a stone after each rest day.”
🎒 It’s best not to build up too many stones. A full bag of stones is burnout and it will take many rest days to recover.
⛔️It’s not just people that exercise, many People will stay up all night have terrible sleep, eat poorly, drink alcohol excessively and do a couple of half assed fitness classes and wonder why they aren’t progressing. You can fill your bag without ever working out.
🪨There are a few ways to mitigate the damage, one would be to carb up around your workouts specifically after your workouts. Make sure your protein intake is right. Find the right training volume for you and refine it often. Hyper Focus on the other recovery activities like breath work, and sleep, moreover having a day at maintenance calories once a week will help. If your life becomes stressful pull back a little.
🪨If your goal is to drop some fat and get fitter. You don’t have room to add more stones with things you can avoid. Because Both trying to getting fitter and a calorie deficit can add stones/fatigue to your bag.
🎒Balancing your workouts with adequate recovery strategies will help improve your fitness.
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