The Under Rested & Restless Fitness Culture
Fitness and sport industries aren’t the only standards setters that aren’t working out. Through COVID-19, the incompatibility of doing things because “that’s how it’s always been done” is more obvious than ever.
Blooming into the spring season of renewal, the world is also entering a year+ accumulation of navigating our global pandemic compounded by trauma in high visibility, online and offline in our personal and collective lives. Our distancing from each other in physical spaces has moved us all online with a steep rise in demand for and desperate accessibility to home-centric health, wellbeing and movement.
For some, it is a new learning that just because something is online doesn’t equate to being accessible to every body. Most mainstream or major fitness, sport and movement offerings (though thankfully not all) utilize marketing centered by ableist bodies that all look and move the same: white or light skinned Euro-dictacted beauty, little and lean, 'hard' (toned), glistening in perfectly organized sweat, wrapped in perfectly sized spandex sets, rhythmically sped up or slowed down to a hype track that sweeps us up in the slickness of it all. Even with a shift towards increasing inclusion and diversity in these industries with different abilities, sizes and ethnicities, there is still a deep cultural lack showing up all across the board. And a large part of it is because colonial capitalist goals haven't yet deemed it profitable enough. For those who are paying attention, we also know that colonial capitalism itself does not rest; it’s busy extracting, exploiting for and selling us more, more, more.
I'm referring to a major component of our bodies' essential function complementary to our movements— across all ability levels, types of movement or sport.
Resting and recovery is both hard to quantify and not aesthetic enough. No one gets hyped to purchase a workout or get up from their chair viewing another human breathing softly on the floor with their eyes closed. Context is everything. And yet, this prioritization is even educated and trained for instructors and coaches.
There were 2 remarkable moments I have remembered and thought about literally every day from my former personal training education and certification (yes, that’s daily for the past 8+ years now). One was learning the difference between my former very improper breathing due to a lack of mindfulness and tending to my nervous systems (hello diaphragmatic breath, goodbye those tiny and high collar bone ones with trauma-informed somatic therapy and practice!) The second, which is what I'm focusing here and in Emilia D'Aversa and I's Rest + Recovery Clinic, he Performance Pie. Also known as the 80/20 principle, this was a foundational module in physiology and training progression for customizing the right program progressions for each client over time. Visually, that 80% is a whole lotta pie.
The fitness and sports industries exclusively market the smaller aspect (20%): active training. Cue the badass training circuits, the adrenaline and victory, all with vigor, stimulation and activation. More speed, strength, mass, intensity, you name it.
The remaining 80%? It's actually the most directive realm of our development and it includes rest, recovery, renewal. 80% of our fitness (again, regardless of your sport/craft/form) is made up of our wellbeing. You’ll notice it translate from the average person’s training ratio across to the rest of their time spent living aka being and doing other things. It's our quality of sleep, how well we exchange nutrients and waste, our capacity for effectively responding to stress and managing it, how well our cellular functions are repairing, the decisions we make in consumption and the way we think while our bodies listen to each tone and word. It's not about perfection, yet how we do anything is how we do everything. All our bodies: mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and beyond.
After identifying the Performance Pie, I remember the course moving right on to be how to double down with clients. Instead of focusing deeply on all the multilayers of the 80%, personal trainers are taught instead to push their clients (albeit safely of course and not with malice) so that they can go on to achieve their goals. While it’s valid that personal trainers are not qualified to be nutritionists, sleep experts or clinical psychotherapists in fitness training curriculum, these aspects of the full humxn being can’t be completely disregarded since they are relational to clients’ movement, fitness and health physiology.
If our lives were single-dimensional and binary, this all makes perfect sense! Except for the very obvious fact that we are not. As humxn beings in our multifaceted world, change is constant and movement is present even in our stillness. In other words, it’s just quantum physics and biology. No big deal, right? Each person is living a full life with their own crises, challenges and change. Constantly. So we absolutely must account for the whole person in order to be responsibly training or working with someone and their body.
Even when we look to the most elite athletes, we tend to reduce their success simply to their aptitude, skills and the multi-million dollar teams/brands/equipment that support them. Go a bit deeper: rest and recovery directly influences the trajectory and quality of our progression. It also happens offline, embodied and almost-never-really-documented because it’s personal, sacred and not consistently pretty. When you’re paid for your optimum performance, resting suddenly becomes very prioritized. I think we can all think of someone who's had an injury that became a chronic barrier due to an undervalued investment of time and energy on rehabilitation, or because there were other priorities such as non-movement or sport related work and relationships. Let's go the distance and most importantly, feel in presence every step of the way. It makes winning even sweeter, I promise. Resting should not be a reward you may or may not make it to. Being rested is a quality we can show up with in every space.
So do you know what your body doing right now? Yeah, right this second… and another… while you read this article. Remarkably it's constantly functioning autonomically (without your conscious input or control) as well as in correspondence to your current mood and levels of mindfulness. Example: prior to my learned lessons and this work that has evolved into The Rested Revolution, my normalized and tiring holding pattern was shallow breathing, tense shoulders and tight hips. Whether I was hanging out in a cafe or watching a movie by myself. Self-awareness and mindfulness are 2 realms of rest that every single person requires always. If you didn't have an answer to these questions, that's not a problem! I want you to join us for our clinic.
Emilia and I are here to create a truer and generative culture for people connected to their bodies and moving responsibly throughout the world. In the gym, on the stage, at home. We believe that feeling and performing our best in our own bodies is the realest form of honoring our bodies and our movement.
If you missed it, Emilia and I further debunk some normalized-but-shouldn't-be aspects in conversation on our recent IG Live. Pop in some headphones (lie down or get to making yourself a nourishing meal) and have a listen as we cover:
common threads and misconceptions about resting and recovering in fitness as athletes and as personal trainers
how our personal experiences as coaches with clients inform the work we both show up to do and our vision of a more healthy and well fitness and sport industry— as well as at home, in our relationship with ourselves
sliding scale and scholarship options for this value-packed offering (you are paying a fraction to have access to both of us in real time throughout 4 weeks. More specifically based on our personal rates, you're saving over $1600. This is a no-brainer and a full body yes-er! You could even look at it as a weekly investment of $80—132.00CAD depending on what is financially viable for you at this time.)
Registration for our live 4-week course is now open with more details here and on Eventbrite. Ready to RSVP? Scroll to the bottom of this page to checkout.
You'll be relieved to know that no, there is no mandatory homework because the work you’re doing from home with us virtually occurs in each 1.5 hour session divided into the following modules:
Week 1 (Apr 13): The Introduction to Rest + Recovery
We explore, expand and re-examine the relationships we have with resting, recovering and everything in between, together. We’re looking forward to some real talk about what’s most difficult about rest + recovery, or the lack thereof, and connecting to meaning.
Week 2 (Apr 20): Our Biology and Human Sciences
The foundation gets set; we bridge our knowledge of the body and its functions with our own experiences to create more informative understanding so we can begin to integrate responses and responsibility about where we are.
Week 3 (Apr 27): Mindful Restoration in Action
Building upon new insights and refined understanding within our own bodies and needs, we examine biofeedback in real time through our experience of constructive resting and mindfulness practices.
Week 4 (May 4): Personal Programming
We sit down and apply what what we’ve learned, realized and chosen over the past 3 weeks by personally programming our own new rest + recovery program for our movement/fitness/sport/performance goals. All work materials including our recorded sessions are yours to keep.
Questions? Love 'em. Contact me.
