The Crucial Pre-Workout Question

THE CRUCIAL PRE-WORKOUT QUESTION

Graced Health Podcast

Amy Connell, Host

Longtime listeners know that I have a stray-turned-princess pit bull named Grace. We think Grace is about 11 years old. We think she was about a year when she showed up on our doorstep. Early on in my blog writing days, and when I regularly posted on social media, she was a continual presence because she was the only person in my family who was a willing participant. I'm not even sure that she was a willing participant, but she didn't get a say. She was in a lot of the content I produced, and clearly Grace was at the forefront of our mind around the time that we got her, because five months after she arrived, that is when I started Graced Health.

Yes, which if you're doing math, that means that we are coming up on 10 years of Graced Health. You'll hear more about that later. 

It took me a while to train her and it took her a while to get used to walking on a leash and being at my side. Because she is a pit bull, it was very important to me that I had a well-behaved pit bull. Once we got to a point where she could walk on my left and behave herself—sort of okay, she was not great around other dogs, but she was great around other people. She loves other people, just kind of weird and socially awkward around dogs. 

After that, I spent a lot of time walking her and I still do go outside with her a lot. I take her on a lot of walks. In fact, it used to be that we could both run five miles. Now neither one of us can, or at least I can't. She might be able to, but I think her body would be hurting because she is hurting now after just a mile and a half or so.

My neighbors see me walking my dog at least daily. What my neighbors see, which is me walking along with my graying pit bull, may look the same, but they often have a different intent and a different purpose depending on the day or even the time of day. 

Sometimes it's because I'm wanting to get outside first thing in the morning and get some sunshine in my eyes. Sometimes it's because I'm trying to get a faster walk in so I can raise my heart rate a little bit and get back in the gym and do a leg workout or just more of a heavy strength training workout, and that's part of my warmup. Sometimes it's because I've been here in my office for so long and I just need to move my legs.

Sometimes it's because I'm sitting there and she's looking at me like she's about to crawl out of her skin, and it's a plea—like, "Mom, get me out." I have a backyard and she goes in our backyard, but she also just really likes being around people because pit bulls are people dogs. They used to be called the babysitter dog. They love being around people, which I don't think is unusual for dogs. I mean, they're pack animals. 

There's a lot of reasons why I will leash her up and take her out. Sometimes it's for her, most of the time it's for me. Sometimes it's just for a mental reset. I might be real jumbled in my head. I might be needing to think about something from a business perspective, and I just kind of need to step away for a little bit. So if I'm going out, she's going with me as long as the weather's conducive.

I do like to think that I'm a responsible dog owner. Sometimes I just want to let her sniff and give her something different to do during the day and we just explore at her own pace. But regardless of what it is, the activity of walking the dog can look the same to someone from the outside, but my intent and the reason I'm doing it is different and it changes all the time.

THE SAME ACTIVITY, DIFFERENT INTENTIONS

You and I can do the same thing with our movement, with our formal exercise. Most of us, when we decide we want to work out, are going to put on our leggings or our shorts or our squat-proof pants or whatever your preferred attire is, and then we're like, "Okay, it's time to work out." 

But have you ever stopped to think about: Why am I showing up today? Why am I working out today? What do I need today? Have we ever just paused to think about why this matters? 

We can do the same workout for completely different reasons. Knowing your intent about it, knowing your why behind it changes how you show up and how you feel about it, and how potentially you may feel about it when you're done. 

If you ever practice yoga, you'll often hear this as like, "What's your intention for the day?" Which, to me, I'm just going to be honest—I mean no shade to any of the yoga instructors and yoga participants, yogis, whatever—that just doesn't do it for me. Like, what's your intent? I'm like, "I don't know. My intent is to be here. My intent is just to show up and do this." 

Now sometimes as I have, let's just call it matured, it's like, "Okay, I want to breathe. I want to stretch my muscles." But for me, that word of like "intent" just doesn't do it for me. But if I ask myself, "Why am I showing up?" or "Why do I want to show up?" that works better for my mind. So you can choose whatever phrase you want as we progress through this, but regardless of what speaks to you, these are important questions to ask ourselves as we start to establish new routines, get back into our rhythms, and as we identify what our body is needing in that day.

SAYING GOODBYE TO "GO HARDER"

If you are like me and you spent the better part of your twenties, thirties, maybe even early forties, thinking like, "Oh, I've got to work out as hard as I can. I've got to sweat really hard..."

I remember someone I love very dearly saying—well, when I go to a spin class, I mean, this was probably 10-plus years ago—she was like, "Well, when I go to a spin class, I just want the pool of sweat to be as big as possible underneath my bike. And I want it to be bigger every time. And if it's bigger, if it's the biggest it's ever been, then it's been a good workout." 

And I'm not going to knock that because I think that there is something to feel like, having that spent feeling. But the mentality of like, "This is it, it has to be max high intensity as hard as you can go every day"—at this point, I think we can gracefully say goodbye to that. We can, what does Marie Kondo say? Like, bless it and give it away. It's no longer serving us anymore. 

However, we still have so much of the wellness industry, this crazy wellness industry I keep talking about, screaming at us to go harder and to do more—faster, stronger, harder, go, go, go. More, more, and more.

Where that's left us is in our head. We're often thinking like, "Oh, I've got to go work out. I've got to exercise. I have to do that." But we're not really sure, and maybe we haven't taken the time to think about why we're doing it or what we're doing it for, or what our intention is. And then we're caught in this polarity of either grinding ourselves to the ground or feeling guilty because we backed off, or because it wasn't the biggest pool of sweat that we've ever had.

This can come from a lot of different environments. Maybe it's from a competitive gym environment, group environment, something like that, where they're just really pushing you to go all out, or maybe it's from your own head. 

It's funny—one thing that a lot of people don't really know about me is I actually am really competitive, but I'm only competitive with myself. When I did triathlons—and when I say when I did triathlons, y'all, they were sprint triathlons, okay? They were not super long. I was doing them in anywhere between an hour and hour and a half. I was not training for months and months for hours and hours. That wasn't my kind of thing. I just couldn't do it. 

But when I was doing that, I pushed myself and I got very competitive. Not with anyone else but with me. So these mentality spaces of going harder, faster, go, go, go, can be from externally or they can be internally. 

ANOTHER WAY

Would you consider just for a moment that there might be another way? And that other way might be led by understanding why we are doing what we are doing, and also that other way is given to us by the grace of Jesus.

Part of my story is being bound by this legalistic thinking of like, "This is what I have to do to either achieve perfect health or achieve a perfect body," or whatever else it was that I thought I needed to be. And it all came from maybe what you would call external motivation of like wanting to achieve something. 

I love the verse in Galatians 5:1 that says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

Now that was Paul talking to Gentile believers in Galatia who were being pressured by some Jewish Christians to follow Old Testament laws like circumcision and dietary rules, so that they were like quote "real Christians." Which, let's be honest, we still have in our world today, not necessarily with old Jewish laws, but there's all these things that are perceived to be like, "Oh, well, she's a real Christian because she..." you know, fill in the blank.

But that's where this verse is coming from. It's coming from the state of like, this is how it used to be. And now through the grace of Jesus, it is not. We don't have to be enslaved, be held to one particular set of laws, set of standards. 

Are we treating our exercise like a law that we have to follow perfectly or maybe as an opportunity to move our body in a way that we enjoy most of the time? We're not going to all of the time, and that's okay. But movement is a gift. It's a gift to steward. It's an opportunity to feel muscles that maybe we haven't felt in a while. It's an opportunity to strengthen our heart, our lungs, our muscles, so that we can go do the things that we are wanting to do so that we can continue moving forward being strong and vibrant.

Yes, I know I'm super corny because I'm pulling in a lot of the phrases that I have right now, but that's why I chose those phrases. Movement is about stewardship of our multidimensional bodies—the physical, the mental, the emotional, the spiritual. It's not just about having to do the one thing.

Yes, everybody here probably knows we need to strength train as we get older, but we all have our own stuff going on in our lives, and so that might be easier or harder depending on that. So we just meet our bodies where they are.

MACRO WHY VS. MICRO WHY

So to do this, I want you to consider what your why is. Why are you showing up? Why are you here listening to me? Why are you thinking about how you want to take care of yourself?

And I think we need to break that down into two areas. 

Number one is the MACRO. So this is going to be like the big foundational why. If I was just making a blanket statement for Graced Health and everyone here, what I would say is we take care of ourselves so we can do what God is calling us to do and live a strong and vibrant life as we move forward. That's kind of the Graced Health big macro why, but I know that that's not going to be everybody's. 

I remember talking with a campus pastor several years ago, and he was sharing how he started taking care of himself in terms of movement, in terms of what he ate, because he had kids later in life and he started looking at the calendar, realizing the age that he was going to be when his youngest child graduated from high school, and he thought, "I am not on the path that I want to be right now." And so he made some changes. That's a wonderful big macro why. 

I have a client who takes care of a lot of different people. She has an elderly parent, she has a husband who has some physical limitations, she has a child, she has a grandchild. She's very involved in all of their lives. And I said to her one time, "I'm so proud of you for showing up and continuing to work at this because you have a lot of things pulling at you." And she said, "I have too many people counting on me that I have to take care of myself. This is something that I have to do." That is a wonderful macro why. 

I have another client I've been working with on and off for probably eight years-ish, and when she showed up, she was healing and putting herself back together because she lost her husband in her early fifties, and that wrecked her world, understandably so. That's a wonderful macro why, and since then, her why has evolved some. She wants to take care of her mental health. She wants to take care of her body. She is now influencing other people in her world. And that is also another why—to help others see how they can steward their body well. 

So even though my bigger macro why, especially here at Graced Health, is so we can do what we're called to do, so we can live a strong and vibrant life as we move forward—everybody's going to have their own big macro why. So that's your anchor, right? That is why you are doing what you're doing in general. 

But then we have these MICRO WHYS. We have these daily decisions, not only about if we're going to do something, but why we're doing something. I'm using the word "why" a lot here. I'm sorry. Why are we showing up? And so that is answering the question: What does my body actually need from me today? 

And I want to say that again. What does my body need from me, from my movement today? Not what does my body think it's supposed to do or what is on the schedule, but what do we need now? 

Hear me please—I find a lot of value in a schedule, and having a loose schedule for me helps to keep me on track. For example, I have clients on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which means that those are the days that I get a very quick HIIT workout in. And then I'm trying to get just little walks, the various kinds that we talked about earlier, throughout the day. And that's it. That's what I do. 

So that means on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays I have my longer strength training days. Those are the days that I'm moving heavy weight around in one way or another. And I know if I miss one of those days, I'm not going to get that back, and I can't make that up the next day because I've got a full client load. So those are decisions that I have to make. 

So there's absolutely something to a schedule, but there's also something to saying, "Oh, I am wrecked today." And it's Monday and I'm supposed to be having a hinge day—which Mondays are my hinge days, like RDLs and all of that kind of stuff—and I just can't do it. Instead, I'm going to go for a walk. Instead I'm going to stretch. And that's okay because it's paying attention to your micro whys.

EXAMPLES OF MICRO WHYS

Before you get out and move—and when I say get out, I mean get wherever it is, even if it's in your living room—but before you move, I want you to consider what your micro why might be, because that is going to hold the space and the intentionality of what you are doing.

So it might be like, "I'm getting out because I need to support my mental health today." And that's it. That's the only reason I'm doing that, which is a perfectly fine reason. Why? Our main pastor right now talks often about his love of the gym, not because he's super strong, which he appears to be, but because it supports his mental health, and he feels like that is a gift to his mental health that God has given him in addition to several other resources that he uses to support his mental health.

Maybe you just want to get that fresh air or that sunshine. As I'm recording this, it is January. I live in the Houston, Texas area. We have been having an unseasonably warm winter, and I'm trying to shift my head because I really like to wear sweaters, but I'm telling myself, "You know what, that's okay because we've had some beautiful days that we can get outside and get some fresh air and get that sunshine," which I know the sunshine helps my circadian rhythm, which will help my sleep. And as we know, sleep is a good thing to pay attention to. 

Another micro why might be to challenge your heart and lungs. It may be that you are working on your cardiovascular health. Great reason to be out there moving. My dad—he doesn't listen to podcasts or watch any of this, so he can't be too mad that I'm talking good about him behind his back—my dad, y'all, will be 80 years old this year and he is still out there walking two and a half to three miles a day because he cares about his heart. He has a history of heart challenges and so he's getting out there and walking for his heart and his lungs. 

And I have been focusing on my cardiovascular health as well, because as I have been doing a bit more strength training in the way that I have been strength training, I am breathing hard less. So I will have intentional times of exercise where I'm really trying to breathe hard. I've said it before you guys—if you've been with me a while, you know I'm one of these crazy people who loves that hand on the knees bending over, breathing really hard. I know I feel obnoxious saying that, but even if you don't like that, it might be that you're like, "Ooh, I've got to take care of my heart. I really need to do that."

Or maybe your micro why is Amy Connell of Graced Health tells me that I need to pull. And so I'm going to go in there and I'm going to get my resistance bands, and I'm going to pull out Strong and Vibrant at Home if you have it—and if you don't, I'll tell you how to get it later—but I'm going to pull that out and I'm just going to do some of these workouts because I know that it's going to work on my back and it's going to strengthen my back in addition to the other areas. And that's what I need as I get older. 

And let's be honest, you may not love all of this, but you still will do it because it meets that micro why that like, "I need to work on my back because I woke up feeling a little pinch, and I know that if I activate those muscles rather than stretch them, then I'm more likely to start feeling better," which is a true statement by the way. 

These micro whys might be more subjective as well. Maybe it's just that you need to get to the gym. Like maybe you go to F45. I know we have a really strong F45 community in my neighborhood, so I'll use that as an example. But maybe you just need to go see your people. You're just showing up and you're just going to go at a half rate—if we were live, I'd probably use a different word—but you're just not going to do that much. But you need to see your people. Wonderful micro why. 

Maybe you have had a really busy day and you need to get some energy out. I used to be this way when I first started doing podcasts and I would have interviews and the connection that I would get from my guests would make me so just amped up. It just felt like it was overflowing and then it was like my dog coming out of my skin. I was like, "Ooh, I've got to get out. I've got to move." So maybe that energy release—that's what you need to do.

On the other side, maybe you just need to be gentle. Maybe you know you need to move, but you just need to breathe. And you need to feel the breath coming in through your nose and hitting the back of your throat and going all the way down, and just taking care of your nervous system a little. Or your body just feels wrecked, maybe because you're emotionally wrecked, or maybe because you're physically wrecked and you need to do some stretching and some mobility and just gently move. That's a beautiful micro why that the wellness industry very rarely says is okay to do. And not only is it okay, but it should be embraced.

And sometimes you just need to clear your head. I can't tell you how many times I've been like, "I'm so jumbled up inside my head." Or there was a time that my husband and I had a little spat and I was like, "I've got to get out of here." And so I went on a long walk and I was better when I got back. Not perfect but better. But those are great micro whys. 

PRE-DECIDE YOUR WHY

But what I want you to do is pre-decide that micro why so you know what you're showing up for.

And what this does is it protects you from falling into those old patterns, those old, crazy wellness patterns, like how big of a pool of sweat can be on the floor. When I pre-decide my why, then what this also does is it allows me to stay in the lane that I decided to drive in that day. 

Meaning, if I'm on a walk and I have thought, "Okay, what I really need to do is just gently move, take my pace down and get some fresh air and some sunshine. This is just a gentle walk." Then what that does is it keeps me from maybe looking at my heart rate going, "Ooh, I need to be going a little faster. I need a higher heart rate because I am trying to take care of my cardiovascular health." Or it keeps me from looking at my watch again and thinking, "Ooh, my pace isn't very high. Okay, I need to kick it up." And then all of a sudden it's turned into something that I don't need, my head doesn't need, my body doesn't need. It keeps me from staying in my lane.

And I say all this, but I can't say this without saying the flip side of the coin, which is you have permission to adjust. If your body's telling you that something is different, is needed more mid-workout, that can go up, it can go down. Only you know what you need, and I would encourage you to be honest about what you need. Stay true to what you need while giving yourself permission to change things a little bit. 

Okay, and I know it's like, "Amy, you're totally coming at me from both sides," and I know I am. And that's because God has given us a spirit of discernment. God has given us the ability to really assess how we are feeling and adjust. Our brain and our body are not disconnected. They are so intricately combined. And this is a gift that God has made in us so that we can change. 

I think the key though is truly being honest and being honest about how you felt before and how you're going to feel when you're done and going from there. So if I take that example that I was saying earlier about going out on a walk and I need a gentle walk and all of that, only I know how I will feel at the end of that walk if I add some intensity. And what I would say is your watch doesn't get to dictate those decisions. It's only the mind that God gave you, your body, your response to those signals. 

And so I know I'm kind of dancing real delicately here because I'm saying two things at once, but I think, as we say in my house, both of these things can exist in the same space. But be honest about changing and why you're shifting in a mid-workout, because you're not locked in. You're just listening to your body, and particularly if you're backing off, that's not a failure.

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE

So as we wrap up, I want you to think about what your macro why is, and you can borrow the Graced Health one, that's totally fine. But figure out like, what's your big term, long-term macro why? And then what I want you to do is every time you lace up your shoes or pull out your yoga mat or do whatever it is that you're doing, I want you to ask yourself: What does my body need today?

Not what am I supposed to do today, but what do I need today and what would feel like caring for myself today, as well as caring for my future self look like?

Do a little body scan. Just take a few seconds and go from your head down to your toe and think about: What is tight? What is tense? What needs some extra gentleness or what is ready to go? What's restless? What's stiff? How am I feeling in my head? Am I anxious? Am I glorious? You know, all of the—I mean, we can be anywhere in this, but this will tell you something, and this can help guide your why. Just taking those 10 seconds of checking in can really guide your whole session and give you the confidence and empowerment to pick your lane and stay in it with, of course, the exception if your body is needing something different.

There's always an asterisk in this because it's just never black and white. There's just so many variations of how we are feeling and how movement needs to look.

Knowing your why—the big macro one and your small micro one—will keep you steady. It will give you permission to adjust and it frees you from the noise in your head. That noise of "the sweat pool needs to be as big as possible." The noise of "but I'm supposed to get 1% better every day." That kind of mentality. 

You are doing better than you think you are. I guarantee it. There's so much out there that we can compare ourselves to, that we can get competitive with, whether with ourselves or with our communities. And I promise you are doing better than you think you are. Might there be room for adjustments and some tweaks and some new patterns? Of course, I think almost all of us would say that. I certainly can. But give yourself some grace.

RESOURCES

And if you're listening to this thinking, "Okay, yes, but I still need some guidance. I still need to know what kinds of things to be doing, and I'll put the micro why with it, but I still need a little guidance," I've got two resources for you. 

One is my Strong and Vibrant at Home program. This is now available at all times. With that, you get seven weeks of guided workouts through an app. So you do it whenever you want. There are several different wellness lessons. I really set things up for you. So if you're the kind of person who's like, "I just need to be told what to do and I'll do it," and I'll do it with the grace of making adjustments as I need to, then Strong and Vibrant is for you. 

If you're wanting more accountability, more connection, more encouragement, and the opportunity to work through like what do you really need and what kind of changes are you wanting to make and still have the accountability with it, then you might be interested in my new program, Moving Forward Together. So what this is, is this is a four-week small group coaching class with a very small cohort, three to six people. That's it. No more than six people per cohort, because I am hoping that we will take this as an opportunity to really connect and to support each other. And if—I don't know, for me, if I'm in a room of more than six people, I get a little blah, kind of weird. So that's just for me. 

You can learn more about these programs. Strong and Vibrant is just gracedhealth.com/strongandvibrant. And Moving Forward Together is gracedhealth.com/smallgroup, all one word, smallgroup, and you can go learn more about that. If you're listening real time, then applications for Moving Forward Together are open now. We will begin in February and go for four weeks, and then we'll have a couple cohorts throughout the year, and Strong and Vibrant is available anytime. So you can check out either one of those.

And finally, if this episode was helpful to you, would you do me a huge favor and just send it—like, take a screenshot of it and send it to your friends. They're smart. They can figure out—if you send them the actual link, that's really helpful too. But everything is figureoutable and they can probably figure out where to get this. But that would be really helpful as well if you've been having these types of conversations or you want to have these types of conversations with your friends. That's super helpful for the show and it means a lot to me. 

Links for information about Strong and Vibrant at Home and Moving Forward Together are in the show notes, and that is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day.