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Is strength training the missing link in your program?

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“Can you open this Mum? You’ve done Crossfit like a hundred times and you are stronger than me because your muscles are bigger.” – 6 year old, getting what she wants as per usual.

Kid has a point. Unless it’s the day after arms work and I’m rendered a useless weakling unable to lift my own coffee. But I digress.

There are a lot of myths about strength work but most of them aren’t true. It won’t bulk you up, unless you want it to. Anyone can do it. You don’t have to be fit first. The people aren’t as intimidating as you think they are.

What you find in strength training might surprise you. You might find a greater love for your body. You might find more self-confidence. And you might find it changes the shape of your body in a way that cardio just doesn’t.

Weight loss has never been my primary goal but it has been a secondary one. I prioritise performance over weight loss any day of the week. And if you are trying to lose weight, here are some words for you.

Every now and then something happens to pull into sharp focus that you are never that far away from that person you used to be. If I could go back and talk to her I would say:

Shame will not motivate you.
Self-loathing will not inspire change.
There is nothing wrong with you.
Your body is capable of so much more than you believe it is.

If you want change, you have to love the body you have right now for everything it has already done for you and everything it is capable of doing in the future. You have to respect it. And appreciate it. And you have to believe in it. Food and exercise are not reward and punishment. There is no punishment. And you are the reward, just like you always have been.

But if it is something that you would like to work on then strength training is something you should consider. It will raise your metabolism (that means more food, right?) It usually involves some high intensity interval type training which helps to stimulate weight loss and it changes every week, so your body doesn’t get used to it. That’s my theory anyway. I ran for about two years and while it certainly helped lose my baby weight I didn’t see a dramatic change until I started Crossfit. I think part of that is metabolism, part of it is muscle development, part is high intensity intervals and I think a big part of it is that my body can never get comfortable with the exercise – because they are changing all the time. My body is used to running. It’s very efficient at running – so I really doubt it does much at this point in terms of weight loss.

I was reading an article the other day on different types of strength training as they impacted on running and circuit type strength training was the only one that improved your strength as much as any other form of training but also improved your running.

One thing I’ve learned in my running and strength training is that if you are doing something like weights or doing something like hard intervals in a run it doesn’t matter how heavy the weights are or how fast you are running, what matters is that you do it to fail. So if I get to the end of a weights workout and I’m struggling to get the weights up, I know I’m going to see good benefit from that. It’s the same with running if I get to the end of an interval session and I’m struggling to keep pace on the final interval I know I’ve given that run everything.

 

 

Why you need a Plan B. And maybe a Plan C.

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I think most people going into a run have an idea of a finishing time they’d like to achieve. They know what their training runs have been like, they have a general idea of what their body is capable of and a great run is a great acknowledgement of that training. Sometimes you want a nice achievable goal and sometimes you want an aggressive one.

Whatever your goal is, I like to have a solid backup goal and a backup for my backup.

You need a Plan B. In 2015 I did the Kurrawa 2 Duranbah 50k. My Plan A for was under 5 hours. Which is a highly aggressive goal given the heat and the distance. But I thought I’d like to give it a crack. In any races there are so many variables. Conditions, how your body feels on the day, fatigue, nutrition and any manner of other things. Some of which you have a reasonable level of control over and some of which you don’t. Things that I didn’t have control over was the fact that I was carrying a bit of a virus on race day. And things that I did have control of (but chose to ignore) was that I was in a period of recovery and my body was in no condition to run a race. So I had a couple of back up plans. One was under 5:30 and my Plan C was under 6 hours. It became really obvious in the first 10k that Plan A wasn’t going to happen. Sometimes in racing you are not sure if you can make it at pace and you need to stick to your guns and find somewhere in that pace that is comfortable for you to run. This was not one of those times. Breathing was a bit laboured and I just didn’t have it in me. So I accepted that it was going to be Plan B.

When I hit about 35km and it was like running through quicksand and the temperature started to get really hot I had to let go of Plan B and just finish. I got there at 5:50 and I had made Plan C.

Plan B or Plan C is so important. Because if I hadn’t had that I could have gotten to the finish line and been disappointed. And how awful would that have been? To be disappointed with my first ultramarathon. Plan C was great. Under the conditions, Plan C was something I could be very happy of and I could be proud of what I’d done crossing the finish line.

Never be afraid to set an aggressive goal.

If you don’t, you’ll never know and you can limit your abilities by only setting safe goals. But have a Plan B. Or C. So you can be proud of your achievement no matter what.

I weigh myself in front of my daughters

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I have two daughters. I am hyper aware of how much pressure they will be under by the world in which they live in. The vast majority of strangers they interact with will comment on their physical appearance as an ice breaker (‘your hair/dress/shoes are so cute’), rather than seeking some kind of interest like they would if they were boys. They will receive an onslaught of information from their community, from TV, from the media that they have to look a certain way, act a certain way, fulfil some kind of beauty standard to be considered a worthwhile human. The odds are stacked against them. As a parent, my job is to try to give them such a strong sense of self that no one can ever take that away from them.

The current popular wisdom on body image, especially for girls seems to be don’t talk about it. Don’t let them see you get on a scale. Don’t talk about your weight. Don’t use the word ‘fat’ or ‘skinny’. But I just don’t agree with that. Children will receive all sorts of information about all of those things from the media, from their friends and from their interactions in the community – if you refuse to acknowledge it you are just not part of the conversation. And I think you really need to be part of the conversation.

I do hop on the scale in front of the kids. It tells me what I weigh, what my hydration level is, what my bone density is, what my fat percentage is and what my percentage of muscle mass is.

I weigh myself in front of my children because it’s not a hidden thing, it’s not shameful.

It’s not a taboo. There is nothing wrong about what I weigh. I also don’t hop on the scale and then become upset with what it tells me. It’s all just information that I will use as to how I’m travelling along. Sometimes they like to hop on the scale too and see how high the numbers go.

I do use the word ‘fat’. If I didn’t say ‘fat’ then I would be telling them that ‘fat’ is somehow wrong or bad or insulting. And it isn’t. Sometimes my three year old comes up to my belly and says ‘I love your fat belly mumma’ and she squeezes it. And I say ‘yes, it’s a cool fat belly, hey?’. Having a conversation with my kids about ‘fat’ and ‘skinny’ allows me to tell them how eating food or not eating food is not necessarily going to make you fat or skinny.

Being ‘fat’ or ‘skinny’ isn’t necessarily going to tell you if someone is healthy or fit or strong.

In this politically correct climate, people seem more comfortable with the word ‘overweight’. But out of ‘fat’ and ‘overweight’ one is a judgemental word and the other one is an adjective.

I don’t diet but I do talk about food. ‘Why are you eating that?’ Usually the answer is it’s tofu and I’m eating it because protein helps the building and recovery of muscles. Or the answer might be it’s chocolate and it’s yummy. I try to aim for food is neither good or bad, it’s all just food. Some food will give you the energy you need and some food kind of won’t but it’s fun to eat anyway.

My way isn’t the only way. Most of us parents have exactly the same goal – children who are resilient and happy and love their bodies. There are lots of different ways to get there. And at some point everyone despairs of how you can do anything in the face of a culture that it is all just geared in one direction. After letting my eldest put on some lip gloss the other day she informed me that now all the boys would want to marry her because she was beautiful. My soul vomited. But I still want to be in there having the conversation with her, because I think it’s worth it.

My Marathon Is Not More Impressive Than Your 5k

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The other day I saw a singlet with the word ‘Marathoner’ on the back and something bothered me about it. Don’t get me wrong, I am all about people being proud of their achievements and sharing that pride with others. All about that. I will be the first person in line to congratulate someone on achieving a big goal. And a marathon is a big goal. But you don’t need to run a really long way to have a big goal. Longer isn’t necessarily better. Or more impressive. Or even requiring more training.

Greatness in running isn’t measured by how far you go, or how fast you go, it’s all in the spirit.

For my marathon I had a 17 week training plan. But you know what, training for my fast 5k took about the same amount of time. In some ways it was harder. I struggle with the 5k distance because it’s an all out effort. There’s no room for settling into it you just have to put your foot down and go. There’s no time to make it up if you have to stop for a few cars, there really is very little room for error. By the last 500m of my last 5k time trial I felt pretty close to throwing up but at that point I wasn’t going to waste 4.5km of really hard effort to fall apart in the last 500m.

The marathon is challenging in different ways. You kind of get to just over half way and you think that you are bullet proof and then you realise YOU ARE ONLY HALF WAY and it’s a real mental struggle to keep it together at that point. But for me once I got past 30 I was pretty much able to coast through to the end.

On balance I would say that the 5k and the marathon were about the same level of difficulty. And although the marathon was a far more emotional run for me, I couldn’t really say which achievement I am more proud of. That sub 25 minute 5k was on hills, I had muscle soreness, it was hot and I was really bloody proud of it.

So you won’t see me getting around calling myself a marathoner or an ultrarunner like it somehow puts me in a different category than a runner.

I am a runner. That’s where the pride is and nowhere else.