Sick of Not Improving?...Shock Your Body!

We all need a teacher occasionally, and I'm lucky to be married to one. When I get in a rut with my training, I can count on Jonny to help me with my next steps.  

While talking about additions and changes that I could make to my training, he reminded me of some advice he gave his sister. She was frustrated with her inability to lose weight. She did 45 minutes of cardio daily and calorically restricted her daily food intake. She was mystified why she wasn't losing fat. After asking her about her exercises and what foods she ate, he told her she needed to Shock Her Body! She was in the rut. Although she was training conditioning every day, she was doing the same old routine, and even though she was restricting her calories, she was eating the same nutritionally poor foods every day.

He told her to do the following:

1. Run intervals 
2. Eat your ideal body weight in grams of protein daily and eat nutrient-dense foods.

She hated running intervals! She hated them so much she tried to negotiate with Jonny, which, as some of you know, is a no-win situation! He told her to keep with it, and soon after that, she had acclimated to the training. She ended up losing the weight and gained more confidence. 

Identifying if you're in the rut has only one question: 

1. Are you changing or not?

This question branches off into five more questions for gaining clarity on what you want to change:   

1. Are you strong or gaining strength?
2. Do you have full range of motion, or are you improving your range of motion?
3. How is your conditioning strength, weak or poor?
4. Do you feel slightly anxious before a workout at least two times a week?
5. Are you in pain?

When Jonny explained these concepts, I changed my program from running 50-meter sprints to 400-meter and 800-meter sprints. I did the very thing that was hard for me. If you're incredibly flexible, you may struggle to do pull-ups or be unable to deadlift your body weight. This means you need more strength. Adding this kind of training to your regime is an example of how you would shock your body. Or you're strong but can't do a back dome or touch your hands to the floor when doing a forward fold. If this is the case for you, then incorporating alignment and flexibility training will shock your body.  

Shocking the body is an individual thing. It requires you to truly understand what you're too comfortable with and what you're not comfortable with and decide to be courageous and do the things that scare you.  

Starting in January, Jonny and I are doing just that; we're building our courageous muscles by practicing the things that scare us. We also know that having community always helps when starting a new plan, and we will announce next week what we'll be doing and how you can join us on this journey!

Looking forward to it!

Jonny and Jessie