Strength Renewed

00:20
How are you? And it's funny, I just like stopped mid-sentence because I knew that we were going on to record. But for the purposes of the listener, you and I have just been discussing injuries and identity and how we identify as a, you know, a particular part of ourselves. And that's like the biggest thing, which of course then leads you and I to talk about mindset. And then I'm just pushed into

00:46
me thinking about mindset and talking about it a lot with people with regards to changing their diet and exercise habits and everything's interlinked. It's super interlinked and I think I always find what's kind of currently happening in our lives, know, current affairs, if you will. And my son and my daughter actually both suffered injuries. Jake's a super athletic kid, Gemma is too, and he...

01:12
You kind of can't put them in a bubble, he went out there and he got hit kind of hard in the shoulder. And I always say this. Actually, the thing that I'm always most, that I repeat regularly is I just like keep your body healthy. And I always feel like as a parent and maybe as a coach too, if you are injury free on top of that, then it's even better. So just try to stay injury free. But sometimes you can't. And it's hard when you have particular injuries that sideline you.

01:41
And you just can't, you know, when you're up there kind of not feeling like yourself, it's hard to reconcile the person that you currently are with the injury versus the person that you know you're not when you don't have it. And both are both are you. Both are your identities in this moment. But you're kind of fighting the one. At least I'm I'm actually saying this out loud. I would like to give advice to myself, all of our listeners, all of our clients and in my son that.

02:09
Both can be true. And even if you are working through an injury and you know this is not how you perform regularly, find some kind of development in that place too. And this is really, really hard. Because I think we all are just squirmy. And we can't wait to get out of it. And we always make these excuses, like this is not how I normally am. I don't do this this way when I'm just injured. You know what mean? It's a immediate way to kind of, it's the same kind of thing when you're changing the different patterns of, in a way, when people

02:38
push back with you on like, you know, their diets, they're sort of a little injured psychologically, because they, right? They're just like, they kind of put up a guard and say, well, this is, you know, this is just how I am with you right now, because this is how I normally do it. And so I don't, you know, I'm just thinking about it because it comes up quite a bit for people. And I would love to kind of just say like, this is where I am with an impaired shoulder, for instance, which is where Jake is. And I'm going to practice

03:08
you know, practice my movement, practice healing, practice getting better, practice to better understand my body, right, in this moment, and just see sort of where I could potentially grow to on the other side of it. But I, you know, I guess this all goes back to ego. Oh, no, it does. And even though, you know, when we were chatting, and it's like, well, as a 14 year old kid, like, it is the biggest thing in your life. But as like a 44 year old or a 54 year old,

03:37
your sport sometimes is the biggest thing in your life. And I talked to so many clients and I'm like this myself, if I can't, if I'm injured and I can't run, logically I know it's okay. know, like that's not, it's of course it's, you know, my tolerance to injury and what I can and can't do is so much better now than what it ever was. but you are part, like what you do is, part of who you are. And if you can't do the thing you love.

04:02
And then you start questioning, you oh, maybe I'm not as good as what I thought I was. you know, maybe this is, you you start questioning everything if your identity is tied up into that. And as a kid, like, and particularly with Jake and all these seems to be doing this summer is just, I don't know, water polo and basketball and all the things. And if you're injured, can't do that, you'd sort of be like a little bit lost. This is what it is. So, and I asked you if you had any...

04:30
Because you're so true, like when a kid, you said, what other identity did they have? And I was like, well, I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know whatever it like. mean, obviously, he's a son. He's a friend. You know what I mean? He's like, you know, a spirit in the universe. But that's that's like 90 percent of the way that he walks in the world. So what what do you do when 90 percent of your normal self, self as athlete or self as, you know, a person who can normally perform, you know, their sport of choice?

04:58
to the best of their ability can't do that. How do you work through it? What are some things that, like what would you say to yourself? Let's just say you were injured and maybe you have been, I don't know the last time, when was last time you were injured?

05:12
maybe like late last year it would have been I'm sure. A little niggle or whatever. If it was something ongoing and I mean I always have niggles like right now I'm sitting here. What? This must be a New Zealand word. No it's not a niggle. What is that? Oh surely you know. It's not an injury but you have like some sort of like tight muscle so yeah I've got some niggles, got some niggles.

05:40
I can't believe you have not heard that, Terri. No, it's my first time. This is so exciting. Oh my gosh. Oh, that's so hilarious. It is not a New Zealand thing. must be, maybe it's an endurance athlete thing. I just got a niggle. Just got a niggle. I love that I'm using it now. It's awesome. You should. needs to go N-I-G-G-E-L? How do you spell it? N-I-G-G-L-E. L-E. Okay. Like a wiggle, but it's a niggle.

06:07
Um, that's hilarious. Okay. This is great. Okay. Oh my God. I'm here for this one. Okay. Good. Continue. But for people like us, and actually this would maybe help Jake is you just become involved in another way. So he becomes a water boy. He becomes, you know, taking the towels out for the tea, like being in, because part of it is that loss of identity. Cause you feel you're no longer part of something. So you just, you just become a

06:34
part of it in a different way. right now, if I couldn't run, I don't know that I would do this because I'm not, it's actually okay. I can deal with it. But if I was struggling and that was all of my community was in running, then I would volunteer at Park Run, which is a free 5k run every Saturday. Or I would go to my Harriers club and I would volunteer there. So I would still be part of the community that people valued and I'd do something of value. And then I would

07:03
You'd still feel sad, but that you couldn't do the thing, but you'd at least feel you were still part of something. But I have to say right now, if I was injured, mean, I'd be disappointed, but not because I'd be disappointed because I wouldn't be doing what I loved. Not that I'd sort of lost myself, but that sense of loss is very real for athletes. Yes. Yeah.

07:27
I think that you're, I think it's a sense of loss. That's exactly what I think. I think you do, you literally kind of have to walk away and you have a temporary set. It's a temporary, hopefully, sense of loss that you will regain with a better understanding of, you know, what you need to do to help, you know, help yourself in that moment. But it is exhausting for, I think for your mindset. it's, there's also one more thing I would say about injuries that I think are really challenging is there's a big unknown piece to them.

07:57
Right? You can't, you don't know a hundred percent what you're, you know, what you need to do to, to maybe you know what you need to do, but you don't know in which, you know, the timeframe and how long it's going to take. And everybody's kind of telling you a little bit of something different. And, you know, you're not a hundred percent sure. I just not a hundred percent sure of what that looks like. And so I'm just very acutely aware of,

08:25
being mindful of what that timeframe and just setting realistic expectations. But I think that's a really challenging part of it is just how the unknown piece. I don't know, go back. we always say, here's some action items, really deep dive into how you can add physical therapy or whatever things you need to add. Like when you've been down, what have you done to get back up faster? How have you expedited your healing? Has it been through food?

08:55
Oh, that's a minor piece of the puzzle. It is for making sure when I had that bone injury, was making sure I was eating enough because you think, I'm not doing anything so I need to pull back my calories and that's the last thing you want to do. The actual healing of the bone process over, particularly in that first couple of weeks, you need a lot more calories. And they absolutely went hard on supplements.

09:21
So normally from a food perspective, it would be reducing inflammatory load. So if you're eating junk food, then, or, you know, a lot of highly processed and refined foods, would minimize those. You would increase your, like- Really fast. What are some of the very high inflammatory foods? Obviously you want to be mindful of them normally, but you want to be particularly mindful of them when you're healing. What are they? They're the highly processed and refined, anything packet.

09:51
Okay. Okay. So the anti-inflammatory foods would be fruit, vegetables, salmon and sardines, so fatty fish would be, lean proteins would be anti-inflammatory. You've also got, that's inclusive of like red meat and as well, people throw red meat under the bus.

10:14
I know, I'm not one of those people. I ride the bus with red meat. Nuts and seeds, eggs. Dairy is fine for most people, but you and I have discussed dairy before about the potential for casein to be inflammatory for some individuals. And of course, minimizing alcohol and things like that. from a diet perspective, there is a lot that...

10:42
that you can do from an anti-inflammatory and a healing perspective. But I don't want to overstate it because actually it's much more about the rest. Rest be it either active rest mostly actually, that's the thing for the blood flow. Explain active rest. Yeah, I'm no physiotherapist. as I understand it, most things require a bit of blood flow. So being absolutely sedentary isn't great.

11:12
And then where possible, just start rehabbing it, whatever that looks like for the individual or the injury that we're discussing. yeah. So there is a lot you can actively do. so actually taking ownership there is really helpful for the mindset as well. So you know that every day you are actively working towards getting better rather than just going, I knew so many.

11:36
really great runners actually in my late 20s. And when they got injured, they'd like sit on the couch and eat junk food and lament the fact they couldn't run rather than actively work at healing themselves. So, but that's a young person's thing. Well, definitely. do have a lot of, I still have a lot of, you know, people that will come in and like something will feel still had been injured or something will feel right. And they're just

12:01
absolutely. They're like, we're not touching this side of my body or we're not. You know, you're like, oh, gosh, there's got to be a fine line between that too, because I appreciate that you're here and that you're willing to like, work hard and strength train and take care of your body. But like literally removing it's like that what you were talking about earlier, like the active, you know, kind of the active recovery, that area still needs blood flow, body still needs blood flow. Keeping it kind of, you know, obviously, if it's broken, there's some things you can't move. But if it's not, I always encourage.

12:30
you know, letting kind of like we talked about greater perceived exertion and you talk about kind of like let pain be your guide. I think that makes sense. about that. Yeah, completely. And not be silly. because like a runner's runners are great. What we tend to do is we go and test like, oh, I if this still hurts until we go for a run. Oh, yeah, it still hurts. Like even like well before and we should know better, but for some, for whatever reason, we just don't.

12:59
Well, I saw it today when Jake, you know, but he tested it. He's a water polo player and he's a swimmer and he's like, look, I want to just want to get across the pool. want to do a 50 of freestyle and I want to see how I how I I feel. I want to test it. Right. And so I think it's. It hurt. Yeah, it hurt. But I don't think it it, you know, I don't think that that 26 seconds in the pool tonight, you know, made, you know, was like the big game changer to everything. I think that he just

13:29
got out. I don't think it's going to make it infinitely worse. But I think he was just a little bit frustrated that it still hurt. I think he was hoping to get in and be back to the way that he normally swims and feels. And it just wasn't there. And again, I was thinking to myself as a parent, and I'm sure parents can relate to this, I think you feel heavy too. You feel like there's want to be more things that you want to be able to do. And it's a fine line between pushing.

13:56
too much one way for them to reclaim that identity and also backing up and like, this working? And I always think about it psychologically too, because it's really depressing to your head space to just not have, to not feel that the serotonin, the adrenaline, the actual like, know, transmitters, neurotransmitters that take place when you perform at a place that you normally perform at.

14:26
I just, it's just, I love the idea of active, you know, active recovery for people so that you're still moving. So even if it's not the way you're normally moving, Sarah Gunning, I think is super important because that just really helps to like break up the fascia and bring up blood flow. I think what you were saying tonight was more, to be more mindful of inflammatory foods and then anti-inflammatory foods. don't, you know, I think some people kind of just think that's a sort of like,

14:55
What is that? And, I think it's important to note what it is. Because that does, that creates, I think what people also need to understand is the power of inflammation too, to like expedite recovery. I think the less inflammation you have in your body, the healthier you will feel and probably the faster you will recover. Is that fair? It is fair. The inflammatory process in the initial stages is super important. So they don't,

15:24
I don't think they recommend icing immediately or anything like that because you want that inflammation to be able to go in and help heal. There's a lot of the macrophages and cholesterol and immunoglobulin factors, I don't know, whatever they are, they go in and they rush in and heal. It's all part of that inflammatory process, but you do want to sort of...

15:50
move that in and move it out fairly quickly as I understand it. But again, I'm no physio, so might be wrong. Someone can correct me. Well, I think I was just more thinking about nutrition as a way to expedite your recovery and how you can eat to expedite your recovery, but also eat to reduce inflammation. I think it's just something that I don't pay attention to as much, but I think simply put,

16:16
less of the package, less of the refined things, less of the dead food, I like to say. If you ever want to know what's like, I'm like, it's very simple. It's not alive, right? There's dead and living food is dead. So just maybe don't in your belly, you'll probably get a dead response. But I'll tell you something. You say, sometimes, and I'll tell you a story real quick. My dad was very into like all this, you know, healthy stuff at, think at a point in time.

16:44
where people just, you know, it's like a very yuppie, I'm in the 80s and I'm like, you know, running the beta breakers and I'm eating at, you know, Berkeley Natural Grocery. And, you he would buy all this crazy food. And I remember just being his kid, Mickey, and just being like,

16:58
You know what I mean? Like that's what we're going to come home to. It's going to be like sauteed tofu and vegetables, Uncle Sam's cereal, which is just like this grainy natural laxative, know, amaranth. can be a bread. Yes, this is exactly what we had. That bread, had tofu, ice cream sandwiches, we had, you know, all of these things. But I remember him using, I mean, that's like, that was not my terminology. That was my dad.

17:23
It's a direct OG, Dan Cork kind of thing. And he would say that, just that's dead food, it's living food, and put that in your body. so I kind of still think about it even though I look at my pantry and I'm like, covering my head because I'm like, oh, I'm not winning any big points with, I always think for a couple of handful of gummy bears, did you have a chicken breast? Yeah, no, totally. There is, there is just this element of you have to.

17:49
You have to sort of a little bit sometimes as a parent, you know, you just can't do it all, can you? You do. You you have these wonderful visions of how things are going to play out and then in real life that just doesn't happen that way. I love to remind people that you have the power to hop into your emotional brain.

18:11
or your rational brain at any given moment in the day. And even when things are really hard and injuries are really hard and we're experiencing this in our family right now, that you have some control in the situation. So when I'm in the emotional brain and feeling sorry for myself or feeling sorry for my kid or whatever, I just try to go out of it and go, okay, how much active recovery did we do today? What was your anti-inflammatory foods? Things like that. They make a difference because they re...

18:40
claim your power in the situation, right? Everybody, like, just reclaim it. And these are some things that you can do. They will expedite your healing and you will feel like you have a little bit of control and a very uncontrolled feeling because injury just has this open-ended like, okay, you're injured and we have no idea how long this is gonna be, you know? But so I would just encourage you to maybe like do these.

19:09
one or two or three things. I love our podcast for many reasons, but I do feel like people can walk away with like three nuggets. know, like they literally can go and it feels really empowering. Like, okay, I can do those three things next time I'm in a state of injury or some my child is or whatever my friend. I imagine to close this out that Jake is getting like physical therapy on it as well, right?

19:37
Yes, mean, that's actually is going to a physical therapy appointment tomorrow. Amazing. So who's great. And so I'm going to kind of be in on that appointment so I can kind of hear and listen, because that's kind of its own brand of genius. People have their feelings one way or the other. But I think it is super powerful to healing. And it's also like not very invasive when you think about it. So right. But I could definitely be.

20:04
streamlining his diet a little bit better right now and his hydration. And I can also just think like we're doing everything that we can so I can feel a little bit less heavy. Cause I realize, you know, if I'm being completely transparent that a part of that identity of his is also part of mine. Me, not only me being an athlete, but me having an athletic son. Yeah. You a son who can perform at a certain place.

20:34
And so it's, you know, this is all a very psychological thing, but you know, you do realize that while you're helping him do the work, I'm doing the work too. I'm doing the work too. I'm always doing the work, I know. No one can accuse you of never not doing the work. Yeah. that's like, it's a super common, right? Parents and their children. That's just what happens. I think some...

21:02
I think it is very common. think you feel the weight, no pun intended, of what they're experiencing. But you're also trying to give them something that doesn't feel so emotional to hold their hats on. And I think that still active recovering and still doing these things and eating in an inflammatory way, less dead, more alive, you might have a few less nickels.

21:30
not to be confused with a wiggle with an N everybody, which is just like a little like, you know, what a pain here and there, a strain, a sprain. It's not a sprain, not a strain, just a pain. Just a pain. Yeah, just a little niggle that you just work through and then it randomly appears somewhere else in your body and you're like, okay, great, another little niggle. in,

21:56
Leard Hamilton's words and he's like this I love him. Yeah, he's so great, right? He's one of my favorites, yeah. Yeah, and he's like, mate, if I didn't have a wiggle, if I didn't have a niggle, and if I didn't have something wrong with me and injured, like if I let that prevent me from doing my sport, then I would never do anything. So he's just like, let you just keep living. I it. I freaking love that. Also that sometimes you have to just kind of keep going in spite of yourself.

22:25
Exactly. he's one of the cooler dudes in the entire universe. thank you for quoting Leard Hamilton. So I'm taking my niggle up to the gym, basically, right now. And I'm living the Leard Hamilton lifestyle. I mean, it's true. I mean, in the actual persistent rain, but still, it's going down. I think it makes a ton of sense. that, I will ask you tonight, this morning, afternoon,

22:54
What you're grateful for. am grateful. I love having these discussions where we just remind ourselves of what is important. And actually there are times where you feel you can't, you don't have agency, but actually you do. And so it's always nice to little snippets to remind you. I like the word agency. Not as much as I like the word nickel, but I'm here for that. am supremely grateful for that for you.

23:24
and the ability to do this. Because I think any time that you can more concisely articulate a intense emotion in your body, you release it and it becomes less weight for you. And I think that's a very powerful place to be. with that, we'll go make Jake a big salad and add a little protein to that. And look forward to seeing you very Next week. Amazing.