Five Ways to Improve Your Relationship With Exercise

Exercise should be a tool to improve your mental and physical health, not something that causes feelings of failure or stress. As a mom you have limited time and energy so exercise should be something that brings you joy and positive feelings. You deserve your relationship with exercise to be a healthy one. Here are five ways to improve your relationship with exercise:

1. Drop the “No Excuses” Mentality- whether you’re pregnant, newly postpartum, a mom of a toddler or with kids in school...you’re going to have barriers to exercise. You’re going to have unexpected things get in the way of your plan to workout. With a “no excuses” mentality, you’re sure to feel bad about missing a workout. Those negative feelings are the beginning to a negative relationship with exercise. Stop. Instead work on a strategy to plan for barriers so that you don’t feel bad when they occur.

2. Appreciate Physical Activity-aerobic and strength training is crucial to good health and fitness, however there will be times in your life where “exercise”, which I consider a structured session of physical activity, is less feasible. However things like going for family walks, biking instead of taking the train to work, playing with your kids on the playground...are all ways to keep you active outside of a fitness class or gym. If you choose to appreciate physical activity, your relationship with exercise will seem less stressful.

3. Be realistic: during my consultations, I always ask what’s realistic in terms of how much time you can dedicate to exercise. Factors such as childcare, work, and child naps or help from a partner or other caregiver are always considered. Rather than choosing an arbitrary number, like “I’m going to workout 3 days per week”, ask yourself what’s realistic. This will help you avoid the frustrations of not being able to meet expectations. Personalize your fitness for a good relationship with exercise.

4. Join a community- for exercise to become a habit, surround yourself with people that are already doing what you’re hoping to do. Whether it be a virtual community or Facebook group, or a studio, fitness class or run group...put yourself in a place where you feel supported, motivated and understood. Your environment should be positive in order to have a positive relationship with exercise.

5. Find your why- your reason for exercise before pregnancy is probably different than it is now. Make a list of all of the benefits from exercise. Check yourself to make sure none of them induce negative thoughts. In other words, instead of “so I can fit in my clothes”, try “so I can play with my kids when they ask”. Eliminate any “whys” that are not positive.

The Trainer’s Trick to Designing a Better Workout

It's been 8 weeks, are you more fit than 2016?

New Year’s Day was two months ago which means those of us that made fitness resolutions should not only be feeling, but also seeing the changes to our body. If you don’t feel stronger, leaner or more confident yet, no worries, here’s a formula to help you design a better workout.

What I’m sharing is not a new method. Personal Trainers have been using this method for years. It’s called the FITT Principle and I’m going to break it down for you.

First off, FITT stands for frequency, intensity, time and type. If you have already set a specific fitness goal (start here if you haven’t) and are aware of your current fitness capabilities then you can use this formula to design a workout plan that will lead to results.

The first thing to understand is that these variables are interdependent, meaning your frequency will affect the intensity of the activity and the intensity will impact the time, and so on.

You also have to understand that for your body to change there has to be sufficient and progressive challenge, as well as sufficient recovery.

The chart above is for most adults based on the American College of Sports Medicine’s recommendations for aerobic exercise to maintain general health. Let’s consider this example: A healthy mom of two that can barely find time to workout, but enjoys exercising outside wants to meet general health guidelines.

She’ll want to start with the frequency variable when planning since that’s her limiting factor. She’s decided she can realistically do 3 days per week. She has about an hour each of those days to workout so she decides to meet the guidelines by exercising 50 minutes each workout. This is a longer workout so it’s sufficient to exercise at a moderate intensity. She enjoys being outside so has planned to bike 3 days per week at a moderate intensity, for 50 minutes.

What happens if she has less time for exercise one morning? She can either increase her intensity and shorten the workout to meet her time restriction or she can keep the moderate intensity and split the time by doing 25 minutes in the morning and 25 minutes in the evening (when splitting the workout time, you’ll want to do at least 10 minute segments).

Make sense? Good, you can now use the FITT principle to create your own plan based on your specific training goal and capabilities. Don’t forget to incorporate a plan for resistance training. You can use ACSM guidelines as a starting point.

If you’re a Philly mom with a goal to lean out, become stronger and keep up with your kids-schedule a Screening and Consultation and stat your customized fitness journey today.