Monday, June 7th, 2010
I got rear-ended on the way to yoga tonight. Perhaps the very act of driving to yoga gets me all Zen because I wasn’t that perturbed by it—the damage, the long phone calls with insurance companies, having to reassure the freaked out 21-year-old who hit me that it was all fine, she and I were okay and that’s all that matters… I think the only perturbing factor was being late to yoga, really. (Yes, I still went.) But, as I sat down to write this–fender bender headache being kept at bay momentarily by OTC meds–no other topic could come to me as I settled in other than perspective and how it may have shaped my reaction to something I might have otherwise flipped out about at another point in my life.
Just makes you want to strike a tree pose and meditate, doesn't it?
In addition to my blood pressure not changing one iota during my little accident, I’ve been trying new stuff lately and renewing my enthusiasm for past interests. It’s timely since we’ve been throwing around the notion of defining the word and concept of “athlete” here at MP4 lately. As far as I can tell, I’m not trying to earn that title by my actions. Rather, I’m mostly doing things because I can. Pretty simple. You see, I have a lifelong habit of letting the DUMBEST things keep me from trying stuff, such as thinking I’m “too fat”, “not talented enough”, or whatever. You know the drill. Fill in the dysfunctional thought of your choosing. In the last 39-1/2 years I’ve had most of them, I’m sure.
Why the change? I’m sure turning 40 this year has to have something to do with it. After a while you figure out that you aren’t going to suddenly transform into a gifted athlete supermodel genius if you have not been one previously. At the very least, you realize that self-limiting thinking sucks and causes you to miss out on life. But it’s also because, as time goes by, you have experiences that make you realize you ought to try something out if you want to “because you can”. (Disclaimer: Can we all be grown ups and assume what I’m talking about is new places, new outfits, new hobbies, new hairdos, new sports, new ways of doing things? Not dangerous, harmful, immoral, unethical, cruel, and/or illegal things. Good, thanks.)
Something happens as certain birthdays close in when you realize that your age is not “old” like you thought it was when your parents were turning those numbers. Mind you, I need more time to recover and I hurt a LOT more when I do things. One of my physical tendencies is arthritis. It’s annoying, but I feel better when I’m moving. (Seanna always mentions that Kas and I are in perpetual motion. Little does she know that once I’m warmed up it’s the only time I don’t hurt. 
I’ll let her continue to be impressed, though.) And when my husband (physical therapist) comes home with a heart-breaking story of a patient’s disability, or I think of a patient of my own who is experiencing a loss of function, I lose any thoughts of skipping cardio. Why? Because I can do it. He and I will park in the back of parking lots and look at each other and say: “Because we can”. Like it’s some sort of protective pact that will karmic-ly keep us from ever being gimped up.
On that note, part of my “because I can” comes from the fact that some people I know “can’t”. I have a dear friend really duking it out with an advanced stage of cancer. She is the embodiment of bravery and peace, routinely undergoing painful and nauseating treatments in the hope that she’ll get more time with her husband and 1-year-old daughter, yet still being able to pull off some of the best conversations about spirituality and other deep topics. I leave those conversations utterly transformed, eagerly awaiting the next one because I grow another level with each one, I swear it. This friend was one of my training regulars. Not only could she hold her own, she did it looking fabulous, even throughout her pregnancy. I train partly because I can, and she can’t right now.
I’m not sure how to tie this all up. I’m not usually the one on the MP4 doing a “pondering” sort of post. But my own transforming perspective is not random. It’s not coincidental that our collective MP4 Team consciousness lately, as we define ourselves and our offerings, surrounds the concept that we train for per4mance AND for beauty because we (“we”=all of us) can. We shun little pink dumbbells while pumping big ones with pink manicures because we can. We pull off a grunt-fart-spit workout, shake off the sweat, and slug down our PWO while heading out for a facial because we can. We choose not to make per4ming well and aging gracefully mutually exclusive concepts.
And that opens up a LOT of “cans”. 
I’d like to dedicate today’s post to my late cousin, Lara Spencer Bunce . A star student-athlete, she could have been the poster-person for MP4: rock star at her sports, mentally determined, gorgeous inside and out. Her too-short-but-packed-tight life inspires me to keep pluggin’ and chuggin’ with a can-do attitude… because I can.
Awesome on the field...
...and off.
“Life is too short to be anything but happy.”
~Lara S. Bunce
10/27/90-6/12/08
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
Practice self love daily, please.
Lately I have been realizing just how blessed my life has been. I don’t mean with money or fame—because I have neither.Haha! I mean with opportunity, family, work, education and even athleticism. And when I refer to athleticism, I don’t even mean being a great athlete. I only mean knowing I am an athlete.
I so love what I do. Every day I either meet new clients or learn new things about the clients we already have. Recently I learned from a seasoned athlete who has participated in many sports that she does not consider herself to be an athlete. She works out 4 to 5 times per week and competes in a few different sports, yet, she does not think that qualifies her as an athlete. This prompted me to ask: “Well then, what makes a person an athlete?” Her response: “All the stuff I do. I just don’t think that I am one.” Oh boy.
As women, we wake up every day poking, prodding, picking, frowning and disliking ourselves, our bodies, our lives…our everything. ‘There has to be more than this’ is our first thought. Our second thought ranges from ‘I hate my thighs’ to ‘I have dimples on my dimples, UGH’ to finally ‘If I could only lose this blah blah blah.’ At no time do any of us really think about waking up and saying, “this body is about to go make a personal record at the gym today”. Or, “yesterday I ran a 5k, 10k, ½ marathon (insert event here), what am I going to do today?” No…we don’t celebrate ourselves. Just denigrate our selves. And how much we can’t do or aren’t worthy of or lack because we don’t look good. At what point does it get old?
Please know that when you come here, you will be recognized as an athlete—because guess what? That’s what you are.
If you:
Lift more than casually (caught yourself either spitting spittle while doing cardio or grunting while lifting)
Participate in *any* sport even recreationally
Own more than one type of sneaker
Wear a hat while working out
Worship sports creams like Icy Hot
Know what pwo stands for
Have a callus of any kind
Run more than just out of toothpaste
Can do a real push up
Shave your chin (sorry, that’s for me)
Chase children throughout the house
Play tennis (sorry, I know it’s a sport, that’s for Mara)
Scale walls with Indian-type costumes on (ah…that’d be Heather)
Own a spin bike anywhere in your house
Tell somebody about some piece of your workout that day
and
Hang out with us…
Well then…you, my dear, are an athlete.
Of course you know by now that we feel, if you have to perform, you might as well look good while doing it. We feel this way mainly because you cannot be the best at your sport if you are not the best at you. This does not mean that you are less of an athlete if you do not look good. It also does not mean that you are more of an athlete if you actually do look good. In fact, the only reason we speak of looking good in the first place is we know that 1) you can relate and 2) the closer you are to ideal weight the better chance you will have to perform at the top of your game. But it in no way should define who you are *outside* of your sport performance nor should it become another way for you to practice self loathing and punishment as we so readily know how to do.
I say this because I think many woman use how they look as a way to define whether they are an athlete or not. Because they do not walk around looking the part all the time, or they have a muffin top, or they have 20 pounds to lose, they are not an athlete. They also feel because they have children, don’t compete, don’t eat, breathe and die sports that they are not an athlete either. It is so time for us to drop all these misconceptions of what makes an athlete and begin to love ourselves for who we are: Women who enjoy pushing our bodies to *any* limit—not just THE limit—and live to brag about it.
As I work more and more with women in all walks of life (I do not work with only “athletes”), I realize that how we see ourselves is more than just a reflection of society. I used to believe that the media sent us messages and that’s where we learned all this self negativity but that’s no longer my only belief. I used to have the sort of comfort about myself because I have a very healthy self image but even that is not always true anymore as I age. I used to also think that if women just got more involved in sports that they would feel better about themselves but now I know that’s not entirely true. My thoughts about this stuff are evolving and as they do, I promise I will share. But know this:
You are an athlete. You are more than what your outside shows. You can be as amazing at your sport as you want to be, it’s up to you. You are no less of a person if you choose not to be more and you are no less of an athlete if your body decides otherwise. Rock on sistahs.
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
When I was younger I would sit at the kitchen table with my mother and my closest older sister and we would watch Wimbeldon from beginning to end. We followed all the players and many of those names were household names to me growing up: Everet, McInroe, Connors, Borg and so on. I knew them all and loved them all. And I remember my mother saying something to the effect of, ‘You could play here if you wanted to’ alluding to the fact that if I tried harder I could be as good as them. And it was then that I remember thinking, “No thanks, I like being a girl.”
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I was a tomboy growing up. I wasn’t adverse to getting dirty. I was a track girl through and through and I was a rough houser. I would climb trees just because, jump off things because they were there and run to everything that I was going to (which is different than being a runner). The best way to describe me is if I was growing up now, I would be part of Parkour. In fact, it annoys me now that they have a name for it when I called it ‘getting to school.’ Whatever.
But women in sports to me had no appeal. Aside from the fact that I am an athlete, I am also a girly girl. I love make up and anything that glitters (not to be confused with Seanna who just downright loves glitter;); I enjoy a great workout session of sweat and calluses capped off with a pedicure and a massage. In other words, as much as I want to be athletic, I must be a woman as well and when I was younger, they did not seem to go together to me. My role models at the time were Billy Jean King and Martina Navratilova who, as awesome as they were as players, were not winning the hottest women of tennis awards any time soon. Who was cute and played against them was Chris Everet and she was depicted as this waif who would never be able to beat Martina’s power and prowess so she should just give it up. Basically we were forced to choose between looking like a man to be good at our sport or being feminine and being considered less of a force.
Man she had skills!
Essentially the message to me was, if you wanted to be considered as an athlete you needed to look like a man. If not, you were just a cute chic who had a nice racquet (pun totally intended). Umm, yeah…no thanks.
Hubba hubba!
Clearly times have changed when you think of athletes like Anna Kournikova, Amanda Beard and Christine Aaron who have made names for themselves and their sports for being athletes and being hot at the same time. They have made it ok to be cute and talented and we at MP4 want to know, “Why is that so bad?” From modeling to being in commercials, these women have made a stance saying, “Hey, I am hot AND good at my sport!” Now how you like them apples?
—Where the Vain Go To Train
This is a huge mantra here at MP4. Not only are we here for you as an athlete, we are also here for you as woman. We provide different insights into your training, try to keep it lively with our own struggles as athletes, prove to you that you are an athlete whether you believe it or not and then tap into your girly side at the end by sending you off with a recommendation for the “best” mascara (right Joanna?).
Yes!…you are a woman. Yes!…you need to be tough to keep up with the guys. But no!…you do not have to forsake your birthright to do so. Recently there was a photo that was released of a high school pole vaulter that nearly rocked the nation. 
Why? Because she was GORGEOUS and yet, still an athlete. She made it cool to be stunning. We want to clink our foundation bottles with hers and say, “Congratulations, girl. You just pushed us girly-girls ahead 10 years in terms of acceptance and we love you for it.”
Even as a company we will struggle as the years pass to get the same recognition as our male counterparts. Because we are not VO2-maxing you to death, speaking for hours on end on lactic threshold (because we love to hear ourselves speak;) and comparing performance studies side by side for the latest trends in agility training, we are not taken anywhere near as seriously as we would be if we were male dominated. Honestly, we could do better in terms of letting you know what we know and that is on the way in the form of podcasts, webinars and articles but would it bother you to know that we recorded and wrote them all while wearing high heels and false eyelashes?
“To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open.” Lillian Smith
I want to make it clear that we are not complaining here. We love a good challenge. Somehow we need to stay true to ourselves and be girly girl while we convince you that the best trainers out there only know a smidgen more than we do (hi, I’d like a diet coke with my piece of humble pie. Thanks.). We get it and we’re up for the challenge. Since outward appearance is as important to us as inward drive and determination, you will soon find out how we nurture and enhance it through nutrition as we tell you exactly what ‘performance nutrition’ means to us. And as we roll out our new assessment tool that will help you to be better at your sport by assessing your imbalances, we will also highlight how it will help you to stand taller and appear slimmer just by fixing you. Lastly, we must provide you with some hearty theory, good old training facts/tips and rock solid examples of our work so that you can see that being girly is not like it used to be and you can still be the athlete you have always wanted to be while celebrating the girl in you. Here’s to a good make up application! Woop woop!
Monday, May 10th, 2010
I suck at letting go. Of some things, anyhow. Seriously, my mind is like a dog with a bone about some things. Mostly this applies to me-and-only-me. I am too busy passing judgment on my past—and my future, if you can believe that—to do to it anyone else. For example, I perceive myself as unathletic. Fit enough, sure. But “athletic”? Um… no. Yet I’ll be the first to slap that label on to anyone who shows effort, heart, and talent–however minimal–followed up with a rousing: “You go, girl!”. Unfortunately this perception does something much worse to me than causing me to fail. It causes me to never try. I’m getting better. I’ve done some things that have been downright embarrassing in the last few years, but what I remember more is that I tried. (Yet another benefit of aging. You just know as a school-aged kid I’d have remembered the embarrassment part more.)
Clearly we learn the p-word too early in life!
This reminds me of a story about monkey traps. Someone, somewhere (Southeast Asia? Doesn’t matter…) figured out how to trap monkeys by putting beans in the bottom of jars that had wide bottoms but very narrow tops. Once a monkey encountered the treats, they reached into the jar and grabbed the goodies, only to find that they couldn’t free their now-clenched fist from the neck of the jar. While it stands to reason that opening their fist to be able to liberate their hand from the jar would be an obvious solution, the smart hunters knew that it was monkey-nature to not want to let go of the beans—even with a hunter in sight, fast approaching with a net! I’m using past tense here, but this could very well still be a monkey-hunting practice used today for all I know. I don’t want to think about it. But the message is clear: A silly monkey can be trapped by its unwillingness to let go, thus changing the course of its life. In this case it is decidedly not for the better.
Goodness knows we’ve all heard enough stories about people who have had less-than-nothing in the way of emotional, financial, and/or physical resources and support rising way above what anyone thought possible because they were able to let go of any limitations, real or imagined. And ultimately, don’t those stories pretty much demonstrate that they are all imagined? Maddening for silly monkeys like myself. I’ve decided that overcoming the mental barriers I’ve set up requires a very conscious override… and some discomfort. Since I have so many of these blocks in place, I need to take one bite at a time. One of my ongoing ones is the whole “unathletic” thing. I’ve done some conscious (and very uncomfortable) overrides such as: competing in a fitness competition and learning to navigate the Women’s Tri-Fit Obstacle course. I’ll be honest, I really sucked at both. But I did them! I’ve also registered for the Warrior Dash coming up at the end of this month. Hardly a hardcore race (I think…), but some obstacles have me nervous, such as the wall. It is not lost on me that the wall in the Tri-Fit O-Course gave me the most trouble too. Poetic, eh? Oh, and the monkey bars too—now there’s some irony! Nonetheless, my husband/cheerleader has already taught me to spryly jump a chain link fence without even snagging my running skirt (love you, man), so I’m already overcoming things. I’ll report back on the Dash. In the meantime, I am being 100% honest when I tell you that I enrolled in long-term disability insurance this morning. Just in case.
You want me to get over what wall, where?
So, woo-woo-make-you-think stuff aside, what’s holding you back? What are you not letting go of right now? Better yet, what are you doing as a conscious override? Please share. We can all learn from each other. Or is it just me who could use a push and some inspiration here and there?
No longer my nemesis!
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Athletes like to self-diagnose. And one of the most common conclusions they like to draw is: “I must be overtraining”, regarding anything from wanting to eat their shoes out of increased hunger to doing a faceplant on their keyboard at work—at, like, 10:00a when they started at 9:00a—to black toenails (wouldn’t that be a fun OPI nail polish color? Called “When’s Your Next Race?”). While still misunderstood, if overtraining were the problem, it’s more likely that the athlete wouldn’t have the energy to label the phenomenon, or they’d be too immersed in ennui to care. So what’s really going on?
For most elite and non-elite-but-kickin’-it-regularly athletes, overdoing it in any way is fairly self-limiting. You really kill it in training for a week or two, over and above the norm, and you find yourself banging down some extra chow and power napping your way to renewal. I remember losing it at one point in training a couple of years ago and Dr. Jodi prescribed “2 starches and a nap”. LOL (PS She’s always right.) Honestly, most athletes will kill it in training for one to two days before the inherent wisdom to nap/chow kicks in and they’re good to go. All the same, things can (and do) go wrong sometimes.
Let’s define overtraining and then move off of it. (It’s not as common as you think) The theory about what it is exactly has been batted around since the late 1950s. We haven’t been able to give it a tight definition, but what overtraining is as its core has stuck: central nervous system (CNS) overload leading to aberrant functioning. “Overtraining is an imbalance between training and recovery, exercise and exercise capacity, stress and stress tolerance.” (see reference) What’s shifted most is the symptoms associated with overtraining. We used to look for restless behavior, which is considered the sympathetic form of overtraining. (Meaning: It affects the sympathetic—fight or flight—branch of your autonomic—think “automatic”–nervous system. It does not refer to your coach and friends feeling sorry for you. BWAHAHAHA! Sorry…) Nowadays we look more for signs of phlegmatic (LOVE that word) behavior, such as lethargy and lack of desire, and sometimes inability to perform. This would be the parasympathetic form (other autonomic branch), and is more common in endurance athletes. All of us active nuts have felt this on some level at some point, I’m sure. But for it to be defined as “overtraining” it has to be pretty profound first of all, but it also takes lot of time to occur (CNS accumulation) and a lot of time to recover from it. Think weeks or months. In other words, a turbo nap, a massage, and an extra helping of yams isn’t going to cut it. In all seriousness, you’re looking at deep physiological disturbances in hormones, blood chemistry, and things like “nocturnal urinary catecholamine excretion”. Well beyond soreness, stiffness, fatigue, and questioning why you do your sport.
Fortunately, what’s happening in most cases is called “overreaching”. Aren’t you so glad it was given a name? Now we can self-diagnose more accurately! Anyhow, overreaching is basically short term overtraining (STO) for, say, a few days to 2 weeks, 3 tops. Better yet, controlled overreaching is STO on purpose, and it is used by coaches and trainers all of the time. The key is the planned and orchestrated recovery that goes along with it for a week or so after the overreaching period. Overreaching has many of the same symptoms of overtraining, just not as many and not as severe. You’re not totally debilitated by them, that is. And with the planned/controlled aspect, you’re expecting the symptoms on some level, so it’s less traumatic. Rather than the complete staleness caused by overtraining, you’ll experience a period of “brief competitive incompetence”. (This term cracks me up. Like, “It was a shame. Ethel just up and rode the race backwards. Must’ve been the brief competitive incompetence created by not recovering adequately from her overreaching.”)
Anyhow, did you catch the word “recovery” there in the last paragraph? I’ve heard Jodi say “You’re not overtraining, you’re underrecovering” enough to know that long-term training success depends on how you recover from short-term overreaching bouts. This can be applied to all of life, by the way, not just endurance sport training. And it’s very individual—not just sport to sport, but athlete to athlete—such as with which type of rest and nutrition you’ll repair and recuperate best. Stay tuned for more on how to put that into play with the MP4 Team!
In fact, we are hosting a call tomorrow night at 8 pm on recovery. If you would like more information on the call or want to attend, sign up on the right hand side above and we’ll send you an email with the details or keep checking the facebook fan page for more info. Like our last two calls, it will be fun, informative and full of solutions that you can implement right away.
Reference:
Overtraining in endurance athletes: a brief review
LEHMANN, MANFRED; FOSTER, CARL; KEUL, JOSEPH
1993, The American College of Sports Medicine.
