Adapt and Overcome

As I had posted a few weeks ago, I have a foot that's pretty banged up.  This also doesn't include the opposite knee that's a little upset with me overall.  So with that, I've had to adapt my workouts so that I didn't feel broken or anything after I finished with my workout.

Some things don't hurt when I do them.  Prior to the foot injury, I was able to do barbell lunges fairly well (check it out on instagram!).  I had a difficulty with squatting due to my knee hurting and being a general pain in the ass for the span of a couple of days after.  Now, lunges hurt because of the angle that my foot is in while I perform the lunges and squats so far don't seem to be too bad.

Running is also something that I can't do for the time being.  I was really enjoying going out for runs, as it was relaxing.  Now, the impact hurts and forces my foot to throb for awhile.  So I can do things like the elliptical, which honestly is boring for me, or what I did the other day and would seriously consider again was to hit a heavy bag while I listened to some music (for the duration of the music) and then find a song that had a good rhythm and used the battling ropes.

With this, I ended up doing about 20 min of bag work and nearly 5 min straight on the ropes, which if you've ever done them you know is hard.

This is how I've had to adapt my workouts to still get what I need but without compromising my injury.  My sparring has diminished significantly due to this and it's sad, because that's where I can get some of my stress out.  But, after my vacation next week, all things should be back to normal.  

Why exercise is only 20% of the equation and the time dedicated to it may be futile

As I've alluded to in previous posts, I tend to be on the slightly fluffier side of things.  To give you a full-fledged idea of how ineffective exercise can often be, I do 2 very intense kickboxing classes per week, 2 moderate intensity boxing classes, 4 low to moderate boxing classes, 4 lifting sessions training both the upper and lower body in its entirety, and I usually average 11,000 steps per day.  Those 11,000 steps are around an hour and a half of movement on top of everything else.  Therefore, if exercise was the solitary answer, I'd be super ripped by this point.

I've pointed out in my last post the quantity of exercise performed by the average person, which equates to about 3 hours per week.  Easily, I surpass that.  On the positive, I would consider myself much stronger than average, but also am still not necessarily the most lean person in the world.  Therefore, exercise isn't the only answer.

For novice exercisers, exercise may be up to 40% of the equation in terms of weight management.  That number dramatically reduces as your body adapts to the various forms of exercise.  However, for many people, they devote so much more time to exercise than in dietary preparation or just nutritional education in general.

Generally changing what you eat is hard.  Often healthy food consists of vegetables, which aren't the most popular things in the world.  However, the more veggies you eat, the leaner you tend to be.  This, combined with an increase in protein consumption, say around 1 gram per pound of body weight can significantly offset any fat mass that could be gained.

To maximize your exercise effectiveness, skip the cardio.  Hitting the weights can have a longer, more prolonged effect on managing your weights over traditional cardio.  This is not to say that if you like running or cycling or whatever to skip it, on the contrary, go ahead and keep it up.  However, overall the weights can have the larger impact on your metabolic rate and improve your health.

When you look at your health, think about how eating can have the more profound impact on your life.  Exercise is still important, only less so.