Wednesday Resources: Dealing With Life Stress While Training
What day is it? Seriously. Life has been a little off balance lately so if you have sent an email, text or tried to call me in the last little while and I have neglected to respond, I love you, I am just getting caught up.
I can say without reservation that this has been the most stressful time of my life to this point. There are a lot of balls in the air but slowly but surely, I am cracking away at my lists and getting things done, stuff sorted and figuring out adult answers to situations.
When your desk looks like this, there is a problem…
As I feel my stress mounting, I find myself trying hard to protect my training. The issue is, stress is stress. It doesn’t matter where it is coming from. Mounting stress in training allows my body to adapt and continually develop to become a stronger and faster athlete, but if I have double car accidents, work stress, real estate stress and decision making stress, I can reach a limit where my body can no longer adapt to that stress and I stop making gains in my training. Make sense?
Basically, no one is super human and the lower stress life you can carry, the better adaptation you will have in training.
Because I am all about getting better in my athletics, I am doing my darndest to stay zen. I can guarantee you that I have failed miserably some days but here are some of the things I am doing.
1. Sleep. This is my first answer to everything. Especially with daylight savings and losing an hour of sleep. This past week, I couldn’t get to sleep right away which is rare for me and I was feeling off so I changed my wake up time from 5 AM to 7 AM and skipped my morning workout in favour of more sleep. This will ONLY do good things for my training.
2. Laugh. I am surrounding myself with people and situations that makes me laugh. I will stop working at a set time each night if I can and flick on a comedy or read a book.
3. Breathe. I take regular breathing breaks because I have a terrible habit of holding my breath when I am stressed. Just breatheeeee.
4. Friends. Honestly, my friends are making my LIFE right now. I am going on lots of hikes, Starbucks dates and I even had a friend send me a text, telling me to meet them because they were taking me on a surprise road trip for the day. I am so unbelievably blessed to have the coolest, most thoughtful and outstanding people in my life.
5. Adrenal Support. I am loading up on Magnesium which helps with muscle relaxation and sleep as well as licorice tea because licorice contains glycyrrhizic acid, which inhibits cortisol breakdown, helping to restore normal levels of this hormone.
That’s all I’ve got but I would love to hear about how you manage to control stress.
How Stress Can Impact Your Workout – The Science of Running
Adrenal Fatigue and Magnesium – Live Strong
UGH stress was the death of me the last few months. I’ve since booted the source of stress from my life (ahem, chemistry) and switched gears to something else. Life is not worth the stress if the journey isn’t worth the outcome. Does that make sense? Anyway…hang in there and keep doing whatever it takes to destress!!
You are such an inspiration for acknowledging what your stresses are and how to deal with them. Thanks for the vote of confidence.
You’re doing a freaking awesome job, lady. And I love that you put the words glycyrrhizic acid in a post. As you know, I’m sending all the de-stressing zen vibes your way. No matter what happens, I’m pretty sure you and I will find that every other month this year is a piece of cake compared to this one! 🙂
The real question is, why WOULDN’T you put glycyrrhizic acid in a post?!
As a Queen Stress-Ball I approve all of the above.
I have started meditating each night before bed – usually 7-15min – and I have noticed a HUGE difference!
Meditation is such a great idea. I am totally adding that in this week. I am loving the phrase “Chop Wood, Carry Water.”
Wish I could “like” this!
Literally every sentence of this post resonated with me! Especially the texting people back – my own mom had to work and have me paged to get me to answer a phone. Oops. I don’t think I have a good answer but I do think you have the right approach. I’m 100% on board with protecting your workouts because I think we need that release/break from life or else we’d go nuts. Plus, breathing, taking things one day at a time and staying on top of your nutrition are all great! Hope some stress fades as you cross things off the list. xo
PS – don’t forget that you’re amazing!
Hey Jess! I feel for you. I think you’re doing all the right things. It’s the ones who pretend that everything is fine who end up crashing and burning. It sounds like you’re plowing through the tough days one at a time, and getting help and love from friends when you need it. You’ll get through this and it will soon be a distant memory. I have that same licorice tea! I didn’t know it was healthy like that, which means I should probably drink more of it. 🙂 Hang in there, Canadian sisterfriend! xo
I manage stress with running, reading my bible, prayer and journaling. I have learned to let some things go and just go with it at times. What’s funny is I add more to my plate to keep me busy to forget what I am stressing about, but his only adds more stress, and it’s a never ending circle!! Stress wreaks havoc on the body in some many ways, so it’s so important to manage it.