Walking into our local CrossFit gym the other day, I overheard one of the coaches giving some advice to a member of the gym who was dealing with some lingering muscle soreness and fatigue associated with a recent stretch of fairly intense workouts. I didn’t hear the entire conversation, but what I did hear sounded like pretty good advice – the coach recommended a little extra rest, some yoga and mobility work, and perhaps backing off on the intensity and volume of workouts for a short time to allow for recuperation. The final piece of advice given was something I’ve heard countless times over the years: “…listen to your body.” Have you ever heard this before?

“Listen to your body.” This is probably more of a “me” thing than anything else, but I find that particular bit of fitness advice to be a little bit lacking. Not that I’m trying to be critical of the coach in question – the coaches at our gym are great, and very knowledgeable. I’m also not saying that’s necessarily bad advice, but it seems to me that it is often given more like a platitude than something that is really useful. What am I “listening” for? How do I assess the signals that my body is giving me? And what do I do about them? Does my body have the final say on what I do or don’t do?

To a degree, yes, it does; we all have our physical limitations, and we all have biological needs for nutrition, rest, and the like. Our bodies tell us of these needs with signals like hunger, fatigue, pain or even illness. At the same time, the biological systems that regulate the body don’t necessarily know that one is lifting weights to get stronger, or running intervals to improve Vo2 max, or making diet adjustments to improve body composition. The opposite can also be true; the body doesn’t necessarily know that a person is completely sedentary, has a garbage diet, and surfs the internet all night instead of getting decent sleep. In either case, all that the body knows is that its fundamental job is to maintain homeostasis – a process of constantly adjusting internal body systems with the goal of maintaining internal stability, and it will try to do that regardless of how it is being attended to. With that in mind, it seems to me that there may be times when a person’s activities and the goal of their internal body systems may not be completely aligned, in a sense. Put another way, the body might send out similar signals of distress or discomfort in response to things that that may be conducive to good health, as well as things that are not. So, how do we know when to stop, or when to push a little further?

I’m not a physiologist or a doctor, so take my opinion here accordingly; I’m just a dude with a keyboard and a website. For me, though, I feel like instead of suggesting that we “listen” to our bodies, we should think of the process more like a conversation with our bodies. What does that mean? For me, it means not only “listening” to the body’s signals, both positive and negative, but also cultivating the requisite mind-body connection that will assist in understanding why the same signals are being sent and felt. Allow me to illustrate with an example where I didn’t do this very well: On my most recent airline trip, I woke up to a cold and rainy day in the layover hotel. Yuck. Going for a walk or jog outdoors wasn’t in the cards that day, so I elected to work out in the hotel gym. I did a little weight lifting, then decided to put on a podcast and jog on the treadmill for a while. After only a few minutes of jogging, though, I felt just completely gassed, out of breath, and out of energy. What the heck? Dealing with some level of fatigue is pretty normal during my trips, but I’m in decent shape and normally can do an easy jog without any difficulty. My body, however, was telling me something else on this day, and I wasn’t sure why. Why was this happening?

Did I get enough sleep? Check.

Was my diet in order? Check.

Did I drink enough water? Check.

Did I feel OK otherwise? Check.

Hmm. “Just one of those days,” I thought to myself as I cut the jog short in favor of some yoga. As I got up to leave the gym, I thought I’d do a quick weather check for our afternoon departure, and when I looked at the weather, the missing piece fell into place: I was in Denver! I was trying to jog at my normal pace at 5,000 feet of elevation over my normal workout location, which I hadn’t thought of when I was wondering why my body seemed so much more stressed than normal over an easy jog.

While that may be a somewhat silly example, I think it illustrates the importance of not only “hearing” what our bodies are saying, but understanding why, so we can respond in a beneficial way. In many cases, the way we respond to body discomfort may be oriented towards a positive outcome; I think that most people would agree that exercising physical capacity in an athletic or fitness context requires discomfort at times – pushing through the body’s signals of distress in a controlled way. On the other hand, that same body conversation could result in a negative outcome; for example, pouring another cup of coffee or three to combat fatigue instead of getting quality sleep, or masking physical, mental, or emotional distress with alcohol or drugs or doom-scrolling instead of addressing the root causes. There are many possibilities. I’ve been on both sides of that ledger, as have many of us who have been around long enough and have the fortitude to admit it.

Revisiting the original question, is it good advice to “listen to your body”? I think that we really don’t have any choice. We experience pain, fatigue, hunger, emotions, and all of the body’s other signals whether we want to or not. However, if we take the additional step of turning those experiences into a conversation where the root causes are rightly identified and addressed, we can increase our own capacity to affect positive change. Or at least put the phone down and get a good night’s sleep.

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