How are your new year resolutions going so far? Have you set any long term or short term goals for yourself? If you’re having a tough time making things stick, you’re not alone. We recently wrote an article on the topic of mastery and mindset shifting that speaks to some of the issues you may be experiencing right now as you look to forge ahead.

In this weeks philosophy article we will take a short but meaningful detour into what it is to build a resilient body (and mind) and give you some take aways that can help you along that path.

What is a resilient body (and mind)?

To be truly resilient in both mind and body (though the duality may not be important here) is to be able to recover well and withstand failure by bouncing back. You rebound REALLY well! Indeed, Resilience is the ability to make a comeback, recover from failure, and restore yourself well vs break down and stay there. This is not the same as robustness which is a less reactive and more proactive quality of resisting failure and weathering stress. Finally, antifragility is yet a third quality thrown around ever more popular in the fitness realm that refers to the human ability to actually increase capability and get stronger from stresses and failures. Why is this important to distinguish? Exercise and self-care practices can help you develop all 3 qualities. The way we think of the interplay at Resilient Body is that you are able to develop all three in unison through various healthy lifestyle practices, but in doing so, attain a new level or baseline of resilience each step of the way. Essentially, you are able to continue to fortify, build, and in that increased capacity be able to recover and restore well to keep the process going.

All three are great frameworks; and exercise and self care can add to all in how they make you a better person. First let’s focus on how exercise does all 3 both physically and mentally.

How Exercise Improves the Quality of Your Life on a Deeper Level

Exercise has been shown to not only improve things like strength, power, endurance, cardiovascular health and fitness etc; but it also can improve myriad markers of overall physiological health and wellness. Whether we are talking reduction in all cause mortality or improving metabolic disease (or preventing it), exercise of many flavors has it going on! Exercising also greatly improves mood and cognitive function, helps sleep, and also feelings of confidence and self-efficacy. It makes us better in so many ways.

One way that exercise does this and that we really like to focus on with clients in their training is how exposing yourself to difficult experiences that really stress and challenge you. In pushing to overcome that adversity in a controlled environment like working out at the gym, you can better buffer you for all that you experience outside of those walls whether that be at home, in relationship, at work, or just well…LIFE…and that whole unpredictable nature of it thing. Preparation in this way through working through adversity pushes your robustness and antifragility to new heights and along with that your resilience.

Your new level of muscle mass, cardiovascular fitness, metabolic function, mental health and wellbeing, and overall abilities climb to new heights. If you ever get knocked down, your resilience is at a new level as well since you likely bounce back faster and more completely to that new higher level of robustness automatically.

Exercise is literal physical and mental strengthening and it requires some stress as mentioned.

With the concept of stress, we pick back up here we started this article. New year goals can be tough tough to tackle and get into a state of flow and everyday routine like brushing your teeth; and undoubtedly the month of January can be stressful for many reasons making things that much harder. It’s a new year with new business, unique challenges, time constraints and obligations, gloomier colder weather and short dark days. Furthermore, physical and mental stress are not necessarily compartmentalized differently in that they contribute to overall stress load just the same. Some of it is indeed good and encourages beneficial changes as mentioned. However, too much of or the wrong kind that we cannot recover from and things are not so good.

In the case of exercise, you can create, endure, recover and respond beneficially to the amount and type of stress in a familiar controlled environment. In a way it’s a rehearsal or a scrimmage for tougher games or things that life throws. You can also adapt your exercise training routine to match your level of preparedness to get the amount of stress that will be beneficial for you since you can recover from it! We need the right amount and type at the right time and you can adapt your exercise goals with that in mind.

In the end, you can only adapt positively to so much stress before you are overloaded. At the point of overload that cannot be recovered from which also persists, negative health consequences can ensue. Self-care and restoration practices really help in maintaining balance in your stress load and contribute to your resilience. In other words, the stress is necessary to grow and improve, but the recovery enhances and makes the process sustainable beyond January. If you are doing a good job applying appropriate stress through exercise, see what you may also do to better balance your growth with solid recovery for long term success. Good exercise programs and coaches can make the difference here, which is also why we balance our online training and individualized personal training this way.

Putting Things Into Practice:

It may help you to try some simple steps towards approaching your exercise differently on your quest toward more resiliency. True resiliency comes through making the time for the beneficial stress of exercise and recovery consistently more than anything else.

1. It all starts with making time. Even the most busy of us have some time to spare. Whether it’s 15min or 45min after you jettison some social media scrolling. It does exist somewhere and you need to truly carve it out. If you’ve had a tough time making time, it may be that you need to actually build out just a small window for yourself in your calendar and make it like an appointment or recurring appointment you would for anything else.

2. Drop ideas of perfection both in how it’s done an what the end product may be. Even having imperfect form in your exercise is encouraged from time to time to expose and prepare you for that type of stress. No one moves or performs like a robot…NO ONE!

3. Mindset shift from fixed to growth. Drop ideas of rigid outcomes and processes. Be flexible in how you may be able to accomplish your goals and even be open to failing as part of the process. Shift how you view your goals in exercise or otherwise from ones of a boxes checked to one of constant exploration and curiosity.

Taking these three practices on will help you toward your most resilient self this year and beyond. Exercise and the many benefits the stresses of it create cannot be overstated as far as how much it can improve the quality of your life and ability to keep bouncing back and maintaining.

Some January Announcements:

• We love helping people connect more and enjoy their training what works best for their wellness. This is why we also have opened a group full body training class option on Mondays and will soon expand that to other days. If you have limited time and ability to work with us 1:1 but still want some great coaching in a small class environment, this may be a great option for you.

• January also marks 1 of 2 times during the year we open up our health and wellness coaching that pairs you to work 1 on 1 with a health coach to work towards your specific wellness goals and healthier lifestyle with a holistic approach. We have only a few spots left until Spring. If you’re interested, please book a free consult with us