Hi Friend!
Forgive me for not writing to you the last number of weeks and then dropping a nutrition habit email on you right away. It felt timely and appropriate to share that as we are actively talking about it in our program.
You may or may not recall that I have 2 main credentials. One is I'm a Certified and Licensed Athletic Trainer (ATC, LATC) and the other is I'm a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS). The ATC credential is why I'm good at understanding, treating, managing and rehabbing injuries. The CSCS credential is why I'm good at helping you get better performance.
In any event, both certs were due for renewal this year, and because I didn't plan well I had a ton of continued education to do, so I opted for the super convenient, but extremely time oriented home studies.
Here are the 13 home study courses I finished this month to meet all requirements.
- Chronic Lower Back Pain Management
- Developing Speed
- Evidence-Based Approach to Ankle Sprains
- Evidence-Based Approach to Surgery and Rehabilitation of ACL Injuries
- Lifestyle Wellness Coaching, Second Edition
- Myofascial Release in Sports Medicine
- Plantar Fasciitis Management
- Postural Assessment
- Postural Correction
- Running Injuries: Strategies for Prevention and Intervention
- Running Mechanics and Gait Analysis
- Complete Sports Conditioning
- Complete Core.
That's 50.25 CEU's for Athletic Training and 5.6 CEU's for Strength & Conditioning (for context the average length of time I spent on each course was roughly 5 hours. Some were a little less, some were almost double and all but 2 came with a 2 hour, timed exam). That's a lot of hours and 13 tests in December.
It was both fun and not fun at the same time. It was awesome to learn so many things I was really interested in and answer questions I've long had. It was not fun to spend so much of my time away from coaching, getting stiff, while learning, and not doing as many fun things with my family as I'd liked to have done.
I'm super grateful for my family's support and understanding even if they didn't like it.
This should benefit you and all my clients, members, family and friends over the next number of years as I implement all I've learned (or at least what I can remember).
I think one of the biggest takeaways is how awful I felt with the prolonged, repetitive sitting. My body ached. My mood was depressed. I didn't feel good and then you compound all the holiday food I enjoyed and it was a mess.
I was super ecstatic when I finished on NYE. We celebrated with a nice Portuguese wine and Sparkling Apple Cider for Vivi ("can I have more"), went to bed early (8:25p) and woke up early (4a), to start setting our goals, planning our year and talking about our life.
You Get What You Pay For I chose to spend my time on everything else but my ceu's over the last couple of years, so I had to pay the cost of missed time with family over the holidays, missed rest time from the year and a body that felt awful. Not fun.
Resiliency & Response That morning of goal setting and planning with Vanessa was powerful for me because I was coming from a rock bottom feeling so I had a lot of subdued passion that I didn't want to ever feel like this again or go through something like this again.
We chose to be more diligent and ruthless with how we spent our time. We listed what was important and started scheduling it in a recurring manner on our calendars.
We talked about reasons we fail and came up with solutions to overcome and reduce the risk of failure.
One particular thing that bothered me was missing workouts. My life has always been built around being active. I grew up playing sports and playing with my friends year round and when those days started to end, I found weightlifting. Training is my self-care and self-care is my training. It's part of my identity. It helps me be my best and my best is what I and others have come to know and expect. When you're not your best you feel different, and very unlike yourself. No thank you. Those 13 home study courses made me feel physically awful and boy did I respond. I've got 5 straight strength workouts and probably all 5 of them I didn't feel like training, so I used one of my solutions to get them done.
Show Up.
Go slow.
Do less.
And if you feel like you can do more and/or want to do more, then do more. And the first days, that didn't happen, but the last 3 days, it has. Momentum is growing. It feels so much better. I can feel my metabolism picking up. I'm a bit hungrier which is a perfect compliment to the eating slowing and stopping at 80% full, nutrition habit I'm practicing.
Vanessa and I built in really good home support so we could get workouts in on the weekend. I've decided to move video shoots to the afternoon, so I don't compromise my workouts anymore. I use the workout cards I write for boot camp, so I don't have to think as much and because they're awesome. I allow myself to modify the workouts if I don't have access to all the equipment or all the time needed to finish the workout. It still counts. I'm playing the long game by focusing on the short game, the daily habits.
And you can too.
I'm back, filled with new knowledge and with a burning fire to use it and take action and you're going to benefit.
Gonna get what I pay for by choosing and scheduling what I want to spend my time on and regular self-care helps make everything better so that's been scheduled and prioritized.
Coach Mike
p.s. which home study above, caught your eye?
p.p.s. what self-care goals are you going to spend your time on this year?
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