Bridget Moroney  00:00

You all had some questions. So I've got some answers. This is our first ever listener q&a. Let's do this. Welcome to the Performance Rx podcast where the conversations are about health, nutrition and mindset for anyone who considers themselves an athlete from the most elite competitors to those who are simply seeking to improve their athletic performance. We hope the knowledge shared on this show will empower you to reach your physical potential. Thank you so much for tuning in. Now for today's episode. Hey, everyone, welcome to today's show. I'm your host, Bridget Moroney. And today we are doing some listener q&a. So over the past couple of weeks, I've gotten quite a few emails from everyone who's been listening, asking different questions from anything that relates to nutrition, habit change, performance, sleep recovery. And so I just thought I would take a couple of those and start answering them directly. So this is going to be a little bit of a different type of podcast than the previous episodes where you're just going to hear my voice. Alright, first question. Been in a rut lately with diet and lifting? What is the best way to get motivation back? Man, I can relate to this. Because I've been off my usual routine for probably about the past three weeks here, traveled out to California to see one of my good friends then came back, I was busy with work and everything. And then it was my birthday, which you know, festivities there, but also traveled out to the mountains in Colorado and did some hiking. And so even though I was pretty active in both of those trips, there a lot of hiking in Colorado, and in California, I wasn't in my usual gym and training routine, for obvious reasons. And also, anytime you're traveling. Even though my nutrition was pretty solid, ate pretty clean, you know, made sure my macros were in balance. It wasn't, it wasn't what I was used to. So coming back has been a little bit of a challenge, because of all of that change. And honestly, just anytime you come back from something really great. The everyday stuff, the grind, if you will, becomes really boring and mundane. So how do you get that motivation back. So first thing is to realize that it's usually action, that gives motivation, people always get a twist around, they think that they have to have motivation, in order to act. But it's actually the reverse. So the whole thing about motivation is, again, you're not going to feel motivated until you act. It's kind of one of those tricky things. But what happens is when you start acting, it creates that positive feedback loop. And you get a little bit of that dopamine hit because you're accomplishing something. So the first thing I would do is just the simple five minute action, put on your shoes, make a pre workout, whatever it is lay out your gym clothes, and then just get to the gym. And maybe if it's depending on what your hiatus has been, maybe you don't even have an agenda, maybe you just go and you'd be in the gym for an hour, and you just mess around. So that would be the first thing. And the same thing for diet to like, start simple, maybe just make a good choice, right now at lunch. So instead of ordering a sandwich or a burrito, or whatever you get a salad or whatever it is, that's going to get you back into your normal habit with your diet. So simple actions. Now, depending on what type of rut you're in, and how long of a hiatus and where you're where at what level you're trying to get back to you might need to do this for a while, basically, you're building up the habit again. So I'll take myself as an example. Once again, I've been basically back to my normal routine for a week here. And I haven't even touched my normal training routine. Because again, to think of just jumping back into the way I used to train and lift is really overwhelming. And honestly my body, I think it would be kind of setting it up for injury, at least at my age. So what I've been doing is just a little bit of GPP just going in doing a couple of lifts. Definitely a lot of mobility, whatever body weight and just moving my body again, just getting myself back into the habit of movement there. And again, building that habit of being in the gym every day, for the same amount of time at my regular regularly scheduled time. And, again, that feedback loop is kicking in. So now it's like, oh, it's time to go to the gym versus maybe Monday or whatever day it was, you know back to reality. It's like, oh, I have to get back to the gym there. So that's what I would So just kind of in general is one act before you get the motivation, the motivation is not going to come before you act. So you might as well just do the action. Keep it simple. So do something very, very simple. Just throw on your shoes, make a protein shake, whatever it is, that will get you to the next step towards your healthy lifting and diet routine. And then again, third, make sure you know, keep in mind that you might have to do this for a couple of days, depending on how long you've been off your game. And in a rut, their next question has to do with supplements, is it okay to take creatine or protein powder, or amino acids on off days? And the answer? The simple answer is yes, it's okay. Like, none of this is going to be counterproductive. If anything, it's going to be more productive. But let's go a little bit deeper than that. So I guess the question that you're trying to get down to really is, you know, maybe what are the benefits of taking creatine, protein, amino acids every day? And then what are the disadvantages to that? And, you know, what's the difference? Or are there any advantages or disadvantages to it? So, we'll start with protein. Protein, ideally, you want to be getting from whole foods, for the most part, protein supplements become very handy for times on days that you are training because one, maybe you're strapped for time to, you know, they're easier to digest, and so on, so forth. For your off day, it just kind of depends on your schedule, and everything else like that. Maybe because you aren't training, you have a little bit of extra time to cook and digest a whole foods meal, I would go that route. But again, if you're strapped for time, or for whatever reason, convenience is a factor, then yeah, sure, take a protein shake there. It's not it's it's, it's only going to help you hit your protein goals. As far as creatine, creatine, yeah, is actually something that you probably should be taking every day, because it's just, there's no immediate effect to it. And what I mean by that is for myself, for example, I just throw my creatine in with my pre workout shake, because it's a convenient time to take it, and that's my trigger to take it. But the effect of that creatine, I'm not going to feel that immediately during that workout. Well, the way creatine works is it builds up in your body and over time, you start to feel the effects. So taking it on an off day is actually a good idea so that you can keep your creatine stores topped off there and continue to feel the effects when you when you go to train. And then as far as amino acids, it's kind of the same thing as far as the protein. So again, a lot of people take amino acids when they're training because they're convenient, they're easy to digest. A lot of amino acid formulas have other things like electrolytes in in there, so it helps with, it helps with hydration. So do you need this on your off day? Probably not, especially if you are eating, again, a whole foods diet and you're meeting your protein goals. If you're in a calorie deficit, or something, could it help? Maybe, you know, if you want some extra hydration in there could it help, maybe, but again, you know, it might be worth just holding off on that and saving your money so that you you know, don't go through as many servings there. All right, next question. Can you talk a little bit about your past shoulder issues and the rehab that you did so for anyone that knows me personally, you know that for many, many years there I had a lot of shoulder pain shoulder, just dysfunction there and honestly, it just came from just a lot of CrossFit style workouts, kipping pull ups for sure. And then just even some of the Olympic Lifts with just like rotation, so I had a pretty inflamed, supraspinatus and some impingement issues. And honestly, did besides mobility and just you know, making sure the inflammation everything went down, but the way that I've rebuilt my shoulders is by doing a lot of rotator cuff and rear delt work. So this is something that I learned from Julian Pineau from strong fit years ago, and also from Cory Gregory from CoryGfitness It's that when you're  Doing a lot of pushing exercises, which CrossFit has a lot of pushing, right, you have a lot of overhead movements there. And a little bit of horizontal pushing with burpees, push ups and you know, benchpress has become a thing. But if you're talking about the horizontal pushing, there isn't really a lot of movement there, to counterbalance. So what ends up happening is people who do a lot of these horizontal pushing, you know, push ups, benchpress, et cetera, et cetera, you get a very strong, but also tight, front upper body, right, so your pecs, get tight, your front delt gets tight, etc, etc. And there's nothing really happening in the back the rhomboids, the the rear delts, and so on, to pull it and balance it. So that was the biggest thing that I started doing to rebuild and basically get my shoulder health back online, I started doing tons of one hand dumbbell rows, a lot of band pull apart their rear delt flies. And this is something I learned from Cory Gregory. But I would do a one to two ratio. And he's actually upped it recently to a one to three ratio, because he's had his own rotator cuff injury and so on with that, but what I mean by that is for every pushing exercise that I do, so let's say I went ahead and did a bench press, then follow it up superset with a pulling, horizontal pulling. So again, maybe it's a band pull apart, and maybe it's a one arm dumbbell row, whatever it may be doing two of those exercises for every pushing movement helped a bunch. And I will say there was a notable difference in my rear delts, just as far as the hypertrophy. So I actually had some rear delt muscle like that actually got developed there compared to what it was. But again, this, but but again, also the function, the health, the the lack of pain. So those are the two things just building up the rotator cuff and all those muscles there. The other thing that I learned from Julian Pineau is that, again, kind of the same along the same lines of what Corey G was saying. But your shoulder is a pretty crappy ball and socket joint, meaning that the ball is actually a little bit too big for the socket. So it is when people talk about like slap tears, dislocations and things like that. It's a pretty easy injury to happen because of just the way the joint is. So again, what do you do you build up the muscles around it to have more stability. And this is essentially what I'm doing with my ACL tear right now is building up the muscles around my knee, and all that connective tissue there to stabilize it. Because at the end of the day, our muscles are our body's own natural braces. So yeah, so honestly, I started that about, let's see, about eight years ago and haven't had shoulder pain. I won't say never again, but I didn't, I don't have shoulder pain now, to the degree that I used to. And again, for people that know me and have coached me and worked with me like that was always a big issue there when I was working with my coach, Dan Casey there like it was always how can we preserve my shoulders for CrossFit open and regional back in that time, CrossFit regional workouts there? So yeah, I would, if you are listening to this and you're experiencing any sort of shoulder pain or instability or imbalance, I would start adding in some of those exercises like rear delt flies band, pull apart, face pulls, one arm dumbbell roll rows into your just accessory work, and just see what happens. Do it on a regular basis and see what happens with your shoulder strength, stability. And like I said, even development as far as like the musculature there. Alright, that's it for today. Just a couple of quick questions that came through my inbox. And so I wanted to go ahead and answer them for you all. Thanks again, for those of you who reached out and ask questions. And if you are listening to this and you have your own questions about training, nutrition, mindset, performance, sleep, recovery, any of that, that we talked about in performance RX podcast, feel free to shoot me an email info@Aspiretocoaching.com is my email or you can go on to the show notes and sign up for the email updates there. You can also go to aspiretocoaching.com Check out some of the Free resources I have there and also get in touch with me on my website and of course on social media, Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, it is all @Aspiretocoaching. So, so many ways to reach out. I hope you do. Keep the questions coming. I love answering these. I love talking about this stuff. And I love helping you guys. So next week, we'll be back with our usual content and guest speaker where we have conversations around different ideas and ways to help you perform at your best. Until then, have a great week, and we'll see you next time. . All right. That's all for today's show. Thank you so much again for listening. And be sure to head over to aspiretocoaching.com/podcast to check out the show notes for today's episode. There you'll find some of the links we've mentioned on today's podcast, as well as some of the previous episodes we've done. And while you're there, please make sure you sign up for a show updates. I am always updating the show and bringing in bonus content. So you do not want to miss out on any of that. One last thing. If you loved this episode, and you think a friend would really enjoy it as well. Grab the link and share it out for me please. It really does help spread the word of this podcast and the topics that we discussed on our episodes. And at the end of the day. My goal is to empower as many people on their performance journey as possible. Thank you all so much again, and we'll see you next time.