All tagged strength training

How Movement Helps Your Personal Development Practice

How Movement Helps Your Personal Development Practice

Stephanie Ondrusek
feminism, mindset

So, you're sitting there, mid-February, having abandoned all notions of resolutions, thinking about the hike you took this weekend and the dinner you're cooking later, wondering why you didn't allow yourself some space for freedom sooner. When all of a sudden you hear chatter creeping up, wafting through the breeze like the smell of city trash in the summer: your coworkers are on their way to the break room, making one self-deprecating comment after another about how they've "failed" already, and they sit down to join you. You're having a tough time listening without

a) ripping your hair out or flipping a table
and/or
b) feeling pulled back into the diet culture soup.

But of course you don't want to do either of those things, and you can't just leave, because you've been trying to be friendlier at work. Why do you always find yourself in these situations?

Stressed? 😬 (Options for Your Training Program, + a Reminder)

Stressed? 😬 (Options for Your Training Program, + a Reminder)

Stephanie Ondrusek
FAQs + hacks, coaching, programming

“I went to squat yesterday. My warmup felt fine — I was a little tired, but I thought once I started lifting I’d feel better. I usually do,” a client said to me."When I got to the working sets, everything felt HEAVY. Like, heavier than it should have. I finished the workout anyway, because it was written down, so I had to do it. But I’ve felt like everything is heavy and takes longer than it used to for a couple of weeks now.

What am I doing wrong? Am I losing all my progress? How am I going backwards when I haven’t skipped a workout?”

Where Can It Be Easy? Where Can It Be Enough?

Where Can It Be Easy? Where Can It Be Enough?

Stephanie Ondrusek
coaching, FAQs + hacks, mindset

Learning to be with your body isn’t a math equation, and once I realized that, I started to notice how it actually felt when I wasn’t trying to force it to keep up with sky-high plans on top of everything else I was juggling in my life. Like many things, I noticed without coercion and with curiosity, I began to hear and work with myself rather than against.

I learned it feels good to me to drop all the thought threads in some swings or incline pushups at the sink or stray sets of other repetitive, mildly sweaty movements. Unbroken sets of 50 used to sound like torture to me, like a challenge that was always bigger and meatier and more intimidating. Now they sound like a lilting lullaby.

For now. That may change, as bodies and minds do.

If you’re like me and most womxn with whom I work, no motivation hack in the world is gonna make it more likely you’ll get to the gym. It’s not a desire thing; it’s an overbooked one.

The questions here, for me:

  • Where can it be easy?

  • Where can it be enough?

  • How would it feel good to interrupt that overwhelm shame train (not like punishment for hopping on it) and redirect its energy?