Listen To Your Body

Learning processes are not always as straightforward as we expect or hope for them to be. One of my favorite go-to examples of this from my own life is my college freshman writing seminar. I had been a pretty strong writer in high school, so I got to college convinced of my powers. My instructor had other ideas, and gave me quite a bit of advice that, at the time, went over my head. In fact, I recall telling myself that he didn’t actually know what he was talking about.

Ten years later I was teaching college freshmen how to write, and damn if some of my instructor’s advice didn’t pop up in my head, now not only crystal clear to me from later experience, but sometimes coming out of my mouth before I recalled where I’d learned it.

Something similar keeps happening to me regarding a complaint my father sometimes aired to me in my youth: “you don’t listen to your body.”

(Apologies if I’ve written about this before: I sometimes repeat these stories because they apply in different ways at different times, and sometimes because I think it really does take a while for any of us to really understand these things more fully … indeed in this story, that’s the whole point.)

“You don’t listen to your body.” My father was trying to get me to understand things like how to carry things more efficiently with less strain, how to throw a baseball further, and so on. I wasn’t the most coordinated kid, despite coming from a family with decent athletic abilities. I suspect I matured a bit later than any of us expected.

My problem was, I listened to the criticism more clearly than I did to whatever it was about my body that I needed to hear. I’ve often said, with a bit of snark and maybe a dash of anger, that my body wasn’t going to get pissed off at me for not listening, he was. So I prioritized him.

He wasn’t wrong.

With adult perspective and a lot of experience, I get a lot more of what he was trying to teach me. And not surprisingly, my body CAN and WILL get pissed at me if I don’t hear what it’s saying.

Even so: our bodies speak a language that is sometimes subtler and harder to translate than we believe.

Early on in my fitness career, something I noticed was that I didn’t actually understand what level of ‘pain’ meant ‘stop’, versus ‘carry on, but more cautiously.’

Muscular pain, at a moderate level of discomfort, is sort of a requirement for development. Joint and tendon pain? Only acceptable within strict limits … beyond those, it’s a big old warning scream from the body and needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

I’m still figuring it out. I LISTEN to my body all the time. I don’t always understand it as clearly and quickly as I should.

Which explains why I’m writing this from the floor of my workout space, with an ice pack under my lower back, having accidentally given myself another of the MANY lower-back spasms I’ve had over the years.

When I lifted the bar off the squat rack last Friday morning, my body immediately said “Huh, this is a little heavier than I thought.” My early-morning brain had not only mis-remembered how much I am squatting lately, it had also not noticed that I had put LESS than planned on the bar, though MORE than I should have. Not enough coffee? Definitely not enough neurons firing. So although I listened to my body, I didn’t hear what it was saying, which was that I was working a little too heavy. The spasm was a louder warning.

Luckily, I hear and obey my body much faster and more thoroughly than I used to. Consequently, the 24-hour check-in with my back was a lot better than it would have been in the past. But I may have to adjust my training for a while. Which is mildly annoying: I’ve had a damned good two months of heavier lifting after months being on the ‘disabled list’ following my last back spasm. I’m absolutely not looking forward to that many months off. But that’s why I listen to my body more assiduously all the time: it helps me stay healthier even when I make mistakes.

I probably bore my clients to tears with cheerleading-style advice about why rest days are good, why they should feel free to stop an exercise IMMEDIATELY if something feels wrong-enough, and that I’m partially trying to help them learn these same lessons about HOW to listen to our bodies. But that’s just because I try to convey information similar to what my dad was trying to impart, in the ways it might have gotten through to me sooner if he had known how to teach me more fully. 

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Disclaimer: Ideas expressed in this blog post should not be construed as official advice on how to safely perform fitness activities. Always consult with your doctor and other medical professionals as necessary, before engaging in exercise.