Super Training

This is episode 127 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, vitality and peak performance coach, Kari Schneider.

Hello.

Hello. Amazing humans. Today we are talking about super training. This, I think, is such a cool, cool topic because it's this culmination of really understanding your best performance with your mind and your body.

So why is this topic important?

Super training, I think I've coined this term in the context that I'm going to describe. And I coined it because I listened to a podcast a few years ago called Super Super Thinking and I absolutely loved what it did for my brain, my mind, in being able to think better. And I thought this is the kind of application that people need for workouts. Their body, their mind connection, how to really get the most from their body, but really being able to serve their mind at the same time. So I think this is very important because I see so many people, athletes and non athletes, athletes cut themselves off at the neck and limit themselves in their physicality and ultimate health with their own thoughts or lack of deliberate thinking, not putting the two together, our mind.

And our body, in order to have.

Our best performance for our mind and.

Best performance for our body.

So this is what I'm talking about with super training. So I worked on making a definition for it in the context that I'm speaking of here. And it is this super training is tapping into your innate wisdom for your ultimate physical results. Truly asking the questions, listening to your.

Body and seeking the answers, understanding the deeper reason for why you train or why you want to work out. It is the deeper connection to the.

Body, not just as a vehicle, but.

Rather a necessity for all that you.

Truly want in life. It is holding space for this awareness so that you can choose and create incredible results.

So what does this really mean? Super training is the ultimate connection with.

Your mind and your body. And I'm not talking about your brain and your body, I'm talking about your higher level, your mind, your mind, body connection. The part of your thinking that is observing your thoughts, the part of your thinking that is deliberate, the part of your thinking that comes from your prefrontal cortex. I like to call it your badass super genius.

So what does this look like in the real world?

So with super training, I'll give you some examples. So let's say we've got a CEO. The CEO who's a super trainer would do something like this. They would have their training planned and their recovery planned and their nutrition planned, such that they know that by doing this they're doing an honor to their best thinking, their best creating, and their best performance in everything that they have to do in order to run a company. That would be an example of super training. They are working their recovery into their training and they're physically pushing themselves for their best health, but at the same time pulling back and planning and putting the workouts appropriately with what they have. So in conjunction with the demands of their work, so that it's congruent, so that when there's a hard push with the business, they might be pulling back a bit on their training or recovering a bit. So it works like periodization for a high performance athlete, but they're periodizing specifically for their performance in work and their performance in life. That would be an example of how a CEO or a very high level corporate person does this, and I've done this many times with corporate people when it comes to their travel, if they're traveling the world, we structure or periodize their training around that. So that when they're traveling, they're not losing out on their physicality. They're using their physicality to enhance their performance in their recovery from jet lag. They're using their physicality to enhance their performance in the presentations that they have to give. They're using the physicality in order to maintain and then step right back into maybe growth for their physical goals when they get back from the trip. This would be an example of super training. An example with the same type of.

Person, not super training.

I've seen this more often and this would be the case where the CEO is burning into candles at both ends. This would be the example of pulling the all nighters for the work and continuing to push really hard and putting all workouts, all training on hold in order to just keep pushing through and grinding on a deadline. And flip side to that would be the same person allowing themselves a certain amount of sleep, allowing themselves a 20 minute workout instead of their normal hour long workout, but allowing themselves that 20 minute workout because they know that for that deadline and for that project, they're going to perform better, they're going to have higher levels of decision making and they'll be able to do it and execute it with better energy, with more focus, with greater clarity than they would have had they neglected their physicality, neglected their body while they're going through this intense time in whatever it is, whether it's acquisition, whether it's deadlines, whether it's whatever the company demands. So those would be the flip sides of a CEO or a high level corporate person in the context of super training. Now the thing, the lie that is told in the brain all the time in these situations is that, well, I can't right now, I don't have the time. And that's a lie because there's someone else in the world, there's probably millions of people in the world who are doing what you are doing or whatever the person is doing and still able to honor their body, honor their family, honor their situation at a higher level. So the lie that the brain will tell us, especially when it's fearful, especially.

When it's uncomfortable or will be that.

No, you can't afford the time to work out. No, you can't sleep a full eight hours, no, you can't stop for a meal right now. You have to keep pushing. And I've done this to myself. So the next example I want to give was an Olympic level athlete or a national or high level athlete, super training versus not now. Oftentimes in this context of high performance sport, because the timeline demands are so specific and those timeline demands of high performance do not honor an individual, then what happens is that coaches, strength coaches, physiologists, sport coaches are pushing the athlete through the timeline necessary to compete in that, in the playoffs, in the world championship, whatever is coming up that that date won't move. So the body has to adapt to the timeline. And what happens in this often is that we see athletes constantly performing instead of at an optimal level for their games or for their individual sport. Instead they're performing somewhere around the 80% mark because they never quite have the time to fully recover from that tweak or fully recover from that injury. As soon as they're better enough, they have to get back to the training.

In order to stay on track for that deadline. And now what often happens with this is that there's some sort of big.

Injury that ultimately holds them back. So say it ends up being a.

Contact sport and an acl. Maybe that ACL injury causes them to be out for a full season and that ends up putting that athlete into more likelihood for the ability to super train because now they have the time, whereas in the season they didn't have the time. So what often happens, and you've seen this on a professional level in high profile sports, whether it's the NFL or NBA, you see these athletes out for.

A season with a season injury ending.

Injury, maybe not a career ending injury, but then they come back the season later or a year later, and they are better and they are stronger and you see them like, like it never happened to them. And it's because they got the opportunity.

Especially if they already had this mindset.

Because athletes have more of an affinity to be connected to their bodies less like other people who aren't as connected with their physicality. So an athlete has a greater likelihood to be connected with their physicality and then maybe they're out because of an injury. And what happens is that they can connect in a greater capacity to their.

Body and they're highly motivated to get.

Back to their sport. And then you've got this optimal combination of super training because this highly motivated individual who's very, very connected with their mind and body. And now they've got these amazing resources with all of the professionals around them to support them and help them and give them greater expertise than they could draw from themselves. And, and they're in this optimal environment of super training. They're being conscious, intentional, deliberate, with every single workout, every single action, and they've got the time to get to this ultimate performance and they come back from this injury greater than they ever were, versus the flip side to the athlete who doesn't quite get that time that they need to fully recover. This is why the off season is so incredibly important. And some performance, high performance athletes are going from a pro season to a national season. They never truly get an off season and it's a recipe for disaster in terms of performance for the long haul or being able to get to ultimate performance, they're never quite there. So examples for myself personally of super training, there's two main examples I can think of in my life where I was actually in a state of super training. I was truly mind, body connected and truly getting the ultimate results not only for my body, not only for my performance, but also for my mind. And one of them is kind of unusual. When I sat and thought about this, I thought, oh my goodness, I can't believe this is my first example of super training. And what it was was my first pregnancy. And it was because I was always working out, I was always training in fairly high level capacity at that point. But for my first pregnancy, I at that point chose to honor my body in a way that I never had because I was growing a human being. And at the same time I was profoundly affected by the results by that because I kept honoring my body. And I knew I had an amazing obstetrician who knew that I trained and knew that I could listen to my body really well and supported me continuing to train throughout my pregnancy. I learned how to listen to my body in a way that I never have before and it taught me so much. But then what it gave my mind is greater confidence what it gave my body. Then after my pregnancy is I was able to go back to competing really quickly because I had listened to my body so carefully and really helped it train and recover and do and I was nourishing it better and I wasn't drinking any alcohol and you know, there's all these things coming together. And that first pregnancy was my first real example of living in super training. Now after that, another, my second real example of that is in the last, I would say the last three, four years because of having inoperable bilateral nerve damage going down both of both my legs bilateral and having not been able to walk properly because of it. And it taught me, especially when I saw the MRI of my long term crushed discs, it taught me to go, okay, here, I'm listening to you now, body, I'm sorry for what I've done and I'm listening now because I truly want to have this as an incredible vehicle for a very long, high quality life. I want to start to work together instead of just tell you what to do. And the example, the flip side is exactly what I just said is telling my body what to do. But worse than that, it would be bullying my body into what to do. It would be, okay, let's go bitch, you got this, Pull through, do it no matter what and not listen to any of the signs, any of the signals that I was overtired or overworked over anything and instead just continue to plow through and not give myself the honor of taking the coaching that I would give my athletes. Instead it would just be drive through, push through and I would recover my workouts, I would plan my workouts with the proper recovery. But instead I was not incorporating what my day to day lifestyle was doing to my body as well. And my day to day lifestyle was constant and lifting, spotting, moving weights, moving around in training, in a gym and other athletes. And then my mind in terms of coaching other athletes and raising a family with five kids and doing all of the other things. I wasn't working in a way that would honor my mind and honor my body. So it was just a deconstructing in a way of ultimate failure when your body ends up lashing back in a way that's either injury or illness or both or worse, it could be disease. And then your brain, your mind is forced to Pay attention to the problem at hand because it was let go for so long. So I did this in competitive track in university. I forced my body into what I wanted and didn't listen to it. And I was young enough that, you.

Know, my body could handle it.

And then in work, I did it. In life, I did it just bullying my body into what my ego wanted or what I chose were my goals and didn't listen. And here's the ugly truth of it is that I did all this because I wanted these other things. I either wanted the performance or I wanted the. I wanted the. Either the. I wanted the muscularity, I wanted the physicality. My ego said that I had to look that way in the coaching world or I had to practice what I preach in order to get respect. But the ugly part of it was that it wasn't my real deep why. It was a superficial why I had to do these things because of what other people might think. I had to look this way or I had to perform this way to garner more respect instead of innately listening to my own wisdom and knowing what was there that I had to offer and believing in myself and what I had to offer. So people, us, me, the world, we are so programmed to demand from our body what we have forgotten or never learned, to listen to our bodies and find out we never learned to work together with our bodies. And if you think of a child, you think of a baby. A baby is so curious. A little baby is starting to move around and their mind and their body are so connected, they'll suck on their toes, they'll roll around, they'll grab their ears, they'll, you know, stick things up their nose. They'll do all of the things because they're so curious. And part of their curiosity is the connection to their own body. They'll watch their hands and how it moves. They'll watch their hands and how it squishes something together or how it can, you know, poke their own squishy tissue or grab or bite their own knees. And this is this mind body connection. We innately have this mind body connection. And then we train ourselves out of it. We train ourselves to not connect with our body, to actually just listen to our brain. And we're taught this in our school systems, our artistic side, our creative side, our physical side that is always secondary both in priority and time when it comes to the other intellectual trainings that we would do in a school system. So we're programmed. We are actually unprogrammed, where our programming goes away from what we are innately designed to do when it comes to our bodies. And I think of this in so many of the temper tantrums I have seen in the gym. I've seen countless adult humans fall into a toddler like state, an angry toddler like state when their body doesn't perform the way they expect it to. So an example of this would be, you know, a successful male grown person who's been an athlete and is very successful in the business world and then they go to do a chin up set and they expect to replicate their personal best. And maybe they're one off from their personal best, but it was one or two better than last week or the week before. So I might be in a scenario of celebrating for them because it's better than last week and better than the week before, but they're having a literal temper tantrum, maybe even kicking things because they didn't replicate their one time personal best. And I look at this and I think of how completely and disconnected they are with their body and how over controlling their ego as being. And I think of it in terms of, you know, if we think of the parent who sees their child walk for the very first time and their child takes those couple of steps and then falls back down and they're celebrating, their child walked. It's awesome. But nobody else saw it. Nobody else saw that child's, that baby's first personal best of walking. And so the next time the other parent comes home or the friend comes over, or the grandma comes over, they're like, she walked, she walked, she walked. It's amazing. And then try it again, but the baby doesn't walk this time, they just crawl or they try to take the step and they can't do it because they only did it once ever before. And so the parent goes, oh, you stupid child, da da da. How can you not do it? You did it before. Well, no parent would ever do that to their child. They would nurture them and support them and hold their hand until they're able to take that second step again and replicate that personal best. And yet I've seen countless times human adults over and over beat themselves up or have complete meltdowns when they have this, when they don't meet this expectation of replicating a personal best or creating a personal best that they thought they should. And their body is completely disconnected from their best version of themselves. The more they keep beating themselves up and their body is less and less likely to go to that next level. And instead their ego thinks that if they Just whip themselves harder, like beating the weight racehorse. If they just bully themselves into it more, they'll get there. And it's the complete opposite. The complete opposite is true. And sometimes it's been a parent, it's been a coach, it's been somebody who's taught them that along the way. But the absolute best coaches in the world that I've seen, they have the technical expertise and the intuitive communication to learn more about the client or the athlete and teach that client or athlete about themselves so that the client or athlete can start to intuitively connect with themselves and learn about their own body and be able to produce what their.

Own body can and nurture them to.

That next level in cooperation with their highest self, with their mind. So I want to teach you three steps in order to practice this for yourself, in order to teach yourself how to super train. Three really simple steps. So step number one is cleaning house. If you're going to have people over or have the best environment in your.

House for yourself or anyone else, you want a clean house.

You want to get rid of the crap that is cluttering or in the way or stopping you from having a smooth pathway or an ease of function within your house. And that's true for your body too. It's cleaning house for your body. We do this with our minds, with thought, work with mindset mastery. We clean house with our brains by.

Thought downloading or reflecting.

We put it all out on paper. We do the same thing with our body. This would be cleaning house with our body. What we do. The step for this is writing down all of the ways that you are currently abusing or misusing your body.

Write them all down.

In the past for me, it might have looked like having alcohol before bed. It could be working through pains that I would feel and running through it anyway. Even though I'd feel the pain in my hip or the pain in my back, I'd keep going, run.

Anyway.

It might be overeating sugar. It might be sitting too long working. It might be not doing the stretching or the rolling. So just write down all of the ways that you are currently misusing your body or maybe micro abusing your body.

Write down all of the things and.

You'Re not looking at all of this to make yourself wrong or anything like that. It's simply cleaning house.

When you clean house, you don't look around and make the piece of paper or this pile of dishes wrong. You just go, okay, this isn't appropriate right now. So I'm just going to make note.

Of all the things I don't want here or all the things that aren't working right now. And then you're going to pick only one, two or three, just one to three that you will adjust or eliminate.

So you're not looking to fix everything when you're cleaning house. You may not look to clean out every single cupboard in your house. You may just look to make it the most functional off the hop. So you might just pick the thing that's going to move the needle the most, the one or two things that you think will have the greatest impact for your mind and body connection.

So number one, write down all the ways you're currently abusing, micro abusing or misusing your body and then just pick.

One to three of them to adjust or eliminate. All right then number two, this might be the most important step because this creates the connection from your highest self to your body. And it is number two, it's questioning effectively. This is highest quality of questioned. And when you use high quality, positive questioning, you will find the greatest wisdom within yourself, how to connect with your body.

So number one, here are some suggestions or sorry, this is number two question effectively.

But here are some questions that you can use. Ask your body what it needs. What do I need? What does my body need right now? Ask if you're on the right track.

So it might be, is this workout.

Plan serving me the best? Am I on the right track with this? Am I doing the things that will support my best longevity? Am I doing the things that will support my best energy? Those are the types of questions that will answer. You'll find the answers to find out if you're on the right track, ask yourself if this is worth it. So you might be in a hard training cycle. You might be doing some things that are really hard and that your brain, not your mind but your brain, says, oh, don't do this. Oh, this is too hard. So then you ask your question from your highest self, is this worth it? Is the hard work, the effort that I'm putting in, is it worth it? You might find that the answer is yes. Even though your brain, your primal brain doesn't like it. You may find that, yes, this is worth it because it's growing me to my best body, my better self, my most healthy self. So ask yourself if it's worth it.

Ask yourself what you really want and.

If it works for your body at this point.

So this is so important for your goals.

Your goals of maybe you have a goal to run a certain time for a race. You ask that's what you really want. But then you ask yourself, does it work for my body at this point? And if you've got multiple micro injuries in your body, then maybe that particular want isn't worth what it's going to cost your body. So another example would be you might.

Be going for.

Say, high performance sport, you might be going for a national qualification, but you know that your body's already really run down. That's where you're asking yourself, is it working for my body at this point? Same thing goes for the flip side. So you might say, ask yourself what you want. And you might want to binge watch Netflix for the whole weekend because it's rainy and you don't feel like going out and you don't feel like doing the workouts. But then the second part of the question, does it work for your body at this point? And the answer is likely going to be no. Binging Netflix all weekend, whether it's raining or not isn't going to serve your body. And if it doesn't serve your body, then guess what? It's not going to serve your mind, your highest self. Anything that you do that does not serve your is also taking a notch away from your mind. And that's one of the biggest lessons in super training.

So here's another question. What would I do if I knew.

Exactly what to do? Sometimes our primal brain hides behind I don't know. Well, I don't know how, I don't know how to do that. And the reality is, is if you ask yourself, well, what if I did know? What would that look like? What could be some possibilities? What are 10 ideas you'll be amazed at when you really think about it and you really look for your own deep wisdom, your innate answers. You'll find them instead of hiding behind the comfort seeking primal brain, which is just going to serve you with, well, I don't know, I don't know what to do. But that's a lie. That's just a little lie that your primal brain is using to hold you comfortable. So when you ask the question and.

Really find the answer, what would I do if I knew exactly what to do?

You'll be amazed at the answer that you find even if you support yourself with, well, what if it's just three ideas? Which leads us to that next question. What are 10 ideas to serve my mind and body? Get creative. You know yourself the best. What are 10 ideas to serve my mind and body? And this question, this next one I think is the most important question. And it Is what is the current belief system that I'm living under and what do I want it to be?

You might be living under a belief.

System that was programmed into you when you were five years old and not even realize that you're still living under that belief system. When you were a kid, somebody might have said something to you, someone who you adored your parent, someone you really respected. Someone might have said something to you that stuck for the rest of your life. Something like, oh, well, you're not really a runner. Or something like, oh, well, you're not so athletic or.

Well, you're more, you're.

More of an intellectual. Something that disconnects you from your body or something that has you think of your body as something to use instead of seeing your body as an integral part of your entire being.

So what are those belief systems that.

You are operating under unconsciously that you want to change? What is the current belief system I am living under and what do I want it to be? An old belief system that I used to live under was that, oh, I had to do these things physically to prove that I could, because no one believed that I could. I might have been picked last for sports teams. I might have noticed how my father would have pay attention to other boys or sports on tv. So I thought my belief system, this childish belief system was that, well, if I'm more physical and I can perform in sports really well, then I will get my father's love. Now what an archaic belief system to operate under. And I'm sure that we all have some form of this that we don't even realize we're operating under and how detrimental it is to our ultimate performance in our mind and our body. And that's what we want.

We want our ultimate performance.

And when we can connect our higher self to our body, guess what? Our body performs, we get our ultimate performance. And when we can get the best from our body, guess what our mind performs with clarity and precision like you can't even imagine when the two are working in conjunction. It is amazing. And I'm not even talking about getting into our spiritual self in this particular podcast. I'm only talking about our mind and body connection and how powerful it is. But there's a whole nother level beyond that.

So that's number one and number two. Number one being the clean house, number.

Two being question effectively high quality.

And number three in how to super train is plan deliberately.

Your body is the most important vehicle.

That will bring you through your life.

And it will determine your ultimate quality of life. Not only now with your thinking, your energy, but also in the future in having a quality of life when you are older. So now planning, when you plan deliberately, now planning looks like when you plan your physical training or your activity for the day, you are giving a gift to your mind for that day. You're going to function at a higher level.

Your communication and your relationships will be.

At a better level. When you've honored your body already, you've already planned what's going to happen. You don't even have to think about it because you already know when it's going to happen. There's a quick 10 minute walk at lunch. You've done a maybe 45 minute workout first thing in the morning. And you know that with that plan you're going to perform optimally cognitively, emotionally and physically. You might even plan a little stretch in the evening. You plan that you want to, you want to unwind with a little bit of TV at the end of the day, but instead of eating or snacking or drinking wine, instead, you do a little rolling on a foam roller or do a little stretching. And you won't believe how that little act of nourishment on your body serves your brain and your soul, your relationships.

So that was now planning. There's near future planning.

So your near future is like your microcycle. This would be your week plan or.

Even your mesocycle, maybe a month or eight week plan. But this is your future planning. Knowing exactly what workouts and why.

Remember your why was your current belief.

System and the belief system that you want to create. Why are you doing this?

Are you doing it for longevity? Are you doing it to, to have.

The most amazing shoulder shape?

Are you doing it so you have your best energy for your family and your life and your purpose and mission in life.

Why are you doing this?

When you understand your why, then it's huge. It's a huge incentive to plan exactly.

What you want to see happen. So in your near future planning, you're knowing exactly what workouts you're doing and why.

You're not just working out ineffectively.

You're training with deliberation, you're training with purpose. You have these workouts planned for your week or your month and planned according.

To your schedule, your travel, your work.

Demand, your family time, your recovery needs. This is called periodization. This is called strategic planning. And you do this near future planning. This is how a high performance athlete operates and this is how high performance humans operate. And then you go for your far future planning and your far future Planning.

Is decades down the road when you want to see yourself operate with amazing quality of life.

This is your, this is the quote. And I, it's. I don't know if it was Babe.

Ruth, it was a baseball player who said this and I hate to misquote.

So I don't want to. I'm not sure who it is. It's that if I knew I would.

Have lived this long, I would have treated my body better. And that's the boat I'm in right now. It's not. Of course I thought I would live this long, but now I'm realizing that holy cow, I've abused my body enough that I am completely bought in to nourishing, connecting and nurturing my body in a way that it's going to be amazing in my 80s and my hundreds.

It's going to do all the things.

I want it to do because I've put in this front end work to have the mobility, to have the strength, to have the cardiovascular fitness. So I'm creating my quality, my for my future.

That is your far future planning and that finishes the number three. So those are your three steps on how to super train, clean house, meaning your body. Question effectively with high quality questions and.

Plan deliberately and you have all the steps you need for that. If I were you, I would repeat this, these steps again with a notebook and just go through them with a notebook. This is a high quality exercise for creating your best life. And nothing, if I want to finish.

Up this, it's that nothing feels as.

Good as having a vibrant energy.

Nothing.

There's nothing like the confidence that the right training brings you for the rest of your day.

Your mind will operate at a higher.

Level when it works together in conjunction with your body. That is super training. So I hope this opens up maybe a different way of thinking about your training, about your workouts. And I hope this offers you a.

Way to not make anything that you've.

Done wrong, but really just know that you're not alone in just maybe having done the things you've done. You're not alone. These are the types of practices that we're doing with the empowered. This is how we operate with the empowered team.

We deconstruct what's going on in our brain.

We look at the best practices for our body so that we can create the best version of ourselves and give the best version of ourselves to others. That's how we operate. This is.

Just the small parts of.

What we aim to do with the empowered.

So you are always welcome to come.

In to our Empowered Team, our group coaching. We hope that that's something that can serve you. And we hope that this super training episode allows you to make either a small adjustment or a major adjustment in how you function with your mind and.

Body so that you can truly, truly.

Tap into your back life what you really, really want in life. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of your day. And here's to super training.

Give this a real shot.

Step into it.

If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the team. The Empowered Team runs year round. It is our group coaching and accountability program where we take mindset and physical performance concepts and break them down to usable action steps that optimize results. To join, email us@info powerconditioning.com with subject line team. That's info powerconditioning.com we can't wait for you to be on the team.