ONE: EXERCISE IS STRESSFUL FOR YOUR BODY
For most people, this type of stress, positive stress, or eustress, is a good thing.
Stress accumulates in the nervous system and how we tend to it determines our mindbody resiliency. Mild stressors are necessary for you to experience and maintain physiological and neurophysiological strength (overall strength).
However, if your lifestyle is causing chronic stress at the cellular level, density and intensity training could, and probably will, compound the stress load on your human.
As a Real Human, lifestyle goes beyond how we eat, sleep, move, think, work and play. Lifestyle encompasses qualities of our relationships, inner dialogue/criticisms and work/life imbalances and how that lifts or loads our stress. This doesn’t mean if you’re stressed, you shouldn't be exercising. We’re saying AWARENESS of fluctuating stress levels and their origins is the first and most important step to making positive shifts towards feeling on point.
Learning movement and exercise to support you where you are at in life is the foundation of functional movement. At the heart of Real Human Performance is an emphasis on overall well-being and achieving your fullest potential – to become more yourself!
TWO: THE FIRST GOAL OF EXERCISE IS TO ACHIEVE POSTURAL INTEGRITY
If holding basic postures with everyday gravity is challenging or even painful, adding load (weights) and repetitive movements will set you up for failure in the form of physical injury or even mental/emotional insult.
Instability or the lack of postural integrity is a cascade effect and insult to injury is long. We’re talking structural integrity of our skeletal system, our frame. The actual shape of our container is a representation of how we hold ourselves and think of ourselves in the world. The downstream effects of the structural integrity on the mental and emotional body are extensively studied - how we carry ourselves influences how we feel and informs the quality (or lack thereof) of thoughts.
Our container also informs breathing mechanics, digestion, nervous system regulation and structural/physical health. If you are feeling sluggish or dull, the first supportive action is to orient yourself. Notice where you are in space, sit up tall, position your feet upon the ground and align your container for your contents and creativity to take shape.
As a Real Human, we want you to receive foundational support to feel at ease, to notice how your structure supports itself and to start taking up space in our world.
THREE: BREATHING IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MOVEMENT YOU DO IN LIFE
Breathing is the first and last thing we do in life and the repetitive movement that we do all day in between. You breathe about 20,000 reps per day.
Most of us breath shallow or even backwards. Emergency breath, or shallow, mouth-dominant breathing is helpful in high-stress, demanding situations like sprinting for your life. When used as the default breath pattern, mouth breathing repeats a catastrophic cycle of stress.
At a basic level, oxygen is our primary fuel source and when our ability to intake it is challenged or gunked-up, there is unnecessary harm for all systems. From an exercise standpoint, breathing inefficiently will result in a struggle to get results from exercise. Compromised breathing bypasses the potential and dysfunctional breathing even has detrimental effects keeping a human in a stress cycle.
As the most repeated and coordinated movement, when done properly, breathing alone can stimulate weight loss, prevent injury/fatigue, improve oxygenation of our heart, eliminate exercise induced asthma, filter and build blood (yes, build blood!).
At Real Human Performance, we focus on breathe work because we know it is critical for optimal health, performance and quality of life. Quality sourcing of breath has an immediate impact and sustained benefit on improved emotional, mental, cognitive and physical ease in life.
FOUR: QUALITY SLEEP IS A REQUIREMENT TO RECOVER FROM TRAINING
If you aren’t getting quality rest you aren’t healing and if you aren’t healing you’re hurting.
One of the best (and sometimes complex) self- inquiry is to identify your relationship with rest. When you think about rest, what is the first perception of resting? We are all programmed by our environment and many of us are have automatic thoughts or judgements of rest equating laziness. What is your belief system that you hold around rest and recovery? There are even sayings like, “I’ll sleep when I die.” In reality, deprioritizing sleep gets us ‘there’ faster. Part of balance in the circadian rhythm is balance of work and play: free movement and meeting demands.
We totally understand it can be challenging to get a full night’s rest in the world we live in.
Our approach is to prep for sleep, appreciate sleep, integrate sleep. Solid rest and recovery bring balance to our circadian rhythm and puts us in sync to heal mentally, emotionally, and physically.
FIVE: EATING INFLAMMATORY FOODS CREATES UNINTENTIONAL INJURIES
Foods out of our biological wheelhouse cause global inflammation.
This means all the bodily systems pay the price for what we put in our mouth. For example, the effects of heavily processed (junk) foods range from joint pain to nervous system dysregulation, organ inflammation and toxin buildup.
When we experience nervous system dysregulation, the blood pressure may increase and when the blood pressure goes up, typically a prescription is written to lower the BP. Is then the blood pressure the problem or a symptom?
The nervous system is sending a signal that something is out of whack (aka dysregulated)! Following this example, the medicine, by design, blocks valuable signals from the body and as such, there are cited studies that show calcium channel blockers cause an increase in heart attacks.
Another challenge from the lack of nutrition, or overly abundant toxins intake is swelling of the organs. If the organs are swollen, the nerves and muscles and soft tissues are pinched and parched – they don’t receive proper nutrients, hydration, nutrition and electrical current. A clear example of the system working together is through something most people are familiar with: back pain. If you are in back pain, it's possibly a symptom of intestinal inflammation. When it is difficult to properly use our core to stabilize the container, the organs are stressed because they take priority and use all available resources for survival.
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SIX: MINDSET IS AN INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF EXERCISE
If you don’t want to be there, don’t enjoy the process, or the environment, you are wasting our time.
What you focus on you feed; what you resist persists. Not only are you wasting your time when you are subconsciously communicating to your body that this is a useless activity, you undervalue your time and self-worth.
It is very likely the body will respond by hindering your movement goals with a mentality that you don't like what you're doing. Put the picture of what goals you want to accomplish in your head and keep them there, especially during times of negative self-talk. Tapping into curiosity and growth mindset is a way to rewire your default mode.
We believe fully that what’s in the way, is the way. Build trust in yourself, trust your experience and trust that you are developing skills that meet the need in your life.
SEVEN: HYDRATION IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL AND INCREDIBLE.
If you want to train, proper WATER is crucial. Not sports drinks, coffee, or other neon colored artificially flavored substitutes.
Our humans are electrical and need 'charging' if you will. Proper hydration, breathing, and sunlight help charge your body for optimum cellular function. What does that mean?! You are approximately 60-70% water by weight and 98% of all cells are made of water.
We actually have sort of a jello-like substance, called intracellular gel or interstitial fluid. Every function of our body relies on the proper function of this gel. Its argued that the rhythm or flow of inner cellular gel health coincides with our human’s overall health.
Drinking water is acknowledging yourself at the elemental level. If we disregard this vital hydration, we are subconsciously denying the essence of what we are made of.
There are many reasons for this, all of which revolve around the miracles of water. Keep it simple: drink clean 1/2 of your body weight in OZ of clean, re-mineralized water a day. For example, a 200lb person = 100oz of water a day. One way to re- mineralize is by adding back a pinch of Celtic sea salt. If you are stressed in any way, more water and quality breath are recommended to ease your live and help flush waste.
Dear Human:
Your human is a smart, interconnected, intuitive, global-operating system that is sending signals constantly – even as you digest this information. Sometimes we are confused by the messages we receive, sometimes the signals are too strong and we don’t want to feel them and sometimes we’ve become numb to them as a way of functioning ‘okay’ in the experience of our world.
We have fundamental guidelines to follow to thrive vs survive. These skills are often more foundational (read simple, not always easy) and are best implemented with a proper rhythm for your nervous system, based on your experiences. Awareness and intention of actions prime your journey. Coupled with a guide and a map, you can rewire your human potential for the most efficient and pleasant experience possible.
We hope this helps to sparks the inner fire to take you on a journey from yourself to become more yourself.
