You Can Move Every Day

I don’t really believe that moving every day is the problem. I think the problem is doing the same thing, at the same intensity, over and over again, and expecting your body to just keep up.

You can lift weights on Monday, take yoga Tuesday, run Wednesday, lift again Thursday, walk everywhere Friday and end up in Pilates on Saturday. You can move every day. Our bodies are actually pretty good at doing things.

What matters is that we’re not always asking for the same thing.

Because your body doesn’t know what’s written on your training plan. It knows you slept five hours because your kid was up. It knows work has been bananas. It knows you’ve been travelling or sitting at a desk all week or forgot to eat lunch. It also knows when you’ve slept beautifully, eaten well and wake up feeling strong and ready to go.

The workout might be the same. The body arriving for it isn’t.

This is where I think we’ve made recovery way too complicated. We have watches and scores and metrics telling us how recovered we are, when sometimes the most useful information is much less exciting: how do you actually feel?

Some days you have capacity for load. Some days you don’t. That doesn’t always mean you need to do nothing. Maybe you lift lighter. Maybe you work on mobility. Take a yoga class. Go for a long walk. Maybe you need to move without turning the movement into another thing to accomplish.

And sometimes massage is part of that picture. Not because massage magically undoes a workout, and not because every active person needs to be “fixed.” Maybe your legs have accumulated a few weeks of running. Your shoulder feels sticky. Your hips are tired. Your jaw has somehow joined your strength program.

Or maybe an hour where your body gets your attention without having to perform is useful all on its own.

I think we need more than one gear.

Some days you train. Some days you practise. Some days you work on range. Some days you feel great and go for it. Some days you start moving and realize the body that showed up needs something completely different.

That’s not failing the plan.

That’s knowing your body.