Is High-Intensity Exercise Right for You?

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 Today, I want to chat about high intensity exercise and help you determine if it's right for you.

For years, it was kind of honestly like the only type of exercise I did. I would do HIIT workouts in between runs, and no run was less than like four miles. I was running six miles every day during the week, eight miles on the weekends, and peppering in HIIT workouts for strength and conditioning in between.

And unfortunately, it took a car accident to make me stop doing such monkey business with my life. This is kind of a segue, but I remember telling someone years and years ago when I was still doing all of this high-intensity exercise, I was like, I can't wait till I'm old and I can just walk and do yoga and let that be my workout and be okay with it.

Like, I mean I'm 34 and I literally walk and do yoga as my workouts and I'm very okay with it. So, I don't know if I thought 34 was old or if I just had very different ideas of what types of exercise were good for my body. Probably a little bit of both.

But anyway, (spoiler alert) my high intensity exercise days are in the past for the most part. And I do enjoy yoga and walking most days as my form of exercise. I get really ambitious and do a Peloton workout probably once a week. And it takes me five days to recover, so that's probably why I only do it once a week. But I do enjoy high-intensity workouts now and again, but I let my body kind of tell me when I'm craving that.

Like sometimes I really just feel like I want to go for a run, and I'll try to go for a run and I'll barely make it a mile. And there's a time and a place to push yourself. Like some days I don't make it a mile and I'm like, yeah, no, I think I'm done. And some days I'm like, no, let's try this, like, keep going and see if you can run the full mile.

But back to where I was in my twenties. If I didn't feel like running six miles, too bad, so sad. That was what was on my workout routine for the day, and I was going to run those six miles and I was going to run them faster than I did the day before.

But anyways, I was going to a chiropractor and they told me, they were like, you cannot do high intensity workouts for a while, like you need to stick to yoga and do lower intensity walking, things like that. So I did. And honestly, my back pain went away. I felt so much better doing low intensity workouts than I had ever before physically.

And it just made me reflect on like, what was I doing? Like who, what really was the purpose of all of that? I'm not a professional athlete. I don't know why I was training like I was. I don't know why it was so important for me to run faster and time my runs. I wasn't training for the Boston marathon, I didn't have to qualify for anything. There was no reason for me to be as competitive with myself as I was, and to push my body to such extremes.

And the further I've come from those crazy days of runs and high intensity workouts all the time, the more I've learned about high-intensity workouts, just in general. And for a lot of people, they're just not great.

And I will say that the majority of the people they're not great for are probably the majority of the people that are drawn to them. And the reason I say this is because high-intensity workouts are a stressor on your body. And our bodies interpret stress the same way, whether it's from a deadline at work, or a high intensity workout, or a cold plunge, or fasting, or a crazy mother-in-law. Like, whatever it is, our bodies are responding to it pretty much the same way across the board. It is a stress response.

So for all my type A, competitive women out there who are super stressed and doing these high intensity workouts as a way to blow some steam and release their stress… It's probably not having the effect you want it to. And it might actually be counterintuitive for you.

So I want to just review a few reasons why you might want to reconsider your high intensity exercise.

So first of all, do you enjoy it? My comment about not being able to wait until I'm old and can do yoga and walk, it was probably my intuition saying, girl, you don't like this. You don't even enjoy this. But I thought I did. I tricked myself into thinking that I loved running and I loved high intensity workouts. So really sit with yourself and ask yourself, are you enjoying it? Or are you just able to scratch an itch, this competitive drive that you have, or something else in your life that's going on?

Are you stressed? If you're stressed in any way, shape or form, you probably are not going to want to do high intensity workouts right now. And it doesn't have to be forever, but take a break. If you're always stressed - me, that is me, I'm always stressed. It doesn't matter what is going on in my life. I would say just my baseline stress level is just high. Maybe high intensity workouts will be very few and far between and that's okay.

And the last reason you may want to reconsider it is if you struggle with bloating or food sensitivities. High intensity exercise has actually been shown to loosen the tight junctions of the gut, which is really just like the lining that keeps everything inside your gut that needs to stay inside your gut. And that can lead to leaky gut and digestive issues.

So, something to keep in mind if you've been struggling with your digestion, maybe you want to switch to lower intensity activity for a little bit. And when I say little bit, I would say like, at least a month or several months to let your body reset and see if that helps your digestion.

So I know this might be hard for some of you to hear and you might be attached to your CrossFit or your long runs or whatever you're currently doing as a regular workout. But just try it. Nothing tragic will happen for just giving it a try for a couple of weeks and see how you feel.

And you don't have to cut it out altogether. Maybe you start alternating a little bit more frequently than you used to. If you're generally doing high-intensity workouts five times a week, try doing it three times a week. And if you still feel like you could scale down even more, try doing one or two times a week and peppering in some long walks, or some light swimming, or a dance routine, or something else that's a little bit more fun and laid back and less competitive and less intense.

I know this was a really long one, this was not two minutes. So apparently I had a lot to say on the subject. But, in summary, I'm not totally poo-pooing on high intensity exercise. I am just asking you to reconsider whether it's right for you either long-term or just for now. And try some new lower-intensity ways to move your body and see what you actually enjoy. All right, I’ll talk to you next week.