08- Navigating Season of Hard

Navigating the Seasons of Hard

1. Embracing the Chaos:

• Kat shares a personal update on the chaos of summer break, balancing business, running training, strength training, and family responsibilities.
• Discussion on how tough periods are crucial in shaping our strength, consistency, and success.

2. Fitness Journey Insights:

• Understanding that every fitness journey has its ups and downs.
• Lessons about resilience, perseverance, and adapting to circumstances.

3. Assessing Good vs. Bad Days:

• Redefining what constitutes a "good" day versus a "bad" day in your fitness journey.
• Reflecting on effort and overcoming obstacles, even if the workout wasn't perfect.

4. Honesty and Realistic Planning:

• Being honest with where you are in your fitness journey.
• Creating realistic plans that address your specific needs and goals.

5. Overcoming Comparison:

• The pitfalls of comparing yourself to others, especially on social media.
• Embracing your unique challenges and understanding that everyone faces their own struggles.

6. Identifying and Combatting Specific Challenges:

• Understanding your unique obstacles, such as lack of time, motivation, or energy.
• Strategies for overcoming these challenges with systems and planning.

7. Real-Life Examples and Strategies:

• Personal stories from Kat about her own fitness challenges and solutions.
• Practical tips for fitting in workouts, even with a busy schedule or lack of childcare.

8. Setting Up Effective Systems:

• Tips on organizing your life to prioritize your well-being.
• The importance of advocating for your own needs and creating a supportive environment.

9. Daily Challenges and Incremental Progress:

• Acknowledging and preparing for daily challenges.
• Embracing the gradual nature of progress and celebrating small wins.

10. Motivation and Encouragement:

• Inspirational quotes and thoughts to keep you motivated.
• Encouragement to embrace the journey and stay committed to your goals.

Actionable Takeaways:

• Shift Your Mindset: Redefine what a successful day looks like and focus on effort and progress rather than perfection.
• Be Honest and Realistic: Assess your current situation and create plans that are tailored to your specific needs and goals.
• Avoid Comparison: Understand that everyone has unique challenges and that comparing yourself to others can be detrimental.
• Implement Systems: Develop systems and routines that help you overcome obstacles and stay consistent.
• Celebrate Small Wins: Recognize and celebrate every small step forward, no matter how minor it may seem.

Closing Thoughts:

Navigating the seasons of hard is all about understanding your challenges, being honest with yourself, and implementing effective systems to stay consistent. Embrace your journey, celebrate your wins, and remember that progress is gradual.

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Transcript

Kat: 0:02

Welcome to miles from her view the podcast, where we dive deep into the unfiltered reality of fitness, strength, training, and nutrition within womanhood and motherhood. I am your host cat founder of KatFit strength. I'm a career strength and conditioning coach, entrepreneur, lifelong athlete, and a mom of two. In each episode, we explore the unique challenges and triumphs faced by women navigating the complexities of life from juggling family and career to prioritizing self care. We dissect the systems and the habits that shape our health and wellness. Join us for real stories, authentic advice, and genuine conversations as we empower each other to embrace our journeys and find strength in vulnerability. Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of miles from her view podcast. I am Kat. And today we're diving into something. Every fitness journey encounters the seasons of hard right now, my kids are out of school and this week has just been pure chaos of trying to get my head around. How am I going to maintain my routines, keeping everything afloat for my business and moving forward my own run training and strength training routines, as well as. All the other things that go into keeping a family moving forward, running a house, plus my two energetic dogs, you know, insert all the things you have, but these tough periods are crucial and shaping our strength and consistency and success. And so we're going to explore how to navigate these challenging times. Assess our progress and develop systems to keep moving forward. All right, let's dive in. In particular, every fitness journey has its up and downs. That is normal. It is going to be some days super awesome and other times. Just, Oh, it just, you just want to quit. Seasons of hard teach us valuable lessons about resilience, perseverance, and the importance of adapting to our circumstances. If you're a mom, you know, firsthand, how unpredictable motherhood and parenting a child can be, especially toddlers. I feel like they're wildcards and babies where you don't know what's going on or when they're going to wake up. I mean, you know, your child, but. They can always throw you a curveball, so you get pretty good at adapting. That is something that we want to do with our fitness. These are tough times, but they're not setbacks. When we have these seasons of hards, the ups and downs, they're not setbacks, but I want you to look at them as an opportunity to grow and develop stronger habits. And one of the areas is how you assess a good day. versus a bad day. It's very easy to say, Oh, I didn't get a full workout. So it was a horrible workout. Or, you know, especially if things don't go as planned, it's easy to say it was a bad day, but when we're in a season of hard, it's essential to assess what constitutes a good day versus a bad day. So reflect on your workouts and daily routines and ask yourself, did you give your, give your best effort? Did you overcome obstacles even if it wasn't the perfect workout and then understanding those differences will help you maintain the perspective and stay motivated. So a couple of examples here. So if you're tired and let's say you do have young children or you just had a poor night's sleep, but you show up to a workout knowing that you still want to do it, but it wasn't, Your most amazing workout. Maybe you lowered your weights that you lifted. Maybe you cut sets or reps off the end But did you give your best effort there? Absolutely. You showed up and you pushed the weight, you move the weight, and you were there and present. Let's say you were planning on doing a workout in the morning, but you needed more sleep. Maybe your workout needed to be moved. Well, you move your workout, but a work project comes up or something else comes up and you were, only able to get 10 minutes in. Well, how many obstacles did you overcome to get to that workout to nurture yourself, to show up for your wellbeing? So if we flip the perspective from judging the, you know, from perfection or all or nothing to, Hey, am I showing up and being aware of what it took for me to get here, honoring my capacity in that moment. All right. So that's going to help. You know, you be an ally with yourself in these tough times. Another one is be honest where you are. It is really tough, but honesty is key and shedding light on your current strength and success and where you're at. So where are you right now in your fitness journey? What are your limitations and strengths? Being truthful with yourself can create a realistic plan that addresses your specific needs and goals. So I'm going to share a little personal story here. I run trails and I have fallen in love with ultra running. I am horrible at going uphill. I feel like a snail when I go uphill, but On the flip side, I'm really good at flying downhill on trails, whether they're technical or if they're a smooth trail, I can get downhill fast. So one of the things that I had to do was become really honest with myself that I'm not the best at going up at hills. And so I had to address that I needed to work on this. If I wanted to improve my overall capacity or overall ability and efficiency to move through the trails and attempt races, and which had pretty solid hills and many of them, then I was going to have to get better at that and be really realistic at overcoming that limitation. Now, and how this relates to your seasons of hard is it. Maybe during that season, we don't work on that and we put it off to the side. But for me and using this little, uh, personal story, I was at a point where I could work on that. It, you know, I had overcome other things and it was now time to introduce that. So really create a realistic. Plan that addresses those specific needs and goals that are going to help set yourself up for success But it comes with being honest where you are Okay, and it's hard. I get being honest with yourself can be hard. This one. I think is very very important. It's in a world where Social media is so prevalent and it paints very rose colored picture You only see the highlight reels into people's life. It's Everyone has their own struggles and it's important to remember that each person's journey is going to be unique and everyone, I'm going to reiterate this. Everyone faces their own struggles at some point. It may look easy on social media for some people to show up and See all these gains in their strength training and their cardio training. It may look easy that they show up every day or what appears every day and you can feel like you're struggling. But the truth behind that is you don't know what they've overcome to get there. You know, it shouldn't reflect any more on your struggle as their struggle and everyone is entitled to their own struggles. So Comparing yourself to others only, it just adds unnecessary pressure. It sounds weird, but embrace your hard moments and know it's okay to have different challenges. When someone else might be, you know, might not be the same for you, then that's perfectly fine. Everyone's going to be challenged with different things and that's, that's what makes us unique. Dare I say, the world go round. But don't have to compare because it's only going to put that pressure on you. Understanding your heart to combat your struggles. You first need to understand them. So what specific challenges are you facing? Is it a lack of time, motivation, or energy? And when you identify these obstacles, you allow for a better targeting of strategies to overcome them. This kind of goes into putting systems and planning in place is when you understand what might be hard for you to either Get a workout done due to lack of time or motivation or energy. Maybe it's don't have access to a gym or maybe you don't have child care. There can be a myriad of things. So kind of think about like, what is your hard that you're facing right now? And then, Can you put a system or plan into place to combat that hard? So how to put a system in place to help you overcome some hard? Let's use an example. Let's take energy. Since maybe you have little kids and you're not getting sleep through the night. Oftentimes the best time for you to work out when your kids are little is before the family wakes up. Well, now you're not getting, you're getting interrupted sleep throughout the night. And now you have to wake up most oftentimes either in the 4 30 hour or five o'clock hour to get a workout in. But that leaves you dragging and exhausted. The rest of the day may be a little cranky cause you're not getting that sleep and you just feel blah all the time. And that's not a fun feeling. I have been there. So what do you do to help put in systems? If you have a partner or a spouse that can take over and wake up with the kids. During a night the night before you do have an early morning workout to allow you to get a good sleep for the night That might be a helpful solution. I do understand that that may not always be an effective solution. The other one is Maybe during this time of hard with your kids little and not sleeping through the night We are finding ways to work out with the kids and understanding that this season of hard with the kids being little, possibly a lack of childcare during the day. So you can get that workout is going to be interrupted. Workouts, maybe a little bit more screen time for your kids, you know, 20, 30 minutes so that you can get a workout in depending on their ages. It may not work for all, um, or include them in it. Um, there are, are, Fun strategies. I remember using them and I remember that tug of war where I wish I would have realized that it was okay to let me sleep and have arguably an imperfect workout, one interrupted by kids, one where I totally forgot what set or rep I was on or what many, many incomplete workouts occurred that you're still moving yourself forward and that season will change. and your kids will get a little bit older. Again, I do understand it can be frustrating in that time. Another one is lack of time. This is huge, especially our lives are just so busy. Um, and with lack of time, no, that five minutes counts. There's not, yes, there are principles that go into effective workouts or whatnot, but if you're taught, if your life does not Allow for you to get you know a 30 minute workout cool five minutes is great and in those five minutes Do one or two exercises during training or go for a five minute walk. That's huge. That time will pass and your capacity to handle more because your season of hard changes will follow. Okay, so we want to look at this as a time that it helps develop that resiliency and setting that precedence for yourself to keep showing up. Other ways to develop systems is looking at how can you organize your life a little bit different. Are there things that you can kind of delegate or one of the things and again, a little bit of a personal story is I always found that I wasn't advocating for myself for time to work out. I was almost waiting sometimes for my husband to give me permission. Not that I need his permission at all, but he would come, you know, home from work. He's been working home for, oh my goodness, over a decade, you know, in theory, come home from work, leave his office. And he's like, I'm going to get a workout in. And I'm like, angry inside because I'm like, how does he get to go to a workout? I've been juggling the kids, running a business, feeding. Like this is a time when they were little and I'm like, I want to work out too. I have needs. And here I was getting frustrated that he was just able to do it. But when I told him, I was like, look, I need to work out and I need to find time away from the kids. And so we worked out a schedule that was amicable for all of us. Everybody in the house that I had kid free time where it wasn't okay. I'm working out and he gets to go do something and the kids are just milling about because inevitably they will always ask me even if dad is sitting on the couch, watching a sporting event or. Sitting on the couch watching their, you know, kid show, they will find me that it was like you are taking care of the kids and I get the focused workout time from me that evolved and grew because we both are both of our health. And well being was important to us, to our marriage, to our family. So we were able to put together a system of how to prioritize our well being while co parenting and co sharing all the responsibilities that the house and the kids needs have. I understand it's hard. That was not an overnight or one conversation and everything was magically perfect, but take up space, say, Hey, no, I cannot work out with the kids now. I need you to take them and I need this time for me. And that's perfectly normal. It's part of co parenting and you have. yourself to kind of wrapping up here is when you are dealing with a season of hard, especially if it's a hard day is understand that every day is going to be different and challenges are going to come up. So ask yourself, what is the hard today? And if you identify the specific hurdles you need to overcome, getting out of bed for an early morning workout, finding the time between meetings or simply just saying motive. Like know that daily challenge and it helps you tackle it head on. It just allows for that brain to know, okay, this is going to be hard to get out of bed. And maybe we can work backwards and lay out clothes early, set our workout equipment out. Review the workout that you're going to do the next day. And, you know, or schedule time in between meetings, you know, block out 10 minutes and be like, Ooh, this is my time to get outside, to take a couple steps or just feel the sun on my face or go up and down the steps in the office. And that will allow you to see that you're nurturing yourself and keep yourself top of mind. Start small, any bit, any minute counts and It can be as simple as putting on your workout clothes. If you're working from home, keep workout clothes in your office and change into it and keep your workout equipment close to your desk. And that way you can get in a quick set here or get a sweat in and then jump back into your calls. One of my favorite quotes to kind of. help through a season of hard is first gradually than all at once. And it's by Mark Twain and it kind of just encapsulates like the fitness journey is that we have to start gradual and then we can take on more. Progress is always going to feel slow at first, but then with consistency and dedication and the right systems in place, you'll find yourself achieving those goals faster than expected. So navigating the seasons of hard is all about understanding those challenges, being honest with yourself and putting in place effective systems to stay consistent. Embrace that journey. I know it's hard when we're in a season of hard, but you have to embrace it and know it's temporary. Celebrate All the wins, even the ones that are so microscopic that you'd feel like, uh, is this even something we're celebrating? Of course it is. And remember that progress is gradual. If you have questions or you want to hear more about systems or routines that can help support not only your fitness journey, but even in your life, check In the show notes, there is an anonymous form. You can drop in, ask questions there. I'll either turn it into a podcast. You can also put your email in there. Also, if you want to hop on a consultation call, if you're like, I need a workout routine, I need something that is just there catered to me, hop on a consultation call. The link is in the show notes until next time. Remember, stay strong, stay committed. You are worth it. Thank you for joining me on another episode of miles from her view. Your support means the world to me, and I truly appreciate you being a part of our community. If you found today's episode helpful and want to stay informed about all things KatFit strength, make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter. You'll receive all the latest updates. Exclusive insights, tips, and updates straight to your inbox to sign up. Simply visit the show notes for the subscription link to discover more about catfit strength programs and how you can ignite your fitness journey. Head over to our website at www. cat. fit. There, you'll find everything you need to invigorate your path. To strength and once again, thank you for tuning in and I can't wait to connect with you in our upcoming episodes. Take care and remember act to take the next step.