Episode 30: Tips to Lower Your Stress and Optimize Your Gains (Ep 30)
Hey there! 👋 I'm personal trainer Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast. In this episode, I discuss how to handle stress and cortisol levels for fitness.
Not all stress is bad stress. Acute stress can be beneficial to help us get up and out of bad situations. But chronic stress can have negative impacts on your health and fitness by suppressing the immune system, impairing cognitive function, and increasing inflammation. All of this can hinder muscle building and recovery from workouts.
In this episode, I suggest a few strategies to identify key stressors in your life and make changes to reduce triggers. These include practicing mindfulness and relaxation techniques, maintaining good boundaries in relationships and work, and prioritizing sleep. There are many options, but it's important to find what works best for your brain to relax and feel regulated.
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(00:00):
If you want to handle your cortisol and your stress levels, one of the first things that you need to do is kind of take an audit of your life and look at what are your stressors, and also kind of ask yourself, am I living in a situation or an environment that's keeping me chronically stressed, where I'm just chronically being triggered chronically, having my cortisol level spike, constantly experiencing fight or flight? And depending on the answer to that question, you're going to have to ask yourself some further follow-up questions, which is, what are some things that I can do to reduce that constant triggering?
(00:48):
Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. My name's Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I am a personal trainer and streamer. And in today's episode, I'm going to share a discussion that I had when I was live on my Twitch and TikTok channels. Now, during this discussion, one of my chatters from TikTok asked how to handle stress and cortisol levels for fitness. This is an awesome question, and I think it's super important to consider because when it comes to making gains, you have to be mindful of your stress levels and the ways that it impacts your ability to make gains and burn fat. So in answering this chatter, I go over some of the ways that stress and cortisol impact your fitness, and then I also give some actionable tips for how to reduce and control your stress levels in your life. And without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(01:43):
What's the best way to handle cortisol and stress levels? That's a really good question. As living creatures, a little bit of stress is good for us, right? Cortisol is one of many different hormones that our bodies use. Remember that our hormones tell our bodies and our brains what to do, right? They tell us when to sleep. They tell us when to eat. They tell us when to get the fuck up and move because we're being attacked and we're going to get eaten by a predator. Okay? So stress hormones like cortisol and as well as adrenaline, they're actually good for you. They have a beneficial function to play. So acute stress, the kind of stress that is in an instant, you got to get up, you got to move, you got to run, right? You are experiencing a threat right now. Your body's going to release cortisol and adrenaline and other hormones to get you up and moving, to get you to safety.
(02:42):
That is a good system when it is acute, when it is within a short period of time. What is killing us is prolonged or chronic stress When we are in living situations that keep our bodies pumping, cortisol that keep our bodies pumping out adrenaline. And over time, the more that we stay in situations that get our body pumping out, that cortisol over long periods of time, this suppresses our immune systems, it suppresses our abilities to recover from our workouts, and it just doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good to be anxious, right? This is where a lot of the anxiety comes from. So we want to first of all recognize that there is good kinds of stress, and then there is too much, which is too much. So if you want to handle your cortisol and your stress levels, one of the first things that you need to do is kind of take an audit of your life and look at what are your stressors, and also kind of ask yourself, am I living in a situation or an environment that's keeping me chronically stressed, where I'm just chronically being triggered chronically, having my cortisol level spike, constantly experiencing fight or flight?
(04:06):
And depending on the answer to that question, you're going to have to ask yourself some further follow-up questions, which is, what are some things that I can do to reduce that constant triggering? Sometimes we have to reexamine our home environment where we live, because home is where you should be able to relax. You shouldn't feel like you're being constantly triggered. And in a state of fight or flight when you're at home, that should be your space to relax, rejuvenate. But if you live in an environment that is stressful and it's constantly triggering that acute stress response, then you probably need to make some changes. And those changes might look like getting into a different home environment. That might look like having a conversation with the people that you live with. So there may be some changes that you need to make in your home life to make your home less stressful.
(05:12):
It may be work stress. One of the biggest reasons why I think people experience chronic stress is a lack of good boundaries. If you don't have good boundaries in your relationships, if you don't have good boundaries in your relationship with your work, when you're constantly being pushed and pushed and pushed, and there's no boundary to protect yourself, this is one of the reasons why a lot of people experience chronic stress. Sometimes your cortisol levels can be really high because you won't sleep enough. A lot of us don't really prioritize sleep enough. So that's another thing that you want to take a look at. You want to kind of take a step back and look at your life. If you've experienced chronic stress and you are more often than not in a state of being stressed out or anxious, you may want to seek help with a counselor or a therapist or a life coach to kind of step back and analyze your life and figure out what are the main stressors in your life, and then come up with some strategies for dealing with that.
(06:21):
And you definitely want to, because no human being, no creature should live in a state of constant stress because it will definitely impact your gains. The more that you experience chronic stress, again, your immune system is going to be suppressed. You're more likely to get sick, which could take you out of the gym. But also if your immune system is suppressed, remember that building muscle is an effect of the immune system. It's an immune system response to repair and fortify tissue. So keeping your immune system boosted by trying to reduce your stress levels or reduce your triggers and sleeping more, eating plenty of good food. All of these are ways that you can help to balance your hormones and reduce your cortisol levels. There's a lot of ways that chronic stress impacts your muscle building and impacts your gains. One of the things that it impacts is your readiness to train. So your ability to show up to the gym and perform in the gym and get the amount of stimulus that you need in order to build muscle. Because when you experience chronic stress, it impairs your cognitive function. And remember that, especially if you're lifting heavy ass weight, like doing deadlifts and squats, that's a lot of cognitive work, and you're not going to be able to get the muscle recruitment that you need in order to move big ass weight if you have cognitive impairment.
(07:54):
Let's see. It also affects your ability to pay attention, which can potentially put you at risk of injury, increasing your heart rate, elevating blood pressure, heightening your muscle tension is just going to lead to also chronic fatigue, which again, can impact your ability to recover. So it has you feeling super tired. It's really, really hard to concentrate it. Also, if you are in a state of chronic stress all the time, it increases your inflammation, which makes it really, really hard to recover and also can lead to just pain while you're training because corti, cortisol and other stress hormones, they increase inflammation. They're trying to get blood flowing to your body, get blood flowing to your muscles so you can run away or fight for your life. But when you are in this state all the time, it makes it so just everything hurts. And when everything hurts, it's hard to train.
(08:51):
It's hard to train, and it's hard to recover from training. And then that impacts your mental ability to cope with the stress of training because you're going to feel really fucked up after a regular old training session because you're already inflamed, you're already stressed. And then you add on the additional stressors of, I don't know what kind of training you do, bodybuilding or strength training. All of these put additional stress on the body, and there's only so much that the body and the mind can handle, right? I mean, stress is something that you have to manage.
(09:31):
If you have high levels of stress, then that's going to impact your ability to further stress your body and the amount of gains that you're going to get from the stress of training. So there are times that you might need to reduce the load of your lifts in order to accommodate for the chronic stress and maybe lack of sleep that you're experiencing. And then when you get into periods where you're able, your chronic stress is more managed, then you probably find that you can push yourself a little bit more in the gym. Let's see. Other things that you can do to help manage your stress is practice mindfulness and relaxation or somatic healing type of practices. I'm a big fan of yoga for the mindfulness practice aspect of it, the learning how to meditate, learning how to be mindful. Learning how to be aware and present in your body is really important because when you're stressed, a lot of times you're not really present, right?
(10:37):
You're thinking about the future or you're thinking about the past, but you're not really present in your body. And so the practice of mindfulness is to focus on your breathing and focus on the sensations that you feel in your body in the present moment and come back to the present moment. So practicing mindfulness meditation, you can use the CALM app or go to calm.com. They have a lot of really great guided meditations for different types of themes. There's also a ton of, I've actually taught this to a couple of my personal training clients, different somatic techniques for relaxation. So one of the things that you want to keep in mind, this is something I've had to learn because I'm A DHD as fuck, and I also have autism. So one of the things that we are, I think gets triggered as well, if you have PTSD or chronic stress is when you are in a chronic stress state, you're dysregulated.
(11:33):
You're not able to regulate your feelings, you're not able to think clearly. So one of your first things that you want to be able to do is get regulated so that you can think clearly, so that you can make good decisions. And so you can just feel better. And for me, in the way that my brain and my body works is I have to use a somatic to regulate myself. Somatic meaning I can't just meditate in my mind. I need to do something in my body to bring myself back to the present. And so EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, is a whole branch of therapy and therapeutic practice that helps you to regulate your nervous system and get into a regulated state. And basically the whole premise of it is that you take, you give your body some kind of stimulus that moves the stimulus from the left side of your brain to the right side of your brain, left, right, left, right, left.
(12:36):
And so they have EMDR music where you put headphones on and the music moves from the left side to the right side, left side to the right side. You can also just move your eyes from left to right, scanning your environment. Another technique is called the butterfly hug, where you take your hands here and you just tap side to side like this. And then there's also tapping exercises where you tap your face, you tap your shoulders, you tap your hands or your arms, you tap your legs. Just something that gives your body a sensation that moves left, right, left, right, left can be very helpful for getting you into a regulated state. And you're also breathing right. You're also focusing on your breath. I've found those to be so, so helpful when I'm in a state of chronic stress and I really need to regulate and I need to bring myself back down.
(13:31):
If I am overstimulated by my environment, which happens a lot, or if I'm understimulated doing something that gives me that left, right, left, right, left, right stimulus, whether it's listening to music or doing the taps or just bringing my attention to, I think about my left hand, and then I think about my right hand, and I keep moving my attention from what does my left hand feel like right now? What does my right hand feel like right now? These are good for helping you in the moment of acute, of an acute stress response to get yourself regulated. But if you're finding yourself getting into this acute stress response, very often, even once a day is too much, I think. But if you are in an acute stress response often, then you need to take a look at your lifestyle and assess what things can be changed in order to help you to reduce the amount of time that you spend with your stress response getting triggered.
(14:31):
It has a cost, right? The good thing about the stress response is it motivates you to get up and moving when it's only acute, when it only happens every once in a while, it makes you get up, jump up, run away. But when you are staying like that, there's so many negative effects on your health and on. And one of them also is just the constant tension that you feel if you are stressed all the time. What I see with a lot of my clients who have stressful desk jobs, they have their shoulders are like this, and they're cemented like this, and they get a lot of neck pain, a lot of back pain because when we're stressed, we kind of curl inward. And then for a lot of us, we don't ever come out of that position. And so when I train clients, I spend a lot of time opening up their shoulders, opening up their chest, doing external shoulder rotation, that kind of thing, because that helps to undo the damage to the body, that being in chronic stress and the posture that chronic stress has you sitting in does.
(15:41):
I would start practicing external rotation if I were. You have chronic stress, actually, anybody, if you have chronic stress, if you spend the day seated at a computer or at your phone, you need to have external rotation, external shoulder rotation exercises in your weekly training routine just to maintain the health of your shoulders and to improve your posture. Is there any of that mindful stuff that's good for a DD? I tried Headspace or whatever, and it kind of stressed me out. Headspace? Headspace. Is Headspace a meditation app? I don't think I've used that one. It's a meditation app like guided stuff and breathing work. What did you find? It stressed you out? Lack of movement, focusing on stuff like breathing, relaxing was too hard for me to just stop and relax. There's one app that I used called Yoga Studio. I haven't used it in a long time, and I know that they've changed a lot of it, but the Yoga Studio app has a series of guided meditations, and one that I really, really liked was this intensive body scan doing the body scan.
(16:47):
Normally when you do a body scan meditation, you're either sitting still or you're laying down, and you are bringing your attention to the different parts of your body and breathing and focusing on relaxing the muscles in that part of your body. But there's one of the meditations that when you bring your attention to whatever part of your body, it goes through your arms, right? And it has, you bring your attention to your right side arm, and it actually has you squeeze all of the muscles in your arm and tense it up and hold it, and then you relax it, and then you go to the other side and you squeeze and tense up all of the muscles, and then you relax it and you go through the whole body like that. That's one of my favorite ways to get really relaxed because it's hard for me to do that without some kind of a somatic cue.
(17:40):
So you might try a body scan where when you are scanning your body, actually contract the muscles that are there and then try to relax them might help. But the thing is, you can also practice mindfulness. You don't have to just sit still and practice mindfulness. It can be helpful, and I think it's a good thing to learn how to practice, but you can practice mindfulness going for a walk or swimming, doing something embodied like fidgeting, just like sitting still and fidgeting with something, giving your hands something to do, some kind of stimulus. If you have a DD, it might be that just sitting still and meditating is under stimulating. You need some other stimulus, so get something that you can fidget with. This is why I have so many fidgets.
(18:31):
I have so many squishies. They need to be, I need to clean them. They've collected dust, but I have so many squishies, and when I need a moment to just relax my brain, I'll just sit and play with my squishy and just let my brain relax and I'll do my breathing exercises, and I'll just focus on the squishy squish quish squish. It works for me. So you may need to fidget, you may need to fidget in order to get into that mind space. And for those of us with spicy brains, that's more often the case than not. I got the time to work on stuff now. So I'd like to work on just relaxing, not having to go do something. I mean, if you have a DD or a DHD, you have to keep in mind that to a certain extent, in order to feel okay, your brain is going to need a certain level of stimulation, and that's okay.
(19:29):
Don't hold yourself to a neurotypical standard of I should be able to sit still and relax. Maybe not. Maybe what helps you relax is doing something, and that's totally legitimate. That's a totally legitimate way to be. And if that's what you need to do in order to get into a state where your brain is able to be calm, then do it. You can accommodate yourself. You're a grown ass person, so you get to choose the idea of a vacation stresses you out. Well, I mean, that's a very neurodiverse idea or feeling. That's a totally normal neurodiverse idea is, I mean, same thing. I don't really, if I have going to take some time off to relax, if I'm going to take some time off to relax, my first thought is not going to be I'm going to go on vacation because that means I have to plan.
(20:30):
I have to pack, I have to think about my route. I have to think about where am I staying, where am I going to get food? It's a huge disruption to my routine. I hate that, but I'm neuros spicy. Of course. I hate that. Of course, I hate that. And that's okay. So when I take time off for myself and I take a break, guess what I do? I do staycations and I fucking love them. And neurotypical people will be like, oh, man, I wish you would've gone to the beach or Gone to the mountains or something. You should. No, I don't have to should anything. I'm 35 years old and I have been deconstructing for over 10 years. All of the should statements that I was raised with or that I cultivated as a part of living in this culture and in this country.
(21:26):
And one of the things that I think has helped me the most is deconstructing the idea that how I need to spend my time needs to look like someone else. How someone else likes to spend their time to relax. I'm allowed to do whatever works for my brain. And the same that's true for you too. I don't want to go on vacation because that's going to stress me out, and then I'm going to need a vacation. I'm going to need a staycation at the end of my vacation to get regulated again. I much prefer a staycation because you know what happens during a staycation? I get to wake up. I do whatever the fuck I want, and then when a relaxed brain, I am able to take care of things that I don't get to take care of during the hustle and bustle of my everyday life. And that relaxes me. So I did a little bit of work on my house.
(22:25):
I did some spring cleaning in my living space upstairs, over Memorial Day weekend, and it feels so luxurious up there now, and I'm so happy I did that. But someone else might look at that and be like, oh, I hate that you did work. I wish that you would've gone on vacation and relaxed. And I'm like, you don't understand. That did relax me, and not only did it relax me in the moment, but now my living space is nicer. Do what makes your brain happy and helps your brain to relax. And that means driving and getting out of your house and going on adventures and being really active. And I have clients who hike. They go on hiking, adventures, skiing, adventures for vacation, and they're very active, and then they come back and they're feeling refreshed. Do what makes your brain happy, and don't let other people's ideas of what makes them happy, make you feel pressured to do something that's ultimately going to make you feel more drained. But that was a really good discussion that we had on stress. I'm really glad that we had that question. It was a good one.
(23:43):
Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I hope that you found it helpful. If you would like to join me while I'm live on my Twitch or TikTok channels, just go to Twitch.tv/jaydigains, or you can follow my channel, which is called Jaydigains on TikTok. I go live at least once a week to answer fitness questions and do one of my workouts. You can also join my email list on my website. That's jd gaines.com or jade harrison fitness.com. I will see you in the next episode. I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your day. In the meantime, make sure that you drink some water, eat your veggies, eat some protein, and take care of yourself.
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