As a coach, one thing I really enjoy is taking what I see in our community, researching it, and then reflecting and writing about what I\u2019ve found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I write this blog for you all this week, I\u2019m deep into Robert Sapolsky\u2019s Why Zebras Don\u2019t Get Ulcers<\/em>, and it\u2019s challenging the way I think about stress, behaviour, and why we sometimes do the things we swear we don\u2019t want to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea that keeps coming up repeatedly is that it\u2019s not just what happens to us that matters, it\u2019s what we think<\/em> it means. And yes, I know the saying, \u201cIt isn\u2019t happening to you, it\u2019s happening for you\u2026\u201d which, for the record, I hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the more we coach different individuals, the more fascinating it becomes to see how two people can experience the same stress and have totally different outcomes. One breaks. Another thrives. And it got me thinking: why do some of us hate exercise so much, love alcohol or our own little treats so much, and feel stressed about the whole thing? Why do we know what we should<\/em> be doing, yet still struggle to do it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What got me thinking down this line was Sapolsky’s description of a study where two groups of mice received different amounts of electric shocks. One group starts with 50 shocks an hour, the other with 10. The next day, both groups received the same amount, 25 shocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Physically, the stressor is identical, yet the group that increased<\/em> from 10 to 25 shows a huge stress response, while the group that decreased<\/em> from 50 to 25 is visibly calmer. It\u2019s not the number that matters. It\u2019s the change<\/em>, the expectation, the story their nervous system has written about what those shocks mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It made me rethink something coaches love to tell people: \u201cLet\u2019s ease you into training, then turn it up after day one.\u201d In theory, that sounds logical. Be nice first, then build them up. But biologically? Psychologically? That slower start might actually backfire. If someone\u2019s first gym session is a gentle \u201c10 shocks,\u201d and the next one jumps to \u201c25,\u201d the body reads that as danger, unpredictability, betrayal. Whereas if day one feels like \u201c50 shocks,\u201d uncomfortable as it is, day two feels like relief. Improvement. Progress. The brain thinks: Okay. I can handle this. <\/em>Now disclaimer I am exploring this in real time, and you are going to have finish the blog to know where this ends up!<\/p>\n\n\n\n This thinking has links to Sapolsky\u2019s other broader argument across his other books, Behave<\/em> and Determined<\/em>, both of which hammer home the idea that our actions are far less \u201cfree\u201d than we like to think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Behave<\/em>, Sapolsky breaks down a single behaviour into layers of causation that stretch back seconds, minutes, days, years, even thousands of years through evolutionary pressures. Your decision to skip the gym and drink instead didn\u2019t happen in a vacuum. It was shaped by your childhood sport experiences, your stress patterns, your friendships, your genetics, your habits, the cultural norms you absorbed, how your parents raised you and their behaviours, as well as the way your nervous system has been trained to assign meaning to effort and pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Determined<\/em>, he pushes even harder. That the free will we think we have is mostly an illusion! We do what we believe to be true, not because we consciously choose it, but because our biology and conditioning push us there. The environments and the cultural norms we have been privy to cause us to tell particular stories and see things a particular way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, if you \u201chate exercise,\u201d or struggle to enjoy it, maybe it\u2019s because somewhere along the way, your brain learned that movement equals embarrassment, pain, confusion, or failure. If you \u201clove alcohol,\u201d maybe your brain learned that drinking equals connection, humour, relaxation, and identity. One is a stressor. One is a release. You\u2019re not weak for feeling pulled toward one and repelled by the other. You are trained. And what has been trained can be retrained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a quote that fits this idea perfectly: \u201cThe road to heaven feels like hell. The road to hell feels like heaven.\u201d Which, for the record, I am unsure and have struggled to find who to credit for this quote directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The premise, though, in the moment, exercise feels like hell! breathing hard, burning lungs, heavy legs, sore muscles. Alcohol feels like heaven! Laughter, friends, stories, belonging. But zoom out, and the roles reverse. The road that feels like heaven now is the one that quietly leads to poor health, medications,and loss of independence. The road that feels like hell now is the one that leads to strength, vitality, capability, and confidence decades from today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The question becomes: should you start your fitness journey with the \u201c10 shocks\u201d or the \u201c50 shocks\u201d? Physically, I\u2019m never going to throw someone into a reckless session that breaks them! Safety, technique, and longevity always matter. But psychologically? I\u2019m starting to think the real mistake is pretending this isn\u2019t going to hurt. Pretending that training will be easy. Pretending that change will feel smooth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reality is that DOMS, breathlessness, awkward movements, all the things people usually associate with something being wrong, are completely normal. Nothing is wrong. The discomfort isn\u2019t a warning sign; it\u2019s simply the phase you walk through before your body recalibrates and goes, \u2018Okay, this is who we are now.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n And to go a long way back into my research about personalities, this is where Dr Eric Braverman\u2019s work on neurotransmitter dominance having an effect on personality becomes important. He argues that each of us has a dominant neurotransmitter profile, dopamine. GABA, acetylcholine, serotonin, and these affect how we respond to stress, reward, risk, novelty, and challenge. Some people are wired to love intensity. Others prefer predictability. Some thrive on routine. Others crave stimulation. So, of course, some people love the grind of training, and others dread it. It\u2019s not about character. It\u2019s about chemistry layered on biology layered on history layered on perception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Add all this together, and the picture becomes clearer\u2026 exercise is hard to love at first because your nervous system hasn\u2019t yet built the associations that make it feel rewarding. Whereas something like alcohol, or any other vice we turn to in times of need for a de-stressor, is easy to love because those associations are already strong. And stress sits in the middle as the interpreter, deciding whether the sensation of strain is a threat or a triumph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So where does this leave us? For me, it\u2019s shifting how I think about \u201cstarting points.\u201d Instead of starting easy and hoping motivation carries you, maybe it\u2019s better to start honestly!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hard enough that your brain respects the process. Safe enough that you come back tomorrow. Clear enough that you know discomfort is not danger; it\u2019s simply the toll for the results you want later. Because if you start with the story \u201cthis is meant to hurt a little,\u201d then the next session doesn\u2019t feel like betrayal. It feels like familiarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of the day, none of this is about forcing yourself into someone else\u2019s idea of discipline. It\u2019s about understanding the layers that shape why you do what you do and learning to work with<\/em> your biology instead of against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s about choosing the discomfort today that gives you the freedom tomorrow. You don\u2019t want osteoporosis in your 60s. You don\u2019t want brain degeneration in your 70s. You don\u2019t want to lose independence before you must. And the good news is you can influence that outcome. Not by being perfect, but just by being consistent. By taking a risk and changing how we think to get the things that truly matter to us, not just today, but tomorrow!<\/p>\n\n\n\n In closing, this isn\u2019t a conversation about exercise at all. It\u2019s a conversation about the lens you look through. Most people don\u2019t quit because training is hard; they quit because they think it shouldn\u2019t<\/em> be. They think discomfort is failure. They think soreness is a warning. They think progress should feel smooth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But nothing about becoming better ever feels smooth. And it never happened in one day!<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you change the meaning you attach to effort, discipline yourself, and stop seeing discomfort as danger, and start seeing it as growth, everything gets easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You stop fighting yourself. You stop negotiating. You start showing up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your perceptions create your patterns. Your patterns create your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And also, remember, those studies were done on mice locked in cages! You have access to this blog, to books, to a conscious mind and the ability to learn. You have the skills and the power to choose the story that moves you forward. The power to choose the meaning that keeps you coming back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So why not choose the version of you that exists on the other side of effort?<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the real lesson here. Not the shocks, not the soreness, not the comparisons. So get up. Get after it. BECOME EXTRAORDINARY!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a coach, one thing I really enjoy is taking what I see in our community, researching it, and then reflecting and writing about what I\u2019ve found. As I write this blog for you all this week, I\u2019m deep into Robert Sapolsky\u2019s Why Zebras Don\u2019t Get Ulcers, and it\u2019s challenging the way I think about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vassesc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Just the willingness to change the way you see what\u2019s hard and reconnect with why you\u2019d want to do any of this in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n