Cortisol is a hormone that most of us have heard of but what exactly is it and how does it affect our stress levels?
Read MoreEver wonder what’s really going on in your body when you’re under stress?
Read MoreYou’re fit, healthy and been training for months hoping to peak just in time for spring marathons and then something none of us ever thought could or would happen, happens. Covid-19!
Read MoreLife stress can lower mood, cause sleepless nights, result in us drinking more caffeine and alcohol and essentially wipe us out. And then we add movement or exercise in order to combat stress. YES… exercise is clinically proven to enhance mood and reduce depression. BUT there is very little research done investigating the impact of adding training stress (intense working out/running) to chronic life stress. So before you jump on a bandwagon and take on too much that simply leads you to add training stress to life stress, start by making room for exercise by adjusting your lifestyle and enhancing your resilience.
Here are my top tips in how to achieve this.
Read MoreElite athletes don’t have a 9-5 job. They eat, sleep, train…Repeat. They have A LOT of down time. They also only race a select number of races per year and train in such a way that allows them to peak exactly at the right time for these races. Rest, recovery and a hefty serving of self-care and fun outside of running is an important part of any training programme…but when you’re squeezing in a long run at 5am (after being awake twice in the night for the baby) or as you commute to and from a stressful job (where you grabbed a sandwich at your desk) rest, recovery and self-care just don’t feature much.
Read MoreI used to be someone who was always exposing myself to challenges in order to be the best that I could be, pushing myself physically, mentally and professionally. This included achieving my PhD by the time I was 28, completing my Masters at Imperial College, running marathons and even ultra marathons! So you could say I liked to keep busy. However, this sort of lifestyle isn’t necessarily healthy. I had little time or consideration for rest, recovery or recuperation, it just wasn’t something that sat comfortably with me. So it eventually all caught up with me.
Read MoreIn 1949 Kihachiro Onitsuka began manufacturing basketball shoes in attempt to help improve the self esteem of young Japanese men after the war.
SEVENTY years later I am sat in the ASICS European Headquarters in Amsterdam, an amazing modern building softened by its bamboo panels and decorated with models of its training shoe as it has evolved over the decades. An interior that gives a real sense of history, growth and forward thinking.
Read MoreAnd then we add training. Let me be clear. Movement and physical activity isn’t training per se. When I say training, I’m referring to structured activity that is working towards a goal such as a race. In order to ‘train’ we have to ‘over-reach’ in order to get physiological adaptations that we need in order to be faster, fitter, stronger. This process induces stress.
Read MoreHave you ever felt so overwhelmed and frozen that you just don’t know where to start? So instead, you go for a run or put on the kettle and escape into social media for a distraction?!
I have!
Read MoreResearch by Lally et al. (2009) entitled ‘How are habits formed: Modelling habit information in the real world’ in the European Journal of Social Psychology says it took participants between 18-254 days to reach 95% automaticity at a new habit and that missing one opportunity to perform a behaviour did not affect creating a new habit. They also noted that the chance of increasing the habit occurs when the chosen behaviour was performed in a CONSISTENT way (i.e. a clear routine)
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