Insights from the High School PE Class I Coach
Written By Kyle Ligon- MovementLink.FIT Head Coach
In addition to my other roles, I coach a high school, functional fitness PE class. The class has been an incredible experience for me. The class is a mix of students grades 9-12 and staff from the school creating what I feel is an amazing opportunity as the school not only breaks the mold of what a classic high school PE class is, but allows students to workout side by side with staff members. I recently sent out a survey to get a feel for what the students felt was going well, maybe not going so well, and to give them an opportunity to ask questions. From their responses, I noticed some common themes that were extremely similar to what I run into with my adult clients. I put together an FAQ response to their survey, but also thought people following along here may find value in my responses, so wanted to share.
Note: These are not actual quotes from people, just instead general quotes I created that I felt captured common thinking.
“I get lightheadedness/dizziness during the shorter workouts and feel like I need more cardio/stamina.”
“I need to improve my body composition, so I have more self confidence.”
“I need to work on my core strength”
“I’d like to eat better, but don’t really know how to do that.”
“How do you stop procrastinating, stay motivated, and get yourself to do things when you don’t want to do them?”
Let’s dive into each of these individually:
“I get lightheadedness/dizziness during the shorter workouts and feel like I need more cardio/stamina.”
This is actually a sign that you are challenging yourself at a necessary level to elicit results. High-intensity exercise is inherently at a level of effort that is unsustainable and physically, it doesn’t feel great when you’re pushing at these unsustainable levels. The game is to try and find the highest intensity that your technique and your body can handle. When you’re there, being extremely out of breath and maybe a little dizzy is just what that level of effort feels like. As you get fitter, you will just do more reps with heavier weights, but will always bump up against that feeling…if you are challenging yourself enough.
On the flip side, if you were to do a 10 minute workout and not experience anything like this, that would not indicate you are fit, but instead it would indicate that you did not try very hard.
Over time, you will be able to embrace the feelings and emotions that come with challenges. Additionally, as you gain experience, you’ll learn what effort levels you can sustain for different durations and exercises allowing you to push against that redline without tipping too far into the darkness;)
Embrace the challenge, that is the only path to growth.
“I need to improve my body composition, so I have more self confidence.”
Confidence, whether that is coming in the form of body image, social situations, and even sports, actually has almost zero to do with what you look like or what clothes you wear. Real, solid, unshakable confidence comes from understanding that you, simply being yourself, is good enough, and comes from building experiences that prove it to yourself over and over again.
Some of the best looking people I know are the most self conscious ones. Professional bodybuilders are renowned for having, by far, the most mental struggles with body image of any athlete…and they have the best bodies on the planet. It seems to me that the more one tries to derive value as a human from looks, the more it actually produces self confidence issues.
Let’s say you are trying to build confidence for a speech. A poor or tremendously good speech will not say anything inherent about you, but instead would only reflect on your practice and preparation, willingness to embrace the challenge and the inevitable nerves, and accepting that you and your preparation is good enough. What you look like may superficially impact the first 5 seconds with the audience, but will ultimately have almost zero do with the actual outcome.
Body composition is simply a side effect of healthy habits, but self confidence is not a side effect of body composition. Self confidence is understanding that you have more than enough value just being you. Someone who judges me, good or bad, based on my body is someone I am not very interested in spending my time with.
“I need to work on my core strength”
This is an extremely common response from the survey, but also something we hear from the adult classes as well. Usually, when I dig into this individually with people, we come to find that it is not actually core strength they feel they are lacking. If it was, it would show up in the inability to perform certain exercises. What people really seem to mean is that they are unhappy with the level of belly fat they have or what their abs look like.
Before jumping into this one, if you haven’t read the FAQ above - “I need to improve my body composition, so I have more self confidence” - then please read that first.
You cannot target body fat from certain areas of your body. Doing ab work does not target belly fat. Quite unfortunately actually, if you grow your abs under your belly fat, you’ll actually just push your belly fat out further. The way our abs may look is simply a side effect of healthy habits and so I highly recommend, just like everything else involving body composition, just make the game focusing on healthy habits.
Luckily the habits that target body fat are the same habits that target athletic performance, joint, and tissue health, and overall health and wellness, so you can get abs as a side effect along with improving so many aspects of health and wellness. Here are the 4 major categories of a healthy lifestyle:
Exercise 3-5 days a week, but be active 7 days a week.
Sleep 8+ hours a night. Personally, I dim lights with sunset, wear blue light blocking glasses, and stop thinking deeply about my life at 9 PM. All of these combine to help me fall asleep around a time that allows me to get 8+ hours. People are different, I typically sleep around 8 hours and my wife typically sleeps around 9 hours a night.
Get 10,000 or more steps a day, go for 5-10 minute walks after meals, and do 10 minutes of mobility exercises every morning.
Prioritize Nutrition
“I’d like to eat better, but don’t really know how to do that.”
Here’s what I do:
I eat real food and avoid processed foods.
I shoot for 0.7g - 1g of protein per pound of body weight each day. I spread this out across my 3 meals each day and just have a general idea of how much of certain types of food this is, but don’t weigh or measure anything. It’s about a palm-size portion of meat/fish/eggs. If you are vegetarian, your daily protein should be even higher because of differences between animal and plant proteins.
I consume all my calories within a consistent, 8-10 hour eating window each day.
I avoid all added sugars and sugar substitutes.
I do not drink alcohol - it is literally toxic to us (Read More...)
I have gluten and dairy allergies, so I extremely limit exposure to these foods.
If you’d like to dig deeper into how I think of these things, you can check out this YouTube playlist of mine here: http://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvTDIqhrFpsIPQoywZQpZAGtc3SUjpWEz&si=XaCAc_4MpYQ3SENw
“How do you stop procrastinating, stay motivated, and get yourself to do things when you don’t want to do them?”
I combine a few strategies and ways of thinking. I think of myself as two different people, 1) In-the-moment Kyle who is usually just looking for comfort and short-term pleasures and 2) Strong/Fed/Rested/Motivated Kyle. In-the-moment Kyle has had his decision making privileges revoked because he was always tending towards short-term comfort instead of doing the things that would push my life in the direction I want it to go. Now, Strong Kyle runs the show and in-the-moment Kyle simply follows through on the plans.
I’ve also learned that the brain follows the body. If I waited for in-the-moment Kyle to be in the mood, we’d rarely get anything productive done. One example I like to give has to do with my disdain for doing my dishes. I don’t know why, but having to do the dishes makes me feel like it is going to ruin my life. But, after deciding that I didn’t want to live surrounded by dirty dishes, Strong Kyle decided that immediately after meals, I want myself to do my dishes…so that’s become my rule. In-the-moment Kyle hates this rule, but he’s got no authority and his job is to simply get as good as possible on following through on the plans, no matter how much dred he’s feeling. What I’ve learned is that once I get started on a task, usually pretty quickly, my brain comes along and the task does not feel nearly as bad as I imagined it would feel. Continuing the task is easy, it’s only starting it that’s difficult. Afterwards, I can change the rule for next time, but I never get to change the rule in the moment.
My life is guided by making plans and following through on them. I can always update and upgrade my plans in the future, but not in the moment. When I’m motivated I make plans. When I’m unmotivated, I lean on the plans I’ve already made. Over the years, I have gotten much better at using all of my willpower to just get started. I just show up to the gym and start. I just show up to the sink and start doing my dishes. To write this, I just show up to my computer and start…all regardless of how I feel.
To sum up a general mindset that has helped me grow -
Tests, whether that be in school, in sports, or in life, will give you insights into your preparation strategies, your efforts, and your mindset, but do not say anything about you that you cannot choose to change in the future. Failures do not say anything inherent about you or your value, they simply reflect on how your experiences lead up to that moment. There is so much to gain in failure that the chance of failure should be embraced, not avoided.
There is almost nothing inherent about you that cannot be tremendously improved with quality effort and strategies. If you feel like you are “bad” at something, my bet is that it is simply something that you have not put a ton of quality effort into improving. If you want to improve it, you can. It will be hard, but you are more resilient than you know. Challenge is to be embraced as it is not only inevitable in your life, but required for growth.
Create plans and get really good at showing up and following through. Everything is an opportunity to learn and improve. Life is more fun when you’re improving things.