The Missing Link in Fitness
Balancing the Feminine and Masculine in your Workout Regimen
The Physical: Focusing on Structural Balance
A workout, ideally, should balance the different structures in your body in order to mitigate injuries/muscular imbalances: the front of your body with the back and with your sides, and the upper body with the lower body.
Take a look at your current workout strategy: does it work on different muscle groups, or are you constantly stressing the same muscles, in the same planes of motion?
Similarly, while there are many theories about the "best" strategy for periodizing your training (or balancing harder/easier workouts), most agree that having some balance is key for both performance and longevity.
Are all your workouts high intensity, or do you find balance through less intense training regimens, off days, and "light" weeks?
II. The Energetic: Focusing on Energetic Balance in your Training
What would happen, if, in addition to balancing ourselves from a physical standpoint, we also brought in some ideas from energetic disciplines?
It's common in other cultures and in "alternative" medicine fields to talk about the benefits of balancing feminine and masculine energy (or, Yin and Yang). The names used to describe this idea may differ depending on the field/culture, but the concept is the same.
Our masculine energy is more linear. It represents "doing." Meanwhile, our feminine energy relates to receiving and being "in the flow."
III. Incorporating the concept of Feminine/Masculine Energy into your Workout Regimen
So, what if we were to take this [more feminine, energetically speaking] approach to wellness and incorporated it with the the [more masculine, energetically speaking] concepts in sports science?
What if we not only balanced hard & light days, but also made our light days more focused on creativity and being in the flow with our movements?
What if our workout sessions allowed for more freedom and flow of movements in our "cooldowns" rather than just methodically moving through specified reps of stretches?
Could this be the missing link in your training?
Written by: Kimberly Boulos, Prenatal & Postpartum Performance Trainer and Birth Doula at Femme Natale PDX.