Summary
In this episode, Vanessa Leone introduces the concept of ‘slowgress,’ emphasizing the importance of understanding that health and fitness progress is not linear. She discusses how seasonal changes affect our wellness goals and shares her personal journey of recovery post-surgery. Vanessa encourages listeners to reflect on their own wellness journeys and to embrace a more gradual approach to achieving their goals, allowing for both progress and regress.
Vanessa Leone (00:01.368)
Hi! Welcome to Meant To Move. My name is Vanessa, I’m your host. This is a little trial that I’m starting off today, a little test. You can tell me if you like it, what you think. These are my musings, my thoughts, my ideas. And I can often have these ideas, you know, random times of the day, in the shower, when I’m driving. Sometimes when I’m with a client, and those of you who are my clients who will be listening, when I have had to run off to my phone and write down my note,
you will know that this happens. So I want to utilize a really short amount of time to go over something that I sometimes talk about with my clients or just a concept that I’m working on. And I’d love to hear your thoughts. Interested to see what you think about it. This first topic that I want to go through today is something that I am trying to conceptualize or call slowgress.
I want you to imagine the seasons of the year, and each season has a particular feel about it, and biologically and through history, humans have prepared for these seasons throughout the year in different ways. And we utilize different resources, we utilize different energy systems a little bit differently depending on the seasons. And we have this kind of transience.
But for some reason, when it comes to fitness goals, when it comes to health and wellness goals, we think in terms of linear progression. And unfortunately, linear progression does not happen in health and fitness and wellness, at least not in very many people that I’ve viewed. And there are portions of this time where you can have linear progression. You’re very dedicated, maybe you have a
goal that you’re working towards. Maybe you were in poor health and then you have decided to start to change something that has increased your health to see that linear progression. But expecting those types of progressions throughout the year, throughout the seasons of our life, I think is really damaging. It’s a really damaging concept because we’re setting ourselves up to fail automatically.
Vanessa Leone (02:25.35)
And what I like about this term slow gress is that it allows those kinds of seasons that bit of progress and maybe that little bit of regress to come into our wellness, our health and our fitness goals, because there really is no way that we can continue with progress. other caveat to this is that there can be different types of
progress as we’re within these health, fitness and wellness goals as well. I don’t necessarily think that we can achieve everything in health and fitness and wellness all in one go. There has to be a different aim or a different intensity to try to achieve certain things. In strength and conditioning and sports science, we talk about a concept called periodization.
And it’s this notion of knowing that no athlete can consistently perform at a high level for the entire year. You need to have ebbs and flows. You need to have a preparation phase. You need to have a competition phase and then you need to have a takeaway phase, a downgrade, a relaxation, a rest. And I think that as a general rule in fitness,
Just our, you know, weekend warriors, people who are coming to the gym, or people who want to engage, feel the pressure of this constant progress, this constant push. I always need to go, I always need to push a little bit harder. And I think that that’s detrimental in the long term, because our bodies can’t sustain that continual progress. We need to adapt to the seasons of our life. We need to…
adjust for different goals, for different health issues, for different stress factors that come into our life, and adjust our training and our wellness goals accordingly. I want to give a little personal example. I, you might have heard it in some of the pods if you’ve been listening, had endometriosis surgery at the back end of 2024. And so I would say that I’m nearly, yeah, it would be two months now.
Vanessa Leone (04:51.598)
post recovery. And I think something like that is quite common in women. But once that initial four or six weeks is done, many people don’t even talk about it. But the impact of surgery can last a really long time, even if it’s minor. If you’re having major surgery now, the impact can last a really, really long time. But I’ll just use this. So the small surgery that I had, four incisions,
It’ll take my scars roughly two years to become fully integrated into my body. There’s no way for me to rush that. However, there are things that I can do to help progress that scar tissue enhancement, that the ability of that scar tissue to integrate more seamlessly with the rest of my body tissues. And so that is part of my wellness goal. That’s part of my training.
But I’m going through a whole new adjustment period, learning to manage without hormonal contraception. I am learning a whole bunch of new things about my body that I haven’t really felt before. And so for me, this phase, the progress or the slow gress that I’m really working on is trying to find consistent consistency in how I’m feeling.
I know that some days I’m going to feel really good and some days I’m going to feel not so good, but I’m really trying to avoid activities and avoid pushing myself so much that I have days where I’m in complete exhaustion. And that has definitely been something that has plagued me for my entire life. I continue to push, push, push, push and push until I can’t really go anymore and I end up falling down in a heap and absolutely burnt out. And if that’s something that you struggle with as well,
I would love to introduce you to this concept of slow gress, where you choose one or two things that you’re really looking to enhance. You’re looking to change, maybe even just manipulate because you don’t know what the outcome will be and see if you can apply these seasons into your life. Now, as I continue further into recovery and learn more about my body and its natural cycle, then the seasons will change and adapt.
Vanessa Leone (07:15.988)
I know that I’ll be able to start to push a little bit higher in my intensity, in my cardiovascular training. I already can, but that’s not something that I’ve pushed too hard. I’ve just kind of waited to see if my body was ready or not. And I think that with all of these podcasts that are coming out, we want to teach you how to listen to your body. We want to teach you markers to look for, things to watch internally and externally that are really important.
that are going to make an impact when you can start to apply these seasons, this slow gress or this kind of periodization, whatever you want to call it, into your life. And so if you just want to take a moment and reflect about where you currently are at in the seasons of your life, what are you aiming for? What do you want to get out of this next season?
And what is your slow gress? What is something that you’re working on just chipping away nice and slowly in the background that doesn’t need rushing, that doesn’t need you to really drive for, but you know, you’ll feel good as it starts to grow, as you start that very, very, very slow achievement of it. Have a think about it. And I would love to hear what they are.
Vanessa Leone Movement Therapist 