What's On My Mind - August 2026
What’s On My Mind
What’s On My Mind
The Injury Action Plan
This Month’s Health Challenge
Eat The Rainbow
What’s On My Mind
The Injury Action Plan - by Kyle Ligon
Whether you’re working out 4+ days a week or just sitting around, experiencing pain is inevitable; everyone experiences tweaks and nagging pains at some point. Most issues can be resolved in days, but common misconceptions often turn temporary issues into long-term limitations. To supercharge your recovery, definitely talk to your coaches and follow this action plan:
Don’t Ice: Swelling is a natural biological process that supplies vital healing resources. Icing blunts this response and can cause further tissue damage. Use compression, heat, and muscle contractions to manage swelling and improve blood flow.
Don’t Just Lay Around: Being sedentary makes recovery harder. Movement increases blood and lymph flow, bringing nutrients to the area and clearing waste. Be smart, walk, and continue exercising, substituting out painful exercises.
Don’t Seek Comfort in Junk Food: Inflammatory foods, alcohol, and poor sleep dramatically slow down your recovery. Give your body the high-quality foundation it needs to heal.
10min of Mobility Every Day: You have to be sick of hearing me talk about this by now, but this is the most common small little habit that gets ignored that will change people’s lives in a profound way. If you are already doing this, make sure 2-4 minutes of your effort goes into areas specifically tied to your painful issue.
Movement Tests and Identifying the Root Cause(s): Surprising to most, the painful area isn’t always where the issue is. If you’re dealing with a painful foot or plantar fasciitis, often times the root of the problem is upstream in the hamstrings, glutes, or even the traps. Movement tests you can do on your own or an in-person or remote movement and mobility session with me, can help get you hone in on where to put your effort.
If you are going to consult a doctor, consult the right type of doctor: Skip the general practitioner (who might just prescribe pain meds) and the immediate jump to a surgeon. Instead, seek a highly recommended Physical Therapist who can actively resolve the root issue and refer you out if necessary.
Don’t Use Supportive Gear: Stop masking the problem with weight belts or braces. With the exception of compression gear to aid blood flow, supportive gear restricts natural movement and hides the root cause. If supportive gear is used, it should be an extremely temporary aide.
Note: if you play a dynamic sport, supportive gear (temporarily) can provide added buffer from re-injury, but we want to balance the temporary support we get with the gears' side effect of inhibiting rehab.
How to Modify Your Workouts During Recovery
We never want you to push through pain, but you shouldn’t stop exercising, either. Continuing to move maintains your habits, sustains your progress, and drastically shortens your recovery time.
Use the strategies below as temporary bridges back to full intensity, always adhering to the 2/10 Pain Rule which means that feeling a very small amount of discomfort is normal, but we do not push through the pain.
Reduce Risk: Remove the most dynamic exercises (like box jumps, cleans, or jerks) where you cannot safely bail out mid movement. Simplify your exercises until you are confident you can handle them.
Modify the Range of Motion: Swap in "sister exercises" to limit stress on the affected joints.
For example:
Knee or Ankle Pain: Swap full squats for box squats (the higher the box, the less joint flexion).
Knee Pain: Swap lunges for low box step-ups
Shoulder or Elbow Pain: Swap bench presses for floor presses.
Back Pain: Reduce the weights (sometimes you can increase the reps) and limit how much your torso hinges forward.
Improve Your Technique: Technique issues and deviations from optimal functional movement patterns are typically found at the root of pain and tight areas. Improving your technique is not only the pathway to recovery and future resilience, but to coming back beyond 100%.
The Progression Pathway: Reintroduce trouble exercises systematically. Start slow with perfect technique. Progress to moving faster. Then progress to heavier weights. Only when those are mastered should you progress to fast, heavy, and fatigued workouts.
When you're feeling some pain, don't just wait around and hope for it to heal. You gotta be procactive!
THE EBOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE
I have been running clients through my MOMENTUM transformation program for 8 years with tremendous success. But, with the amount of 1-on-1 attention I provide in the program, it creates a cost that has been prohibitive for some. I have finally consolidated the MOMENTUM program into one, easy to navigate EBOOK, so that more people can finally access the information that has changed my life and so many others.
When you finally “Get It”, the results you’ve been after are inevitable.
This Month’s Health Challenge
Eat The Rainbow - by Kelly Dodds
When you hear "eat the rainbow," you probably think of eating colorful fruits and vegetables.
But why?
Different colored plants contain different vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fibers. Those nutrients don't just feed you, they also feed the trillions of beneficial microbes living in your gut. The more variety of plants you eat, the more diverse your gut microbiome becomes. A diverse microbiome has been linked to better immune function and overall health & well-being. So we should try to eat a wide variety of plant foods.
What Counts as a Plant?
Plant foods include:
Fruits
Vegetables
Beans and lentils
Whole grains
Nuts and seeds
Herbs and spices
Even garlic, onions, basil, cinnamon, and black pepper contribute to your weekly variety. Frozen, canned (low sodium), and dried plant foods all count, and are often more convenient.
Each plant offers a unique combination of nutrients and beneficial compounds. For instance, blueberries provide different antioxidants than carrots, spinach offers different vitamins than broccoli, and beans provide fiber that bananas don't. There is no single "superfood" that does it all. Health comes from eating a wide range of foods consistently.
Research suggests that people who eat around 30 different types of plant foods each week tend to have a more diverse gut microbiome than those who eat little variety. While 30 isn't a magic number, it's a practical evidence-informed goal to ensure eating more diversely and improving health.
How do you count? Count each unique plant food once during the week, regardless of how much you eat. For example, if you eat spinach every day, it counts as 1 plant food. If you eat spinach, kale, broccoli, carrots, and blueberries, you've eaten 5 different plant foods. Serving size is another important variable, but this month we’re focusing on the number of different foods you eat in a week rather than the amount eaten.
An example of 30 different plant foods you might eat in a week:
Fruits
Apple
Banana
Blueberries
Strawberries
Orange
Avocado
Vegetables
Spinach
Lettuce
Broccoli
Carrots
Bell pepper
Tomato
Cucumber
Onion
Garlic
Beans & Legumes
Black beans
Chickpea hummus
Lentils
Edamame
Whole Grains
Steel cut oats
Brown rice
Quinoa
Nuts & Seeds
Almonds
Walnuts
Chia seeds
Sunflower seeds
Herbs & Spices
Cinnamon
Black pepper
Basil
Parsley
This Month's Challenge
Count how many different types of plants you are currently eating in a week
Compare the number you counted with the recommended 30 different types of plant varieties in a week
Add more variety as needed. For instance, if you are currently eating 16 different types of plants per week, try adding 5 new types of plant to your diet each week until your variety has widened to the recommended 30 per week
Want to make it easy? Work directly with a MovementLink Coach!
