The Ready State

💬 A lot of people drink to de-stress… but your body may experience alcohol as just another stressor.

I get it. When life ramps up, most of us reach for something that helps take the edge off. That’s a very human response, and for a lot of people it’s been the default for a long time.

But if you zoom out and look at it through a performance lens, alcohol adds load to a system that’s already working hard.

🧠 Your brain and body are constantly asking one question: Am I safe?

When stress is high (training, work, life) your system is already managing a lot of input.

Adding another stressor (like booze) into that mix can make it harder to recover, regulate, and show up the way you want.

🍹 I enjoy a good margarita as much as anyone… what I’m touting here is really about timing and awareness.

When the pressure is lower and you’ve got more bandwidth, your system tends to tolerate it better.

When demands are high, it’s worth thinking about what actually helps you come down and reset.

We’ve seen this play out over and over again with athletes.

When they reduce alcohol during high-demand phases, things tend to move in the right direction with energy, recovery, performance.

So I’m not here to rain on your parade… just something worth paying attention to. 😉

What does breathing have to do with nutrition and weight gain? More than you think.

Patrick McKeown explains how poor breathing can disrupt sleep, increase cravings for sugary foods, stimulate appetite, and create a cycle that impacts overall health and recovery.

🎧 Full episode is live now… comment “193” and I’ll send it over.

“Walking on glass” first thing in the morning? 😬

Yeah… that’s a pretty classic plantar fasciitis experience.

I’ll ask you to kindly ignore my team so we can actually chat about what you need to know… ⤵️

Overnight, that tissue cools down and stiffens. You’ve been in one position for hours, circulation is lower, and the system hasn’t had a chance to load or move.

So when you hop out of bed and immediately ask it to bear weight, it’s not exactly thrilled about it.

A couple things tend to help:

🔹 Give the tissue a heads-up before you load it. Move the foot and ankle a bit while you’re still in bed. Point, flex, roll it around, get some gentle input into the system.

🔹 Think about gradually loading instead of going from zero to full bodyweight in one step. Even just standing and shifting weight side to side for a moment can make a difference.

And zoom out for a second.

That morning pain is often a signal that the tissue isn’t tolerating the total load it’s seeing across the day.

That could be volume, footwear, stiffness upstream, or how much variability you have in your movement.

So yes, we want to make mornings feel better.

But we also want to build a foot and lower leg that can handle the job.

Scope out the Mobility Coach app for more ways to keep your feet (and everything upstream) moving the way they should — you can search by pain point/body part to hone in on the regions around the foot. .

Not a member yet? Comment TRIAL to get linked up with a FREE week and see what I mean.

Your knees should support all the cool stuff you want to do this summer.

Hike, squat, run around with your kids…

Chase adventure and jump into activities without needing a five-minute negotiation with your joints beforehand.

Which is exactly why we built the new 10-Day Knee Pain Challenge inside Mobility Coach.

Over 10 days, I’ll walk you through simple daily sessions designed to help you:
🔹 improve knee range of motion
🔹 build capacity and control around the joint
🔹 restore better mechanics
🔹 address some of the upstream/downstream issues that often contribute to cranky knees in the first place.

Here’s the thing: knees are rarely just “a knee problem.”

So we’re going to look at ankles, hips, tissue quality, loading tolerance, and how your whole system is actually moving. 🙌

Sessions are intentionally on the shorter side, but that means I’m asking you to commit to consistency.

The goal here isn’t to annihilate yourself with volume, but to give your knees consistent inputs that help them tolerate life and movement better.

If your knees have been feeling stiff, irritated, crunchy, sketchy going downstairs, or generally older than the rest of you… this is for you.

And given my recent injuries from the winter… this one feels extra personal to me, too.

Comment TRIAL and I’ll get you set up with a free week of Mobility Coach so you can jump into the challenge. 👇

If you’re already a member, you can sign up for the full challenge through: https://thereadystate.com/10-day-knee-pain-challenge/

One of the things Juliet and I ended up talking about on the last episode of RECESS was self-talk.

Last month Rachel Entrekin became the first woman to win the Cocodona 250 outright and crushed the course record, which is an absolutely wild accomplishment.

What caught my attention was hearing her talk about what was happening in her head when she found herself leading the race at mile 50.

Instead of thinking, “I’ve got this,” she was dealing with a lot of imposter syndrome.

“What are you doing?”
“You’re going to blow up.”
“You’re going too hard.”

And I think that’s a really common experience. I’ve seen it in sports over and over again. People work incredibly hard to put themselves in a position to succeed, and then the moment arrives and their brain starts trying to talk them out of it.

Rachel’s response was simple: “Why not you?”

That’s a powerful reframe.

Juliet is one of the fiercest competitors I’ve ever met. The bigger the moment, the more she seems to come alive. So I asked her what she tells herself before a race.

Her answer:
“I’m going to win this race. I’m prepared. I’ve done what I need to do to win, and I’m going to win.”

Not because the outcome is guaranteed, but because self-talk is real. The conversation happening in your head matters. And whether you’re racing, competing, giving a presentation, or doing something that scares you, it probably makes sense to be intentional about what you’re saying to yourself.

In the last episode of RECESS we talked Social Connection, School Recess, Rachel Entrekin’s mindset during Cocodona 250… and why Prom Maxxing gives us the ick.

Comment RECESS and we’ll send the link right over.

...And don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss the next episode of RECESS, coming THIS THURSDAY!

Patrick McKeown reveals why dysfunctional breathing patterns are incredibly common in people with anxiety and panic disorders – and how chronic stress can reshape the way you breathe without you realizing it.
From shallow chest breathing to open-mouth breathing and altered breathing rhythms, this clip explores how your nervous system and breathing patterns feed into each other.

🎧 Full episode is live now… comment “193” and I’ll send it over.

Are your tissues so stiff and tacked down they resemble the layers of a panini that has been pressed by a vice and left out for days to harden? 😬

Then we gotta talk..

One of the ways I think about healthy movement is that your tissues should behave like warm silk sliding over steel springs.

That means layers can move on top of each other. ➡️ Skin glides. Muscle and tendon articulate. Nerves have space to pass through without getting irritated.

When that system gets sticky, everything feels harder than it should.

Your range narrows and positions can feel restricted. You lose some of that effortless transfer of force that makes movement feel smooth and connected.

A lot of that comes from how we train.

Your body reinforces itself first. It lays down collagen and builds the scaffolding before anything else. That’s part of getting stronger, but it can also leave you feeling dense and bound up if you never restore how those layers move.

🎯 This is where some targeted work earns its place.

Getting into positions, spending time there, adding a little pressure or load so the system reorganizes and starts to move more freely again.

The goal is simple: You want things to slide (not unlike that Goo-Goo Dolls’ hit 🎶 they were onto something…).

Want to un-panini yourself? 💪 Comment TRIAL and start your free week of Mobility Coach — you’ll find a robust library of daily maintenance mobilizations to keep you slidin’ & glidin’ the way you’re designed to.

If you train, play, or just use your body with any intensity… you’re going to get dinged up. 💥

That part isn’t the problem… what matters is what you do next. ⤵️

One of the biggest misses I see is how casually people handle swelling after a tweak or minor injury.

They’ll dial in their training, track recovery, think about nutrition… and then a joint blows up and there’s no real plan.

Swelling changes the environment of the tissue.

It limits how muscles can function, affects how sensitive that area feels, and makes it harder for the system to start repairing and organizing itself.

If you can get ahead of it, you give yourself a much better shot at moving well sooner and getting back to what you want to do.

That means being proactive.

Compression. Movement. Anything that helps keep fluid from hanging out where it shouldn’t.

It may feel like a lot in the moment, but this is one of those places where early attention pays off.

If you’re going to be active, you should have a plan for this.

Follow me for more ways to stay durable and keep your system moving forward. 💪