Monica Puig is training in her workout gear. In a new social media post shared by Le Cosh Endurance, the 2016 Olympic Gold Medalist and triathlete hits the track, looking super fit in her two-piece workout gear. “The race for excellence has no finish line,” the Instagram post is captioned. How does she approach diet, fitness, and self-care? Here is everything you need to know about her lifestyle habits.
“One way that I battle my inner demons is quieting the negative thoughts in my mind and shifting a negative thought to positive,” Monica told Olympics. “A lot of the times when I’m running a marathon, I say, ‘I don’t want to be here. Why am I doing this?’ And I tend to shift that focus to ‘I get to be here and I get to do this’. A lot of people would love to be in my position and I’m actually doing this right now. So I tend to push that thought out of the way and reshape my thinking so that it’s more positive.”
Monica is a big fan of supplements. “I stay energetic before, during and after the U.S. Open, number one by making sure I take all of my USANA supplements. They really help me recover my body as best as I can,” she told Clean Plates.
Monica also understands the importance of getting enough fluids. “Also, making sure that I’m very well hydrated, drinking lots of water or any kind of sports drink and after really hard sessions, I make sure I have protein shakes, get a good night’s rest to make sure my body is 100 percent,” she says.
Prior to running, Monica was a tennis star. However an injury led her to become a marathon runner instead. According to ACE Fitness it blends together cardio and aerobic exercise, as there is a lot of running around, and hand-eye coordination. “While tennis provides numerous health benefits—improved aerobic fitness and anaerobic endurance, muscular fitness (grip strength and endurance), flexibility, multiple skill parameters (balance, speed, agility and quickness), reactivity, and power—it also is psychologically demanding,” they say.
Monica explains that after giving up tennis she was depressed, until she found a new passion in running. “Every time I cross the finish line of a marathon and I get a new personal best time, I get emotional, I’ve cried,” she told CNN Sport. “I’ve just felt in awe of what I’ve been doing because I could easily just be sitting on the couch crying and feeling sorry for myself. But I tried to channel all of that energy that I have towards whatever I had been feeling about my career into something more productive,” she added. “It’s more about showing myself that I didn’t let myself fall into this big black hole of depression and sadness when I had to finish my career so early. I was able to pick myself back up and find something else that motivates me to get out of bed every day, that motivates me to continue to be strong, fit, and have fun at the same time.”