The Physician Vitality Collective by COVAL Fitness

The Physician Vitality Collective by COVAL Fitness I help physicians and surgeons build strength, improve their health, and perform at a high level—despite call, travel, and demanding schedules.

Author of The Physician Vitality Playbook
Founder of The Physician Vitality Collective

09/26/2026

If your back doesn't feel right after six or eight hours in the OR, the workout doesn't automatically need to be cancelled. It may just need to be adjusted.

Hours over the table can leave you stiff and less ready to train than you expected. That doesn't necessarily mean something is injured. It means the plan as written may not be the right dose for today.

You have three options: push through the original workout, skip it, or adjust it and still get something productive done. The third is usually the right call.

Start with your warm-up and see how your body responds. If an exercise keeps provoking symptoms or you can't control it, swap it, like a belt squat for a back squat or a chest-supported row for a bent-over row. Then cut the load, the sets, or how close you go to failure. If you start moving better and symptoms settle, carry on. If they build, end that exercise and go for a walk. That isn't quitting. It's an informed training decision.

This is general training guidance, not a diagnosis. New, severe or persistent symptoms should be evaluated by the right professional.

After a long OR day, what do you usually do: push through, skip it, or adjust?

09/24/2026

The hospital cafeteria gets blamed for a lot. It isn't the reason your nutrition falls apart.

Think about when you actually get there. Post-rounds. Between cases. 9 p.m. after an add-on case ran long. You're tired, you're hungry, and you've spent the whole day making decisions. That is not the moment to start a nutrition debate with yourself, so your default takes over: whatever sounds good and is right there.

The fix is to stop deciding in the cafeteria. Decide once this week and run a default plate on autopilot.

First, a protein anchor. Put a lean protein on the tray before anything else, like grilled chicken, the omelette station, or a couple of Greek yogurts. Second, add produce, fruit salad or whatever vegetables look fresh. You're not chasing a superfood, just adding volume and nutrients. Third, a carbohydrate to fuel the rest of the day and recover from training, like sweet potatoes or rice. If you already took fruit, that covers it.

This is not a diet. It's one decision made once, so the mentally drained version of you doesn't have to be the disciplined one.

When does your eating usually go sideways: post-rounds, between cases, after a late add-on, or on the drive home?

Most training plans fail physicians for a boring reason. They are written for the one version of the week where nothing ...
09/24/2026

Most training plans fail physicians for a boring reason. They are written for the one version of the week where nothing goes wrong.

Then a case runs late, call lands, travel happens, and the plan treats a normal week of medicine like an emergency.

The approach I use with physician clients is one plan with three settings. The full week when time and sleep are there. A compressed version, two lifts on a 15 minute timer, when the day held but the window shrank. A minimum version when sleep has been short for a few nights. And a recovery day with a step goal when sleep is gone and the last case ran long, so the week bends without ending.

The deciding happens on the way in, not mid-week when decision fatigue is at its peak.

Which one breaks your training week most often: call, late cases, travel, or family logistics?

09/23/2026

If you're a surgeon, you will miss workouts on occasion. That part isn't the problem.

Call week lands. A patient isn't doing well and you stay late. Your kid spikes a fever overnight. None of that is failure. It's the job you signed up for.

The damage happens after the miss. You skip Tuesday, so you write off Thursday, so you plan a fresh start for Monday. Then clinic absorbs Monday, and one missed session has quietly eaten two weeks.

Here's the three-step return I give the surgeons I coach. First, book the next realistic window, not the ideal one. If all you have is a few minutes between cases, two minutes of bodyweight squats counts. Second, cut the dose. One upper and one lower lift, alternating for 15 minutes. Half a session done beats a full session skipped. Third, resume instead of repaying. Doubling Thursday to cover Tuesday stacks volume on a tired body and digs the hole deeper.

You don't need a fresh Monday. You need the next opportunity.

What usually starts the slide for you: a call week, a patient who keeps you late, a sick kid, or clinic running over?

09/22/2026

If you made it through med school, residency, boards and years of call, discipline is not the reason your workouts keep falling apart.

The usual fitness plan assumes you control your week. Surgeons don't. The last case runs two hours over. A post-call day runs on three hours of sleep. Friday belongs to your kid's basketball game. The plan was written for a week you never actually had.

When it breaks, you don't blame the plan. You blame yourself. Training shuts down for weeks, a fresh start gets planned, and it all gets filed as a discipline problem. That cycle, not the missed session, is what costs people years.

The approach I use with surgeons is one week with three versions. The full session, 45 to 60 minutes, for days the schedule holds. A compressed session for post-call days: your first two lifts, hard sets only, 15 minutes. And a 15-minute bodyweight circuit you can do anywhere, for the weeks medicine takes over. That third one is the version people skip, and it's the one that saves those weeks.

Which one breaks your training week more often: late cases, post-call days, family commitments, or travel?

09/22/2026

On certain exercises, a client of mine could not feel the muscle he was supposed to be working. The one thing he could feel was his right knee.

He also takes teeth out for a living, which puts a lot of force through his right wrist, and heavier curls were bothering it. If you operate, do procedures, or grip instruments all day, that part probably sounds familiar.

The usual responses are to push through the pain or go lighter. Pushing through is not the point. Going lighter might feel better, but it will not create enough overload to build strength and muscle.

So we spent a few minutes on mechanics. A slight turn of his right hip and heavy pressure through the inside of his right heel moved the load toward his hip. His words: "So that's better. I don't feel knee pain." On the curl, his wrist was flexing about 60 degrees into the rep, with the dumbbell rolling toward his fingertips. Sitting across the palm, the dumbbell makes a neutral wrist easier to hold.

Small mechanical differences like these can decide whether you are loading a joint or the muscle you meant to train.

One client's experience. Individual results vary.

What have you been quietly working around in your training: a wrist, a knee, your lower back, or your neck?

09/21/2026

Six months ago a physician client started with one complaint: everything felt hard, even the simple things.

Six months later he is down about 15 pounds, the hip that had him consulting an orthopedic surgeon is quiet, and his nutrition runs on autopilot. Same grocery order every week. 80 to 100 ounces of water a day.

Then the second problem showed up, and it is the one driven people miss. His energy went into the gutter. His watch flagged recovery day after day. His wife noticed before he did. Burnout was getting more real, and his own read on it was that he must be weak willed.

The answer was not more discipline. We shortened his strength sessions to about 30 focused minutes and started moving his intake up toward 2,000 calories. If the scale holds while his energy climbs, the system won.

His line at the end of the call: "The more I do this, the more I realize there's a physiological basis to this. It's not an infinite reserve."

One client's experience. Individual results vary.

Which one shows up first for you when the schedule gets heavy: the energy dip, the recovery warnings, or the urge to push through anyway?

It was an absolute honor to present “Health Optimization Built for the Demands of a Loaded OR Schedule” at the Clinical ...
08/31/2026

It was an absolute honor to present “Health Optimization Built for the Demands of a Loaded OR Schedule” at the Clinical Orthopaedic Society annual conference last week

Met a lot of great people and it was exciting and fun to be in an environment with so many high quality surgeons who are striving to provide the best for the patients

Big time thank you to president Marlene DeMaio for inviting me out to present and putting on such a solid event 💪

Reminder to those who attended - if you want a free copy of my book - “Physician Vitality Blueprint” - then the code I shared is good until Friday!

08/15/2026

For you who are already in pretty decent shape and are looking to take things to the next level, this is what a custom program that integrates with a surgeons schedule can do for you

My client had this kind of success despite being on call every other night

#𝗽𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲

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