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As a person with a chronic illness, my nightstand is neatly lined with bottles of medication, medical tape, and topical pain relief. Notably missing is a fluorescent green pickle-flavored multivitamin. “I feel like you have to try it at least once,” says pro-soccer player and self-proclaimed pickle-lover, Alex Morgan. “As an athlete, I crave salty food sometimes, and pickles just — they kind of check all the boxes.” Morgan, a Nature Made partner, swears by the brand’s pickle-flavored multi-vitamin gummies for any fellow pickle fanatics looking to prioritize their health.
Aside from daily vitamins, Morgan’s current wellness routine has a lot to do with recovery, which means she gives herself plenty of time to rest and occasional permission to indulge. “It’s a balance, in a way, of making sure I’m doing the right things to recover — but also not forgetting about enjoying the little things.” Since becoming a mom, this balance might mean taking her 3-year-old daughter out for ice cream, or going for a bike ride even at the end of a long day. She also tracks her sleep, eats a high-carb, high-protein vegetarian diet, uses cryotherapy and infrared saunas, and is starting to get back into meditation, especially on game days.
“I think anyone can relate if they have a big meeting or a PowerPoint or anything that’s really important. I feel like you just start to get anxious and you start to go over it in your head, over and over and over again. So for me, even meditating [for] five minutes, like breathwork or guided meditation, that’s great.”
As a huge supporter of women’s sports (she recently repped Caitlin Clark’s Iowa jersey and voiced her support for the women of the NCAA Final Four), Morgan spotted a couple sideline meditations during March Madness. Still, she prefers to do her own meditation before she hits the playing field — either on the bus, on the way to the game, or in her room.
“A lot of people think of meditation as like, ‘Oh, 30 minutes, you have to sit still,’ and this or that, no — it can be a few minutes of just breathwork. It can be box breath: in [for] four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Things like that can really just help slow your heart rate, [and help you] think about one or two things, not a million things at once.”
Having been at the top of her game for over 13 years, Morgan’s wellness routine — from pickle vitamins to meditation — is part of what enables her to actively participate in yet another groundbreaking year for women’s sports, and she doesn’t anticipate the momentum stopping anytime soon. “It’s definitely an exciting time to be involved in women’s sports, and for me to be so close to it…I’m just soaking it all in.”
Chandler Plante is an assistant editor for POPSUGAR Health & Fitness. Previously, she worked as an editorial assistant for People magazine and contributed to Ladygunn, Millie, and Bustle Digital Group. In her free time, she overshares on the internet, creating content about chronic illness, beauty, and disability.