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52: What Stopped You from Lifting - 7 Guests Share their Stories
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Welcome to Season 3, Episode 52 of the Movement Logic podcast. In this episode, Laurel and Sarah are joined by seven other guests for a panoramic, multi-perspective answer to the question “why don't more women lift weights?” Our seven guests (all of whom are movement professionals) weigh in on their previous objections to strength training. Of course they also share their impetus for starting to lift, and how it changed their lives.
Sign up here for the Live Strength Training Webinar on Sept 14th with 30 day replay.
Sign up here for our Free Barbell Mini-Course + our Free Barbell Equipment Guide
Our guests on Instagram:
Maryann Thompson @maryannthomsonpilates
Diana Romero @insprana.yoga
Naomi Gottlieb-Miller @conscioushealthymama
Lisa Schwarcz Zlotnick @lisazlotnick
Kathy Dodd @kdnaturalyoga
Trina Altman @trinaaltman
Alex Ellis on Instagram @hollaformala on Tik Tok @aewellness
Episode 47: Our Oopsie Stories from the Teaching Trenches
Sarah’s barbell equipment Post 1 and Post 2 on Instagram
Books about fitness culture:
Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Movement Logic Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up to date and cutting edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to the MovementLogic podcast. I'm Laurel and I'm here with Sarah. No further information needed. We batch recorded a bunch of episodes in LA, but now we're interrupting that batch of episodes and recording this one in our respective homes in Los Angeles.
00:00:56
Speaker
and Huntsville, Alabama. It is early August, August 8th to be exact. This won't air until the end of August.
Exploring Experiences with Lifting Heavy Weights
00:01:03
Speaker
We have a very, very special episode for you today. We are going to be joined via voice memo recordings by seven other guests who are sharing how they got started lifting heavy and or what kept them back from lifting heavy, what their objections
00:01:24
Speaker
were or are, and they're going to be sharing this via voice memos that they recorded for us. But first, before we get into that, we've got a new review in Apple Podcasts and we watched. Thank you. Be moved. I am so moved. It's a lovely, it's a lovely review. It's so great. So this is a very recent review. It's our most recent review. Five stars. The title of it is learning and laughing.
00:01:54
Speaker
Any podcast that can simultaneously entertain me and educate me is always going to be at the top of my playlist. The Movement Logic podcast is always in my rotation for these reasons. Laurel and Sarah are a wealth of knowledge in their respective fields.
00:02:09
Speaker
They are excellent communicators. They have a knack for distilling complex concepts down to easy to digest bytes. They are objective, authentic, creative, and sometimes more than a little spicy. There is never an episode where I'm not laughing out loud at least once, but it's usually more than once. If you haven't listened to their oopsie stories, press play ASAP. I will link that episode in the show notes, folks. Thank you both for all your hard work.
00:02:37
Speaker
and dedication to science-based tools for movement enthusiasts. I appreciate you and I look forward to learning and laughing with you in the future. We look forward to that as well. Thank you.
00:02:50
Speaker
Thank you.
Impact of Positive Feedback on Podcast Creation
00:02:51
Speaker
That is nothing short of a rave review. We really appreciate it. Yes. We get really, really super uninhibitedly excited. We really do. I'll go on podcast and be like, oh, there's a new one. And I'll text Sarah and she'll be like, oh, it's so great. It means a lot to us. It really does. We pour our hearts and souls into, I don't know about our souls. Do we pour our souls into these episodes? I mean, kind of.
00:03:18
Speaker
work, and it's something you and I both care about enormously. So I think there is a component of heart and soul into it. I mean, we live and breathe this, right? We live in our respective jobs. Like it's bodies, bodies, bodies all day long. Isn't that a song? Body, yada, yada. Anyway, it is. But the world told me not to faff about too much in this episode, so I'm trying to rein it in. But it's very hard for me, as you can tell. What I really like about that review, I just want to say, is that I feel like
00:03:45
Speaker
This person just nailed us, but in a good way. Totally, I feel seen. They get us, and it feels good to be gotten. Thank you. Be moved. Back to this very different kind of episode that we have for you today. Sarah, we're going to be hearing from seven people. They recorded voice memos for us. How do we find these people? Some of these people we already knew. We found them by being like, hey, friend.
00:04:10
Speaker
Do us a favor. And then I also put up a post on Instagram where I think it was in the stories where I was like, Hey, do you remember why or what stopped you from lifting or what felt like a barrier or to entry or any of those things? And a few people responded. And then I was like, can you record a voice memo for us for an upcoming episode? So some of them are our colleagues from the internet and some of them are our colleagues from real life. Those were my categories. Did you
00:04:38
Speaker
grab anybody from a different category? Yeah, I reached out to members of my virtual studio who train with me live and or private clients who train with me. That is how I found my people and I knew that they lifted heavy weights because I've witnessed them working toward that and achieving that. And so I wanted to check in with them to see what were their objections.
00:05:01
Speaker
to doing that, to embarking on that, and or also a lot of people shared why they started doing it. Not everyone talked about their objections as much as like what motivated them. So yeah, and I want to give full credit to Trina Altman, who is one of our our peeps who recorded a memo, a voice memo for us. She gave me this idea. Trina and I are good friends. We text message each other from time to time. And sometimes it's about
00:05:27
Speaker
topics that are movement or teaching related. She's been a guest on this podcast twice.
Inspirations for Discussing Women and Weightlifting
00:05:31
Speaker
And we got into this long text thread about women's objections to lifting heavy weights. And at one point she said, I have an idea for a podcast you should do. You should interview various women who lift heavy and ask them what
00:05:46
Speaker
held you back initially from getting started with lifting heavy. And I was like, yet again, I am reminded that you are a genius, Trina. She is a genius. She is a genius. And more than a genius, she's a generous genius because she'll just
00:06:01
Speaker
give you that idea. She sent us this paper and I'm like, oh, well, there's a podcast episode right there around this paper that Trina sent me. So if you're wondering how much involvement Trina Altman has in our podcast, it's more than pretty much anybody else I would say at this point. Yeah. Well, she's a collaborator with MovementLogic and has created two tutorials with us. The three of us go way back. And so she started MovementLogic with us. She came up with a name. She did.
00:06:30
Speaker
She's a big brain behind this operation. Sarah, what are some of the enduring themes that came through in these recordings? Like what do you remember standing out to you? Definitely more than a few people had the sort of like
00:06:44
Speaker
barbells are not for me because that's a man's arena or that's a bro space. It was interesting because some of the quality of those objections sometimes was the intimidation factor. It seems scary to go into that space. I don't know what I'm doing in that space.
00:07:05
Speaker
But for some of the women, and honestly, this was for me as well, it was just like, oh, I don't think I need to. There's been no, I don't have any understanding of the idea that I need to lift anything heavier than 10 or 20 pounds ever in my life. And that endures, that idea endures. I have a client that I had to have that conversation with recently. So that was one big theme, this idea of that space is not for me either because it's a scary space or because I just don't think I need to be there.
00:07:35
Speaker
One person expressed also reservations about getting too ripped and also losing their flexibility because of lifting heavy weights. There were a couple of people who really just were worried about whether or not they could or if they would get hurt. Right. That's a common fear for women, I think.
00:07:58
Speaker
And yes, there was this idea that do I really need to be doing this because I do yoga. And a couple of people mentioned because I do HIIT, which is high intensity interval training, some really just didn't find the gym to be a very welcoming place for various reasons. And so the idea is if I'm going to lift heavy weights like barbells, I need to go to the gym, which is usually where most people start because the gym already has that equipment.
00:08:29
Speaker
All right, so I think we can jump right into this special episode. Let's do it. We'll introduce the person ahead of time. I'm going to give you just a little bit of information about them, but we're going to link their Instagram profiles in the show notes. All right, so we're going to air the recording for you. Sarah and I are just going to talk about what stands out to us about what these women share about their experience. All right, so let's get started.
00:08:58
Speaker
We're going to start with Marianne Thompson. So Marianne Thompson has been with me in my virtual studio from the very beginning. She is a master Pilates teacher. She works out of Southern California. And I have witnessed her going from lifting what I would say were moderate weights. She never really struck me as being somebody like lifting the pink dumbbells, which is interesting when you hear what she has to share about that. But she has progressively acquired bigger weights, kettlebells.
00:09:27
Speaker
and is now lifting what I would say objectively is heavy for certain exercises. All right, let's listen to Marianne Thompson. Thanks Laurel and Sarah for asking this question. My name is Marianne Thompson. I'm 57 years old. I've been teaching Pilates for about 14 years. I have never thought about it before. My answer I think is pretty silly. I associate lifting heavy weights with bodybuilding.
00:09:56
Speaker
big, big muscles, tan, shiny skin that hold like masculine type of not very flexible vibe. And it's not very appealing to me. Another reason is I didn't think that I could do it.
00:10:12
Speaker
Like I'm not strong enough and why would I? What benefit would lifting heavy have for me? And I felt like I would probably drop a weight on my head and hurt myself. But I just really never asked any questions about it. I just figured that it just wasn't for me. The studios where I work offer dumbbells to use in our classes. And although we offer weights up to 10 pounds, women usually pick the two or three pound weights.
00:10:40
Speaker
I haven't asked them directly why this is, but I think it's mostly because just like me, they're afraid that they're going to hurt themselves.
00:10:50
Speaker
Before starting Laurel's live classes, the last time I lifted heavy weights on purpose was in my high school PE class. My friends and I had a contest of who could bench press the most. I think I lost and I made it to about 65 pounds. One of these days I'm going to find a bench and I'm going to do a bench press and let you know how much I can lift now.
00:11:16
Speaker
Okay, so Marianne brought up a couple of, I think, what are really common objections. Yeah.
00:11:25
Speaker
So the first one was the initial objection was that she associated lifting heavy with bodybuilding. This is super common. So what's the difference between lifting heavy and bodybuilding? Well, bodybuilding is an actual sport or it's a competitive way of, I mean, the name tells you all, right? You're building your body. It's about the aesthetic. It's about muscle hypertrophy. It's all the like,
00:11:52
Speaker
Arnold Schwarzenegger pumping iron posing in a little bikini like all of those things that we associate with it that's bodybuilding yeah and it's not really about weight lifting in my mind has a lot less to do with what you look like and has much more to do with the actual strength of your muscles and
00:12:13
Speaker
the quality of that strength that could be measured in different capacities, like an endurance strength or like a power strength, right? But somehow we conflate the two and we think they're the same thing. Right. I think one of the reasons we conflate the two is because bodybuilding and bodybuilding athletes are so photogenic, like the camera loves that. And so that's what the media represents. For many years, and I think it's changing, strength means having massive
00:12:41
Speaker
Muscles and to a certain extent yeah massive muscles mean strength right but Heavy strength training like you kind of mentioned is not a sport. It's a way to lift and
00:12:55
Speaker
And it does build muscle. It builds muscle about as well as what is also called the hypertrophy range, which is a more moderate rep range and a more moderate load intensity. But even light loads can build muscle. But for the most part, the hypertrophy range, it's kind of a myth because you can build muscle.
00:13:17
Speaker
with using any rep range as long as you get close enough to failure, especially in those lighter rep ranges. But I've heard that bodybuilders tend to live more in that moderate rep range because they can simply complete more volume, more weekly volume using that rep range. And what that means basically is that they don't have to rest as long between their sets. So because they're resting less between sets, they are able to pack in more volume and volume is the main driver.
00:13:46
Speaker
Time under sufficient tension is the main driver for hypertrophy. The irony is that a lot of bodybuilders don't lift heavy weights. Something else she mentioned was feeling like she wouldn't be strong enough.
00:14:00
Speaker
Well, I think that's a common, it's really common because we think about, for example, and this is something later on that she was talking about, where she's working in the studio offering up to 10 pounds, but then most of the women select a two or a three or maybe a five pound. So we think of that weight as our quote unquote strength level, right? But then we'll go to the grocery store and pick up a gallon of milk and two heavy bags of groceries and walk it out to the car and put it in the car and pull it out of the car and put it in the, you know what I mean?
00:14:29
Speaker
So, we do all of these strength activities during our day-to-day that are absolutely higher load than the two or the three or the five pound dumbbell, but somehow we don't factor that into our strength. And so, then we think, well, the jump from a dumbbell that's relatively small to an enormous barbell with weights on it seems impossible. It seems like there's no way to get from A to B. You know what it kind of reminds me of? It's like people who say that they don't do yoga because they're not flexible enough.
00:14:59
Speaker
Everybody says that. The number of people who have said that to me is a lot. First of all, yoga can exist and have value outside of any aesthetic or performance benefits that you get from it. It's a practice that comes from ancient India that is a lot more than just a physical practice.
00:15:19
Speaker
But a lot of people in the West, especially, I think start doing yoga to make themselves more flexible. And yoga is actually a really effective modality for improving flexibility. So it's funny that people are like, I'm not flexible enough to do yoga when one of the main kind of physical benefits of yoga is actually to make you more flexible.
00:15:39
Speaker
That's the same with strength training. But I think that we've talked about this a lot on this podcast, which is that when people hear heavy strength training, they either think that having
Differences Between Lifting Heavy and Other Activities
00:15:49
Speaker
never lifted weights before in their life, that they're going to be given a very heavy weight right off the bat, which is not smart programming. I mean, any program worth its salt would not hand a complete
00:16:00
Speaker
beginner to strength training, you know, objectively heavy weight for them and be like, okay, now you're going to do your one rep max. Like that's not how it works. Yeah, it's not how it works. And also, but, but it's not surprising to me that that's what people think it is because all of the media representation is the like straining bulging eyes, almost popping out of your head, you know, kind of a lift, right? And, and
00:16:27
Speaker
I hope that noise translates into an image in people's heads. But it seems like a world away, right? Or it seems like that's all of it is like that, right? And it doesn't show like, oh no, sometimes you're just lifting the bar by itself for a while before you're adding your plates and plates. Or to her reference to the people at her Pilates studio who are lifting these two and three pound dumbbells, they are probably lifting those weights many, many times to stimulate that.
00:16:55
Speaker
feeling of fatigue. Really, the feeling doesn't tell us what the adaptation will be. The feelings that you have in your body can be a really inaccurate source of information for what is happening in your body. I know that in yoga, we hear, listen to your body. I think that's great advice, but also listen to your body with the understanding that
00:17:18
Speaker
you can always know exactly objectively what's happening to your body just based on how it feels, right? So for example, you can have these really strong muscle burning sensations from a high repetition activity, you know,
00:17:32
Speaker
running, for example, is a cyclical activity. And if you run a long distance for you, the next day your legs might be sore, but that doesn't necessarily mean that running made your legs objectively stronger. And so I think sometimes with these lighter weights, we have to do so many reps of them just to get that feeling happening. We might think that that feeling means that we made our muscles stronger, but it's probably more
00:17:58
Speaker
of a strength endurance adaptation. But my point in all of this is to say, if you're used to doing 30 or 40 or 50 or 100 repetitions with two to three pound weights, and then you hear that you have to lift heavy, you might think that you have to lift heavy 20, 30, 40, or 100 repetitions. But that is also not how lifting heavy works, right, Sarah?
00:18:19
Speaker
Nope, not at all. And that's another thing where I've had this conversation many times where we're so sort of tuned into the idea of three sets of 10. Like three sets of 10 is just like burned into our psyche as the number of reps and the number of sets that you do.
00:18:35
Speaker
And the idea that there could be a set and a rep count of like three sets of three, because quite frankly, you can't lift it four times because that's how heavy it is. That's a totally new, I mean, for me, when I started lifting heavy, that was a totally new concept.
00:18:52
Speaker
We talk about this in another episode as well, but it feels so different in your body, and I still haven't come up with a way to explain it, but it feels so different in your body to lift something that is that heavy, but knowing that you're only going to lift it three times, so you're willing to kind of
00:19:10
Speaker
I don't know if this is going to help, but when I'm doing those lifts, I'm not thinking in my head, okay, I need to keep a lot in the tank because I got to do 30 of these. Instead, you're just like, all right, here goes three, and then you're done with that part, but then you're resting.
00:19:27
Speaker
Right? So it's a very different, we're so much more accustomed to this kind of hit workout where it's like super intense and then a little bit of break and super intense and a little bit of break or something like yoga or Pilates where there's kind of like this low to medium ish level of intensity going on the entire time, right? Without that much of a break, it's just such a different way for your nervous system and your body to experience load, uh, that
00:19:56
Speaker
It, that in and of itself, I think takes some wrapping your head around or getting used to in the beginning. Yeah, absolutely. So we're going to talk more about hit and what intensity means in hit versus intensity and heavy strength training, because both are actually high intensity forms of exercise, but they, as Sarah's pointing out, feel totally, totally different. And the adaptations that you get from them are totally, totally different.
00:20:18
Speaker
Anything else to comment about Marianne other than I just adore Marianne. I think she's naturally funny and I don't think she realizes how funny she is, but the bench press competition is awful. I'm like, yes, Marianne, you have to let us know what's your bench at? Because I imagine it's going to be a little bit better potentially. Yeah. Who knows? I like that. It was nice hearing from her because of her. Everyone that we heard from is different.
00:20:47
Speaker
you know, teachers or not teachers or they've been working this long or this area. And for someone who's been sort of in the health and fitness arena for so long,
00:20:56
Speaker
It's so interesting to hear how many of our experiences as movement professionals. A lot of the stuff she was saying, I was like, yep, that's, I thought that, yep, I used to think that, I used to think that, I used to think that. It's really pervasive. It's not just like, oh, gen pop doesn't get it, but the fitness professionals do. No, not at all. We all have this essentially big misunderstanding of what strength training is and what it can do for us. Absolutely.
00:21:22
Speaker
Okay. So our next person is Diana Romero, who is one of the people that I reached out to on Instagram and responded and gave us her recording.
Personal Journeys into Strength Training
00:21:31
Speaker
So we're really grateful for that. She is a yoga and mobility coach for CrossFit, which is a really fun overlap, I think of two different territories. She's also already lifting heavy. Like I sort of scrolled through some of her Instagram and I'm like, yeah, girl, you get that deadlift.
00:21:49
Speaker
and she's from Belgium and so we're gonna listen to her recording.
00:21:55
Speaker
Hi, my name is Diana and I wanted to tell you a little story about how I went from not lifting at all and why didn't I lift to lifting heavy and throwing heavy shit around because it's fun. So I grew up in a very athletic family, sports weren't a thing for us.
00:22:21
Speaker
and around my late 20s I decided that I had had enough of being unfit and started going to gyms. The typical tour included the cardio machines, a couple of those pneumatic or electronic or maybe cable weight machines with some explanation and then glows in over
00:22:45
Speaker
the free weights room. And there was very little support about learning how to lift heavy, which muscles you work, how you perform the movements, so I didn't do it. And then I had the opportunity to try CrossFit a couple of years ago. And then I had a coach.
00:23:08
Speaker
that was focused on teaching me proper form and working and starting on light weights, all the way to as heavy as I could lift. And that got me hooked.
00:23:19
Speaker
So that's why I went from not lifting and why didn't I lift because I didn't have the knowledge, I didn't have the space, there was no support in the teams to really start lifting and there was also an explanation of why lifting was good for you. They were focused on people coming in and do their fitness routine which is mostly cardio and lift and that's money in the pocket.
00:23:42
Speaker
Whereas if they would have had to teach me how to use all those free weights, they would have spent a lot of time and money on me. I hope this helps with your podcasts, and hope to hear it soon.
00:23:54
Speaker
Bye-bye. First of all, I loved this whole thing. I thought it was so interesting that she talks about coming from a family where fitness was not, or sports, or movement. None of those things were emphasized in any way. My family was medium-ish into things. My mom played tennis. My dad played golf.
00:24:12
Speaker
They tried to get me to do both of those. I don't like sports with balls and bats, as many of you already know. So I was like, not into that, but I did a lot of ballet. That was my main thing. By the way, neither of those sports involve bats. Wait, golf? No. I mean, okay, hang on. I'm talking about...
00:24:42
Speaker
I can't stop laughing because I'm looking at Laurel who's dying laughing.
00:24:46
Speaker
What I mean is a bigger picture, a thing that you hold to hit a ball. They involve whackers. A whacker and a round thing. Anything with whacking a round thing, I was just like, this is not my thing. But if it's just me, I'm fine. And that continues to this day. And that also makes a lot of people nervous about the fact that I ride a motorcycle, but that's a different story. You don't have to hit anything. In fact, you're trying not to hit anything. So maybe that's why I like it so much.
00:25:15
Speaker
It struck me that, so that was really kind of striking that she came from a family where fitness wasn't really emphasized. And I think that's true for a lot of people where unless it's something that was really brought into your life growing up, you're going to have to go seek it out in some way. And it's not part of what you feel is habitual or routine or part of your life. And then also to the point where when she went to the gym, she kind of
00:25:41
Speaker
stuck with the cardio machines and with some of the machines for lifting, for cable and those kinds of machines, but didn't do any of the freeways. I think that's also very common for women. We get into the gym and the place where we feel comfortable
00:25:57
Speaker
is the treadmill, the elliptical machine, the bike, right? Those are areas where it's like, again, it's this kind of like steady state, medium level effort that maybe we're accustomed to if we've been doing like yoga or Pilates or it just sort of feels like that's what we're encouraged to do because that's where we're like, quote unquote, fat burning, calorie burning, toning, right? We're losing weight, right? That's sort of the goal and the idea of those
00:26:26
Speaker
machines the way that they are presented to women most of the time. I also thought it was super interesting that CrossFit was what got her into the barbells and free weights because
00:26:36
Speaker
Really, it sounds like what she was missing at the gym was a coach or a personal trainer. And maybe they didn't offer those, or maybe the price was just too much. But I love that she went to CrossFit and that the training there allowed her to then progress through her weightlifting. Yeah, amazing. So something that a lot of people, I don't think, realize who have never done CrossFit is that CrossFit trends more female than male.
00:27:04
Speaker
There have been some studies showing that more women do CrossFit than men, actually. And that's fascinating, kind of anecdotally to be my situation where I take CrossFit. There are more women, a lot more women in some classes than others, but it's pretty 50-50, I would say.
00:27:22
Speaker
And yeah, CrossFit utilizes all different rep ranges and intensity levels. It tends to also function in that little bit of a more of a high intensity interval training format a lot of the times. But what I thought was really super interesting
00:27:39
Speaker
about Diana's account here was that she really felt kind of left out at sea with regards to how to even use these free weights or what the benefit of them even was. Whereas on the machines, which I'm a big fan of machines, by the way, I know a lot of people kind of poo poo machines, and I think it's a super dogmatic opinion to have about machines. That's another episode. But the machines have diagrams on them that tell you how to use them.
00:28:04
Speaker
And they are extremely stable. And so if you're at all nervous about not having enough stability to do an exercise or like Marianne mentioned, dropping a weight on her head, it's not going to happen with a machine. And so I think they're a phenomenal entry point. The one big downside for machines is that they aren't training load-specific balance. And they're also probably not weight-bearing in the ways that we would want to be weight-bearing for bone building.
00:28:30
Speaker
But I'm a big fan of machines. And so I think it's cool that she eventually kind of meandered toward CrossFit and got what sounds like really good coaching. And now she's throwing heavy shit around, which is just amazing. So good.
00:28:46
Speaker
So next up, we're going to hear from Naomi. Naomi is another member of my virtual studio. She's been with me for a long time. She's a regular in the live classes. Naomi Gottlieb Miller is a yoga teacher who lives in New Mexico. She
00:29:02
Speaker
on her Instagram page writes, I make time for busy moms to make time for themselves on and off the mat, which is really super lovely. Naomi visited me at my home in Huntsville. She was bringing her oldest daughter to space camp here in Huntsville, to the Space and Rocket Center. And we hung out and I consider her a friend. So here's Naomi.
00:29:29
Speaker
I don't think that I ever had any specific fears or concerns when it came to lifting weights. I just didn't think that I needed it. I didn't think that it was relevant to my life, which I think, of course, is the arrogance of being young, being in my early 20s. And up until that point in my life, I felt like I was strong enough. I had lived in New York and
00:29:57
Speaker
I had moved myself by myself pretty much into and out of several six-floor walk-ups, not to mention carrying it often, you know, several blocks in between, you know, my old apartment and my new apartment. So, you know, I considered myself plenty strong. And this was particularly by the time that I'd started taking yoga classes. And I loved yoga. And so I didn't think that I needed anything else.
00:30:26
Speaker
you know I thought that yoga was enough and honestly that was something that was communicated to me not only as a yoga student but you know as a teacher when I was in my teacher training and when I did continued teacher trainings the the message that was really loudly communicated was that
00:30:48
Speaker
yoga was enough and I bought it. I thought that my yoga practice and the running that I did a few times a week was sufficient for keeping my body healthy. And I really do think that that was a bit of disservice that not only my own community perpetuated and did, but that I also did when I was a newer teacher.
00:31:16
Speaker
Okay. I'm going to jump in here. We're going to listen to the rest of her recording, but there's so much to talk about already. Um, starting with like leaving off with being like, I perpetuated this myth that yoga is enough. Like she's super transparent, honest individual. If you follow her on Instagram, you know, like she is not pretending to be anyone that she's not. And she's a super.
00:31:37
Speaker
Um, emotionally open and honest individual. And so I really resonate with her sharing that because I did it too. Like, did we not all do it at some point? Everyone who taught yoga for more than like five or 10 years has probably in some way, shape or form communicated that yoga is all you need. Like I definitely used to say,
00:31:55
Speaker
Yoga will make you stronger. Yoga will just cure a lot of what ails you. And I think it is a disservice, but it's also, we can only kind of operate with what we know and we can't allow what we don't know yet to influence what we say and do. So now that we know more, a lot of yoga teachers are
00:32:17
Speaker
changing their tune and I think that that is the responsible thing to do and I think that's the only thing we can do, right? Absolutely. I mean, this is the whole thing about like not
00:32:27
Speaker
you know, when you know more, you do better, right? And we were all, it was very pervasive. I heard it everywhere. I said, I mean, everyone just sort of believed if you did yoga, it fixed everything. And even in some of the, you know, yogic textbooks, I mean, if you look at light on yoga, there's a whole chunk of like what different poses do for different medical ailments. And
00:32:50
Speaker
Honestly, I think some of it's a really big stretch, but we're in here where we're all going along with, because we didn't know any better. Not even just me. I remember my boyfriend at the time was like, oh, you don't need to do any other exercise. You do yoga all the time. I was like, that's right. I do yoga all the time, so I don't need to do anything else.
00:33:14
Speaker
So the thing about her examples that she gave, which is like, I didn't know that I needed to do anything else. One was because of the arrogance of youth. And I think this is really common, right? Like that when we're young, we feel invincible. But the irony is that like, when you're young is the best time to build bone, it's the best time to strength train. And sadly, like a lot of women don't realize that until they're older. And
00:33:37
Speaker
Unfortunately, until they get their first DEXA scan, which doesn't happen until they're 65, which is already well past the menopausal average age for menopause where bone mineral density has started to rapidly decline. It's a really big flaw at least in the United States healthcare system, which is riddled with flaws as we all know.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately, the way that the healthcare system is set up, a lot of times women don't realize that they should really step it up with regards to resistance training until it's way, way too late. So it would be good if we all just assumed that we should be doing it.
00:34:18
Speaker
regularly just like we drink water and eat vegetables every day, basically. That's why the CDC has it as a twice-weekly physical activity guideline. That's the Center for Disease Control. I think that that's a really good point that she's making, which is that she came to this realization later, as many of us do, and then she uses endurance-based
00:34:42
Speaker
activities like yoga, so strength endurance based activities like yoga, and also like an endurance based performance of like her ability and like moving apartments to explain why she thought she was strong. And I think that she probably was strong, honestly, like her baseline of strength, doing all of the physical activity that it sounds like she did do, including the running and including the
00:35:06
Speaker
Or maybe it was just the cardio and the yoga. And living in New York City is in and of itself just an incredibly demanding environment to live in. That her baseline strength was probably higher. Because here's the thing, all physical activity exists along some continuum of varying levels of load. And so our bodies, they adapt positively
00:35:34
Speaker
like a wide range of different types of stressors. Depending on your fitness level, running can to a point make your legs stronger, right? Yoga can to a point make your body stronger. Just like lifting can to a point raise your VO to max, but the key is to a point
00:35:52
Speaker
or a little bit for some people. And so it's really common, I think, to think that because, first of all, I feel fatigued after this yoga class, or I feel fatigued after moving apartments. And I just schlepped all my stuff up and down all these flights of stairs and across town in New York City where no one drives cars. Like, I must be strong. And that, to a point, is true.
00:36:14
Speaker
But those activities allow you to perform a certain level of strength. They don't build strength. Neither one of them employs progressive overload, which is really about the way that what you're doing changes your body to make it capable of lifting heavier things over time systematically.
00:36:52
Speaker
solves all of the problems. And yoga is phenomenal. I love yoga. I still practice yoga regularly. I still teach it, you know, to some degree in addition also to mobility work and strength training. But I've also learned that, you know, holding plank pose is not, you know, building upper body strength in a really significant way that holding warrior two for two minutes or longer is not really strength training. And
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Let's keep listening.
00:37:22
Speaker
you know, I wish that was something that I had learned sooner. And it really wasn't until I
00:37:30
Speaker
was postpartum for an entire year that I really even gave strength training a second thought. And even then, I didn't really think much about lifting heavy weights. I didn't think that I needed to. I thought that I was getting enough from, you know, my HIIT practice that I had discovered.
00:37:53
Speaker
And, you know, HIIT doesn't really encourage lifting heavier than like maybe 10 or 15 pounds. So I thought that was also enough. I didn't really have a great desire to lift more than that because I liked HIIT. I also really didn't like the idea of what lifting heavier felt like to me, which felt very much like a bro zone.
00:38:19
Speaker
Okay, so I wanted to pause there again because I think we could talk a little bit about her mentioning that she had discovered her HIIT practice. So that's that high intensity interval training style, which we're going to hear another contributor mention. So high intensity interval training.
00:38:41
Speaker
the adaptations that you'll see from a high intensity interval training. A lot of times it depends on the intensity of the load you're working with. Like you could definitely do high intensity interval training with more than 10 to 15 pounds. Although I would say mainstream interpretation of high intensity interval training is in that like lightweight, high repetition
00:39:03
Speaker
zone. And so the adaptations you're going to see from that are probably going to be more in line with cardiorespiratory adaptations and then some endurance, definitely some muscular endurance adaptations.
00:39:19
Speaker
But you're probably not going to increase your maximum force production in any meaningful way. Now, if high intensity interval training involves impact, there could certainly be bone building benefits from high intensity interval training, for sure.
00:39:37
Speaker
But I think that I love that she's drawing a distinction between high intensity interval training, where it's high rep, low load, not a lot of rest, versus lifting heavy weights. I think that those two things get conflated a lot of the time. What do you think, Sarah?
00:39:59
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think for women, it's sort of this gradient of a comfort zone, right? So we're used to going to like a class workout setting. Okay. So that feels comfortable. And then we're used to a group class setting where maybe you're lifting sort of smallish weights and
00:40:20
Speaker
you know, doing some squats, but you're not, you know, the body weight or you're holding a pretty height, light weight or whatever. It's sort of like some variant on like sort of jazzercise, but not really, you know, kind of a general exercise, kind of a class. And then that gradient of comfort, I think,
00:40:39
Speaker
sort of follows a nice trajectory in terms of something that feels familiar to go to a class where it's like okay now we're just changing the parameters a little bit where we do like intervals of intense work and then we have intervals of rest but the intense work because
00:40:57
Speaker
It's still almost more cardiovascular based in a lot of ways. It's got a lot of an aerobic component to it. It's like mountain climbers for 30 seconds or something like that where you're supposed to do it as fast as you can or as many of them as you can or to her point holding a 10 or a 15 pound weight and doing as many squats as possible or lunges or something like that because there is this component of
00:41:22
Speaker
get as many in as you can during this time period, it doesn't allow for holding a weight that's significantly heavier than that, something that might actually build bone density because the goal of it is to do as many reps as possible. And like we were saying earlier, when you get into that heavier weight range, the rep level goes down. It has to, right? So it makes sense that HIIT training feels like
00:41:49
Speaker
You know, Oh, I'm getting into more strength training because compared to what I was doing before, this has a lot more effort involved. So it feels more towards sort of like maximum effort, but a lot of that maximum effort is more cardiovascular. It's not about the actual load that like the maximum load that your muscles could withstand if you were lifting something one or two or three times. Right on. All right. Let's keep listening.
00:42:15
Speaker
You know, I have no desire to hang out in a gym with a bunch of dudes who either want to, you know, prove their own worth by throwing weights around or making me feel insignificant because I'm not lifting as heavy as they are or, you know,
00:42:35
Speaker
being a smaller woman, their assumption is that I can't lift as much or that I'm not lifting in the right way or whatever it is. And so, you know, I avoided going to gyms. I really like working at home. And I think, you know, that for a lot of people can be a really big barrier is, you know, not wanting to go to gyms. And as a mom, you know, that is, that is another big thing for me, you know, and it's a barrier that I've since crossed, but
00:43:05
Speaker
I still don't go to gyms, I just have built a gym at home because not only does it fit into my lifestyle and it's something that I can use in my teaching, but it's not convenient to go to the gym. I have three kids, so I think that for me and for a lot of the women that I teach who are also moms, the idea of
00:43:27
Speaker
lifting heavier also involves a significant amount of legwork, for lack of a less cheesy way of thinking of it. It requires so much more energy, planning even. I would have to, in order to get to a gym, even if I went to the closest gym to me, I would have to make sure that my husband could get the kids out the door potentially, or if I was going to do it in the middle of the day, which would be
00:43:53
Speaker
really inconvenient and not my favorite time to work out, it would involve, you know, making sure that somebody could watch the kid who's not in school to do the thing. And it's just, it's so much work. So I think that one of the biggest obstacles that so many moms in particular have to overcome is
00:44:11
Speaker
you know, A, do I actually want to go to a gym in order to do this? And then B, how do I make that happen when you don't have a gym at home, when you don't have the equipment at home? And then, of course, when you start lifting heavier and heavier, you know, you start to hit a limit of like what you can actually have at home. So that has been, I think, the most challenging thing for me to overcome. And while I'm glad that I've overcome it,
00:44:37
Speaker
You know, I'm already hitting another limit in terms of, you know, I've lifted pretty heavy for a lot of the stuff that I'm working with. Maybe it's time to up level now to barbells. And that is a whole other mountain that I have to climb, but I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. So I've been watching Naomi get stronger and stronger and stronger, and she's lifting some big kettlebells, but, um, she's, she's outgrown. She's outgrown them, you know, as, as everyone who is consistently strength training.
00:45:07
Speaker
will for lower body work, for lower body work, especially women for lower body work, right? So, yeah, the gym, right? And like the bros and the gym and like being judged and being evaluated and man, like gyms have just somehow some...
00:45:31
Speaker
I consider it to be a major failing, I guess, of the people in charge of the business of running gyms in general. They have completely neglected an entire customer base in fostering the types of cultures that are often, unfortunately, dominant in gyms. I think it's changing, but I don't think it's changing fast enough because I don't think
00:46:00
Speaker
a lot of women feel comfortable at gyms still. And if they do go to gyms, like you said, Sarah, they're kind of just staying with the cardio machines. Yeah. I think this is, like you're saying, it's a really common thing for women to feel intimidated by the gym, but I thought her point about
00:46:18
Speaker
As a mom, how do I make the time to leave my house and go do this is something that is hugely under-considered by gyms. They would be so well-served to start to come up with creative ways to help women with this, whether it's having a daycare available at the gym. I know Equinox has that at a lot of gyms, which I think it's so smart.
00:46:42
Speaker
The CrossFit box that I train at does as well. It's a game changer. Yeah, and it seems like a no-brainer and a game changer. And I'm like, this is just more money in your pocket, which is what you care about anyway, right, gym owners? So anyway, I think that's sort of two-pronged of it's going to be a bunch of bros judging me. And how the heck am I supposed to carve out this time anyway? That's a pretty solid one-two punch of I'm not going.
00:47:09
Speaker
Yeah, and Naomi has a lot of equipment at home that she uses to train with, and you can hear that she's entertaining the idea of getting a set of barbells, which I'm happy to hear. Yeah, it's really, I think, the pandemic opened a lot of people's eyes and minds, the idea that they could
00:47:32
Speaker
train at home. And I think, I don't know if this is true, like we need some research to support this statement, but I feel like more women started strength training during the pandemic because they realized they could do it from home. At least I know a lot of people in my virtual studio started strength training with me when they hadn't before because they were already kind of practicing yoga with me online after I pivoted. And then I started offering strength and other like high intensity interval training with kettlebells and things like that.
00:48:00
Speaker
and they're doing it now. So I think that's happened all over the world, actually. And it's really awesome. And you can... This is where I'm going to ask you, Sarah, about your barbell setup. You can have barbells at home, and it doesn't have to mean that an entire room is devoted to your barbells. Can you tell us a little bit about that, Sarah? Absolutely, because I have a barbell setup at home.
00:48:25
Speaker
in my, it's in my home office, which I sort of jokingly refer to as like Mary Poppins bag. Remember when she would just like pull like more, you're like, how are all of these things fitting in this room? But the reason it works is I have a lot of equipment that can sort of be pushed up against a wall or made space for. So I, my home office is not big. I believe the room is eight by 12. Like you could get a twin. Well, you know, that room you've slept in that room.
00:48:50
Speaker
Oh yeah, I lived multiple days in that room. So what did we have? We had like a queen mattress on the floor for you, but like very little room around that, right? It wasn't like, you weren't like, Oh, and now let me take a tour of the rest of the room. Like the whole room basically was the mattress. So like, here's the thing, Sarah, your, your, your barbell equipment was not in that room. No, I know. It was in the closet. Yeah. It was all in a tiny closet. Yes. So, but that's the thing. Like I have the ability, I have a closet that I dedicated to just shoving all the equipment into.
00:49:19
Speaker
And it doesn't take up that much space. I have the adjustable rack where it's just two stands that are two separate pieces from each other, which is really helpful because then it's not like it's one giant cage that can only move in one piece.
00:49:33
Speaker
They each then go into the closet. We're going to link in the show notes, Sarah's set up so you can check it out on Instagram because she made a post about it. Yeah, and I'm going to make another one because the one that I made, I'm like, there's more detail people need to see. But yeah, that goes in the closet. My bar, I just kind of stand up in the corner because that doesn't take up any space, but it could also easily go in the closet. And then the plates lean up against the wall in the closet. So I can take the whole setup out of the room and I can
00:50:01
Speaker
do my workout for the day, whatever lifting I'm doing, and then I break it down and it all goes back into the closet and it's as if it was never there. So you don't need a lot of space. You really, really don't. Yeah, I have all of my plates. We've just added two 35-pound plates to the family because my husband maxed out on what we have and so I'm happy to have some more weight as well to work with. But I have a cool plate stand that is super stable and it holds all my plates and my barbell.
00:50:30
Speaker
And it's so stable, I'm not worried about it with my daughter. Anything like that thing is not going anywhere. And I think the footprint of it is probably 1 and 1 by 3 feet. So all of that equipment, 1 and 1 by 3 feet, super organized. I can easily access the plates off of the stand, get the barbell out, no problem. And so that plus these two
00:50:54
Speaker
separate pieces that Sarah uses as her rack to support the barbell for things like bench press and back squat. The footprint is not that big and you don't have to look at it. It can all go in a closet. It can live in a closet and then you can pull it out to do your workout for 30 minutes and then put it back in the closet.
00:51:14
Speaker
It's pretty amazing how space conserving actually barbell equipment can be, and I would argue the footprint for all my kettlebells right now, and I have a lot of kettlebells. I have thousands of dollars worth of kettlebells that I've acquired over the last four years, is bigger than the footprint for my plates and my barbell for sure. If I had the rack set up as Sarah, it's a smaller footprint.
00:51:42
Speaker
I don't think many people realize that. All right. Thank you, Naomi. Should we hear from Lisa Schwartz Zlatnik next, Sarah? Yeah, let's do it.
00:51:58
Speaker
But I do think this is a good opportunity for us to actually talk about our six month progressive overload, strength training, weight lifting, bone density course, don't you? Yeah, I do. So our bone density course is a six month course and it includes a six month program within it. It also includes bonus courses like strength training 101 and all about osteoporosis.
00:52:28
Speaker
But the bulk of the content is really the program. And the program is six months because why, Sarah? Because six months is in the research when you are able to start seeing changes to bone density. So if you are going to start doing this kind of progressive overload, no matter what weight you're starting from, you're not going to see any change in your bone density typically until you're past that six-month mark. Right. And so we need at least that amount of time to make a change.
00:52:57
Speaker
It's properly programmed, which means that we start you where you are. So in the beginning, we're going to be focusing a ton on techniques. So you might be lifting what would be more moderate or even lightweight in the beginning for you so that you can really dial in the technique of working with a barbell. Now it is a barbell.
00:53:15
Speaker
specific program, but that doesn't mean that you can't take a lot of the information we're sharing and apply it to using dumbbells and kettlebells. You certainly can. We just simply believe that a barbell is the best, most logical piece of equipment that you would want to become familiar with if you want to be able to progressively overload for life. And so this is the other thing too. This is a six month program, but that's not to say that you are going to
00:53:41
Speaker
ideally lift weights for six months and then stop. This is basically us helping you get started over a course of time where you will have ample time to learn how to use weights, learn how to strength train.
00:53:55
Speaker
learn how to progressively overload, learn how to progress toward lifting heavy weights. And barbells are the best way to be able to progress for life. But then we want you to keep going when this program ends. And we'll give you ways of continuing to use our program to continue going, right? So it doesn't end at six months. It's something that we can continue to cycle back.
00:54:17
Speaker
on and use. You know what it reminds me of? Sorry to break in but I was just thinking while you were talking about that it reminds me of like you know when you see some a parent helping a child learn how to ride a bicycle with no training wheels and I mean I remember this is how I learned my dad held on to the back of the bike
00:54:34
Speaker
And I started pedaling and he's running alongside me and at some point he lets go and I kept going, right? And it's that moment where like, you don't know as the person I'm like, when did that happen, right? So in that metaphor analogy story, Laurel and I are like your parent. We're going to hold on to you. Is that weird? We're going to hold on to your bike, your metaphorical bike. And we are going to hold your hand the whole way through.
00:54:56
Speaker
And then our goal is to make ourselves no longer necessary so that you can then continue to work on your strength for the rest of your life. The course is called Lift for Longevity for a Reason. Yeah. And two things that are really important. One, you own the course when you buy it. So it's yours forever. It'll always live in your computer. And then number two is that this course is structured in a way that we have not encountered any others. First of all, there are no six-month programs that are guided.
00:55:24
Speaker
with live option and recorded follow along classes included with it. So a rude awakening for me when I was going from yoga into the strength training world and like I wanted to get stronger. It's like, Oh, I need a program. Okay. I finally got that through my head. I can't just be one off classes all the time. So then I invested in a program and I got emailed a PDF. I was like, wait, where's the program? Where, where's the content? Literally all the PDF. So the PDF was linked to videos on Vimeo.
00:55:49
Speaker
So yes, you're like, how do I do a bent over row? Let me click over to this one minute demo video on Vimeo. And look, that's a fine way to be given a program. The thing is that it's actually very, very different, though, than how yoga practitioners
00:56:06
Speaker
Even Pilates teachers are used to being taught movement. We're used to going to a class where there's a group of people and being guided step-by-step through what to do in the class.
00:56:20
Speaker
I think that it's more yoga slash Pilates teacher friendly to do the course the way we're doing it. We're offering one live class a week. You don't have to attend live. It's all going to be recorded. We're going to ask you to strength train more than one time a week, but we are not only going to provide you with a demo video of every single exercise that you're going to do in the program, we're also going to provide you with a full length class of every single workout in the program.
00:56:45
Speaker
So you will always have the option to just watch a quick demo and workout on your own like the rest of the strength training world is doing, or you will always have the option to take the workouts as though it were kind of like a yoga class or a Pilates class for it to be a guided follow along experience.
00:57:01
Speaker
This I cannot find anything like this not to mention the fact that we have a physical therapist Who's that and a strength coach? Who's that teaming up? Who are they to provide you with this content? It's it's Sarah and I you know we have a a breadth of knowledge and a breadth of expertise and a breadth of qualifications that it's
00:57:22
Speaker
You also don't always find, right? So we have something for you that will give you a taste test of what this program is going to be, which is a free webinar. And the webinar is just basically a workout. The way this workout will work is that you'll show up with whatever equipment you have. So if you have barbells, great. If you just have a broomstick, that's also good. And maybe if you have a couple dumbbells and kettlebells.
00:57:44
Speaker
We're going to take you through the experience of a workout. We're also going to do exactly what we're going to do in the course, which is leave time at the end of the workout for Q&A. We're also going to do exactly what we're going to do in the course, which is provide individuals with form check feedback and take questions. So it's going to be very interactive and basically an exact replica or slash. It's going to be an example of how this program
00:58:10
Speaker
will be for you to take in its longer form. This is a free webinar. You get a 30 day replay. It's happening on September 14th. If you want to attend live, if you can't attend live again, you will get emailed the replay.
00:58:22
Speaker
You'll be able to take the class a couple of times, get a feel for what it's going to be like. And then knowing that's the bulk of the content, like you'd be able to make a better decision about whether or not this of course is something that you want to invest in. Absolutely. So alternatives to this are obviously like to get one-on-one personal training sessions, which I will never not recommend. It's a great idea. But in terms of costs, sometimes that can be a major valid objection. Like people just don't have
00:58:48
Speaker
a couple hundred dollars every month lying around to pay their personal trainer. And I think that that warrants longer discussion. If you don't have that type of money, the cost of this longer form course that
00:59:00
Speaker
that we're presenting to you is a fraction of that cost. It's not the same thing as working with a personal trainer, but it has a lot of the same benefits because there's that live, real-time personal feedback component to it. If that's interesting to you, make sure you go to our show notes where you can sign up
00:59:20
Speaker
to get the Zoom link for our webinar that is taking place on September 14th. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it too. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And the other thing is, if you have been listening to this podcast, this is who Laurel and I are. This is not like, these people are showing up in that class as well. So just get ready for- They'll be there. These people will be there. By they, we mean we. We'll be there. All right. Lisa Schwartz Zlatnik.
00:59:49
Speaker
hails from Israel. She teaches two strength classes to women, and she's a member of my virtual studio. We also work one-on-one together, and she's expressed frustration with the lack of sufficient weights in her space, but also we've kind of troubleshooted how to get her students
01:00:12
Speaker
To lift heavier because they're selecting like mary and brought up their selecting weights they're very very small so this is a. Ongoing challenge as it as it as it seems we're gonna hear from from lisa now.
01:00:28
Speaker
First thing I'm going to say is that I've been doing fitness and working out since I'm a teenager. I used to go to the Jewish community center in Montreal and there I would say like, you know, the main thing that we did was
01:00:44
Speaker
the old school Nautilus machines, right? And that was kind of the in thing at the time, whereas like the free weights and the barbells and that kind of stuff was like, it really was like you looked over and it was like the bros who were doing that kind of stuff. And like everyone else was, you know, mucking around with like the Nautilus machines.
01:01:04
Speaker
Here's what you might find interesting. My first introduction really to lifting heavy came when I joined here in Israel 0-10K running group. And the guy who ran the group was the owner of the CrossFit box here.
01:01:21
Speaker
So part of the package was coming to two CrossFit classes a week. And because the community that I live in is largely an Orthodox community, Orthodox Jewish community, much of our fitness is gender separated. And so actually, as I began this introduction to CrossFit, I didn't really have that stigma or that embarrassment of
01:01:45
Speaker
being with the guys and that the heavy lifting is for the guys because we were a group of women and the teacher said this is what we're doing today and he taught you know this is what we were doing so we didn't really have that barrier in really thinking about it I think what the my main barrier was
01:02:02
Speaker
was that I, aside from the technical one of not having the equipment, which we started accumulating over the years, like, and then mainly during the beginning of Corona of COVID, was that like, I did a lot of working out with, you know, the 21 Day Fix and Beach Body and Chantee and, you know, that style of workout, right? That was like what was considered the
01:02:25
Speaker
entryway into like good fitness and those workouts are like sweaty and fast paced and screaming at you to work harder, work faster and you finish those workouts feeling like you're in a puddle of sweat and you feel worked out.
01:02:40
Speaker
And I think my barrier to lifting heavy, lifting with barbells, was that feeling that it's not doing anything. Because when you do those kind of strength exercises, you aren't necessarily sweating. And you aren't feeling your heart rate jacked through the roof. And you may not feel that lactic acid burn, right? Much of like what I had internalized was like, that is the route to fitness.
01:03:10
Speaker
right? I grew up like in the era of step class and aerobics and the sweat and the getting out of breath and then that was like what what I understood would lead to me losing weight and being fit.
01:03:25
Speaker
And so it was only as I began being exposed, actually, as I became a yoga instructor and I found people like Catherine Bruni-Young and you and Jenny Rawlings and, you know, others like in that sphere who began to talk about lifting weights
01:03:47
Speaker
did I begin to understand and learn what the benefits of lifting weights and 30 minute hardcore jumping around with lightweight workout might actually not be the best bang for my buck. Um, so that is kind of my story. I'm happy to talk about it. It's fun.
01:04:10
Speaker
Lisa is a super dedicated, very disciplined lifter from my perspective. She is really methodical and devoted to her strength training. She's pretty fully equipped in her home and they have an entire room devoted to weights and various pieces of equipment. So she is fully invested, fully invested.
01:04:39
Speaker
And, and strong, you know, and you can tell like she's been doing this for a while, and she has the strength to back it up because she's been lifting heavy, right, she has not been.
01:04:52
Speaker
She's done kettlebell classes with me as well, but you can hear that in her mind now there's a very clear distinction between high-intensity interval training, which kettlebelling could exist in both those string training and high-intensity interval training worlds, which is why so many people love kettlebells. But a lot of people tend to engage with kettlebells in more of a
01:05:13
Speaker
a high intensity interval training format, so they're lifting relatively light kettlebells. And you could hear her kind of come to this understanding via like influences online that strength training is not going to leave you feeling the same way as those classes. And because it's different from a felt perspective, which is because it's different from the stimulus side or the stimulus perspective, it's challenging your body
01:05:44
Speaker
in terms of maximum force production rather than cardio respiratory endurance or muscle endurance, right? It's more so about maximum force output, especially if you're lifting heavy, that you are not going to be left feeling the same way after those workouts. You might not break a sweat, right? You feel different. And so I think you've touched on this, Sarah, and I'd like to talk a little bit more about it. But I think this is a big barrier because
01:06:10
Speaker
When, when women want to get fit. So this is another word that keeps coming up. I want to get fit. Like Diana mentioned the word fit. Um, I don't know if anyone else did, but you know, here's this word fit. Oftentimes the connection is fitness equals cardio. Fitness means losing weight. And those three things are totally different. Actually, you can be fit and not lose any weight. In fact, you can be fit and gain weight. I've gained weight, right? I've gained muscle, probably five pounds of muscle.
01:06:37
Speaker
in the last four years. You can be fit by certain standards and not by others. You can be a marathoner. Your cardio respiratory endurance is awesome, but you might actually not be very strong, especially in your upper body.
01:06:58
Speaker
disentangling this idea of being fit from cardio and also from losing weight, I think is important to do, but she realized actually strength training is more bang for my buck. What do you think she meant by that? I mean, we could ask her, but I think I kind of understand what she, where she's coming from there. What do you think?
01:07:16
Speaker
Well, I think, you know, to your point about for women, the idea of fitness, meaning losing weight, that is definitely the most popular and especially, you know, prevailed in the media idea of what fitness means for women. Like what is the, what would be your, what are your fitness goals? Lose weight, right? That you hear that a lot. And the, I don't think, I think if you said to women, like,
01:07:45
Speaker
would you rather have a different number on the scale or have your body feel stronger? Like which one in your core is more important to you? I think a lot of women would go for the feeling stronger part, right? Because they feel like they're supposed to have a different number on the scale, but the
01:08:04
Speaker
work of getting there is pretty miserable in a lot of ways because it involves possibly dieting. It involves a lot of cardiovascular exercise, aerobic exercise, because that's the fastest way to start running. You'll drop a bunch of weight. But when she's talking about getting more bang for her buck, I think it's that understanding of like, okay, the purpose of my weight training is not to
01:08:30
Speaker
look differently, but to feel differently and that understanding that feeling of strong in your body is really something special. That's sort of what I took it to mean. I know firsthand from working with people one-on-one where there's more room for, I guess, dialogue around these topics that might feel a little bit more sensitive, which is that one of my one-on-one clients, for example, has been trying to lose weight and
01:08:54
Speaker
since we've started strength training, she's noticed that her weight continues to fluctuate. She hasn't actually
01:09:01
Speaker
lost the amount of weight that she's trying to lose. And she's noticed that it has much more to do with her diet, but her clothes fit the same. And so bigger number on the scale, we've talked about this because she's been training steadily with me for a long time, like more than a year. The bigger number on the scale is often indicative of increased muscle mass. And so you are not going to
01:09:26
Speaker
look bigger, you might look more tone. Looking tone could be a body composition shift, which would be a combination of increasing muscle mass and decreasing body fat or non-lean mass. It could be both, it could be one or the other. But I think what gets missed or left out in women's minds is that in order to be tone, one really good way to do that is to build muscle.
01:09:54
Speaker
So super interesting and then I love that she mentioned that she didn't never had to worry about like being judged by men because she was in a community where the exercise was segregated and that she felt like you know we would find that interesting which I definitely find that interesting but it kind of speaks it reminds me of why so many women like Naomi like working out at home because
01:10:18
Speaker
When you're working out at home online, live, for example, you get to choose who you work out with. You're not limited to the one or two or three gyms in your town. Right. Right. And, you know, because not everybody lives in New York City or Los Angeles. Right. I have one of my dear friends lives in a very rural
01:10:36
Speaker
She's an ER doctor in a very rural community in Minnesota, and there's one gym where she lives. She's working online with people. I think that it's so fascinating. These conversations, these voice memos that we've gotten have just really reflected back to me why we're doing what we're doing.
01:10:56
Speaker
Also, if you're working out online, you can choose whether or not the whole group can see you. You can turn your camera off. If your obstacle is really about, I feel so new and so vulnerable in a way. I don't want people watching me while I'm doing this. I want to get through the messy part and then maybe I'll turn my camera on or whatever.
01:11:20
Speaker
That's an opportunity that you just don't get when you're going into a bro gym. It does make me laugh how many of the women are just calling it bro. They're like, it's a bro space, the bros.
01:11:33
Speaker
We really have categorized it as a space for bros, bro dudes. Yeah. You know, and I'm like, just also I want to say that I have had so many positive interactions with men in the strength training spaces that I've occupied. So I don't, again, want to make it sound like, uh, I think I say this in a past episode that hasn't yet aired because we're in this weird like batching and then listening to things long after we recorded. But I said like, I, I,
01:12:01
Speaker
I love men and I've had really good positive experiences with men, but I think that this statement is true. Women are more likely to be made to feel uncomfortable in a strength training environment by men than men are made to feel uncomfortable in a strength training environment by women. I think that this is a statement that would be hard to argue against, even though I'm basing it
01:12:24
Speaker
exclusively off of anecdote, although I think there's been a lot of smart, I shouldn't say that, it's not based off of anecdote. There's some great books that you can read on the history of fitness culture that reinforce this idea. But I just think it's important, and Trina mentions this in her voice memo, which is that
01:12:43
Speaker
If you're trying to get stronger, it's really important to find people that you trust and that you want to be around to get stronger with. And that doesn't necessarily mean taking live classes with those people, but embed yourself in a community, whether it's online,
01:13:00
Speaker
Pre-recorded on demand or live where you feel supported right and so that might be a gender thing it might be an age group thing it might be a race thing it could be lot there is lots of different reasons why we may or may not feel comfortable with certain people and it's all. Correct you should find the people that you feel comfortable with full stop.
01:13:25
Speaker
All right, next we're going to hear from Kathy Dodd. Kathy's Instagram page, she writes about what she does. She says, I help people who want to build strength and flexibility from home with weights and yoga. Fun online classes for accountability and connection. Kathy is a member of my virtual studio. She's been with me from the very beginning. She's an incredibly smart movement educator. Her Instagram feed is one that I regularly learn from, so follow Kathy. Here she is.
01:13:57
Speaker
Hi Laurel, hi Sarah, it's Kathy Dodd here and I'm gonna try to answer your question which I think is about what might have held me back from lifting heavy weights.
01:14:13
Speaker
I guess I'll start with strength training in general. I really wasn't so much that things were holding me back, maybe just the culture, I guess. I never really even saw it as an option. It seemed like when I was growing up and when I was in my early 20s, so I'm 60 now, so this is a while ago, I wanted to exercise, but there was
01:14:40
Speaker
sort of women's exercise and men's exercise and you know, it was pretty gender conforming and so the women's exercise was pilates or yoga or jazzercise or something like that.
01:14:54
Speaker
So I picked yoga and I didn't really consider that I needed strength training until I was about 50. And then I realized I really wasn't getting any stronger and doing yoga. And so I started cross training and that's when I started lifting weights.
01:15:16
Speaker
And when I started lifting weights, I did kettlebells because it was during the pandemic, the gyms were closed. It was something I felt like I could do at home. I don't know why, but it just felt more accessible, more manageable than barbells for me. And when I was able to go to a gym, there I kind of experienced maybe a feeling that the
01:15:44
Speaker
weight might be too heavy somehow and that I wouldn't be able to do it that I wouldn't be able to like actually lift it off the ground or whatever and so and it took like a long time and a lot of awkward moments for me to understand how to put the plates on the bell and how to secure them there and where to put the racks for the
01:16:11
Speaker
bar, right? Like how to do all of that stuff. And I mean, I'm just someone who is just going to do it and not, I didn't really care by that time. Like I said, I was over 50, so I didn't give a fuck.
01:16:31
Speaker
What people thought, I just kind of faked it until I figured out what to do with the machines. And I think a lot of people wouldn't do that, right? They would be afraid of looking like an idiot.
01:16:47
Speaker
So anyway, then I realized like, well, if I can't lift it off the floor, I just put less weight on the bar. So it all started to make sense. And so, yeah, I guess that is my story. I hope that's clear. Thanks for asking. Bye for now.
01:17:11
Speaker
So I fucking love that she's like, yeah, I'm over 50, so I don't give a fuck. It is amazing how that happens. The older you get, the fewer fucks you give. It's quite incredible. So true. And she's very self-aware because she's like, I don't think everyone's like me. I don't think everyone is as maybe adventurous or in this state of mind of like, I don't give a fuck. If I don't know what I'm doing right now, I'm just going to figure it. I'm going to muck around and figure it out. And I'm kind of like that, too. I'm a little bit of a...
01:17:40
Speaker
Fuck it. Like I'm a I'm a I'm a learn by making a lot of mistakes type of an individual and I'm comfortable with that by now But not a not everyone in fact, I would say probably anecdotally. I don't see a lot of people being like that Yeah, they they want to know how to do it and then they then they do it right? I'm I'm a ready fire aim type of person Ready aim fire type of person. So what stood out for you how she kind of just worked her way through it on her own which is I
01:18:11
Speaker
This thing that stops a lot of women is this idea going back to one of the earlier recordings where she was concerned about hurting herself. I love that Kathy was just like, if I can't pick it up, I put less weight on it until I can't pick it up. That's a big chunk of figuring it out. It's just like, well, that's too heavy. All right, I have to make it a little bit later. Oh, I can do that. Okay. Right. This idea that heavy is a fixed amount.
01:18:37
Speaker
that there is a weight that is heavy and it weighs 200 pounds. It's like, the thing about heavy, the word heavy, it's used a lot, but the thing about heavy is it is both individual and specific. So it's individual in the sense that everyone has their own heavy. And it's specific in that not every weight for every individual is heavy. A heavy weight is pretty objectively defined in strength science as a weight that you really can't lift more than six times.
01:19:04
Speaker
So she just realized like, okay, well, if I miscalculate what I can lift, then all I need to do is take weight off the bar, which is why we love barbells. Barbells are endlessly tailorable to the individual because of the nature of how you make them heavier and make them lighter, which is totally different from a kettlebell and a dumbbell, which is like,
01:19:25
Speaker
a thing that you can't change unless you get the adjustables, but then you're still running up against like not being able to hold onto with your upper body. Yeah. I mean, unless you have the adjustable kind of a dumbbell or kettlebell, you know, I see this with people all the time where they're like, okay, well I have eight pounds, eight pound dumbbells and I have a 20 pound kettlebell, but
01:19:45
Speaker
With for my upper body, the eight is too light, but the 20 is too heavy, right? So you're just kind of stuck because you're like, well, now I have to go buy something else. I have to wait for it to show up or I've got to go get it. Whereas in with a barbell, you just like, Oh, let me take these two of these five pound plates off. Oh yeah. Now I can lift it. No problem. Like it's just, it's really, it's so straightforward. It's so barbells are so straight forward and.
01:20:08
Speaker
I didn't know that before I started lifting them and most people don't. We perceive them as complicated and hard and they're just like a big dumbbell.
01:20:19
Speaker
If a dumbbell doesn't scare you, then a barbell shouldn't either. All right. We are going to listen to our last two. These are dear friends of ours, Trina and Alex. So Trina Altman and Alexandra Ellis. I will play them back to back. Trina is a author and author.
01:20:40
Speaker
Movement genius, she teaches primarily, well, right now she's personal training people out of her gym. So she's a one-on-one personal trainer with a sizable roster, from what I can tell. She's also a famous, I would say, full-on famous Pilates teacher and yoga teacher and has created multiple courses and programs online. So check her out.
01:21:10
Speaker
Alex Ellis is another friend of ours. We actually all met ultimately because we were yoga tune-up teachers at the time. Alex has tailored her work now to really be in the mobility realm. She really focuses on helping people who are not active, who don't have a habit of exercising and things like that. She's just really good at motivating people to get them to start working together. She has tons of
01:21:37
Speaker
She has an insane TikTok following 500,000 people, some crazy number. I'm like, what? How? Huh? We'll link her TikTok in the show notes. Another, she's also a secret genius. She's a concert level piano player, but you would never know it. She's one of those people that makes, yeah, Laurel's making a what face? She's one of those people where you're like, what have I been doing with my life? Because she's done so many things. She's also endlessly energetic.
01:22:02
Speaker
and just a really good time to be around. So I totally understand why all of her clients just love her because she's fun. She's a great cheerleader, but she's not blowing smoke up your ass, but she's here for you. So she's a great coach. She's a really great coach. Awesome. All right. We're going to play them back to back, and then we'll check back afterwards. So first is Trina.
01:22:26
Speaker
So, the impetus, the straw that broke a camel's back. How do you say it? Anyways, the thing that got me to start strength training heavy was I had been looking for a personal trainer for a really long time that knew how to work with hypermobility, people had injuries, etc.
01:22:48
Speaker
that was really smart and my friend Jules had a, had yoga butt. She had hamstring tendinopathy and she was working with a trainer and she was doing deadlifts and it was what got her out of pain and how she healed. And so I think he had come to one of her continuing education courses.
01:23:15
Speaker
His name was Andrew and so I reached out to him and that was the beginning. He was a competitive power lifter, but he also worked with. Lots and lots of older clients with all kinds of injuries and my friend jewels. So, yeah, I think.
The Importance of Compound Lifts in Strength Training
01:23:34
Speaker
Starting to train with progressive overload requires programming. It requires having support a cheerleader, somebody who knows what they're doing, who's gone through it before and somebody that you trust and like spending time with.
01:23:52
Speaker
So yeah, that was really how it happened. Because I had strength trained my whole life, but I would just show up at the gym and do random stuff with weights. I was not doing progressive overload, and I didn't know how to program anything for myself. And I also was using the machines for the most part. I would do squats, but it was like with the Smith machine. Occasionally some barbell things, but not much. I wanted to learn how to do all the compound lifts.
01:24:20
Speaker
And so, yep, that's my story. Just going to jump in here real quickly and say like the compound lifts would be things like back squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, pull up, a dip. These are lifts where two or more joints and the muscle groups associated with those joints are involved in the lift. So this is different than doing isolation exercises like biceps and triceps.
01:24:49
Speaker
And it's also different than using the machines which tend to focus on a specific muscle group. So the compound lifts are heavily indicated for building bone density because of the amount of muscle worked and the weight-bearing component of that. Let's hear from Alex.
01:25:13
Speaker
Hey Sarah and Laurel. Well my journey to lifting heavy started how I imagine many other people's do as well which is because I wanted to look cool. I was deeply embedded into the yoga world and was finding that my body was not feeling
01:25:31
Speaker
as good as I expected it to. It wasn't feeling amazing all the time. I would push it too far in a class and then be out for two or three days with just incredible pain and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. And I knew that there were other poses and you know balancing arm balances that I wanted to be able to do that I just did not have the strength for.
01:25:55
Speaker
Around the same time, I was also looking into mobility and kind of the crossover between yoga and strength and how to help people on the other end of the flexibility spectrum with their flexibility. And so as I started to dip a toe into the water of strength training, I honestly, what kept me coming back was the feeling that you can take on anything.
01:26:24
Speaker
Like after you have done a pull-up or a deadlift or even a row, I walk out of the gym feeling like I can take on the world. That every task I have on my to-do list that day for work is not as difficult because I already did something that built that mental toughness.
01:26:43
Speaker
And as like a bonus side effect of doing strength training, all of a sudden my back didn't hurt as much and my ankles didn't hurt as much and my posture was better and my cardiovascular strength is better. I wasn't getting as tired as I used to. And I never lost my flexibility. I actually am hypermobile so that was never
01:27:05
Speaker
I discovered not an issue for me, but building strength not only helped me psychologically feel tougher, but I feel like my body is now tougher and more resilient than it ever was before.
01:27:19
Speaker
And now it's something that I truly, I couldn't live without, honestly. I was out in my garage gym this morning, it's probably about 95, like 10 o'clock in the morning. And I was just honestly thinking about as I was doing my workout, how again, that mental toughness,
01:27:40
Speaker
right we do something that is uncomfortable and challenging and difficult yes for all of the physical benefits that it brings but that mental toughness makes it so much easier to be uncomfortable in all the ways that life makes you uncomfortable.
01:27:59
Speaker
So I hope that helps. I'm a thousand percent addicted to strength training and lifting and actually now realizing I need to get back into some more of the static stretching just to maintain the health of my body as I approach my forties and beyond. But I'm so glad that you both are talking about strength training and that we can hopefully inspire more people to try it because it will honestly change your life. Hope that helps.
01:28:30
Speaker
I think there's like this dirty little secret in the yoga world because both Trina and Alex said this where people are walking around with pain and we, so many, so many yoga practitioners and yoga teachers either believe or just, I don't know. It's that sort of like, um, what's the thing where you double down, you know, it's wrong, but you double down because you don't want to have been wrong. A lot of yoga teachers are walking around in pain and
01:28:58
Speaker
just thinking, well, if I just did more yoga, this would go away. And how interesting it is that both Trina and Alex, who had long careers exclusively in the yoga and Pilates world, were both walking around with pain and that the pain got better from lifting. I mean, it's been true for me as well. I have some scoliosis in my spine, which is not, I don't have a huge amount of it, but enough that I have different
01:29:23
Speaker
Muscular like tone side to side in my body and the past month has been really busy. My clinic director had a baby I Absorbed most of her patients and it was nuts and I didn't have really time to do enough Lifting and my weird back pain started to come back and as soon as I started lifting again the first one I was like, oh I felt good and then the second time when I got in two lifts in one week and
01:29:48
Speaker
I was like, I'm a new woman. I am reborn. No, I was like, I can do anything. I am reborn. I have energy and endurance again. It was wild. And I understand when Alex is talking about that addiction feeling of it, you're like, it's free drugs in my own body and with a side effect of stronger bones and strong muscles. What more do you want?
01:30:11
Speaker
I love to bring drugs in my own body with a side effect of stronger muscles and stronger bones. That is an Instagram post, my friend. I love it. Yeah, they're both hypermobile. Do you want to speak to that at all? Yeah. I mean, and I'm actually going to be ... I'm trying to think what order this comes in. I'm going to be doing a whole solo episode about
01:30:33
Speaker
hypermobility and strength training and whether or not there is actually a link between hypermobility and osteoporosis or osteopenia. And it's interesting, the research is not completely clear, but it's very, it's interesting and it kind of points to possibly there is. So it's another way, it's another reason, right? Because so many women who practice yoga do it because it feels easy because they're hypermobile, right? And so
01:30:58
Speaker
This is exactly the category of people who, if they do not start to load their bones with external load that is significant and what is considered heavy, not three pounds probably or not for long, they're already more at risk of developing osteopenia and osteoporosis. So I see this research and I'm like, well, today's good. Today's a lifting day because I am also hypermobile. So you got to get it. And I'm actually doing an Instagram.
01:31:26
Speaker
I feel goofy about this, but I made a post explaining why lifting is so helpful for hypermobility because you can see my shoulders.
01:31:36
Speaker
isometrically contracting as I'm starting to do a deadlift and I just like zoom in on my shoulder. I'm like, look at that. That's why that's so good for my shoulder because it's co-contracting everywhere. But it's true. When you came to the CrossFit gym and we did overhead squats, and you'd never done overhead squats before and you like, you looked perfect in the overhead squat. I was like, oh my God. Just if you got hypermobile shoulders. Exactly.
01:32:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So the other thing that I wanted to mention which really resonated with me was what Trina said.
01:32:10
Speaker
about finding people that you trust and want to work with as being really super important. And then also what Alex said, which is that lifting weights just makes you feel like a badass and it expands your comfort zone. So the discomfort of strength training, which we've already discussed now is different than the discomfort of yoga. It's different than the discomfort of high-intensity interval training.
01:32:34
Speaker
in Pilates, right? It's its own kind of discomfort. This type of discomfort makes you more resilient and expands your comfort zone to be able to tolerate other heavy shit in your life. And there's actually a lot of research now pointing to the connection between lifting weights and mental health.
01:32:55
Speaker
So it's an exciting it's an exciting time for strength sides because that's a whole other realm of Free benefits that you can get I've definitely I've definitely felt like a new woman after after lifting as well Sarah because like a state that I constantly find myself in is feeling like I never have enough time and super frazzled and stressed out and
01:33:22
Speaker
I realize that it's just a mind state rather than a state of life because after I strength train, I don't feel like that anymore. Right. All right.
Conclusion and Listener Invitation
01:33:33
Speaker
I hope you've enjoyed this episode. We hope hearing perspectives from several people other than us around strength training objections and reasons they got started just helped you to think about what some of your objections might be, consciously and unconsciously, and why if you do strength train, why you got into it. You can check out our show notes for links to everyone's insta handle and any references that we mentioned in this podcast, including
01:33:55
Speaker
Link a couple of great books on the history of fitness culture for you to check out that I highly recommend. You can also visit the MovementLogic website where by joining our mailing list, you get our free barbell mini course with a free equipment guide to help you build your home gym at home because we've talked a lot about home gyms in this episode. And don't forget the free webinar is happening September 14th, which is two weeks away. And you're going to want to be there with whatever equipment you have.
01:34:24
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining us on the Moving Logic Podcast. It helps us out enormously. If you like this episode, subscribe, rate, and review. Thank you. Be moved for your most recent review. It made our week. All right. With that, we will see you next week. Oh, wait. We weren't coordinated. One, two, three. See you. OK.
01:34:50
Speaker
Okay. All right. Three, two, one. See you next week.