Adina Rubin talks her life in Israel, training women worldwide with her signature program, kettlebell training, and the issues with training with your cycle!
Helpful links, discounts, & affiliates:
•Take a strength training class with Adina: https://adina-rubin-s-school.teachable.com/p/sthh-live-call
•Peloton and Your Period: How Cycling is Ruining Your Cycle: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-4-peloton-and-your-period-how-cycling-is-ruining/id1561648184?i=1000520106227
•How to Store Fat & Slow Your Metabolism: Are you running yourself into the ground?: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-6-how-to-store-fat-slow-your-metabolism-are-you/id1561648184?i=1000522167936
•How to Strength Train for PCOS without Feeling Like a P.O.S.: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-strength-train-for-pcos-without-feeling-like-a-p-o-s/id1561648184?i=1000530156356
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TRANSCRIPT
Okay. Hi friend. Hi. From Israel. That’s right. Somehow I missed that day at school. At Aina school. Where? What? So when, how, Tell me, tell me how you are no longer in the United States with me. Okay. So. I mean, it was something that was kind of brewing for a while. I am a Jew and whoa, whoa, whoa, . You can’t say that anymore.
Um, well, that’s kind of part of it too. Like it was something we were dreaming about for a while. And then with all the covid stuff, life started to feel like super mundane and just like Groundhogs Day in New York. Yeah. Yeah. And it got to a point where we were just like, What are we doing? Like let’s go move to a super cool city where there’s just not rampant antisemitism.
And where my kids can grow up with the holidays being their holidays and the language being our [00:01:00] language and just like the communal feeling of Jews everywhere. And I don’t know it, it feels really good, . Uh, I don’t know. You and I have had such interesting conversations and it’s been a while since we’ve gotten to talk, but I, you know, I ask you all the questions and you’re always all about answering them, and I don’t, I don’t know.
It’s just so, it’s so. Fascinating. Maybe. I hope that is not an offensive word to use in reference to just everything that I’ve learned from you, everything that we’ve talked about, and I love to hear that you made that decision. Must have been still such a hard decision. Did you peel away from family and friends to do this and have you found community there?
Yes. I mean, the community is amazing. First of all, we moved to the cool city in the world. We’re in Tel Aviv, so Oh. Yeah, it’s like I act like I know anything about Tel Aviv. . I have heard of Tel Aviv. Yes, you should come visit. Um, I love to, it is like all the best things about New York City, but it’s also a small beach town, so like, The way I like to describe it is it has the energy of New York City, but the nervous system of a small beach town.
How is that possible? Right? It sounds crazy, but it’s like a big city and I can walk out my front door with one of my kids in a baby carrier pushing a stroller, like everything is at my fingertips. Like I never feel like I need to put my kids into a car seat to run an errand, which was like a big hangup for me with the suburbs.
But I’m also four buildings from the Mediterranean Sea. Like we go to the beach every single day and so, and everyone knows each other like it has that really small town feeling. We run into our friends every time we leave our front door, so it’s just delightful. is English is your first language though, right?
Yeah. And the language is hard. Okay, so what’s that? Okay, so I grew up speaking Hebrew, like in school. We all learned it in [00:03:00] school, but I’m not by any means fluent and my kids, we just like plopped them into Hebrew speaking schools. It’s been a lot of change. ? Mm-hmm. . It’s been a lot of transition. Big feelings from the kids and just like, yeah, Some days we’re just like, Well, this is very hard.
We didn’t think this through . That’s okay. Well, everyone’s adjusting. Yeah, and it’s funny cuz I feel like my husband is integrating into the language better than I am cuz he doesn’t mind sounding stupid. And that’s something I’m struggling with. Like, it’s really hard for me to just be like, I’m gonna be bad at this and sound like an idiot for a while.
Um, so yeah. I’ll get there. . Is this your first hint that you are, Everybody has that, not everybody, but many of us have those moments where you’re like, Wow, I actually really don’t wanna look stupid. Like when you really cultivate that muscle of being willing to look like an idiot and doing it anyway. Was this your first hint that you were not in favor of looking stupid in front of other.
Uh, I don’t know. Cause I’ve picked up things later in life, like sports related things that I wasn’t great at at first. So like it, I’ve definitely like known that about myself before and had to actively try to do a thing that felt really hard. Um, but languages are for sure the worst of it for me. like, I, it’s just, it just blows my mind.
But immersion, I mean, it’s the best, it’s the best way to do it, right? Yeah. And I imagine people around you are not looking at you like, get outta here. Like, it seems like everybody’s been welcoming, right? Yeah. You can get around Israel with English like it, there’s, and like basic Hebrew, you know. Um, but the thing about Israelis is they have a very, like, rough exterior for the most part.
Like, it’s kind of like, Everyone. It sort of feels like everyone is your family in that they can talk to you in more like an abusive way originally, but you know, they care deeply, you know? So like, It sounds like very New York. What I always thought of New York. Yeah, different. New York is kind of like, everyone really hates you.
here. Their hatred is genuine. This is more familial. Exactly. Familial hatred. Okay, got it. Well that’s just so cool. And you have three or four. Three. I just had my third kid seven weeks ago now. Oh my gosh. Well, you’re very gracious for coming on and doing this with me now and it’s a totally different time zone apparently, where you are.
but I’m So, last time you and I were together, you were pregnant with your second, I think. I know. That’s crazy how time goes like that. Wild. Wild. Okay. Well, what does it look like? What’s like the fitness scene over there? Because you being a strength coach and being, you know, an online entrepreneur as well, what does that look like?
It’s tough actually, and it’s something that I’m like struggling with a little bit. I have had. I work completely virtually with my clients. So I’ve actually had a few clients who live here and that was really nice when my son was born seven weeks ago because like they knew exactly what I would’ve wanted for food
That was really nice. Um, but the fitness scene is kind of similar to New York and LA in that like the city is very health conscious, but that kind of. Vegan and a lot of running and Uhhuh yoga and Pilates. I just haven’t shaken that yet. the world has not shaken that entire, that facade that what it, what, uh, what we want it to look like.
Yeah. So like it has a long way to go in that respect. There’s like one or two. Strength slash CrossFit style gyms that I’ve found. I train at home mostly, but I’m just looking for that like cultural piece. Mm-hmm. . But I’m gonna start running some keball workshops on the beach when I’m back up and running, so that’ll be fun.
Um, but yeah, it’s definitely not here yet. Well, so working out at home, this is something that’s always been a big challenge for. I don’t know if it’s the motivation or the space or what it is, and I, you know, designed, I’ve designed programs around that challenge, but I am, you know, I have a trainer and that’s one of the reasons why I work is so that I can, so that I can do that because I know that that is one thing that is really, really hard for me to navigate.
If I absolutely had to do it that way, I. But just personality type. Being an obliger, being an Enneagram six, it really feels like that trainer client relationship is what keeps me getting stronger. And which, by the way, I just was looking at my stuff from two years ago, right before I got pregnant with my second baby, and I have, I think like two pounds, either two pounds more or two pounds.
Skeletal muscle mass since then, which I don’t think is half bad to just be down about two pounds of skeletal muscle mass, and I’m about up about 2% body fat, which again, I do not care. It has nothing to do with aesthetics. It is just interesting to track different metrics and see how different things are related to each other.
But I found that somewhat interesting, but. As a trainer and as somebody who values strength training and movement and exercise, where does that motivation and that dedication come from? Not just to do it for a couple weeks, but to do it long term? You’ve been doing it that way for a long time. Yeah, so there’s definitely moments where I like hit a wall and I’m like, I need community desperately.
And I had that pretty recently before our move. Like I was just, I think it’s also that covid fatigue of just everyone being home for too long. I ended up going in to train at this like pull up club with a couple of trainers that I really respect and like, and it’s always nice to learn from other trainers too because everyone kind of has their own way and their own client experience and, and things that they’ve done.
But I was training towards a specific goal that I knew a friend of mine who was a coach had successfully programmed for other people for in the past. So I was looking for that community and I was looking for someone. Write that program for me and guide me on kind of some of my blind spots. But part of what keeps me motivated also is just that, like, I do this for work.
So a lot of times if I’m training, I’m filming sets for things that are going on, Instagram stories or you know, like stuff like that. So that definitely helps too. And also just having goals like for me, If I know that I’m looking towards, I like to set really fun goals postpartum specifically. I always like to try to aim for a pull up wearing my kid by the time they turn one.
So it’s really fun, progressive overload because the kid is getting bigger while you’re training for it. So that’s always really fun. But things like that keep me showing up where I’m just like, I know I’m training towards this thing and. Training is a non-negotiable date with myself on my calendar and obviously early in the postpartum season.
That can be tricky, but everyone in my household knows that that’s a priority for me. Like my husband is very supportive and I will always communicate very clearly. Like today is a training day and I’ve had to feed the baby X number of times, but I’m trying to fit it in before you have to go do that thing.
So like the second I’m done feeding. He’s yours. I’m going upstairs to train, you know, whatever that looks like. But that’s something I tell my clients all the time too. Like it has to go on your calendar, you have to be on a program, and it has to also be something that’s realistic for you in this season, like part of the reason that I build my programs, the way that I do more in the style of minimum effective dose training is because I’ve worked with so many moms and I’ve.
What the time availability looks like. And if you were a person who was doing CrossFit five, six days a week at 5:00 AM before you got pregnant, and you think you’re gonna maintain that in the postpartum season, like here’s a fun wake up call that’s speaking of progressive overload. Yeah. It just is gonna keep getting harder.
Yeah. Yeah. So to like, Yeah, we could train the maximum, the maximum recoverable load. That’s not gonna help the moms who just wanna feel strong. Oh man. Something popped into my head when you were saying that. Now I forgot what it is, but I, it’s something else that I wanted to ask you about. Have you always been so into kettle bells?
I know that’s, I mean, you talked about kettle bells on the beach. What is it about, what is it about the kettle bell? Okay. I could go on for a long time, but no, actually I was primarily a barbell athlete. I competed in power lifting. That was like my first foray into majorly like focusing on strength training and being on a program and all that stuff.
And I think that that was really important for me. I was a person who, I know a lot of us have a very similar story getting here, where fitness was just, To look a certain way, to be smaller, to have this obsessive thing that I did, that I was doing in a very under nurse state with all kinds of stress, and it wasn’t not pathological.
And then I got to a place where I found power lifting and it was this feeling. Oh, like I’m standing on this platform and everyone in this room is cheering for me to be the strongest version of myself, and nobody cares what size I am. The only reason my weight matters is because it just determines who I’m measured up against in, you know, But everyone there is excited for me to do better than I did on my first attempt.
So like that shift was huge for me. And also, Just that experience was like the first thing that really taught me how to program. But since then I have worked with so many women and realized that barbells aren’t going to be the answer for everyone. And I think that I have a lot to say about CrossFit.
Diana and I actually did an amazing podcast episode called CrossFit, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Um, but I think CrossFit did an amazing. Popularizing barbells and getting barbells into the hands of more women, but just realistically, the population that I work with, a barbell isn’t gonna be the answer for everyone.
And I do think that every modality has a place and every modality can get us to a specific goal depending on what that goal is. I’ve just seen with kettlebells since I started writing my programs centered around the kettlebell. I have seen it become more accessible and more sustainable to more women.
Like this past year, I had almost 500 women go through my program, which was just like so exciting and so amazing to see all of these people who had never touched load before in their lives. Never. And you know, some of them were recovering CrossFitters, as I call them, . Some of them had a very athletic past, but some of them literally had never done strength training before.
And there’s something about the kettle bell that makes it more approachable. First of all, you just need a couple of them and you can keep him in your home and you can train in your home and your pajamas in between your kids’ naps, like do a set while you’re cooking dinner and it just like fits in so well.
But I’ve also just found that people fall in love with training with bells. Like there’s something so fun about it. It’s almost like a dance when you execute these lifts correctly, and it just keeps people coming back. Like once you’ve felt that feeling in your hand, once you’ve had that feeling of. Your hips coming through properly and like the float phase of the swing, like it just, there’s something magnetic about it that makes people wanna keep coming back.
And I’ve also seen them just in incredible effective rehab tool. So people who are experiencing shoulder issues, mommy thumb, you know, like a lot of these things that so many women are complaining about. I’ve just seen the kettlebell solve it, and it’s just been awesome. Well, to me, that that feeling that you’re talking about is athleticism.
It’s feeling like Yeah, absolutely. You, yeah, like you’re the, you’re the boss of your body and that you can achieve this feat. That’s not just picking something up and putting it down. It’s. Moving something, whether that, I mean, and we do that, like babies are basically kettlebells without the handles, you know?
Yeah. Until a certain point. But that, that’s that feeling that I, I just realized over the last couple of years that I crave, like I crave feeling capable and athletic and like I can. Overcome and tackle any challenge. And I, I do, I believe like dumbbells are great. Love the barbell love all of it, but there’s a unique sense of accomplishment for sure with the kettle bell.
Yeah. There’s something super fun about it, and again, like you said, it’s such an amazing way to train athleticism. Like it sort of wraps into one, the ability to train like strength, strict. Strength, endurance power. Like there’s just sort of an explosive nature that you need to execute a lift with a kettlebell.
And the thing I find so cool about it too is yes, we can do these things with oll lifts. With barbells, like we can train explosive hip extension with a barbell clean. We can train explosive hip extension with a barbell snatch, but the kettlebell makes it much more approachable. More people. Yeah. Because the strictness of the bar path isn’t the limiting factor.
So like if you’ve had a shoulder injury or you have limited thoracic extension, you, it’s not like, Oh, you can’t snatch, you know, or you can’t clean because you can’t get your elbows up in the rack position because of your limited shoulders. Like there’s just more wiggle room with the kettlebell and. I love that, especially for prenatal and postpartum training, cuz it’s not like your growing belly is gonna ruin your bar path.
You know? Like there’s, there’s so much more room for modification with the kettle bell. Yeah. Which is again, what just makes it more approachable to more people who have never done this before and that’s so fun. Well, and as you said earlier, those space constraints aren’t there, you know, I mean, you don’t have to have a rack and you don’t have to have something mounted to the wall, or you don’t have to have room for your plates or whatever.
Or the barbell itself. It’s like you need very, I mean, I could have a barbell or I could have a, uh, set of kettlebells in my closet and get stuff done right in here without, I could hide in here and do my workout if I wanted to. I couldn’t do that with a barbell. So that’s, I used to joke about that actually, when I was living in New Jersey because, Jim was in the garage and in the winter it was so freezing that like sometime I put like a little Dyson heater in there and it did help.
But I had my upstairs bells and my downstairs bells , like there were the days where I just like couldn’t make it down the one flight of stairs. We’re not doing the downstairs bells today. Exactly. Too cold. I remember what I was wanting to say before this idea that you brought up of being on a program, and not everyone can afford the customization, but when you are niche, like when your approach to fitness is niche, as yours is, and as my trainers is, You are by nature more customized than something like Beach Body or Peloton or whatever you get from those programs.
And you can totally disagree with me on this, but what that brought up with me was like, I’ve said before, I do like about Peloton and Beach Body, that it’s like it empowers people to like join this community and feel good about themselves and own their fitness, and that’s great. Especially over the last couple of years when gyms were just not the same as they used to be.
But at the same time, it’s the same thing as you were saying about CrossFit. It’s like, It’s really just making you sore and tired. The preponderance of what you can pull from those programs is you’re sore, you’re tired, cardiovascularly, you’re probably adding some, some level of fitness. But these opportunities to customize and to work with someone, whether online or in person, that can really work with your strengths and weaknesses, I feel like is just, it’s just the gold standard.
It’s where you get the. Mileage. So how do you approach that? Yeah, I’m always thinking about looking at what people have and trying to give them what they need. And it’s a hard thing to do on a larger scale, and I was one of those coaches who was like terrified to first of all move things online and second of all, to start writing self-paced programs for the masses because I was so meticulous.
Watching all my clients move and, you know, nitpicking and coaching and all that stuff. And I actually found that once I moved things virtually, my clients became more independent. Quickly. Like, more quickly because they were doing things on their own as opposed to like outsourcing their fitness to me.
Mm-hmm. , like I had some when I was training. New York. I had some clients who I’d been seeing for like five years, and I would be setting them up for a deadlift and they’d be like, Which one’s that Again, you know, like it just, there’s a certain autonomy that came to clients who were working out themselves with programs online, which I’ve loved, but the way that I build my programs is just after years and years of working with people.
and seeing what the majority of people need and making sure that that is a part of the program. So there are certain things that aren’t gonna change no matter who the client is. Like, we’re gonna push, we’re gonna pull upper, lower body, we’re gonna lunge, we’re gonna rotate, we’re gonna carry. But there is certain nuance with the specifics of the populations that I work with, where from coaching so many people, I have found that there are certain ways to cue things.
That are just gonna fix most stuff for moms. And yeah, like of course seeing someone one on one or at a point, there’s always like clients who will ask certain things in the chat and I will say like, have you seen a pelvic floor physical therapist yet, for example, You know? But things that I have found to just be going on for a lot of people, I think.
Once you’ve seen that and you’ve worked with enough people in that way, there’s a way to build programs that it’s going to solve problems for a lot of people, even though they are geared towards a mass audience. Like one thing that I joke about, and Diane and I talk about this on our podcast all the time too, is like all of the women who come through my program are just clenching their but , they’re just.
Holding onto their butthole for dear life. And so the way that IQ movement and the way that IQ breath work is geared towards breathing into your butthole and relaxing your butthole, and it has solved problems for so many people. There are many, many differences in the pre pregnancy butthole and the postpartum butt hole’s.
Lovely. I can certainly attest to that. Yeah. So. That’s a thing where it is customization, but it is for a lot of people. . Yes. Yes. Well, that’s, that’s scaling. And I feel like some people, the idea of scaling is kind of like, Ooh. Like they feel a little weird about it. Yeah. And when they look at it, the control, Well, letting go of the control, but also like, That it’s in some way greedy, where you’re like scaling your business, but like it’s scaling your impact.
And I found that as a, in my nutritional therapy business, where it was like, you can say the same things over and over and over on one-on-one sessions with people, but if. For the most part, everybody’s needing the same or close to the same baseline. You can actually scale your impact and the number of people that you can help by putting something together that is, that is scalable and repeatable and not you having to trade this information for an hour of somebody’s time.
So I just think that’s brilliant and that’s part of the reason I kind of went online. 10 years ago I had a brick and mortar office. I was seeing people one on one and then I started doing group coaching cuz I realized I was needing to work through the same things over and over again. So then we get people together in a group, and then at a certain point I was like, It’s time to write a book.
It’s time to write a course. It’s time to take it online so that you can actually impact a broader swath of people. You know, it’s, it’s efficiency, but it’s also impact. Yeah. And it’s also like everyone thinks that they. Extremely unique and special. And you are, I am unique and special. You are you, millennial you, but there are certain foundations that everyone is missing.
Like for example, eating enough protein, You know, like you can do all. Supplement protocols in the whole wide world and all the biohacking. But like if you are a grown ass adult and you’re eating less than a hundred grams of animal protein a day, like let’s start there, you know? Yeah, yeah. For sure. Okay.
What else did I wanna ask you about this, um, these individual things that you see just repeated over and over. So the butthole, the protein, I dunno if I like saying those in the. Sentence. It’s fine. , It’s fine. It’s totally fine. What, what else is there for me? I see, And by the way, I don’t think I told you this.
I meant to tell you this when we were chatting beforehand, I, I don’t think I’ve said this. Publicly anywhere, either. Not that anybody cares, I’m going to get my C P T starting this month, which I’m really, really excited about. Yeah, I’m super excited because I’ve just, it, it’s more just for my own, for my own knowledge and for the fact that I’ve been a quote unquote fitness model for a program underneath this, a personal trainer.
Um, but I love to be able to talk about all of these more in-depth concepts, but one of the more compelling things that I realized was. How impactful controlled articular rotations are? The cars, the series of cars, for me personally, especially as I get older. So that’s one where I’m like, I would love to, to impress upon people the importance of some of these like core foundational mobility exercises, types of things.
Do you see besides the protein and the butthole that, Let’s see how many times we can say butthole? What else do you see? Wait, do you know this joke with Diane? No. No. Oh, the joke is that like every single podcast episode, we somehow mention butt holes and Costco. Like that’s Butts and Costco. That’s our brand at this point.
Oh, that’s amazing. That’s a great hashtag. Are we still doing hashtags? I don’t even know what is the internet really? What? I have no idea. So what else, What else is there? Yeah, I mean, like you were saying about the mobility, I am very committed to helping people get their joints to be just a little bit juicier.
Mm-hmm. and stretching, ain’t it? You know, like I think that people have wasted so much time thinking that they have to stretch as they age, and something that I really emphasize with my work. Breath work. First of all, we’re all just sleeping on the breath, but also, you feel me taking a deep breath right now.
Yeah. Get after it. Yeah. Um, Loaded mobility is like the game changer for all of my clients, and I think that that’s something that the kettlebell gives us incredible access to as well. Just like teaching people how to, first of all, hold and stabilize load, like I think. A lot of the things that I hear people complaining about, it’s like, just a little bit of strength.
We’ll fix this, you know? Mm-hmm. , um, like we were saying about just people, I think something that’s been missing in our life, and I know you emphasize this as well, is like, play, but like touching the ground. Like I think. When I put someone into a beast hold for the first time. And also, I encourage all my clients to train barefoot because I just think we’re missing out on so much with our feet.
But when I put my clients into a beast, hold for the first time, like all fours, get those knees off the ground and let’s just see how we can hold ourselves on the floor. And the first week of the program, there is so much complaint from people. Let’s not say complaint, let’s say feedback. There’s always so much feedback.
My wrists hurt. My hands hurt. My fingers hurt, my toes hurt, and when it’s three weeks later and all of a sudden, none of that stuff hurts. And your hands are super strong and it just feels better to touch the earth and to support yourself on the floor. Like that’s a huge, huge thing that shifts so much up the entire chain, right?
Like the shoulders get stronger, the risks get stronger, the elbows get stronger. It’s just we haven’t put ourselves in this position for long enough as we age. And if you don’t use it, you lose it. And where in there are you not training, are you, are you not? Does that not train stability as well? It seems like that part and parcel to that is also the stability piece, which yeah, absolutely.
Maybe we don’t worry about it now, but I see. I don’t know if he listens to my podcast or not, but God love you, dad. Like I see my dad and stability is very much one of his pain points, and I know for myself, I don’t wanna be there in 30. Yeah. And I think that a lot of people are dealing with that now, but it disguises itself as tightness.
Ah. So like especially at the pelvis, like people who are, think that they’re dealing with super tight hips and really it’s just like they’re soaz has clamped down to. Their pelvis because their abductors weren’t doing it. Their low abs weren’t doing it, their pelvic floor wasn’t doing it. So oftentimes the women that I work with who have gravitated towards yoga their whole life, because maybe they were successful at it, because they were always the flexible one, you know, and.
Right. They like, you feel successful in that yoga class because you can get into the poses that the other people can’t. Mm-hmm. , the teacher says, Were you a ballerina? , So, and then you have a baby and everything hurts, and your body just feels so tight now because your body just clinging to some level of stability.
But if we just give you that stability, we solve the tightness too. Yeah. You. Yeah, all things are related. Another thing I wanted to ask you about, I’m gonna skip around here, but I don’t wanna miss the opportunity to ask you about this. This is something that I talked about in an earlier episode of Liz Talks where someone wrote in and asked me a question related to working out with your cycle.
I either talked about this in the podcast or in an Instagram post. I can’t remember, but you talked about this recently. Yes. At least on your Instagram, and I was like, Yes. Can we talk about that real quick? Your, your opinion? Oh, yeah. Your thoughts around working out with one’s cycle. Yes. I’m so glad you asked.
I mean, The program that I run is literally called strength training for Happy Hormones, and I’m very, very focused on helping people to train in a way that supports their hormone health, their metabolic health. And I teach people how to train with their cycle, but that looks very different than the infographics that you are seeing all over Instagram.
So, so, What a lot of people are hearing now is okay, so we have to train in accordance with our cycle. So in the menstrual phase, You gotta just do some gentle stretching and yoga and in the follicular phase, go ahead, do that strength training, and then in your ovulatory phase, you’re gonna feel amazing.
Take a hit class in your lal phase, like let’s start to tone it down. Just go for some walks. And that my friends is not programming and you will never get strong if you do that . So strength train the entire time and just adjust it a little bit. If you feel really, really disoriented in your lal phase and you feel like, you know what, this Turkish get up is not gonna happen because my proprioception is all off.
So maybe I was able to do a Turkish get up with a 16k. Last week, but now I feel like I’m gonna use my 12 kg and I’m gonna rest an extra minute in between because things just aren’t firing the way they should be. But I’m still gonna recover from my workout just fine if I make those adjustments. Or maybe I just need like a little bit more carbs this week because that’s what my metabolism is asking me for.
So I’m still gonna do my strength training as programmed, but I’m gonna focus on the recovery piece a little bit more. So I’m gonna sleep a little bit better and I’m going to eat a little bit more, or. In that first week of my cycle, maybe I’m feeling a little crampy or maybe I’m just feeling a little low energy.
So I’m gonna start, I’m gonna do my breath work and maybe it’ll feel good to do one set of everything and then I’ll stop. Or maybe that’ll make me feel even better and I’ll finish my workout for the day. But like, stick to your strength training program that I pray that you are on and just adjust certain variables.
Based on feedback you are getting from your body, not based on feedback you are getting from an infographic. Sorry. So good. Should I stepped down now? No, I’m like, this is the poll quote we’re gonna use for this podcast. That’s so good. There’s just so many things, so many things wrong with this idea of telling a woman that based on her cycle, she should or shouldn’t do one thing or another.
It completely misses the point. And I’m talking about, in particular, strength training. I’m talking about this idea that your body is less capable because of where you are in your cycle. In my opinion, and this is gonna be much less articulate than what you said, but there’s a variability of stimuli that we can inc.
Every time you work out, you check in with yourself. Exactly as you were saying. How do I feel today? Like, am I feeling like I need something a little bit less neurologically challenging, and maybe something a little more straightforward. Rather than saying, I’m not gonna serve up this stimulus to my body because it’s less effective in managing it.
I think there is a point to actually training and using the stimuli at multiple points in the cycle so we can get better at it, so we can cope and compensate and. And rise to the challenge. I guess this is not a fully formed thought, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being aware of how you perform across your cycle.
And there’s a little bit of literature around when you know one thing works better than another thing, which, whether it’s a follicular phase or I think it’s a follicular phase. I can’t remember. You’re probably more familiar. But at the same time, I don’t know that it’s the strongest research and the most broadly applicable research.
And I don’t know that they were taking into account nutrition and sleep and all of these other factors that can impact and that can be adjusted based on where you are to potentially make your training just as effective as it was two weeks ago. Yeah, and everything’s information too. Like I’ve certainly had that experience where.
I’ve been late LAL phase, and I’ve been doing my workout and I’m trying to put that super heavy press overhead and it just won’t go up the way it did last week. And I’m like, Oh, all right. My period is starting tomorrow. Like now I have that information and all it means is put down that kettlebell and pick up the next one down and just finish out with a little bit of a drop set, you know?
Mm-hmm…and that’s fine. And I. It’s just one of those things that people get a little obsessed with the, you know, this is another thing that I can Yes, control or another set of rules I can follow and it’s not gonna serve you because we’re all super different too. Like some people will feel super, super strong on day one and two of their cycle.
Might recover really, really well then and like that’s the time that they can pay PR and other people will wanna PR around ovulation cuz they just feel that surge of energy and like it’s like, I can do this now even though your hormones are climbing and maybe you won’t recover as well. It’s just, again, more data points and just like pay attention to how your body feels.
Yeah. And don’t use it as an excuse to not move your. Right, And if the long term goal is being healthy and maintaining muscle mass long term, which we know is predictive of how you age and how healthy you are as you age and injuries as you age in recovery, as you age, if that’s the point, then. Maintain that strength training priority, but maybe your, your off days are different.
Like maybe depending on where you’re on your cycle. You’re doing something gentle. You’re walking, you’re really, you know, doing your breath work, you’re doing yoga and maybe a different point in your cycle. Your off days are you’re playing tennis or you’re doing something a little more interesting.
You’re rock climbing, you’re doing, moving your body in a way that’s maybe a little bit different, but that priority. That priority for me personally is to, to build muscle mass now so that I can maintain it as I age. And really, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but a lot of these infographics, these people that are, are.
Promoting this means of training in a much more rigid and sort of subscript descriptive a word, like a subscription type way. Like this is what I do and this is what you should do too. Or actually quite a bit younger from what I can tell. I don’t know how old you are, but it’s nice when you’re in your twenties and.
You’re kind of, anything works, anything feels good, you’re finally listening to your body. You’re finally kind of figuring out how you exist in the world, and, and everything’s good, Everything works. But when you’re 39 like me, you gotta start, you know, putting together a hierarchy of needs. I also just feel like no one is strong enough.
Like, I agree, and I have been strength training in earnest for a long time and I went and picked up my two year old the other day and I was like, Oh shoot, I got some work to do. I just feel like a lot of the infographics I see are from people who have never really been on a program. Yeah. You know, like everyone’s just kind of baselining it.
I’ve done some weight lifting but not truly understood what it means to like be on a progressive program that gets you stronger week to week, and that’s fine to do with any phase of your cycle. Like if, if you are a person who’s only ever gone to this hit class and gone to that CrossFit class, or did this workout, I found on YouTube and maybe that one workout was super.
And you thought to yourself like, This is hard. This is strength training. Like I can’t do this the day before my period starts. You’ve never really been on a strength training program that is very, you know exactly what to expect when you show up to your workout every day and it doesn’t leave you in a sweat.
Angel on the floor, like you leave the workout feeling like I still have energy to go about the rest of my day. Mm-hmm. , like maybe, maybe the quote unquote strength training that these people are doing. Is just not it like, it’s just, it’s Have you ever actually done a well designed strength training program?
If you think you can’t do this all throughout your cycle, You know what I’ve noticed interestingly, is when I really need like a neurological boost, when I’ve got a lot of work to do that day, uh, we will do like deadlifts, like we will do something like leg heavy where we are just pushing that blood flow like here and then all the way back through the body again, I don’t know what it is, but back in the day, back in the CrossFit day, something like that, I would do something stupid that would completely burn me out, that would leave me.
Sweat angel on the floor and I wouldn’t be able to do anything else for the rest of the day. But now I can do a really tough lift and feel like I have more energy for the rest of the day on a sustainable basis, not just once or twice. And then like the cortisol thing crashes and then I burn out. It’s like smart, dedicated strength training can leave you with more energy, not.
Right. It’s like, yeah, I mean, I could go on forever about the pro, the quote unquote programming and CrossFit. Like it’s just doing so many women such a disservice, like 15, 12, 9 with no rest is not the same thing as three by five with three to five minutes of rest in between sets, you know, slightly different.
Just slightly different. And all of this, you know, I. I don’t want to be dismissive of people’s experiences because I wouldn’t feel like I had figured out what I feel like I have figured out had I not. Popped into a CrossFit class 10 years ago. So there’s a journey here, you know, and I feel like maybe my job food wise, and maybe you feel like this is your job fitness wise, is to keep people on that journey.
Like keep, keep moving forward. Like we all kind of go through these phases and these places, but let’s keep going. Let’s, let’s keep moving to the next thing so that you can continue to improve. You know what’s funny? The internet is so funny. So when reels first started, I was like, This form of media is so perfect for my sense of humor and the way I like to deliver information.
Like, I’m gonna get on this right away. And I jumped on it. And in the beginning I was like cranking out the reels and they were hilarious. And like they were blowing up and I was getting, like, I was having a reach that I never quite had on Instagram before. And I got trolls coming out the woodwork that I had never, never experienced in my life.
And obviously you can hear the things I talk about and the tone with which I talk about them, but I had a couple of reels where I was talking about strength training and they just blew up to the point where like crazy trolls in the comment sections telling. That because I was trying to promote this like really approachable, sustainable strength training that I was super ableist and I was the problem with the fitness industry, like people should just be moving and I am the problem with the whole fitness industry and the reason no one’s moving.
And it made me laugh so hard because , I’m glad you could laugh about that. Yeah. It’s just so funny that like I was trying to make this thing more approachable to more people to actually feel good and capable in their bodies, but because I was telling them that like doing Peloton seven days a week for two hours is.
Sustainable and supportive of their metabolic and hormone health. Like I’m the problem with the fitness industry. Anyways, I just thought about that because I feel like I can’t help but express my thoughts and feelings about the CrossFit programming. But like I said, I do think they did a wonderful job creating community around fitness and popularizing strength and power lifts for women.
And again, if you wanna hear me talk more about this, like we did a dedicated podcast. Going through all the pros and cons there. Um, but again, it’s like so many people are leaving this strength training thing at the door and not realizing how much easier this is to do long term than all the things they’ve tried before.
Mm-hmm. and how much more sustainable this is and how much better. It just makes their every single thing about their life. And so, I can come off as sounding like dismissive of other forms of fitness, but it’s like I don’t want other people to make the mistakes that I’ve made or to make the mistakes that I’ve seen so many people make before they find my programs and things like that.
Like it’s just, I feel like I have to speak this way because the marketing is so strong from those companies. and I just, And it’s cheap. And it’s cheap and it’s addictive because of the cortisol and so, I just, I just wanna help all the women and keep them from wasting their time. . Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, it’s, it’s, there’s efficiency to it as well.
You can get more out of it in less time. So, you know, Lord knows I don’t feel like I have a whole lot of time. I used to have time to go to CrossFit five days a week at 5:00 AM. Not so much anymore, but you can do a blessing in disguise, a hundred percent , that I can do two to three days a week. And I mean, you know, it is a time investment going and meeting with a trainer, but at this point I’ve also wrapped it in as part of my job.
So that’s, you know, another justification for it. But thinking of Liz, Liz, without that aspect, Liz, without that aspect, professionally, actually trying to make it my job. If I didn’t have that, what I would need is something that I could do at home that did condition me metabolically, cardiovascularly, whatever you wanna say.
That built strength, that built mobility, and you can do all of that with a kettlebell at home in a couple hours a week or less. Whatever you can do, you can shave it down, like you said earlier to. To one set. If that’s the time that you have, and that’s what your body’s telling you, you can make a huge impact if you’re doing the right things.
Yeah, just that’s the thing though, is like so many people get trapped spinning their wheels and just like saving Instagram posts and doing the one YouTube video, and then this day I hop on the Peloton and mm-hmm. again, like we talked about with that cycle conversation. Of course you’re gonna hit a wall and feel like you’re not getting anywhere, like trust the people that know the stuff and put together the thing that solves the problem.
It’s really the closest thing to a shortcut is just following a program that’s well designed by someone who knows what they’re doing. And eat enough protein. Oh yeah. Eat the protein. Yeah. And stop clenching the butthole. , eat the protein. Thank you for gifting that beautiful concept to my podcast. I appreciate it very much.
It’ll change everything I’m telling you. Well, maybe we should wrap it up on that note. Thank you so much, my friend, for coming on with me. It is a pleasure.
