Over 70 and Shredded: The Guide to Building Muscle at Any Age | Michelle & Joan MacDonald

51:27If there is shame around it or if there's any of those things, there's a ton of resources. And again, it's a spectrum, which I think is really, really important. And we in our journey move through different pieces of it. So just being cognizant of that, staying agile. What you need, your needs and your experiences today should not and likely won't be your needs and experiences in a future environment. And then we always aspire to grow, have a growth mindset. I can't do this yet. This is, and don't, don't, don't shame. And please embrace pharmacological intervention where it's appropriate and where there's research and the safety protocols have been in place.

52:08Do you consider yourself now resolved or in remission? Okay. Oh, yeah. So as you are coaching people, do you think the orientation towards health or towards nutrition, is there a way to do it without putting people into this kind of obsessive way? Because what I'm hearing you say is that the eating disorder was a coping mechanism. It wasn't directly related to the food. Exactly. But now, as we think about the world of health and wellness and nutrition and the use of GLP-1s, do you think that as we start to reorient ourselves to nutrition, that it puts people at a higher risk? Or does it become a higher risk?

52:55Have you seen that as women are trying to transform their body? It's a very complex issue. I'm glad you brought it up. as a coach I would say number one I have to provide a strategy that somebody can execute on and I need to educate you on the pieces the protocol that I'm asking you to do whether it's educating you without clobbering you over the head educating you around the why that we're choosing to focus on fiber or the why around we're choosing to train this way or not train this way or why we're doing the cardiovascular piece for now for where your body is now and give them choices so that they can make an empowered choice right well if we don't want to do this then can you get blood work done so we make sure we're not getting deficiencies right so talking like that giving them choices, creating space.

53:54I also have to be able to assess, you know, the fit of what it is that they're asking to achieve with where they are in terms of their ability to regulate themselves. So before we turn the cameras on, we were talking about emotional and maybe it wasn't emotional regulation, but it was more nervous system regulation. Which is tied into emotions. Yes. And what you were talking about is really, if you cannot regulate your nervous system, then it's going to become much more difficult to make the next best decision, whether it is training or whether it is food. Because, you know, we've all been in a very stressed state.

54:44Typically, those decisions, if you cannot bring it down five notches, are not going to be good decisions. This all kind of brings things full circle that while we talk about training and we talk about nutrition, we also have to recognize that there is a discernment component. Yeah. Because as a coach, that's outside my lane to coach you strategy around an eating disorder. But disordered eating takes place on a spectrum. Right. And so I'm not going to be a I call it a lazy coach and say, well, I can't. I there's nothing I can offer you because you can't control yourself around food right there's definitely education I can do there there's strategies I can offer but when it comes to an actual eating disorder that's out of my lane okay right and there's that assessment that has to happen and also great communication because that is a different that is a different place and from my experience if I look back and think if I had had great help could I have shortened that window of time and then what would great help look like right so could I have shortened that window of time of suffering get those years back oh my gosh like I was not able to you know go out on a date without thinking about food and how I was gonna go purge afterwards like I just wasn't present and it was just such a waste of of energy I think women are fantastic we're fabulous we can change the world we can create jobs for other people we can shift legislation we can have babies like there's so much that we can do and we're really taking out a main a major player that can contribute to society when a significant portion of the population is wasting their energy with this immolation like we just it it needs to stop and that's you know what drives me changing the narrative it's really changing the narrative i say around aging for women but it's really about what does it mean to be a woman what does it mean to be strong right what is masculine what is feminine how what can we do now as gen xers right to change the narrative for the the gals that are coming up behind us right the gals that are in their 10s and 15s and 16s right now and it's a it's an extremely important conversation right i look at my daughter she's six but i mean she's watching She's seeing just, again, we don't, she's not allowed on social media per se.

57:11She's also not allowed on electronics. You know, I recently took the kids to the park and I decided that we should all do a push-up challenge. You know, I don't know if I'm a very popular parent, but anyway, I'm not. And, you know, out of all the kids, it was, you know, five boys and my daughter. Yeah. And did she? She was the one who wanted to do it. And the boys were like, I can't do that. So it's interesting. It's an interesting perspective, because I hadn't really thought about it until now is we think, okay, well, what does strength look like? And if someone was starting on their journey, and let's say they've got a great coach, and they're lucky enough to be coached by you, and you collectively, do you pick if you were to say if I call my mom, and we say, okay, we're going to give her three exercises that we want her to do?

58:08That's difficult, right? But are there three exercises that you feel as a coach that everyone should be able to do? Three movements. Everybody should be able to do wall pushes, which is you're standing so far away from the wall, hands on it, like around this area. So your hands are towards your chest. Okay. Push butt. push push like as if you're doing a push-up but you're doing it against the wall working with bands they're fabulous I've had to do different exercises with bands you can a small even a two-pound barbell in your hand against I love hearing you say that and I want to talk to you about why love you against with the band in your hand as well and you step on it and you lift it up like you do a bicep curl bicep curl that's should be easy for anyone okay so you got two you could hold on to the um a counter like it's assisted but you can bend your knees like squat down try to keep your back as straight as you can and squat down as far as you can and you keep doing that within a week you're going to change that we probably say squat to sit into a chair and get back up again oh yeah yeah well yeah i know i know that a lot of people you know for older people they have to you know have to hold on to both sides and and and rock until they get up it's very difficult for a lot of people especially when they're in shape and even if they're younger like before they're 40 i know of girls that can't even do that and it's happening earlier earlier i do not believe that sarcopenia which is oh it's happening so fast that's right yeah 2016 sarcopenia which is a decreased muscle mass functionality and strength is considered a disease of the older population i do not believe that to be true i believe that there are going to be phenotypes of youth starting oh yeah you name it way earlier decrease muscle mass of strength and function yeah michelle did you say what are the three things people should be able to do or what so there are a handful of questions that we get from the audience yeah and one of those is the three best exercises for a beginner a woman in her 40s is starting and again i know yeah that's i i gonna give you a nuanced answer.

1:00:45I know in your viewers. I have a few answers. Do you want to tell me what you think? Yes. Tell me what you think. I think that everyone, but again, I mean, they're obviously, I need to be able to provide an answer. Just don't say everyone should be able to do 10 push-ups because you'll end up, you'll die on the cross for that. But what I will say is that I'll provide an answer because I can give you a thought process to why. Yeah. I think everyone should be able to carry hold something and carry this functional movement this would be you know a movement that i think that we do all the time that helps with activities of daily and stay independent yep so be able to carry yes you have to be able to do a carry now if i were to pick my second best exercise do i think that you have to do a push-up you don't have to it's my favorite exercise because it's just fun who doesn't love to do sets of push-ups but you should be able to push It could be a wall push.

1:01:39It could be a push-up. But I do think that upper body strength, but I'm not tied to that answer of a push-up. If I had to pick a third exercise, what do people have to do? I do think from a value perspective, someone should be able to, and you guys, the coaches might all yell at me, but to put something overhead. You have to be able to, again, you know, I'm a trained geriatrician, which is, did you Yeah, I know you are. Of course I do. So after seeing all of these people in nursing homes, we begin to think about, as they're going to physical therapy, what keeps them out of a nursing home? They have to be able to get up off the toilet.

1:02:19They have to be able to carry their stuff. And they have to be able to put stuff away. So my third exercise, again, you can pick it, but some kind of overhead activity. It doesn't have to be a heavily loaded one. But those would be my three. I think those are brilliant. I want to hear your three. um you know if i if i'm talking from yeah i had dr stewart phillips on my podcast um stronger by design i love dr stew phillips he's fabulous won't come back on our show i'm just kidding she's a good buddy i've known him for years i love that um and we we had some tension because i'm a coach and i'm i specifically about changing the narrative for women and and and i'm like we can do more right so i agree and him and i disagree i know i'm like i'm not going to say go for a walk i'm not going to say pick up the pen well how is that going to help with type 2 muscle fibers yeah so okay so do but you are being called to action here but i um i do agree that at a minimum right two great purposeful intentional gotta add those caveats in intentional strength training programs and we can start low if we're talking about getting people started so then it would be like well what should you be able to do you should be able to get up from the floor unless you have a you know joint issue that prevents that from happening but if you fall down you want to be able to independently get yourself up off so what's your exercise let's say they're in their 40s so they're younger would it still be a push-up or some kind of push uh for that piece you're looking at core strength and you're um there would be pushing involved right so you got to push yourself to get onto your feet there'd be knee mobility so you'd have to train This is sorry, but the truth is to get up off the floor you'd have to train all of those different pieces to get you up off the floor.

1:04:10give me three exercises i gave you three and i'll say overhead press and i've given you three you have to give me three okay well to just get to just be able to functionally get up off the floor you three best exercises three beginner exercises for women and we'll just say 40 40s and 50s i'm going to caveat and i'll probably get burned on the cross for this i'm going to say what should a strong 40 year old i love it but they're but they're a beginner so so this is what you can aspire to and what you have to train for so you have to do some kind of a squat or leg press movement so they're the same movement i was very curious about that right um i don't know the answer to that so you think a squat or leg press this is good so if you can put a barbell on your back where you have access to like a safety squat and you don't have hip dysplasia or torn down we're talking about like if you could do this thing and these are real points for a 40 year squat and you're in shape right because we're not talking about total mass but like more lean mass squat your body weight that's going to be a shock to some people i got i've got a lot of pushback from that a strong it's okay we don't care about those people i'm female you should do that if you can't do those things you're on a leg press then i would say we're looking at you know including the sled for like eight reps okay great for eight reps did you say sled the sled but well you're actually pushing okay hammer strength like 118 just just the sled alone but you should be able to leg press for eight to 12 reps double your body weight okay you're 120 pounds 240 so the sled plus i'm not gonna do that math the sled plus right right that's a strong average female so so periodize yourself to that goal do you have one more there's two more right so that takes care of the lower body okay the upper body again this is the pull piece right um so you should be able to lift off the floor a strong female 1.5 your body weight pull off the floor pull off the floor would this be a strong deadlift what kind of exercise if you don't have back issues and you could do a deadlift off the floor or a median deadlift or like a belt squat machine rdl that would be pulling off the floor for eight reps now that's going to seem like a lot of weight for some people but i have so many clients that are actually able to do that after a certain period of time.

1:06:32So somebody that was 120 pounds, you know, you're looking at, um, sorry, I said 1.5. I take that back one and a quarter times for eight reps. So somebody that was like a hundred pounds, a hundred pounds, they're going to be able to lift 125 pounds. And this exercise would be the, um, belt squat. You can do a belt squat romanian deadlift okay right yeah safe um that could be a deadlift or a barbell romanian deadlift so those would be the options if you don't have contraindications with your back and you might have that yes yeah for sure if you can't do that then i would say well let's move to because that's your whole posterior chain and there's definitely a skill to that uh and if you don't know what you're doing i would definitely get some training to how to do that properly if you have contraindications then could you do a t-bar um machine where your chest is supported for that you know probably we're looking at half you know a third to half your body weight so working yourself towards being able to that pulling motion with that's your back your arms uh your and your your lower back would be secured so i would be very specific to that why that's important again very functional your back as a woman your back the back side of your body your back your glutes, your hamstrings can really put a lot of mass on and if we're talking about aging well, we want to have a decent amount of muscle mass.

1:07:57So where are you going to put that on? It's not probably not going to be your pecs. It's probably going to be the backside of your body and we see that when we do the before and afters, the backside, we see all this muscle over the course of a year and it's really exciting. It's easy to see. It gets you, you know, hooked into your why, like why am I doing all this stuff? It's working. When we think of the typical, if I think of baby boomers are older and i think of their posture oh right i'm not a baby right it's terrible yeah by the way for those who are listening strong back you want to hit the 80s with really strong back strong glutes that's going to be how you're moving forward and so that's your your lower body that's the pull piece either it's pulling including your your legs or it's pulling just the back only and then there would have to be i would want to have that push piece in there for sure so making sure that that be a sled push or any kind of push it could be a sled push it could be i'm not going to say probably three years ago i would say every woman should be able to bench press but with my clients majority being in their 50s and seeing the amount of shoulder and elbow and inflammation issues tendinitis cropping up I'm like ah you know what I'd sadly I've got to take that off the table so making sure that you are training your your pecs and your front delts and I like functional movements like the sled push if you have access to it but if you have something like like mom said like an incline push up and bringing that incline down if you can do that push I take overhead pushing off just because it's uh i have so there's a lot of injuries but a lot of clients you make a really good point how do we you know and i'm probably wrong on that there there has to be a way to be able to get stronger in that plane yeah usually usually the flat press or a machine press i'm getting really strong with that so in the old days i would have said with the bench press you should be able to bench press like for eight reps half your body weight but we don't know where anyone came up with these numbers, do we?

1:10:04Oh, I'm giving you those numbers as a coach, right? A strong female and what I see my average client being able to achieve, no matter if she's never weight lifted before, in a year or two where we can get her to, that's what I'm seeing across the board. Like I'm seeing girls in their 60s, being able to hip thrust 225 pounds. And I like the pushing piece because your triceps, your pecs, those are important, especially when we think of getting up off the floor. Can we talk about glutes? oh we always can talk about glutes i love glutes because i don't have any and i would like to know for myself this is true i'm asking for a friend who's sitting in front of me who's sitting next to me who is me are there certain exercises that are the best for building your glutes you have great glutes i like the frog one good i do that one do you yes laying your legs down face down.

1:10:55I get pushback from that one. People are like, I feel so embarrassed at the gym. But it is a goodie. Okay wait, so this is not the frog pump. Is this where you're laying on your back? No, this is when you're laying on on a bench on your face. I've done that. And you lift the barbell with arch of your feet. Carlos is fired. Carlos Mata, my trainer, he's fired. I've never done that one. You can really feel it. I'd sit with Brett on this one. I mean, he's just studied this so much. I usually make the barbell hip thrust or the glute machine hip thrust. In my most beginners, that will be the one lift.

1:11:32I really try to make sure that the coaches are putting that in. So we have a bunch of programs and the hip thrust will be in there. The only caveat would be somebody at home that didn't have access to that. We'll still do like a dumbbell hip thrust. But couldn't you use bands and tighten the bands on both sides of a bunch and then use You can, but there's a journey that a woman, in my experience, and I can only speak from my bubble, right? There's a journey that a woman goes through where, and I think my mom's video that made it onto, I think it was like the Google. You send it to us. We'll post that.

1:12:04Yeah, she was on like the Google, no, the YouTube year wrap up, and it was her hip thrusting 200 pounds for, I think it was 12 reps. and as a coach she had never barbell hip thrust before but I saw her I said try this hip thrust and her movement patterns were great and so I said I said let's let's work on this and within I think a week or two I was like let's keep putting weight on let's keep putting well yeah you had you and Hattie were there egging me on we were all those are good friends you know but she didn't know the weight she was using and when I said hey she's putting it on I'm not even me seeing what it is she was shocked and so a lot of us again women were so we're so ingrained that we're not strong and um and we lack that confidence going into the gym and there's so much empowerment when you put those big big girl plates on the 45s and you can walk into a gym and you can move that weight and so that's part of that mindset journey that I like to coach and And it's a very safe movement.

1:13:11It's a very short range of motion. There's not a lot of skill involved, honestly. And there's glute machines now all over the place in gyms, so we can always do that. If I really feel I want to pull back on any skill aspects to that lift to be able to acclimatize being strong safely. And we know from research that it is as effective as a squat. And a squat has much more difficulty when it comes to skill. And injury risks. And injury risks. I still think I coach a lot of gals from zero to hero with it and it can be done but there is more skill required from the coach especially online however so glutes for me hip thrust love it that would be my my number one good I love doing this we I always have that in my program so this is good to know I guess I have to rehire my my coach my trainer but you said something that I want to just pause on and that is moving safely and that exercise and training is a skill so important how do women in midlife take care and prevent injury are there ways in which totally easy okay in the modern era it's so easy you've got a smartphone videotape yourself if you're in a fussy gym you can either change gyms there are stealth ways you can videotape yourself now with your watch put the phone on put a magnetic piece on it go put it somewhere be totally unobtrusive um i always just like switch gyms if you can but you can videotape yourself and why is that important because you can see right a lot of times on youtube i think jeff nippert is great yes jeff jeff i'm going to the gym yeah and i have bad form or i don't really know necessarily what i'm doing and i want to hire somebody not but let's say i'm traveling and i don't want to get injured okay if i'm going in there is there a way machines that i can that's what i was going to ask use machines or are there common mistakes that you see when women come to you that they do that put them at risk for injury yeah absolutely so um number one like use machines if in doubt you don't have time um you're already making 50 decisions in life you can't go on youtube and look at uh shorts by by by jeff nippert on how to do a lateral raise then go do a lateral raise machine you're so locked in that you really can't screw around with your movement such good advice um if you have the scope you know to hire somebody that is tried and true for example they have clients that are your avatar they can literally tell you oh my god this was me five months ago i've learned so much right so if i am a great coach somebody's going to tell me and i have pride in this i've learned more from you in three months that I have with my trainer for the last 10 years I'm like then I done my job right so if you can hire somebody if you're really proactive videos that you can watch on YouTube video to yourself how does it feel in general slower is better so slow down the negative introduce pauses know where you are if you are a beginner so that means people aren't coming up to you and saying wow you are so good at your training are you a coach are you a trainer if they're not doing that and I get asked that all the time then just slow down slow down the negative which is when you're lowering the weight generally right slow that piece down because that allows you to lift less weight but get yourself to approximating failure that just means like nobody should be talking to you you can't talk to anybody during the last couple of reps right so slow down the negative you can lift a lighter weight so even if your form is a little bit off it's probably not going to impact your joints negatively but you're still able to push your muscles to where there's enough stress to drive the adaptation you're looking for progressive stimulus yes yeah very very important right and then how are you feeling right so if you're doing an exercise for your quads like a squat or even a hex squat which is a machine and you're feeling it in your back that's a red flag you should not be feeling it in your back you're something is going wrong right so either you have an issue that has to be dealt with medically that you didn't know about and as we get older there's you know and if you have been dieting your whole life maybe you have osteopenia osteoporosis maybe there's a lot of women have a issues around their lumbar spine when they hit menopause just with age not eating properly not training properly do you have disc generation issues it's more common than we think right so that's not just your form like maybe that's something that has to get investigated properly hopefully we have an amenable doctor for that or it's your form right and could you use a belt right so my gals that do tend to um are more prone especially gals that travel a lot and are sitting down or are working and sitting down and don't aren't able to stand up and work um there's some great like i love the and i'm not sponsored by them i love the slimmatum pro trainer i've had to use it in the past oh my gosh it's a really great um training belt you'll see it a lot in um ibb mpc gals bikini gals but it actually is like a really decent amount of support it's relatively comfortable it has like a that's wide and it has a tie piece and then it has a velcro piece right and the support through the obliques in the back is considerable it's not um like a belt that you're clunking on um you can wear it under under something as well as over it's just comfortable and functional and so i I would say, and I've told my clients that if they're feeling their back, I say, listen, for this week, I want you to wear the Slim Tone Pro Trainer just to be on the safe side.

1:19:01And then make sure you're doing some extra core work like a McGill sit-up, bird dogs, anti-rotational things like a payoff press. Those are great exercises. Let's touch on core. Yeah. Are there, number one, why should we do core? For your six-pack. Because your core, if you have ever hurt your back, your core is everything. It's so preventative and an important part of transferring power from your lower body to your upper body. It affects your posture for women as well. I would tie core into pelvic floor health. They're very knit together. And that's one thing that we face as we age, whether or not you've had kids, incontinence, and prolapse.

1:19:40And none of those are fun or sound fun. And they contribute to balance. Yes. So and when I say that not the core exercises, but if you're a woman that has pelvic floor issues, potentially see pelvic floor specialists, core exercises. Yeah. Are there a handful? Because you'd mentioned Bird Dog, Pavlopress, McGill Sit-Up. Yeah, I think most CSCSs are going to say, especially with that avatar of the 40 plus female, where most of us aren't coming into our 40s trained on core strength. Those are the basics. You're going to be wanting to do properly executed dead bugs. And there are advancements in dead bugs.

1:20:23Like dead bugs kill me. when I pull my navel into the base of my spine and really keep my lower back down on the floor and I'm mindfully moving I mean 30 reps and I am cooked like cooked I would also say have pride in cooking yourself right which is like getting to that lactate threshold burnout sooner rather than later if you're somebody that's like oh I can do like 50 of them you're probably not doing doing them intentionally there's mind muscle connection there's opportunity there that you can take advantage of and so just staying super humble and trying to use the appropriate muscle more and usually it's going to be slower movements and really feeling the muscle as you're doing it versus the body is so efficient if it's if you tell it just i want you to do this thing it can figure out how to do that with minimal exertion and it and it does that quickly like within a couple of weeks you're being efficient you're doing more but are you necessarily using that exercise for what it's supposed to be doing which is targeting your core in a kind of multi-movement way so dead yeah bringing this back to presence which being present at training right totally makes a ton of sense when so and dead bug okay right and there are advanced dead bugs so you can do the simple dead bug if you're having a bird dog or dead bug i'm sorry bird dog and thank you guys very good very good you know I put bird dog in our book so good it's a great one but anyway and you can do it like from plank all right so you're playing opposite legs up that is like that gets the the fascial sling the cross body fascial sling which you'll find a lot of people find one side they're like oh I can do it on one side but on the other side they're do you have women uh in your programs and when you're coaching them and just in general do you recommend that they do those exercises every day i don't think you have to do them every day um i think when you're learning them it can be really smart to get more frequency so several times a week dosing them in three to five times a week but uh small doses and learning the movement is key and then once you've got it like i like three times a week i know hattie loves to program some core as a part of her pre-workout she's really big on that so whether it's like a pale off press you can do kneeling pale off press you can do a one-legged pale off press you can advance all of these you can do them with weight with bands um so pale off press uh some kind of a side plank so you can go all the way up to a copenhagen plank why side plank because you had mentioned anti-rotational movements can you talk to me about why that's important why side plank's important why i guess you could use a pale off press with rotation and is there a reason choppers yeah wood choppers that you want that kind of anti-rotation, rotation movement.

1:23:21It's so important to transferring power from the lower body to the upper body. And so if you're an athlete, obviously that's so important, whether you're playing soccer or volleyball or whatever, you've got to be able to transfer that lower body power. But for functional movements, for just aging well, that's where you're going to reduce your fall risk. And do you know Gunnar Peterson? I don't. Should I know that person? He is amazing. he's like the og yeah all right and a person will link it hey gunner you're due on the podcast too uh no pressure but he talked a lot about he's like gabrielle you have to have rotation and anti-rotation movements in there i'm like why he's like i don't know when you get up and you twist you don't want to i don't know you can put your back i was like yeah you know that is a really good point and there's so many different ones you can do that are fun you can do like so i like side plank to bandit clam nice plank that's so multifunctional I wish it's a little bit more advanced pale off presses done properly are great I love doing single leg like it's such a challenge and so the kid I don't think I've ever done a single leg so what she's talking about in balance yeah your back I don't know and that's probably why I do it yeah the core is back people think you're six-pack now the core is going to be when we think of like stabilizing for us it's going to your back your obviously your tba your your central abs and your deep sorry your obliques and then you also have the the the glute muscles are involved in that as well so when I engage my colon I grace for a heavy lift my glutes were involved my back were involved like you squeeze your glutes squeeze your glutes but I wanted to add that in too because it's it is important and And I do see anecdotally, I do see with my clients engagement of their core and their glutes together.

1:25:11It's hard. When they're walking away from the camera, they're setting up their camera, they walk away. Or they're walking to the equipment. That's when I see it. I'm like, there's just no core. How can you tell? Is it that they're abdominals? Because if someone is going to videotape, we should do a challenge. which by the way I don't know exactly when this comes out but we have not announced it yet um drum roll I'm trying to see if I'm getting the like don't talk about it yet yeah am I um we applied and got a national holiday for November which is going to be this is probably confidential but it's national muscle health month oh my god I totally love that national muscle health month month for november and the states great question or texas texas is its own country but it's um national i love that so and i don't know where this fell into this but we're talking about glutes and you know as women are learning to train the importance of muscle and moving well and moving well moving well because you can have muscle like i said but then oh the glute so how do you so if someone sets up their camera this is for national muscle health month because it's really should be national glute month, but it's not.

1:26:30It's globally of muscle health. If someone sets up their camera and they want to know if they are engaging their core in their glutes, should they be feeling their glute on each step? Could they see if they're not engaged? Visually, you'll be able to see it. So it's very easy. So if you're listening to this and you're like I I want to I want to see just video to set your camera up and just forget about it you got to forget about it right because if you're thinking about it then you're not going to get what's really happening um and see how you move your glutes are the biggest muscle in your body they should be and when you are propelling yourself forward they are a big part of that however they should be however i see the vast majority of my clients and we videotape all my clients are we videotape that's our kind of standard do they put do you then put into a program or you just watch it visually like a program that analyzes angles and gait and no we don't do that i do think that is really great but we literally they when you apply to work with us we ask you to submit three videos so we can analyze and um put you in the right docket and and just kind of know all right this is what we're we're what we have to train have you ever uh wrote someone back and be like dude we're not talking about those kind of videos no no one ever did that okay although although i have had gals because it's hard to get in i've had gals uh actually talk in their videos i'm like oh my god i love you that's that that grit that mindset's awesome but so if you're walking away and you're how do you know you're not engaging your glist well obviously you have to be wearing some kind of a tights where you could see but you'll really see as you're moving that there's just uh for lack of a better word like it's it's flaccid if you're using the muscles like a contraction and so what it should feel like is if a gal can do a romanian deadlift i would say well your glutes and hamstrings when you're walking should feel like the top third of romanian deadlift so think of how it feels during the top of a romanian deadlift or if you can think if you're able to jump right so just think how do you jump like that's how your glutes should feel you can't jump with your glutes relax you just that is one thing that i have not seen mastered you actually have in like you know use them several times and they're just they're engaged they're toned they're engaged um they should be i'm so lucky i lived with my husband and you know he's a six-time champion and i just i look at him his glutes are never off they're never off they're always engaged they're part of how he stands and moves and his abs as well do you think that's a male female thing because i look at my husband and he's the same way no i don't and the reason why is because with the opportunity of working with some high level athletes including my poor friend hattie so she stayed with us and she'd be like doing the dishes in her bikini same thing never they're always they're part of how she stands how you're stacking the rib cage over the the hips if you're not using your glutes you're going to be off you're either going to be in severe anterior tilt with your abs not engaged, right?

1:29:39Because if you're in extension, you're not able to lock your abs in. And as I said, the core really is from your, you know, your front side, your lats all the way down and more back muscles in your glutes, or you're in posterior tilt. Which a lot, that's probably easier. A lot of people are more, are they more posterior tilted? I see it both. Okay. Kind of evenly there. I see it both, but you'll be able to see it anyways. it's a fun exercise to do and then can you train it yes you can absolutely train that if you become if you train your res your reticular activating system onto this idea that you can master that as a woman you will master it and if you look at there's so many female athletes but particularly in bodybuilding and it's why i do love bodybuilding because and i see this in my clients it opens the door that you are allowed at whatever age you are 40 50 60 to really deep dive into how to run your rig so your body's your rig how to freaking run that rig here's the blueprint everything's a learnable skill you can learn it and you're allowed to get crazy with this like obsess over it dive into it because there are so many positive health outcomes again you can do all the weightlifting you want to but that doesn't mean you're not going to have dowagers back if the other not going to You have what?

1:30:55It's called dowager's back. If the other 24 hours of the day, you're not engaging. Is there a standard amount of, and I know this is nuanced, so I'm going to be okay with this, but for a woman who is starting a resistance training program, should that be a minimum of two days a week? Should it be three days a week? Again, I understand it depends on how the training program is done, but from your guys' perspective. It was four days a week, three of weight training, and one of yoga. And anyone says yoga's a sissy thing doesn't know how to do yoga. It's not. You have to really train your body. Your balance.

1:31:43Your balance and everything. And I have very poor balance, but I'm working on it. I was in my undergraduate. we worked on some of the first post-menopausal women's studies nice and the exercise so there was a a series of studies it was post-menopausal women and then it was a combination men and women uh might not be in that order it's probably a combo of men and women first the five days a week of resistance training was yoga they used yoga as the resistance training component i'm sorry it wasn't five days a week i think it was between two and three days a week but the resistance piece was yoga for the beginner which is interesting I thought that was really interesting do you feel that there is a sweet spot for women in their 40s as to like so yeah again the side the science says the evidence says that two times a week is a great starting point of intentional training and I think it's um you know it's 150 minutes of of of hard exercise and that's not just resistance training that could be cardiovascular training but 150 minutes a week and then two resistance trainings a week however in my experience I think and this is the mindset piece getting great outcomes that you can see and feel in three to four months that's going to be probably one of the biggest hooks and that doesn't mean you're training every day but it means you know four times a week for 40 minutes really purposeful training and making sure that you're sticking to the same program for enough time that you're able to actually progress ability range of motion weight right um is key so not switching from exercise to exercise but really progressing so i do think you know and then you've got you know your food has to be and i do want to talk on that.

1:33:34I want to touch on that. Does it matter the age? So let's say you guys are both different generations. For Joan, you started with two, you start with four days a week. One of those days was yoga. Do you find that in like another generation, earlier generation would get the same type of benefit, but what you change is maybe the weight or, you know, how do we think about it? If someone is listening to this and they're not a kind of ear to that, how do we think about scaling? I have always trained the individual. So, and if there's one message I would want to impart the audience where I have had success with women, it's you train the individual.

1:34:17You don't train the age. You don't train, yeah, you train the individual. So mom's program only started to differ from, say, Wendy's program when she had a shoulder injury, right? And we had to, she fell off her bike. She probably already had arthritis in the shoulder, fell off her bike. And then that turned into a lot of inflammation, lesions, which ultimately required her to have a surgery. So taking those overhead presses out became key. So you look at the person that you have in front of you. if I think of somebody who's very obese so where mom was when she was 200 pounds I had to think of the weight on her lumbar spine from her tba her from her her sorry her transverse abdominal muscle having to hold on to all of that visceral fat which is the truth right and the strain that would cause on her back so I put her on the leg press she's secure she's locked in it's very simple to execute there's no strain on her back we're going to train her her leg strength So I really think of the individual.

1:35:27Don't get too caught up on your age, other than being informed. Sex, no. We know that there's absolutely no difference. And I think Dr. Lauren Colenzo Semple is - I would agree with you. This is going to make us a little unpopular, but from the evidence that I have seen, there doesn't seem to be sex differences through or for training. It is a good foundational program that is individualized for that person, is a good foundational program. It's based on skill level. Yes. Contraindications based on like injury. There's no statistical difference between how a woman, the rate at which a woman gains muscle, even in menopause.

1:36:05I know this is so hard to hear. I'm really glad to hear you say this. You know, there's just not, same thing with weight loss. There's no special menno diet. There's no special menno training program. You can't adjust your program based on what you want to amplify. And male bodybuilders do this too. You have a weak chest. You're going to have to, you know, rotate in more, more chest training frequency. So same thing, but the actual training program, progressive overload, sufficient volume, mechanical load, like it's the same. And there is so much grifting going on. So just being aware of that and, and just because something sounds sciencey or somebody is an expert in something doesn't mean you're not being shilled.

1:36:45So that's difficult to navigate, but it's challenging, but there should be a red flag if somebody has special knowledge that major bodies aren't aligned with. Yeah, it's very challenging. But the good news is having good training programs and good nutrition, whether you're perimenopause, menopause, male, female, yes. Before we go to our strong seat questions, which will be in the super caster section, which are gonna be super fun, lots of supers, I want to touch on nutrition. And I just want to understand your principles for body transformation. If we were to pick, let's say weight loss, how do you guys think about nutrition for weight loss?

1:37:31I think that one's pretty simple. So I mean, you have to be in a deficit. That doesn't always have to be from food. It can be from managing your knee, cardiovascular, you know, expenditure, but you have to be in a caloric deficit. So if we're talking about food specifically, um number one you can't play around with your protein you want to have that um make sure you're prioritizing protein in your meals i prefer to have people dose their protein out in all of their meals so every meal is protein centric it's great for um satiety is a big one because satiety equates to adherence right you want to eat foods that don't digest immediately and leave you reaching for food or you know uh in in an hour otherwise you're not going to maintain your caloric deficit and muscle mass right so we don't want to just lose weight and this comes into the effective use of a GLP-1 right if we're just focused on the scale then we put ourselves at risk of bone loss and muscle loss we don't want to do that we want to make sure we're getting our money's worth right we want to actually gain muscle maximize bone mineral density and and have that favorable muscle to fat ratio and you can do that it's not that hard so muscle produce got to be there preferably dose it throughout the day I'm a big proponent keep it super easy you know I tell my clients what's your ideal weight that you that is healthy to maintain for your size probably it's what you weighed in college or something like that totally great super easy and I just say like hit a gram just hit a gram so if you're if you were 120 pounds in college you're 160 pounds now aim for 120 grams of protein split that up in your four or five meals a day and you're golden and i think mom now right like there's so many options for protein it's not just chicken and salad yeah it's easy when you have the protein powder these good protein powder about the creamies oh what's a creamy what it's like ice it's like an ice cream but it's you know ninja yeah yeah they have they have like an ice cream maker yes so you basically your protein show yeah i'm waiting to see if my neighbor can actually get that to work well which he says it's amazing yeah oh my gosh i gotta get it down to san miguel she's a ninja creamy oh i love i love making them and i just love me can you make it with whey protein what do you make of it i make it with whey protein okay i'm gonna buy one today oh they're insane okay yeah i'll i'll let you know what is the one that we have it it's it's amazing literally you freeze your your protein shake in these little containers 24 hours you run it through the machine in five minutes old it is so i mean there's just there's no excuse there's so great um yes low calorie or calorie free seasonings condiments um if if you're if you need to have that flavor profile if that makes you happy there's so many options now there's just so much that you can do there's baked things that you can make now there's bars available i see things like fair life out there now i was traveling and i needed protein and they i saw the fair life i'm like that's brilliant i love seeing that we're seeing more protein options for mainstream people instead of all this protein empty foods that you're used to seeing so and then fiber you know i've got to talk about that i tell my gals like aim for that 25 grams of fiber if we're doing a cut where i'm going to be honest if we're bringing carbs down because you're you started with low calories which is often the reality of older people they're just not eating as much as they should be for their size but we have to drive that fat loss we might have to bring carbs down to a place where how are you going to hit 25 grams of fiber so that's where we're supplementing it in with fiber but ultimately if you can you want to be following a diet and being a deficit where you're able to hit that 25 20 to 25 grams of quality fiber and you do that by eating a variety of produce um and whole grains if you can if you can digest that or tubers if you if you can digest that um legumes if you can I'm a I love chickpeas and lentils they're the two easier legumes to digest versus like a black bean um and eating the colors of the rainbow which is easy right and so you know one week you're having tomatoes and greens then the next week you rotate in some red peppers then the next week you switch your greens from green beans to say broccoli or peas so you're just easily rotating it in keep it simple right if you're going to execute on this kind of less restrictive than we previously thought yeah talk to your girlfriends join a group of people that can oh i've got this great recipe it's four ingredients i do have a low carb bread pudding which is oh that's almost like an oxymoron yeah you can you're going to come over it is and it's in your best well i'm obsessed with it so basically we tried over the last two years all these different recipes yep and you know this was one of my so what's the you can share the secret does it have protein powder in it?

1:42:41Well, well, uh, it, you might not like the secret. I'm not going to tell you, but you can try it and then I'll tell you. Okay. It's amazing. Bread pudding, my house. I love apple bread pudding, my house tonight. I love apple and cinnamon. If you come later, you will meet some gremlins. Are those your, is that your children? Oh yeah. No, they were born gremlins. They just became my children. Okay. Michelle and Joan, I am so grateful and just delighted that we were able to sit down and have this conversation. You both are just incredible icons. Thank you so much. So honored to be here. Thank you.

1:43:21I hope we gave some actionable takeaways for the people listening and just I've always been in awe of what you're doing. I think you really helped put protein and focusing on building muscle on the map. So keep doing what you're doing. Thank you so much.