Episode 112: Why I Don't Change My Workouts Very Often (and Suggest You Don't Either)

Don't be fooled by the uber-personalized workout plan hype of the fitness industry. Here's why most of my workouts stay the same...and yours should too. 

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Transcript

Becoming MindStrong Season X Episode 112

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
menopause workouts, weight training, progressive overload, muscle mass, bone density, nutrition,
workout splits, personalized workouts, fitness industry, metabolism, muscle adaptation,
workout tracking, fitness goals, nutrition importance, fitness program

SPEAKERS
Speaker 1
Speaker 1 00:00
Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast. Spoiler alert. In the next episode, in this
season, we're going to be talking about red flags from the nutrition industry, what to watch out
for, how to be aware that you're being sold, marketing hype. What we're going to talk about
today, I don't want to necessarily label as a red flag. It's more a marketing tool that I'm seeing
time and time on social again, on social media. And it really as much as I hate the word should
and shouldn't, it shouldn't be the focal point of any kind of health, nutrition, weight loss
program, specifically for menopause. And this is the topic of why your workouts really shouldn't
be changing that much every single day. Check it out.
Speaker 1 00:51
Welcome to the becoming mind strong podcast, the official podcast of mind strong fitness. My
name is Rachel, and I'm the CEO of mind strong and we are here for two things. We're here for
hope in a stage of life where it feels like we are doing everything right and nothing is working. I
am here to tell you you are not broken. This is fixable, and I promise there is hope. And number
two, we are here for truth in an industry that is designed to keep us confused with shake
systems and point systems and frozen meals. I promise you it doesn't have to be that difficult.
Someone can teach you the skill of riding a bike, someone can teach you the skill of knitting,
and I can teach you to master the skill of nutrition. So are you ready? Let's rock and roll. You
Speaker 1 01:49
so as you heard me say in the intro, you know, there's certain things in the nutrition industry. When I see on my my Instagram feed, I just kind of roll my eyes and I'm like, Oh, my heart
breaks a little bit. This concept of changing your workouts every day, or Uber personalized
workouts, I'm not going to put them in the same category. And as you heard me say in the
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intro, I think this is an area where a lot of coaches and trainers are using this to push their
program, when in reality, not only is it not necessary, but it's not the most to our benefit, more
than keeping some things the same, and that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm going
to explain more in detail. So where we need to start this conversation is about the best bang for
your buck when it comes to workouts in menopause. I have lots of past episodes about this. We
talk about weight training versus cardio. The quick and dirty answer is, when it comes to
workouts, for anyone hard stop period, multiply that times a billion in a menopausal body,
when it comes to workouts, weight training is the most bang for your buck over cardio. Does
not mean we should not do cardio, right? Cardio is great for our heart. Cardio is great for our
lungs. And menopause is a time of life where we lose lean muscle mass and we lose bone
density at an alarming rate. So resistance training, weight training, pushing our muscles to do
what they can't yet do is how we counteract that. It's how we preserve lean muscle mass along
with proper nutrition. It's how we can help bone density. And the more lean muscle mass we
have in our body, the faster our metabolism runs. Now if my goal is to push my muscles to do
what they can't yet do, you'll hear this referred to as progressive overload. Here's what that
means. Okay, if I'm doing bicep curls, so I'm holding a dumbbell in my hand and I'm curling my
arm up and down. If I'm doing that with a five pound weight, and it is too easy for me, I can sit
there and I can do that all day long. I'm not really doing much. Maybe I'm burden a couple
calories from the movement of moving my arm up and down, but I'm not actually challenging
my muscles, because my muscles get stronger based off necessity. If they're like, What the
heck is Rachel doing? I can do this five pound exercise all day, every day. There's no reason for
it to get stronger. But if I put down that five pounds and I pick up seven and a half or 10
pounds, now my muscles are like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Rachel's pushing us to do something we
can't yet. Do we better adapt. We better get stronger. And that's exactly what they do. They
adapt for the task at hand, and our muscles get stronger over time. So if we can agree, which I
hope you do, because science is going to science that progressive overload is the best workout
for our bodies. Hard stop for everyone, specifically in menopause. If we're doing workouts every
single day and we're jumping from this exercise and that exercise, and I'm changing up my
back day and I'm changing up my luck day, how are we monitoring our progressive overload.
Said differently, how am I monitoring if I'm getting stronger? For example, let's go back to my
bicep curls. If on Mondays, I train arms. Okay. Monday is my arm day, and I know the let's call it
five exercises I'm going to do on Mondays. One of them. One is bicep curls. Well, if I look at this
Monday, and I look at next Monday, and I look at the past Monday, and I look at seven Mondays
from now, I can see whether I'm keeping a note in my phone using a workout journal or just
mentally keeping track. I can see if I'm getting stronger, how, very simply, because the weight
is going up. But if I bought into this concept that every single time I work out, I need to be
changing up my workouts, how am I tracking right? If I did bicep curls on Monday, December 1
last year, and I haven't done them again for four weeks, how am I tracking my progress? How
am I knowing if I got stronger because I'm going too far in between to actually see the progress
go when I do a workout. I'm not trying to say that I do the same exact workout every day, every
week. I do not but the way that I do my workouts, it's pretty similar week to week. Okay, there's
a whole past podcast episode where you talk about workout splits. A workout split is very
simply how you divide your body up. I'm going to interrupt this episode real quickly to ask a
32nd favor, if you are loving the podcast, if you can tap that Five Star Review button above, maybe even leave a few nice words. It is the biggest help to getting the podcast out there. As
the time I'm recording this, we don't advertise the podcast, so we rely on our old friend, the
algorithm to help get it in the hands of other women. Leaving a review is the absolute number
one way to help us do that. Thank you in advance. Thank you. Thank you. Now, let's get back to
the episode. So I'm not going to go too deep in the weeds in this episode, but if you're a
newbie, if you're newer to the gym, you're probably going to do a split, meaning you might do
back and biceps one day, you might do shoulders and triceps another day, right? We're pairing
body parts because right now, in the beginning, we don't really have the strength to do a full 45
minute workout on just our shoulders. We'll get too tired too quickly. So a lot of newer people
do workout splits. As you get more advanced, and this is not a hard and fast rule, a lot of this
depends on schedule, but I'll tell you what I do. I'm more advanced. I've been doing this for
over a decade. This is how I love to train because personal preference is part of it. I do one
body part per day. So I have a day where I just train arms. I have a day where I just train back,
one for shoulders, one for legs, one for chest. I'll take a rest day or two, and then I'll do it all
again. That's my personal split. Sometimes that changes it again. It depends on your your level,
it depends on your lifestyle, depends on your preference. With that said, if you were to study
most of my back days, most of my chest days, most of my shoulder days, most of my leg days, most of my arm days, arm days, they're going to look pretty similar, because I can tell to go
back to what we were just saying. I can very easily track if I'm getting stronger, because I did
lat pull downs, which is a back day exercise. I did them last week and the week before that, and
the week before that, and I'll do them next week, and the week after that and the week after
that. So it's very easy for me to track, Oh, I did X weight last week. Am I still on X week X
weight? Have I stayed there for a few weeks? Am I hitting a plateau? Have I gone up in weight?
The only way to see that is by repeating the exercise. Now that doesn't mean I don't ever
change my exercises, though. Inside ignite our 12 week program, we give our members a full
workout plan for at home workouts, a full workout plan for the gym workout, and we call these
our staple exercises. So in week one, you'll see, let's call it six exercises. In week two, four of
those might be the same, and then we change up the other two. So it's not about complacency,
it's not about staying stagnant. It's about coming back to those core staple exercises to track
progress, and then we can supplement here and there. Now, to me, as a person who believes in
human psychology, who believes in getting snowballs rolling down a hill, there also has to be
an element of pleasure to this, right? If you're someone who gets bored easily and you're like,
holy cow, the thought of doing a similar workout week after week after week sounds terrible.
Don't do that. It's more important that you're getting your workout in, that you're pushing your
muscles in progressive overload to do what they can't yet do with good form. Of course, that's
more important. And if we're going to talk about, again, maximizing workouts, getting the most
bang for your buck, I always suggest having some staple exercises that you come back to, and
then we can switch out here and there along the way. What I see happening a lot in the fitness
world is a lot of these coaches, a lot of these trainers out there. They're they're leaning into the
personalization of the workout part, as if that's the Holy Grail, right? It's, I will hand deliver your
personal exercises and change them week after week after week. First of all, what are you
doing for my nutrition? Because nutrition is 90% of the game. It is absolute capital T truth that
you can't outwork a bad diet. I don't care if you never do a workout. We have to get your
nutrition. In check first, and workouts will make the process more efficient, faster, all the above,
it's fantastic for you, but Nutrition has to be number one. Number two, I don't think you should
be changing your workouts that often because of everything we've been talking about. And
number three, you just don't really need it. Now, the caveat to this is, if your goal is to be a
professional bodybuilder and step on stage. Then, yes, you're going to want more personal to
workouts. You're going to want to coach who can say, Okay, what you were lacking in your last
competition was a little bit of glute work. So we're going to rearrange your workout schedule
and maybe throw another leg day in there. We're going to take out this exercise and put this in
if you are looking to compete on a stage. Absolutely, your workouts have to be more
personalized, more tailored to you. In ignite as the time I'm recording this, we've helped over
3000 women. I think we've maybe had one to two that fall in that category. For the vast
majority of us, nutrition is number one. That's true for everyone, and having these core
exercises where we can track our progress consistently, and then switching it up a little bit
outside of that. This is how we maximize results. This is how we track our progress and make
sure that we're on the path.
Speaker 1 11:18
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to miss it, from March 3 through fifth, 2026 join me live on Zoom totally free for mind Strong's
runway to summer, my three Day Metabolism boosting challenge to join. And for more details,
go to www dot mind strong fitness.com/challenge,
11:43
or just use the link in the show notes below. You.
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