In this episode, we are focusing on strength training and how it can help support healthy hormones. I’m joined by my friend and colleague, Adina Rubin. Adina is a Strength Coach and Nutritional Therapy Practitioner that specializes in helping women gain energy and get strong.  

After driving herself into the ground with years of under-eating, doing way too many HIIT classes and taking hormonal birth control, Adina realized that real food, strength training and stress management were the keys to vibrant and optimal health and she set out on a mission to share that with as many women as possible.  

Through her signature program Strength Training for Happy Hormones, Adina uses low rep kettlebell training with a major emphasis on pelvic floor health to make strength as accessible as possible no matter what stage of life you’re in or where you are on your healing journey.  

As a Certified Russian Kettlebell Instructor, Prenatal and Postpartum Corrective Exercise Specialist, Restorative Wellness Practitioner and Root Cause Protocol Consultant, Adina has shaped her unique framework to help women achieve optimal hormone and metabolic health. 

Adina began unlocking her own optimal physical and mental health when she trained competitively for powerlifting and she thinks all women need to learn what it feels like to lift heavy things.  She wants you to know, you’re stronger than you think you are. 

Links/Resources:
• Follow Adina on IG 
• Listen to Adina’s podcast
• Check out Adina’s programs 
• Take a strength training class with Adina
• Peloton and Your Period: How Cycling is Ruining Your Cycle
• How to Store Fat & Slow Your Metabolism
• How to Strength Train for PCOS without Feeling Like a P.O.S.
• Free Training: Optimizing Hormone Health with Mineral Balance
• Mineral Imbalance Quiz

Transcript:
Amanda Montalvo 0:00
Hey, this is Amanda Women’s Health dietitian. And I’m Emily nutritional therapy practitioner. And this is the RU menstrual podcast where we help you navigate the confusing world of women’s hormones in teach you how to have healthy periods. Each week we will be diving into a different topic on women’s health and sharing our perspective using nutrition, female physiology and metabolic health. Our goal is to help you wade through conflicting health information and empower you on your healing journey. We hope you enjoy it

all right, in this episode, we are focusing on strength training and how it can help support healthy hormones. I am joined by my friend and colleague Adina Rubin. Adina is a strength coach and nutritional therapy practitioner that specializes in helping women gain energy and get strong after dragging herself into the ground with years of under eating doing way too many hit classes and taking hormonal birth control. Adina, realize that real foods strength training and stress management are the keys to vibrant and optimal health and she set out on a mission to share that with as many women as possible. Through her signature program strength training for happy hormones Edina uses low rep kettlebell training with a major emphasis on pelvic floor health, which we’re going to talk about to make strength training as accessible as possible no matter what stage of life you’re in or where you are on your healing journey. As a certified Russian kettlebell instructor, prenatal and postpartum corrective exercise specialist, restorative wellness practitioner and root cause protocol consultants, Adina has shaped her unique framework to help women achieve optimal hormone and metabolic health. And she began unlocking her own optimal physical health and mental health when she’s started training competitively for powerlifting. And she thinks all women need to learn what it feels like to lift heavy things. If you follow her on Instagram, you’ll hear that over and over which I love, and she wants you to know that you are stronger than you think you are. So thank you for being here. Adina, I’m excited to talk with you about this topic. I know that you’re very passionate about it as am I. So thanks for taking the time. Thank you so much for having me. I’m like listening to you read my bio. I’m like, I sound amazing.

Very impressive. You can just hear how balanced you are. You know, it’s like you there’s many different approaches, and I’m sure it took you a long time to get here. I love that. It’s like it’s not just strength training. It’s pelvic floor health. It’s yeah, nutrition, you know, minerals, all that stuff. Well, spoiler alert, your whole body is connected.

So why don’t you give everyone a little bit more on your background, like I talked a little bit about how you were doing like too much hit and like burnt out and everything in your bio. And that kind of brought you to strength training. Can you talk about that a little bit more? Yeah, for sure. I know, this is a very familiar story. For a lot of us, I was always an athlete growing up. So I kind of just always loved movement, but never really went to the gym as a kid or even, you know, middle school, high school. And then in college, I all my sports went away. I didn’t play competitive sports in college. And so I was kind of like really looking to fill that need. And I was also pretty unhappy in college, I was in a long distance relationship with my now husband it just like the school wasn’t a great fit. For me, I was a studio art major. So I was just like lonely in the studio late at night. And just like, it didn’t feel good. And I got really into fitness because that movement that using my body for something had always felt really good to me. And so when I found like fitness in the gym, I went a little too hard on those hit classes. And I know now that I was running on fumes and super addicted to stress hormones. So it felt good. Until it very didn’t, I was really surviving on gigantic coffees, bananas, and little Ziploc baggies of fiber cereal, because some GI told me that I had to do that.

Adina 4:01
And yeah, for like, stuff that I now know, was pelvic floor issues, which we can get into a little bit more to. But yeah, I was doing these like hit classes on that much nourishment if you can imagine what that felt like and started hormonal birth control and just the whole spiral of what it did to my metabolic health, my mental health. And then after college, I had some lag time between when I graduated from my undergrad and when I was going to grad school so I just enrolled in a six month vocational school for personal training because it was something I was kind of interested in and then I was like okay, cool. I can do this part time when I am older and a mom or during grad school and like Little did I know I was just gonna fall head over heels for human movement and dive so incredibly deep on that. But the cool thing is that while I was there

Learning, you know, anatomy, physiology, understanding the biomechanics, how it related to human movement out on the gym floor. The culture at the school that I went to was just extremely strength focused, a lot of people were competing in powerlifting meets, and I was naturally pretty strong. So when they saw me out on the training floor and learning about barbell lifting and that kind of stuff, they were like, Have you ever trained for powerlifting? Why don’t you do that? Why don’t you sign up for this meet with us. And I did. And it was life changing, like,

gaining strength, unlocking my own strength. Specifically, I love powerlifting. Because I don’t compete in powerlifting anymore, who knows, maybe I will, again in the future, but for this season of life, it’s not something I’m very focused on. But I think what’s really cool about powerlifting is that I spent so much time growing up playing team sports, where it’s like us versus you, and half the people in the room are cheering for one team. And half the people in the room are cheering for the other team. Were in powerlifting. It’s like universe yourself, and you get on this platform to prove how strong you are. And then everyone in the room is rooting for your strength, and to have everyone in a room rooting for me as a woman to be the strongest I could possibly be. It was like such a crazy, life changing feeling. And now I understand like physiologically, why training for powerlifting was such an amazing shift for my metabolic health. But at the time, I really just saw the big picture of that mental health piece of like, the confidence that came with feeling my own strength unlocked and having other people celebrate it.

But yeah, it was just such a life changing experience. And from that moment, I was just like, every single woman needs to know what this feels like. And I am on a mission to help them figure it out. And I think something that shifted from back then to what I do now, which I know we’ll get into a little bit more is like, at the time, I was so proud to post pictures on you know, videos on Instagram of my 200 pound plus squats. And now realize how unrelatable that made me like it was like, okay, cool, but I’m not going to do that. So my shift to this low rep. Approachable kettlebell style training, I feel like made it much easier for every woman in their living room, every postpartum mom, every prenatal client to see themselves in me, you know, and, and be able to feel like, oh, maybe I can do that.

Amanda Montalvo 7:39
Yeah, it’s fun to post those videos, right? It’s fun to so the big lifts. And when you hit a PR, I think back on my Instagram, I’m like, gosh, that’s like all I used to post was like workout videos. It’s so funny. But I love that you mentioned that. And I’m curious because you talked about that feeling. And I know that feeling that’s why I fell so in love with CrossFit was because it was like, the whole celebration was it was instead of me focusing on trying to be like very small, and lean. Even though I know a lot of people in CrossFit focus on that the people that I was around are way more focused on just being like really jacked, and really strong. And just like being the best athlete that you could be. And I was like, Whoa, this is way more fun to focus on than focusing on like trying to change my body. And I was like, what have I been doing? I know you just like got into gym and like, you were always into like sports and stuff. Were you coming from a place where there was any like body image stuff or no? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 8:39
And like a major way to I was as a kid, I was always living in a bigger body. And then I would say probably freshman year of high school. I think it was the summer before freshman year of high school, I lost a ton of weight, not super intentionally more just like I was really active that summer, I was playing a whole bunch of sports at summer camp. And just like, I don’t know how intentional it was, but I stopped eating so much like packaged and processed foods. Not that wasn’t like a thing that I did in my life. It was just a thing I did over that summer. And I lost a ton of weight and got so much positive feedback for it. And that it became a little piece of my identity as it unfortunately does. And looking back I still was struggling with so much body dysmorphia. Like looking back at some of those photos and how big I thought I was at the time. It’s just like, you know, it shocks you that experience. That was a big piece of it for sure. And part of why I was running on those fumes in college is because I was actively restricting and so many people around me because I was a person who was into fitness. We’re celebrating it is like how do you have that willpower like oh my god, how do you go to the gym two times a day? How do you eat that? How do you not eat that? And so all that reinforcement from everyone around me was making me feel like these were Rent, completely disordered habits, you know how that happens. And so I’m very grateful now to be living in a place where I have a very wonderful relationship with food, a very wonderful relationship with my body. And where inside of my group programs, I’m able to create that space for people, where the feedback I get from my clients a lot of the time is, this is unlike any other fitness container I’ve ever been inside of just from the perspective of how you talk about the body, how everyone in here talks about the bodies, like I’m very intentional about creating the community with very specific guidelines around how we talk about our bodies, how we talk about our wins, what are we considering wins? How do we show up inside of this group. And so it creates an experience outside of anything you’ve experienced in the fitness industry, which is something I’m extremely proud of.

Amanda Montalvo 10:55
I love that, and I can’t even picture you not appreciating your body because you’ve done live classes for my membership. And I’ve always loved your work, but like seeing you in that environment was really cool. And you are intentional with how you speak about even when you’re demonstrating something, just the way you describe the body and stuff. But I’m like, gosh, I can’t picture a diva trying to like manipulate her body because I feel like you’re always such a champion for other women. And even just being a good example yourself, of like trying to appreciate your body and what it can do.

Speaker 2 11:28
Yeah, I really appreciate that feedback. And I’m so happy that it presents itself that way, because I really, it took a while to get here. And I feel like I’m finally at a place where I feel so comfortable in my own body and speaking to women about their bodies and helping people to find that peace. Because there’s, you know, it’s so multifaceted. And there are we all come with our own life experiences and our own diet and fitness experiences. And I never want to discount those because, you know, those of us who are still struggling or who try to pretend we’re not struggling, but those thoughts still creep in like, it’s really hard. It’s society is very much working against us in this way. And so I think the work that you do is amazing. And anyone in this space, trying to help people feel well and feel strong and feel balanced, while trying to shift away from that societal norm is like, I really feel like we’re changing the world. You know, so it just

Amanda Montalvo 12:27
remembering that if you are not there right now, it takes a lot of time. Like Adina just said I’m I was the exact same. And it’s something that now where I just I just practice a very body neutral approach. So I’m like, I don’t really talk about my body because I honestly don’t really think about it. And I just spent so much time my life obsessing over it that I’m like, I just don’t have that energy or space anymore. And it didn’t really get me anywhere, right? Like it didn’t make me healthier. It made me less healthy. And it definitely didn’t make me happier. And I do notice there’s just like such a hyper focus on it. But I did a great episode with my friend Fallon. So go listen to that if you guys have not listened to it, if you’re in you’re struggling with body image. So let’s dig into like the meat of what I really want to cover. And when I was thinking like, Okay, I’m gonna have Adina on we’re gonna talk about strength training, I’ve gotten so many requests to cover this topic. And what I think about is like, I feel like people know, right, like, a lot of the women that follow me, they have some understanding that strength training is better for your hormones. And I feel like and you’ll kind of walk us through why, but I feel like they’re just kind of like, they’re still a little bit unsure as to like, what What about doing some cardio? What about taking some hit classes or like feeling a specific way? After they work out? Why do you utilize strength training to support hormone health? And why do you think it’s better than using workouts like hit yoga? That kind of thing?

Speaker 2 13:58
Yes. So this is a very loaded question. I’m going to try to rein myself in and keep my thoughts organized. But there’s a couple of factors to it. And I’m always thinking, biggest bang for your buck, right? We talk about it in the nutrition space all the time, we talk about nutrient density, it’s like we have these two foods in front of us. This one has X number of calories and X number of important nutrients for me, and this one has, you know, way more nutrients per calorie or whatever it is, like, I’m just gonna pick this food, because I know it’s going to serve me so much more on this healing journey. And for me, it’s just what it comes down to is strength training is we are going to get so much more out of this thing than any other form of fitness. And of course, there’s always a little bit of a caveat in there. But when we are coming from a depleted place, and we are coming from a place where we’re trying to work on our metabolism, work on our hormones, get our energy GE up, we don’t have that much energy to dedicate to these other things. And so if I get a little bit of your time, I’m like, How are we going to move the needle right now? And the answer is always strength training. And there’s nuance to what that looks like. And that’s specifically what I focus on inside of my programs. But when it comes down to it, if you are a person who is running on stress hormones, whose metabolism is suppressed, whose hormones are kind of wonky, here’s what we need to have happen. We need to lower your stress load as much as we can. We need to shift you from a place of fight primarily functioning in a catabolic metabolism, where you’re just constantly burning through resources and breaking things down to a place where we send signals to your body to shift to anabolic to shift to building some more stuff, right? And so that’s the meat of like, why we choose this thing? What message are we sending to the body. And then the result is, oh, well, if we do strength training properly, and we’re following a protocol, that’s not too much stress on the body, but just enough stress that we can build a little bit of muscle, then we come out of it with having put less stress on the body, we’ve shifted from this place of catabolism, just like burning through resources, running on fumes running on stress, hormones, breaking things down to a place of anabolic just building some stuff. And then we have muscle and muscle is quite literally amazing. It’s a metabolic engine, it’s an organ all in itself that does amazing things for our body. It regulates hormones, it helps with our insulin regulation as well. So if you are struggling with tons of insulin resistance, we can make ourselves more sensitive to insulin and help our whole blood sugar balance our whole hormone thing by just like living in a body with more muscle on it. And then like the whole other piece of it is it just makes our life so much easier to live, it makes our day to day so much easier. So if we have to go through our day and do all these tasks, and do all these things that just feel really hard, then at the end of the day, we feel super worn down, and we have no time for ourselves, we have no energy for anything that we have to do. Whereas if we have muscle on our body, and we have access to good movement patterns, and we go through our day, and our daily tasks are just easier. We come out the other side with more energy, we’re just not as exhausted and less stuff hurts. And then there’s this whole other layer to it, which is for the women I work with. And I know the women that you work with, who so many of us have just experienced chronic illness. And we’ve been told like you have this autoimmune issue, you are this autoimmune issue, you are a weak person that always gets sick, you have PCOS, you have this thing that makes you less regular or less normal and less strong, or you get sick, and you just feel like you’ve labeled yourself your whole life as a person who’s sick. feeling strong, can shift everything for you. Like feeling like, oh, wait a minute, I can feel good inside my body, like oh, wait a minute, I can feel super capable. That like the mental health aspect of it, of just feeling like a person who’s in a strong body, when you’ve spent your whole life feeling like you’re in a weak body. I have seen that change so many things for my clients.

Amanda Montalvo 18:45
I bet and I’m really happy that you specifically mentioned that mental health aspect of it. And it’s just like confidence. Like, I feel like it really does build your confidence, like how you talked about when you that first time you ever did the powerlifting competition like that feeling of everyone cheering for you like it builds your confidence hitting a new PR like it doesn’t even matter if it’s like what the number is. It’s just like going past beating like an old goal that you have like that really does. It builds your confidence that’s going to make you much more positive and believe in yourself. I think in all aspects of life. I think that’s why people get so into, like weight training, power lifting, whether it’s like they’re doing it for fun or for sport, CrossFit, all that kind of stuff and working out in general. One thing I wanted to highlight was how you talked about we’re going to do these movements anyway, right? Like you’re going to have to squat in your day to day you’re going to have to bend over and do a deadlift in your day to day. You might as well know how to do it correctly, so that you’re not going to hurt yourself. I think people kind of underestimate it. And I love I know you’ve done some great posts on Instagram, of like relating it to being a mom and like carrying your kids around picking your kids up. Getting up off the floor with your kids like all that kind of stuff and how I mean, we don’t I don’t think people realize like, they might think I don’t know how to do those movements, right? I don’t know how to string string and stuff, well, you you kind of do, you just might not be doing it correctly. But I think that’s an important thing to highlight. It’s like we can’t, we’re never gonna get away from these movements, if we’re doing things in our day to day. So it’s like, if you can learn how to do them the right way, you’re not gonna hurt and you’re, you need it in all seasons of your life, too.

Speaker 2 20:26
Yeah, and I’m a little controversial in this space, as far as my perspective on like, postpartum training, because and even people who are just like struggling with chronic illness, and in a really depleted metabolic state, because I know there are so many people in the holistic health space, and even in like the deeper like, alternative alternative, like metabolic space who feel like, okay, so you’re in this super depleted, depleted state, this is what your metabolic markers look like, we’re not going to let you train right now, because we don’t want to add stress on top of it, right. And I respect that. And I understand that, however, they’re gonna have to do hard stuff in their life, especially in the postpartum season. Like, I’m a big believer that you earn your workouts by eating enough and sleeping enough, because I think it’s quite literally the opposite of what diet culture, culture, fitness culture, regular society is telling people. And I do truly believe that however, I also really, really believe that like, being a mom is really hard. And just existing in a day to day life is so hard. And so if you’re postpartum, and you’re not really getting enough sleep, that’s not going to change for a while. And you’re not really eating enough, because you can’t quite figure out how to manage all of this, you still need to pick up your kid off the floor. And you still need to put the car seat in and out of the car. So like, if we can find the dose of strength training, that’s going to move the needle to make all that stuff way easier for you so that less stuff hurts, so that you get injured last, because you know what stuff hurting and being really hard for you is also a stress on the body. So if we can find the dose of strength training, which is why I’m like so passionate about specifically what I do with like what I like to call minimum effective dose strength training, where maybe it’s two reps, once a week, maybe it’s three reps twice a week, what is the least dissed that we can do to get you the most out of it. And so we look at our training a little bit differently, it’s not going to failure. It’s not what you remember from training for bodybuilding, which like short has value, but I’m talking about a very specific season where you are really depleted, you are not going to be getting the sleep that you need to recover from those, you know, maximum recoverable load workouts, those higher rep workouts, those higher intensity workouts, we just need to figure out, what is the dose of stress that I can put on your body that you will be able to recover from, and it will make you stronger and it will make putting that car seat into the car way easier. And that’s going to take a whole lot of stress off the body strength training

Amanda Montalvo 23:17
workout, it can be a positive stress for us. But I think when you are being that smart with your strength training, that it could actually build your resiliency, like you said, like if you’re getting a little bit stronger, and that makes it so that it’s less effort for you to pick your kid up off the floor. That is less of a stress, right? It’s like less of an effort. If it’s like if picking your kid up off the floor is like an 80% effort at the time. And then you add a little bit of strength training and then all of a sudden, it’s a 30% effort. That’s huge. That’s like going to exhaust you way less than if it were at like that. 80% which I think is a good point. I get that question a lot. I’m sure you get this all the time. But especially inside my master minerals course, is when should I start working out again? I mean, I don’t really ever tell people not to work out. I’m just like, What are you doing for workout because it’s not all the same. Like it’s just not, you know, like, like the strength training you’re talking about is not the same as, like even I think of like the training I’m doing right now in pregnancy, it’s like higher rep and like a little bit lower moderate weight, it’s like the like that would be totally different for someone the effect that’s going to have on you and like just your system stress wise, then like lower rep and lower frequency. So I feel like the thing now that people are going to want to know is okay, so strength training is great. It’s going to help me build muscle which is going to support my metabolism. It can help you with insulin resistance. It can overall help me in my day to day functionality, reducing my stress, making them more resilient. They’re like sign me up, right, who doesn’t want all those things? But now it’s like okay, well, there’s a lot of strength training people out there. So how do you know What makes a good program? And I this is like, I’m like, I want to spend the most time talking about this because I think that it is confusing. And you’re like, Who do I trust? And a lot of the time you’re trusting someone based on their appearance, what they’re posting online? Do they look like they know what they’re talking about? What are some things because I have very nerdy listeners and women in my community that they’ll want to know. And if they know these things, they’ll go look up programs, and they’ll be able to find if it’s a good fit or not, like what do you think makes up a good strength training program?

Speaker 2 25:29
Yeah, so we actually just did an awesome episode of our podcast, my friend Diane and I, we have the Get Your Shit Together podcast. And we talk a lot about like, you know, digestive health and hormone health and metabolic health and strength training. Obviously, we just did an episode called Getting Started on your fitness journey, which breaks down a lot of this stuff. And I think it comes down to a few things. First of all, there needs to be load involved. Okay, there cannot be just all bodyweight bodyweight can get you to a point. But bodyweight cannot progressively overload you. In this style that we are talking about. Yes, there are some people that get really advanced with calisthenics training, and can belt build a really strong body, but from my perspective, the dedication that it takes to do that, and the intensity with which you need to progress those calisthenics will not serve the population that we’re talking about. If we want to figure out how to easily go from a place of feeling weak inside of our body to a place of feeling strong inside of our body, following a program that incorporates load is going to do that the best, we also really want to understand that the program needs to cover every single movement pattern, the major movement patterns that your body is capable of doing. And I mean, multi joint movement patterns, I mean, squat, push, pull, hinge carry, that is what it comes down to. And from my perspective, each workout should be all of those, or half of those, but each workout should be full body. And the reason I say that is because I think a lot of people are wasting their times with like, upper body, lower body splits, which is very much coming from the bodybuilding world, and is not serving, the postpartum moms is not serving the depleted client with autoimmune conditions, or the clients with, you know, metabolic and hormonal imbalances and things that it’s just not worth our time. And for a bunch of reasons. But number one is that, we want to make sure that even if you can only train one day a week, it’s still going to move the needle. And if your program is an upper lower split, that’s five days a week, and you only train one day, and then you’re doing back and biceps that day, this isn’t gonna change your life, you know what I mean? If you’re training in a program, that’s one to three days a week, and it’s squat, push, pull, hinge, carry, and then your kid gets sick, and you have to take your dog to the vet, and your car breaks down and you only had one day to train that week, it still moves the needle on your strength. And so I think a lot of people miss that, where they put together these fancy programs, because they think clients really need this variability to stay interested. But what we need to do and what I try to do as a coach is teach why this program looks boring. And what’s interesting about it is that you’ll fall in love with the patterns. And you’ll fall in love with how you feel and you’ll fall in love with committing to getting better at these movement patterns. And committing to adding load and feeling stronger week to week. And that’s what’s interesting about it, like a really good program should be kind of boring. You know, when you look at it on paper, it should be boring, it should be squat, push, pull, hinge carry long rest periods, and long means more than 30 seconds. Because if you are only resting 30 seconds, we are not getting the metabolic benefits that we’re looking for. This is not strength training. Okay, we need longer rest periods. So we’re talking one to two minutes. If you’re training like in a barbell, powerlifting style that could be as much as five minutes between sets, which can sound crazy if you’ve never thought about it that way. But we need those patterns. We need load. We need progressions, so the load needs to be increasing over time. And again, it doesn’t just need to be a load. We can progress things with stuff like tempo with stuff like altering how we’re executing the movement pattern. And then I really think about intention as the other major piece to it. So what I mean by that is like really owning your movement patterns. And showing up intentionally for each rep with intensity. So the reason that we need those long rest periods is because the reps that you execute, you should be putting in a lot of work, those should be hard reps, whether that’s because you’re creating a ton of tension and getting explosive, or because the load is increasing and the load is getting heavier, I can get so much out of someone with two reps with three reps. If you’ve ever done one of my classes, if you’ve done one of my programs, you can understand that what you thought you needed 15 reps for in the past, we can get done in three reps if we are really intentional. And we are executing these patterns properly. And we are adding load. And that is how we use really low reps as little stress as we can put on your body to get a whole bunch done and to really move the needle on your strength.

Amanda Montalvo 30:58
And I can vouch for this because I’ve taken a class with the Drina it is intense, it’s like you don’t think it’s going to be. But the way that you cue, I think really helps because it is I mean, it’s easy, especially when it’s like you’re working out by yourself to be less intense or intentional, like with your movement. If sometimes it’s like, we’re just going through the pattern that day, you know, we’re gonna have those days, it’s it is what it is. But I do I want I remember taking your class when I love the breath work, and like really engaging, and being mindful of the pelvic floor, which we’re going to talk about. But I also was like, wow, that was really challenging. harder than I thought. And I don’t do a ton of kettlebell stuff. So I would say like, that was newer for me. But it was really fun. But I think that’s like, this is where the whole piece comes in of like how you can make this work on your healing journey is it’s less reps, right and the rest, that’s going to have a completely different impact on your nervous system, versus like, more reps, less rest, and just like like not letting your heart rate come back down in between, you know, it’s a different kind of stimulus on your body

Speaker 2 32:11
completely. And part of what makes us so appropriate for the healing journey, too, is how I phase the programs. Because it’s not like the class you took is not day one week one, you know, it’s like, I’m very intentional with how much attention we put on the breath work in the beginning, because I want to make sure that everyone in the room can get into a parasympathetic state before we start training, because that’s how we’re actually going to build muscle, right, we have to tell those stress hormones. We’re not breaking stuff down right now. Like we’re actually thinking about building some things here. So we’re going to need you to just calm down so that we can do this thing. And again, obviously, search serves major function for just like central nervous system and connecting to the breath and pelvic floor. But we spend so much time on breath work in the beginning, because I know the kind of women that sign up for my group. I know how many type a recovering CrossFitters recovering orange theory years recovering peloton or is like, I know how many of these people end up finding my work as like a last resort. And so sometimes for those people, it’s so important to do week one day one, to have them sit there and think for a second like, Well, how long are we resting for? We’re only doing three exercises, we’re only doing five reps? Like what do you mean, you know, and so it builds over time, the last few weeks of my program, we get to really use intensity and have a whole bunch of fun. But that’s because we spend those first few weeks building a recovery base. Like so many of the women that come to work with me, their body doesn’t know how to recover from stress anymore, because it’s been in such a depleted state. And so we can use those first few workouts to utilize the breath work to utilize those basic movement patterns to keep the reps low to keep the sets low to keep that overall volume pretty low. And just reintroduce these patterns, and then build on them and build on them and get more explosive. And we’re still keeping the reps low. But then the intention goes up, and the intensity goes up. And it’s really fun, which is what you mentioned. And the big reason that I fell in love with kettlebells because all of my clients fall in love with them. Like there’s so many aspects to kettlebell training that are amazing, just from like, a metabolic perspective, a joint health perspective, but I don’t care about any of that stuff. I care about the retention rate and how many more of my clients stay in love with kettlebells than they did with anything else I used to do in the past.

Amanda Montalvo 34:46
Now I can see that they’re also great for any season, like if you’re pregnant or not, you know, like there’s so many things with the barbell that I’m like can’t do that any more. You know, just because I don’t want to ruin my Bogner

Speaker 2 34:58
Oh my God, I am Watching the CrossFit open right now like I’m watching everyone do their CrossFit workouts and I have some pregnant friends and I’m just like, your bar path like, why are you still snatching this does not make any sense,

Amanda Montalvo 35:10
you’re gonna destroy your bar path, you’re gonna destroy your lift, and then your shoulders are gonna hate you.

Speaker 2 35:16
Like, I can’t understand how anyone could look at that and be like, this is a good idea for someone who’s six, seven months pregnant.

Amanda Montalvo 35:24
I can’t even imagine I haven’t even like gone anywhere near that stuff. But I like dumbbells and kettlebells all use for a lot of different movements, because your belly doesn’t get in the way. And there’s other things like different ways to use them. Yeah,

Speaker 2 35:37
it’s so fun. They, and again, they’re so accessible, like, throw a couple of them in your living room. And then for me, I have my office bells that I keep behind my chair, I have downstairs bells in my gym, but I have some office bells, because like, if it’s a day where I can’t even make it to the garage, I have appropriate load for some light stuff, medium stuff, and heavy stuff, I have three bells in my office. And I can get something done in 20 minutes if it’s a day where I really won’t be able to train.

Amanda Montalvo 36:06
Hey, Amanda, here, just giving you a quick break, hopefully a break for your brain in the middle of this podcast episode, to remind you that if you haven’t gone through our free training, optimizing hormone health through mineral balance, we really do recommend starting there. And the main reason for that is because you’re going to hear us say things like mineral foundation, having a solid foundation, are you putting the foundations in place, especially what was we get deeper and deeper into different hormonal topics and specific imbalances in the body, the the mineral foundation is always going to be so essential. So if you haven’t watched the free training, you can find it in our show notes. Or you can go to hormone healing rd.com. And it’s going to be right on that front page there. But we really recommend starting there so you can understand how is your current mineral status? How do you assess this, and how to get started with all that just you can get as much as you possibly can out of the rest of the podcast episodes. But that’s it, I hope you enjoy the rest of this episode. Okay, so just to like sum it up for people. So basically, when we’re looking at a strength training program, we want to make sure that it has load, right, not just bodyweight stuff. There’s got to be some progression. But then also like the movements and I think that’s what can be confusing for people. So knowing like squat, push, pull, hinge carry, right. So those are going to be like your big ones. And rest and make like being mindful of that. Now you might not be able to know all of this, just by looking at someone’s like sales page for their program. But these are things that you could ask people if you are interested. And then the whole idea,

Speaker 2 37:43
I’ll tell you how to, I’ll tell you how to spot it right away. Okay, if somebody advertises that their program is so amazing, because it has hundreds of exercises, and you’ll never get bored.

Amanda Montalvo 37:52
Yeah. You know, you’re probably not going to make progress on any of those exercises. Because that’s the whole point is that it’s like,

Speaker 2 38:00
yeah, have you ever seen me do those, like trolling Instagram ads on my stories? Okay, so like I get, because I’m a fitness professional, I get served the dumbest fitness ads ever on Instagram. And I always screenshot them and put them on my story and talk about like, what’s wrong with them. But that’s one that comes up so much. It’s like hundreds of exercises, hundreds of like, we don’t need hundreds, we need six.

Amanda Montalvo 38:28
I’m so glad that I don’t get those. I could totally it. I mean, like I get it. And I do understand, like wanting to have fun with your program. But one thing I think of is how you do the full body aspect, which I really love. It’s also like you don’t need as many days of the week, which we’ll talk about next. Like what how to find that minimum effective dose. But then it’s like, because then you can do other fun stuff. I’m like, Yes, I love strength training. But I also like to do other things. But if there’s only so much time you have in your schedule to, you know, get movement in. And it’s like, if it’s the weekend, and I’ve already hit all my days for the week, that’s to me, I’m like, Oh fun, like I can go do something else that is moving my body in a different way. And still know that like I am going to continue to make progress and get strong and like keep that. So when someone’s thinking about like, really, you can only do the one full body day a week and still like move the needle. What how do you know what your minimum effective dose is any like tips on finding this?

Speaker 2 39:29
Okay, this is something that blew my mind. And it is shocking to a lot of my clients, how little we actually need to move the needle. If we are focusing on those other things. If we are focusing on the proper movement patterns, if we are focusing on load if we are focusing on intention, rest progression. It’s really way less than you think the problem is so many people are doing too much like garbage. training, you know, if we need to do is dial it back and do way less of really quality stuff. And my perspective on this shifted for the first time when I competed in powerlifting, because I went from two a days, you know, like six days a week to training one time, three days a week, and doing my squat bench, you know, pull squat, press pole, whatever it was. And then it shifted again, a few years later, when I started, I went to a seminar, a minimalist drink seminar, with this guy by the name of Marty Gallagher, and he is like a world class powerlifting coach, he’s set and broken a bunch of his own world records, and then has some really elite lifters that he’s trained. And he trains all of his lifters one day a week. And that blew my mind. And so I went to his strength seminar, and I learned from him, what I like to do is, first of all, learn from anyone that I possibly can. And especially coaches who have gotten results in this industry, whether their bio seems to have anything to do with what I do. I think that training for elite strength and performance, strength and power is so similar to training for happy hormones, because we’re trying to put the least stress on the body and get the most out of it. And so all of these strength and power experts who I’ve had the opportunity to learn from I go to any seminar, I can get my hands on, I go to every weekend certification I can get my hands on, because I’m just constantly trying to learn the most that I can to shape my perspective and to help more women. And when I went to his seminar, and saw the way he trains his athletes, and started implementing it with my athletes, I was shocked, shocked at the results at how much we’re doing that just like doesn’t even matter, you know. And so I still program my programs for three days a week, because, first of all, so my athletes are not going to push the intensity that we would need to really get the most out of that one day of training. But also because I know people like that consistency in their routine, like movement accomplishes a lot more than just getting us strong, right? It gives us if we’re a mom, and it gives us some space to ourselves. It gives us some time to dedicate to be in our own thoughts, which is again, one of the reasons I love strength training too is like when you run you can kind of get that runner’s hypnosis where you just disappear. And so many people deal with their mental emotional baggage that they don’t want to deal with by just going out for a run and losing themselves in that highway hypnosis, when you’re strength training, strength training, if you’re doing it properly, like you can’t quite be outside of your body, you have to be very in your body, and very aware of your physical surroundings. So I do love that aspect of it as well. But yeah, I program three days a week. But I always tell my athletes like little secret, you only really need to do one, and you’ll still be really successful. And I think that helps so much the recovering perfectionist who are like, what the program says three days, and then I miss two days. And one of the reasons that I love the training app that I use now with my groups is because you can move your own workouts on your calendar as a client. So I think that’s really helpful for people not to just like see a miss day, if that’s something that they’re working through. Yeah, like you only need one day a week, which is crazy. And you only need, I would say, one to five reps, to really get things done. If you are again, showing up with that intensity, showing up with that intention, utilizing load and utilizing those super important movement patterns. So it’s way less than you think is the point, way less than you think. As long as you master these movement patterns, and you show up with intentional intensity.

Amanda Montalvo 43:57
Do you think that there are ways that someone could know if they were getting that minimum effective dose? Or like if going beyond that? Really, like if they’re like, Oh, f I’m working out like three, four days a week, but maybe or even three days a week, but maybe that’s still like, hindering the intensity of their other workouts or progress that they’re making? Like, how would someone know if they should like try to scale back?

Speaker 2 44:21
Yeah, again, it totally depends on your goals, which is a huge piece of it too, right? If you’re going to compete in powerlifting, it’s going to look different. If you’re gonna compete in bodybuilding, it’s gonna look really different. But if you’re a person who is just trying to improve your metabolism, trying to improve your hormones, your insulin sensitivity, trying to feel really good in your body, then whatever is the least that we can do that fits really well into your life is what I recommend and anything else is like, bonus and just don’t overdo it on those workouts. You know, if you like, really just want to move that’s a question. I get a lot like, Oh, I did the three program workouts for this week and I just really feel like I want to move what should I do? And so I say like, what sounds fun, you know, go for a hike with your dogs like what sounds really fun to you. And depending on where they’re at in their healing journey, it might be, yeah, take that dance class that you love that you always used to take or maybe do a peloton ride. But like, I want to know that we’re not harming our strength goals by doing that. So it’s really going to depend on where that client is at metabolically and in their healing journey. But like, my feeling is that for those of us that are still in that place, where we’re addicted to six, seven workouts a day, I want to ask you, what is going to happen, when you have that baby, what is going to happen when you are 75 years old. My intention for the programming that I do for women is to make this as approachable, no matter what season of life you’re in. So I see all the time my clients who came from across the background where they were doing six 5:30am classes a week, and then they get pregnant and have a baby, and then they’re postpartum. And then they just end up in this spiral where they can’t even get back into the gym, because they’re like, it’s never gonna look like what it looked like and my fitness level, and how can I get back there when instead, if we had shifted the perspective to let’s train in the living room in our pajamas with some kettlebells. And we’re going to do it two days a week for 35 minutes. And here are the movement patterns, then, when life gets crazy, and you have, you don’t have that time available, you could do that. No matter what season, you could do that when you’re pregnant, you could do that when you’re postpartum, you could do that when you’re 75 years old. And I’ve had some clients upwards of 6070. And like seeing that feedback and seeing how it fits into their life, too. And it’s doable and manageable. I’m like, I cracked the case on something here like this. This is where it’s at, this is what we need to be doing. Because our lives are so unpredictable, and up and down. And different seasons are busier, and having something that is easy to come back to makes it less of this pedestal of like, I’m never gonna get back to that fitness level I was at like, it just just do the thing that moves the needle. That’s it. If you’re getting stronger, if you’re feeling better, if you’re sleeping well, if your metabolic markers are improving, like we know we’re on the right track, you know,

Amanda Montalvo 47:18
it’s also like, one less thing to worry about. Right? Like, I just think about, like the transition. Like I get so many people like they’re pregnant, they’re like, oh, no, what should I? What can I not do for like training? And like, should I? What program should I do that sort of thing, which I totally understand. Because especially if you’ve never been pregnant, your body is going to change a ton. And you’re going to have to modify things and like focus on other areas to feel good throughout your pregnancy. But it’s so it’s like that could be one less big struggle, you know of like going into postpartum or like going back to work after having a kid or something like that. It’s like, it’s one less thing that you have to figure out when life changes, or you’re moving through different seasons. So I feel like I’m like that is like a lot less stress, which I feel like we all need. So I know, Owen, we talked, you talked about breathing and like how in the beginning of your programs, you really focus on breath work and like breathing patterns and stuff like that. Why is it so important for women to understand, like when they’re kind of whether there are already been strength training, or if they’re like embarking on this strength training journey now?

Speaker 2 48:30
Yeah, I was thinking a lot about this. Also, when you were mentioning when we were first talking earlier about the car seat, and how if it’s an 80% effort, versus if it’s a 30% effort. This is something I think about all the time when it comes to pelvic floor health, because I lose my mind when doctors tell women, oh, you have this pelvic floor issue don’t lift more than 10 pounds. We see it from obese. We see it from PTS, we see it like so many people are navigating women away from load. And I’m like, do you want to know how heavy that car seat is with that kid in it. Because spoiler alert, it’s more than 10 pounds. So if we can, in a safe environment, like the gym, get you stronger to make that car seat less of an effort. It’s going to be way easier for you to lift it and you know what it’s going to be it’s going to mean you probably won’t breath hold, you will probably want to hold your breath when you’re trying to put the car seat in because our breath is an amazing tool for accomplishing tasks. And so what it does ultimately is creates pressure inside of our abdominal cavity. So intra abdominal pressure inside of our torso inside of our trunk. We have this capacity for pressure and the pressure the pressure is created by our ad musculature so our rectum is our internal obliques, external obliques transverse abdominus, like our breathing muscles, our back muscles, so like all our erectors, everything back there. And then our breathing diaphragm and our pelvic floor, which also gets referred to as our pelvic diaphragm. And so all that stuff together creates this like abdominal canister. And it’s basically just a capacity for pressure. So when we breathe, the way that we breathe becomes really important, because it’s all about how we manage pressure inside of our system. And the thing is that pressure goes to the weakest link. So if you posture Lee, kind of put yourself in a position where you send pressure forward into your abdomen, like your abdominals, right, like maybe you’re a person who kind of dumps your pelvis forward, you stick your butt out, maybe you’re pregnant, and then your center of mass just kind of shifts forward, and you carry load in the front. Maybe when you do a task, that’s really hard for you. And so you breath hold, you put all that pressure forward, and it contributes to something like a diathesis, right. Or maybe you really clench the back of your pelvic floor, and you have what I call tight butthole syndrome that everyone has these days, maybe you really clench the back of your pelvic floor. And then when you put all that pressure down, it contributes to things like peeing in your pants, and it contributes to you squeezing your butt even more and ending up with stuff like constipation, hemorrhoids, anal fissures. But the point is that our physiology, our basic design is that when a task is really hard, we usually hold our breath, because it makes that task doable, because we create pressure, and we create stability out of that pressure. So what I try to do is teach people, other breathing strategies, while we’re doing tasks that are not as super hard for us, so that we can create more capacity for the tasks to become easier, and for us to hold our breath less. So that’s just like a major piece of like the postpartum stuff, because in that car seat example, right? If your body is feeling super weak right now, and you have to put that kid in that 40 pound car seat into the car, and it’s going to feel super, super hard, you’re probably going to hold your breath, and you’re probably going to put a ton of pressure out onto a dialysis if you have one or down onto the pelvic floor. If you experience stuff like leaking prolapse, whatever that might be. If we make that task easier, by getting you stronger, and teaching you how to use breath, through movement, so we’re teaching you how to exhale on exertion, maybe that’s the strategy we use. Then, when we’ve been doing that all along in the gym, we’ve been getting you stronger, and we’ve been navigating you away from that breath holding strategy, then we go to pick up that car seat. And not only is it easier, because you’re stronger, it’s easier because you know how to control your breath with that strength. So you don’t breath hold, and you don’t put all that pressure down and you don’t pee in your pants. And you don’t put excess strain on this diathesis that you’re dealing with and trying to figure out how to heal. And it just makes life so much easier to navigate all of that stuff. Because we’re always going to create pressure inside of our abdominal cavity. It’s just a matter of how do we regulate it? And how do we reserve that intent, like that huge amount of pressure just for like a really, really maximal tasks. And so that’s a major piece of it just like, again, making stuff easier, making you move better, making you more efficient. And again, like the pelvic floor stuff is just huge, because so many of us just don’t even know what our pelvic floor is, or we find out about it. And then we get navigated to an expert that’s not quite great and doesn’t really understand load. And again, there are amazing pelvic floor PTS out there. But there are also ones that tell women not to lift more than 10 pounds, so I have a bone to pick with them. But outside of that, just from a nervous system perspective to so many of us are just holding our breath, shallow, anxious breathing all day. And we can get people to actually learn to breathe and learn to use our diaphragm our breathing muscle breathing muscle as it was intended to be used, where it was actually like stimulating our vagus nerve and getting us into a parasympathetic state. It just solves so many problems, not just in the strength space. Yeah, we know in the digestive space. We know in the stress management space, like there’s just so much value to learning how to regulate our breathing. And that’s why I make all my athletes do it. every single day because it just like, it’s, it’s everything, breathing is everything.

Amanda Montalvo 55:06
It’s one of those things where whether you want to do it or not like you’re gonna be doing those functional movements throughout the day anyway, living a regular life. Whereas with the breathing and the pelvic floor, you’re going to be challenging your pelvic floor in different ways throughout the day, as well. Especially, I feel like if you have a small child, and you have to do more things for them, picking them up the great carseat example you gave, like, all that kind of stuff, we’re gonna do it either way. So you might as well learn how to do it the correct way. And even just the breathwork stuff, it can sound like, how am I ever going to think about that all the time, you don’t. It starts with focusing on it during your training. And it’s amazing, even like, think about it, if you’re focusing on your breathing for your 3040 Minute training session, whatever it is a few times a week, that will rub off into the rest of your day. Like you don’t even have to think about it. I think that was like a huge thing for me when I started really focusing on it. When I got pregnant, I was like, Ooh, should have been doing this long time ago. And then, especially for lifting, I was definitely a breath like I would always hold my breath, or just like breathing at the wrong times, you know, like breathing out when I should have been breathing in for sure. But it’s it does, it does translate. And I think it does make a difference. And I think about the women that really struggle with pelvic floor health, especially after pregnancy and labor and delivery and everything and their postpartum and they’re still struggling. My question is, I’m like, Well, how are you doing your movements? You know, are you breathing with those things? Because I do think that while there’s different things that can go on, for sure, depending on like what your birth and everything are like, in your body in general. But I’m like if there’s little things that you could work on, because I think it’s theirs, they’re worried about strength training with pelvic floor issues, like you said, because they might be getting this advice from a professional. It’s

Speaker 2 56:54
something you said also reminded me of this, I always think about this, whenever people tell me like, oh, lifting is so dangerous, or like, oh, the what you do in the gym is so dangerous. And I’m like, The gym is a controlled environment. Life is dangerous, like you trying to pick up that toddler that fell asleep on the couch and navigate them upstairs without waking them up. That is so much riskier than me picking up this kettlebell from the exact spot, I put it in with the exact mechanics like the ergonomic design to get it to the right rack position. Like, it’s so easy to control these things. And like you said, think about the breath work. So that in life, when you have to get the sleeping five year old out of the backseat of the car, and get them up to their bed without waking them up. Then all of a sudden, the breath work is automatic, and it works properly because you trained it. And then all of a sudden, you’re strong enough because you trained it in a controlled environment. So like when it’s icy out and you’re carrying the Carsey and you’re trying to navigate all this stuff, it’s like life is so dangerous. The gym is so safe, we just have to learn how to do it. Right.

Amanda Montalvo 58:06
That’s a really good point. And I think a good perspective shift for I think it’s easy to be intimidated by strength training, especially when when you talk about like doing it with intensity and intention. That’s kind of like, Oh, but I don’t know, like, I don’t know, if I’m like up for that. I don’t know if I can do that. You can, it’s more of just learning how to do it correctly. And you know, not going too heavy too quickly. Not you know, not increasing the load unless like you really need to, if you if you need more of that intensity. For that lift. One question I would love to end it with is what I say someone’s listening, and they’re like, Okay, I get it. Strength training. Maybe they’re like really amped up on kettlebells. Now, because you’re like, Oh, I kind of like that. I like the idea of that seems really simple and doable. And now they know what a good strength training program looks like. What do you recommend for women? You kind of touched on this a little bit, but let’s like put it in a nice bow for people. What do you recommend for women that feel like they have no time? To get any of

Speaker 2 59:01
my favorite question? There’s a few things that I recommend all the time. Number one, take it off a pedestal, like do not think that you need the matching, you know, athleisure with the perfect setup and the whole deal, like don’t let go of all that. I train most of the time in my pajamas. I’m lucky if I’m wearing a sports bra, you know, like it’s just lower the expectation of yourself and the thing, lower the expectation of how many times this needs to happen a week. I think that approaching it from this perspective of if I’m doing the right things, the tiniest bit can move the needle. So what I tell my clients all the time, is don’t feel like it also needs to happen all in one shot. I think something that shifts everything for a lot of my clients is You can break up your strength sets throughout the day. So if our workout for the day is squats, rows and carries, you have a meeting and then you have a little bit of Hall time, do the squats. And then you know, you’re gonna have a little bit of lag time right after you put the kids down for bed, do your rows, and maybe the kettlebell carries get subbed for bringing the groceries in from the car, and you’re intentional about the form and you’re intentional about putting as many of them in one hand as you can, if we’re trying to do offloaded carries that day, it’s just like, we can fit it in, we really can, we just have to lower our expectations of ourselves, take it off this pedestal, understand that we can get a lot done with very little if we’re intentional about it. And that it doesn’t have to happen all at once, we really can break it out through the day, you’ll have a lot of success doing that. And you might find that it just fits way better for you. So my clients like love to do their a circuit in the morning and their be circuit in the evening, or they start their training session while they’re kind of cooking dinner. And it’s really nice, because we have long rest periods. So you can go do a set. And you can start the thing on the stove, and you can throw that other thing in the Instant Pot and you can go back and do another set, or you can involve your kids in it. But for a lot of my clients, I know they really like to have that time to themselves. So if that’s if it’s not doable, you know, you really can make it a space where your kids can be involved, you just have to be very clear on rules around kettlebells, because they cannot walk in front of you while you’re swinging them. But I think we all just need to lower the expectations. Again, we’re still going to show up with intensity, we’re still going to get the thing done. But take it off this pedestal of what it once looked like or what we think it needs to look like. And understand that if

Amanda Montalvo 1:01:53
we are executing the major movement patterns, if we are adding load and we are resting, we will get stronger, and we will feel better. There’s a lot of like research, I feel like in the last like five to 10 years of like the benefits of not doing all your training at once and breaking it up throughout the day. Like a ton. I feel like Dr. Peter Tia has like a whole thing on that. But not that I love everything else that he talks about. But I do like the whole that whole breaking it up piece. So it’s like could there even be some more health benefits with breaking it up? I think so. Right? Versus like doing your whole session at

Speaker 2 1:02:30
once. Yeah, because what I see all the time is like so often people call overtraining, like people training too much like seven days a week. But if you sit on the couch seven days a week, and you just do one really hard workout, that is probably going to be overtraining for your system. You know, if we split it up throughout the day, it can more closely mimic how we used to exist in our lives where we just like, did hard stuff, then like ate our lunch, then did more hard stuff, then ate our dinner, you know, it’s like now we just sit so much and then think we can undo it all with this one workout where if we actually incorporate more movement throughout the day, it has a lot of metabolic benefits.

Amanda Montalvo 1:03:14
Yeah, so that’s like, I feel like another thing if you’re if you’re having a hard time wrapping your brain around that you’re like, oh, I don’t I can’t imagine not doing my whole workout at once and breaking up throughout the day, am I going to get the same benefits, there actually could be even more health benefits and metabolic benefits. And like nervous system benefits, you know, especially think about if you’re like focusing on that breathing throughout the day, I just think that too. I’m like, oh, that could have like a huge positive impact on someone. So you have your strength training for happy hormones program that is so by the time this episode comes out, is going to be available for people. And I’ll make sure that I link it in the notes so you can grab any of the Dinos programs, but do you want to tell people a little bit about the program?

Speaker 2 1:04:04
Yeah, sure. I mean, it basically is everything I wished was in the fitness industry. So everything you heard us talking about. It is a wonderful community of women who are focused on trying to get strong and trying to feel good inside their bodies. It’s a 12 week, low rep kettlebell focus program that builds in progression builds in intensity, I teach you exactly how to execute every movement pattern. So that’s feedback I always get from my clients also, like my demo videos are really robust. I do a lot of coaching in them. It’s not just like a GIF of me doing the movement or some random video I found on YouTube. It is me showing you exactly how to execute it talking through coaching points, talking through some common mistakes, things like that. I focus very heavily on how to breathe throughout the movement pattern. We talk a lot about implications on the pelvic floor. videos about if you have a specific thing going on with your pelvic floor, maybe try this breathing strategy versus that one. So You really feel like someone is holding your hand and coaching you through it. That’s if you’re looking at my self paced program. So you still have the community aspect because there’s a chat in there with other women. But I do also offer a version of the coaching of the program that’s a little more high touch. And it’s my plus coaching version. And that’s where we have live calls twice a week, and I am coaching you live, I am giving you form feedback, you are on calls with other women who are also getting strong and super awesome. I always say like, my clients are really cool. I only work with cool people. So it’s a really fun community. And again, like I said, we really create a space that is very different than what you’ll see in the fitness industry. We focus on strength, we’re intentional with how we talk about our bodies, with how we talk about each other. We celebrate each other so much like my favorite thing to do on the call is when I know someone’s getting close to a PR, I’ll have everyone watch them press and we all cheer. It’s like it’s really, really fun. And at this point, I’ve had the opportunity of helping hundreds of women get strong and watching their entire lives change because of it. And it is just the best feeling in the entire world.

Amanda Montalvo 1:06:06
Yeah, and I’ve had quite a few of my own clients and women in my membership. Do a dinos program, the plus coaching one. And they I’ve all it’s whenever I post about it whenever you open because you only open this up a few times a year. Right? Yeah, yeah. So whenever a dean opens it up, I always post in the group. And everyone will comment that’s done in the past. And it’s really cute, having them share like their experience about it. But they, they always have really good things to say you’ve done live classes in my membership, and people always love it. If you guys want to try a class I’m going to have there’s a link where you can take a strength training class with Edina through teachable so you can kind of get a little taste of what it is. But I can’t recommend the program enough. I know I’m sure plenty of women that are in my community will say the same. But yeah, so if you’re looking for something where you’re like, you know what, this is like the right time for me, I know I can fit it into my schedule, because Edina just went through that minimum effective dose and like helping you know that it’s a key thing if you just train the one day a week, you’re still gonna get a lot out of it. Definitely, definitely think about taking her program. And I’m going to link to a Dina’s Instagram. It’s at Adina Rubin underscore and then her website, her podcast, all the good stuff. She’s got a lot of really helpful information out there. So even if you’re not feeling quite ready to dive in, I would say like absorb everything you can. But yeah, thank you so much for being here. Adina. Thank

Unknown Speaker 1:07:27
you for having me Amanda

Amanda Montalvo 1:07:34
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