Summer series: How to get strong (& stay strong)

Welcome to Healthy Ish and happy new Year. Thank you for joining us on the Body and Soul podcast. I'm your host Felicity Hawley. To celebrate the new year, we are dropping our top Healthyish episodes from last year and this one was a goodie. You really liked it and we thought it was the perfect one to play again in the new year. When you're setting all those goals,

Yeah.

It's every person I've ever met in person of social has never ever called.

Me by my real name. What is it like, well, my full name, Like everyon's always like, oh, actional Lexa.

I've set down the busy your handle.

Yes.

The guys at a table next to me being like actional Lexa, do you want an arm wrestler?

I'm like no, Can someone ask me for my number?

Are you good at arm wrestles?

I used to be Yeah, used to get me free breakfast in Hong Kong. Well there we go.

I should call you action Alexa, sorry something like that. Okay, strong, I mean you are incredibly strong. We'll talk about your strong minded, extra healthy ish, but your your strength of body. What does what does it feel like to be strong?

God? Such a great question. You know.

My love of weight training and being strong stems back to when I was fifteen and my mom was diagnosed with a mental illness. I was being bullied at school for being too skinny. So my nickname at school was that a Laxa and Arexa Gosh's cruel, aren't they?

Yes? They are?

And I went to the weights room on a mission for muscles and it was kind of that was my first ever experience with lifting ways and that place just became my sanctuary and I think from then on in it sort of it became the place where I learned to develop physical strength. But then I also learned about the connection between physical strength and the mental fortitude that came alongside that, and it's just I can't describe it. But for me, the gym isn't so much about Peb's

I mean, you're so right. I mean when I go heavy, which I like doing, not as heavy as you mind, you you just you feel unstoppable, you do, And I think that's what has given me the confident to do everything else that I've kind of tried to give a crack.

And I think that feeling of empowerment. You know, not everybody has a really positive first experience with fitness, and I think I was just incredibly lucky to find myself in a place where people really had my back, people really inspired me, they really took me under their wing, and that sense of empowerment was such a gift that it's probably why I do what I do now, because I think, for you know, me, as both a coach and a female, there's nothing more rewarding than seeing a

And also linking that, I mean often we go to the gym and we left weights and we think, oh, we have to do this to keep fit and strengthen our muscles, especially as we're getting older. But to translate those same learnings from the gym into other areas of your life, perhaps that connection isn't made enough.

No, And I think even when it comes to work ethic, like I find that if you can cultivate like a stellar work ethic and you're training, it often permeates everything else that you do. So there are so many connections that are really undervalued and not spoken about enough.

For sure.

Now on Instagram, you know you wrote you wrote that you're forty four, but your mind says you're twenty five when it comes to lifting weights. Now, this is probably I think something that a lot of as scrapp are we. Oh, I used to be able to lift this in the gym. Oh, I used to be able to run this. I used to be able to do this and now I can't. How do you, like, how do you manage this and navigate this?

Look, I'm not going to say it's easy, because I think it's a really it's a really easy path.

To fall into, especially if you're on social media and there's a lot of really fit, fine looking females out there where that genetically blessed twenty year old bodies who were doing incredible things. And I think when you get older.

With filters Monday, yeah, you know, it's not.

Everything that you see on social media is obviously not

Less summer bodies, more old lady bodies.

You know, like, bring on the old lady bodies, ladies.

We want strong muscles and dense bones to kind of carry us into a really strong future. Like the statistics surrounding osteoporosis and women quite terrifying, you know, like forty percent of women after menopause will develop, you know, will have an osteoproduct fracture. And by the time you're eighty, forty percent of women will have osteoporosis. I don't want fractures.

What does your weekly strength through team of client?

I since I had my head replacement, I had a head replacement six seven years ago now, and it changed the way that I train. It forced me to reassess the way that I trained. And now I probably train two to three times a week structured strength training in the gym. My warm ups and my activation and mobility and stabilization stuff are probably longer than my actual workouts themselves.

Oh interesting, Yeah, I.

Take a long time to warm up.

And then I have probably two days where I do some pilates and more restorative type stuff where I focus more on streets management.

Now, talking about stress management, you are coming up in a show called Naked and Afraid Act. She's out in the US, it's coming to Australia in December. There must have been a lot of stress being in the Colombian junk call Naked? Were you afraid.

God? More afraid of failure? To be honest, like, not afraid of the jungle herself, more afraid of failure. I think I spent my whole life trying to hit specific goals and being out there. The goal was to survive and that was the only thing I was really worried about, like not pulling my own weight for lack of a better term, out there. So I really leaned into all the physical hard work. I was like, the way I'm going to get through this is by being a workhorse and using the work ethic.

That I've developed. And that's exactly what happened.

We look forward to talking about about it next Healthy Thank you for coming on the podcast.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Hope you enjoyed this chat with Alexa Hearing from her now we have to get her back on when her a series of Naked and Alive drops. It is towards the end of the year, so yeah, if you do want a little snapshot of it, make sure you listen to Extra Healthyish because we talk a lot about it on there. If you did enjoy this chat, jump on