Hi, folks, how are you? Thank you for tuning into this body and soul podcast called Healthy Ish. I am Felicity Harley. Joining me today is a woman who is strong, very strong in both body and mind. But we are focusing on what it takes to get a strong body. In this episode, my guest is high performance coach and motivational speaker Alexa Twers. She is also known as Action Alexa on Instagram. Anyway, she will tell us exactly how
to build that full body strength. If you do like what you hear from Alexa, I know you will make sure you're listening to extra Healthy Ish, where she talks more about how to cultivate a strong mind. You can search for that wherever you get your podcasts.
Alexa, welcome, thanks for having me.
I can't believe we have a met in person. I mean I think we have. Well, I've been following you for a long time social media because I feel like I do know you.
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 everyone's always like, oh, Action Alexa, I've set.
Down the bus 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 actually a Lexa and Arexa. O.
Gosh, that's c 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 weights, 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 in the gym. It's kind of about the bad assory that you get from lifting the heavy weights and then how that translates into the rest of your life, because I just feel like it's a catalyst for so many other areas.
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 confidence 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
woman become empowered in her training and then watching how that translates into her attitude towards the rest of her life, like, that's the coolest thing about what I get to do.
And also linking that, I mean often we go to the gym and we lift 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, and when it comes to work ethic, like I find that if you can cultivate like a stellar work ethic and your 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 write 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 a scrapper with. 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 real life. And you know, if you put two people in front of me, who one was twenty years old lifting incredible weights in the gym and looking phenomenal, and then you have a forty year old lady lifting the same amount of weights and looking phenomenal, I'm going to be more inspired by the forty year old female and the gym lifting weights, because man, the dedication and the discipline and the commitment to cultivating that for so many years of your life and still looking
like that and still being able to do like that is so much more impressive to me. And those are the people that I go to for education and empowerment and inspiration, and I wish more women would look at that and be more inspired by that, because I think the worst thing we can do as we get older is try to fight our bodies to get back to what we could do when we're twenty. And I think it's natural, Like, you know, when I was in my twenties, I had I started out in the gym purely for
esthetic reason. I wanted to look a certain way, and you buy into that. But I think inevitably along the journey you kind of then find how weights makes you feel or how training makes you feel, and you buy into that. You know, I shifted from aesthetics and then I went to performance, and now I train because I want to feel good. I want to be able to do all the things I love to do outside of the gym, and I also don't want to be in pain.
You know, as you get older, your body doesn't respond the same way to either training or nutrition, and you can spend all of your time fighting that and have your body be like have an absolute tantrument about it and you not get anywhere, or you can lean into what your body actually wants, start listening to it, and start preparing for like, you know, less summer bodies more old Lady bodies, you know.
Like, bring on the old lady bodies.
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.
I don't want to be falling over and getting injured and not having functional independence when I'm old, and we need to start preparing for that.
What does your weekly strength through team of client?
I since I had my head replacement, I had a have 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 stress management.
Now talking about stress, you are coming up in a show called Naked and Afraid. Actually'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 her self, 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 extra Healthy. Thank you for coming on the podcast.
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
I hope you enjoyed this chat with Alexa. Hearing from her now we have to get her back on when her series of don 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 rate and review it. You can subscribe to this podcast, share it with a friend someone who needs a bit of motivation
when it comes to building strength anything else. Head to body andsoul dot com dot you follow us on socials. Grab our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow it Stay healthy Ish