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Welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about how you can break a plateau through your workouts. Now, I have done a couple of episodes on how you can break a plateau with your food intake and other ideas. For example, in episode 101, I talk about eight tips for breaking a plateau without cutting calories. And then also in episode 120, I explain if you are going to do the calorie cut at how and when to do that effectively.
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But today I'm going to give some simple tips for helping you break a plateau simply focusing on your workouts alone. No supplements, no food, no anything else, just your workouts. And as you know, your food intake does matter. It is a huge part of the equation. If you're trying to see changes by either losing fat and or building muscle, it makes a massive difference.
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And you want to make sure you're getting a good, solid nutritional intake. But today we're only going to focus on your workouts and kind of mastering those and making sure that those are on point. So today I'm going to give five tips on how to break a plateau when you're trying to see changes with simply your workouts. And before we get into it, I want to give a shout out to Mary Fala. Fun listen with great information.
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I've been following Andrea on Instagram for a while, but just recently started listening to her podcast and binge listened to six episodes on the first day. She is so real and fun to listen to, all the while filled with great information. I'm already implementing some of her nutrition and training, and I'm excited to learn from her. Thank you, Mary, so much for the review. And if you find this episode helpful, as always, don't forget to leave a review.
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Let me know what you think, let me know what helped you, let me know what touched you. We are really a team, and I like to communicate back and forth with you, so let me know that as well. Also in the Show Notes, there'll be a link if you want to submit, a topic you want me to cover or a guest you want me to have on. I'm always open to what you need to hear and people you want to hear from. So you can click on that link in the Show Notes and you can follow along on Instagram if you want to.
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Just focus on the podcast on Make It Simple podcast, or on my main Instagram handle, which is deliciously fit and healthy. And as we get into this episode and we talk about ways to make our workouts more effective, one major way to make your workout more effective is to feel good in your workout, to make sure you're getting the nutritional needs you need. Which is one of the reasons why I personally added AG One to my routine at the very beginning of this year, and I'll be honest, I have never looked back. I realized at the beginning of this year that I often was worried about my kids. Are my kids eating enough nutrients whether they're a baby or two years old, six years old, 1015, it didn't matter.
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We're always worried that our kids are getting enough vitamins and minerals. And I stopped one day and was like, am I aware of myself? Am I sometimes just going through the motions and making sure that I'm getting enough vitamins and minerals and plenty of good things that are going to help me feel good in my body? And I think some days as moms, we run on low and some days we don't have a ton of whole foods. Which is why I added AG One into my routine to make sure that I was getting vitamins and minerals, a probiotic, and really just getting rid of my multivitamin and just making sure that I was getting a great gut health drink that I can easily have in the morning, first thing when I wake up.
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All right, let's get rocking and rolling and talking about ways to improve your workouts and break your plateau through your workouts.
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So my first tip is to check your form. Form matters so much because a movement is only as effective as your form. I've been in the fitness industry since I was 19, and I am still mastering my own form and constantly improving it. I can tell you that my form in basically all of my movements is a million times better than it was when I was 19. So it's okay to not have everything mastered to start.
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But you do want to be aware that you are constantly looking and trying to improve your form, and there's a couple of different ways you can do it. The first idea to improve your form is pay attention that you are feeling the movement in the right muscle. If you are doing a squat and you start to feel the work in your back, chances are your form is incorrect or something is off. Hence why you are not feeling the work in your glutes and your legs. I used to see this all the time when I taught group fitness.
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I would cue the class squat lower in your squat, make sure your back is flat, you're shooting your glutes back, and everyone would go yes. And then all of a sudden I would see people folding their upper body forward, which made them think they were getting low, but they actually weren't sitting back into the squat, which made their form off. They felt it in the wrong place and they weren't seeing progress in a change in muscle in their legs and glutes. So you do want to be aware of your form. For clients oftentimes that they say they're struggling with a movement.
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We'll say, send us a video of you doing the movement, and myself and the coaches will critique it and say, hey, I can tell in this video you're not pushing through your heels in your squat, or your shoulders are rolled forward in your bicep curl, so you're putting work into your upper body instead of in your biceps. Simple things like that. There's a lot of things you can be aware of, of just feeling it in the right place. Form is also so important. It is why I cue it in every single one of my workout videos on my Instagram page.
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Deliciously, fit and healthy. I do voiceovers on all of them and I have text cues on them. In my coaching programs, I do text cues on all of the full body workouts. I don't do voiceovers so they can play music at the same time, but they can still get those cues. And in most of my guides, I also will have text cues or written cues and some voiceovers in them.
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Either or it's really important because sometimes if you're just following along with someone and you're trying to copy what they're doing, you may not be doing it correct and you won't realize you're doing it correct unless you actually have cues to help you know that it is correct. This is also why in my upcoming app we are doing an entire section of form. That's right. I'm going to go through every single exercise and give form cues and explain how to do it effectively, which is going to be a game changer. You can also go on YouTube and look up form for different movements and think about those cues and then practice them yourself.
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That's going to make such a difference. This is also why there are mirrors all over the gym, because it is useful for you not only to feel that your form is right, but for you to visually see it. So that's the other thing is to watch yourself in a mirror. I still use the mirror to watch my own form. And I'll tell you why this matters so much.
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About a month ago, I filmed 500 videos for the app in our upstairs playroom. I moved all the toys to the side. It's so funny. I could have done a studio but I'm like no, it's easier for me to do a home. We put in like a fake floor and I did a wall, so it was a clean wall behind us and we just brought up lights and filmed up there.
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Now, with this said the trickiest part about where we were filming is I didn't have a mirror to watch myself and hear me out on why this matters. I would be doing a shoulder exercise and my husband knew to watch for this because we filmed up there enough that his job was to watch and to tell me, hey, your shoulders are going like your wrist is going slightly above your shoulders or too high in a lateral raise. So then it's above my shoulders, which isn't necessary. I didn't always see if my shoulders and wrists were perfectly stacked in a plank. I went off feeling and I kind of know because I've done this for so long, so I do know, but it's not quite as good as if you would see it in a mirror.
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So I can feel for it. But his job was literally to watch for any mistakes I made. That way if I wasn't stacked, if my body wasn't square so let's say something where I'm supposed to be in an all four position and my upper body wasn't square to the floor or parallel, anything like that, he watched for. I also sometimes have an issue because I had a hip injury for so long. My hips will shift when I start to get tired in a squat.
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And when I'm watching in a mirror, I can catch myself do it and kind of make adjustments around it to fix it. But when we were filming upstairs and I had no mirror, I couldn't always see it. Now sometimes I could feel it for sure because you do get used to that motion. But again, it wasn't quite the same. So this is why having a mirror can be very helpful, even if you are someone who tends to bounce when you lift weights.
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I sometimes will have a bad habit and I've worked on it for years of where I have really heavy weights for a bicep curl or something and I do a tiny little bounce you can see my knees give to power the weight up. And if I'm watching in a mirror, I catch that and I'm like no, I want to do a strict bicep curl or a strict shoulder press. And when you're watching in the mirror, you can just make sure you're not doing those tiny little things that you may not be noticing. Get a simple small mirror. If you're working out at home, if you're in the gym, use the mirrors for what they're supposed to be used for.
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But if you're at home, go to Walmart or any store and buy two of those $10 mirrors that are kind of long that go in the closet and put them next to each other and use those and watch your form. If you can't get a mirror, I suggest filming yourself because that's also going to make a difference. If you film yourself, you're going to catch when you're swaying or swinging your arms during a bicep curl instead of really stabilizing and isolating that bicep curl. You're going to notice when you're folding forward in a squat or when you're supposed to be hinging back in a Romanian deadlift, but you're actually just bending your upper body forward. All of those things, even your elbows flaring in a tricep extension, make a huge difference on your outcome and your ability to build muscle when your form is on point.
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If you are struggling with seeing changes, I need you to take some time and film yourself doing some workouts and see what you look like and look if your form is on point. And if not, you might need to even look at getting a trainer or watching some form videos online. So if you are struggling to see changes and really feel like you've plateaued, I want you to get a mirror and watch yourself, or I want you to film yourself and see what your form looks like. Another good thought to make sure that your weights match your rep range, whatever it is in your workout is to make sure that your movement is slow and controlled. If you are flying through ten reps and you're going pretty quickly, it probably means your weight is light.
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If the weight is heavier, you're going to be a little bit slower and controlled and you're going to need to kind of brace your body. Keep your shoulders back, for example, if you're doing a bicep curl, and really stabilize to get that weight up. If the weight's too light, it's going to be really easy to swing it up and down. So that's another sign that your weights are too light. My next tip to think about during your workouts is are your weights even correct for what you're doing?
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One of the most common questions I get asked in my social media posts is what size weights are you using or what size weights should I use? This varies drastically by person. It makes such a difference based on someone's experience, someone's form, and what they're used to lifting. So I can give you a guideline. It's really hard to tell people what size weights to use, but I can give them cues on how to make sure that the weights they are using are effective.
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So my first tip is within knowing what size weights you're using for the rep range in your program. The last two to three reps should be extremely challenging. Like you should feel really gassed, like you cannot do any more reps. So here's an example. Let's say in your workout you have ten reps.
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If you can do all ten reps. And if I was standing there in person and I said to you, okay, Jessica, you just did your ten reps. Can you do two more reps? Can you do three more? Can you do four or five more reps if you finish your rep range and you literally say, can I do another one?
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And another one, and another one, you are not holding the correct weight. You should not be able to do any more. Your muscle should be gassed. You should want to put down the weight and take a little rest or switch to another muscle group if you're in a superset or whatever it is. But that muscle should feel done.
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If you can do more reps than what are allotted, then you need to increase your weights. I also currently always tell my online clients, now, I would rather you start heavier and have to downsize your weights than get halfway or three, four through your set and realize, oh my gosh, my weights aren't heavy enough, I need to upsize. Because if you have to downsize, you've already really challenged yourself and you're like, holy cow, I cannot finish these reps. I have to lighten my weight. That means your muscles are working, they are dying.
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If you have to downsize, that's okay. That is a better choice than choosing lighter, not challenging your muscles and then getting through and going, oh shoot, okay, well, just up it and then at the end, maybe the last three reps might be challenging, but you've lost and missed a lot of the work in the first 50% if your weight was too light. So start heavier, downsize. If you need to mess with your rep range, you should not be able to do more. You want to feel really gassed in those last three reps, no matter what the rep range is.
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That is going to make a huge difference for your body's ability to be challenged and to add muscle, which is going to lead us into my third point, along with having the right weight, is you need to progressively overload your muscles and create variation with that overload. And I also talk about some of these ideas in one of my very first episodes, episode two, I give some ideas of how to change things up with progressive overload. Progressive overload just simply means that you are changing up the load so you are gradually bumping up the intensity of your strength training workouts to increase your muscle strength and endurance. So now think about your habits. If you are someone who goes to a fitness class, do you always go to the same class, pick up the same weights?
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Okay, we're on bicep curls. I'm going to hold ten pounds now and doing the same thing over and over again. If that's you, you're not going to see changes doing that. You've got to change it up. You need to progressively overload those muscles a solid program is going to have you changing them every few weeks.
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So a couple of different ways you can do it is one, you can increase your weights every couple of weeks or even change the reps. I know some programs every four weeks will change the rep range. So let's say you had ten reps. They might switch to eight reps, but make you hold heavier weights. Or maybe they'll leave the weight the same, but they will switch you to a higher rep range, maybe twelve reps.
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So you're challenging and you're under that weight a little bit longer. In interval programs, they will often change the intensity of the movement or the time if it is a timed workout. So within my coaching program right now, we do both. We change every two to four weeks. We have a change at two weeks and then again at four weeks.
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We do time under tension. So if it's a timed workout, I change the time, and if it is a weighted workout, I change the reps. And throughout the program I am pushing constantly. Increase your weights. It is better for you to go slow and controlled than fast and get a ton of reps in, because that's going to better progressively overload the muscle.
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You can also progressively overload through tempo. So slow down your movements. That is the amount of counts you're doing for the movement. So for example, a bicep curl, maybe you're only counting up one for the bicep curl and one down for the bicep curl. Slow that down.
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And from the bottom of the bicep curl, as you curl up, count slowly three to four counts and then count slowly down three to four counts. Or do one fast up three. Slow down any of those variations. Like you can even do three, slow up one, fast down two and two. It's just about changing up that time under tension, which helps build muscle.
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The more muscle, the stronger you are, the faster your metabolism. Your plateau is broken, so it makes a difference. Tempo is another really great one with changing those counts. You even want to think about changing up those counts within the eccentric and the concentric movement. So the eccentric movement is when you're lengthening the muscle, so it's getting longer.
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The concentric movement is when you're shortening the muscle, so it's getting shorter. So imagine a squat as you go to squat down the glutes lengthen. They basically stretch as you bend your knees. That's the eccentric portion of the lifting move. When you go to stand up, your glutes shorten and contract as you stand.
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So like they get smaller. Think about them. They flex at the top. That's the concentric motion. It's the same thing in a bicep curl or even a push up.
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For a pushup, as you go down towards the floor, your chest muscles are stretching, they're lengthening. That's the eccentric. When you push away from the floor, that is, the concentric as you play with that tempo, even play with the tempo within both sides of those movements and varying that up. Maybe for a little while you're doing the eccentric where you're counting slower and powering up on the concentric. And then maybe you do the opposite because they're both needed to train the muscle and they're going to train the muscle in a different way.
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So it's a great way to break that plateau and create variation and create progressive overload with tempo. You can also create variation with progressive overload through changing your rest times, because if you're resting shorter, your intensity in the movement may be more intense. Or if you're resting longer, you might be able to hold heavier weights in the movement, which is going to mean the movement is more intense with more weight. So changing up even the rest time is going to make a difference. All of those are just really great ways to progressively overload the muscle, which is going to help break a plateau and help you see changes.
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There is a crazy amount of research that shows that if we progressively and regularly increase our intensity, change things up with weights, time, tempo, all of the things that I've talked about. That is how we enhance and grow our muscle. When we progressively challenge our body without causing injury, that is when our body recovers and becomes stronger. And as we get stronger, our metabolism gets stronger, we become more functional and are able to do more things. So that is a win win if we don't raise the intensity or at least change things up on a regular basis.
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With some of the ideas I gave for progressive overload, your performance in your fitness is going to honestly plateau out or you're going to even see declines because other aspects of our life are also always changing. For example, as we age, oftentimes our bone mass, especially for females, as we go through menopause. I read an article once that said that our bone mass goes down by 20% when we go through menopause. And the more muscle we have on our body, the more likely it is to keep our metabolism stronger and keep our bones stronger, which I've talked about in a previous episode to help prevent osteoporosis. If you're progressively challenging your body with progressive overload, you're going to keep that muscle on.
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You're more likely to keep a stronger metabolism, which is going to help prevent some of those plateaus and even those declines as we age. My fourth tip is adding more bilateral movements. And this is why bilateral movements make you work 15% harder because your body has to stabilize during the work of that movement. Let's imagine you're doing a single arm shoulder press. Your body naturally wants to kink its shoulders as you force that shoulder up, but we know that's not what it looks like.
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We have to stabilize our body. The shoulders should stay level. We're not supposed to kink up one hip. So your body, your core especially, has to contract and brace itself as we power that one weight up. So even though we're not working, let's say the left side, the left side and the right side are still working to stabilize the body, which is making the body work even though we're only doing one side at a time.
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And then you'll do the other side, it also allows you to focus on the muscle so you can make sure you're not overcompensating. I mentioned that you should feel where you're working because mind muscle matters. And when we do single side movements, we're better able to tap into that muscle and pay attention and find things that are overcompensating. For example, when I developed my hip issue a year ago, which as you know, has gotten so much better, but my range of motion is still a little bit smaller in my hip that I've had issues with than my opposite hip. I noticed when I was deadlifting in the midst of everything, when I was having a lot of pain, which thank goodness I'm not anymore, that I stopped feeling the work totally evenly across my body and I started overcompensating with the stronger leg, the leg that my hip was not injured in.
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And because of that I was struggling building muscle and I was even struggling maintaining some of the muscle that I already had because I was overcompensating into that one side. So one of the things that I did was I shifted into a lot of bilateral work. So just doing one side at a time, that allowed me to really tap into the muscle, make sure the right muscle was working and use the right weight for that. So when that hip was injured, I would be doing an RDL on my side that wasn't injured and I could use five to ten more pounds in that side than my other one. And that seems crazy that I wasn't exactly using the same size weight, but it allowed me to challenge my injured side and still try to maintain and even build muscle there.
00:23:48
Because there was no way to overcompensate with my left side because my right side was alone and I could really focus in on what I was supposed to doing, on if my glute was activating, on if my hamstring was turning on, or if I was overcompensating with my quad, all of those things. Using bilateral work helps you. So you don't just go through the motion because you're singling out certain body parts alone. And not only certain body parts, but only one side of the body for that body part, which just helps you pinpoint what's going on. I've also noticed that sometimes I can even lift heavier in a bilateral movement.
00:24:27
So for example, there's just a move literally just this week where I was doing a shoulder movement and I normally can hold 225 pound dumbbells with ease but when I tried to switch up to noticed I little bit started to do the bounce that I talked about, where I start to try to power it up slightly, bounce my knees to get it up, and even my chest would start to a little bit flare up as I tried to pull that weight up. So instead what I did was I switched it to a bilateral movement. So I kept that 30 and I was able to do 30 in a single shoulder and then I would focus on stabilizing my body for the other half and then I did it on the other side. So while it was less weight overall and less stress overall on my body, this single muscle I was focusing on and I was pinpointing actually had more weight on it and I was able to isolate it a little bit better and think about it. So if you're struggling even with a bicep curl or shoulder movement or even squats shift, try a reverse lunge, see how you can load that one side on a reverse lunge instead of a squat, try a single sided shoulder or bicep movement.
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See if you can get a little bit more weight and really think about stabilizing your body as you use one leg and see if you can add a little bit of weight that way while keeping your form and while being aware of that, that's going to allow you to pump up those weights. Again, remember to get them a little bit more while still being able to keep good form which is again more weight is going to help you develop more muscle which is going to help in so many aspects of not only feeling good but speeding up that metabolism which helps break that plateau. If you're trying to see changes in fat loss or in building muscle, my last tip is I want you to work on your mobility. If you're feeling stuck and plateaued in your workouts, if your nutrition is on point and you're like, no, I'm doing all these things. I'm progressively overloading.
00:26:23
My form is good, I'm changing things up and you're still feeling stuck, it might be your mobility, and I know that seems crazy, but your range of motion makes a massive difference for your ability to build strength and put on muscle. The more range of motion you have, the better. So I want you to picture a squat, picture someone doing a squat and imagine they're the same height, same weight, same everything, they have the same weight on their back, everything's the same. Person A lowers in the squat and they only go down maybe like one or 2ft. So they're not at 90, they're not even at 45, their glutes just shifted back just a little bit, maybe one or 2ft.
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Now imagine person B goes all the way down where their knees are bent, they're all the way almost in a seated position and. Then they power up. Who is going to get the better benefits from the squat? If everything's the same, it's going to be the person who has more range of motion. Now, person A who didn't fully do a squat maybe only did a small kind of half squat as you have seen people do sometimes.
00:27:25
Maybe there is some mobility issues, that's why they didn't go all the way down to a normal squat. Maybe they have some hip issues where it doesn't allow them to do that. Or maybe they have tight ankles and if your ankles are tight, you are not going to be squatting very well because it literally stops you from lowering back into that because your body feels out of balance. So that mobility makes a huge difference in our range of motion and our range of motion makes a huge difference in our ability to put on muscle which will help break that plateau. Be aware of your ankles, your hips, your knees and your shoulders.
00:28:03
Because all of them with greater range of motion is going to allow you to get into a better position, a better form position. Because sometimes even things like a deadlift, if you can't hinge back because your hamstrings are tight, your deadlift form is going to be bad. You can work on it, you can know all the cues you want, but if your hamstrings are so tight you will not be able to hinge, you just won't be able to. So you won't get the outcome you want no matter what. So you're going to need to work on those hamstrings so that you can truly hinge.
00:28:35
All of those are going to affect your range of motion. I actually work on mobility like crazy and I can be honest and say before I had my hip injury, I didn't. I would do my workout and off I went and I didn't even care and I didn't always warm up great and I should have known better because I was a trainer. And the truth is sometimes we know better but it doesn't mean we do better. And I have no shame in admitting that I should have been doing mobility for years and years before.
00:29:01
But we can all learn from our mistakes and I work really heavily on mobility now and I think that's a huge reason why a lot of my range of motion for my hip has come back in general and why I don't have pain anymore. I've always had pretty good range of motion in my shoulders. I have no issues there. It's pretty much almost perfect mobility in that range. But I warm up my calves, I stretch my calves, I go through a range of motion with them before I even bother squatting because I can't drop it low if those calves and ankle and all of those are all warmed up.
00:29:33
And I'm moving through a range of motion with a mobility movement, not just stretching a calf and then going into it, you kind of need to get them fluidly moving. So the joints and tendons are going to be supportive as you go into that position. I highly suggest Amir from Beard. The best you can be on Instagram. I had him on the podcast.
00:29:54
Episode 127 mastering Your Aches and Pains Using Mobility He has a subscription program for mobility. I'm actually in it myself. He is able to move in a way that is not even possible in my mind, but it makes such a difference. I've seen it for myself. So follow him on Instagram.
00:30:12
There's also plenty of other people who do teach mobility. Move you is another Instagram that I really like. Again, that's move and then the letter U. And they teach a lot about muscles and moving and some of those things because it makes such a difference. And one more account I like is DocGen Fit.
00:30:30
She also gives some good mobility and stretching and all kinds of things to help your muscles get moving through a range of motion, which is going to make a difference in your ability to lift more rates and be able to do it in a functional way. The last thing I want to mention, and it's not really a tip I already went through, my five tips is I want you to pay attention to see if your goals actually even match your workout program. I highly suggest episode 45. Does your workout routine match your fitness goals? Because I have had sometimes clients come to me and their habits or the workout routine that they are using are not matching their goals.
00:31:08
For example, if they are only running and running is fantastic, but their goal is they want to put on muscle, yet they're only running. That's going to be tricky because running is a cardiovascular activity. It is meant for your heart and lungs. It works your muscles, but it does not work them like weights do. Weights actually challenge just a muscle, hence why it's called strength training, to break it down.
00:31:34
So it's the primary purpose of weights when for running it's more, the primary purpose is a cardiovascular activity. Again, not that it's bad by any means. I do a mix of strength training and cardio. I believe in both. But looking at your balance of what you're doing and what you're wanting and I think that episode 45 is going to make a difference in helping you kind of make sure that you are aware of that.
00:31:58
If you are doing your own workouts, I also want you to know more than breaking a plateau or always seeing changes or losing fat, I hope that these tips help you be more functional. I hope they make your workouts stronger. I hope they make it easier for you to enjoy your families and run and do and see and participate in life and never feel limited by your lack of ability to move I think that's the most important thing. I am all for changes and progressing and all those things, but more than any of those, I hope you know the way you function matters and how you feel matters. And of these tips, I hope that even they help you see that and make that ability to function more and to get stronger and to feel good, better.
00:32:46
All right, that's it for today. As always, you are doing so much better than you think you are. And we'll chat next week.