Latest / Midlife Glow Up: Simplifying Fitness, Nutrition and Healthy Habits for Women over 40 / 46. 5 Fitness Lessons I’ve Learned After 30 Years of Coaching Women

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46. 5 Fitness Lessons I’ve Learned After 30 Years of Coaching Women · Midlife Glow Up: Simplifying Fitness, Nutrition and Healthy Habits for Women over 40

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think we make fitness way more complicated than it needs to be.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have been in the fitness industry for 30 years, and I have seen a lot of trends come and go.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I actually started my fitness journey with steparobics with my mom back in the 80s.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I did my fair share of Taebo and kickboxing.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I taught and attended boot camp classes and bar and did hit and spinning.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember when hour-long fasted cardio sessions were just what you had to do because we were convinced that that was the secret to burning more fat.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: We did beach body workouts on our little DVD players and programs like P90X and 21-day fix and even something called insanity.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: You name it, and I've probably either taught it, tried it, or watched it have its moment over the past 30 years.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved plenty of those things.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them are still part of how I train and coach today.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: But after three decades of coaching women, I have learned that the things that actually matter haven't really changed that much as the fitness industry would have you believe.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to keep reinventing your workout routine every time a new trend comes along.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are a handful of lessons that I have watched play out over and over again over the years, both in my own life and in the hundreds of women that I have had the pleasure of coaching.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So today, in this episode, I'm going to share five fitness lessons that I have learned through my journey thus far.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And these are things that I wish every woman understood about staying strong and active and healthy in midlife and beyond.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Midlife Flow Up Podcast, where we simplify fitness, nutrition, and healthy habits for women over 40.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Joan Dandano, your midlife health and wellness coach.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are ready to feel strong, consistent, and confident in this season of life, well then you're in the right place, my friend.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have five lessons that I want to share with you today.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And throughout these lessons, I will bring in some personal stories or share some client wins to help really make this make sense and hopefully land with you.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have a feeling that a lot of what I'm going to share will be a review of things that we've talked about in the past, but I'm excited to kind of pull them all together here today and share in one episode the five lessons that I wish that every woman in my life knew.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So lesson number one, shocker of all shockers, is that consistency is way more important than intensity.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that we, our generation, has been conditioned to believe that a workout only counts if it's long enough or hard enough.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so you need to sweat, you need to feel sore the next day, you definitely need to spend at least an hour and you need to do this at least five or six days a week, or else why bother?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: But what I have learned is that the women who get the best results are not the women who are doing the hardest workouts.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the women who are spending all day in the gym.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: They are the women who just keep coming back day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: One of my FitZone members, Monica, is a great example of this.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Monica has been working out with me virtually now for six years.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: She lives in Brazil.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I'm teaching my 6 a.m.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: class, it's evening for her and she logs on very regularly.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: She's super consistent.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: But this year has provided a lot of obstacles for her getting in her normal routine workouts.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So she experienced a skiing injury that kept her away from her workouts for a little while.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then she had a season of work that was just so demanding.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it caused her to get off of her normal routine with fitness.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I love what she said about coming back.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: She said, by this point, exercise is already an ingrained habit in my life.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So even though I had to take time off, when I was ready to come back, it didn't feel like starting all over again.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: It actually felt like coming home.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So she simply came back.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there's such an important distinction between taking a break and starting over.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are seasons where you're incredibly consistent.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are seasons when you just can't be, whether it's sickness or travel or injury or work.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: The goal isn't to create a fitness routine that never gets interrupted, because that would be perfection, and perfection doesn't exist.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the goal is to create a fitness routine that you know how to return to time and time again.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that is consistency.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a skill that you can build.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So lesson number one: consistency matters more than intensity.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lesson number two is strength training changes everything.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So for a long time, fitness for women was centered around burning calories and getting smaller.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: We were told to do cardio and eat less food and burn as many calories as possible.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And thankfully, that conversation is changing.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because especially in midlife, strength training is one of the most important things that we can do for ourselves to build and preserve our muscle, to support our bones, to improve our balance and our stability, to prevent injuries, and just really protect our ability to stay active and independent as we age.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: But there is another benefit of strength training that sometimes I think gets overlooked.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: When we lift weights, when we practice moving resistance with our own body, it changes the way you think about your body and what your body is capable of.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: When you notice that the dumbbells you've been using for the past six months are starting to feel lighter and you're able to up-level and go with heavier dumbbells, it's like, wow, if I can do that, I wonder what else I can do.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so you realize in everyday chores like picking up the groceries, carrying them upstairs to the fridge, or getting up and down off the floor, or on that hike, you're like, gosh, I'm not as winded as I used to be.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: You begin to feel more capable and more empowered.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And as we get older, this notion that we are building the body that will support us in the next decades to come is super empowering.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: My client, Jamie, was not in a good routine of moving her body really intentionally for quite some time.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And she said she was a little bit intimidated by the idea of lifting weights.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So she came at the beginning with just her body weight and a mat.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And she realized pretty quickly within the first few weeks that just her body weight was not enough anymore.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: At the beginning, it was a lot.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: But then she realized, okay, it's time to go buy myself some dumbbells.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And she started with the lightweights.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then before she knew it, she was lifting way heavier than she thought she was even capable of.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So our body really does adapt quickly, especially when we give it the right stimulus.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And strength training is the best stimulus that we can give to our muscles and our bones in this stage of life.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So lesson two, strength training really changes everything.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Lesson number three: your fitness plan has to fit your actual life.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Our real lives are busy and chaotic.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Our real life is not super consistent.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you are in the similar stage of life as I am, one week you are dropping a kid at college, the next week you are caring for an aging parent.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: The week after that, you might be traveling.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So when you have a week where everything goes according to plan, it almost seems rare.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So your fitness routine needs to have flexibility to move with you through all of those different parts of your life.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: One of my clients, Jan, really experienced this in a big way recently.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: She moved from Arizona to Florida and then decided to move right back to Arizona again.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think of everything that comes with moving across country, your routines are disrupted, your house is in boxes, you're figuring out where everything is, you're rebuilding so many of those pieces of your everyday life.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: But Jan told me she was so grateful that she didn't have to disrupt her fitness routine.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't have to find another gym or hire another trainer or find a good group of people that she connected with.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Her workouts and her community moved with her because FitZone is virtual.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: So all she had to do was log in.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was a few hour time difference from Arizona to Florida, but I love the way she described it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: She said, this was one less thing that I had to figure out when everything else was in my life was in boxes.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what I want fitness to be for you, something that really supports the life that you are actually living and helps you feel stronger and more capable and more grounded.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that is actually one of the biggest reasons why I created FitZone.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've never heard me talk about FitZone before, FitZone is my live virtual workout program and on-demand workout library for women over 40 who are really ready to build muscle, improve bone density, but they don't want to do it alone.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: They want a supportive community of women.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's me to you in your living room, or you can choose a workout from the library that fits your schedule.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: The workouts are always changing.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: We strength train, of course, but we also work on mobility and balance and core strength and functional movement because those are the things that matter a lot in this stage of life.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: The goal with flexible fitness is to give you options to continue to take care of yourself through the changes that occur in this stage of life so that you don't have to stop and start over again.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: So lesson number three is make your workout, your fitness plan fit your actual life.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Lesson number four, you don't need perfect conditions to make progress.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think this deserves its own lesson because this is where a lot of women get stuck.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: We tell ourselves, I'll start when my knee feels better, or I'll get back to it when work slows down, or I'll just wait until after the vacation or after the holiday to begin my workout routine.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'll start in September, I'll start in January, I'll start when I have more time.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: But here is the thing: we are never going to have perfect conditions.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: We have to just start inside the chaos of our actual life and make some progress.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: One of my longtime Fitzone members, Kelly, made a commitment to herself to do three workouts per week.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: She kept it super simple.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And those workouts don't have to look perfect.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have to look the same week after week.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: But for three whole years, she has committed to doing three workouts a week.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: How amazing is that?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about the compound effect, 52 weeks in a year times three workouts times three years.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is almost 500 workouts that she has gotten in over the span of three years.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is what consistency looks like, but that is not what perfection looks like.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Kelly has dealt with numerous injuries.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: The most recently was a knee injury.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so she has had to modify a lot of the exercises.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And she could have waited until her knee was 100% before coming back, but instead, she kept showing up.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if her knee was not feeling good that day, then she would modify and do all upper body.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Normally she comes to my eight o'clock classes, and I do offer four 8 a.m.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: classes here on the Pacific time zone.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: But if her workday starts earlier, then she has the option to jump into that 6 a.m.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: class instead.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if neither live class that day works, then she has the option to fall back on the on-demand library.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what flexible fitness looks like.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what it looks like to start making progress instead of waiting for the perfect conditions.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: She just keeps showing up and she makes the workouts work for her.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this lesson is really applicable to a lot of women in our stage of life.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we think that modification is failure, but it's not.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's just making the workout work for you.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you have 20 minutes, then that still counts.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need a whole hour.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: If your body is really sore and you need to use lighter weights or body weight, that still counts.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if your normal schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but you have conflicts on all of those days, then you do Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, it still counts.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Your workout is allowed to look different depending on what your body and your life look like in that moment.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the ability to adapt is actually one of the things that I think allows you to stay consistent over time.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that lesson number four is stop waiting for perfect and just start making progress inside of the chaos.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Lesson number five is train for the life that you want to live.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is probably the lesson that I feel most passionate about, especially at this stage in my life.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: My own definition of what it means to be quote unquote fit has definitely changed dramatically over the years.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: In my 20s and 30s, fitness was almost entirely about aesthetics for me.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I would spend hours in the gym doing really long cardio sessions.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I would lift five days a week.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there was definitely this all or nothing mentality behind it.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And how I would measure whether it was quote unquote working was how I looked in the mirror or what the number on the scale told me.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: But today I look at fitness so differently.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I still care about feeling good in my body.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: But what matters so much more to me now is what my body allows me to do.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: In this stage of life, in midlife, I feel an incredible amount of gratitude for this one precious body that I have and for everything that it allows me to experience in my one precious, amazing life.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: This body allows me to hike and paddleboard and play pickleball, and it lets me travel and walk for miles, and I can garden and run and lift weights and take a yoga class.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I can get down on the floor and get right back up with ease, and I can carry my own suitcase and I can say yes when an opportunity for adventure comes along.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to take that for granted anymore.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want to live to be 90 or maybe even 100 years old.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't just want to be here.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be participating in my life as long as I possibly can.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I want to keep traveling and playing and exploring and trying new things.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be able to do the basic things like put the dishes away over my head and climb stairs.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to move through the world independently.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so today, how I measure success is what is my body capable of?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Am I doing now what I can to preserve those capabilities for my future self?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: The way that I train today isn't only about what I can do today.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I am paving the way for my 60-year-old me and my 70-year-old me and my 80-year-old me and my 90-year-old me.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give her the best possible chance of continuing to do the things that she loves instead of sitting on the sidelines because her body can no longer keep up with the life that she wants to live.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, none of us get to control what aging is going to look like.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: We will have injuries, we will have illnesses, our bodies are inevitably going to change.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But there is so much that we can do.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: There is so much that is in our control to build strength and muscle and balance and keep our mobility and our endurance to give our future selves the strongest foundation possible.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I want you to start thinking beyond the mirror and beyond the scale when you think about the results that you're getting from your fitness.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Can you walk up and down the stairs without getting winded?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Are you reaching for heavier weights?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Can you easily get down on the floor and back up again?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Can you spend your day exploring on vacation?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can you hike and garden and ski?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever brings you joy, can you do those things?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes the best results are not the ones that you can visibly see.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're the ones that you experience when your body keeps up with your life.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that is really what we're training for.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: So lesson number five, train for the life you want to live.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: So those are some of the biggest lessons that I have learned over 30 years in the fitness industry.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And to recap, they are consistency matters more than intensity.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Strength training changes everything.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your fitness plan needs to fit your actual life.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need perfect conditions to make progress.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to be training for the life that we want to live.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you noticed something about the women whose brief little stories I shared with you today.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: What they all have in common, including my own, is that we have had to adjust.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: So Monica had to take time off her workout routine.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And Jan moved across country twice.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Kelly has a demanding work schedule and a knee that requires fitness modifications.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I have had to adjust how I think about what fitness is for and what results I'm tracking.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: But we all have found a way to keep fitness as a main priority in our lives.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what I want for you as well.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to build a relationship with movement and strength that you can keep coming back to through all the different seasons of your life.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because the goal isn't just to be fit today.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is to build strength and confidence and capability that allows you to keep saying yes to your life for years and years to come.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are looking for support doing exactly that, I would love to invite you to come try Fitzone.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: As a reminder, FitZone is my live virtual workout program and on-demand workout library for women who are in this stage of midlife where we feel stretched so thin to launch children and care for aging parents and also balance the demands of work and life and social, all the things.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: What we need is a workout program that fits into the chaos so that you can keep coming back to it over and over again without having to start over.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're curious at all, I would love to invite you to just come try a free class for yourself.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: I put all the information in the show notes so you can learn more there.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have any questions, just hop over to Instagram at Jones FitZone and DM me.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: As I was putting this episode together, I realized I could do the exact same thing as this with nutrition.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because after years and years of helping women with food and healthy eating, there are some pretty important lessons that I have learned along the way there too.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So stay tuned.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: In a couple weeks, we're going to be talking about the five nutrition lessons that I wish every woman in midlife knew as well.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening today, my friend.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, progress over perfection and consistency over intensity.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep growing, keep glowing, and bye for now.