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Why Consistency Builds Confidence After 50 · Making Muscle Memories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: After 40 years of work in the fitness industry, I have learned that real strength isn't just built through exercise, but through experience.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I will share with you some of the science as well as the stories that have shaped my work.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: We are all building muscle memories.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: One rep, one story, and one day at a time.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Every time that you show up for your body, you are making a muscle memory.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not just physically, but emotionally as well.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we're going to discuss why consistency builds confidence and why the memories that you are making matter.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Making Muscle Memories podcast.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Lauren Erk and I will be your host.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, we are talking about consistency as it pertains to building confidence in our 50s.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for many people, they will say that they will start to feel confident when they get results.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: But this does not always happen.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: The results come from sometimes years of being consistent.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And being consistent does take a lot of effort.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now the idea of consistency is that we do a repeated activity over time and we start it with a little bit of uncertainty, maybe a little bit of unsteadiness, and certainly lack of wisdom, but through a consistent amount of practice, we gain the wisdom to do this thing without even thinking of it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the first time that you got behind the wheel of a car.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember sitting in my car with my dad, and I thought I would never be able to merge onto the expressway.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to look at my odometer, I was trying to manage my speed, I was trying to look at the other cars, I was trying to increase my speed at the right time and decrease my speed at the right time, and noticing when that ramp came onto the expressway.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And now I can do it by thinking about something completely different.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've been guilty of looking down at the radio or whatever when I was merging onto an expressway.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just nothing to me now.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we don't want to pay attention when we drive, but we all have things that we've done repeatedly and we have gotten really good at doing them.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now I think when we get older and we reach this idea of I'm older, I'm in midlife, and I'm worried about failing.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to start over and I have a fear of moving.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: These are all very real things that I hear from my clients over and over and over.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: You go back to the doctor's office and they tell you that you've lost some bone density, or maybe you've put on some weight, or maybe you've realized in your life that you've somehow lost some of the strength that you once had when you were younger.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of starting again and trying to get that strength back really makes you think, I am going to get injured, I am not going to be successful, I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't know where to start.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the reason for that is we kind of look at like we're sitting on a mountain, we want to climb the mountain, we want to get to the top of the mountain, but all we can see is the top of the mountain instead of thinking about how am I going to get to the next ledge, what am I needing to do to get to this ledge?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then what we need to do is not always super enjoyable, they're repetitive.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And what we need to be able to do is show up consistently over and over.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Once we reach that level, we show up consistently to reach the next level.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And if we continue to do that with no regard for the top of the mountain, we will see that we will reach our goals.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: But what we don't recognize is that the confidence that we have to reach that goal is built over time and there's no way around it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to tell you a story about a client of mine.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to change the name because I definitely want to protect client confidentiality.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: But this client's name was Anne.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: When she first came to me, she was very thin, a thin white woman in her 60s, and she had gone to the doctor and found out that she was diagnosed with osteoporosis.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not just osteopenia, full-on osteoporosis.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And she was full of fear.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: She had been active her whole life, but yet her body was somehow disintegrating.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when we looked at some of the things that she was doing, what I found out, even though she, you know, from in her clothes, she looked very thin and she looked in shape, her idea of exercise was walking.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I had to explain to her was that walking alone was not going to provide the necessary feedback, the necessary torque to her muscular system by moving her joints in a multiple direction of in multiple directions in planes of motion and using different force applications for her to build bone.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: For the body to actually build bone, it really needs a certain amount of consistent force application that is varied and strategic.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, hearing all of this, Anne was, she was on board, she understood, but what came up immediately for her was fear.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, I love my walks.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love to put on my headphones, my listen to a podcast, whatever, and I just go and walk, and it's a big part of my day, and this is a very freeing aspect of my life.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when I told her that she needs to start with resistance training, the first thing that came out of her mouth is every time I work out with resistance training, I get hurt.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Or I have been, you know, diagnosed with osteoporosis, so I'm really fearful that I'm going to fracture a bone.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so what was really interesting to me is that just like that story that I just told about looking at the top of the mountain, to her, starting a resistance training program looks like I've got to lift as heavy as possible, and that's going to be the only thing that's going to put forces on my bones and cause my central nervous system to lay down more bone.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think a lot of people do this when they get these types of diagnosis, whether it be weight loss or rehabilitating a joint, getting in shape, whatever, getting more muscles on their body.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: They don't understand that being able to do this takes a long time.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now I will tell you from the very onset of working with this woman, I have now worked with her for almost two years.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: When she started with me, she was getting muscle activation techniques.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And what we found immediately as I was testing her body, she had zero core strength.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: We would look at her trunk rotation, trunk extension, side bend, lateral flexion, and everything was testing massively weak.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, I remember saying to her at one point, how do you hold yourself up?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a woman who had had three children, and she had not really taken care of her core in such a way for these muscles to stay strong.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly we can all agree that walking around your block is not going to train your core, but she just assumed because she was looking good in clothes that her core was strong.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So she started on an isometric resistance training program.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And she did that in my app, FIS On Demand.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I assigned her, as I always do with my clients, several videos that would correlate with what we were finding was weak.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And these were requiring her to perform things that she had never done.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: She actually had to sit at home by herself and look at a television set or look at her smartphone or her iPad or whatever it was she was looking at.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And she would have to come face to face with where her body was weak and learn how to consistently show up for herself.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some weeks she would come in and she would say, I was doing these isometrics and I was sore.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And anytime that pain came up, I saw the fear come into Ann's eyes.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had to go back and we would have to go over the same principles that I go after in my platform over and over.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Remember what he talked about in isometric.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: It shouldn't be making you sore.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: It shouldn't cause pain.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: It shouldn't cause you to tremble.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: It shouldn't cause you to use a lot of multiple joints to try to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so she had to learn over a period of not just weeks but months of consistent training that she was actually, her idea of resistance training was doing a lot of it all the time.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: She learned that actually the consistency of going through this every single day was way more important than her being intense.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a principle that you're going to hear me talk about a lot on this podcast, that consistency beats intensity every single time.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because every time she added too much intensity to what she was doing, she would set herself back and her consistency fell at the window because she couldn't do what she wanted to do for two or three days after.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So she learned through working with some of these videos that she began to like doing isometrics.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: She started learning how to love squeezing her muscles.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: She loved being able to do things around her home.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: She learned that getting up out of a chair became easier.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: She actually had more energy during the day, and her body was starting to change aesthetically, even though that was not really our goal at the time.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I didn't say to her was that she needed to really think about what she was spending a lot of her time doing, which was a lot of walking.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what we noticed is that over time she was starting to replace resistance training with her walking program.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: She wanted to walk less and she wanted to do more resistance training.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, eventually we had to have that talk where isometrics were not going to be enough.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started to introduce the concept of progressive overload.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the word progression alone means consistency, right?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: It means showing up on a daily basis.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So over time we learn how to do positional isometrics, which I like to call integration in my program.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Through doing integrative isometrics, she then learned how to add movement, looking at calisthenics, Pilates-based training, and whatnot.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes she would learn that she would do too much, in which case she would go back to her isometrics.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this has gone on for a period of a couple of years.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what I've noticed about Anne, and I just spoke with her, I guess a couple of weeks ago, she came into my office as she always does.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: We see each other only once a month.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: The rest of the time, she's doing things on her own with my app and doing exercises.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: She's still doing some walking.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: She says that her husband has told her how great she looks in her 60s.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: He actually referred to her as his hot wife, which I thought was so cute.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the biggest thing is that she felt more confident in her body.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you know where that confidence came from?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: She says, I showed up for myself.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I gave up this walking program that I thought that I needed, and I did something that initially made me feel scared.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And through this process, she has learned so much about resistance training and about what her body needed on a consistent basis.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: She was funny because I was overhearing her talking to another one of my clients, and she was talking to her about what she has learned.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now you gotta remember these isometrics, it's gonna take a while, and you're gonna need to do these on a daily basis, and you're gonna need to show up for yourself, and you're gonna need to listen to the cues that she's telling you, and you're gonna have to practice over and over and over these very same skills.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what happens over time?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: You learn to love it, you learn to look forward to it.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And she actually made it a part of her morning routine so that it came right after her devotionals, after her prayer sessions, she would go right into her exercise, and this became a sacred time for her.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I feel really good about this because I know that I've added years to her life and she is going to age much, much slower.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for the next few minutes, I want to talk with you about the science of consistency.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the story that I just told you about Anne is a really powerful one, and I could tell you multiple other stories.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: I could also discuss with you things that I've experienced.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's that consistency part that is tough for people, and you have to get through those periods of time that consistency can be painful.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a real science to the power of consistency.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: You see, when our brain notices what we do on a daily basis, we have what's called neural pathways.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Nerves actually conduct information that they send from one neural cell to the other.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, these neural pathways are honed over time through the method of consistency.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about someone that is walking in a circle around a table, like I do when I'm doing MAT, when I'm training some with someone and treating their muscular system.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: If I was walking in the same circle over and over, eventually I would wear the carpet down.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would wear tracking in the floor.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you see people that are going to a track outside at a park, over time that track is going to get more and more worn down until pretty soon everybody knows where to go.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is the idea of what happens in the brain.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: We have these sheaths, these conductive conduction sheaths that surround a neural pathway and they're called myelin sheaths.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: These myelin sheaths become thicker with repetition.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: What they do is they improve the communication between one nerve cell and another.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that when we first start to do something, it feels it feels inconsistent.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't feel comfortable.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know we have all had that experience of trying something new.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is even harder as we get older because we had more time to have things in our life that we that we do automatically.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to learn how to drive, we don't have to learn how to feed ourselves, we don't have to learn how to wash our hair and put our clothes on and make a grocery lift and balance our checkbooks, all the things that we were learning at a younger age, everything in our life becomes pretty easy as we get older.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea of learning something new is not fun.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's why there's always these jokes about older people not wanting to learn technology.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And let me just tell you, being married to an IT professional, I've had that experience handed to me over and over again.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing that I have learned is that in the beginning, if we can just get past those first few weeks of feeling insecure and feeling a little bit unsure of what our next path will be, our next step will be, and we just keep taking those consistent paths, we are actually not only building muscle in our body, but we're building the brain matter as well.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now I've talked about a lot on this podcast is the idea of muscle memory.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say that I think we we kind of have a bad way of saying muscle memory and that muscles don't necessarily remember, but they do respond to what the brain is telling us.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we can definitely say that the brain remembers.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if we want to, for instance, build muscle or get good at a task or lose fat or increase bone density, there is no way to do this fast.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to tell you, but this happens over a period of time, right?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: You see, our brain desires repetition, it desires consistency, it doesn't like haphazard, it doesn't like things that are things, you know, unpredictable.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's why when we go into a situation like going into a new country for the first time, or you know, trying a new activity for the first time, or meeting a new person, going on a date, these are all scary propositions because we've never been there before.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: But like I said at the beginning of the podcast, if we can learn how to take these little baby steps, what happens is that they start to compound over time, a little, a little, a little actually becomes a lot.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then as we see this power of consistency over time, our muscles have become stronger, our brain matter has become stronger, the neuropathway has become more ingrained and more strong, and now what used to be uncomfortable and new and scary becomes comfortable, fun, and rewarding, and something that we actually look forward to, just like my client Anne.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to take a moment after hearing all of this.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's all just take a moment and really think and ponder.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to pose a question to you.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: What are the muscle memories that you are currently creating?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had to ask myself this question many times.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, who are the people that we are spending time with?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: What are the activities that we are choosing to participate in?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: What are the ideas that we keep telling ourselves?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to think about getting a journal or maybe writing something down and making this a consistent practice for yourself.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Am I teaching my body fear or am I teaching my body that I am capable?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want all of my listeners out there to think about one thing that they are scared to do.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And as we get older, these things compound.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's traveling to a new place.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly, I'm in fitness.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about fitness things that you might be scared of.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your doctor has told you that you need to get more active, but you're scared to.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're afraid that if you get started, that you might fail.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you're afraid that you won't be good enough.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know I've suffered from this many times in my life.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: But what if we could think about what's the first step that we could take?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: One principle of anything that is good for us is that resistance always shows up.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: The more resistance that shows up in terms of the things that you need to do, the more that you have to realize that thing must really be important because there's more resistance towards doing it.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, how can I overcome that resistance today with one step?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then the next day, we want to repeat that and maybe over time add another step.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to make that choice that we're going to participate in this for a long period of time until we achieve the results that we are looking for.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if this podcast spoke to you, I encourage you to subscribe and please share this with anyone that you know that needs to hear this message.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to close with a very short and important story.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: When my grandfather was dying of lung cancer years ago, and it was a really horrible experience watching him, I walked into the hospital and he knew that he was on his way out.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he told me that he had just he told me that he had just taken his last dose of morphine, and he was trying to give me some advice about something that I was going through at the time that I don't think he knew that he knew.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he gave me the best key piece of advice.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Lauren, I don't know why this has happened to me.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why Gaga, which was my grandmother at the time, I don't know what's gonna happen to her, but I have to take things step by step.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And one important message that I want to tell you, keep moving forward.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that was such a great lesson for me.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Keep moving forward.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if your step is just so little, it's I'm gonna put my hand, put my feet on my yoga mat today.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I am going to get out my dumbbells and put them in my workout space.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to schedule a workout session and unschedule something else or not schedule something else.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: That might be the first step.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the next step is I'm going to try 10 minutes of exercise three days a week.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe I'll try 15.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll eventually add four days a week.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe I'm going to try something new that I've never done with the goal of enjoying it for the first time.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to promise me that you will journal this, write this down for yourself.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because this, looking back on your accomplishments and checking off that to do list, is the very thing that your body craves.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that you have enjoyed this episode.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Again, thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.