Behind the Scenes: Menopause Fitness Coaching Session

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. Before we just dive into this episode, I have to give you a little quick start, okay? Today I'm inviting you to listen to a replay of the Stronger Coaching sessions. I did them live every day for 20— actually, it was like a baker's dozen, so it's probably 30, some days 35 minutes, because we were just in a juicy conversation and we couldn't drop it. But for 12 weeks, 5 days a week, we did coaching. And you can listen to a sample of this. And then if you want the entire library for soundbites that are categorized by topics, I will tell you how to get them. So I'm inviting you to listen to this replay of what I'd call menopause fitness coaching sessions. But there are a lot of women who are in this program who are well beyond menopause, 10 years, 20 years even. And participating in some, not even there yet. And that's okay too. The whole idea of Flipping 50 is flipping and getting to menopause in better shape, getting through it easier, and getting out the other end with the muscle and the bone and the brain health intact. So we have a better 40 decades or so after that. So what questions do women in a 12-week strength training program with a variety of levels of experience with Strength Training Ask. This is where you find out. The actual coaching session isn't edited, not at all. It occurred on a Zoom with the option of joining by phone or any device with attendees on camera or not, using chat to ask questions so that sound distractions are minimal. I'm seriously pulling back the curtain today with this episode. Nobody else is privy to this unless belong to our Flipping 50 membership, they get access to pretty much everything. Not absolutely, but pretty much everything. And those in our stronger 12-Week Strength Training Program will get and keep these— this library of information for long after, as long as they want to use it. And I guess I would have to say, you know, I hesitate always to say lifetime access because truly I wouldn't want to give you lifetime lifetime access to any information that I knew in my heart was outdated. And let's just say that right now I know anything I taught in the late '80s is outdated. So if I knew there were books I'd published or articles I published back then, you know, I'm not gonna freely hand them out. And likewise with content here, we will update if that is the case. So this, our Stronger 12-Week Program, calls for women in midlife or beyond. In this particular call, I answered questions about exercise form, hip mobility, lunges, and progression. Now, I want you just to have a little imagination. These calls took place on Tuesday through Saturday, and we did it on purpose so that we had at least one weekend day to make it easier for anybody who couldn't join us on an 8 AM Pacific time Monday through Friday could potentially join us on Saturday if they wanted to. And then what we begin to do after week 1 was make Saturdays movement days. So if someone wanted a demonstration of an exercise, an explanation of a modification of an exercise, wanted to tell me when I do that my knee hurts and have me demonstrate or give suggestions for why that might be, that's what Saturday became. So this is Tuesday, and there were some lingering questions coming at the end of Saturday's session that are answered here, but we were not moving while doing this, so you won't be behind. But this will give you kind of a bird's-eye view, or bird's-ear view, I guess, of what it's like to be on those calls and what kind of content came out of it based on purely questions. So it wasn't a, I showed up with content to deliver. This was a, I'm here, I'm going to answer any question that you give me, or, and I'll answer potentially with, that's not my scope of practice, I can't answer that, but here's who could. In some cases, that's where we go. Before we dive into this episode, might help you to know just that Saturday again is the movement day. This is the Tuesday after that when there were still some questions about what we had Done. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50, where I address your top struggles and concerns. Most of all, hope to empower you so you can age the way you want to. I share what to eat, how to move, and how to change your mindset so you can have the energy and vitality that you want, need, and deserve in this second and better half.

Lots of questions about activity. So number 1, from Saturday when we actually did a movement session, the question was about some of the kickboxing sessions show sidekicks. And I— my cue is to put the toe down. So work on having the heel higher and the toe down. And someone said, it's— I'm not able to do that. I'm thinking maybe that's just the way people's feet are different. It's not coming from your foot, girlfriend. It's coming from your hip. Your hip is immobile. So we need to work on that hip mobility. So the ball and socket joint in your hip is what's helping you turn that over like this. And it's not whether your foot can go like this. It's coming from here. So we're waving that way. So it was data. You just got some feedback.

I'm a little tight in my hips.

So you do mentally still want to be thinking I want that hip higher. And the why is because similar to in a cue for lunges or for squats, I'm going to always tell you be a little heavier on the heels, emphasize your weight on the heels, because the glutes connect to your, your, your, your bum will connect there if your weight's on your heels. So similarly, even while it's in the air, if we have that heel up, we're using the glutes to do that, we're getting it up and whether it's a push kind of a kick or it's a roundhouse kick. And we don't do a lot of those because they're the most risky and you need to really be able to articulate. But when we're doing that push, we want that to come from the glutes and not from the quads. And so when the toe is up, you're going to overemphasize the quads and we want that push.

So heel up.

And, and if it's not happening, my suggestion would be try to go a little lower. And see if you don't have more range of motion that way, more ability to work on the heel-ups. So it's when we start lifting up, now we've got that hip having to do more things. And it— you may be able to rotate if you're kicking down low. So get the power in the kick and do it low like you were gonna kick at your ottoman or kick at the couch. So it's low as opposed to high, and you may have may find you have better form, but also get in some of those number 4 stretches where the ankle crosses over the other knee, the pigeon pose in yoga, you know, and work on some hip mobility. And you may find that could improve as well. Someone asked about— I bought a half foam roller to do calf raises. Basically, we call them calf raises interchangeably, which is so funny. It's not the calf raising, it's the heel heel raise. But I think we all know, right? Toe— or it's on our toes, lifting the heel raise, and you're gaining range of motion by having that. And she says, is that recommended? So it's not not recommended. So certainly you can do that. But I would recommend this, similar to a YouTube video I just posted this weekend. Whenever you do squats, you want to make sure you do a hamstring exercise as well. Our entire lives, we've all probably been doing heel raises. Whoever told you do toe raises? Almost nobody. But as we age, that's the motion we're gonna lose. And what do we need when we walk so we don't trip on the rug or a stair? Toe raises. We need the ability to pick our feet up. Otherwise we get into that senior shuffle and moving along here because we want a better base of support. So when you do those heel raises, notice how much muscle is behind your calf as opposed to in the front of your shin.

Do some toe-ups.

You can do those even sitting. If you have your feet flat on the floor right now, pull your toes up and just do 20 of them.

And while we're talking, do 4 sets of 20 of them.

There's not much muscle there. And tomorrow you may say, yeah, felt that, feeling that today still, because we don't, we don't generally do this unless you've recently started walking and you're walking faster because we'd have more of those repeated toe-ups, or you're doing a lot of uphill climbing and you've got hilly areas and you're moving fast. We have that repeated lift, and a lot of times people confuse that with shin splints. But going for, you know, a couple of walks in a hilly space did not give you shin splints. It gave you fatigue in the anterior tibialis, that one muscle that runs up and down that front bone.

So we do need that.

So absolutely, there's nothing wrong and it's great for you to do those heel raises. But to all of us, I would suggest we should be doing those toe-ups because, you know, if we're gonna be racing around the nursing home and the community center when we're 85, you know, the person who's doing those toe-ups now is gonna win, right? She's gonna be more stable.

So start those too.

And anybody who's curious, What do I mean by a half foam roller? So generally, their foam rollers are like 6 inches in diameter, and they can be shorter, or they can be 36 inches, which is more typical. But a half is just one cut in half so that you can lie it down on the flat side, and you can play a little bit with standing on it and have the ability to lift up. You can do that on a step. You can do it on a stair step. I will do it on a machine when I'm at the gym. If I'm using a machine and then I'll get up and I need that rest in between, you don't want to go right back at it. But to make sure I get 1 or 2 minutes in between, I will often look for where's a part of the machine that I can stand on, on the ball of my foot, and then hang off of and do an upraise that way. So there's lots of tools and toys you could play with. What is the toe and knee alignment for a curtsy lunge? So this is one where you got to put your thinking cap on and imagine it, imagine doing it. And here's what I want to tell you is that if there's— it doesn't feel good to you, and particularly if it doesn't feel good to you in the knee, there's a reason for that. So what is good alignment in anything in the legs and lower body when we're talking lunges or we're talking squats? We wanna make sure that your knee is tracking over your toes. And when I say toes, I don't mean that it's like right over the top of it. We don't have to get so crazy about that. Your, your knee sometimes in daily activities of life goes beyond the front of your toes and your weight is still on your heels and you're okay. So your correct form that way will not look the same as somebody else cuz all of our lever lengths are slightly different. From your knee to your ankle, from your knee to your hip are different than someone else's. So we won't look exactly the same. But if you can say, I'm keeping my weight on my heel, you're still okay. But what we mean is if the big toe— so if this were my foot and my knee is here, the face of that knee should be facing the same way. I should not have my knee facing that way if my toes are facing that way, or more likely if I'm turning out and my knee can't turn out and it's this way, I've got a problem. I'm putting stress on my knee because the knee is just a hinge joint. It has a little mobility, a little ability to go this way, but we're not supposed to have a lot. So when you get injured, often the knee has been forced to go rotating or moving laterally in a way that it doesn't really have a range of motion to do. So the best alignment is always going to be when you're in that curtsy squat. There is, you've turned the toe slightly and the knee is also slightly pressing that way. We, we rock that boat just a little bit. We really take it to the edge. So if you leave the foot planted at the same way that you went to the side and then you go to the back and that foot doesn't have a slight move or a slight pivot, we're putting torque on the knee. So if you find the surface of your floor and the combination of the traction of your shoe. If you have new shoes, it's not going to work very well because you have great traction. It won't want to move because the shoe is doing its job. Or you find I can't get that pivot in there and you're feeling the torque on your knee. I would leave it out, leave it out and just do 2 on the same side or do alternating lunges and leave that curtsy out because we're first always no harm., right? Like physicians have this role, like do no harm. Well, so do we, right? So we choose the exercises based on risk and reward, and not every exercise is appropriate for every individual or every individual at this perfect moment that we're at right now. So just leave it out and we'll choose something else to work on those glutes or that medial glute muscle a little bit more. So be safe first and then choose which, which one you need.

So I hope that helps.

Feeling the curtsy squat, someone says. So this was our nemesis last Saturday, apparently feeling it more in the quad than the glute. The weight is forward is, is what I would suggest to you. So remember, I just said it's kind of heavy in the glutes. Heavy in the heel means heavy in the glute. If your weight is going to the ball of your foot, you're in your quad. So you really have to make that emphasis to come back behind it.

And that doesn't mean you have to pick your foot up.

It just often means you have to literally push your heel into the ground and move yourself backward. So being sure that you're not changing and going forward. There are a lot of quote unquote influencers on, you know, wherever they are, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. And They're demonstrating in order, in order to load the glutes, lean forward, and they mean lean forward angle from your hip. And there's truth to that. But you'll notice that I'm pretty upright almost all the time, and I'm cueing you to stay upright because it's very difficult if you're just getting used to movement to lean forward, keeping the weight back in your heel and your glute. We tend to, as soon as we lean forward, we go forward, and that puts the emphasis in the ball of your foot. And you're going to feel it then in your quad. But the risk is not just in the quad, in the knee. And this answers the next question that was— someone said during front lunges. Now, here's the deal. You never see them in a Flipping 50 video. So depending on where you are, you're realizing I haven't seen them yet and you won't ever. We have 8 programs. I'm working on number 9 to be done before the end of the year. And we encourage lunges. I love lunges, but I don't do forward lunges ever. And I probably haven't for the last 25 years with most clients unless we're doing a walking lunge and we've decided it's appropriate for the person I'm with. I do walking lunges. But why is walking lunges or forward lunges— I feel them in your quads because you have to decelerate Imagine you're driving your car fast. Anybody else do that? And you come to a stop sign, right? And you, you don't quite get stopped. Your nose is out in the middle, right? You've gone beyond and you know it because you feel like, oh my gosh, can't wait for this light to turn, right? Is that just me?

More than one who does that?

Okay. But you've had to decelerate. And when you were going forward in a lunge, stepping forward, and maybe stepping back, you're doing a stationary lunge. You step forward, you have to decelerate, you have to stop that motion, and you've got your body weight coming forward. And most of us can't get to the heel and stop because it's, it's all too new. We're in motion, and when it's dynamically in motion, we end up going forward. So we put the foot down, but we go into the ball of the foot. And that, yes, is quadricep, but mostly it's knee. We're just going into that knee stress. So whenever you have deceleration, the risk of injury goes up. Most of the ACL tears that have occurred with our young, you know, adolescents, they happen during deceleration movements of some kind, you know, unless there was direct trauma. So it's the slowing down, it's the stopping or sudden pivoting and change of direction. So when we start standing and we go into a rear lunge, we never have to deal with that. The knees are in perfect position when we start, we step back, we just bring it back into perfect position. We're not actually stressing the knee. So it may be that the— some of you do, I know you've said experience discomfort in the back knee when you're in a lunge, something odd is going on. You've got probably an imbalance in that, but it's, but that's much less common. That's kind of an anomaly, and you may want to not take quite as long a step backward, keep it shorter, closer to your body, but weight still on that front heel. And it's much easier to maintain good position if you started in good position and you're leaving the knee there. We're just then subtracting and adding it back in. So I hope that makes sense. Somebody else asked about barefoot walking. And first of all, you didn't invite me to come over, so I don't know where you're beach walking, but I would like to test this one with you. And it says, is this good? And said, I have neuropathy. I believe that. So nerve damage in toes, it's somewhat common midlife and beyond. And generally there's there's— you either deal with it or there is some minor surgery that you can do to fix that. So is that good? So there's a lot of possible answers here. So is it good for you? And it may depend on if you're walking on that sand close to the water where it's really wet, densely packed, might be better because it then just a step away from a harder surface, right? It's still fairly solid. But when you're walking in that very dry sand and it's powdery and you have this very uncontrollable means that may be more difficult to control what your response to that would be. So when you see people running on the beach, they're generally running close to the wet water, like right where it's going to come up and get their shoes wet or they're barefoot. But whether or not you can depends on, you know, does it trigger anything? If you have plantar fasciitis, you probably already are going, oh no, never, I couldn't do that because absolutely, you know, the general rule is you should be in shoes 24/7 anyway, except when you're working on things to ice the foot, strengthen the foot, and working on mobility, you know, not necessarily in a weight-bearing way. So when you— if you would put that stress on, I mean, it would trigger your plantar fasciitis potentially because of every time you set your foot down, your foot contracts like multiple times. And all of these muscles in the sole of your foot, they're like 6 layers deep. And there's a lot to mess with and a lot that could go wrong. So flip-flops are like the worst possible thing for somebody with plantar fasciitis. You know, dump them away because because that, or, um, clogs, right? Backless shoes. Because your foot not only has to do all the contraction that it normally does, it has to contract twice because it's trying to keep that shoe on. And we do it subconsciously unless you have plantar fasciitis. You begin to be very conscious of it because it actually hurts when you wear those shoes. Um, so hope that helps. Okay, that clears all the questions. That was a lot.

So any questions that come up?

Okay, the sidekick, we solved that one. Lower works and try to work your way higher. Good. So don't just work your way higher by muscling it over time, but work on that mobility through the hip. And you may find that once your mobility improves, so too does your ability to kick higher. So great.

Glad that was helpful. Okay. That was a sprint.

Anybody else got a question? We've got about a minute and I will answer anything I can. Or if there was anything from that, you know, verbally talking about things you may have needed a visual for, happy to try and clear something else up if you've got another question. You're all very quiet.

Okay, I could just call on somebody. It's what teachers do, you know, when it's very quiet in the room. All right, I think we'll wrap then and we'll call that good.

So realize we have a clean slate tomorrow.

Um, how about I leave you with this?

I'm going to leave you with one, one thing, and that is You know, we're in what, going into week 6? Yes. So most of you, and please don't feel behind if you're like still doing a week 5 workout or if you're ahead, don't gloat, okay? Either.

It's—

you're in the right place at the right time. You have plenty of time. So although it's a 12-week program, you officially have gotten in your 12 weeks with about 10 or 11 days to spare. So there's extra time on the end that you probably didn't even realize. But I want to share this example of something that I told my son this past weekend. He's about to— so he's in his late 20s. He's about to quit his job and start his own business. And it's a little tedious about— he has a non-compete and wants to start a company that's very similar. So I have tried to bite my tongue. I really want him to do it, right? I really think this is— there's no better time to do it. You know, the personal growth opportunity that will happen no matter what happens to the business is you're never gonna have this perfect time again. And I didn't give him my two cents, but I recently said, okay, so where are you? Are you quitting on Monday?

Are you, you know,.

And he, the past two weekends, he was a golfer in college, and so he's continuing to compete and play in tournaments as a young adult. And he won this past weekend, like, the city tournament and the club tournament, and kind of a big deal to get your name in the paper. And I said, look, I said, I'm all behind you for doing this. Here's what I want you to do. So I'm gonna mom right now. I'm gonna parent really hard, so be ready. And I said, you have to lock in these feelings of winning. You have to lock that in. You have to lock in the award that you won last year when you were, you know, the biggest producer for the company after just 6 months of working for them while others were doing it for 12. You have to lock that in, and you are that person every single day.

'Cause you're gonna have some hard days.

There are gonna be, pardon my French, but I said there are gonna be some days that suck. And you have to remember this right now. I need you to lock it in. If you need to write it down, do it. Because there's gonna be days you're gonna doubt, you're gonna think, what did I do? I could have just been taking in the regular paycheck. So I say that to all of us because I think exercise sometimes goes that way as well. And, you know, we're in the middle. And when you get close to the end, it feels like I can rally again and I can run a little bit harder because it's almost done. It's like— and we kind of like, I wish I would have done harder from the beginning or all the way through. But it's actually this middle where it's messy in the middle. And it's, you know, you can feel like it's not going as well as I wanted to, or I fell off, or it wasn't perfect, or that weekend interrupted things and I didn't get started. But just remind yourself, you know, you've had days that did go really well and look at the data. You know, what was it about that that made it go well? And to keep tapping into that. So, you know, a bad day is just a bad day. And maybe it's not even a bad day. Maybe it's just that was a bad morning or that wasn't a great meal and then it's over and being beyond it. So work on, you know, the mindset of sticking with it. We have at this point in our lives, all of us started something and quit something, right? And sometimes quitting is a win. We needed to walk away from something. But when, you know, other programs didn't work for you, sometimes they can do a job on your head and there can be a, well, this doesn't work for me. You know, it won't work for me. It works for somebody else. And I think just making sure that you realize those thoughts are going to keep coming at you and you just kind of have to be ready to say, oh, I saw you coming. I knew that you were going to do this to me and just be able to say, okay, I can kind of let this go through. I'm going to ride this wave. It's not going to feel good for a little while. I'm going to feel like it was me.

But not necessarily is it you.

So there you go. Okay. I will be back tomorrow answering any questions.

You are so welcome.

And thank you. Thank you. And I shared a message on Instagram as well, because somebody said responses came when I was sharing his picture of the trophy.

And they said, you must be so proud.

And I made a response that said, you know, I was proud of him on a random Tuesday. What I am right now is happy for him that he got what hard work and what discipline or continuing to do the hard things does. He got what he deserved. We don't always get it in the time we want it. So we're the same way here. I'm very careful with our coaches and I, I want them to be sure that when they're, you know, coaching you in a Facebook group, that they're not stealing your thunder. We're not proud of you. We're happy for you. You should be proud of yourself. And we just want to celebrate with you.

You're adult women.

So you got this. All right.

Have a great day, everybody. There you have it. Your behind the scenes. And I told you disclaimer was given early. I didn't take out the ums, and I'm sure there were some. That's in part, I think, human conversation. That's sometimes what the brain does while you're thinking and making your answer potentially come out in the best possible way. So apologize, I guess, and not apologize as well. The way questions are submitted for those coaching calls, they're submitted in the chat on Zoom. We had a few questions asked in the Facebook group that also were included on those calls. And there are a few individuals choosing not to be in the Facebook group who are on the other side of the world that need to send questions to our support team that make it to us. And so they get to the questions list, so they get included in those coaching calls in there in the library. To see a real example of how we label each call with hints of this is what the topic is, I'm going to include a picture of what it looks like when you open up this call library just in case you're intrigued about how this works. If you want to get your hands on it, the library is included in this 12-week session of Stronger. You get all 60 sessions to click whenever you want them, and you will always have access to them in the courses area where you log in at flipping50.com. Even though our 12-week program, just to be totally transparent, those videos are not what you're purchasing when you purchase Stronger. And I know a lot of people want to do that, and it's the popular decision, but there is a reason that I don't do it that way, and that is because of 40 years of being an exercise psychology guru watching behavior change. People with a lifetime access don't have any reason to use it now. And fitness, my friends, just does not work like that. So if I hold your feet to the fire for a 12-week program that starts on a very specific date and ends on a very specific date, you are much more likely to use that. And telling you this is not for me telling secrets. The reason I do it is because I want you I want you to be a high-maintenance customer. I want you to be there every week asking questions every week, saying, "This was too hard," or, "I don't like that exercise." Those are the people who succeed. It's what we want. We need for you to do that. You and I need a little push and pull between us. Usually a coach and a client have that kind of relationship. If I'm walking arm in arm with you and saying, "Oh yes, okay, we'll just give you that excess." You don't have any reason to do it, and I want you to have a reason to do it. So that's why we designed the program. So when I say you keep the coaching library, you do. That'll be a resource if you're working with me or if you're working with someone else 3 years from now and no longer working with me, you can still take advantage of the library as if you were asking me questions and get content that you can improve your workout results with. So there you have it. I will put the link in the show notes for today to some other episodes that you might enjoy, as well as to the 12 Weeks Stronger program. We call it Stronger Plus because it's plus a good dose of coaching. You get answers to questions like how much protein, what time, what do I eat before, what do I eat after, how much time should lapse, what's— what about intermittent fasting, is that a good thing How can I lose fat? What if I'm gaining muscle and losing fat but the scale isn't changing? And by the way, if that's happening, celebrate. All right, what are you waiting for? We need to start Flipping 50 today. Come on over to the show notes at flipping50.com/menopausefitnesscoaching and take a look at the illustration of the library. You'll see what it looks like if you're behind the scenes looking at it. You get a link to the 12 Weeks Stronger program. You can learn a little bit more about that. And again, total transparency, we do it that way because my goal is not to sell the most. My goal is to have the most successful clients.

That's at the end of the day what it's all about.

What are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 today.