What's Still Missing from Women's Fitness Programs

If I were the president, this would essentially be a State of the Union kind of a speech. You know, that one at the end of January where you either tune in or you definitely tune out, whichever it is. This is that. And I've been doing this now for— I will turn the corner in 42 years in January of 2026. So whenever you're listening, I think it's relevant. And I think that Had I known anybody when I started out at 22 changing my major— actually changed my major at 20— and knew somebody who'd been in this, in the career or the field for 42 years, I would have thought, wow, that's old. So I'm feeling right now like I'm just getting started, and I think that it takes until now to have the vision and the wisdom to be able to look back, to look at what is true now, to look at all we thought was true, all we thought we knew, and know better that we didn't, and be humbled by the very essence of who we were in that moment. And I like to think I'm an old soul, but that is where this is going. I want to share with you the current state of the fitness industry, what what's challenging about it for me personally and what I think is challenging for you as the women that we serve in this community in two ways and potentially three, because we're really expanding our reach a little bit more. And so to those of you who are the newer audience that I'm aiming at, the PAs and the physicians who also depend on expertise from health and fitness coaches to help be a part of or round out the part of the team of delivering services to your patients. We call them clients in order for them to get better results doing what they do with you. Then there's the health and fitness coaches who it's been my pleasure to be a teacher to teachers for a very long time. Honestly, I've mentored since, um, my grad school years. I've mentored since— probably I had been a teacher for no more than about 5 years, but 10 years into it, I began actually teaching formal workshops. And so it evolved. And now, 2018, we first launched the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist coaching program and certificate, training trainers and health coaches how to do what we had done and use the framework to to get reliable, predictable, consistent results for both their business as they grew so they could have a lifestyle. No longer does fitness have to be a hobby and something you do part-time where you invest more in your shoes and your tights than you get back in your paycheck. We, we've passed those days, but you still have to be smart about how you build a business, and most certifications and 4-year degrees don't teach you how to do that. I do. We want for you to experience that kind of lifestyle because you're changing other people's lives as well. So you're number 2. And the third, for you who are listening, who are here, who've been participants in classes, who've been clients of personal trainers or health coaches, who go to the studios, who want a certain result, this is for you too. So all 3 layers, I'm targeting all of you. Emphasizing what it's taken to painfully learn some lessons. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. Let's dive into this one. I think you're going to love it, but let's check in first with one of our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. There has never been a better time to be a fitness or a health coach and really, truly do something that you love getting up in the morning to do that offers you value. In your own lifestyle, but also the feeling that you've helped improve somebody else's life. And yet it's also been the most tricky time. You potentially, if you've gotten certified since 19 or 2020, did I just date myself? You got certified at a time when there was not a lot of practical experience going on. And so you haven't had a lot of repetitions, seeing a lot of different bodies with a lot of different lever lengths, cueing a lot of people, understanding what their questions are. And that could put you behind when it comes to supporting and teaching and training, as well as marketing and building your business. And nobody wants to market and sell who loves to serve. And that's really what a health coach and a trainer is. But there is a way to do it with integrity. And I will tell you, if you are a consumer here and still listening, you want qualified educated, heartfelt, heart-centered trainers and coaches to be good at marketing. Otherwise, you find the ones who are good at marketing and not heart-centered. They just want you and potentially want you to be low maintenance, and that is not what we want. We want you to be life-changing, ask the questions, use us, abuse us, and let's get you some results. So if you're interested in learning how do you do both, how do you become a better coach with a framework that's predictable, that gets results,. And then I can tell you, worked for me, and it's worked for thousands of others at this point. But I quit everything at 49 and essentially started over. I proved that what I was doing the decades before in coaching trainers and health coaches worked because I went from zero to six-figure months. And if I can, you can too. Okay, so I will put the link in the show notes. You can find more at fitnessmarketingacademy.com where we talk to our health coaches and fitness trainers specifically over there. Let's launch into this episode, and I'm going to start with this: rethinking fitness goals and fitness measurement. So we have to move beyond what are your goals, what do you want, which is literally what a trainer or a health coach will, will ask, and you will say, you know, can you help me lose this? And inevitably you're holding a body part, right? And you can name a couple probably that you already know would be included in that pile. But we need to provide measurable progress, not just the feeling that your belly has gone down or, or even the feeling of confidence when you walk into a room. And that is priceless, by the way. I'm not discounting it, but we also want measurable results because I think we get to a point where we think we want very specific results, but often some of us are exercising with very random plans. Like we do the feels like, and sometimes that's not all bad. Sometimes just moving is the thing we need to do. We need to release the framework and the tension and the blueprint a little bit. Those of us who are type A need that most. Those of us who are already very free souls and artistic might need a little bit more framework and structure, but we know who we are. I think we have to suggest ways that we can make it easy for you to assess and test. And I think the very use of the word in the fitness industry— we're going to fitness test you, we're going to do a fitness assessment— I think most of us, even those of you that are out there who were very good at school would say we have to agree we did not like tests. Like if we had an exam, we had a test, or we had a quiz, it still caused stress. Now, you might have been a really high performer, but I think even high performers— and I might go to the extent to say high performers probably felt the stress of that more than anybody, not most of us. Most of us would not put our hand up and say, "Yes, oh gosh, I want a test. I want an assessment." I probably would now more than ever because I realize that it's data. And I suppose you have to be 61 or close to it, at least in my book, to feel that way. I now understand if I get a bad score, it's just a benchmark and it's data. And if I am looking at my own and I'm not comparing to somebody else did this on their VO2, what is mine? You know, I'll be fine. So it's out of comparison mode, except you to you, but you're also in fairness, please don't compare your 61-year-old self to your 45-year-old self. You know, if I did that, my 61-year-old self has gotten smarter, is no longer doing endurance athlete types of things like endurance swimming, endurance biking, and endurance running, you know, my VO2 max might have been better when I was 45 because I was doing those things, but I was setting myself up for a fall at 55. And I don't mean fall, scrape my knee, or, or break a bone. I just mean That was not the best use of my time or my energy. Now, here's the thing I think we all have to ask ourselves. If you've learned something about the way you spent your time then in your 30s, your 40s, maybe in your 20s for you, would you go back, do you think, and change it if you could? I don't know that my 45-year-old self would've listened. To the wisdom that I'm offering it now. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have. So hindsight, you know, is better because now I can say, I know I wish that we could put this out there for people, but I also don't think that you can squash somebody's desire completely. You can let them know, hey, there might be a more intelligent way to do this. Even I, as I was endurance training, kept my eye on my skeletal muscle mass and my percent body fat. Not just my percent body fat, wanting to see it go down, but my skeletal muscle mass. I was very certain that can't go down because I knew the relationship between that and my bone density. And I knew I wasn't doing a bone scan. Nobody was going to offer that up for me, but I did know Spending so much time in a pool and in a bike mean anti-gravity, great for muscles, great for your heart, but not great for your bone if all things are considered. And we purely wanted bone density, that's a lot of time off your feet. So important to think about, you know, what you know, what you know now. But let's come back to simple at home test, and if the word could be different. Assessment is really not a lot softer, but we don't need to pull you into a lab and have you do a VO2 max, hook you up to a mask that plugs your nose, closes everything off except breathing in, breathing out. It's not comfortable. You're drooling. It's very awkward. I've delivered them. I've administered them. I've done them multiple times throughout my career. I still hate them. Hate them. It's a very strong word. And if you are not used to doing it, most often you're going to do it on a bike, your quadriceps are going to experience local fatigue that you're not used to. Now, if you're a biker, different story. You're still going to experience some pain and discomfort, not quite as bad, however. So at-home tests for mobility, we can have you stand on one leg and reach with the opposite leg Easy peasy. Put a little tape down on the floor. It's all you need to do. It's easy. It's low cost. It's accessible. Stability. I can have you lift up one leg. You could do that right now. And we can do a couple of other things demonstrating stability as well. Balance, which is or isn't stability. So there are a few different things. Center of gravity over base of support versus just lifting that leg up. Cardiovascular testing, going for a walk, marking a mile, you go to a track would be the ideal and the best, but it doesn't have to be. If it's repeatable, it becomes a test that you can use. And all you'd want to do is replicate as much as possible the environmental factors. So, you know, if you are going and it's 80 degrees, no wind, perfectly beautiful. You don't wanna retest on a day that it's, you know, 112 degrees and the wind is blowing strongly. You have everything working against you on that day. You wanna keep it fairly similar. And most of us can do that. If you are walking indoor track, even better. So there are certain indices or tests that are connected directly to your longevity. These field tests, we call them, that you can do out in the field for yourself are so very easy. We've got an entire battery. I will give it to you. We call it the fitness scorecard. 7 categories of tests that you can do. And again, there's that word, but there are ways to get curious about where are you right now? How do you do? Because some of us think I go to yoga like 3 times a week. I'm sure I'm very mobile or— and stable. And are you or aren't you, right? So we really have to take a good look at that. Or you think your mobility is great because you go to Pilates, and yet you might want to look at, is it directly applicable to kind of movement that we really assess for longevity? We want to look at those things, and you can do that. It costs you nothing. I promise within the 7 categories we came up with from the literature, by the way. We didn't make them up. That sounded bad. But we chose that within each category, you'd at least be able to respond to 2 or 3 no matter what. If you didn't have equipment at home, you just have a tape measure, you can get your hands dirty. You can put a little dot when you reach your hand up of dust on the wall. We can wash it off later and you can jump up and get your finger dirty and hit that up there, measure the distance, and then go wash the wall before anybody notices what you just did. That's cheap, free. Don't, don't have to do anything. There are a couple things where you need access to something you can hang from for the dead hang, or you want grip strength testing. If you don't have one of those, they're about $35 if you wanna do it regularly just to retest every month. But But if you want to leave that one out, okay, you have a different way to test your strength. You don't have to do it that way. So we want to find easy ways for you to monitor your own self at home. And so if you're exercising at home, you prefer to do it that way, as many do. We know that 85% of women self-report that they're not exercising enough, not even the bare minimum. This is according to the CDC, Center for Disease Control. And we know that if 80% of women will admit that they're probably a few more of us that won't or didn't or ducked being asked, right? Because we don't want to own up to it. We also want to focus on the fact that we won't see the results that most of us want so very desperately right away. All right. So the thing you really want if you start a weight loss program is weight loss, and it's often not one of the first measures of success. And if it is, it often then is short-lived, and what comes back to bite you is something that lasts far longer. We usually regain, and we regain 100% fat and have lost a little muscle. So metabolically, our metabolism slows because we lost weight and it was muscle, but when we regained, it was all fat, which is not metabolically active at all. So it's not helping you burn calories, it's making you in fact more sluggish, so you don't want to burn calories. We don't want that to happen. That is in part for some, not all, that we're seeing with GLP-1s for people who didn't make lifestyle changes either in tandem or prior to starting it. But we're not seeing that, by the way, for everybody on GLPs. GLPs have actually helped some people lose weight, get some of the weight and the load off of joints, decrease the hunger and the constant thoughts about food to help them be compliant with lifestyle changes. It's not that everyone was just lazy and awkward who went on GLPs. It's that they tried everything, it wasn't working for many people, and this made it possible. So just in case, throwing that in there. But I want you to focus on other things. So what are other ways we can see progress? Easy, achievable things. Improve sleep. If you're starting an exercise program just simply more activity, 10 minutes more a day consistently of your self-selected intensity level, is shown in self-reports. That's just, here, let's pull you on the street, do you exercise? How does it help? Right? And the answer to that was yes, it improves sleep quality by 33% in a study by the National Sleep Foundation. I found that Fascinating. And I did that— first of all, I came across that in 2013. That was a long time ago and I'm still talking about it because it's so simple. Move for 10 minutes every day at a pace that is reasonable to you and you could sleep 33% better. I'd say, folks, that's a pretty good exchange, right, for an investment of time and energy. So that's an easy one. You can also look at mood boosting. If you get outside and move, it's probably gonna boost your mood even better. There are studies about, you know, walking in green, meaning in a forest setting or the woods or green grass or the park versus the city. And the green was better. But if that's not possible because it's 120 or it's -20, which is I think where I'm going, I'll tell you more about that later. Um, you're probably going to get the better result if you just move and maybe you paint the walls so that it looks like you're in a tropical vacation. Could that help? Or it's just in an area, an environment you love. I tend to think personally I'm always solar powered, so I put, you know, or would I put my reformer upstairs in my bedroom because I had tons of window light. I put the treadmill or my exercise bike in the kitchen because again, close to the most window light. And it's an ugly thing to have sitting there, but I'm not going to use it down in a dark, low-ceiling basement. I'm not going down there. And you know, when you think about why would you— why would you assign something so important to your everyday health to the basement instead of like you have a full dining room you use once a year dedicated to table and chairs? I mean, I am about to move, and I'll tell you what I'm doing. I am taking the library, which is like one of the prime real estate rooms in the house, and it's full of window light, and I'm putting all the gym equipment in there, and it's where you'll see me shooting videos. It would be a beautiful and lovely setting to put a couple chaise lounges for reading, but I'm not going to use it for that anyway, so why would I not put it in the place where I'm using it most? And getting the most life out of it. And similarly, I am turning one of the dining rooms full of window light into my office. And, you know, I just don't care when people come over. This is what we do here. We help people with their lives and I'm helping myself with mine. And we'll see who lives to be happier longer. And, and I want the same for you, but I think it's silly we make decisions about our house and, well, like, what would people think, you know? And I know some people would never put their power plate in the kitchen, dining, living area, but that's exactly where mine is because I'll use it, because I see it, because I'm cooking dinner. And if I were cooking dinner and I needed to run downstairs to go use it while I was cooking dinner, I don't think it would happen. So I want you to focus on things that are easy easy to achieve. And first, your first goals: your sleep, your mood, your libido will increase if you're doing the right exercise, at least if you get in the sweet spot. If you're doing too little, it's not going to be helped. If you're doing too much, it's also going to be trashed. So don't do that to yourself. Um, decreased cravings, more stable energy— those two really go hand in hand— rather than like immediate weight loss or immediate muscle changes. However, I will tell you this: It does not take long to see muscle changes, begin to see some muscle tone. That little line between your triceps and your fat in your arm, you start seeing that, start to see that line from your quadricep and your hamstrings. And that's a lovely thing the first time you notice it, or someone else says, look at that, look at your legs. And it's It's a wonderful thing you would not see from cardio. So we, we tend to think cardio burns calories, or we did once, and hopefully you too have learned this lesson. Cardio simply helps you be maybe a smaller version of yourself, but after midlife menopause sets in, that even may not be possible because you may be changing and increasing cortisol, increasing insulin, causing more fluffy and puffy inflammation. And it's not that it's causing you to gain fat necessarily. It may cause some belly fat deposit if you let it go too far, but what you're doing is just inflaming yourself further. So you will find that doing less actually may be the key to you getting better results. So I want to have you highlight the importance of improvements in maintaining motivation by helping you see these other things. You have to call your own attention to how's my mood, how's my libido, decreased cravings, how are you as far as creativity, problem solving, because those things start to fire better when you're doing the right exercise too. So I also think body composition and longevity are areas where we have to turn to We have in the fitness industry promoted the kind of the gut feeling that women have already had, that we're supposed to be small and, and have teeny tiny little waists and maybe big boobs and big, big buns, but we're supposed to shrink. And that is much more desirable, if you will, than being big. And, you know, notoriously, if you look back at art— I was an art major for about 2 years, so I unfortunately I didn't change soon enough. I had to take art history. And now going back, I think I would love taking it again, but I certainly did not then. It was like, I have to memorize how many slides? I mean, those tests were brutal. So if you've ever seen Mona Lisa Smile, uh, that's— it's that bad. Yes, Julia Roberts was the star. Um, but what I want for you is to realize that we've always wanted to shrink, at least during our lifetime that's been it. And so reframing body composition goal to getting stronger, gaining muscle, not worrying so much about your size, because the size and the weight that you are will benefit from the strength that you gain. And, you know, I know a lot of women who say to me, I don't need to work on my fitness, I am fit, I want to lose weight and I want to lose it by acts. And, you know, there is probably something if you're doing the fitness that is in the way. Either we've got some hormone disruptors, maybe exposure to toxins, you know, and those are in cleaning materials, those are in fragrances products that we're putting on our hair and our body that are fragranced. And I would say if you are weight loss resistant or you are suffering from adrenal issues, I would remove those things. I would really go back and look at those things closely. And I did a podcast not too long ago on this, and it's hard to do on your own. So walking through either in a course or walking through with a coach can be really helpful, or both. Go through the course, have a coach to keep you on track and help you realize that no, this isn't just silly. And yes, previous generations have worn perfume and the woman next to you may have it on, but if it's a disruptor for you because your body has reached this tipping point of exposure to toxins over your lifetime, your tipping point may be some other level than someone else's. And there's a lot of things that go into that. And this podcast is not about that, but I would be sure that you're revisiting that one as well. So let's look at also challenging the idea of shrinking being the honorable goal for women and look instead at body composition. Look at your longevity, take those fitness tests and really look, are you scoring well really in all of them? Sure, you're stronger than most women. In your age? Sure, you're probably more cardiovascular fit than more women your age, if, if this is you. And yet, how about your mobility? Do you have that as well? How about your agility? Are you also there and able to, to move very quickly for your size? So those things are important as well. Focus on that weak link and make it a strength. So there's a need in our fitness industry for better starting points. And for women over 40, I think this is one of the biggest, biggest mistakes we've made so far. You know, we need to recognize that so many women are overwhelmed and we want clear, specific guidance on where to start our fitness journey. So many If we talk about that 80% of people not exercising, why aren't we? I mean, would, would any woman put her hand up and say, I want to die older, faster, like being old at 70 versus, you know, not old until I'm 90 and sicker and fatter? Who's gonna say that? But that is kind of what we're saying. Or you have a belief that no, fitness doesn't matter at all, that I can be as fit or fat as I want to. I can be as lazy and sedentary as I want to, and it's not going to matter at all. That might be your belief system. So maybe, maybe that's who you are if you're not moving. But I don't believe that most women are in that bucket. I think now we're, almost all of us, educated enough enough to know that if you were exercising regularly or somebody who did, that you would potentially feel better, you would be healthier, your metabolic health, your numbers that the physician uses for good health when you go get a checkup would be better. So we need better starting points and advocating for defined protocols rather than vague advice like move more. I find this is really a hard point. So there are a lot of people that say, just move more and let people, you know, do whatever it is they like. I don't think that's enough. I am always surprised and shocked, and I would love to have a response come in from those of you who are listening in earshot about this. A lot of women actually prefer, tell me exactly what to do. On day 2, what am I doing? And I found this among physicians and PAs that I work with, professional types, lawyers, realtors, financial planners. I found this among people who are really driven and really take control of their lives elsewhere, but they actually want to make fewer decisions when it comes to their fitness and be told, you know, the decision they're making is, "I'll do it. Tell me what to do and I'll do it." But they're not sure. They know they're not experts in fitness, so they want that programming. And it's been a shock to me always that if we finish, say, a 12-day challenge, or I've done an 8-week programming where I give somebody the workouts 5 days a week, they want to know if the next step is the next one like this too. You tell me what to do every day. And I am always like, do you want that? And most often, yes, they do. They absolutely want it. So this is really an important distinction. We want to emphasize the importance of giving specific guidelines. Say move more. I would say we need to first just say, how much are you walking now? What I want you to walk is at least 10 minutes every day. Do that for a week. If you're already doing that, keep doing it. You can walk more if you want, but that's all you have to do. Week 2, I want you to walk 15 minutes every day. If you're already doing that, good, keep doing it. And we, we start getting there to the point where, okay, you're gonna do 5 more minutes than you did on average last week. And we start giving more specifics, far more valuable. And we would do something similar with weight training as well. We want to emphasize the importance of setting foundational goals as prereqs for more advanced ones, similar to academic progression. So let me give you an example. So if you were talking about math, which that really makes me nervous talking about math, but let's say you wanted to take geometry because you knew you're going to a university that required you have to take geometry. Well, you have to take Algebra 1 and 2, and so you're gonna do that freshman year and sophomore year, and then by your junior year you get to take geometry. That was my experience. However, I did not look at it like I get 2. Let me tell you, that hour of the day was not fun for me. So, uh, neither were the 2 I would spend at night at the kitchen table, and my parents were like, I— you're over my head, I don't know if I can help you. Yeah, good luck with that. So it's important that you have the prerequisites if you want to lift more. And so basically, if We have you say, here's a beginner program, here's intermediate, here's advanced. So we have these 3 offerings. Which one is most appropriate for me is what you're trying to decide. It would be much more helpful as a fitness industry if we would say, you have already had experience lifting with a bar and doing back squats. Now, I don't do back squats. That was just a, for example. By the way, here's why I don't do them.. And I'm a strength and conditioning coach, like, could be for Division I schools, right? I don't do that and haven't for myself since I was probably 45, and I haven't done that for most of my clients either, since most, most women over 40 trigger their upper back, their upper traps, their neck, and trigger more headaches if they have a tendency to have them by loading their spine like that. We instead put them in a leg press, or we put them down in doing a press up with a, a different kind of a squat, or have them do a hack squat so there's no pressure on the spine. Loading the spine is, is not a good idea, to borrow from a renowned world-famous back pain expert. You know, you're gonna pay for it if you're greedy now and you're trying to go to maximum lifting level. We're gonna pay for that later in life.. And some of us know it, we're doing it, we're, we're paying the interest right now because we did high impact or we did overuse of certain joints, ligaments, tendons earlier in our life. And we didn't listen, like my 30 or 40-year-old self, my 45-year-old self didn't, wouldn't have listened to, you're going to regret that if you do all those iron distance triathlons. And you know, you don't get it until you do. And that's sometimes just life, but at least we could be hearing what else should we be doing along the way to protect ourselves. But we need to know, all right, here's what you are if you're defined as a true beginner. You have not been consistently exercising twice weekly resistance training for the total body, reaching muscle fatigue for at least 3 months. That's a beginner. And then maybe intermittent or intermediate would be you've been doing that for at least 6 months. Now I just left a gap if you're paying attention. Come back to me if you didn't catch that. So I said if you're less than 3 months, you're a beginner, but I said if you have been doing twice weekly for at least 6 months, now you're intermediate. Well, where's that gray area? Well, I think everybody has to kind of place themselves at Maybe I'm a beginner right now because I was away from it, but I have muscle memory and I was an athlete. I just need to get back to it because I was a caregiver for a while or traveling a lot for a while. I would say you probably are going to progress quickly to be an intermediate. But if you really are starting from scratch and you have arthritis, I would say you go slower. Allow yourself to be that beginner for 6 months or more. And feel no injury, no pain. I'm progressing well, I'm getting stronger, and it's going better for me. So now I'm going to classify myself as intermediate. So it allows for a little bit of pacing by leaving those gaps, as long as we tell you, how do I responsibly choose for myself? So somebody who's been lifting weights consistently at least twice weekly to total fatigue in major muscle groups, you've been doing at least 8 to 10 sets per muscle group, meaning chest exercises. You have fatigued the chest in, in 4 sets on Monday, 4 sets on Thursday. That's 8 sets total, and you've been doing that for at least a year. Okay, now I'd say I'm convinced you're, you're more advanced as well. And you may or may not have athletic history or sports history. Doesn't have to be true, but that at least gives you a much better idea of what's the description of somebody who should go to beginner class and intermediate? What have I accomplished at this point? I think we also, you know, need to look at the emotional connection we have to body image and to exercise. You know, acknowledging there's a deep emotional tie that we have as women, I think more so than men. I could be wrong because I only have experience in a female body, but I think that it It is, you know, it is our hair, it is our skin, it's our nails, it's our body shape. It is when we put on a dress or we go somewhere, we have to have another dress, right? We don't get to wear the same suit every wedding and every, everything. We have to change it, change more than the tie. And I think, you know, we want to be sure that were acknowledging that, not ignoring it. And I think just saying, "Oh, but you're so much more than your size," or, you know, "You don't have to be perfect," I don't think those statements are helpful. I think they're intended to be, but I think we each have to get some support, maybe speaking it out loud like I just did, that there are more ways to look at our value and that we get it. Let's help each other through this whole idea that we have to look a certain way. And if we focus potentially on feeling a certain way, like we're getting the rest, we're getting the exercise, getting the recovery, so we're sleeping well, we're firing on all cylinders, we have more energy, that maybe the, the other tangible looks that we want are also coming along for the ride. We're doing an in-depth group on that coming up in, uh, 2026 in January, and that group is about closed, so I don't have room for him anymore. But if you are somebody who's looking for private coaching and, and kind of in a very intimate and small group and you're ready to really invest in your own future, give me a shout out, but, uh, we'll double check to see if we have any opens and we'll connect to make sure that it's a right fit for you. Okay, um, we also want to look at sharing personal stories, meaning the coaches, me sharing mine, you know, because my ride personally in my own fitness as I age has also been bumpy just like yours. And there have been curves, curves, and there's been, you know, water over the road, don't drive through there places. And, you know, sometimes you just drive through anyway and think, I shouldn't be doing this, I shouldn't be doing this and you go anyway. Can't tell you how I know that, but those things happen for all of us. And so acknowledging that your journey wasn't perfect, mine wasn't. I did this and, you know, I probably wasn't supposed to, but I did it anyway. And looking at the value of those, because like we were— we are talking about menopause now and we never have before. I think it's helping every woman get to it better and easier. And I think then if we start talking about our own experience with fitness and what we thought and felt going through times that were imperfect, or times when we actually looked good but we felt like crap, you know, that sheds some light for every other woman to be able to say, I'm not alone, that was happening to her too. Really important. And, you know, I think let's look at encouraging this self-talk shift. So this is not about me imposing my thoughts or teaching you this is how you should be, but it's sharing a story, sharing the collective look back at 42 years and how the fitness industry has evolved. And in a way, it hasn't. It hasn't evolved completely and enough. It's still somewhat in its infancy. So 42 years ago, I would say 52, it was really born, you know. And I was just still like at the tail end of elementary school probably at that point. But that's when really Jane Fonda, Jackie Sorensen, those kinds of things were emerging. This is really kind of important for you to look at, you know, where were we, where have we come. But as an industry, the fitness industry is fairly young, the coaching industry much younger yet. So things that we have to consider when you're looking at, is this really something that we can say this is absolutely the way it should have been. I think we're still finding our way as a fitness industry. It's a very exciting time. You're part of it, you're building it. So, um, all of these little pieces, you know, the fitness industry's message— and I want to address this first term, fitness industry. What does that mean? What does that even mean? Really, that means everything. So the industry that we're in is still very loosely defined. The fitness industry is— includes accredited now certifications, but those are fairly easy access. You don't have to have too much education education in order to get it. You don't have to have a high school diploma, don't have to have a college degree for most of the certifications. There are one that I can name, um, Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach, which is the National Strength and Conditioning Association. You can take the test, you can pass the exam, but you won't get your certificate until you have a 4-year degree, which I've always found very interesting and very cool. Like, they've drawn a line in the sand. And I didn't take mine until, oh gosh, 20, 20 years, 18 years at least after I had graduated college. So I was already teaching at a university when I was taking that, so I didn't have to jump through the hoop. But it was also a hard test. It was not an easy exam, practical piece to it, and so good because so many Many things don't have that, but we have to look at the industry and say, other than that, there are a lot of quote unquote certifications out there. You can get them right and left. And if you don't know what you're asking for, simply to say, are you certified to somebody tells you nothing about their qualifications. So please ask better questions. And if you need them, I am happy to share them. In fact, I will make a point of doing a future podcast episode of questions that you should ask before hiring a health coach and questions that you should ask before hiring a personal trainer if you're working with someone one-on-one. So I have nothing to gain for it. We do have certified menopause fitness specialists all over the United States and across across the globe. Actually, if you're interested, we have a directory. You can reach out and ask, do you have somebody, you know, in my area? We don't show you the directory, but we will let you know, and we'll do an introduction email if we have somebody close to you, depending on who you want to work with. If you want to work with me or one of the people on our team directly who train the trainers, you can reach out to support@flipping50.com. 50. But back to, um, reference to Dr. Stuart Phillips first made me aware of this again and said, you know, why would we intimidate them? But the 80% of people not meeting minimum exercise requirements for metabolic health, we really have to look at why are we trying to scare everybody away. Let's make it easier. The persuasive or pervasive message of lift heavy shit, pardon my French, and do high impact. You know, it has to be intense enough. We really want to start before we can progress, right? And we're almost by that message suggesting you progress or we don't want to hear from you. Like, that's terrible. So we do want to make it— let's create a habit before you start going harder. There's a place, pace, and the two together. We have to start you at the right place, progress you at the right pace. And they are two key things to you not getting sick, injured, or exhausted so that you stick with what you're doing. And again, I'm calling out to you because I'd love to hear from you. If you're not exercising, can you share anything about why? Is it painful? Is it uncomfortable? Is it intimidating? Is it that you don't have time or you don't have energy or you don't know where to start, what's been your experience? It's very insightful for us to hear about that and how we can help. We need to do the ABCs before we can go further. That's true for all of us. We would never give someone a chapter book in kindergarten unless we knew they knew the ABCs, they knew the sound them out, they knew all the pieces of that. We often cater to hard bodies, to the very athletic. We will see even some of the doctors right now in the space who began talking about menopause— because physicians don't get exercise training, by the way, you all know that, right? They don't get nutrition and they don't get exercise. They're just showing the exercise they've learned to do and Often we're seeing them show off maybe by wearing their weighted vest or by jumping or lifting heavy. And yet, should they be doing that? It's well-intended. However, is it working? Because we're still seeing 80% of people not doing it. Is it a good thing? I don't know the answer to that. It might be good for somebody, but is that somebody already moving Or are we getting somebody off the couch saying, I could do that? Because I think that's what we want to do first, at least. And instead we show, you know, bare naked core, and we show six-packs, and everybody's got a spray tan. And, you know, the people who need us most, we're probably letting sit out. So I'm curious to know, again, any of you When you go on fitness accounts, you see them in your social media account, you know, is it encouraging or is it intimidating? I think most of us love beautiful bodies. I don't think we could argue it's hard not to look at them. However, that still doesn't say, does it help you? Does it help motivate you or does it have the opposite effect? For you. So I'm, I'm very curious, and I think maybe somebody might be listening and say it's actually both. Like, I love looking at it, it's really motivating. But when you think about that, do you think, well, I could do that too, or I could look like that? Or do you think there's no way I could get there? Share your, your feelings and impressions, please. So I think, you know, look at your own personal experience versus overtrained, you know, medical professionals due to poor screening and insufficient program descriptions. You know, it's, it's really hard, I think, when medical pros we rely on and we, we've given them authority and credibility for our entire lives. Like, we go to doctors and we expect them to fix us, right? When we were sick, that's how we grew up. And the truth is that we now have to take back and advocate for our own health. We have to ask questions, we have to gather information, and we need to take it and say, here's what I want. And there's an art and a science to that as well. I think it's not easy, but it's super important for acknowledging who are we working with and talking to, and where are we trying to get our advice, and are they qualified really to give that advice. So poor descriptions in the fitness industry get us into trouble. Beginner, advanced, intermediate may not be really helpful for you. So ask, you know, what, what should I be able to do if I'm going into this class? The thing I've hated for over a decade is, oh, this class is for everybody, all levels, we can accommodate all levels. To me, that is like screaming, this is for nobody, because nobody is going to be served really well in there. A beginner will be doing too much trying to keep up, and somebody advanced potentially won't be doing enough or will feel irritated. All those things, you know, inflict emotions that are not positive about the exercise that we're doing for us. We want to advocate for more descriptive criteria for fitness levels. You know, I want you to share, here's what I've been doing so far, where would be a good start for me, provide, you know, examples of what this is, you know, when we talk about beginner, intermediate, advanced, about intensity, but also realizing realize you want to share information about you and limiters. Do you have arthritis? Do your knees bother you? Can you bend over? Can you get down on the floor? Because that would change whether you can do a particular program or not. So you may be very able-bodied and strong and energetic, but you have knee issues and can't get down on the floor and back up very that changes what program might work for you. So it's something for you to think about, to advocate for yourself, and for you if you're a health coach or fitness trainer, to think about as you title and label things so people can find what they need. I want to emphasize the critical importance of considering multiple layers, you know, being beyond a simple health history for women in midlife. We need to look at what what hormonal stage you're in— premenopause, perimenopause, menopause transition, postmenopause. We also want to look at what is your fitness age. Are you really a beginner? Are you a toddler, you know, kind of intermediate? Or are you more advanced? And/or are you even competitive, even for your age group, or, or otherwise Those things also very important. Your limiters, and that could be time, they could be energy, as well as a certain condition that you might have. And I also think really important for you to consider, if you want to take another step, where do you do that first? And maybe it's not just blindly exercising. Maybe there's more to it than that for you. If you would like to start, I I do a discovery call. We are offering $10 off during Black Friday week. We're, we're doing pre-Black Friday things, so you can get a 30-minute discovery call from me, normally $50, for $10 off right now. If you go to the store at the right time, you'll see that it's already there, and you can do that later this month. We have, um, something called an ultimate assessment also. You'll be able to take advantage of that. We have Exercise Prescription course that is for fitness pros, health coaches. Really, it's targeting physicians, however, for exercise prescription so that you can be more organized, you can be more on point, say more than you should walk or you should lift, and know really how to give them a little more in terms of the exercise prescription, which includes the frequency, the intensity level, sometimes appropriate but others not, duration because it's not about duration as much as correct intensity and lifting load. Usually duration should anymore be chosen by the individual. How long do you have? How long will you make? What's realistic for you? So probably the best starting point. But this exercise prescription for women 40 and over is on pre-order for $250. It's regularly $500. If you want want it. We've had health coaches and fitness coaches ask. We've had physicians, um, ask about CMEs. Those are a little bit— it's a longer process to apply. We partner with an agency for that. But for those of you who are interested in, will this be giving CEUs by an accredited organization? Yes, and it's not out yet. So if you're looking to get the course and crash course before the end of the year to get recertified with these, you won't have them yet. You will have— we don't call it lifetime, you'll have a long time access to this course. So when the CEUs are ready, you will be able to take that quiz and get the CEUs. So we will promise that. And if you're like most quality organizations or agencies, it's like every 2 years you need their CEUs. So you will get a significant number. And I— we don't have the total hours yet because honestly it is not ready to go. So that rolls out this month. It is November as I'm doing this live. It should be out. We'll start rolling it out module by module and realize this is going to help you considerably with programming for women who are in menopause, any stage, and looking at how much load do they need, how much rest between sets, how many rest rest between repetitions, if to tell you the truth, how much rest between workouts, and how do I look at what else is going on in their life when we're considering rest and recovery as well. We'll talk about protocols and we'll talk about how you program for the rest that someone needs based on whether they're a beginner or more advanced without having them sit and scroll on the phone in order to do that? How do we program very efficiently and effectively? We've got all the answers. We've been doing it for 42 years, but really we've been doing it for flipping 50, and we have 12, 12-week programs. So if you're interested in exercising for yourself, we've got that too. You'll find everything today in the show notes. But I hope that this has resonated a little bit with your own motivation level, and if you're a health fitness coach, that you're already way ahead of me, and you're part of the solution, not of the problem. The fitness industry, you may have grown up with it if you're like me. So it really started— Jackie Sorensen was, you know, I think we did contract PE in high school and we would dance to Jackie Sorensen's Hush All Over the World doing aerobics. And that was the beginning of, you know, our— then Jane Fonda, and then, then what's next? And it was spinning and slide and step and all of the things little by little came out. And then it's— we've gone through an exciting era in the fitness industry, but I think now we're in another one. We're breaking through this era of women between 50 and, and 90, you know, or the end of our lives, lifting weights and doing things that others have not yet done. So go us! We, we are doing this and making the world a better place because of it, our own personal world, if nothing else. So I hope that this has kind of got you thinking about your own experience in the fitness industry as either a participant or as a health coach and as a fitness professional and what you want to make of it. So if you are interested in more information about the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist and becoming one, reach out to me personally. Personally. We'll do a quick call if you'd like to, and you're serious. I'm going to send you there to look at it first, and we'll make sure that it's something that you're really interested in doing. And then hop on a call and let's see what it is you want your business to look like. What are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 today.