330-SYNCPodcast_HomeWorkouts

Jenny Swisher: [00:00:00] Welcome friends [00:01:00] to this episode of The Sink Your Life Podcast. Today we’re diving into the topic of whether or not your home workouts or even your live exercise classes are actually designed for your female physiology. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way after years of being a home fitness enthusiast.

In fact, as a little backstory, I started with the popular program P 90 X way back in 2010. It reignited a passion in me for exercise. I had played sports in high school and I missed the endorphin rush, the sweat, and it just plain felt good. I got great results and it makes sense that I did. Given that the program was designed around progressive overload philosophy, which is sort of the OG of how we should train as both men and women, after about seven years of doing ample home fitness programs, of checking the boxes on the calendars that come with the programs, things started to change not only for my body but for the programs themselves.

I started suffering from adrenal burnout, low cortisol hypoglycemic episodes, and what I now realize was a true over training and [00:02:00] under fueling scenario. You see, over time the workouts changed instead of hour long, progressive overload philosophy with adequate rest and recovery between sets, they became 20 to 25 minutes or shorter, and designed to be in and out, a quick blast of cardio and on with your day.

The problem was that a lack of focus on strength building and a greater focus on calorie burn and high intensity, that became the goal, and with that came burnout and hormone imbalance. I wasn’t actually getting stronger in my workouts. I was lean, actually, many of my friends would say I was too lean and struggling with dysregulated menstrual cycles, blood sugar issues, and overall fatigue.

The problem was my brain had become conditioned to check the boxes on the calendar and to do the hard work. Every day to crave the sweat and the high intensity to push myself day after day. This led to a dysregulated nervous system to boot. And the thing is, I have actually seen this in literally hundreds of other women who’ve joined my course starting in 2021.[00:03:00]

The thing that was once delivering results and true health began to struggle.

It goes without saying that one, if not, the leading company in home fitness has since gone downhill, but others are emerging claiming to be hormone healthy and guaranteeing results in 21 days or six weeks. But the reality is it’s all just still marketing. And here’s why.

It hasn’t been until the last decade that we finally have research on the female body as it pertains to training. Until the last decade, it’s been assumed that we’re just small men. And that what works for men will work for us. It makes sense when you understand female physiology that we are different and therefore require different things when it comes to both fueling and exercise.

So how do you know if your program is truly designed for you as a female? Well, here are some things to look for. Number one is the focus, progressive overload and strength training. Now, hear me out. Some programs claim to be progressive overload, and they may even say that out loud, but lifting weights doesn’t always equal progressive overload.

Progressive overload is when you do [00:04:00] the same movements. Ideally functional movements like pushing, pulling, squatting, lunging, and you do them with as much weight as you can with proper form and technique. You do the same movements over time with the goal of increasing the weights. A lot of programs will claim that because they have strength training that their progressive overload, when in reality the moves change and the focus is not repeating the same movements week to week with greater capacity.

This is a red flag. Okay. Number two is the work to rest ratio between sets. Women need a one to two ratio, meaning that we need to recover for double the amount of time that the effort took. So if the plan is to do four rounds of squats, the goal would be to do round one. With the heaviest weight you can with proper form followed by double the rest.

If the squats took you 30 seconds, you would rest for at least 60 seconds before beginning round two Most home workout programs don’t wanna waste time. Dilly dallying on camera. So they edit the workouts to scoot right along, which gyps your rest and recovery, and therefore compromises your capability with progressive [00:05:00] overload.

Now let me be clear if the goal of a particular workout involves super sets or triple sets, the rest that we’re talking about comes between the sets, not between the moves. Sometimes the idea is to double up or triple up on combos of movements before we rest, but the more simple that we can make it, the better.

Number three, adequate rest and recovery in the overall plan or calendar. If your plan is six to seven days a week of work, you’re likely going to eventually burn out. It’s not about strength gains at this point. It’s about pushing you to your max, which will eventually max you out. Number four, the cardio element.

Ah, my favorite. We need cardio to work our VO two max as women. In fact, it’s a primary indicator of our longevity, but daily cardio via HIIT training or cardio, that’s disguised as strength training that has little rest between sets like we talked about. That’s where we see a problem.

I like polarized training where we alternate between body part, strength, focus, and cardio, or mobility. Number five, if the HIIT workouts are [00:06:00] longer than 15 minutes, you’re being marketed to true. Hi is eight to 10 minutes max, and anything more is just high intensity cardio. Don’t get me wrong. Zone three training as it’s called, which is where we aim to reach our heart rate max is necessary.

I love me, a good plyometric workout, but a lot of times these sustained HIIT workouts are just long bouts of zone two. We don’t have to do this. We can work smarter, not harder. We can leverage the alternation between zones two and three without sustained high intensity and high impact. These are five things that we can look out for when it comes to workout plans that we’re following as women.

We have to pay attention to the research that’s done on women and the research is clear fed versus fasted training. I’ll link up a podcast on that spec on that specific topic, adequate rest and recovery. Progressive overload. This is the way, it might be boring and not as flashy, but it’s what delivers results.

I hope this helps you, my friends. I get asked often about what I do now for exercise, and the answer to that is easy. I keep it very simple and I utilize [00:07:00] our amazing sync fitness platform, my trainers, Jen and Kelsey, and I have created workouts that are meant for female physiology.

Oftentimes women will say, first, wow, this is different. But then the results speak for themselves. We help women strength train and push in ways that their bodies are meant to push and rest and recover the way that we should. And as a result, we see women actually feeling energized from their workouts instead of tanked.

Share this out with a friend. Everyone needs to hear this. Make sure all women know what they need to know when it comes to exercise. As science evolves, we can too. We are not small men and what we require is different. Our bodies can carry life and sustain life. It’s time we think about our hormones, muscle and nervous system regulation as part of our overall plan.

Until next time, my friends, thanks for tuning in and we’ll talk soon. [00:08:00]